#LMK THOUGHTS I LOVE YOU ALL

[spideyhexx]

oct. 1st - on trial

ModernLawStudent!Coriolanus Snow x Reader

mdni! cw; cunnilingus (yeah that's it ) wc; 2.6k

kinktober2024 masterlist

a/n; enjoy the first day of kinktober :) also the title does not make sense cause the plot changed mid-writing but i like the title so nobody speak on it

Coriolanus lets out a big sigh as the hot shower water cascades down his body. 

If he could, he would erase the day from his memory. He woke up late, which means you woke up late, and both of you scrambled to get ready for your respective morning classes. You handled that easier, but Coriolanus was brimming with anxiety over the mere notion he might be late to class. 

He sat through his first one of the day, hoping to dear god his stomach wouldn’t rumble too loudly since he did not have time to have a decent breakfast. All he ate was half a granola bar while walking to class and he learned very quickly it was not enough to satisfy him for even thirty minutes. 

After the class, he treated himself to a breakfast sandwich from the campus’ best cafeteria. One plus of the day. But then his second class had a pop quiz. Which he promptly almost failed. Close enough to failing that he had to ignore your texts about something he can’t remember now. 

He went to the library after to decompress. Coriolanus decompressed, however, by reading yet another book for his psych class which had a midterm coming up. He needed five sources and he was running thin, and the book his professor suggested to him was so long, he wanted to say some choice words in an email, but he held back. 

He was a speedy reader anyway, it wouldn’t be so bad. 

But it is bad. Coriolanus has to reread every other sentence because of the way this apparent academic scholar writes. He usually would pride himself on being able to handle some of the densest texts, but none of this was getting through to him. 

To make matters worse, his grandmother kept him on the phone for an hour. Yes, an hour. She could not figure out her login for something and Coriolanus, being the ever so gracious grandson that he is, spent the time helping her, but by the time he hung up, he wanted to rip his hair out. 

So yeah, the shower was good. Really fucking good. He pays attention to the time though, not wanting to take too long and use up all the hot water before you come home. 

Coriolanus does the basics. He washes his body, rubbing every spot he can as if it will wipe the day clean. Give him a refresh. No shampoo today, since he cleaned his hair yesterday, but he does wet it, smoothing his hands back against his wettened curls so it’s out of his eyes. 

He turns the shower off and grabs the towel hanging on the hook, drying off a bit of his chest, ruffling it in his hair, then he wraps it around his waist, stepping onto the bathmat in front of the sink mirror. 

With a washcloth, Coriolanus wipes the steam from the mirror, then opens the right side drawer of the counter to take out his skincare. 

He almost feels a bit of relaxed excitement in the tips of his fingers that he’s finally at the end of his day. Like all is well and soon you’ll be home, and he can cuddle up with you and listen to you ramble about whatever show you’ve been watching. He never tells you how much he loves that, but he’s sure you know. 

Coriolanus clips the front curls of his hair back so they don’t get in his face, opting for the soft pink ones that you compliment all the time. 

Right as he grabs his cleanser, he hears the front door open and close shut. He smiles at himself in the mirror, rinsing his hands in the sink. 

He can hear a muffled groan from you, then the sound of a cabinet closing a bit louder than it should be. 

Coriolanus already opens his mouth to speak right when there are three incessant knocks on the bathroom door, “Are you-,” he cuts himself off, “Come in.”

The door opens, revealing an exasperated-looking you, rivaling Coriolanus’ freshly showered ease. He raises his brow, “What? What’s wrong?”

“You didn’t get those cookies I asked you to pick up,” you say, and in any other circumstance, he might laugh at the statement, since it sounded so minuscule, but the look on your face told him to keep that in. 

“You asked me to get cookies?”

You roll your eyes, “I texted you like three times if you could pick them up for me.”

Oh. The texts he ignored. He gives a sheepish smile, “Oh, I’m sorry, I just had a bad day and-”

“Yeah, so did I, but you can’t ignore my texts, Coriolanus, even if you couldn’t go to the store or whatever, I would’ve appreciated you responding or something.”

He nods. But his face returns to its blank slate which he could tell annoyed you. “What happened?”

You sigh, rubbing a hand over your face as you lean against the doorway. He can tell you’re trying not to look at his stomach and his cheeks heat up at the thought of that. 

“It’s not worth it, just a shitty day and you always do this. You always ignore my texts when I’m asking for something.”

“I didn’t open the text, I didn’t know,” Coriolanus says, his voice more soft than defensive, but you take it that way. How could you not? You’re already so worked up from your day. You feel bad he also had a not-so-kind day, but you can say full-heartedly that you would text him back regardless if the day was going bad. 

Coriolanus was a good boyfriend, but he was also an awful texter. 

“You should have opened it,” you tell him and he nods, fingers fiddling with the edge of his towel at his hip. You can’t tell if he’s doing it on purpose to entice you or if he’s just nervous. 

“Are you gonna tell me what happened? Besides the waking up late thing.” Coriolanus raises his brow at you, and your eyes dart to the pink clips in his hair. 

“Ran into Festus,” you mutter and it earns a scoff from Coriolanus. That vapid human was the bane of his existence and your ex rolled into one. He couldn’t believe you even dated a guy like that. Coriolanus was sure you were joking when you told him that Festus was an ex. You were not. 

“Vague,” he calls you out for how short your explanation is, and he wants to hear the details so bad. He knows you’ll never go back to him, so the little blip of jealousy in the pit of his stomach is only there for a few seconds before it vanishes. But Festus had to have said something to you for you to deem your entire day as, ‘shitty.’ 

Coriolanus can tell you don’t want to talk about it. So as the silence lingers on in the still-hot bathroom from his shower, he lets out his own sigh. He reaches for your wrist, which you reluctantly let him take. 

“I really wanted those cookies,” you mumble, as he pulls you closer, until your back against the bathroom counter next to him. 

“I’ll go out and get them,” he says, his thumb rubbing circles to your inner wrist, sending a bit of heat into your skin. 

His words make you stiffen a little and you study his face with a furrowed brow, “You hate going out after your showers.”

He replies immediately, “I do,” and his voice comes out more like a whisper. Your hand is brought to his side, and you naturally caress your fingertips to his stomach, feeling the bit of muscle there, just as his head dips down to kiss the side of your neck. 

“Thank you, then,” you whisper back, although you don’t need to. It’s just the two of you in this apartment. In this bathroom. The warmth from his shower starting to get to you. Coriolanus raises his head back and looks over your face. He’s contemplating. You know the look well. 

But you can only watch it for a few seconds because he’s made a decision. Unceremoniously, Coriolanus kneels on the tiled ground in front of you, head tilted up to see your face. His nose twitches and he grabs his discarded pants, putting them under his knees so they don’t get uncomfortable. 

“What’re you doing?” You could take a guess, but with Coriolanus, sometimes your guesses were always more fun than what he had in store. 

His eyes lock to the space between your legs, then back up at you.

Nevermind. What he had in store sounds fun as fuck. 

Coriolanus’ hands touch your knees, then slowly caress their way up to the top of your thighs, “Yes?” 

He is not sure what’s compelled him to do this, seeing as he’s never eaten you out in this way before. Maybe it was your annoyance. Maybe it sparked something in him he did not want to admit to. Maybe it’s the fact you were staring at his mostly naked figure and he wanted you to join him on that front. It’s mostly the annoyance. 

You nod, “Yeah,” and his fingers, shaky yet quickly, undo the button and zipper of your pants. 

He tugs them down, then remembers your shoes. With a curse under his breath, Coriolanus unties your sneakers and takes them off you, tugging your pants off the rest of the way, then trailing his hands back up your legs. 

You rest back against the counter, both hands against the cool stone of it as his breath hits your inner thigh. 

No matter how much it stirs a giddy feeling in him, Coriolanus can’t take his eyes off of your face as he leaves the softest of kisses on your thigh. He’s been between your legs so many times, but every time feels like he’s discovering some new part of you, like there must be an area of your skin he hasn’t touched, that’s begging for his lips to grace it. Your breath is hitching andyour hand rests on his head. 

He nuzzles his head against your other thigh as his teeth graze the skin right at the edge of your underwear.  

The exhale you let out causes tingles to spread throughout his body, “too slow?” 

