#Its just that these plants have wormed their way into my brain and after writing so much HDG lately I can't think of much else.

[ratgirlexe]

It feels almost weird to me that I really struggle to compute HDG as a horror-adjacent setting like so many others do. I know that there is an inherent power imbalance in the vast majority of relationships within the setting, and that can easily lend itself to a feeling of dawning horror when the protagonist realizes that they are inherently powerless against whatever is about to happen to them, but ultimately the setting just... isn't very scary to me in the way that it seems to be for so many others.

Maybe it's because I haven't read as many of the more extreme horror-adjacent entries, or maybe its because the other settings in which I write are so much more bleak, but its just not why I come to HDG to write. Ultimately when I'm writing in HDG, there's an inherent positive slant to what I'm writing, because there's this idea that ultimately by the end of the story the characters will be in a better place than where they started. It might take forced drugging or brainwashing or any number of potentially horrific things to get them there, but at least in my estimation its ultimately going to be for their own benefit?

And again, maybe I just need to read some of the darker things folks have written, I know there's a handful of works by certain writers that are apparently much more extreme in how the dynamics between characters work, but ultimately HDG as a setting is one of wish fulfillment, both for submissives, dominants, and those in between. I can't see it as anything but hopeful, even if sometimes the big plants are quite scary.

[soraviie]

━ type: jungkook x gn! reader   ━ navigation

━ about: a healthy splash of angst; reader is slightly older than Jungkook (also in denial) and he is a whole forest because there's just so much pine

━ requested by @manavi-meera (?) tumblr deleted your ask when I tried to write in it, all I saw was the gif :/

"Just think about it."

"It's Jungkook!"

"Yeah, it's Jungkook. So think about it."

"Hmm."

It's around when your foot is halfway across the threshold that Yoongi speaks again — just as somber as he'd begun the conversation. If, of course, one's ex-boyfriend turned best friend hurtling a bunch of mistruths and delusions at a completely oblivious and confused party of the other could be construed as a "conversation".

"Oh and ______________?"

You turn around, feeling some form of clammy fear sink its grimy talons around your gut the longer this stifled, awkward bout of silence drags on.

"Yeah?"

"Just...be kind. No matter what you do."

And because for some unknown reason a sudden knot appears at the base of your throat, you can't speak — without rhyme or reason it seems nigh impossible to utter a single word so you nod. Nod and leave Yoongi to sit in his studio alone and with that disconcerting glimmer in his eye. 

Jungkook liking you — one has to laugh! 

“Old man has to be checked for dementia,” you grouse to yourself, the only thing hearing your discontent being the darkness of the emptied hallway. 

The thought! The absolute gall! 

Jungkook liking you…

It’s — it's ridiculous!

But because of one nosey little fucker, the idea has been planted in your head now and like an invasive species of flora, it refuses to leave your gardens alone. 

You try to imagine, you give it an honest, good effort but even now, after all these years what you see before your eyes when thinking of Jungkook are those big, wet eyes. It doesn’t matter how many tattoos and piercings he adorns himself with, how many bikes he drives through the night in the name of the thrill, none of it matters — to you he’s just a gangly kid, always turning his face away so you don’t see the nearly constant state of panic reflected in his features. 

What Yoongi has been smoking you have no idea, frankly you certainly don’t want to try it if it causes this sort of brain damage. 

Jungkook yearning for you. 

Yearning. Just hearing that word bounce back in your skull makes you scoff. Yearning was for torrid love affairs and sentimental romance books; no one in real life yearned. Who could possibly have the time?

Grab your jacket —> go home —> forget this ever happened —> maybe share a demure chuckle or two with Yoongi five years laters, because obviously he’d be embarrassed about being this wrong about something but the plan is fucked. 

It’s fucked because big, brown eyes are staring right back at you, as you round the corner into the wardrobe and more importantly they’re holding your jacket. Well, his hands, not the eyes. Eyes couldn’t hold things. 

“Welcome back,” Jungkook outstretches the jacket towards you, his voice rumbling low in the chest. It’s usually a pleasant hum but because of Yoongi you cannot help but wonder whether it’s a pleased hum as well. “Why didn’t you tell me you're stopping by?”

Had it been just yesterday you would have punched his arm, rolled your eyes and annoyed the ever loving shit out of him, saying he’s not your boyfriend — you don’t owe him to know when and where you’re coming and going but it’s today and suddenly merely touching him feels excruciatingly awkward. 

“Must have slipped my mind,” you mutter, struggling to put the jacket on. A faint wrinkle of discontent worms its way in the space between his eyebrows. Frustration rises and he outstretches himself to help you — out of instinct, out of annoyance? — you're not quite sure, before it never crossed your mind to ponder about it. However, now that you do your legs take an automated step back and Jungkook's hands after a second of lingering contemplatively into the air, half reached out towards you drop back to his thighs — unassuming and still.

"Something wrong?" he asks, inclining his head to the side and why....

...why is it sort of cute?

Cute in a very Jungkook way but not in a usual Jungkook way because usually he was like a little brother you never wanted and...

"__________________?"

...and you're spiralling.

"Yeah?" you blink down on him and the frown on his face deepens.

"You're a bit," jerkily, he waves his fingers around. "Out of it."

"You're like a brother to me, right?"

You didn't mean for it to come out as a question but it is now and it's terrifying. It's terrifying because Yoongi was right. Jungkook's not laughing or scoffing or even acting annoyed or offended by this familiarity. Rather there's this ashen film covering his face and the longer his gaze flits anxiously from one spot to another — anywhere but your own persona — the more you understand.

He'd thrust his heart into your awkward hands and now you're simply horrified to even hold it with more pressure — what if it breaks, what if you hurt it in anyway? It feels more like an injured bird than a heart — any wrong move and you would do something that would weigh down on you for the rest of the remaining days.

It's your turn to call out his name and echoing the same confused, absent-minded state you're in, he hums at the mention of his name, eyes hazy and teeth gnawing on his lip.

"I mean I always thought we're...friends, you know?"

"You're still—"

"I'm not little anymore."

For a second he gains a new sort of resolution - the hazy veil in his eyes is traded for something more steel like and his spine straightens just for a second befoer he collapses into himself, muttering with no small amount of bitterness:

"I'm not a kid, ___________, and you're not that much older than me."

"I know it's just," there is an ill-willing sense of a migraine coming on - you could feel it into the tepid albeit painful tension sitting at the base of your neck. "I guess it's just hard to shake off first impressions, Koo."

He gives an ugly sort of snort — a bit bitter, a bit self-depreciating — and you swear there is a "don't I know it" under his breath, grumbled in a tone that implies it's something of an inside joke with himself.

You wonder what it means.

"I'll walk you home," he suddenly utters, jumping up from the seat. Was he always such a beefcake? Your stare lingers just a touch too long and now that the proverbial scales had been ripped off your eyes you fully grasp how he preens underneath this crumb of attention.

It brings back the awkward feel in your hands — like holding something too small and too precious while walking across a tightrope.

"I didn't ask—"

"Tough shit," he throws over his shoulder, already walking away, pretending to be all cool.

"When did you get so commanding?" you grouse, rushing to keep up with him. It's a bit easier to breathe for now, here in the desolate hallway of HYBE's lower wardrobess, things have for now returned to normal and you revel in that fact though in the back of your mind you know things are soon to change. Conversations will be had and secrets will be spiilled, be it for better or worse. You know it and Jungkook knows it but for now you both pretend it's the same it used to be and bicker to your heart's delight.

"Spank me then."

"Fucking perv."

"Who do you think I learned it from?"

"From Namjoon's truly godless porn sites."

"I'm a good boy, I would never."

"Wipe that sly grin off your face and maybe I'll believe you."

send in a picture of the boys and I’ll write a scenario

[sydtaxerror]

HOLOctober day 3: Purgatory

Day 3 of doing a hololive writing challenge for October using a custom prompt list. This ones a pretty light-hearted Silent Hill 2 parody starring Bae and Irys. No real gore or content warnings. I wish I could change my clocks and then wasurebeam myself because my ADHD-addled brain refuses to start writing until its convinced we just barely have enough time to get it done before we pass out. Whats worse is so far its been right.

Day 3: Purgatory

Bae woke up in a padded cell. Its walls were stained dull with age and rot. She groaned, “Not again. What did I do last night?” Etched above a heavy, rusted iron door, were the words “Thou Shalt Not Be a Borrower.” 

“Okayu-senpai? Is that you? You can’t just kidnap people, senpai! You know I’m good for it!” Bae first tried the door, which was locked, then pounded her fists against it. “How am I supposed to get your diamonds in here!” Frustrated, she looked around the room and noticed something she hadn’t before. A small asterisk-shaped opening in the wall, with the words “take one for the team” written above it. 

“Oh, absolutely not.” She began pounding on the door again. “I won’t do it, senpai. I’ll wait here ‘til I die!” After only a few minutes she got bored and approached the hole again. “Frick it.” She slowly slid her arm in, “eww, why is it warm?” Her fingers contacted something and she withdrew it, peaking through the fingers of her other hand, she was relieved to notice it was just a key. She unlocked the door and entered a long hallway filled with similar doors leading to similar cells. She heard a strange sliding sound coming from the other end of the hallway, a creature emerged from the shadows. It was a large shaft ambulating on two large spheres attached to its base. “A peen!? Mane-chan is that you? Is this an elaborate bonk?” 

Without an answer Bae lifted her hand and dice appeared between each pair of fingers and thumb, she threw all four, “perish!” One die bounced off it harmlessly, another cut through it like a knife through butter leaving it with a perfectly square hole near its base but otherwise unharmed. The third missed entirely, clattering to the floor and promptly becoming a potted plant. Luckily the fourth exploded, obliterating the peen and both sides of the hallway. She looked down the hall and saw multiple peens shuffling around. “Nope.” She leapt out the window, rolling down a long hill. Standing up and straightening her clothes, she found herself in a small, foggy, town. “I don’t think this is Neko Neko island” 

She found herself walking through a park and found a familiar nephilim wearing a very unfamiliar outfit, including a leopard print skirt. She was horizontal on the ground, making strange grunts and motions that resemble the worm but sideways. “I’m glad someone else is here but what on earth are you doing Irys, there’s peens around!” She reached a hand out and the mysterious nephilim took it, responding “who’s Irys? Never heard of her. My name is…” she gave Bae a sultry wink, “Yabairys.” 

Bae narrowed her eyes. “Ok. That's fine. Everything is fine. I don’t care anymore.” She looked back at the nephilim.  “You know that skirts like, way longer than your usual dress right? Much less Yabai?”

“This is my usual outfit, Bae. Who I’ve never met before.” Bae walked past her, refusing to acknowledge the response. A short while later they heard a muffled voice in one of the buildings, a bowling alley. Bae started toward the door, bracing herself emotionally for some fresh new hell, but noticed Yabairys was standing still with her arms crossed. “What are you doing Irys, we need to see who that is. Probably.”

“Its YABAIrys. And you can go in alone, I hate bowling. I’ll wait out here.”

“You hate…we’re not going bowling. We’re just going to see who that is! You’re going to wait out here with the peens because you hate bowling?”

“Yes.”

“Whatever, suit yourself.”

As Bae entered the bowling alley Yabairys yelled, “this is the worst date I’ve ever been on!”

Bae entered the bowling alley and was surprised to find Korone sitting at a table eating a Pizza. As Bae approached her Korone yelled out, “PIZZA TIME,” startling Bae. “Um yeah, I see that Korone-senpai, whatcha doing here? You know there’s peens around right?” 

“I love Pepperoni Pizza.”

Bae tried to switch to Japanese but found that, other than yabai and senpai for some reason, it came out as slightly janky english. 

“I love PEPPERONI PIZZA,” Korone responded.

“Look, hard same, but there’s monsters, Irys has lost her mind, I had to put my arm in a…we gotta get outta here!” 

Suddenly a large buff rat wearing a paper crown crashed through the wall, turning it to rubble.  He was dragging an over-sized diamond pickaxe behind him and started to charge forward. Bae yelled out, “It's a Brat-king!” and tried to reach for Korone’s hand to drag her away, but Korone had already leapt from one of the tables and crossed most of the room. She slid to a stop directly in front of the Brat king, bending her knees slightly before launching into a flying upper-cut with a mighty “Orayo!” The brat king was thrown up through the rough, ending up stuck halfway. He flailed for a while trying to get loose then gave up, limbs hanging limply through the roof. 

“Huh. That seems like it probably saved us a lot of trouble.” Korone, for her part, just sat back down and continued eating her pizza. Bae glanced back and forth between the two a few times before shrugging. “I guess you’ve got it under control. Enjoy your pizza senpai!” As she walked out she heard a quiet voice say, “I am justice.” 

Yabairys scowled as Bae returned to the street. “Finally had enough bowling? I can’t believe you just left me out here.”

“I wasn’t…you wanted to…” Bae closed her eyes in frustration and took a deep breath, “You know what? Yes. I’ve finally had enough bowling. Good to go.”

“Good, because its my turn to pick where we go, and we’re going to the love hotel.” She pointed to the top of the hill where a large hotel had appeared. Bae was pretty sure neither the hill nor the hotel had been in that spot earlier but she refused to comment. “I think that's just a regular hotel.” 

“Not if it was made with love.”

Bae looked at the rundown old hotel. “I don’t think it was. It looks like it was built with cheap lumber…and capitalism. That's like the opposite of love.”

“You just don’t understand romance.” Yabairys began dragging her up the hill.

As soon as they crossed the threshold of the hotel, a diamond pickaxe swung through one of the walls and the Brat king started chasing them. They ran for an open elevator the opposite direction down the opposite hallway but just before they reached it Yabairys tripped. Bae pressed the button for the top floor then spammed the close door button but Yabairys managed to lunge forward just as it closed, freezing the elevator in place. Yabairys was trapped between the doors but unharmed.

“Oh no!” Yabairys squirmed between the doors “I’m stuck step-Bae, help!”

Bae looked down on her, literally and figuratively. “Why are you so calm?” She looked through the gap in the door and saw the Brat king just standing around. He gave her a small wave. Bae screamed, “are you two working together! Is he a shipper!?” 

“What!?! No!”

“Uh-huh, sure.” Bae stepped on Yabairys’ head and used it as a boost to climb to the elevator’s emergency hatch. “I’m out of here.” She scampered through the hatch then hung from the elevator cable long enough to poke her head back through the hatch and announce, “I want a divorce” before climbing the cable to the top floor. She entered a wide, empty room, a single cloaked figure stood leaning on a windowsill at the end of the room. They were faced away from her. Bae crouched, grabbing a lead pipe and slowly moving towards them. “I wish you wouldn’t.” Calli turned and lowered her hood. 

“Calli!?”

“Sup.”

“Is it really you? You’re not all weird?”

“I mean, maybe a little I guess but I think I’m pretty chill, mostly.”

Bae launched at her and gave her a big hug, tears in her eyes. “Its really you, I’m so glad I’m not alone.”

Calli let her cry for a second then patted her on the back, “seems like you’ve been through a lot, need any help?”

“Yes, definitely. But first, what are you doing here. I think we’re in some kind of weird hell.”

“What are you doing here Bae. This isn’t a hell, its a purgatory, they’re like underworld Florida.”

“I think its got something to do with owing Okayu a bunch of diamonds.”

“Huh. Okaaay. Well, you can have some of mine I guess.”

Bae hugged her again. “You’re the best.” 

“Lemme give you a lift home.” Calli held her arm out the window and in a burst of pink flame her scythe appeared in it. She let it drop and it continued to hover, she climbed out the window and sat on it side-saddle. 

“Your scythe can fly!?”

Calli offered her hand, rolling her eyes “All scythes can fly Bae. Ready to go?”

Bae took it and climbed on, “I think so, but I feel like I’m forgetting something.”

Calli leaned forward and the scythe began to accelerate away. “If you forgot it, it wasn’t important.

Hours later a voice is heard, screaming from an elevator shaft: “Step-Bae? Step-Bae!? Step-Baeeeeeee!”

[ohleander]

3.13.23

When I grabbed my laptop, I felt like I just had so much to say and yet here I am with brain farts and nothing of substance coming out. A silent but deadly? Nah..

One thing on my mind today is how well I'm starting to understand my cycle and how excited I am to keep understanding it. My regular human hormonal cycle is an incredible force to understand. Now that I know that I reset myself every month in more ways than just "emotional and bleeding" I reset myself in the same way the moon gets full and new again each month. I, too need a period of extra rest and its friggin natural! I'm not supposed to be the same every day but I can accomplish SO much in a month if I know how to use my energy right. I am so on the right track and I keep staying uncomfortable because I keep growing like crazy. I'm glad I don't feel the same all the time, even when I go through long periods of turmoil. I'd rather feel too much than not enough. And I go through periods of that, too. Sometimes the idea of emotions is so foreign and sometimes I'm drowning in them.

There have been so many times in my life when I wished to change my body for gender euphoric reasons and for right now, I'm glad I made the choice to try to understand my body and its cycles before I did any alterations to it.. It has only given more validity to my feelings on gender, too! I found out that I naturally feel a lot better when I have more testosterone in me and I feel the most dysphoric most often during my luteal phase. I still have a lot to learn about the science behind it but a lot of folks who take T say that they feel more balanced and right but consistently. I also know males who have low T due to sickness and they have a hard time emotionally when their testosterone is really low. I cant help but wonder if taking T would help me feel more consistent and even. I think when I make the decision, I'd like to try low dose first.. and more exercises rather than top surgery.. I'm still getting comfortable honoring my body as a vessel, I'd like to not change it too much yet.. and some things I can always change.. surgeries I cant change.. I don't feel like I would regret getting top surgery because I've wanted it for as long as I've had boobs. I do fear the hormonal repercussions of getting top surgery, and if I did decide to have a baby I'd like to feed them through my body, if I could. So many thoughts and things to consider and they're all pretty valid. Maybe one day I'll be at a point where I'm making these choices.. for now its just something I think about a whole lot.

Another thing I think of a whole lot is publishing a book... any kind of book and so many books. I could honestly keep writing forever and ever if I had this computer in front of me. Sure I go blank sometimes, but if I just start talking about that, I somehow worm my way out of blankness and into a topic. One day I want to write about plants and of people. I want to write essays, musings & philosophies. I remember sitting and the round table one day with dad and telling him after high school that I wanted to be a philosopher.. I noted that philosophy was a class that could be taken at college.. and somehow I never got to take that class... maybe one day I will. Or else I cal learn it on you tube.

I have a hard time not letting the songs that are stuck in my head dictate my personality for the day. I suppose its kinda my duty to make sure I'm listening to easygoing music instead of ozzy and meg myers. But the hardcore songs are so good to get the energy up.

Speaking of I honestly love my commute each morning. I've got to pay better attention to my driving that I have lately. I'm lucky, I've been a distracted driver as of late (I think its the manic episode, aka ovulation) and I really gotta chill. I've been dissociating more lately too. One thing that's a bit concerning is the fact that ovulation time often feels like a manic high for me, the surge of hormones is through the roof. the extra hormones feel really good but its almost over electrifying.

ahh I took a melatonin tonight and I can feel it working. I am blessed, the past couple of nights I haven't woken up with a lot of cortisol anxiety.. we'll see though.. melatonin can often do strange things to the mind at night.. I'd like to sleep all the way through until 5, please! and then lovely loose and lanky lucid sleep..

LA

[thankyouforbeingsowrong]

Hello! I loved your Here to Love You fic!! :D And I'm here to indulge you in procastinating by sending in a prompt 😉

What about "I told you so" for Robbie/James? 😊 (Or for Laura saying that to them 😜😂)

Thank you so much <3 This excellent prompt plus one of your comments wormed its way into my brain, and I couldn't not write this little coda to Here to Love You.

This is to make up for the fact that despite all the implications of their scheming, I didn't include any actual James and Laura interactions in the fic itself, despite how much I love them. I am atoning for my crimes XD

I hope you like it <333

____

Laura glances up from the clipboard she’s writing on as James enters her office, gracing him with a surprised smile. It sends a twinge of guilt through him for some of the more resentful thoughts he had been entertaining about her meddling over the last few weeks. Especially because he can reluctantly admit to himself now that the meddling worked out pretty well for him in the end. Better than he ever would have hoped if he's completely honest.

She’s standing behind her desk, watching him patiently. Kindly. The guilt washes over him again.

When he doesn’t speak she glances back down at her notes. “I don’t have a body for you, so I assume this is a social call—” She frowns slightly and flicks her gaze to the computer monitor before scribbling something down on the paper.

James clasps his hands behind his back to resist the impulse to bite his thumbnail, and makes a small noise of affirmation.

"So?” Laura holds her pen poised over the paper and looks up again, mischief in her eyes.

James doesn’t answer and she rolls her eyes. “How did it go? I am going to need more than a one line text after all that James."

“Good.”

Laura gives him a deeply unimpressed look. He wants to laugh at how oddly comforting it is.

He tries again. "Better than expected."

She narrows her eyes and lets out a satisfied hum, like the cat who got the cream. “I suspected as much."

James furrows his brow and tilts his head in question.

"You have a little—" Laura taps the end of her pen to her neck and raises her eyebrows. James' hand flies to his neck in a panic. He runs his finger anxiously over the skin just above the collar of his shirt.

Laura leans over her desk, narrowing her eyes to take a closer look.

"Oh no, my mistake. Must have been a shadow." She smiles at his scowl. "Shall I tell Robbie well done for keeping it below the collar?"

"Please don't," James says through his relieved sigh. "I had come to say thank you for your help, but I'm reconsidering now."

"Sorry, I'll behave.” She bites her lip. “I’m just happy for you. But really, how did it go? I’ll graciously let you spare me the gory details until we've been through a few bottles of wine."

"It would have to be quite a few."

Laura snorts lightly and hums in agreement.

James sighs and shifts his weight slightly from one leg to the other. “It definitely didn’t go as planned, though your ideas were very helpful. That restaurant you suggested was lovely." He sighs. "The wine especially went over a little too well.”

James remembers holding Robbie steady with an arm over his shoulder on the walk to the car, disappointed in himself for losing his nerve, and letting him drink so much.

“Oh dear. Have to pour him into bed, did you?”

“Not quite.” He gives up the pretence of calm self-control, this is Laura after all he reminds himself, and nibbles gingerly at his thumbnail. “But Sunday night I got locked out of my room and he invited me to his. We talked.”

“In bed?” The wicked glint has returned to her eyes, along with a cheeky smile.

“No comment.” James can’t suppress a minute twitch of his lips and Laura is quick to pounce.

"Is it tacky to say I told you so?" she says, putting down her clipboard and rounding the desk to stand in front of him, eyes still dancing.

"Yes."

Laura lets out a laugh, and pulls him into a half hug, getting up on her toes when he bends down, and planting a kiss on his cheek. "I told you so."

She holds his arms as she pulls back, and looks up at him with a soft, earnest expression.

"I'm so proud of you. Both of you."

James can feel his cheeks heating and quells the urge to back out of the room in a panic.

“Thank you.” He’s sure his voice sounds too rough, but she doesn’t call him out on it. And he means it. Without her kind pestering he probably wouldn’t have mustered up the nerve to see his plans through, and spent a sad, lonely weekend at the seaside by himself instead.

His heart pounds as he recalls the drive home with Robbie the night before, bickering over music and seeing how much they could tease each other without causing an accident. Falling into bed together at Robbie’s flat, exhausted and too wrapped up in each other to mind the late hour.

James clears his throat, Laura can probably see the flush in his face, but she lets him go with nothing but a knowing grin and leans to pick her diary up off the desk behind her.

"Will the two of you come round for dinner Friday night so I can embarrass you properly?"

James sighs in resignation. "If we must. Pending any murders, of course." That I might commit, he mentally adds.

Laura gives him a knowing look "Don't think you can kill someone just to get out of it. I'm very good at my job."

That surprises a genuine smile out of him. "The best. Can we bring anything?”

“A bottle or two?” She winks. “Oh, something for dessert? But don’t let Robbie make it.”

“As if he’d volunteer.”

James' mobile rings and Laura peeks as he pulls it out of his pocket, Robbie's name flashing up on the screen.

"Speaking of— duty calls," He says, thumbing over the screen to answer.

"You already have the sweetest nicknames for each other." Laura throws over her shoulder as she heads back around the desk to pick up her paperwork again, gleefully watching James’ baffled expression as he lifts the phone to his ear.

He can hear the sound of Robbie booting up his computer in the background.

“Aren’t you in yet? You left an hour before me this morning, how long does it take you to get dressed for work?”

“I don’t know, you can time me if you’re curious.”

Laura chokes out a delighted laugh and James pinches the bridge of his nose. He wonders if he’s forever doomed to embarrass himself in front of her.

He sighs and clears his throat. “I had to make an extra stop on my way, I won’t be long. Laura says hi by the way. She’s kindly offered to cook us dinner on Friday in exchange for salacious details about our sex life.”

He hears a smothered cough down the line. “Tell her to mind her own bloody business.”

“Is that a no to dinner, then?” James says to Robbie, as he raises an eyebrow at Laura.

“I’ll see you both at 7.30!” Laura says, loudly enough for Robbie to hear as she shoos James out of her office.

“I’ll do a crumble.” James mouths as he backs out of the doorway, with a little wave.

He continues the call on his way out to the car, making a concerted effort to shift back into work mode, but finding it difficult to suppress this giddy, unfamiliar cheeriness.

“Do you think it’ll be suspicious if I show up with a smile on my face this morning?”

Robbie snorts. “Innocent might order a psych eval.”

The thought does nothing to dampen his mood. “Want me to pick up coffee on my way?”

“Could you throw in some breakfast as well? All I had in this morning was cereal and no milk.”

“I suppose I can manage that, if you’re lucky.”

“I feel pretty lucky.”

The softness of his tone makes James’ breath catch. “Me too.” He takes a breath as he gets into the car. “I’m just setting off, see you soon.”

“See you soon.” Robbie echoes with a smile in his voice.

[asterizmz]

13. 17. 28!!!

13. Do you have any troublemaker OCs?

if you count "accidentally almost did bioterrorism at their last job as pharmacy techs by releasing lich biomass in the backroom and then bailing" as troublemaking then yes Vivian and Valentine are your girls. Val is the more reasonable of the two by a long shot, but that all kind of balances out when you consider that he’s obsessed enough with Vivi to just kind of let her do whatever stupid shit she wants. she’s having fun <3

17. Any OC OTPs?

oh yea definitely lol. technically their relationship is spoilers for the story i'm planning on writing for them but Hydra/Zeal/Rainier worms its way into my brain enough to make it really really hard to keep to myself... but also this would be way longer if i tried to cover everything i like about them. i enjoy the intricacies of poly triads and i also enjoy people that’ve gone through hell finding sanctuary in each other. will definitely elaborate more on it later.

fun fact Hydra and Zeal were actually the original Main Duo before Rainier was a character and shuffled things around so that Zeal showed up a little later and that Rainier/Hydra were a couple first. These three have changed a TOOON since i first made them, but i think i'm pretty happy with how they are now :]   

coming in VERY close second for my are Deux/Pixel i love the t4ts... both of them happen to be exes of Zeal’s (with Deux, Zeal realized she wasn’t into men midway through and broke it off, with Pixel, things just got... complicated) (also not at all relevant to how they got together) which i think objectively makes their current relationship really funny but also i think they’re really sweet. more dudes should be entranced by their girlfriend’s silly girl swag.

28. Your most dangerous OC?

tough question since several of my hydraverse characters have an “everything die” button of some kind but i think probably Collette, albeit totally unintentionally. unfortunately becoming a lich is not reversible.

liches are less “undead guy with magic” more a natural (or unnatural, in Collette’s case) phenomenon that just kind of happens when an at least partially intact corpse is exposed to incredibly high amounts of organic magic and wakes back up, with the catch that they are now functionally immortal, immobile, and both an infinite magic reactor and highly transmissible living tumor.

before the incident that led to her “death” Collette had a generally normal life as a solid magic transport driver for a few power plants in her territory. after 50+ years of being a lich since, she’s gotten pretty good at playing park ranger for her abandoned shipping facility and forest and its specialized telepathic fauna. mostly to shoo unprepared adventurers away from dying to a million types of cancer at once by appearing to them as telepathy-hallucinations of her “living” self, but she doesn’t HATE having company every once in a while.*

(*fun fact 2. Vivi and Val regularly come and hang out with her for “research purposes”. they are surprisingly not near as stupid about basic antimagic PPE when dealing with her as they were when they had their degrees revoked over it.)

[vicious-vixxxen]

Mermaid!Kirishima X Male Reader

((Lost the original ask who prompted this, but here’s a little Mermaid!Kirishima to start the prompts off here! Thank you again for being the first to send in an ask, I appreciate it so much! And such a fun and interesting one to kick things off with, so manly! <3))

You’d almost fallen asleep. Again. Jesus Christ. Groaning, you stretched your limbs out as far as they’d reach- stifling a cry as your joints popped, and you became a puddle against the wooden dock you were laid across. The soft plap-plap of the waves beneath you very nearly lulling you under once again. Opening your eyes finally, you raised your arm to block out the harsh mid afternoon rays, and to check your watch for the time. Nearly four. He was late. “Where the hell are you, sharkboy,” You grumbled, sitting up, and stretching your arms out for a second time, stretching them for all they were worth, before slumping over and scrubbing at your tired eyes. Wincing slightly at the soft burn of your palms against your cheeks. Fuck. No sunblock. Of course. You’d be confused with a lobster by the time you went home and scooped up in a net for dinner if you didn’t apply any. Chancing a glance around the open ocean around you, spotting hues of blue after hues of blue- but no red- you sighed, tugging off your sweat soaked tank top- shoving it into your bag with the rest of your things, before retrieving your sunblock, and squirting a liberal amount into the palm of your hand. Slapping them together afterwards to smear it around, before hiking a leg up to begin applying it. The soft scent of coconut filled the air around the dock, and mixed with the salty scent of the seafoam below the dock, it reminded you of Kirishima. How enamored he’d been the first time he spotted you out here, doing just as you were now. The scent, the sight. Long tanned legs, short board shorts, no top. He’d been drooling, it was a whole adorable thing. Of course, you absolutely flipped your shit the first time you saw him. He wasn’t exactly the most subtle creature to catch a glimpse of, especially when he reared up to apologize- fins fanning out, causing you to nearly have a heart attack. You knew of mer-people, of course, but no one had seen any in these parts in decades. You certainly hadn’t. Not in your lifetime. First time for anything, though, you supposed. He’d wandered too far from his pod, and gotten curious of the handsome human male spread out like a buffet on the docks. If there was one thing to be said about Eijiro, it was that he was too curious for his own damn good. Something that both endeared you, and frustrated the fuck out of you. You hardly noticed, so caught up in your thoughts of the creature, the sound of the water breaking- the soft creak of the dock straining beneath the merman's grip as he hoisted himself up quietly, laying flat on his stomach just a few feet away. Eyes wide as saucers, red irises glinting mischievously as he tried to stick to his plan. Thwarted only by all the bare expanse of skin you were showing off. Tan, and soft looking. Soft to the touch, too, Kirishima thought suddenly, mouth too full of saliva as he recalled the feel of your skin beneath his webbed fingers. Shaking himself from his awed stupor, Kirishina grinned- all sharp teeth, as he shimmied across the dock, long tail swishing excitedly beneath the water, where it hung low from the dock. Already aware of his tardiness, Kirishima wasted no time lunging for you when he was close enough- laughing boisterously as you shrieked, and began swatting blindly at him. “You asshole! How many times have I told you /NOT/ to do that?” Y/N Shouted, initial panic already seeping away, as he was rolled over beneath Kirishima- the merman's soggy red spikes haloed by the sun’s rays, making him look….positively angelic. The fucking heathen. “You’re an absolute menace to both land and sea society Kirishima- no, no don’t fucking kiss me, I’m mad at you. Take your fishy kisses somewhere else, they will not be accepted here!” Y/N continued to shout, laughing suddenly as Kirishima nuzzled and raked his teeth along the soft expanse of your neck, webbed fingers digging just this side of rough into your sides, to elicit a fit from you. “L-Lemme g-go you smelly s-sardine! Ah-ahah! S-shit, i’m gonna p-piss myself if you don’t-ah!- stop! Kiri, please, mercy, mercy!” You cried, tears in your eyes as Eijiro wrapped your legs around his broad hips- shifting his scales downwards, as to not scrape you. Cradling you in his arms, his elbows against the dock, to shift you both upwards just a bit. Toothy grin as bright as ever as he gave in, and finally looked at you. Kirishima swore he could look at you forever. Your bright, twinkling E/C eyes, the soft, sun bleached tips of your hair. The curve of your nose. The curve of your /lips/. Especially the curve of your lips. “You can’t just show up late and expect me to be all hugs and kisses, that’s not fair,” You pouted, despite the smile you couldn’t help forming on your face. Ankles hooked just at the small of Kirishima’s back, where waist met scales. One hand splayed across the creatures back, the other finding its way deep in the crop of damp hair atop his head. Fingernails digging gently into the base, in that sweet spot that always had Kiri mewling if you scratched long enough. “Mm, i’m sorry, baby shark,” Kiri cooed, snickering at the eye roll he could practically sense, as he dipped his face back down against your neck, and kissed. “-It was my turn to lead the roundup for dinner. You know how long it takes to completely swarm a school of flounder? Little bastards shoot off in different directions. So yummy,” he paused, nipping at your earlobe, causing you to tense, “-but so difficult to catch. Like, but also kind of unlike, another little fish I know.” “A man of a thousand sweet talks.” You were already putty in the merman's hands, and you both knew it. Didn’t mean you had to advertise it. “I am sorry, baby shark. I tried to hurry, but you know how Denki can be. He gets a little zapped if he exerts himself too much on the hunt. We all gotta get him back to the cove in one piece after that, and he’s such a squirmer, so...ya know,” Kirishima shrugged, arms tightening just barely around your middle, as he leaned back, smile less predatory, and more sincere now, as he pressed your foreheads together gently. “Apology accepted...I guess,” You mumbled finally, breaking the creature's gaze, only to flick your gaze down to his plump, bitten lips. One drop of saltwater still clinging to his cupid's bow. “I missed you, dude,” Kiri whispered finally, blush painting his pale face, as he pressed chaste kisses to your cheeks, and chin. Peppering them all over afterwards as you began to giggle. “Missed you too,” You sighed, closing your eyes, and angling your head to catch Kirishima’s lips in a soft kiss. Just a press of them together, no real urgency. You had the rest of the evening, and long after sunset to spend together. There’d be plenty of time for rough, heated kisses below the docks. When you lost your trunks, and Kiri started losing control of the sharpness of his scales. Leaving small pricks and scrapes over your inner thighs, from how you’d going to his hips. Only to have the merman lay you out on the dock under the stars, and kiss them all better. Webbed hands spread wide over your stomach, your hips. Trailing down your thighs, up, and around… “Whoa now,” Kirishima whistled, pulling back to glance down between you, and you huffed. “Don’t get cocky, asshole. I haven’t seen you in almost a week, give me a break.” Hooking your chin over the merman's shoulder, you rolled your eyes once more at Kirishima’s little giggles. Mesmerized by the expanse of muscle in his back. Gaze trailing down between Kirishima’s shoulder blades. Down the small of his back, where his hips dipped first inwards, then back out. Hips filling out below his scales, bright red at the tips, and a deep obsidian at the base, where they met his flesh. Similar to the hair atop his head. Unhooking one of your feet, you ran your toes down along the soft, slippery surface of his tail, as far as you could go, before bringing it back up. Noting the shiver down Kirishima’s spine, and grinning. “Never gets old, does it?” “No, nope. Absolutely not. You make my tail feel like it’s gonna shake right off,” Kirishima groaned, planting his plans on either side of you now, caging you in as you rested back against the dock. “Should probably get that checked out by a doctor.” “Asshole.” “See if I give you the gummy worms in my backpack now.” “....did I mention how much I love you yet?” “That’s what I thought, seaweed brain.” You laughed, flinching back with a frown as Kirishima nipped at the air in front of your face playfully- reaching back for your brag, to draw out the large bag of gummy worms you’d already opened, when waiting for the merman to arrive. Grabbing one out of the pack, and holding it up between two fingers for Kirishima to slurp up. Humming contentedly as he chewed, and you simply smiled. “Love you,” You whispered, feeding him another- watching as he slowed in his chewing, before gulping audibly, and leaning down close. “Love you too. Beautiful boy.” ((Thank you again to the wonderful prompter who asked for this, I had a blast writing it!))

[trevorthetravler]

A Short Terraria Story

It’s been years since I woke up here. My first sight was a strange young man. Ever since then its been hell.

Ive fought so many god forsaken monsters here. So many mind rending horrors. It all started with an eye. A giant eye that shoots smaller eyes and then wrends itself open to reveal a massive jaw filled with razor sharp teeth. Then it was this giant worm, though I still wake up with nightmares of a massive brain, then a massive bee, then the skeleton.

The skeleton was awful. I watched it emerge from a seemingly normal man like some giant crawling out of a human handbag. After that was something I never imagined was something somehow worse, The sight of it alone nearly driving me to insanity.

I was exploring hell, or at least what felt like hell, when I saw this demon thing carrying a doll that looked just like that strange man I met when I first woke up here. I shot it and watched the doll fall into the lava. The thing that I saw emerge from the wall itself was horror incarnate. I tried to run but I tripped and fell into the lava, then I woke up in my bed.