“No,” you tell him, your fingers lightly threading into his semi-wet hair. Coryo flattens his tongue on the skin of your inner thigh, licking up to the edge of your panties. He skims his tongue along the line until he gets to your hip. A small kiss lands on it, and you let out a breathy chuckle, “Maybe a little too slow.”

He smiles, tracing his tongue back down to the dip of your thigh, and feels you tighten your hand to his hair. 

“Maybe we should-oh.”

You’re cut off by the press of his nose over the cotton of your panties, his tongue flicking out to lick against the cloth as his hands rub to your hips, toying with the waistband. 

“Mhm,” he replies, rubbing his nose against you at a slow, languid pace, the smell of you enticing him, he curses silently at himself for not doing this for you recently. 

“Coryo,” you breathe out, and he mumbles an apology that makes you laugh. 

“What? No, no sorry, this is…oh my god,” your voice trails off as he presses a wet kiss right over where your clit is. 

Not able to keep this going much longer, Coriolanus tugs your underwear down, letting you kick them off, and he gives you no time to say anything. He buries his nose into you, groaning at the wetness you’ve accumulated from all of his previous actions. 

Both of your hands find his hair, messing up the clips that are still there, but not knocking them out. His eyes watch you, hooded and dazed from the taste of you. The way his tongue teases your entrance, dipping in for only a second before moving out, has you whining for him already. 

He moves up to your clit, swirling with the muscle of his tongue and sucking it to his mouth, relishing in the way you pull his hair. 

You let him dig his hands into your thighs, half to hold you up for him and because the strong grip is one you feel only now and then with him. He always expressed not wanting to bruise you like that, but you wanted his tight hold on you. 

“Coryo, shit, shit,” you mutter as he sucks on the sensitive bud more harshly, then licks his tongue back to your entrance, lapping against you like a needy dog looking for water. 

“Mhm mmm,” he mumbles against you, fingers pressing into the back of your thighs like he’s urging you forward. 

But he pulls back a little, lips shiny and red, the ache in his lower region increasing from the whimper you let out at the loss of contact. He splotches kisses on your thigh, “It’s okay…it’s okay, I’m gonna make you come, just give me a moment.” 

You notice how heavy his breath is, almost as if he’s on the verge of finishing himself, but he steels himself quickly. His kisses never stop, caressing every part of your inner thighs, before he trails back to your cunt, lapping eagerly, and smiling when you moan at the contact. 

“I know, that’s what you wanted,” he mumbles, his hands slipping up to your ass and pushing you to his face. 

“Fuck,” you grunt out, unable to stop the jerk of your hips from his touch. Coriolanus’ eyes close at the movement, feeling his nose bump back into you. You give another test, but it’s awkward from this angle. 

Coriolanus can’t think. Your taste, your sounds, the fact he can feel you pulse as he licks you, he’s sent into a complete overdrive. 

He moves one of your legs up and over his shoulder, slotting him more comfortably between your legs and effectively making you gasp out and hold to him tighter. 

“C’mon, do it now,” he encourages, pushing on your backside and helping you grind against his tongue. It snaps something inside of you. To rub yourself down on him and feel how hungry he is to take whatever you give him. 

“God…fuck you for holding back on me,” you say through a moan. He’d laugh if he wasn’t buried in your pussy, desperate to taste the release fast approaching you, wracking through your body and waiting for that last chord to be struck. 

You can’t recall when he’s been this insatiable, but you can’t complain. Maybe you two needed this. 

“I’m so close,” you say, though you don’t need to. Your hips rock against his face, his nose catching and rubbing against your clit just right with every other thrust, and Coriolanus fucks his tongue as deep as he can in you. He tries to keep his eyes open as you let out a shaky moan, but it’s difficult. With your taste and with your hands tightening in his hair so hard it burns his scalp, he has to close his eyes as your orgasm rips through you. 

Your hips stutter and he grips the backs of your thighs tighter, making sure you don’t fall. His tongue licks up everything he can until you feel too sensitive and gently push his head back. The hair clips hang on to his curls for dear life. You can see how hard he is under the white towel, begging for attention.

The whole bottom half of his face is wet. His mouth parted and his lips redder, almost swollen-looking. 

“My knees hurt,” he whispers. And you lightly tap his cheek in a scolding manner, sending him a lazy grin.

[royaltea000]

Putting my pretty princess in different outfits again

[puppyeared]

personal character design headcanons + brainrot

Note: the re-bound!au does NOT belong to me, it belongs to @chipper-smol I’m just not normal about it lol

[absolutelykrillingit]

Thinkin about how cool it is that we get MCR in the year of our lord 2024. Choosing to live in spite of pain has always been such a strong message of their work and that isn’t without reason. There’s an alternate timeline where the mental and sometimes even physical (thinking about Frank here) struggles that they’ve endured won. I don’t mean to be bleak in observing that we could have very well lost members of this beloved band years ago. But that’s just it: we didn’t. How better to exemplify the importance of choosing your own life than showing us that aging and changing is beautiful. Gerard’s intro for Disenchanted, the thing about the beauty of being young and angry stands out to me because he isn’t that anymore. He’s not the wild front man of this fresh off the scene band anymore. He’s happy now in ways that probably would’ve been shocking to that version of himself. Gerard Way and the rest of the band performing in 2024 is so cool, not just because it’s always amazing to see this band we love, but it signifies just how important their message is. As Swarm Era Gerard so beautifully put it, “In the face of extermination, say fuck you”

[tiny-planet-13]

if we don't find out Jeremy's secret in tsc2 I genuinely don't think I'll be able to sleep until the third one like it's eating away at my brain I will be a hollowed out form of a human zombie-ing my way through life until I get that clarity

[mercless]

i would like to know more about hn talon's feathery ailment ... is it their demonic nature clashing with the angelic blood that is resulting in their worsening condition ? is there a reason why it is specifically feathers / bird-likeness as opposed to anything else ( i.e. would other demons undergo similar transformations if they also got contaminated with angel blood ) ? can you share more about how you envision the progression and prognosis ? will it kill them or will there be some sort of final stage of their transformation ( whether that's a bad thing because it only gets worse and worse , or a good thing because maybe now that it is complete , they won't be in as much pain and discomfort 🥺 ) ? is it at all affected by whatever they're doing / thinking / feeling / experiencing ( tamagotchi talon ... ) ? what do they do to manage their condition ? does it make them self-conscious or feel badly about their physical appearance ?

"-But it looks like the angels ain't done with you."

I don't recommend that anyone ingests angel blood (good thing that's a difficult thing to do these days) but I wouldn't want to definitively say how it works for anyone else either. and I think it makes sense if talon isn't too sure either, with not meeting anyone else in a similar predicament as they (yet... will get to this later) but say if it were another angel Talon had attacked and drank the blood of, I believe they would still be having similar symptoms, as angels are quite feathery beings (varus with his arm of feathers, irelia with her wings and other choicely placed feathers.) But the particular angel they stole from has had a specific impact on just how the blood has changed them.

The reason for their worsening condition is because the blood has a powerful influence, like an undiluted acid. And it is so dramatic of an change because this influence is the polar opposite to their demonic existence. The more that Talon fights against the changes, the less symbiotic the blood and their demonic nature melds, the more violent and painful the experience is for them. And without any interference either with understanding or other experiences, I see it as a bitter, drawn-out struggle. Just wallowing in fatalism until Talon is nothing more than an unrecognisable pile of bile, blood, and feathers that tore itself apart...

Fortunately for them, the more Talon interacts with their rotting world and the people (and creatures) also struggling in it, the more they will come to terms with their own potential, and reflect on how they can be something more than what they once were. Learning that they don't have to let their worst action define their existence. More than just accepting what they did, and putting in the effort to understand emotions and how to be an active part of life, will mean they are not stubbornly fighting against their affliction. This will increase the speed of it's progression, but also be far less painful of an experience since they won't be actively fighting against it. When Talon is unable to call upon any of their demonic abilities anymore, the physical changes of the affliction will be complete, but they will continue to learn and better themself in an attempt to make up for all the wrong and pain they have caused in their existence. I can picture this happening in two or three decades time, in which there is no longer any hellfire, brimstone or summoned weapons. Talon is no longer a demon, but maybe by then they'll also know if the powers that be would accept a malformed, inexperienced, makeshift samaritan as a stand-in. But that's a hopeful thought, thinking they'll live that long.