You see, this damned island is filled with horrors beyond my comprehension but none can be compared to the curse that I discovered that day. I was immortal. This was a relief at first and I now was able to test and plan my attacks against these horrible beasts with no consequences. That relief would eventually turn into dread as my depression slowly took hold.

You see, I wasn't from this land. I was a father to a beautiful family, I worked a comfortable job and had a warm house. But when I awoke on this island my memories were… manipulated. They were still there but all the faces were blurred, anything specific was lost. I couldn't even remember what genders my children were let alone their names or ages. I wouldn't blame you for thinking that this immortality was a good thing. Now I had all the time in the world to find a way back, and I thought that at first as well.

The problem is a lot has happened since then. Mechanical monstrosities, horrors disguised as plants, an ancient stone golem, a fucking pig-fish. Even If I could go back, I'd be a different man. My children wouldn't recognize me, I could never just return to that job. I wasn't a normal man, I was a shell of myself in the form of a powerful immortal warrior. I’ve put a gun to my head countless times just to wake up in my bed. I've used exotic weapons just to wake up in my bed, I’ve fed myself to incomprehensible horrors only to wake up in that bed.

Now I write this note, I’ve found a being powerful enough to give me the release I need. But when it slays me I just come back. My desperation has led me to assume that the only way to escape is to slay it, rip out it’s heart and use its power to give myself what I truly want, what I need. I’m confident I will finally slay it. I will slay this god and earn my release. If this doesn't work, I don’t know what will.

May this note be read by whatever poor soul awakens next on this island, and not me awaking once more from my bed. I would sign off on my name but I don’t even remember that anymore so I will sign off on my title, given to me by my enemies and the traders I consider friends.

-Signed, The Terrarian

Note from the author: I am fully aware some of the things mentioned in this short story are not completely accurate to the lore of the game, I am also aware I’ve left out many things you might have expected. I did this intentionally for the sake of the story. Please forgive me.

[asweetprologue]

drown all my shadows

Octoberfest 15: Lost (whumptober #20) - Last one!!

Jaskier wakes in a fog.

His immediate first impression is, in a way, a lack of impression. The world around him seems featureless. He’s standing, though he doesn’t remember standing up, or walking here in the first place. The fog is thick around his thighs, sending up slow, curling whisps whenever he moves his hands. It’s not much better elsewhere, filling the air and turning the world into an opaque canvas of white. He can’t see beyond his own outstretched hand, everything lost in the gloom. 

It’s unnerving. The world is dampened around him, like there’s cotton stuffed in his ears. Jaskier doesn’t know how he got here. He and Geralt had been together - on a hunt? There had been a cabin - a woman? a witch? - and they’d given chase, following her into the woods beyond… 

He remembers nothing else. His memories are as foggy as his surroundings. One moment he’d been running after Geralt through the forest of craggy, blackened trees, and then next thing he remembers is opening his eyes to this barren landscape. The silence around him is so intense he can hear his own heartbeat rushing in his ears, deafening. 

Half just for something else to listen to, Jaskier says, “Hello?” His voice falls flat in the fog, eaten up by the mist. No one answers. “Geralt? Hello?”

There is nothing. He does a once over of his surroundings once again, but in every direction all he can see is white. It’s almost like being in a box, surrounded by walls on all sides. Feeling panic starts to worm its way into his chest, Jaskier takes a few steps forward. He can’t explain why he feels dread curling through his stomach. It’s just fog, he tells himself. But it doesn’t feel like fog. It feels empty and oppressive and cold, clinging to him and tugging at his clothes and his feet. Something equally cold and empty echoes through Jaskier’s chest, a spot of fearful loneliness that he has always worked hard to keep at bay. 

With no other recourse, he walks. 

There are no features to the landscape that he can distinguish. The fog is endless; he may as well not be moving at all, for all it changes. The ground under his feet is a plain gray dirt, but he has not stumbled upon a single plant or animal since he’d started walking. It feels quickly as if hours have passed, though it also could have been only moments. There is no way to mark the passage of time or how far he’s walked. There’s no sun in the sky; the fact that he can see at all suggests that it must be there, but the fog has swallowed it along with everything else. He can only put one foot in front of the other, occasionally calling out to anyone who might be near. 

It could have been minutes or hours or days, but eventually something does change. He thinks he’s imagined it, at first, but as he moves closer there’s no mistaking. There is a shape in the fog, something just slightly darker than the rest of his surroundings. He can’t make it out, but Jaskier moves towards it with a burst of enthusiasm that borders on fear. As he nears, the fog dissipates enough for him to make out the outline of a figure.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Jaskier says, relief sweeping through him. Even if this person is as lost as he is, at least there will be someone with him. Anything to help assuage the nervous, lonely thing inside him. “I thought I was the only one out here, are you alright?” As he approaches, he can see that it's a woman, her yellow dress faded with age. Jaskier practically runs to close the last few feet between them, reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder. The dress is soft under his hands, but extraordinary cold. At his touch, the figure shifts like water under his hands, turning in his direction. 

She has no face. 

Jaskier screams, but the sound is consumed by the fog like all the others. He falls back, scrambling away on his ass. The thing that looks like a woman but has no face does not follow him, standing perfectly still. The flat expanse of smooth skin where her features should be does not change in the slightest or react to him in any way. Jaskier stumbles to his feet and runs back into the fog, desperate to escape the horror of it.

His heart does not stop pounding, no matter how much distance he gains. It’s impossible to tell if he is gaining distance. And it isn’t long before he stumbles across another figure, practically running into it. The man is the same, utterly devoid of features, a personless person shaped thing. Jaskier feels the terror gripping him wind tighter and tighter as he turns and immediately finds another faceless figure in his periphery. The shells never react to him, but for some reason that is more frightening than if they’d tried to attack him. 

Jaskier runs, not stopping to assess the shapes he sees blurred through the fog. He’s panicking, he knows, but he can’t stop. He’s alone in this horrible fog with these empty people. There’s no escape; no matter how far he runs, there’s no thinning of the mist. 

Finally he collapses, curling into a tight ball in the thickest part of the fog. Gasping into his knees, Jaskier thinks, frantically, that he might be trapped here forever. Who would look for him? Who would even know where this is? No one at Oxenfurt would think anything of his disappearance, his family haven’t seen him in decades. He has fans who will forget him, patrons who will mourn the loss of his art but move immediately on to newcomers. As he thinks, Jaskier feels the fog closing in tighter around him, kissing his cheeks and clutching at his shoulders. It’s so cold, in a bone deep way that scares him as much as the faceless people. No one will remember him, no one is looking for him -

Geralt, he thinks. Geralt will look.

It’s such a relief he almost cries with it. No matter what Geralt has said in the past, they’re friends, and Geralt is the most noble man Jaskier knows. Geralt would not write off his disappearance. Geralt cares about him, and he will find him. Geralt will come. 

And suddenly, as if summoned by sheer will, Jaskier finds a familiar hand thrust into his face. 

Geralt’s eyes are wide when Jaskier looks up, and it’s so good to see him, so good to see anyone that Jaskier fails to spring immediately into action. Impatiently, Geralt shakes the hand in front of him. “Jaskier,” he says, insistent. “Take my hand.” So Jaskier does. 

Instantly the fog retreats, as if blown back by a strong blast of aard. The forest comes into focus around them, the spindly arms of the trees reaching up towards the pale blue sky. Jaskier is pulled to his feet, Geralt’s hands settling on his upper arms as he is given a thorough once over. “Are you alright?” Geralt asks, gruff but clearly concerned. 

Jaskier feels a bit faint, weak in the wake of his terror. “Ah,” he says faintly. “M-Mostly, I think. Yes. What was that, Geralt? Where was I?”

Geralt frowns, glancing around the forest around them. It’s quiet, but in the way forests often are in the fall. If he strains, Jaskier can hear the rustle of animals rooting through the fallen leaves that coat the ground around them, the soft calls of birds and the chirp of squirrels and chipmunks. “The witch was kidnapping people,” Geralt says. “Do you remember?”

Jaskier nods slowly. It’s coming back now, without the fog leaking into his brain and obscuring his thoughts. “People from the village. We chased after her, when she ran from the cottage. She -”

“Hit you with a spell,” Geralt finishes. “Yes. It put you in some kind of… in-between place. Managed to get her to tell me what it was, before I killed her. It feeds off of people’s loneliness. She used it to strengthen her magic.”

“There were others there,” Jaskier says, feeling nauseated as he remembers the blank stares. “They had no faces.”

“Already gone. Eaten up by her magic,” Geralt says, gently. He’s smoothing his hands up and down Jaskier’s arms now, a grounding gesture that Jaskier is grateful for. “It wouldn’t have happened to you. I found you easily, once I got her to tell me the spell. People care about you. The spell only feeds off of lonely people.”

“I knew you would find me,” Jaskier says. He feels tired, exceptionally so. Like the fog sapped up all of his strength, both physical and emotional. “Fuck, Geralt, it was awful.” Unable to help himself, Jaskier leans forward until he’s resting his forehead against Geralt’s shoulder, fingers tangling in the familiar leather armor. 

To his surprise, strong arms come up to hold him tightly. Jaskier sighs, relief sweeping through him as Geralt’s warm palms press into his shoulders. “It’s alright,” Geralt says, in the same tone he uses on Roach when he’s trying not to spook her. Jaskier would take offense if he didn’t feel so much like he might be spooked. “I would never have left you there.”

“I know,” Jaskier says, tired but content. “I would never forget you. I’m never lonely with you.”

Geralt squeezes him tightly, once, before releasing him, though not entirely. One hand still rests on Jaskier’s shoulder, just at the joint of his neck and collarbone. “We should get back to town. Are you alright to walk?”

“Yes,” Jaskier says, though exhaustion rests in every bone. “Bit of a fright, that’s all. I’m perfectly hale and hearty.”

To prove this, Jaskier turns and starts away, not even sure that he’s going in the right direction. A hand catches his wrist as he does, and he turns back to Geralt with a questioning look. He’s met with a soft expression, one he’d rarely seen before on the witcher. “I’m glad,” Geralt says. “That you’re not lonely.”

Jaskier finds himself smiling, warmth flooding through his chest to finally chase off the cold from before. “Never with you, dear. Never with you.”

[bluerosesburnblue]

I hope you don't mind this ask, but... Any theories / speculations about the most recent story update for KHUX?

Oh, I don’t mind at all! I’m glad you asked, actually, because I’ve had some thoughts, though not many new theories of my own, unfortunately. That being said, I can definitely go over how some of my old theories and some of the fandom’s hold up and my thoughts on a few of the new theories I’ve seen floating around

One thing that I’m consistently proud of is how my old guesses about Darkness’s true nature just keep ending up almost right barring some slight details. I made the claim back when Re:Mind first came out that Darkness could be a hive mind of entities that plant bits of themselves in others, and then refined that back in July of 2020 by likening it to a parasite that worms its way into people’s hearts and incorporates itself into them to control them. This past update confirmed that the Darkness we’re fighting is one part of the hive mind that wormed its way into Ven to force him to act out, and that by doing so it detached itself from that hive mind and became incorporated into Ven’s being (which Ven can then shape). So I gotta say I’m pretty pleased about that part

All that’s left to be seen from the July post is if Darkness has a connection to Verum Rex/Quadratum, but I doubt that that will be touched on by the KHUx finale. Though I will say that it’s pretty interesting that the Master of Masters tells Darkness about “a world [he] can’t even conceive,” which seems like it could easily be referring to Quadratum, which also means that Darkness knows about it

That’s pretty much all I have to say on the Ventus/Darkness/Vanitas connection, but there’s still more to cover in this update

One thing that I’ve been trying to figure out is who the cloaked figure right at the start of the update is, Luxu or the MoM. Measuring the sizes and my old guess based on the KH3 Secret Reports both say Luxu, but this brings into question “when,” exactly, the True Dandelion scene takes place as it doesn’t have the dark haze around the edges that they give flashbacks, but is clearly the real-world set of pods as they’re not destroyed AND it’s missing the pod that Maleficent already used. The True Dandelion scene has a lot to unpack, but this scene at the start does make me wonder if Luxu and/or the Master have a way in and out of the datascape that doesn’t involve the pods, otherwise the numbers don’t add up

Also related to the post of mine I just linked is the idea that the Black Box is the datascape. I believe that this might still hold true. It’s interesting to note that they show the scene from Back Cover where Luxu is given the box in the first place just prior to the reveal that using the lifeboats to escape starts the process to seal it off and have the real Daybreak Town fall to darkness, and the Master’s “hint” to Luxu involves this very process. Why would Luxu be forbidden to open the box? Quite possibly because it contains the infected datascape meant to seal off the vast majority of the Darkness hive mind. And several Dandelions. It is both the “hope” mentioned in KH3 through those Dandelions, as well as a trap to keep Darkness out of being able to interfere for quite a long time

Now, the questions that I’m sure are on everyone’s minds are “who is the True Dandelion,” and “who are the ones who use the lifeboats?” Let’s start with the True Dandelion, as there’s far less moving pieces involved in that one

I won’t take credit for coming up with any of these options, I’m just going to discuss the logistics of them. So the candidates for the True Dandelion in, what is in my opinion, the least likely option to the most likely option, are:

Kairi: I’ve seen this one floating around and... honestly don’t believe it at all due to the sheer amount of logical contortions that you have to do to make it work. To wit:

Where the hell would she even come from if it was Kairi? As can be clearly seen with Ven, is stated to be true with Subject X, and is implied to be true of Lauriam/Elrena, those who travel to the future using the pods will regenerate their bodies at the age they were when they used the pods. Which would make Kairi at the oldest a four-year-old. Four years prior to KHUx was when Brain was told that he was a Union Leader. So she either would have been just born immediately prior to the war and was just... stolen or something? And we never saw? Or just after the war, where she would probably have to be the child of a Dandelion that got teen pregnant because they’re supposed to be both kids and the only survivors? Or Luxu and Ava’s kid somehow? Like, what? The timeline is just insane with that

If she was born before the war... you would assume that the True Dandelion would be, you know, a Dandelion. Which would mean that Ava handed a Keyblade to and recruited a literal toddler. This would also retcon Aqua being the one to accidentally pass the ability to wield a Keyblade down to Kairi and I refuse to make theories predicated on “the author will retcon this.” You just open up a huge can of worms doing that

The body wrapped in white looked a hell of a lot bigger than a four-year-old to me

I am sick to death of “this character was secretly from the Age of Fairytales~” being employed by the narrative. It’s happened at least three times already (four if you count Luxu). Enough already

Ventus: Ven has some hints, though some notable contradictions to it being him

On the one had, the sheet that the True Dandelion is wrapped in is extremely similar to the one that Xehanort wrapped him in when planning to leave him on Destiny Islands in BBS and there’s a possibility that Xehanort may have found him in that very sheet if he regenerated wearing it

On the other hand: Ventus might not have even been a Dandelion in the first place (he definitely wasn’t a Union Leader, but I don’t know if it was ever said whether he was selected as a regular Dandelion or not), and there’s the timing of the scene that I mentioned above. It’s definitely after Maleficent used her lifeboat but before anyone else used theirs (when you would expect Ven to remain with his friends) and, since the scene doesn’t have the flashback effect, it’s implied to be happening concurrently with everything else, so Ven should still be fighting Darkness in the datascape while it’s happening and eliminating him from being this particular person

Strelitzia: Oh, boy, have we got some nice old hints to Strelitzia, but still a few logical contortions, just like Ven

The white sheet is coming back up again. Namely, the fact that we still have an unexplained scene where Strelitzia appears to Lauriam in a dream wrapped in a white cloak, though it’s of a different style than the one that the True Dandelion is in. That scene also featured flower petals being blown into the wind, much like a dandelion seed (though, notably, the petals that are blown aren’t Dandelion seeds)

The question is, yet again, one of timing. How would Luxu get her body? While she was only introduced in KHUx, her scenes are all flashbacks to before the war, so we know that she was struck down in the real world, not the datascape. We see her body dissolve into light and her heart be released. Now, technically you only need a heart to time travel (actually, a heart is the only thing that can time travel), but Luxu is clearly seen putting a body into the machine. A machine that only allows for time travel because it destroys the body. If he had her heart, he wouldn’t need to use the lifeboat because she’s already in a state to time-travel on her own and this eliminates the possibility of him putting her Nobody into the machine, because without a heart it would just evaporate her body leaving... absolutely no heart to go to the future with

Now, Luxu theoretically could have grabbed her heart. We know that he was hanging around Daybreak Town at the time while observing thanks to his fight with Ava, but Strelitzia is struck down just after the fight with Ava starts so it’s very likely that Luxu was too preoccupied to retrieve her heart before it was gone. Speaking of Luxu’s fight with Ava...

Ava is my current top pick for the True Dandelion candidate due to the sheer number of questions it answers and how few it raises

Ever since KH3 came out, the question of “where the heck is Ava?” has been buzzing around as a major mystery. Her last chronological point of appearance is the same as the other Foretellers: the Keyblade War itself, where she’s shown leading her Union to battle. Notably, she seems resigned to her part in this, and this is the first and only time we see her after her battle with Luxu where he reveals to her the Master’s true plans. Melody of Memory seems to imply that the other Foretellers managed to skip to the future by going to another world, Quadratum (or at least this is the most likely explanation as there’s not enough pods to send all four of the other Foretellers AND the characters that we know end up in the future to their destination). However, Ava isn’t with them and Luxu knows what happened to her

It would be easy to write this off as them trying to drop Ava from the narrative or her not being important, but her chess piece is included in the “Eraqus and Xehanort foreshadow the next saga” chess game on the far right of the board and Nomura confirms that they represent the Master’s six apprentices, i.e. the five Foretellers + Luxu. So, Ava is necessary in the upcoming saga and yet, she didn’t get to the future the same way as any of the Master’s other apprentices leaving her open to get there via a lifeboat

Ava is the very founder of the Dandelions, who all of the others look up to and defer to and was spoken of heavily in the scene just prior to the True Dandelion reveal. That’s grounds for being called the True Dandelion if I’ve ever seen one

Luxu would very easily be able to ensure that Ava would be able to make it to the future. Just like with the Master of Masters, he already has the memories necessary for her to use to regenerate a body, and either her Keyblade or her mask would make for effective mediums that wouldn’t be too difficult for Luxu to take. If he put her in the white cloth, he probably took her mask off already

Ava hasn’t been around for the events of KHUx, so there’s no timeline discrepancies if it’s her

So, now that we have an idea of who the True Dandelion could be, let’s talk about the rest of the lifeboats and how they might fit together. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s assume that the True Dandelion can’t be one of the Union Leaders and that their battle with Darkness is taking place at the same time as Luxu is sending off the True Dandelion. I’ll be referencing an old theory of mine, while making additions now that it’s clear that there’s two sets of lifeboats: the Data Set and the Real Set

Right now, there’s an equal number of Real Pods and Data Pods: 5 each. For the Data Pods, of the seven that we started with, one was used by Maleficent and one was damaged in the battle between Maleficent and Lauriam. As for the Real Pods, one has been used by Maleficent, and one has been used by the True Dandelion. This leaves us with five each.

We can narrow this down further by eliminating people that we know end up in the future. These are:

Ventus

Subject X, who is most likely Skuld based on her description

Lauriam

Elrena* (of note with Elrena is that we actually have no idea where the hell she is at the moment or how she’s going to get into the pods. Furthermore, while every other lifeboat user sans Maleficent has been shown to have amnesia upon waking and Lauriam/Marluxia directly indicates as such applies to him, too, in KH3, Elrena/Larxene’s KH3 scene and character file short story both indicate that she recalls Lauriam and possibly Strelitzia, though she also seems surprised at the idea that she’s part of an ancient Keyblade legacy. I won’t deny that there’s a possibility that she doesn’t use a lifeboat and ends up in the future by other means based on the discrepancies)

So with three confirmed cases, we’re left with one ambiguous case in Elrena and three more possible candidates: Ephemer, Brain, and Player. Four people, and two pods

I want to make it clear that despite what I brought up against Elrena, I do think that she’ll be using one of the lifeboats if only so that KHUx has narrative consistency. They introduced Elrena, they made her part of the investigation on Strelitzia’s whereabouts, so it only makes sense that they need to show us where she ended up for a satisfying conclusion. So let’s slot Elrena in for one of the lifeboats. That leaves one between Player, Ephemer, and Brain

My best guess is that Player won’t be using a lifeboat at all. Not only are they a create-a-character that would be a HUGE pain to try and incorporate into future entries in the series without making a “canon” version and thus ruining their appeal as an avatar, but we haven’t seen or heard mention of them at all in the games set in the present-day. There’s zero indication that they made it, which makes them the most easily eliminated as a lifeboat user

That leaves Ephemer and Brain, and I still believe that Ephemer will be the final lifeboat user, and for the same reasons as stated in the theory I linked at the start of this section. Not only does Brain have the same facial sprite as Eraqus, but he wields the Master’s Defender which will be later passed down to Eraqus and I believe that this eliminates him as a time traveler, despite the fandom’s popular opinion that it confirms it

Because I don’t believe that Brain is Eraqus’s grandfather, but rather his distant ancestor who inherited the No Name and passed down both Keyblades through the ages

So let’s resolve some plot threads taking everything I’ve stated and linked to above into account

My Big Guess for the KHUx Finale

Ventus will use the fact that Darkness is tied to his heart now to give it a physical, but still mostly amorphous form that he, the Union Leaders, and Player can finally take down. Darkness will be sealed inside Ven’s heart, where it will lie dormant until he reaches the future. Eventually, Xehanort will extract it in the form of Vanitas and it will follow Vanitas’s life cycle, ending in him being reabsorbed into Ven at the end of BBS. Darkness, now back in Ven’s heart, will make brief contact with Sora during the events of Re:Mind

Lauriam, upon learning that the world will be sealed with the use of the lifeboats, will attempt to rescue his partner, Elrena. Both will take lifeboats out of the datascape and into the future, whereupon they will be recruited into Organization XIII by Luxu’s current incarnation, Xigbar, likely to keep an eye on them. I believe there might be a squabble among Ephemer, Skuld, Brain, and Player among who will use the final lifeboats (each person nominating others besides themselves), but ultimately they will settle on Ephemer and Skuld

Skuld will wind up amnesiac in the future Radiant Garden and is discovered by Ansem the Wise and his apprentices and dubbed Subject X. She becomes Xehanort’s favorite test subject due to the similarities in their amnesia and possibly some lingering memories that he has that don’t quite belong to him (KHDR Xehanort certainly seems to want to meet his “old friends” very badly)

Ephemer’s heart will wind up in the Keyblade Graveyard as I mentioned in an old theory, unable to manifest a body due to the lack of a medium present. Through this state of being just a heart (and possibly related to those old talks about him being “unchained”), he will be able to enact the Light of the Past moment from KH3, and may very well be revived for future events in the series

This leaves Brain and Player behind in the datascape. However, you may remember one detail that I brought up, but neglected to fully expand on until now. There is a difference between the Data Pods and the Real Pods. While all of the Real Pods have been used up at the time of my proposed sequence of events, the Data Pods have not been. One was never used, only damaged. This leaves open the possibility that it can also be repaired (Also, I’m just gonna say it. Player’s met someone recently who has a magic hammer that can repair anything... might not come back but also totally could). Brain and Player could then repair the final pod and, in a callback to when Player was sent to Game Central Station, have them both agree once again that Player is the more expendable person in the scenario. Brain will take the repaired pod, leaving no way out of the datascape for anyone else, while Player stays behind to be sealed away for the time being (this could also be a callback to the original KHx, where Player also stayed behind to take part in the war instead of fleeing with the Dandelions, as they refused to leave their party behind)

When Brain escapes, however, he will be met with a Daybreak Town with no Real Pods left, as Luxu used one on the True Dandelion. Now that the seven pods have all been used up and the real Daybreak Town is falling to darkness, Luxu will take a corridor out as the Master instructed, but bring the newly appeared Brain along with him (either that or Brain emerges after Daybreak Town falls, either is possible) and bequeaths the No Name onto him. Brain, stranded in the past while all of his friends have been sent to the future, will be Luxu’s new apprentice and rebuild the fallen Daybreak Town as Scala ad Caelum, then pass down both of his Keyblades: Master’s Defender to his biological descendants, and No Name to his apprentices

As for the Master of Masters? I think he’s already taken an eighth lifeboat (you’ll note that there’s space right in the center of the cluster where one more could theoretically fit) and had done so before the start of the original KHx. He’ll be revived at some point in Xehanort’s young adult life to goad him into his insane plans as seen in Re:Mind, then duck into Quadratum to hang out until the next arc in the franchise, as hinted at with his appearance in the KH3 Secret Movie

(He is most definitely not Sora. He’s clearly bound to the same rules of time travel as everyone else which means that Sora couldn’t go back in time to become him as that would be long before the point in time where Sora was born and that breaks KH time travel rules. Not to mention that the Master talks about Quadratum in this update like he’s never seen it before until it came up in the No Name’s range of vision. Sora is literally in Quadratum right now, he’d definitely know what it was already if he was the Master)

And I do believe that should cover everyone’s whereabouts by the end of the game and into the next arc of Kingdom Hearts with minimal plot holes

This is just my best guess, putting together details that I’ve been accumulating for the past year and a half or so into what sounds like a coherent sequence of events that bridge the gap between KHUx and KH3 and beyond. There may be some details I get wrong, obviously. Nomura has been known to be... unpredictable. But I think, based on the evidence we have at hand, that this is the most logical series of events to end the game on and I’m really interested to see how close this gets to the actual finale we see

[boop-le-snoot]

masterpost ☀️ main masterlist ☀️ taglist

previously on...

Star is getting better, Sam is getting a friend, Stephen is a Sad White Boy™. A layover chapter. I'm not very happy with how this turned out but hey, it's an update and its still pandemi-lovato outside, we gotta be gentle on ourselves. PA turned out to be way more serious than I planned it to be anyways and I think that's very yeehaw of me to expand my writing from the usual almost-crackfics that I write. Love you all 3000.

Days stretched like a piece of chewed up gum, bleeding into one another at a snail's pace, one dull grey NYC afternoon after the other. The hospital wing I was forced to camp out in Tony's tower was top notch but everything, starting from the constant beeping to the sharp, chemical smells, irritated me, and what little strength I had to communicate was mostly spent on listening to Sam's tall tales.

Odette had stopped by shortly after the first wave of weakness had set in; no, I didn't dramatically faint or suddenly develop third stage cancer, I simply turned into a near-catatonic vegetable, devoid of any emotion or will to exist. My bones were like Jell-o, my thoughts - sluggish, sparse clouds that rarely swam in the grey plains of my overtired mind.

My boss was fussing over me for hours, I heard faint echoes of her and Stephen's argumentative conversations before she flipped out and shut the door to my hospital room, strong aromas of incense and smoke briefly overshadowing the bleach and plastic stench every hospital seemed to have. I

I became mostly coherent after her ministrations; enough to see the dark circles under her eyes and the ghastly tone of her skin. More often than not, I couldn't even properly focus my vision, things like using the bathroom and eating three times a day were the worst chores I'd ever had to do.

My body was trying to convince me to wither away, to simply allow the vessel for my spirit to become one with the Earth once more. I had no energy to process what had happened on the foreign planet; when I slept, I didn't dream, I didn't have nightmares, time just flowed like a fast, untamed river, my weary body drifting along the calmer streams of the shoreline and occasionally bumping into a stone of daily routine.

My stubbornness, however, was an inherent part of me. I had considered, many times, simply giving up; the voices in my head whispered at me their poisonous ideas. It would be so easy, to fall asleep and never wake up. They baited me with the promises of afterlife, of golden halls and spaces full of light and warmth.

Sam had started spending a lot of time at my bedside absolutely unprompted; sometimes, he'd hold my hand, gentle, tender fingers drawing senseless squiggles on the inside of my palm. Faint echoes of his aura told me he was worried for me, but also grateful for what I did for Stephen and angry at someone. I tried not to think about the last part: I could sense their pity and their unease every time one of his teammates stopped by my hospital room.

A healthy-looking young woman spending most of her days blankly staring at the wall wasn't a picture-postcard view. Sam wasn't bothered by it in the slightest, and when I finally clawed my way out of the dredges to be able to answer questions with a simple 'yes' or 'no', he promptly lit up, speaking to me in a happy tone that almost wasn't forced.

Tony stopped by, too, usually late in the evening, when he thought I and everyone else was asleep. He sat next to me, his intelligent brown eyes fixed on my face for twenty, thirty minutes at a time before he'd stroke my hair or run a hot, calloused palm over my arm, and then took his leave, slow, shuffling footsteps quietly receding into the hallways. I really didn't know what to think about Tony, he had always been quite quirky, but his gestures were... Nice.

Stephen... Him, his actions, I understood the least. He had argued with Tony, argued with Odette and I was sure I heard him and the Black Widow scream at each other during lunch time. Sometimes I thought I heard his voice, at night, the darkness behind my eyelids suddenly bursting with golden sparks and green bokeh but when I finally mustered up the strength to open my eyes, the empty, white walls were all that greeted me.

Stephen never stopped by, I rarely heard his voice outside of my room and almost always it was one bickering or another, mostly with Sam muttering a few choice words as he noisily sat down on the chair next to me. As much as I hated to admit it, it bothered me. Near-death experiences tended to leave a strong imprint on the human mind and whether Stephen liked it or not, we were connected for life.

"Then Steve, the dumbass, just jumps out of the plane. No chute, no warning," Sam's voice, drifting between fond and annoyed, snapped me out of my stupor. "Robot-brain curses, yells at his boyfriend like he can hear him and just... Does the same fucking thing," the exasperation made a tiny spark of mirth settle in me. I flexed my fingers despite the dull ache, gripping Sam's fingers in my palm. I didn't need to see him to know he immediately perked up. "Meanwhile I'm standing there with my wings, trying to figure out where in life did I take the wrong turn to end up with these two idiots."

"You should get them," I swallowed, my throat dry, my vocal cords tense from the lack of use. "One of those... Backpack leashes," the words were a battle to get out, it was a fight with a brick wall to force my brain to string sounds into a sentence, but I persisted.

"Should I say 'welcome back'?" Sam's optimism is cautious.

"Gettin' there," I forced my eyes to meet his, to see the life bustling in him. To feel alive, even by proxy.

"I should get Strange here, he's been running himself ragged these days, tryin' to figure out how to bring you back," Sam's free hand scrambled for his cell as I struggled to raise my eyebrows. "Yeah, yeah, I was as surprised as you were, Tony barely gets the wizard to sleep and eat."

Faint pangs of shame wormed into my headspace, for assuming the worst when I knew that his façade of vitriol and sarcasm was just that - a wall to protect himself. My rediscovery of the ability to feel, even if it was gooey shame, grounded me in this plane of existence, forcing me to face reality and return to it.

"I feel like shit," for once in my life, I allowed myself to openly, publicly complain about my state of being.

"Yeah, I couldn't tell," Sam's tone was refreshingly teasing. "Odette and Strange explained what you did. Well, sort of," the man scratched his chin. "I understood about half of it, really, but what matters is that you were badass as fuck!"

I struggled to hold onto that sense of being present. "Well, it wasn't my choice," I felt the need to state the fact. "I'm a conductor, of sorts."

Sam's eyebrows rose, both of his hands encompassing my lax palm. "Wizard-man said you consciously directed the energies, or whatever."

I felt the tiniest laugh bubble up from the bottom of my throat, my dry, chapped lips stretched on their own accord. "Because it tickled and itched. It was annoying," I belatedly suspected that there was something... Off, about my explanation.

Sam's gaping expression, exasperated disbelief, put me on edge. "You thought that radioactive ash tickles and severe nerve damage itches?" His head shook from side to side, as if he was trying to get rid of a persistent mosquito.

"Um," I had the decency to look away. "I didn't know it was radioactive," I meekly supplied as the door to my hospital room all but flew open.

Stephen looked - not much better than me, if I had to guess, with the exception of a highly anxious face instead of the (probably) dead inside high school drama club goth that I looked like. The Cape billowed behind him despite a lack of any wind, wiggling as my eyes widened in response to the fabric moving on its own.

"You're okay," Stephen's baritone had me snapping up to meet his stormy eyes with a speed I wasn't aware I possessed at this stage of my recovery. The sorcerer stood silently, eyeing me in turn.

"I'll go get some coffee," Sam delicately interjected, giving my hand a brief squeeze and all but running out the door.

"Radioactive?" I repeated the question that bothered me the most. Shock seized my chest as I fully faced the implications of our impromptu adventure, but I welcomed the acrid sensations, desperate to feel anything at all.

"Yes," the sorcerer took a few long, hurried strides before crashing into the chair. "I didn't notice at first, but then you grabbed my hand and," a jerky inhale followed the confession. "I felt the healing burn, I felt how your body rejected the particles," his speech stuttered. Slender, gloved fingers pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'd be dead in an hour, maybe, if not for..."

I was equally at a loss for words, it seemed. "Weren't we... Harmful to others when we..?" I struggled to form my thoughts.

"You burnt it all off," Stephen replied curtly, puzzled. "Your whole being rejected everything that came from that wretched place. Tony insisted we run tests, do scans. Neither of us have even residual radiation from past x-rays," Stephen's fingers twitched. "But that's not all."

"Your hands?" I offered, remembering some of Sam's words.

A sharp inhale coming from the sorcerer answered my question, if not in detail, and the man himself hesitated to reply for a reason I did not know. I didn't undo the damage, this much I knew was true. He swallowed loudly, eyes firmly planted on the wall opposite me. "They do not hurt anymore," the words were barely louder than a whisper.

I chewed on my lip, slowly, idly, letting Stephen process whatever bothered him that much. He should have been happy, or so I thought, that there was one less thing in this world that had the potential of giving him a headache. "Good," I simply replied, attempting to shrug.

"No, you don't understand," he suddenly lifted his eyes, staring at me hotly. "You did so at the expense of your own life, your lifespan, you energy, your ability to have child-"

I stopped his rant, lifting up one shaky, and my feeble gesture instantly made the tired, broken man deflate into someone that reeked of shame and regret. His shoulders dropped, head briefly touching the side of my bed. For all purposes, I nearly acquired a lapful of kicked puppy Stephen.

Mustering up my very last dregs of energy, I scoffed in his direction: "Don't fucking tell me what to do, wizard," before the familiar weight of apathy began taking over me again. One sluggish thought after the other, I came to a conclusion that he was experiencing a sort of survivor's guilt, except I didn't die.

Or maybe I did? Maybe I'd left some unknown, invisible part of me on the irradiated plains of a foreign world, coming home as a shell of my former self. To their eyes, at least, it could have looked the part; not too long after Stephen's departure, I mustered up the strength and the courage to look into a mirror, to properly see the damage I'd done to myself.

An ashen undertone to my skin, my eyes had sunken deeply into my surprisingly angular face. I had the look of a person who'd survived famine and torture, at least. I appeared to be as dull and disgusting as I felt. For what felt the first time in ages, I carefully, slowly ran myself a hot bath with some of the fancy toiletries placed in the bathroom, because of course Tony would have a full size bath in a hospital room, the steaming, herbal-smelling liquid almost instantaneously giving a boost to my blood flow and speeding up the living energies within my exhausted form.

Sam was waiting for me when I stepped out heated and pruney, a lopsided tilt to his lips and the mouthwatering smell of coffee gathering saliva in my mouth for the first time in days.

"Stephen needs to see a fucking therapist," I grouched, sitting down on the bed, bundled up in a fluffy bathrobe.

Wilson's responding eyeroll was pure reflex. "They all do," he reached out for his thermos, having noticed me eyeing it. A paper cup was promptly filled and given to me. "I can recommend a few, by the way. That specialise in unusual circumstances," he eyed me with kindness, gesturing towards the hospital room with a wide wave of his hand.

I chewed on my lip. "I don't think it will help much, at least right now, since all my hurts are- eh, magical," I shrugged. "I gotta figure out how to stop my limbs from feeling like cooked spaghetti noodles first." The coffee tasted like the usual hospital sludge but somehow, after being devoid of all feeling, it was the single best thing I've had in the past week.

"Seems like a solid plan," Sam agreed. "Your boss is a scary lady, by the way. And I mean it respectfully."

The corners of my mouth tilted up. "Yeah, but she's also very experienced and very kind. She knows her stuff."

Sam quickly looked to the side and as I followed the direction of his stare, i spied a pile of empty Tupperware boxes, causing me to lift an eyebrow at the suddenly bashful man.

"What?" He tried for indignant but it came out as a squeak. "I'm a man, god dammit! I am given free food, I take the free food!"

The realization set in. "She's feeding you now? Did you hit on my boss to get food, Sam?" I wagged my fingers, enjoying the face expressions the man was making, probably, a little more than I should. He looked like a right bird when disgruntled, all puffed up and glaring.

"No!" He almost shrieked. "She cornered me, said I was doing God's work by sitting and talking to you! She just started bringing those... Casseroles, every time she stopped by," the agitation in his voice was quite funny to me. "Not like it's a chore, I actually like the peace and quiet. You've been the best listener I've had in the past year," Sam's grin grew more genuine. "And I don't have to see RoboCop's mug all day or listen to someone argue over the best pasta shape."

"Your house sounds like a nightmare," I supplied conversationally, remembering my own peculiar place and the set of rules and- SHIT, I belatedly realized, someone might went to my apartment to get my stuff and gotten in trouble. "Sam, who went to my place to get my stuff?" I asked, trying to force down the bubbling unease.