Going back to the symptoms of the affliction. Previously, Talon's form was one of shadow and brimstone, and they were able to phase in and out of being corporeal at will. Over time, this ability has been weakened - only able to vanish as a shadow for a moment at a time. Brimstone skin was made brittle until it fell away to soft flesh, hollow bone, and hair. Feathers have begun sprouting through this softer skin too, mostly across their left shoulder, arm and chest, but are beginning to sprout along their throat too. Talon used to pull them out by hand, but has forfeited the fight. Back to the left arm, a sort of carapace has begun to form over their left hand, along the thumb's metacarpal and back of the hand in layers of grey ash and weathered gold. This and the growth of the feathers is very similar to Varus' - the angel in which Talon killed and drunk the blood of - own feathers and angelic arm. But without any of the matching powers, it is a far less grand sight.

Although still considerably hot to the touch, Talon's core temperature has drastically lowered compared to the past. Whatever organs of malice and bile a demon has have made way for a growth in their chest, helping pump the foul angelic blood and pesky emotions around their body routinely, and push out more of their demonic essence every day, little by little. With this, it has already made their demonic powers incredibly weakened. Previously Talon also used to be able to disintegrate bodies with a slice of their hellish blades, but they just do not run hot enough anymore. The final physical symptom are their eyes. Once filled with hellfire, it is far more likely nowadays to see their extinguished, golden-brown irises instead. It is slightly controllable with their emotional state, or when using their powers though.

In other ways, the blood has made Talon far more empathetic, given them a conscience. Troubled with how their actions will effect others now, the suffering and cruelty of the world has become a pain all it's own. Dulling the delight in spreading fear and even disturbing the once simple exchange of souls, Talon is often contemplating their next course of action instead of only giving thought to their best interests. And how their previous, often violent actions, have caused so much.

The agony and illness of coughing up feathers and demonic bile leaves talon haggard and frail. Getting sleep and relaxation would help the most, but with their paranoia it is difficult for them to find places to fully lower their guard and properly rest. Talon's tried to get a room in the crossroad saloon before, but it's... never really worked out (Gragas doesn't let them). Hating and damning the ailment only makes it worse, since it's basically like trying to separate themself from something that has already been mixed in. Feathers get stuck in their many teeth, skin itches from keratin growing in. Fatigue and sensitivity to their own heartbeat. Talon tries their best to hide the majority of their symptoms. Their coughs and exhaustion are the most obvious.

For how the changed made by the affliction is making talon feel... I'm going to paraphrase from a previous message;

I say its dysmorphic but the more I think about it, it's also… having your health decline and your body changing along with it, at least with talons perspective right now since they're losing their demonic powers. dysphoric in the way that they're still holding on to the thought that this isn't what they're supposed to be, they're Supposed to be a being of shadow and hellfire not flesh and bone, let alone feathers and sympathy. so I want it to be much more about accepting that this is their body now moreso than finding a way to reverse the changes. That it's okay to change with age and wisdom as you open yourself up more to the world.

At this time, Talon misses being completely monstrous, of being frightening and having that implicit respect. They feel weaker than they really are because they continue to compare themself to the long-gone height of their power, and because their new physical changes make them feel vulnerable. Being constantly exhausted also doesn't help with any of this. Beyond this though, the only other thing they don't like about these changes is just that; it's different. The uncanny features still don't feel like that that's who they are, and there is this disconnect when others react to them, or comment on their looks.

poses I don't know, maybe Talon just needs some sort of big motivation to no longer see this affliction as a curse, but as an opportunity to be more than a demon that skulks in the shadows. And some encouragement that yes, that is in fact a good thing. Maybe like an ultimatum of some sorts.

[wasjustred]

Winter Weather Warning - NSFW Larissa Weems x f!Reader

Summary: A blizzard comes barreling through the area and you find yourself stranded———in Larissa’s quarters.

Pairing(s): Larissa Weems x femprof!Reader

Warnings: Mentions of alcohol, smut – fingering and cunnilingus (reader receiving); Larissa gets an orgasm

Word Count: ~6.3k (oops)

Author’s Note: Whaaat? A fic? From me? Finally?? I hope this was worth the wait! Thanks to all you lovely folk who’ve been so patient with me; there’s been a lot going on in my life so I’m very appreciative of you all. Feedback, as always, is welcome and encouraged! ♡ ﹠. a special thank you to my beta readers @sapphicsbeloved and @zephyr-is-tired ——— sending you many kisses and finger waggles for your help! 😙🥰 ╱ AO3

You try not to begrudge the snow for falling when and where it will. It’s pretty, you have to admit: soft, and flurried, sweeping over the stone grounds of Nevermore without prejudice. You peer out from your window and watch scattered groups of students chase after each other gleefully, faces turned up toward the sky like small purple sunflowers in their school uniforms, arms outstretched and reaching. The low angle of the sun against the trees suggests dusk will fall soon, just enough light still to cast long, excitable shadows across the ground.

A smile prods at your lips as you turn away from the window and further into your classroom with the intention of setting up for your last class of the day. You’d originally planned to guide them through a review period for an exam next week, but with the state of the sky and the weekend finally here, you decide a film might instead be just what everyone needs; you can afford to push the exam back another day, and really, they’ll be gunning for extra time where they can get it anyway. You know your students well enough.

When the kids begin filing in, you delegate tasks without explanation, the room abuzz as you instruct one student to close the blinds and a few others to adjust the desks just so. You catch a glimpse of the world down below before the windows cover up: Steady flurries still, but nothing that worries you. The kids’ thrill at spending the period in relaxation when you reveal your plan to them is enough to distract from any further thoughts on the weather, anyhow.

The hour passes swiftly as you sit in the back grading papers, every so often glancing up to take stock of the room. Everyone files out just as fast at the sound of the bell and calls out wishes for a good weekend while you’re left to rearrange the room back into its original state. You take care of the desks first, pack your own items up, decide to leave the windows for Monday since it’s dark out by now, no longer any ribbons of light sneaking through the cracks where the blinds don’t quite meet glass. A nice bottle of wine, a fire, maybe a few candles and a good book… the night is promising, and you run through a mental checklist of how many comfort items and practices you can employ as you wander down to the front entrance, bundled up tightly in your coat to brave the cold.

But when you reach the landing of the long staircase, the sight that greets you is not promising in the slightest: the outer floodlights cast a muted glow over what had been a harmless shower of snow, now furious gusts of heavy flakes collecting faster than your brain can entertain. There has to be at least a couple inches out there already, and the realization that you’ll have to navigate through the winding, hilly roads of Vermont in the middle of this elicits a groan. The treeline is hardly visible amidst the dark and the snow, and the roads are likely no better off: the town tends to skirt right around Nevermore when salting the streets. This drive’ll be a perilous one at best.

“Absolutely not.” The sound of Larissa’s disapproval startles you into a sharp and over-dramatic gasp, every muscle of yours tensing at once when her voice comes from just behind you. 

“Jesus, you scared me! ‘Absolutely not’ what?” You turn to her with features marred by confusion - once the surprise has melted away - and tilt your head up, taking a small step back to balance yourself when you realize how close she is. She looms over you in a way only she can: regal and overwhelming–––yet cordial all the same, offset by the soft floralness of her perfume. The fact that she’d reached you there without a sound would likely be unsettling if it were anyone else. With her it’s just… attractive, the slyness of it all. The mischievous grin she bares in response to how you jump doesn’t help.

“There is absolutely no chance I’m letting you drive in that.” This elicits an incredulous scoff as you peer up at her, arms lifting at your sides like a pair of very exasperated, very amused wings.

“Letting me? What am I supposed to do? Break my back sleeping on the floor of the library? No thanks.”

“Don��t be silly,” Larissa tsks, pressing her lips together in an all too familiar demonstration of thought. She’s quick with her next words, though, and something tells you there wasn’t much thought to be given at all. “You’ll stay with me.”

The firmness with which she says this, the matter-of-fact tone that has always so easily slid off her tongue, leaves no room for discussion. You gape at her but Larissa’s already swiveling on her heel and walking in the direction of her office as though it’s been decided once and for all, no questions asked. She throws a crooked finger over her shoulder and gestures for you to follow, the sound of her heels now echoing through the mostly-empty halls.

You wonder, frivolously, how in the hell you didn’t hear her the first time around.

You rush after her with quick steps in an effort to keep up; Larissa’s long, unhesitating strides carry her farther and faster than you can move without some effort. The view of her backside, however, is not one that merits complaint. You follow the curve of it up until you come upon a landing you’re not familiar with, nearly knocking into Larissa when she halts abruptly and turns towards you for the first time since this little journey began. She looks almost unsure of herself now, eyes flitting about rather than meeting yours. It’s one thing, you know, to flirt in passing; to brush arms when you’re both chaperoning students in Jericho; to trade amused, knowing glances across faculty meetings. But it’s another to invite you into her sanctuary, a decisive and loaded crossing of one of the last lines between the two of you.

“If you’d prefer, I believe there’s an empty dorm room I can have made up for you. It’d be no problem.” She finally looks down at you long enough for you to read what’s going on behind that mask of hers, typically pristine and perhaps a touch righteous: she’s trying to give you an out, trying to relinquish control for a second before she commandeers your night, and she’s worried she’s already gone too far by bringing you up here in the first place.

But you’re not going to say no to a night at Larissa’s side, especially when the potential for a warm fire and a glass of wine or two is so high.

Especially when it’s her asking.

“No, it’s alright. Unless you’ve changed your mind?”

“Not at all,” she’s quick to blurt out, shaking her head. “I simply wanted to make sure you knew you had the option, that’s all.”

With that, Larissa turns again and begins the ascent to what you assume is her hall–––until you’ve reached another landing with only one door, and she pushes it open to reveal an entire apartment all her own. It’s very her, this place: Warm, shining, elegant. The living room is awash with low, simmering lights, furnished with a mix of dark leather and velour, a towering bookcase taking up the whole of one of the far walls with an accompanying reading nook. She walks you further into the threshold and eases the door closed behind you, hovering silently as you take the space in. There are a few framed art pieces that you promise yourself you’ll review more thoroughly later on, scattered vases of flowers and various, high-hanging mirrors.

What truly draws your attention, however, are the photos strategically lining the walls, clearly taken at various points in Larissa’s life: A small platinum-blonde girl carefully posed before a Christmas tree with two very proper looking hounds on either side of her, all very regal and staged except for the wide, nose-crinkling grin on the girl’s face; a beach trip with the same girl, slightly older now, arm thrown over her face as she squints against the sun and into the camera - and a pair of kids that look to be around her age chase each other in the background; teenage Larissa suited up and on horseback, smiling proudly as a judge strings a blue ribbon around the horse’s halter; graduation photos from Nevermore; a trip to the Scottish Highlands, it looks like, a twenty-something Larissa soaked to the bone but grinning out at the miles and miles of luscious greens like she couldn’t be bothered less by the weather. It’s the most you’ve ever seen of her.

Eventually Larissa brushes behind you, laying a hand at your waist in passing as she toes off her heels and begins the process of lighting the fireplace.

Her touch leaves an emphatic tingle in its wake.

“I didn’t think my wall was that particularly exciting,” she muses, glancing over her shoulder at you. You duck your head and turn from the wall, following her lead as you slip out of your shoes and place them next to her own.

“I always like to see what people were like before I knew them. It’s intimate.” Larissa’s gaze softens almost imperceptibly before she returns her attention to the fire, adjusting the logs one last time and replacing the latch on the brass screen.

“What do they tell you, those pictures?” She wipes her hands and comes to rest against the edge of a couch, gazing at you as you shift on your feet and consider her question. Her eyes remain soft, but there’s something else lurking there behind the blue now: Curiosity? Interest? Desire, even? You can’t read it for sure, so you clear your throat and move back to the photographs on her wall, crossing your arms over yourself.

“Well, .. this one,” you start, gesturing towards the Christmas tree, “screams rich.” Larissa snorts loudly and tilts her head in a way that says you’re not wrong. “Probably an only child - at least at the time, otherwise there’d be other kids with you.” Her smile gives nothing away this time, but you charge ahead, brushing your fingers against the frame that holds the beach between its borders.

“This isn’t an American beach, that much I know.” You choose not to elaborate, allowing your ‘Americanness’ to speak for itself. “But I can’t tell if you grew up going there or if it was a special vacation, maybe visiting family… ?” you trail off as your gaze drifts over to her questioningly. She just shrugs, and you click your teeth in mock disapproval before moving on.

“You look happy here,” you observe, allowing your hand to drift over the photo of Larissa in her English riding gear. “Unforced. You enjoyed competing, maybe preferred your horse to people.” This one might be an unfair deduction, supplemented by your understanding of how cruel kids can be–––especially to an outcast, especially to a 6’3” girl.

“The Duke,” Larissa pitches in, pushing up off the couch’s back to join just behind your shoulder, gazing over at the photo in question. “My mother hated the name, but I insisted. He was a gift for my fifteenth birthday,” she reminisces, breath coursing over the tip of your ear. You peer up at her as she smiles, something sad and regretful there before she sucks in a deep breath and points out a new photo to you, more recent by the looks of it: Larissa stands with a large group of students in their Nevermore uniforms, mid-laugh as one of the kids waves his hands wildly and another has their mouth agape in what looks to be protest. Her eyes are crinkled - genuine - and one of her hands seems to be in the process of making its way up to cover her mouth, the other mindlessly resting at her midsection. You know that laugh. It’s her most uninhibited, her most authentic, which only comes out when she’s caught completely off-guard. Your favorite, if you’re honest.

“My first class of students as principal of Nevermore,” Larissa offers, scrunching her nose happily at the memory.

“What’d he say? That student?” You’re part genuine curiosity and part selfishness: eager to know what made her laugh like that, and how you can take hold of that kid’s humor and use it for yourself, elicit a look like that, a laugh like that, which so rarely comes about during school hours.

“I wish I could remember,” she murmurs, taking one last look before clasping her hands together and shocking you out of the reverie. “But nevermind all that. Have you eaten dinner yet?”

You nod sheepishly, nearly apologetic knowing she likely hasn’t and is looking to be a good hostess. But she merely nods, looking relieved: “Oh good, I can’t be bothered to cook tonight,” Larissa admits, a teasing grin stretching from ear to ear. 

“Let me show you where everything is, then.” She guides you down the hall and nudges one of the doors open, gesturing with an open palm. “Here’s the bathroom. Extra amenities are in the second drawer there, towels in the closet.” The suite is nicer than any bathroom you’ve ever had, really the stuff of luxury hotels: white marble floors, a deep soaking tub, gold knobs and handles on almost every appliance. You’ve no choice but to forcefully shoo away the startling, indecent imaginings that break through your reserves of Larissa sinking deep into the lush bubbles of the tub, skin glistening, chest bare––––

“Heated floors, too. I never go cold in the winters.” Ever humble, Larissa pulls at your shoulder gently and switches the light off, directing you to another door just diagonal of the bathroom. When she swings the door open, you’re embarrassingly aware of the way your jaw drops.

“Bedroom’s this way,” she says, stepping into the space. It’s gorgeous, swooping drapes of dark ruby and gold, satin bedding that pools over the mattress and onto the floor, puddles of fabric against a thick persian rug. There’s another fireplace opposite the bed, an area farther off with another scaling bookcase and two large, well-worn armchairs, a small number of intricately designed table and floor lamps, a matching vanity and armoire, the former of which is careful, lived-in chaos with its scattered tubes of lipstick and skin care tinctures.

It’s Larissa.

“Wow,” you breathe, meeting her amused gaze. “You never mentioned you live like this. I would’ve taken you up on a sleepover much sooner if I’d known.” Larissa flushes and coughs out a coy laugh, smoothing a hand over her hair as she looks out across the room.

“Yes, well. You’re here now.” She reaches out and lifts your handbag from you, pulling at your coat lapel next to signal you should take it off. Once you do, Larissa hangs it along one of the walls and places your bag on her vanity. Busy work. “I have clothes you can borrow of course, though they may be a bit big. I’ll set them out, although,” she pauses, glancing at her bedside clock, “it’s early still… Up for a movie? Glass of wine?”