"Some lady stopped by, I think her name was also Sam?" He quietly questioned. "Had two kids with her, the boy kept staring at me like I'd stolen his lunch money," the man finished off his coffee, gathering the trash and noisily throwing it in the bin.

"Yeah, that's my neighbor. And Armin is a cool little dude, he's just very shy," I offered absent-mindedly, inwardly breathing a massive sigh of relief.

"He looks like the boy from 'I see dead people' movie," Sam deadpanned, opening a large drawer and extracting my gym bag from it. "I'll leave you to get dressed," we nodded to each other before Sam left the room, phone to his ear and a relaxed atmosphere around his whole being radiating warmth and contentment. That was a nice change from the tense, grim atmosphere of the days past. I could get used to it, could re-learn how to let myself feel like a living being again.

I was eager to return home; stepping in through the portal, my living room greeted me exactly the way I left it the day I went to work, a few books scattered on the couch, my fleece blanket hanging halfway off the couch. Stephen hovered behind me as I set my bag down on the table, immediately surveying the state of my plants and my altar.

"Do you need, um, help with anything?" He was fidgeting, all but vibrating behind me.

Apparently, Sam had talked some sense into the wizard because he stopped by a few times since that day, for a short small-talk or a cup of coffee, the kicked puppy look back on full display.

I told Sam off, of course, saying that I was an adult and so was Strange, but something in his knee-jerk reaction told me that he was so used to playing referee, it didn't even register with him that I might be able to handle my own business. I told Sam that much, taking his hand in me: I wanted a friend, not a parent, not a therapist. It went pretty smoothly.

"No, not really," I figured I could water my own plants and vacuum my own floors. My phone buzzed at that moment, a number saved in my phone as "Tony 😎" coming through with an absolutely outrageous message.

"I'm bringing pizza in 20. You better have Netflix. Tell Dumbledore to pick up his phone."

I promptly thrust the phone in Stephen's face, who instantly developed an equally annoyed and fond expression, as he searched the numerous pockets of his robe for the sleek, light StarkPhone. "Resistance is futile," he sighed, sitting down on the couch as I went to change into something fresh and water my plants while Stephen flicked through my Netflix. I heard him mutter to himself: "Grey's anatomy? Sixth season? Oh my God," with the tone of a man tortured.

"I had a roomie in college who majored in Medical History," I snorted. "When she had a bad day, she'd absolutely pick apart every single thing in the show. From the doctor's misconduct to the way a surgeon was holding the scalpel," I explained, seeing Stephen's eyes sparkle with amusement. "She was absolutely vicious and it was the most hilarious thing."

The sorcerer stroked his chin, leaning back into the couch. "That's acceptable. All medical shows are rubbish," he stated firmly. His phone beeped, causing him to sigh and conjure up a portal within seconds, in the corner of my apartment I had aptly designated to be the landing pad to myself. Tony stepped in, a bottle of wine and three steaming pizza boxes in hand. Smiling at his boyfriend, Stephen turned to me with a curious look: "What did you major in?"

Taglist: @couldntbedamned @mikariell95 @letsby @sleep-i-ness @toomanyrobins @mostly-marvel-musings @persephonehemingway @schemefrenzy @lillsxd @bluecrazedandbeautiful @slothspaghettiwrites @xoxabs88xox @secretly-a-weeb @stuckybarton

[keichanz]

More Than

so i was listening to the song More Than My Hometown by Morgan Wallen which is now my new obsession and i shit you not, the ending to this little drab popped into my brain so fast i knew i had to write it down. thus, this angsty little blurb was born. 

now as i was writing, i realized that it was giving off sooo many One Last Ride vibes, written by the ever so talented @lemonlushff​​, that i decided to tweak this so it could tuck somewhere into the story itself as a sort of unofficially official glimpse of their breakup. i’m happy to report that it has Lemon’s official seal of approval and she loved it! 

so now i’m gonna share it with all you fine folks and i hope you enjoy it too! :) and since it is in the OLR universe, there will be angst hahahaa. 

so this is for you Lemon, my sweet and sour friend~ ❤️ 

one last thing--i highly recommend either having the song above playing while you read this, or at least listen to it beforehand. yes, it’s a country song, but it really is so good and the lyrics - which i’ve italicized and bolded - seem to reflect Inuyasha’s thoughts perfectly, which is why i thought it fit so well with OLR’s theme. 

....shit okay one last last thing: i swear to fuck that the ending jumped out of a scene from a goddamn western harlequin romance novel with its level of cliche and drama and yes i am entirely proud of that fact ;ljadfilajflkahjsfue

She stood beside the bed, feeling empty, cold, hollow as she stared down at the pillows and blankets. It was still unmade, the sheets twisted, messy from her hasty retreat just that morning. Tears burned her eyes as she remembered why; the argument, the begging, the screaming. The heartbreak.

Her heart twinged and Kagome gasped, closing her eyes as she brought up a hand to cover her mouth. Was this…was this really it? Were they really going to leave things like this, unresolved and painful between them? God, she didn’t want to. She wanted to run outside, run through the night to his house, throw open the front door and beg him to—

Her bedroom door crashed open and Kagome gasped, whirling around with wide, liquid eyes, heart in her throat. Golden eyes, furious, hard, bore into her own and suddenly a heat suffused her body, chasing away the previous chill, and her stomach swooped as he shut the door and stalked toward her.

Her breath left her in a stuttered exhale, body trembling, coming alive from the heat in his gaze.

“Inuy—”

“Shut up,” he growled, grabbing her waist, hauling her in tight against him. His lips fell over hers, swallowing her gaps, the crush of his mouth hard, unforgiving, punishing.

Hands – frantic, desperate – removed clothing, touching, grabbing, caressing. They fell on the bed in tangle of limbs, skin against skin, heart against heart, flushed, needy, desperate. Growls, moans, whispered pleas echoed throughout the darkness of the room as they rocked together, moving in a dance as old as time. Fingers grasping sweat slicked skin, hearts thundering wildly and then perfectly syncing in a moment of euphoric completion. A stuttered breath, a gasp of a name; then silence.

Tears trekked down her flushed face as she was gathered against a hard chest, as familiar arms wrapped around her stated body and held her as she cried.

Girl, our mamas are best friends and so are we The whole town's rooting for us like the home team Most likely to settle down Plant a few roots real deep and let 'em grow

Kagome stood in front of the full-length mirror and ran a brush through her still damp hair, the yellow and blue sundress she wore complimenting the blue of her eyes. Blue eyes that were dull as they stared at her reflection, but didn’t really see it.

Which was just as well. She didn’t know why she picked this dress to wear, but had felt compelled to wear it anyway, even if looking at it made the vice on her heart tighten even more.

A gentle knock on her door startled her out of her thoughts and she blinked. Kagome turned her head in time to watch her mother crack open the door and poke her head inside, her smile kind, but her eyes sad. The older woman took in her daughter and her smile faded, but she didn’t comment as she stepped inside.

“Souta brought the car around,” she said softly. “And the keys are in it. Do you need help with your bags?”

“No,” Kagome answered and looked at her reflection again. “I packed most of them in the car last night. I just have my carry-on left.”

Mama nodded but said nothing as gazed at her daughter. Her heart ached at the pain she saw reflected in those dear features, in the eyes were that identical to her late husband’s—Kagome’s father.

“Kagome…” she started, but then sighed as those sad, sad eyes turned toward her once again. Mama shook her head. “Are you going to say goodbye?”

Kagome’s breath hitched. She didn’t need to ask who she was talking about. She swallowed past the lump in her throat and tried to ignore the butterflies that took flight in her belly.

“I…I’m going to try,” she whispered and god help her, but she couldn’t stop the tears from welling in her eyes. “But Mama, I don’t…he probably doesn’t want to see…”

Her throat tightened and she pressed her lips tightly together to stifle the sob that welled up. Immediately arms, warm and familiar, surrounded her. Kagome buried her face in her mother’s shoulder as the tears spilled from her eyes.

“I’ll talk to Izayoi,” Mama murmured and kissed her daughter’s head, her heart aching for her little girl as she felt her own eyes getting hot with the threat of tears. “If anyone can talk some sense into that boy, it’s his mother.”

Kagome sniffled and nodded, grateful that her mother would help her in this endeavor. It was unlikely he’d want to see her, but she had to at least try…

Closing her eyes as her mother rubbed her back and smoothed her hair, Kagome clung to her mother and let herself remember, the memories flashing before her mind’s eye and then fading away just as quickly, only to be replaced by another one, fresher, more precious, more painful than the one before.

But we can't stop this real world from spinnin' us Your bright lights called, I don't blame you for pickin' up Your big dream bags are all packed up and ready to go But I just need you to know

“Shhh! Quit laughing or they’ll hear us!”

Another badly stifled giggle echoed in the night as he drew her into the darkness of the trees, toward their secret spot they’d found years ago. One hand held a six pack while the other held tight to her hand, fingers laced, and he couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across his face before an exhilarated chuckle of his own burst from his lips.

Darkness gave way to the orange glow of a fire, the soft crackling of wood breaking the stillness of the night.

“Why is this so good?”

“Because we’re seventeen.”

“If we get caught, I’m blaming you.”

“Shut up and maybe we won’t be.”

“Hey, this was your idea—”

The rest of the words were stolen in a kiss, a hand coming up to cradle her jaw as a ragged sigh whispered against her lips. He tasted like beer and spearmint gum. She smiled. A strange combination, but it was him, and she loved it.

--

“You should have seen it, Inuyasha,” Kagome gushed a year later, sitting on her bed as she excitedly gushed about her time in LA to her best friend. “The sunset was absolutely gorgeous, like nothing you’ve ever seen before! God, I wish you were there with me. I just know you’d love it.”

Inuyasha smiled and reached forward to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “I doubt I can love anything more than you.”

Blue eyes widened as a flush spread across her cheeks; her breath hitched, lips forming his name and eyes drifting closed as he leaned forward and took her mouth in a warm, lazy kiss.

--

“Would you ever wanna go?”

“Go where?” Fingers racked through dark hair and her sigh was blissful, a soft melody in his ears.

“California.”

“…You mean like…visit?”

“Well, maybe longer than a visit…like an extended trip, or something…lots of opportunities out that way…”

A brief pause before the fingers continued. “No. …Do you?”

“Mmm…dunno. Maybe after graduation? I had so much fun last time, but…”

“But what?”

A pause. Then, “Nothing. Kiss me.”

A husky chuckle before a pair of lips covered her own and any thoughts about the Golden State far, far from her mind as she returned his kiss.

That I love you more than a California sunset More than a beer when you ain't twenty-one yet More than a Sunday morning Lord Turnin' some poor lost souls 'round, Hallelujah bound

“Ewww, get that away from me!”

“C’mon Kagome, it’s just a worm! It ain’t gonna bite ya!”

“Eeee! Inuyasha, don’t you dare—!”

Laughter as he chased her around with a baited hook, the sound of water splashing as bare feet waded into the lake.

“Wait, I think I got something!”

The crank of a fishing rod as he reeled it in, the water splashing as whatever was caught struggled against the pull. Grunting, muttered curses, and soft giggling before with a splash the bass burst from the water, dangling from the hook.

“You got it!”

“Damn, ain’t nothing more satisfying than that feeling when the bass hits the hook!”

“I can think of one thing…”

Soft lips, warm and smiling, pressed against his own and Inuyasha abruptly decided that yeah, this was definitely better.

--

“California?”

“Yeah! Can’t you just imagine it, Inuyasha? The lights, the nightlife, the ocean, and no more snow! You always complain about the snow.”

“Yeah, but…Kagome, I don’t know…”

“Just think about it, okay? I’m not asking for you to decide right now. But this is something I’ve thought about for a while now, Inuyasha, and I just…I want to experience it with you. Please?”

A pause, and then heavy sigh. “Fine. I’ll think about it.”

A brilliant smile, soft lips pressing to his cheek in a warm kiss. “You know I love you, right?”

“…I know, Kagome. Me, too.”

--

“I can’t believe you’re reading that crap.”

“It’s not crap, it’s romantic. You could probably learn something or two from these books, you uncultured dog.”

“Uncultured? Really?”

“Besides, I like it when the guy gets the girl at the end. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.”

“I can make you feel all warm and fuzzy, too.”

Her gasp was cut off as lips pressed against her neck and hands slipped beneath her shirt to roam across soft skin. The book fell from her fingers to dive into silver hair, eyes closing as her head fell back with a breathy sigh.

--

“Yes.”

The blood was rushing so loudly in his ears he barely heard her and the thundering of his heart against his chest was so forceful, it was a wonder it didn’t leap out into her waiting hands. 

“Y-yes?” he echoed, voice naught but a disbelieving rasp as he stared at her with wide, shocked - and cautiously hopeful - golden eyes.

A half-sob, half-laugh burst from her lips and her eyes were bright from more than just the unshed tears brimming the beautiful depths.  Lips trembled as she smiled, hand trembling even more as she held it out before her.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, Inuyasha, I’ll marry you. I—”

What she felt next wasn’t the cool metal of his grandmother’s ring as it found a new home on her finger, but instead the warmth of her beloved’s hand as it wrapped around hers and yanked her forward into his arms. They tumbled to the ground, laughing, crying, exchanging endless kisses and promises of forever as the ring, forgotten on the ground but still nestled within the velvet box, glittered merrily in the warm glow of the fire.

Yeah, I love you more than the feeling when the bass hits a hook When the guy gets the girl at the end of the book But, baby, this might be the last time I get to lay you down 'Cause I can't love you more than my hometown

“Come with me.”

Silence; thick, stony. Cold.

Desperation made her voice high, the words falling from her lips fast. “Inuyasha, please, come back with me—we’d have such an amazing time together, learning, living and—you can enroll in my school, Inuyasha! It’s not too late, there are so many programs to choose from, and I just think you can do so much more with your life than—”

“Than what, Kagome?” The words were snapped, harsh, biting as he whirled around to peg her with a hard stare. “Than taking on the valued responsibility of the ranch that’s been in my family for fucking generations? Than building our fucking house? You know, the one we'll live in after we’re married? I can’t do that, Kagome. I won’t.”

“But that’s just it, Inuyasha, you have no room to grow here! You’re stifled by the responsibility you feel to take over the ranch when leaving could relieve you of that burden! The world is so big, Yash, and there’s so much more beyond this little town, so if you would just trust me—”

“You’re asking me to drop and leave everything I know behind, Kagome!” His voice was loud, thunderous in his anger, his frustration, his pain. “This my home, our home, and you just want me to leave like it don’t even matter! Like the fucking life I’m trying to build for us don’t even matter!”

“That’s why I’m asking you to come with me!” Tears, hot, salty ran unchecked down her face, blue eyes big and pleading and flashing with undisguised panic. “I want to be with you, Inuyasha, I do, but I need you to understand—!”

“Then be with me here, dammit!” A note of desperation, amber eyes pleading, frantic, angry.

A choked sob, a muffled whimper. “I can’t…”

An anguished sound, a shattered cry, and then a door slamming shut, loud, devastating, final.

--

The words slammed into him harder than any blow he’d ever received, the shock greater than hitting the unforgiving ground after falling off a horse, and the pain far, far worse than he ever could have imagined.

Fuck, it would have hurt less if she’d just outright slapped him in the face.

She wouldn’t look at him, her gaze focused on the ground, dark hair hiding her expression. He swallowed once, twice; his mouth felt like a desert, his tongue heavy, thick, useless. His throat worked but no sound came out. Ice replaced the blood in his veins, freezing his lungs, making it hard to breathe.

“Wh…what did you s…” He shook his head, swayed on his feet as he blinked hard. He couldn't have heard her right. She couldn't have just told him—

“…I cheated on you. Inuyasha, I—”

He didn’t hear the rest of what she said. His legs abruptly gave out and he stumbled back, sitting down hard onto the fallen log behind him. The log he’d proposed to her on. The log they’d kissed on—

He shook his head again, a frown pulling his brows down low over his eyes as he tried to register the words spilling from her mouth a mile a minute. Two days…two days ago. That—that didn’t make any sense. He couldn’t—he couldn’t smell anything, couldn’t detect any sort of incriminating evidence that suggested she’d been unfaithful. 

Amber eyes lifted, flashing with tentative hope. She’d been drunk—she didn’t remember, so maybe if he told her—

The sight of his grandmother’s ring, nestled in the middle of her palm, might as well have been his heart because it sure as sure shit felt like she’d just ripped it out of his chest. His stomach clenched, the breath seized in his lungs, and a curious numbness spread throughout his entire body. The realization hit him even harder than the pain had, and that in and of itself would have brought him to his knees had he not already been sitting. 

Honeyed eyes, agonized, pleading, lifted to her face. Again she would not meet his gaze, eyes closed against the tears that spilled down her cheeks. He suddenly tasted salt and with a start he realized he was crying too, the tears warm as they streaked down his pale face but he gave them no mind. 

“K…Kagome…” It was the only thing he could get through a throat tight from anguish. A plea, a prayer, a question all in one as he stared at her, heedless of the tears that continued to fall. 

Her eyes squeezed shut and she shook her head; a clenched sob broke from her lips as she reached forward, grabbed his hand, closed his fingers around the ring, giving it back, giving back his heart that she no longer wanted. Pain, sharp and intense, pierced through him and he gasped, unable to do a damned thing as she backed away from him, arms folded around herself.

“I’m sorry,” she rasped, shaking her head, over and over, backing away. “I just…I can’t…”

A sob, borne of a sorrow so deep, of regret and fear and pain so sharp it felt it in the very marrow of his bones, broke free of her lips right before she whirled around and dashed away, through the night, through the trees, away from the fire, away from him.

Inuyasha could do nothing but sit there, his rejected grandmother’s ring clutched in his fist and his vision blurry from hot tears as he watched her run. Curious, that instead of the crushing pain he expected to feel in his chest, there was a hollow ache that resonated, like an echo of a mournful howl for the one who had just run away with his heart.

What hurt more than the pain of watching her go, however, and more than the diamond cutting into his palm, was the jarring realization that the woman he loved more than his own life would rather fabricate a lie of infidelity than be with him. 

And because he loved her more than his own happiness…he’d let her. 

I ain't the runaway kind, I can't change that My heart's stuck in these streets like the train tracks City sky ain't the same black Ain't that a map dot shame, man, to think that

Sitting on his bed, freshly showered and donned in simple jeans and a t-shirt, Inuyasha’s head was bowed between his shoulders and his arms were propped on his knees. His hands, clenched into tight fists, gradually relaxed and a breath he hadn’t’ even realized he’d been holding rushed from his lungs, escaping his mouth in a harsh exhale that did absolutely nothing to absolve the torment wreaking his mind.

As the last vestiges of the memory faded away, far more painful than all the ones before, he opened his eyes and stared down at the hardwood floor, scuffed and scratched and worn. He frowned, his chest feeling tight, his stomach in knots, his muscles tensing and relaxing with a restless energy that was hard to ignore. He wanted to punch something, to run, to fight, fight for her to stay, fight for them.