You’re almost - almost - embarrassed by the unrestrained nodding of your head, but hell, it’s been a long week, and relaxing with a bottle of wine sounds like the perfect reward for making it through without breaking down [in front of your students]. The fact that it’s Larissa’s personal wine, in her personal quarters, in her personal hands does nothing to lessen the appeal.

The question of where Larissa will sleep, if showing you the bedroom was her way of offering it to you, hangs in your head, but you decide the answer can wait until the time for sleep comes around. By no means are you going to allow Larissa to banish herself to the couch in her own home. You’d sooner take the floor–––even if you’d jokingly complained about that very same concept earlier in the hour.

“Do you have a preferred genre?” She asks as you both return to the living room, you perching on the sofa as she disappears into what you assume is the kitchen to fetch the wine. It’s not normally a loaded question, nor one worth considering too deeply, but you realize you have an opportunity here… and if Larissa’s occasional blushes, her soft gaze, mean what you hope they do, perhaps there’s a strategy to be employed. You shift further into the cushions, absentmindedly running a hand over your clavicle in thought.

“Don’t laugh… but I’m a sucker for romance when the weather’s like this,” you call out. Larissa peeks her head out from around the corner, brows furrowed in funny disbelief.

“Really?”

“Wha–– why is that so hard to believe?!”

“It’s not, I just.. wasn’t expecting it, I suppose. You seem more of the action or thriller type.” She shrugs and disappears again without further explanation, leaving you to half-pout half-ponder at her words. Before you can make an argument in your defense, however, she’s returning with two full glasses, bottle tucked under her arm, and dimming the lights, a practiced look of concentration slanted across her features as she makes her way over to the couch and lowers one of the glasses into your waiting hand. The red sloshes up just near the edge when Larissa hands it off, and you half-jokingly prod at her as your brows shoot up in amusement.

“Are you trying to get me drunk, Principal Weems?” She tuts with faux indignation, but the growing flush of her cheeks betrays her.

“I wouldn’t dare.” She settles next to you - still a respectable distance for colleagues, but closer than mere acquaintances - and places the uncorked bottle on the table ahead of you, grinning.

“Romance it is, but I pick.” You ‘d be surprised by her demand if you didn’t know Larissa’s need to be in control at all times. In fact, if anything surprises you, it’s her calmness in the face of this turbulent weather–––perhaps the most uncontrollable variable there is. Even the most headstrong people can be manipulated, but not the sky.

The film she chooses isn’t one you’ve seen before, which excites you, and you both sink into the couch with a comfortable silence. You share little notes back and forth on the revolving plots and chuckle at the occasional joke, however cliché, as the movie rolls, finding an easy rhythm you’ve never before been able to appreciate amidst the chaos of classes and faculty meetings. 

It’s about an hour in, having finished your first glass and poured another for yourself and Larissa, that you make the mistake of peering over at her from the corner of your eye. A particularly sappy scene is playing out before you. The TV’s light flickers softly against her face, which is content and dare you say tender as the two protagonists share a moment together. The stumble before the fall. Her forehead creases and you have the sudden urge to kiss the lines away, warmed by the wine and her beauty.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she whispers hoarsely, though her eyes never leave the screen. 

Your heart jolts when she catches you out, running hot with guilt. Your legs shift beneath you as you move to scoot a few inches away - to give her space from your leering gaze - but you freeze when you feel her hand on your knee, holding you in place. You watch her for any sign that’ll tell you what’s going through her head but she doesn’t budge further, only loosening her hold on you a fraction when you relax against the cushions again. Your heart is beating hard at the door of your ribs as you tilt your head back towards the movie, far too distracted to actually process anything that’s happening. The air is so thick now your lungs can hardly keep up; it’s a dizzying thing, electric, and your thoughts jumble haphazardly as you wonder whether or not Larissa’s feeling it, too.

You risk a peek at her again–––but Larissa is already looking at you. 

Her chest is heaving, albeit subtly, and her eyes are dark. A steep wave of arousal pulses through you when her tongue slips out along her upper lip, her gaze flicking down to your mouth and back up again: a question. The second you nod her mouth is on yours, both of you sighing into the touch. You cup the back of her neck, pulling her closer still as your other hand fists around the fabric of her dress. An insistent tug at your waist brings one of your legs between her own, hips rolling against each other as she gropes at you mindlessly, squeezing the thigh slotted over her heat.

“Is this okay?” she asks breathlessly, dragging your bottom lip between her teeth before she pulls away to look at you. Her cheeks are flushed a heavy pink and her lipstick is smudged. You giggle at the realization that there must be bright crimson streaks along your chin and lips.

“Yes,” you assure her between steadying pants, stroking a hand from her shoulder to her wrist and entwining your fingers, giving them a gentle pinch. “You alright?”

A smile briefly turns her lips, soft and loose. “Very much so.”

The next few moments are sweeter, slower as you take your time savoring her taste, tracing the swell of her lips, the delicate scar at the top there, following the line of her jaw up into her hair with your fingertips. She presses into you as gentle as ever, drawing shivers up to the surface of your skin as her hand snakes up the length of your spine. Barely there still is the sound of the fire lingering in its box and the distinct roar of wintry gusts at the window, mere suggestions at the back of your brain. The wine’s been long forgotten on the table.

You shudder when Larissa’s fingers tease at the lower hem of your blouse and brush against a bare sliver of skin, resting there before you arch into her and take hold of her wrist, guiding her hand higher. Her lips quirk to one side at your earnestness, especially as she reaches the clasp of your bra. She hesitates again, more teasing than searching, and slides her tongue into your willing mouth, exhaling sharply when you meet her move for move. Nimble fingers unclasp the bra without issue before they drift around to your front, putting distance between your bodies as Larissa palms your breasts, takes a nipple between her fingertips and pulls and twists with wicked dexterity.

A whimper escapes you when she sinks her teeth into your lip for a second time, much harsher this go around before she suddenly parts from you and begins pressing open-mouth kisses along your jaw and down your neck, nipping and soothing in time with the hapless rocking of your hips. She adjusts to unbutton your top, never once pausing in her assault on your neck as she does so.

“Wait,” you pant out suddenly, and all at once her body leaves you, drawing back to give you space. The look on Larissa’s face is a concerned one, but gentle still, and you know she’ll follow where you need. It’s everything you can do not to keep her waiting in exchange for the chance to look at her, swollen lips and mussed hair, dress askew. 

She’s never been more beautiful to you. 

“Take me to bed.”

Her concern is washed away and replaced with relief - and then more prominent, want.

Larissa rises up from the couch and reaches a hand out to you, catching you off-guard when instead of walking you to the bedroom once you stand, she bends at the knee and scoops you up, your legs coming to wrap around her waist as you laugh in surprise.

“Who am I to say no,” she teases, placing a chaste kiss to the corner of your lips before making the careful trek over to the bedroom.

The question of where she’ll sleep is hardly that anymore. 

You’re both already naked and rocking against each other beneath her blankets when the power goes out. Neither of you truly take notice until the temperature in the room’s significantly plummeted.

“Oh–––one moment, darling.” You push yourself up on your elbows and whine as Larissa slips out of bed, hissing against the cold. Goosebumps raise along her skin, the peaks of her nipples hardening further as she rushes to kneel before the fireplace, sparking a flame in record time. Her skin nearly glows in the moonlight that trickles in from the windows, reflective amidst the snow. She looks like a ghost before you - ethereal, hauntingly so - and you tilt your head, gaze tracking from the deep slope of her calves to the fine curve of her ass, the faint divots of her spine, the wisps of hair that have come loose from their hold and fallen to her shoulders.

“You’re staring,” Larissa chides as she slides back under the covers, shivering.

“I’m admiring,” you correct lamely, a pitiful pout coming to rest upon your lips as you open your arms and draw her closer to warm her now-frigid skin. She hums as if to say ‘yeah, okay,’ burrows into you and drapes an arm across your middle as she pushes her leg between yours. Your hips instinctively buck when her thigh slides against the wetness of your cunt, and you’re both abruptly reminded of what had you so distracted in the first place.

Larissa tentatively nods towards you again and runs the tip of her tongue along your pulse point, your hips beginning to rock together once more, panting heavily and in unison while the storm surges on outside, unabated. The heat pooling in your stomach is in stark contrast to the drifting chill in the room, rearing a confused, overwhelming sensation of hot-cold along your skin. Larissa’s breath, warm on your neck, only further urges the feeling along until you feel as though you might snap if she doesn’t take you fully.