But he remained where he was, hands flexing, jaw clenched, eyes shut tight against the pain that was determined to bring him to his knees. God, why, why did she have to—

Gentle rapping on the door before it was cracked open. He didn’t look up but he didn’t need to; he knew why she was here. The ache in his chest intensified, sharped, traveled up to knot in his throat and make it harder to breathe.

She didn’t say anything at first, simply stared. Then, “…She wants to see you.”

Inuyasha turned his head, looked out the window.

A pause. Then a sigh, resigned, sad. “Asako called. Before she showed up at the door, I mean. Asked me to talk to you. Said I would, but didn’t make any promises.” Pause. “You already know how I feel about her doing this, but…you should at least say goodbye. You’ll regret it if you don’t. You know you will.”

A tightening of his jaw and a deep furrowing of his brow was her response.

“…I’m sorry, my love.”

The door closed with a soft click.

A minute passed. Two. Three.

Inuyasha exploded to his feet, grabbed the lamp on the nightstand, and hurled it against the wall with a roar that was equal parts rage, frustration, and deep, intense anguish that reverberated throughout the entire house; echoing, thunderous, shattering.

Deafening silence followed his outburst; he sank to his knees and wept.

I love you more than a California sunset More than a beer when you ain't twenty-one yet More than a Sunday morning Lord Turnin' some poor lost souls around, Hallelujah bound Yeah, I love you more than the feeling when the bass hits a hook When the guy gets the girl at the end of the book But, baby, this might be the last time I get to lay you down Cause I can't love you more than my hometown

It was impossible not to hear it. As the color drained from Kagome’s face and her heart clenched in her chest, Izayoi stared at her with eyes hardened from the ache she was feeling for her son, the sorrow she felt at his heartbreak twisted into bitter, resentful anger at the woman standing before her.

Kagome closed her eyes, bit her lip to stifle the sob that welled in her throat, sucked in a shaky breath meant to harden her resolve. It didn’t and she fought not to fall apart on the front porch, locking knees that threatened to give out on her.

“Go,” Izayoi muttered in a voice like flint and ignored the younger woman’s flinch. “You’ve done enough damage here. And I’m not talking about whatever he just destroyed.”

Hot tears pricked the back of her eyes. Her throat tightened, preventing any words, protests, to spill from her mouth. She stared at the older woman with wide eyes, someone who she, for the longest time, had looked upon as a second mother, someone to confide in, to trust.

She found none of the warmth that she was used to seeing. No fondness, no compassion, no understanding. Coldness spread through Kagome’s veins, turning her blood to ice, knotting in her stomach, heavy, uncomfortable.

Izayoi stared back, cold, unforgiving, unregretful.

“I’m sorry,” Kagome whispered.

The older woman pressed her lips into a thin line and looked away, arms tight across her chest.

Rejected, heartbroken, Kagome turned, her feet feeling heavy as they carried her back to her car. The tears ran unchecked down her face now, streaming down pale cheeks. She tasted salt and she got in the vehicle, closed the door. Her body felt like it was on autopilot as she revved the engine and started down the long dirt driveway.

It wasn’t until she had gone halfway that she broke down, great, gasping sobs erupting from her throat. Her vision was blurry from the unending tears and her knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel so hard. Without even realizing it her foot had slipped from the accelerator and she was merely coasting now, too distraught, too tormented to think about anything else but the pain ravaging her heart. Unbidden one last memory, the most recent, flashed before her mind’s eye, twisting the knife keeper, crushing her, killing her…

“Don’t do this.”

He froze at the softly uttered words, spoken in a tone so raw with pain that it trembled. He swallowed hard and turned his head just the slightest bit, but said nothing.

Silence. Thick, tense, deafening.

Then he tightened his jaw, hardened his eyes, and continued putting his boots on.

A choked sob, the rustle of cloth. “Inuyasha, please—”

“I’m sorry.”

He stood up from the side of the bed and refused to look at her as he collected his jacket, still sitting in a heap on the floor from where it was hastily thrown the night before.

A stuttered breath, followed by the salty scent of tears. His lips drew into a tight line and his hands fisted tightly at his sides as he forced himself to head toward the door. But, goddamn him, he paused right in front of it, hand on the knob, jaw clenched so hard it ached.

“Please,” she begged and the word was a raspy plea, vision blurry from tears. “If you would just—we can talk about this—”

“I love you, Kagome,” Inuyasha said and he heard her sharp intake of breath, but he didn’t turn around. He swallowed once, twice, and closed his eyes as he opened his mouth and forced the words past a throat tight with emotion.

“Inu—”

“But I can’t…love you more than this. I just…I can’t.”

Another sob, a hitched breath, and his chest ached. He bowed his head.

“See you around, Kagome,” he whispered and left, his footsteps fading down the hallway and down the stairs until the slam of the front door echoed in the dark house.

Kagome dropped her face into her hands and wept.

The front door burst open and Inuyasha was desperation personified as he rushed past his alarmed mother, sprinting as fast as he could toward the barn that held the horses. Not even a full minute later a white blur sped from the barn and bolted through the open gate of the pasture, following the car that was leaving with his love, his soul, his very heart.

Standing on the porch, Izayoi pressed a hand to her heart while the other covered her mouth, muffling the sob that burst from her lips as teary eyes watched her son chase after the woman who broke his heart.

'Cause I love you more than a California sunset I love you more in a twenty-dollar sundress Hate that loaded down car you got your keys in Girl, but I hate even more that you're leavin'

Urging his mount to go faster, harder, the thundering of her hooves against the ground rivaled that of the thundering of his heart in his chest. Hands gripping the coarse hair of her mane, Inuyasha grit his teeth against the harsh wind, his eyes wild, desperate and bright with unshed tears as he kicked the mare’s flanks to go faster, dammit, faster!

The distance between them was closing, the rumble of the engine, of gravel crunching beneath tires becoming louder until he was riding alongside her, along the fence that enclosed the front pasture. His hands fisted his mount’s mane in a while-knuckled grip as he leaned over her neck, legs tight to her sides.

He turned his head and wild, despairing golden eyes collided with wide, tear-filled blue.

Kagome’s heart lurched in her chest, making her gasp as goosebumps erupted on her skin. She sobbed, shaking her head, mouthing his name and forcing her eyes to look straight ahead. What—what was he doing?! Why?! God, he was making this even harder than it already was, taking her heart and stomping on it, cruel, cold, conniving.

But it made sense, didn’t it.

She had broken his heart, and now he was doing the same to her.

'Cause I love you more than the feeling when the bass hits a hook When the guy gets the girl at the end of the book But that ain't you and me so I guess I'll see you around 'Cause I can't love you more than my hometown

Inuyasha didn’t let up, not even when she looked away, gritting his teeth, kicking his mount to keep up when she accelerated. She was crying, and although he couldn’t hear her, he could see the way she shook, shoulders jerking, chest heaving, face wet from her tears and fuck she was wearing the sundress—

The end of the drive was in sight. Kagome slowed down, so did he, but she didn’t stop as she once again turned her head and caught his gaze. Inuyasha was already staring at her, heart in his eyes, a silent plea falling from his lips, willing her to hear….

“Don’t go.”

A sob, raw, choked, anguished.

“I’m sorry.”

Without even realizing, he let up on his mount, the mare slowing to a trot, a walk, and then stood still, recovering from the hard gallop. Golden eyes, awash with ears, watched the car reach the end of the drive and turn, driving away, going, going, getting smaller, fading.

Gone.

Something inside Inuyasha shattered and he didn’t think it could ever, ever be repaired.

Love you more than my hometown Love you more than my hometown Love you more, baby, love you more

[gumnut-logic]

“Hey, you comin’ over to Lila’s tonight? I’ve wrangled an invite and I know you’ve got a thing for her. Could be the night.”

Scott threw a leg over his motorcycle and unhooked his gloves from his belt. “I don’t know, Pete. Dad’s out tonight and I’m supposed to be looking after my brothers.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“Can’t you ask Virgil? This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, man. Don’t sacrifice your love life for the brats.”

His fingers stretched out the gloves. “Pete, those are my brothers you’re talking about. Don’t make me kick your ass.” He didn’t bother to look at his friend. He knew Pete didn’t mean it, but there were times where he just did not understand. He shoved his key into the bike’s ignition and she came to life with a roar. “And no, Virgil has his own thing. This is my call.”

“But what about your thing?” Pete had to yell over the idle of the engine. “Lila seemed very interested.” An exasperated sound. “You’re not your brothers’ parent. What about your grandmother?”

He unhooked the bike stand and let his legs take the sway. “You’re stepping on forbidden ground, man. You watch what you say about my family.”

Pete stepped back, both hands shooting up defensively. “Okay, okay. I’m just trying to look out for you, bro. Don’t want you wasting your life stuck at home.”

Scott glared. The throb of the bike beneath him was almost an encouragement to the anger welling up inside. He let his hands drop to the handlebars. “They’re my family.”

He didn’t bother to explain further. A hand took the throttle and a foot the brake. A flick of the clutch and he tore away, leaving Pete in his dust.

-o-o-o-

It was probably an overreaction on his part and as his bike tore out onto the highway, he figured he would probably have to speak to Pete and smooth things over. He meant well.

He just didn’t understand.

Perhaps worrying about four younger brothers wasn’t usually the thing for a twenty-three-year-old. Hell, according to societal norms, he should be hunting down a partner, focussing on his career and looking for his own digs.

He had kind of done that with the Air Force. It took him away from his family, sent him across the planet to experience new things.

But that only made family more special. Was it wrong to miss his brothers?

Perhaps his circumstances were a little different from the norm. When they lost their mother seven years ago, Scott had been about to graduate high school. With Virgil traumatised – hell, all of them traumatised – Allie still in diapers and Dad…he couldn’t blame Dad, but it still didn’t negate the fact that his father had gone missing for over a year, disappearing into his work….there had been bonds built.

He valued those bonds. He valued being there the day Alan took his first steps, the day Gordon won his first trophy. He wasn’t a parent, but he was a big brother and as long as he drew breath, he would watch out for his siblings.

For his family.

If that made him odd in society’s eyes, screw society.

The bike’s engine dropped revs as he slowed and turned onto the dirt road that led to the farm. He loved the dirt and if he broke the safety limit just a little on acceleration, there was no one else on the track to care. The trail of dust the bike kicked up behind him was satisfying in its own way, even if his pants ended up coated in it.

The farm eventually emerged from its cluster of windbreak trees, an island amongst the fields. Turning into the drive, you would never have known it was the home of a billionaire. It looked the same as it always had. Neat, tidy, a little worn around the edges, but Joe from the local builders was due next Monday to fix the gutters again and touch up the paint.

It was home. A quiet place for his family to grow.

And he was going to miss it.

A sigh as he pulled the bike to a halt not far from the front door. He killed the engine and secured it. Climbing off the bike proved that yes, he did have half the dirt road on his pants and he took the next few moments to brush it off into the petunia bed.

Petunias? When had Kyrano planted petunias?

Thoughts regarding their security officer ‘come gardener accompanied him inside.

“Scotty!” A lightning fast ball of blond energy barrelled into him the moment he walked through the door. “You’re home!”

He caught his eight-year-old brother in a hug that lifted him off the ground and spun him around. The briefest of thoughts as to what Pete would think if he knew how much joy swelled in his heart each time Alan greeted him like this.

It gave him purpose.

“Heya, squirt.” He let his little brother down with a last squeeze. “How was school today?”

That prompted a grumpy expression. “Boring. Ms Jennings said I couldn’t write about rockets and had to write about worms in science. Worms are boring.”

Scott held back a snort. It was a familiar theme.

“They have their importance, Allie.”

“That’s what Virgil said. Then he blabbed about ecosystems and recycling...all boring!” Yes, that was a pout. A definite pout.

Scott folded down beside his brother and lowered his voice. “Would it help if I told you a secret?”

Of course, this immediately drew Alan’s attention. Secrets in this household were powerful things. “Yes!”

“Promise to keep it?”

Alan nodded. “Rescue scouts’ honour.”

“Okay...would it help if I told you that Dad is developing a rocket fuel that is made by worms?”

Alan frowned at him. “Worms make rocket fuel?”

“Yep.”

“Really? How?”

“Now that is a secret even I don’t have. You’ll have to speak to Brains about that.”

That caused a whine. “But Brains is on the Island. And he speaks gobblety-gook.”

“Then you’ll have to be patient and listen to Ms Jennings long enough to know enough to understand what Brains is saying.”

Blue eyes pierced him, suspicion at his tactics. “Really?”

Scott smiled just a little before hugging his brother again. “Really.”

He was still eyeing his brother suspiciously, but appeared willing to take it on board.

Scott had to hold back a grin. Perhaps, one day in the far future Alan might turn to him and call him on his bullshit, but that wasn’t today. And it wasn’t totally bullshit. Virgil had mentioned composting and renewable resources as part of the fuel making process.

There were worms in compost, weren’t there?

Still under eight-year-old scrutiny, Scott stood up. “So where is everyone?”

“Virgil’s in the living room hogging the ‘projector. Gordon’s in his room and Grandma says he can’t come out until he says sorry to Virgil.”

Great. “What did he do?”

“Messed with Virgil’s stuff. Virgil got really angry and there was yelling. Grandma got angry, too.”

Fantastic. “Where’s Grandma now?”

“Out the back. She has all her stuff packed.” And that was definitely a sour face. “Does she have to go?”

“Grandma has the right to do her own things, Allie. She does a lot for us already.”

“But I’m going to miss her.”

“It’s only for the weekend.”

“Why can’t we go with her?”

“Do you really want to go to a medical conference?”

“Nooo.” The logic cranking through his brother’s head was almost visible. “But we could go to Disneyland! That’s in California, too!”

“You’ve already been to Disneyland and you have school.”

“School’s boring.”

And they were back to square one. “Okay, squirt.” He ruffled his brother’s hair. “If you eat your dinner and help Grandma with the loading the dishes...without complaint...” Yes, there was the pout. “And you have your bath...without complaint...we can do some stuff before bed.”

His little brother’s eyes lit up like the stars he would no doubt be chasing one day. “Can we do rockets?”

“Maybe. If the weather holds.”

“Yes!” Alan actually jumped and fist-punched the air before running off down the corridor. “Virgil! Scotty says we can do rockets after dinner!”

Scott grinned after him. He shucked off his jacket and hung it on the hall stand. A brief thought of Pete and the possibilities with Lila. Sure, he was interested in Lila. She was gorgeous and smart with a beautiful smile.

But this?

Pete did not know what he was talking about.

-o-o-o-

[slasherkisss]

CABIN FEVER - JASON VOORHEES X READER [CHAPTER 7]

Summary In an effort to remove yourself from your previous life in the big city, you move to Crystal Lake. The cabin you had inherited from your father makes the perfect place for a fresh start, however, there is a secret in these woods (and within yourself) that you must come to accept…and to love.

A/N You’d think I’d be able to write more of this in my freetime but, you know what, we work with what we got here. There’s no smut in this chapter, sorry, but lots of murder and tender fluff to make up for it!

——————————————————————————————

The next two to three days of your existence was relatively unbothered, save for your constant paranoia of the escaping victim.

Every night you swore you could hear footsteps, not yours or Jason’s as the two of you rested in the same bed, and it sent you sitting up in a blind panic as you stared into the empty nothingness of the darkness that enveloped you. Some nights you stood to pace around the house, checking windows and watching over your shoulder in case the figures of people you didn’t recognize snuck behind you. They brushed your shoulder and whispered in your ear, sending goosebumps up your entire body as you incessantly cleaned the house, the phantom stains of blood spots from Jason’s previous murders singing to your paranoia like beacons of sin.

Multiple times Jason stopped you, his hands around your body to pull you close to him and simply hold you back from moving. His grip was so strong that you had no choice but to sit in his arms and calm yourself, matching your breathing with his own as he nuzzled the back of your neck and tugged at you with something, you supposed, was akin to worry. There was guilt in letting your emotions fog you to your boyfriend’s own, but making it up to him with long, languid kisses to his cock seemed to work for the most part as he, too, tried to ease your mind with thick fingers and moans that shook the whole cabin late at night.

You seemed normal enough on your third day in the aftermath of death, going into the garden to tend to your ever-budding crops while Jason left out on patrol around the lake. Though he was reluctant to do so at first, you insisted that you were fine with it. His home was your home, after all, and it was important to the both of you that it remain protected and safe, lest someone discover your home. Lest someone discover the two of you together.

Despite its dangers, the thought made you smile. Oh, how loudly your parents would protest if they saw your current choice in companionship. Oh how the curses would fall from their lips alongside their preacher as they would try (and fail) to drag you home.

Home… No, that place you had left wasn’t home. It never was, was it?

This was your home now.

It was a comforting thing, you realized as you knelt into the dirt and began to dig up a few of the weeds that had dared make their home in the fertilized soil of your potato crop. The trowel you used bit into the earth with ease, its stainless steel edges growing momentarily matte from the dust of the dirt you pushed it through with practiced ease. You pulled each weed with careful precision before placing it to the side, taking a breath as your small pile of invasive plants began to grow larger and larger.

You wondered if you could find a book on natural weed killers and put some in your garden. It would make all of these a lot easier.

Making a mental note of such a thing you stood, wiping the small layer of sweat from your brow as you took a deep breath, feeling the pleasant warmth in your muscles from the day’s work as you kicked around some of the soil to cover the holes you had created before gathering up the weed and moving them to the compost pile you had slowly been accumulating in one of the spots behind your home, neatly covering it with the worms and dead fruit that hung in the same space with a satisfied nod.

Returning to the front of your house, you could only freeze as white hot terror rushed over your entire form.

The woman that was just beyond your fence was familiar, though far more ragged than you had remembered her to be when you had first seen her escape three days ago.  

She stood there on the other side of your fence and you could feel your heartbeat still as your eyes met. Your lungs suddenly stopped working and breathing became more and more difficult as the two of you gazed at one another from the mutual safeties of your fence sides. Of all the things to happen, you realized with a dawning grimness in the base of your mind, this was likely one of the worst possible things. You felt it in the way your body trembled and the way your mind went blank as the two of you stood in the discomforting silence of the world around you. The only echo of sound that dared hum across the tense atmosphere was the thrum of cicadas high up in their trees as they chirped on, unaware of the events unfolding beneath their safe haven.

The woman was still caked in mud, the same clothes on her as the day you had watched her escape Jason’s wrath. She must not have been able to get out of the forest on her own, you realized with somewhat of a smugness to your thoughts. She must have relied on those men who fell so easily at Jason’s hands, unaware that Crystal Lake was much larger than others had given it credit for. You could imagine her, starving and shivering in the cold of the night before spotting your cabin in the rising sun, thanking God as she ran towards it in hopes that she would be able to find some sort of respite and rescue amongst good natured, friendly people-

Only to find you.

You.

She knew where you lived.