“Please,” you whimper, dragging your nails up over her back with little reserve. Larissa nips at your chin and yanks your leg further across her, taut against your clit.

“Please what?” Her voice is raked over with a carnal desire the likes of which you’ve never seen on her before, deep and airy. It only serves to pull the coil tighter. Your breath hitches as she pushes herself up on her hands and knees, hovering over you now, and she leans down, down until her face is level with yours, an intense wave of adoration flooding through you as she caresses one of your cheeks. She whispers, “I want you to beg, sweetheart,” and it’s all over, never a chance, the air all but torn from you, slick heat gone straight to your cunt.

Beg for her. Beg for Her. No matter how many times the thought bounces around within that empty little head of yours, you’re frozen in place both by lust and surprise. You’ve had your share of fun, of course, but the type that usually involves you calling the shots, taking charge. You thought you liked it that way.

You might’ve been wrong.

You’re only finally jostled from your thoughts when Larissa pulls back and draws a brow up at your silence. A shadow of concern passes over her face but you’re quick to pull her back in, nodding.

“Please fuck me,” you all but whisper, desperate to be filled, to be warmed, to be taken care of while the elements ravage the earth beyond these four walls. Larissa grins smugly at your feebleness, pressing her full weight upon you before she winds a hand down between your bodies, cupping your slickness in her palm. You’re dripping all over yourself, you know: a cool, nearly chafing wetness coating the inside of your thighs, so easily spread when Larissa dips her fingers in between your folds. She sinks a single digit into you just halfway, draws it out, sinks in again and curls it against that soft spot, yes, right there––

She easily adds another and hums at the way your body translates its own neediness, busying her mouth with the soft line of your jaw.

“You feel so good..” she murmurs as her fingers bury themselves into you knuckle-deep, so long and soft and better than you’d ever imagined (and you’d certainly spent time imagining it). Her hips press into yours from above, throwing weight behind her hand as she rolls against you, a slow and steady fucking that excites the fire already roaring within you. You gaze up at her in awe as her eyelids flutter in time with the movement of her hips, realizing she’s found just the right friction against the back of her own hand that each time she thrusts into you, a firm, rippling pressure rubs up against her own clit.

Your hands search frantically now until they’re planted at the slope of Larissa’s waist and you watch, carefully, as you pull her harder into each drive of her hips, rejoicing when she gasps and shudders into the pattern, breaking it for a fraction of a second before driving into you with a far greater desperation.

“Oohf, yes, th-that’s it, darling,” she pants out before capturing your lips in a sloppy, bruising kiss. Suddenly your own orgasm is incidental as you revel in the picture of her coming undone above you, chest flushed, cheeks pink, her hair falling further from its updo as she works her bottom lip between her teeth.

“Look at me, I want to see you,” you clamor with a novel burst of confidence, hands drifting up from her waist to cup her face in your palms. You want to look her in the eye when she cums. You want the memory of her sounds, her face, so deeply imbedded in your mind that it’ll keep you warm when you’ve returned to your own quarters. You want, you want, you want, and she whimpers - a heavenly sound - and obliges, gaze unfocused for a moment before she looks down at you, tongue darting out as she attempts to maintain some degree of focus.

“Right there, right there.. I can feel how close you are,” you huffily encourage, shifting so that both of your legs wrap tight around her and wrench her deeper, harder into you, smiling when her breath hitches at the change of pace and pressure against her sex. You watch her closely, in awe: Larissa’s brows are furrowed, her mouth fallen open and the pink of her tongue closely matched to that of her cheeks, the slight swell of her tits lurching which each thrust. The knowledge that each plunge into your cunt brings her closer is surreal––that she’s so obviously getting off on fucking you, that the frantic snap of her hips is building both of you up, simultaneously.

Her hips begin to stutter into you, airy whimpers falling from her as she teeters on the edge, fingers curling haphazardly in an attempt to continue fucking you through the oncoming rush of her orgasm. The mattress rocks and dips momentarily as Larissa gasps, sharp, and suddenly bows over you with the force of her climax, breath hot on your neck, forehead pressed into your temple, chest heaving against yours as she mindlessly ruts. Her fingers remain buried in your heat, pulsing slowly in time with her come-down. 

Larissa’s body shudders as you run your palm over her in light, gentle sweeps, one hand carefully traveling to cup the back of her neck.

“You’re alright.. I know.. ‘s good, hm?” You feel a weak nod at your side, Larissa eventually stilling atop you. The pad of her thumb draws slow, lazy circles around your clit as her breathing slows, nosing the crook between your shoulder and neck. 

“Christ,” she mumbles against your skin, and you chuckle as her lips draw a line from your ear to your chin.

“Yeah?” She hums and - slowly, determined - begins to wriggle down your body until her face is level with your cunt, glancing up at you with a blissed-out smirk before she presses an open-mouthed kiss to your slickness. The wet warmth of her tongue slides easily against you, dipping between your folds, lapping up the puddle that’s collected at your center, working in tandem with the pressure of her thumb at your clit, a feeling dumbly akin to religious devotion: a reverent prayer at your sex, holy flames licking up the walls of her bedroom, the weighted creases of her sheets stretched where she kneels before you.

A strong gust of wind wracks the shutters of her windows. They bang haphazardly against the glass, knocking in time with the surges of the storm.

Your fingers clench around the bed covers as Larissa rolls over your entrance once more, teasing, then pushing into your dripping hole with an embarrassing ease. She fucks you slow and as deep as she’s able, fingernails digging into the flesh of your hips. Not even the devil themself could stop you from rolling your pussy against her face in search of some greater friction, whining as the sounds of her tongue wading through your arousal mixes with the crackling of the fireplace, the moan of the storm outside.

“Ohfuckyes,” you pant as your legs spread further on their own accord, knees drawing up to alter the angle at which your pleasure floods through you. She moves with delicious ability, and you watch the stark blondeness of her hair bob with every fervent lap of her tongue, overwhelmed with the sudden realness of the moment: Larissa’s scent on the pillows, her lipstick smudged across your lips, her sweat on your skin. Her thumb abandons your clit, and a desperate cry waits at the threshold of your mouth until her finger is replaced with the pointed flicking of her tongue, quick and full and firm against you. The coil pulls tight within your core.

She murmurs something brusque but you’re too consumed with the sensation of her fingertips at your inner thigh to process, but she repeats herself as you release a heavy sigh, her fingers sinking deep into your cunt.

“That’s a good girl..." Your back arches at the same time Larissa takes your clit into her mouth, sucking and slurping as if to drink from that little bundle of nerves drawn straight to your core, as if to quench an otherworldly thirst. She pulls your orgasm from you quick and unforgivingly, never stumbling in her ministrations when your thighs begin to close in around her, or when your hands wind into her hair and pull, hard. She continues to devour you as if she doesn’t notice the snapping of that coil, the sounds that melt into the satiny sheets of her bed as you cry out for her–––the curling into yourself as your clit throbs towards unbearable tenderness.

“Fff––please, please, I’m––” Sapphire eyes bore into yours as her lips stretch into a devious smile, slowly but surely unlatching. A mercy, if you’ve ever seen one. You tremble in relief.

“You can’t take it?” she coos, superficial concern floating by your quivering sex. You don’t know whether to pull her closer or push her away when Larissa glances down towards your soaking cunt again––––

but the choice is made for you when she draws herself up and grabs hold of your chin, pushing her tongue into the waiting cavern of your mouth. The sure expanse of her thigh slides between your legs as she does so, eliciting a startled twitch as she brushes against your clit. She swallows your gasp.

“So sweet.” Larissa nips at your chin, presses her thigh against you more firmly and rubs her thumb back and forth along your cheek. Your hips buck of their own volition, acting solely on the most primal of instincts despite the sensitive twinge between your legs. There’s only Larissa’s softness, her warmth, her gentle affection circling your head, coloring the air around you. The world’s ending outside and it’s just her.

“Please kiss me,” you whisper, suddenly overcome with the need to absorb her, to touch her anywhere and everywhere all at once as if you could meld together somehow amidst the tousled satin.

She stills, hovering over you with a smile so soft you’re almost certain this has all been a very long, very desperate webbing of dreams until she obliges, brushing her lips against yours with the utmost of care.