As if she also realized that same thing, the woman turned around and began to sprint in the opposite direction, her breaths coming in shaky and terrified gasps. You watched in shock for a few minutes, your eyes widening as your hand tightened against the trowel you held in your vice grip. Your heartbeat pounded in your ear and your mind screamed at you in the fiercest voice you think you have ever heard it muster.

Run, run, run! She’s running. Go after her. It’s bad. She’s bad! She’ll take him away. She’ll take you away from him and then what?

And then what?

You didn’t need to hear anymore from yourself before you hopped the fence and sprinted after her.

The trees were a blur around you as you pushed passed them, your breath coming in sharp and succinct pants the faster you pushed yourself. Your boot clad toes hit the forest floor and pushed yourself off of it with as much momentum as you could muster and, oh, you could feel your heartbeat in your ears as you chased after your target. You had the advantage of functionality when it came to outfits, you realized with a moderate source of hope as you began to catch up to the hobbling form out before you. Though her feet were bare, her outfit was a tight skirt and thin tank top that left gashes on her skin as her flesh hit the whipping whirlwind of trees and the biting forest floor cut the edges of her ankles with warning nips, slowing her down for you. Easing her into your trap of movement.

The forest was on your side.

This was proven even more accurate when you saw her trip in front of you, her foot catching between rocks and bending with a sickening crack in the completely wrong direction. It sent bone jutting out from her skin and ankle and caused her to scream, long and loud and desperate, against the blue of the sky in the clearing. There was a mixture of agony and terror deep in the hum of her vocal chords as she attempted to crawl away from the area, even with the shattered bone against her body. Adrenaline and fear pumped in her veins and in yours as you continued to move forward.

You didn’t stop running. You didn’t allow yourself to catch your breath before you descended upon her with your trowel in hand.

Atop her torso, you pinned her arms on either side of her body with your thighs, feeling the way she squirmed and wiggled under you like a maggot as begging, desperate pleas left her mouth in nonsensical babbles.

“Please,” She drooled as she spoke, tears streaming down her face, “I won’t tell-I won’t tell anyone I promise-I promise, I promise I’ll be good I won’t tell a soul about any of this of any of anything not at all! Just please, please don’t kill me please I promise I’ll be good I swea-!”

You cut her off by raising your trowel, gripping it tight in both hands before bringing the steel down into the base of her skull with as much force as you could muster.

Her scream cut off with an even worse sounding squelch.

Blood blossomed from the spot in her forehead where you had sunk your gardening tool into her. The skull of the woman gave more resistance than you were expecting, making you have to wiggle the dull steel into her brain further, watching as parts of bone began to splinter and stick out against the edges of her forehead. There was something of fascination in your eyes as you withdrew the piece of metal and plunged it back in, the initial hole in her cranium helping the item to dig further through her membrane and deep, deep into the grey matter of her mind. The squishing noises accompanied by the gurgles that left her half open mouth as it filled up with blood was near pornographic, making you shudder as you pulled your trowel out a second time and stabbed her again.

And again and again and again and again and again…

Her head was a pulp by the time you decided to stop, your breathing heavy in your throat as you tried to swallow the oncoming trail of vomit that dared push itself greedily to the pit of your stomach. Your hands were stained shades of crimson and gray, bits of skull matter clinging to your fingertips as your pants soaked up the messy, wet dribblings of your victim. Blood pooled out of her nose and mouth, some even spilling from her ears but a majority of it echoing from the gaping hole in the center of her head. She looked, you thought, like a jack-o-lantern someone kicked in on the side of a porch. Only the seeds and guts were replaced with brains and skull as you reached out with one hand, deftly poking at the material.

That was when you actually threw up, the texture sending your stomach spiraling into the distance as you turned your head and allowed yourself to be relieved of your morning’s breakfast.

The scent of vomit and blood combined with the slow rot of the forest around you did little to quell your stomach after you had emptied it. Wiping your face with the back of your hand, you winced as the wetness of smeared blood pressed itself bitingly to your cheeks. You must have looked like a vampire now, you thought with a dull laugh, having fed on a poor, innocent victim. Having used her form as nourishment.

No, you thought as you looked down at the body beneath you with another ragged breath, she wouldn’t have given you any nourishment if you had eaten her.

She was doomed to die like this from the start. From the moment she ran from Jason and into the woods, she was destined to be consumed by them once again. Crystal Lake did not let any of its victims leave once it had decided to claim them.

You felt it then, the slow and steady breathing of the ground beneath you. As if the earth was rising and falling with even movements. You inhaled sharply, pressing your hand into the ground and feeling the shifting movements. Up and down… as though it was resting. Sleeping beneath you as it drank up the offering you had given it, tendrils and mushrooms biting greedily into the flesh in order to eat all the nutrients it could muster.

There was a rustle of wind and you shuddered at it, the trees shaking and groaning as though thanking you for the meal.

You smiled.

Standing up, you walked back to your cabin with uneasy steps in the direction you had ran, the trail of your chase easy to see and easier still to retrace. Still, you remembered the direction you had left the corpse in as you tripped over your own feet several times in your efforts to get back to your home. Shovel, you decided with low desperation, you needed a shovel. To dig a hole six feet under ground and give the earth back what she needed from you.

Give her to it, that sweet little voice in your head laughed as your cabin came into view, the forest needs fertilizer, after all. How else will you raise your crops? Keep your supplies fertile? Give her to it, Y/N, it’ll be alright.

You let out a shaky sigh with a smile despite yourself. Yeah, that was what you would do.

You were almost surprised to see Jason at the front of your house, sitting patiently on the steps and twiddling his thumbs idly as though thinking. You had told him many times that he was welcome into your house, even when you weren’t there, but he didn’t seem to find it ‘polite’. That or he simply didn’t want to be in the house without you, since you were the only reason he visited it at all anymore. Both thoughts made your heart skip a beat and you couldn’t help but smile despite the pain in your sore body and the blood still dribbling from your form.

“Jason!” Your voice came out much more clear than you thought it ever capable of in such a situation and you couldn’t help but be proud of yourself.

At your echo Jason stood up, moving quicker than you had ever seen him move towards you. There was a pause in his body language and you could see moderate panic shine behind that mask of his as his hands were waving around, frantically signing at you with a speed you could barely keep up with. Messy and panicked as they were, you were able to comprehend them enough to understand what he was asking of you as his face checked you over, inch by inch, still signing over and over again:

‘Are you okay? What happened? Are you hurt?’

“Jason, Jason-” You tried to shush him, stopping his movements by reaching out to grab his face in your smaller hands and pull him down so that he was eye level with you. Being so close to your blood splattered face, feeling the way the wet of the blood smeared across his mask and clothes the closer you drew to him. The sight of you, so red and warm, made his chest rise and fall with equal parts worry and arousal. Biting your lip, you found your voice enough to continue:

“I-I’m fine, Jay… I… That woman who got away the other time she… I chased her and… i didn’t want to let her escape so I… We need a shovel!”

As if to remember what you had come in there for, you ran off and away from your boyfriend in favor of entering your home, leaving parts of the doorknobs and floors bloodstained in your wake and a confused Jason staring at the spot where you once were. Slowly standing up, the behemoth of a man could only follow behind you as he watched you scramble around your house with desperation, looking for the shovel you had bought to do yard work. You knew you bought one, anyways. At the very least you BROUGHT one at some point here. Didn’t you? Or did you dream it? Your mind was a whirlwind of memories mixed with hallucinations as you pushed yourself forward. Moved yourself faster. Begged yourself to keep going and going and going and-

Jason’s hand touched your own, resting over it and holding you down with one of the firmest grips he had managed on you.

You took long, shaky breaths as you looked at him and then at your house. You found it both annoying and amusing to see just how many blood stains you had left in your wake, the scent all but permeating your home as it soaked into the wood of the cabin. You had just cleaned the blood up from the last time you and Jason had entered as well, you huffed to your own mind, of course it’d just be fate that you’d get even more on it than before. It would be hell to clean up.

A sudden exhaustion overtook your mind as you slumped forward, leaving Jason to catch you in his arms as you let out a long, tired sigh and shut your eyes tight, trembling in his grip as he helped you to the floor to sit on it. The wood was suddenly too cold and too hot all at once as your fingertips slid across its textured surface with aimless disinterest, your eyes blurring with something between tears and adrenaline as you found your breaths coming slower and slower, as though you were trying to stop breathing all together.

You sat like that for… well… you didn’t know how long you sat like that. With Jason at your side, cross legged in front of you as his hand gently rubbed at your legs and shoulders, tilting his head to observe you without saying a word. The silence was nearly oppressive for the both of you and you could all but hear his breathing through his mask. Did he need to breathe? You wondered just that for longer than you should have before you were, suddenly, moved. Suddenly shifted in a way that made you startled.

Jason had you in his arms now, carrying you as carefully as he could up the stairs of your home and into the master bathroom that housed itself neatly alongside our bedroom. You barely registered the movements as anything other than events outside your own body, as though you were looking down at yourself being lifted up by the man at your side. You were placed in the tub as carefully as he could manage and you watched yourself adjust awkwardly in your clothes as you lay there, stunned into something of a dissociation by the status of the world that you seemed to vaguely inhabit.

You came back to your own body when the water hit you.

You gasped, startling slightly into a sitting position as your hands gripped the edges of the tub. You looked up to see Jason fiddling unsurely with the handles of the water, shifting it from hot to cold at an insanely unpleasant pace that sent chills down your spine as the water soaked your bloodstained clothes and sent swirls of light pink and dirt dribbling down your drain like spit at the dentist’s office. You shuddered and reached out, shakily, to push his hands away as carefully as you could and adjust the water temperature for yourself. Jason simply watched you, allowing it.

Once the water was an acceptable temperature, he returned to your side. Massive hands slid up your body and removed your clothing bit by bit. Your hiking boots fell from your feet along with your socks, soon moving along to your bloody, ripped pants and eventually to your top, your underwear sliding off and into the pile of clothes Jason had amassed and leaving you naked in the slowly filling tub of water that soaked into your core as you curled yourself into a ball and sat there, staring forward in shock.

One the tub was filled Jason turned it off, his hands reaching out with a wash cloth to hand to you in an awkward unsureness of if you needed it or not. It was only then that you became hyper aware of the itchy patches of dried blood and viscera coating the remainder of your skin. Though your clothing had managed to catch much of it, the feeling was still there that you were soiled. Dirty and ragged with the urge to dump bleach on yourself to rid your skin of its sudden imperfections.

Grabbing the cloth, you scrubbed it on your body until your skin felt hot and red and raw with friction. Until spots on your form were no longer covered in brains and bits of skull and you tried, desperately, to rid yourself even of the skin they touched. You had to get clean, you thought with hungry worry in your mind, you had to rid yourself of all of this.

Go away, go away, go away, go away-

A hand stopped you before you could rub your skin clean off, forcefully ripping the cloth from you and putting a hand on your arm to stop you from thrashing to reach out and grab it. When you looked up, all you saw was Jason’s sharp glare from beneath his mask and that, alone, stilled you with surprise. He had never looked at you before in such a threatening way. It made you wonder if you truly had fucked up in one way or another… or was he just worried about you?

You stayed still the rest of the bath. Until the tub was drained and Jason pulled you from the water and wrapped you in a towel, drying you off with rough grips of his hands to your skin that sent shivers down your spine as you clung to him through it all. You couldn’t say when he had picked you up again and moved you to your bed, the sheets soft under your bare skin as he removed the towel, but you were there suddenly and you shifted with a sudden exhaustion in your bones as you sighed.

You looked up at Jason, who stood by the edge of the bed looking down at you.

You lifted your hands up to weakly sign:

‘Are you mad at me?’

He took a long moment to return the question with his own signed answer:

‘No.’

‘Then why did you look at me like that?’

‘Worried.’

‘... She’s dead’

‘I know.’

‘I need to clean what I started.’

‘No. I’ll do it.’

You opened your mouth to protest with your words this time, hands suddenly too heavy to sign with your boyfriend as you let protests rise in your throat. This wasn’t his problem. This was something you had done. You had stabbed her in the head. You had killed her.

Oh god you had killed her.

Jason leaned forward, his mask pressing to your face. The semblance of a kiss where his lips might have been. Your eyes grew more heavy with the comfort, feeling his hands push themselves on you as gently as they could, feeling you and comforting you with his presence before pulling away. Jason’s fingertips flew in the slow and steady movements of signs he had practiced.

‘I love you. I’ll do it.’

The last thing you saw before you gave into the closing of your eyes and the sleepiness of your body was Jason leaving the room, his shoulders squared with determination and the lingering scent of blood and lake water shaking itself through your entire room before it all went black.

[smallestclowninthecircus]

Tma season 2 notes baybeee

I made myself take several breaks so I could give my frie d who is listening to it at the same time as me a chance to catch up. Honestly just posting them so I have them saved somewhere but whatever.

ep 41: real graham wrote keep watching before he was replaced. Jon feels like he's being watched. But they werent replaced by things related to the eye. It's the web that's on the box that replaces them. Endless hallways and doors to nowhere. I bet nicholas will have ideas what entity this relates to. If it even does. They're like the tunnels in the one with the builder guy. Tunnels closing in etc. Also like the cave diving one. He's assuming it's just one

ep 42: so 100 gecs? (IM SORRY I LIKE 100 GECS BUT LMAO) so there's some entity related to music right? There's the piper episode and the 27 w/ the calliope. Ah yes, this season is gonna be the season of Paranoid!Jon

ep 43: section 31? fucking books. god no. smashed lights? cult lady did that. covered the lights too. she mentioned a spooky clown doll. thats not random.

ep 44: is this that same circus that got mentioned before? it is! the pipe organ! pop off organ! pipe off! mouth on the stomach! yes! mouths in unusual places my beloved!

ep 45: antiques! like that one ep!

ep 46: every time books get mentioned i sigh. hhh sus smells. it got brighter. I get the vibes occasionally that the dark and the eye are sorta at odds with eachother. GRRR BARK BARK LEITNER. ayyy ex altiora. entity go brr. which entity do we thing it is? my guess is The Dark. The book buyer's name is Mike. He has scars? Electricity? The childhood friend of the guy who got it later on perhaps? The Vast? its formatted like an entity idk. This happened before the other one. He got trapped in the wood carving. a win for the web lol spiders go brr

ep 47: did i hear spiral? ITS THE NOT THING FROM THE EPISODE WITH NOT GRAHAM "it didnt move, it shifted" is like the exact same sentence as before. ay john's starting to remember. the laughing woah thats weird. is "michael" one of the entities? "you make it seem like theres a war" supports my theory that theres a struggle between a couple of the entities. I said i thought it was the eye and the dark i believe but im not sure. its whatever entity michael is vs the worms? what did nicholas say the worms were again? The Corruption? still dont know which one michael is tho.

Had to take a break after that episode. smth about the quality of michael's voice makes me feel like im gonna slip into one of those states where it feels like nothing is real, so i got a nice cold glass of water.

ep 48: jesus ok this one's kidna corny. you're telling me love made the crowd go away come on now. Ur losing it big J. also shouldnt it be more sus that "sasha" is so unaffected by the worm incident/ finding of gertrude's body

ep 49: haven't we heard hector's name before? oh is he the crime guy? fucking jared... so it's a throat? chompa chompa. (it's just a little bit hot) the good part about these episodes is that we know whoever's telling the story isn't gonna die. even if it's a close call, they're not dead. hotworth? ok not jared keay. it bothers me how theres so many repeated names, can they not come up with other names? "sasha"'s computer is breaking... sus. Elias our favorite weed man! jon ur so paranoid lmao

ep 50: robert smirk, at it again. this is like that one episode with the old dude who locked his door. who said idle beforehand? was it smirk? fingertips. thats so weird lmao. bahahah tim

ep 51: simon fairchild. im sure jon will mention the name at the end i cant remember where we've heard it. this is just like the cavediving episode. a hand? there was a hand in the last one right? the scalpel! and an eye thing. she's trying to throw them off.

ep 52: thats the guy from before! with the hearts! god i hate this guy writing the statement hh. lights blowing, and brackish water. we know how this ends but its still tense. rainer? reigner? rain man. we've seen him before

ep 53: pls not a leitner. oh boy mans scratched out his eyes. rip skelly. why would gertrude have had this statement off the books? jon stabbed himself?? bruh im? big man are you okay

ep 54: cockney boys! ayy its our favorite delivery men. she cut out their eyes. she knew that the eye was a thing?

ep 55: oily residue like the retirement home!

ep 56: worms? no. spiders?? bruhh. aaah yelling :(( aww martin anyways yeah i called it about paranoid!jon he needs to take a nap and drink some hot chocolate and calm down for once please

ep 57: just remembered, i think theres an entity called The Lonely?? This feels pretty lonely idk. fairchild, lukas/ lucas, some spooky place in norway idk. "sasha" knew he was recordinig hmm suspicious cmon jon figure it out. Sasha and tom. hm sus. for records sake i feel liek i should note here that I did have it spoiled to me simply that that's not sasha, but thats really all. i assumed it was like the thing that happened to graham in S1

ep 58: i feel like i recognize the name eustice (?) wick. someone please tell me im not just watching jon's descent into madness over the course of this podcast. im hoping it isnt so but, (and pardon the dsmp reference) im getting real wilbur vibes from this one.

ep 59: oh dear ok account from the fielding house. swirling designs? Spiral time? oh boyy. oh wait! 6 inch hole in the middle! is it not a spiderweb type design on the table? thats what i had assumed but that description sounds more like a spiral thing. cobwebs is a Web thing. ayy nicholas was right! the box goes in the table! the place that she kissed him was burning. Raymond is an avatar of The Web and agnes is the burning one. Lightless Flame! Why did she save him? i guess she was against this guy eating ppl or wtvr but why was she at the halfway house then? I think she's like michael.

ep 60: the eye go brr

ep 61: breacon and hope once again. tom. sasha's boyfriend. vampires sleep in coffins. the guy just walking in seems similar to the mind control of the vampires

ep 62: bones! its that one leitner. is this mother keay? the mom of gerard? this is what happened to her right? her skin was found on hooks? oh yeah thats what i thought the pages are made of skin. yeesh. The End!! sounds like an entity. phrased like one, and i think i remember it. are the people trapped in the pages? or... kept?

ep 63: eaten by the darkness! cavediving episode! (just like eaten by the sky) did my brain make up one called The Vast? it feels like it should be one, and all these episodes have some similar description about their feelings when they do whatever chosen hobby they have. ok now this one kinda feels like the dark. lights going out and all that. ok so not really a The Vast thing, its more of a Dark thing. feckin smirk gah.

ep 64: dice! the death guy! the death game thing! the person tricked somebody else into becoming death and then they were immortal? but if the egyptians wanted to kill him or punish him or whatever couldnt they just kill him? it worked in the end when he had the person giving the statement stab him, that did the job and actually killed him

ep 65: finally jon is actually acknowledging something is wrong.