“Are you alright?” Her voice is hushed, eyes searching.

“Better than alright,” you assure her, brushing a stray hair from in front of her face. “Kind of just wanted to be close to you…” You shrug sheepishly and turn your attention to the far wall, suddenly very interested in the twisting shadows of trees cast against the space there. The abrupt rush of vulnerability reddens your cheeks, lips pursing as the regret at such an intimate admission prickles up with equal swiftness. It’s quickly brushed away, however, when Larissa clicks her tongue and tilts your face towards her with a palm against your cheek, brow arched amusedly.

“Then be close,” she says, pressing a small kiss to the tip of your nose before she pulls you flush against her and buries her face into your neck. The fire’s dwindling, informed by the dying light of the room, the falling temperature beyond the bed, but neither of you notice as you wrap yourselves up in the arms of the other, tending to a warmth all your own.

[syrupbitee]

this is so ass im so sorry

[honeycreammilkshake]

there will be cake.

i finally finished my first fic, and it's greenflame! it takes place between possession and skybound. i spent a few days on it and i'm still not satisfied... it still feels a bit ooc and amateur to me, but please let me know what you think. here it is...

Sitting down for dinner with the other ninja, Kai had no intention of talking about anything serious, let alone marriage, and especially not how he should go about proposing to Lloyd. But picking at his bowl of chili, he looked around to his friends, watching them talk about their day with animated expressions and exaggerated hand gestures, observing Cole and Jay arguing about every detail of their training so they could trade insults while blushing whenever anyone (mostly Zane) pointed out just how closely they'd have to be watching each other to know such minor things about their routines. And when Kai glanced over to his sister she was already glancing his way with an exasperated smirk at Cole and Jay's antics.

The only absent one was Lloyd. The Green Ninja was training late, as usual, pushing himself to his limits. The perfectionism was at first a little annoying for Kai, who tended to take any show of exertion as a competition against him, but overtime he'd learned to accommodate his boyfriend, who was typically late to dinner or outings with the rest of them. The pressure Lloyd must have felt, every single day, to not only lead the rest of them but to also make his pretty much godly ancestors proud of him had been grinding on him even more as of late, and Kai didn't want to add to their young leader's troubles. Still though… after their last battle, almost losing Lloyd to possession had made him keenly aware of how fragile the normalcy of all their lives were.

At any time, they could find themselves under attack once more. Ninajo had a reputation for attracting the most dark-hearted, vengeant, and power-hungry of villains, and Kai had to wonder if there was some kind of sign posted out for all the tyrants coming to seize this particular place. Something massive and neon was advertising how siegable and conquerable this entire land was somewhere, he was sure.

But as a ninja, bound and entangled with all the rest of his team (a fate he would never want reversed or changed in any way), he knew he would lay down his life for any one of his friends if it ever came down to it. And, naturally, he knew in his heart that no matter how much he teased or gave Lloyd trouble, he would stand behind that completely unhinged god-in-training no matter what. Wherever Lloyd led him, he would follow. And it was because of this that he knew he had to make their relationship even more official, even more sacred, so that when villains like Morro or Chen or the rest came knocking again, Kai would know there was still a chance at a normal life, even a small part of it, in their own lives. That he could say that Lloyd was his in more way than one and come back home to that small piece of stability.

Now, watching his friends continue to taunt and push each other, a warm feeling suddenly overtook Kai, not unlike the sensation he got whenever he drank a nice cup of Wu's tea. He felt it blossom inside of him, a hot and protective surge that came whenever he thought of the others, especially Lloyd. He knew he could trust them completely, he could ask anything of them and they wouldn't treat him any differently for it.

So it was without any filter that he found himself asking, "Guys, if I were to hypothetically propose to someone… someone who's very uhm… career-driven and practically all-powerful, how would I go about asking them to do something absolutely ordinary like marriage?"

A small silence briefly overtook the table as the others, except for Cole who was still digging into his plate without interest in anything else, glanced around towards each other. Nya, on Kai's left side, was completely still all of a sudden and opposite him Zane and Jay exchanged looks.

Just as the stillness was starting to become unnerving, Zane, always practical, broke in, "Logically the best way would be to—"

"Oh my gosh, you guys," Jay all but shrieked. "Kai and Lloyd are going to get married!"

"Wait what????" Kai burst out, feeling his cheeks start to heat up. "I didn't say anything about—"

"Oh please," Jay scoffed, rolling his eyes. "You're the fire ninja, Kai, so whatever you're trying to cover up, you still burn holes right through it." He was picking at his bowl of chili delicately, like most of its contents offended him, and by the way he had complained about every other dish Cole had prepared for them, you would think it was genuine. But Kai knew the Blue Ninja would sneak lots of extra helpings of Cole's meals whenever he thought they weren't looking. And seeing as how most of Cole's food was… to put it plainly… bad, Kai knew it was because Jay was simply (and not so secretly) completely crazy for the Earth Master.

"You guys thought it was such a secret, but we could all tell what you were up to," Jay continued, matter of fact, then smirked. "The walls here are really thin, you know."

Kai groaned and buried his face in hands. "Okay," he sighed out. "So what if it is Lloyd?"

"I knew it!" Zane exclaimed from Cole's side, face lighting up. When the others looked to him, he explained, "Pixal told me they have a 95% compatibility rate. Lloyd's sensitivity and high emotional intelligence counterbalances Kai's hotheadedness and temper—"

"Yeah yeah we get it," Kai huffed, feeling called out.

"My vitals monitors indicate that your heart-rate speeds up whenever Lloyd appears," Zane added helpfully. "My data also suggests that Lloyd's libido increases whenever he watches you training."

Beside him, Nya made a choking sound. "Oh my god," she gasped, wiping away dribbles of water from her lips. "Please never say libido again, Zane."

Despite the embarrassment at having his secret relationship exposed so quickly, Kai couldn't help the way that information stroked his ego. All the time that little brat had been claiming to watch so closely to point out errors in Kai's form (as he always did) he was secretly checking Kai out shamelessly. It made him flush with more than a little contentment, but he got a hold of himself quickly, and managed to grit out, "Okay guys, that's enough."

"Where would they even get married though?" Jay pushed on, ignoring Kai entirely.

"Somewhere big enough for all of us," Zane pointed out. "I can compile a list of popular wedding locations and analyze them for suitability."

"No no," Jay dismissed, whipping his spoon around passionately so that a bit of chili hit Kai in the face. He wiped it off with a grimace as Jay continued to lecture Zane. "It should be somewhere perfect for the both of them..." Jay bit down on the handle of his spoon and then grinned widely at Kai. "I know just the place—my parent's junkyard!"

Kai blinked, caught off-guard. "Jay, I'm not marrying Lloyd in a junkyard—"

Across the table, Cole's face finally unfused from his plate long enough for him to shout, "Will there be cake? I'll definitely come if there's cake!"

"Always thinking with your stomach, right Cole?" Jay snarked. But the Earth Master chose to ignore him, much to Jay's disappointment.

As the others continued to conspire Lloyd and Kai's wedding, loudly describing each lavish detail — "Lloyd should wear all red so Kai can wear all green... and there should be dragons!!!" Jay contributed while Zane added, "Kai should put Lloyd in his lap and ride in on one to the ceremony" and Cole piped in, "And there should be triple stacked cake afterwards!" — Kai's ears picked up shuffled movement in the hallway. He sat up straight. Wu and Misako were out getting "vital" supplies like flavored tea and herbal medicines — old people errands — and they weren't expecting anyone else to come calling. It could only be Lloyd.

Getting that sensation he got whenever he was about to be cornered, he felt himself start to panic. "Guys, if you don't shut up now, I swear I'll send every single one of you to the Cursed Realm," Kai hissed out. "I don't even care if we're on the same team — you will all be banished for your crimes. This conversation is over."

But, of course, cause everything and everyone hated Kai, this was the exact conversation Lloyd chose just that moment to walk in on.