So we know Mary Keay was revived most likely with the book by gerard.

Gertrude was way more aware of the entities than Jon. mary keay referenced The End openly and she cut the eyes out of her magazines and all that which makes me think she was aware of The Eye

ep 66: please not buried alive pleeaase not buried alive. lukas of the tundra? didnt we hear the name lukas before? she wanted it to be difficult to find important files because that way bad people couldnt find them?

ep 67: agnes... the girl in the hilltop house? agnes poppin off!! he's really not gonna question how she knew where he lived?? oh no D: the tree. were they the ones working on the house? aww they kissi- OH DEAR. why did she kiss him? it seemed like she cared about him? also she could kiss that other dude on the cheek and he was fine, but maybe it was cuz she was younger? lightless flame go brrrrr.

ep 68: oh god books. yup its bitchboy leitner. mans said "this seems supernatural, its a werd book!" bruuh.

ep 69: heh nice. aw cmon jon listen to martin. gahhh spiders. is that the class we heard about in the other doctor one with the teeth apple? some kind of psych class? oh dear. fucking spiders. aaaah. web do be goin brr. it's like the girl in the homeless shelter! who made the guy leave and she took his bed.

ep 70: is this gonna be the book that mary keay had? Most likely a leitner no matter what. Oh boy latin. Why did it start in latin then become old English? I'm guessing people put them in the book? He cant burn it. Phrophecies go brr. He says eh it's a decade in the future it's fine. Its gonna have changed. Ayy called it. Just accept it, it's a magic book. His death is getting closer. Leitner didnt make them but just collected them? Gertrude burned the book! She burned them down there so no one would know.

ep 71: oh boy tunnels. Our favorite thing /s. is The Buried a thing? Idk this seems pretty buried. Oh dear he's trapped here isnt he. "Not enough space to move, never enough to breathe" is that from the computer episode? With the guy who uploaded his consciousness? Somebody living down there. Hmmmm. Guesses: tom, sasha's boyfriend. Gertrude herself? (Though I doubt it)

ep 72: sweeney todd moment. Meat. The slaughter? Idk we'll see what the supernatural part is. Meat is meat. Similar to the slaughterhouse episode. Is it fucking Jared I swear to God it better not be. Hooligan teenagers, you know how it is. Meat is me lmao. Is the kid gonna be in the freezer. Ok that's good. OWW. Oddly textured candles. Made from people? Human fat or smth? Tom from the meat processing plant!

ep 73: outer bay shipping. Bet it's a subset of breacon and hope delivery. The Dark go brrr. Uh oh mans is gonna die. Leo or whatever. Cult ppl go brr. The people's church of the divine host. Who is the divine host? Is it reigner or whatever his name is? I dont think Jon can quit tbh. Probably an anonymous tip but from who?? One of the entities?

ep 74: fucking teeth hhh. I dont know which entity is related to teeth. Spiral. Isnt the spiral an entity. It feels like it could be related to many things idk. Yeah this sounds like the spiral. Heart attack at 29? Jesus... michael! That's kinda what I was thinking. Sasha goin in the tunnels. Hmm sus. They move the floor. Wack. Bet its tom.

ep 75: Man with a lightning scar. Has one of the leitner books. The childhood friend of the one who first introduced us to leitner. Oh my god that sounds terrifying. Michael crew.

ep 76: scalpel? Hmm spooky. NotSasha... think jon think.

ep 77: another double! NotThem, The Stranger. Not related to the table?

ep 78: what was that at the beginning? Question mark?? Oh boy more NotThem. Decker... what is the deal with the table. Does it contain the creature? Fucking Michael. Bitchboi himself.

ep 79: yes pop off martin. Ugh fucking Michael just leave man. I hate that dude. New person. Hmm. No idea who it is.

ep 80: shitener himself! Ok sir tell us the entities. Ayy The Spiral. Ok we know what that one is. The Eye is the beholding! Oooh. The Stranger. Did elias just kill leitner? Popping off honestly.

[olliesmoreno]

Nine in the Morning

Micky x Percy (Butterkins) Fan Fiction

Secret Santa was: @thatrosewoodwriter

Fic Summary: Taking place after the events of Princess in Practice, this fan fiction is an imagining of Micky and Percy and what they did next.

Thank you @rwchsecretsanta for organising the whole thing.

I’m sorry it’s so long xjsjsje I got pretty carried away.

Note for @thatrosewoodwriter

Hey Charley. I was your Secret Santa, sneaky me. You might have already guessed that because I think I was pretty bad at hiding it. Anyway, I was very happy when I found out I got you, we were already friends (and continuing to develop our friendship) but I was delighted. You’re a great friend that I love talking to, and you never seem to run out of interesting stories to talk about. You are also very talented, with singing, writing, making art etc, and it blows me away. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the fic. Even though I don’t usually really write, I tried my best. As I said, I am very happy that I got you and I hope you like it.

-: ✧ :-

Nine in the morning, before breakfast, Percy was walking in the Tompkins Gardens in a dark blue bath robe, under the vivid pastel blue sky.

Percy had always adored the gardens - wise like several football pitches put together.

Plants and flowers of extreme beauty and colours, rosy pink, glowing blue, fluorescent greens surrounding him, nature at its best, beautiful and bright. He walked on the smooth gray stone pavement, his hands in his pockets, on his left side a bush wall with different coloured flowers.

In the middle of the gardens, was a big fountain, at the centrepiece of it, a white statue of Aphrodite, the greek Goddess of love, a paper white life size statue, her hair tied back and a warm smile on her face, wearing a white robe.

Percy slowly walked his way to the very front, occasionally bending down to sniff the flowers and admiring the beauty as he walked.

Last night he hadn’t got much sleep, he admitted to himself, and he felt his energy draining as he walked.

He remembered looking around his room in the Tompkins Manor, pastel blue walls painting ironic melancholy as the walls felt like they choked him. Restlessness consumed him, and dark thoughts had wormed their malicious control into Percy’s brain daily. The thoughts came to him abruptly and without control, even though Percy did his best to suppress them.

Alfred Tompkins is sick.

Leviathan have the Hamelin formula.

Your own father sold you out for Leviathan.

Percy physically cringed as those memories came coursing through his mind again. He shook his head, as if to literally shake the memories away.

He turned his head and saw a figure emerge from the back doors.

Micky Tompkins, his best friend.

His light blonde hair was messy, not brushed properly, and it looked annoyingly good on him, and it made Percy want to ruffle his hair. As he ran closer to Percy, he couldn’t help notice that his ocean blue eyes sparkled today. He wore a white fluffy bathing robe. Only Micky could look good in a white bathing robe, Percy thought bitterly.

“Micky,” Percy scanned him, smiling. “Hi. Walk with me?”

Micky smiled back. “Of course.”

-: ✧ :-

They walked side by side in the heat, Percy on Micky’s left as a cool breeze found it’s way down his spine. Micky suddenly felt his palms build up with sweat, and he shook his hands quickly and clenched his fists, praying Percy didn’t see anything.

This wasn’t exactly ideal, as recently, Micky had fallen more and more in love with Percy, and he prioritised looking good in front of him nowadays.

Everything Percy did, Micky couldn’t stop admiring.

His smile. His hair, that he loved to ruffle. His personality. How he held himself. He’d become more and more in love by everything he did. It was almost worrying.

Even that black bath robe he was wearing, that accentuated the black circles around his eyes, that made him look like a panda, as his eyes were sunken and his skin was pale white. Micky let out a quiet laugh.

Percy didn’t seem to notice this, he stopped walking and fell back. He went on his tiptoes, pulling a red rose lower and smelled it.

His jawline. The way he crinkled his nose. The way he closed his eyes.

Percy went down to his feet again and let go of the flower, his smile fading slowly again. He wore a withdrawn expression as they walked, looking down occasionally and chewing his lip. Micky’s heart beat quickly. What was wrong?

“Are you alright?” asked Micky.

Percy looked at him, and slowly signed, “Tired. Just a bit tired.” He gave a small smile as if to show this.

Though Micky senses there was more to the story, than “just a bit tired.”

Micky’s face swiftly morphed into a mask of worry, his heart aching seeing Percy like this. “I don’t think that’s all.”

Percy ignored this, and continued walking.

“I think I know what it’s about. What... happened. And, you can talk about it, if you want. I don’t mind,” he offered an encouraging smile, hoping that hid his anxiousness.

Percy chewed his lip again as they walked. They reached the end of the garden now, facing a large bush wall where rows and rows of different flowers popped out, and the two turned to face each other.

“Alright,” signed Percy, his eyes burning. “I will. I just...” he coughed. “I’m still angry. My world is still loose at the seams, threatening to tear at any minute. I’m still getting over the shock, and I still have to accept-“ Percy put his hands down, and clasped them to his sides.

Micky nodded as Percy’s face tightened, but he continued. “I still have to accept what he did.” Percy didn’t need to specify who he was. His father. “It feels like everything I’ve ever known has broken, shattered in front of me. Like I can’t trust anyone. And it will be a long time I get over it, I guess. But for now? I’m still lost.”

He walked slowly toward the wall at the end, his hand scraping through the bush delicately, as a dark melancholy overwhelmed the air.

“I’m sorry,” Micky signed, though the action felt useless, numb, and his throat felt dry.

“Don’t be.”

Micky sighed. He desperately wanted to wrap Percy up and to hide him, protect him from his own inner demons and from the horrors of the world.

If only it worked like that.

“None of this is your fault,” Micky signed desperately. “It’s completely understandable to feel like this.”

Percy looked at him again, raising an eyebrow. Micky mentally wished he was better at advice. The whole fiasco had only happened days ago. And, here Percy was, vulnerable for the first time that Micky could really see, and he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t magically take the burden off his shoulders. There was nowhere they could both just go and hide in. He wasn’t a knight in shining armour, ready to protect him. He was just Micky.

“And, I’m here for you,” continued Micky eventually. “You can always talk to me. I’ll be here for you. And I will help you. I promise.”

Percy walked away from the wall and towards him again, with a blank facial expression. Micky gulped but he continued. “Whatever you need me to do. To be there for you so you can talk it out. To distract you. To buy you Butterkist popcorn.... anything. Because, what has happened... you didn’t deserve it to happen to you. And I will keep helping you until you’re happy again. Me and Lola will help you to the very end.” He attempted a smile.

There was a long pause. Percy eventually smiled back, and Micky exhaled, relieved.

“Thank you,” signed Percy. “I appreciate that. I’m glad you can help me,” he paused. “And I’m glad I can be honest with you. So I will continue to be honest with you, too.”

Micky nodded in response.

“I’m not sure it’s that easy...” signed Percy, his facial expression hardening, though Micky could see the vulnerability etched in his eyes.

Percy fiddled with his bathrobe belt, before continuing to sign again. “This memory. I will get better, but never the same as I once was,” he rubbed his eyes. “And I’m trying to be happy, I really am,” he blinked quickly. Micky could almost swear he saw tears building up. Micky leaned closer and held his shoulders, as Percy sighed, his hands shaking. “And I’ll try harder. For you. But it’s difficult, because I wish things were just like how they were before-“ and before he could attempt to sign anything else, Percy’s face was leaning against his shoulder, breathing heavily, his hands moving its way onto his shoulders.

Micky hugged him, placing his hands on his back. He didn’t dare move, his heart aching for his best friend.

It was a while before Percy lifted his face again, and looked at him head on.

He had stopped crying, although fresh tears were still on his cheeks. Percy held his breath and stepped back a little.

“I’m sorry,” he signed, avoiding eye contact.

“No, it’s okay,” Micky signed. There was a pause before he continued. “Life might not go back to how it was. But things will get better from now. Things will improve. This is just a setback. I promise things will get better. But for now, you just need a distraction.

Percy exhaled again before laughing bitterly. “Then distract me,” he grinned, as if he was challenging him.

Micky wiped the tears off Percy’s face with his thumb, as he leaned closer. He stepped back again, but only to look at Percy right in the eyes, to take a deep breath, and sign “challenge accepted.”

And suddenly Micky was kissing him.

-: ✧ :-

Percy’s eyes widened as he felt his hands tremble, Micky kissing him softly, curiously. Percy placed his hands on his shoulders carefully. Micky gripped Percy’s bath robe belt and pulled him closer, as they both closed their eyes.

And suddenly, energy coursed through his body, through his veins. His heart beat against his rib cage furiously, and he thought it was going to shoot out at any given moment.

He forget everything: Leviathan, Hamelin Formula, even his father, as they kissed, and Percy felt like he was floating.

Until a fresh wave of horror set over him.

What was he doing?

He opened his eyes and abruptly stepped back.

“I’m sorry,” he signed quickly, his eyes big and his mouth wide open, as he ran off, back into the house, leaving Micky in the garden.

-: ✧ :-

Michael Tompkins, you are worse than a stickless lollipop.

Micky wore a permanent expression of horror as he lay in his cold bed. It was night now, 10pm, and he wished the ground would just swallow him up whole.

For the whole day, he had ignored what he had done, ignored Percy, ignored Lola, stayed in his room, and when he ever had to go out, he had lurked the house like a silent ghost. He acted like he hadn’t done nor remembered anything.

But he remembered what he had done alright.

He remembered a kiss, his lips against Percy’s, as soft and light as a feather.

Why did he do that? Why? Why? Why?

One minute, he’s trying to help his best friend, give him advice. Percy had been washed completely by the numbness of misery, of agony, of a sadness he could barely comprehend, inner demons constantly gnawing at his mind with no mercy.

The next minute, he was kissing him, as if nothing else mattered.

And under the guise that he was distracting Percy, instead of genuinely doing something that would help him, acting on his own selfish desires.

Yet worst of all, he still enjoyed it. Enjoyed kissing him.

He remembered the gentleness, the affection of it leaving him breathless and almost knocking him off his feet, making him feel like he was floating.

The way his body felt so light he thought he was going to melt.

He rubbed his hands over his face in shame, groaning.

You’ve ruined everything, Micky. Why did you have to kiss him?

But then, he sat up suddenly. An idea brewed in the corners of his mind.

But you can fix this... maybe?

He got up from his bed speedily and sat down at his desk and scrambled for a pen and paper, hurriedly opening drawers. He eventually found some lined paper under his books, and quickly grabbing a pen, he wrote rapidly.

Meet me in the gardens, nine in the morning. I will explain myself.

He was going to apologise. It was selfish of him, to do something so problematic, and he planned on dismissing the kiss and saying it meant nothing.

Since Percy clearly didn’t like him back, and he couldn’t do anything about it.

All you can do is help him, he thought to himself, hovering behind Percy’s door and pushing the note underneath it, taking deep breaths, his heart breaking slightly.

-: ✧ :-

Even though the sticky air was hot and humid, a cold chill went up Percy’s spine as he stood at the front of the garden, looking around nervously at the harmony of flowers.

He wrapped his arms around himself, not because it was cold, but to calm his nerves.

What did that note mean? What was Micky going to say?

His hand hovered above his lips, remembering the sensation, unsure what to think.

He squinted in the distance. He saw a figure in the distance and he felt himself exhale in relief, silly as it was.

Micky slowly walked towards him, his mouth in a thin line, and Percy felt his heart beat frantically.

“Finally,” Percy grinned.

“Percy,” Micky smiled, but it looked awfully sad. “I need to tell you something,”

Percy nodded.

“I’m sorry,” he signed. “You said ‘distract me’ and I took that too literally. We can pretend nothing happened, if you like, and it’s okay, and I’m sorry for doing it, so incredibly sorry. We can just talk about you and everything that’s happened, from now on, and the kiss doesn’t have to mean anything, as I said,” he signed rapidly, keeping eye contact.

When he finished, Percy felt his head thud and he felt like he had swallowed bile.

His body had previously buzzed with excitement, of curiosity, wondering what Micky had to say, tight with hopeful anticipation, but now he felt paralysed.

His bones ached, his heart had sunk. His hands were at his sides, dead, unable to move.

Percy desperately tried nodding. He only managed a single, quick one. He forced his hands to go up, they were as heavy as lead. He was about to bite his tongue and sign, “alright,” but his hands moved differently, as if he had no control over them. “I don’t mind if that kiss means something.”

Micky blinked repeatedly, his eyes fiery. “What?”

Percy took in a deep breath and closed his eyes. His hands moved to sign, individual hand movements explaining, telling the story of how he felt, something his brain didn’t know, only his heart knew.

“Yesterday, I’m going to be honest, I stopped kissing you because I was scared that it would ruin everything. That our friendship would be ruined. Because I’m not good enough for you.” He felt his throat go dry, yet he continued. “You’re so kind, you’re good to everyone. And understanding, I don’t need to explain what’s wrong, ever, you always just get it somehow. And, you’re really cute, you’re incredibly attractive - I always look like a middle aged man who’s been through three divorces. I can’t even sleep at night anymore because I’m so nervous after what happened. I’m a wreck. I’m broken. And scared. And I won’t be able to be good for you. And most importantly of all, you deserve better than me anyway,” he and shoved his hands into his pockets, balled them into fists as he dared to open his eyes.

Staring back at him, was Micky, those same wistful ocean blue eyes, but they were open wide. His mouth was open, he looked shell shocked.

“No...” Micky signed quickly. “No, no. You’re wrong. That’s not it at all,”

Percy raised an eyebrow. Micky continued.

“I thought you were too attractive for me. And you’re great. You care so much about everyone. You’re so smart. And brave, after everything- after everything that’s happened. If I went through the same thing I would have broken down.”

Percy laughed aloud, though there was no humour to it. “I’ve already have.”

“No- that’s the thing,” Micky walked closer towards him. “You talked about it. You asked for help. And now I know what to do. I will help you, Percy. As you have helped me my whole life. With talking to people, with drawing when were younger. Everything. You make my life better. And I will help you get through this.

Percy felt his fists loosen, his hard facial expression soften and melt. He was about to open his mouth wide open, but before he knew it, all of a sudden, they were kissing again

A warm feeling flooded through Percy’s chest in an instant. His body hummed with electricity, with heat.

Before, when Micky had said the kiss didn’t have to mean anything - as he said those words he felt like he had been pushed into a cold darkness for eternity, but as they kissed and Percy wrapped his hand around his neck, he felt like he had stepped into the sun again, embraced by warmth and into the healing sunlight.

It was the second kiss, and he still felt the same way.

Like there was a missing jigsaw piece that had been slotted into a hole in his heart he didn’t realise was there, as if Micky was a part of him.

They stopped kissing at the same time to look at each other, as Percy’s head ached.

“I’ll be yours,” Micky signed slowly. “As long as you let me. And we’ll help each other.

“And I will,” Percy signed quickly. “I let you. And we’ll be with each other. We’ll make this work,”

They blindly grabbed each other’s hands, squeezing tightly, a look of understanding passing between them, as they let go again and leaned in for another kiss.

We complete each other.

-: ✧ :-