With a short glance around to the other ninja, he came into the room and a crushing silence followed as they all tracked him with their eyes. He walked casually, carrying a bowl laden with an excessive amount of Cole's chili (which wasn't that bad but it also wasn't that good either, so Kai felt Lloyd had filled it to the brim subconsciously) and settled down in his usual spot to the right of Kai, slowly lifting his spoon to his lips…. Lips that were twisted up in an unmistakable smirk, the one Kai knew and adored so well, that he loved to bite on — but right now, seeing the way it melted away the usual prim and proper princely beauty of Lloyd's face into the wild rawness of the conceded brat he really was, all Kai could think was Lloyd knows…. He's been listening in on the whole thing!

"What's all this about cake?" Lloyd asked, oh so innocently, as if he didn't know already, and Kai kind of wanted to manhandle him right then and there for being such an unyielding brat.

But before Kai could say or do anything to grab at any sort of control over the conversation, Jay leaned in closer to Lloyd, conspiratorially settling his chin into his cupped hand like he was about to tell the world's greatest secret. With a hauntingly straight face he said, "Only that Kai can't keep his eyes off yours."

… And then everything kind of blew up in Kai's face.

Nya and Zane burst out laughing and Cole let out a bellowing huff before slapping Jay across the back so hard the Blue Ninja's face almost landed in his uneaten bowl of chili (Kai wished with his whole heart that it really had). Jay glared briefly at Cole but then the Master of Earth said, "I guess that's why they call you the Master of Shocks! That was a good one, Jay."

Pure pride swelled the Master of Shocks' chest, making him look just like a puffed up little blue jay — which he technically was… though Kai could barely register the humor of it as sticky hot embarrassment exploded inside of him.

"Oh wow you guys," Nya finally managed to gasp as she held her sides, like she could fall apart from the delicious humiliation of it all. She wiped at her eyes, choking out, "Look at Lloyd's cheeks — they look like cherries!"

Lloyd's mouth was pressed together tightly, and his cheeks were definitely a deep scarlet that Kai took some satisfaction in seeing, but he knew his own cheeks were probably just as red and burning twice as hot.

And of course Jay would point that out. "Guys, check out Kai's face — he's burning up!"

"Oh the irony," Nya giggled.

"Red ninja indeed!" Zane chimed in with a grin that practically spilled off his face. And in that moment, Kai had never been more certain in his life that he was surrounded by traitors. Enemies.

Kai ground his teeth together and finally managed to squeeze out some sort of response. "You're all banished."

The other ninja, minus a cherry-colored Lloyd, started laughing again as Kai sat there, gripping the edge of the table and plotting revenge. Only Cole made any kind of move towards redemption, leaning closer to both Lloyd and Kai to say, "You know we're just teasing you two… We're really happy to see you making things more official. And just so you know, I would love to be there for you, even if there no's cake for me."

"You do know the whole point is so that Kai gets to keep the cake just for himself, don't you?" Jay smirked.

Before Kai could set fire to either himself or Jay, Cole turned to the Blue Ninja and smiled. "Don't worry, sparky, I'll make sure to claim a cake for myself too," he said, and proceeded to reach over so he could grope Jay's ass as the smaller ninja let out a high-pitched squeak.

"Who's the Master of Shock now?" Zane grinned as Jay started choking.

Nya pursed her lips and said, "Really? Right in front of my chili?"

Kai moaned and buried his face in his hands as the entire table descended into chaos. But it died out quickly as Lloyd stood up, his face unreadable, that silken smirk of his erased from his lips. As Kai peeked up at him, he couldn't help but feel… reverent. Lloyd was strong, and fierce, and brave. And more than that… he was the magnet that kept them gravitating to him, to their destiny. Their fates were inexplicably tied to his for the rest of their lives. They all shared a bond deeper than mere friends: they were each other's counterparts and focal points and homes.

And nobody was more at home with Lloyd than Kai.

"Kai," Lloyd began, and Kai felt the air rush out him as soon as Lloyd turned those ember-bright eyes right on his face. "Do… do you really want to marry me?"

Kai's heart was pounding far too fast. It felt like the adrenaline spark right before a battle. "Of course," he managed.

The other ninja were finally fully silent, their eyes wide and watchful. Feeling bold, Kai pushed away from the table and stood right in front of his boyfriend. Then he sank to his knees, his eyes never leaving Lloyd's, and swallowed. "You know that all of us are bound to you, and all of us would protect you with our lives, just as you would do for us. But the bond I share with you runs even deeper. I promised you that I would protect you, and that I would follow where you lead me, that you could always rely on me, so I would like to ask you now… Will you let me follow you forever? Lloyd Montgomery Garmadon, will you marry me?"

In all that time, Lloyd and Kai didn't look away from each other. The others remained blissfully quiet, but there was a current of anticipation coursing through the room.

It felt like an age before Lloyd cleared his throat and said, "Of course I will.... Someone has to keep my cake away from Cole, after all."

Kai groaned but found himself grinning anyways. "You're insufferable," he told Lloyd and pushed up from the floor.

"That only means you're even more perfect a match," Nya pointed out from Kai's side, but she hugged her brother tightly, patting him on the back. They both knew how much this meant to him...

Lloyd and Kai returned to their places at the table and tried to resume eating normally, but they kept glancing over to each other until Jay scoffed and said, "You two, honestly, go get a room."

"Quiet, sparky, you'll get yours soon," Cole winked and Jay started to protest.

"If you think I have any interest at all in a dusty piece of rock like you—"

"Yeah yeah," Cole waved him off. "Keep pretending, bluey."

Lloyd laughed and reached over to offer his hand for Kai to hold. Kai took it gently, and didn't miss the way everyone stared at their joined hands, their fingers twining together.

"No matter what comes in the future, we'll face it together," Lloyd promised Kai, and they felt each other's pulses jump at his words.

Kai nodded, soaking up the way the light hit the pale gold of Lloyd's hair, making it look just like a glowing halo. This boy would be the death of him, he just knew it. He couldn't help the smile spreading across his face. He raised a spoonful of chili towards Zane, Cole, and Jay and gave his best unhinged grin. "The future looks bright for you and me both, but right now I say we take these three down for being so obnoxious," he suggested and Lloyd grinned too, wild and full of fire, just like Kai.

"What?" Zane sputtered. "I didn't do anything!"

"Wait!" Jay cried out. "But we helped you propose to him, Kai!"

Lloyd snorted while Kai rolled his eyes. "Sure you did," the Master of Fire said, then launched the first spoonful at Jay's surprised face.

"Food fight!!!" Nya cried, pounding her fist on the table before she upended her entire plate on Kai's head.

Kai gasped, shaking sticky shrimp out of his hair. Reaching up, he felt the clingy, pasty sauce of the dish matting his once-immaculate spikes, and he shrieked, "GET HER, LLOYD!"

With a roar, the table fell into chaos again. As the ninja threw handfuls of food at each other — except for Cole who sat there lamenting the waste of it all — Lloyd and Kai looked at each other and smiled. Everything that they had ever done, all that they had ever faced and clawed their way through, had been worth it for moments just like this. With a laugh, Kai leaned in and kissed Lloyd in front of everyone, not even caring to keep anything concealed anymore.

He didn't even care when Nya shouted, "Gross!" and splashed the rest of her water on them. With a smirk, he pulled Lloyd closer and set a palm to the boy's back to dry out his clothes.

"You know," Zane said afterwards, as everyone settled down. "Someone has to clean all this up before Master Wu returns."

"Not me!" Jay was the first shout.

"We will," Lloyd said calmly, volunteering an unwilling Kai before he could protest. "We started this after all."

"They had it coming," Kai argued but stopped when Lloyd cast him a sharp look.

"You said you'd follow wherever I lead," Lloyd reminded Kai, then smirked his signature smirk when Kai let out yet another groan.

"Alright then," Kai sighed. "Lead me to the dishes."

"Get used to this," Jay said smugly. "This is going to be married life for you from now on."

Cole stood up from his seat and brought the rest of his plate down, shrimp-first, on Jay's head. "And this is going to be married life with me," he promised the Master of Lightning and walked away smiling.

"Welcome to the family," Nya said to Lloyd before standing up from the table.

"Can't be crazier than my family," Lloyd called after her, then turned to Lloyd. "Well, let's get cleaning."

Kai sighed melodramatically but didn't complain. He had promised to follow Lloyd wherever he lead him, even if it was just to another mess to clean up. So he smiled as he knelt down to pick up pieces of dinner from the floor with Lloyd. He wouldn't have traded it for anything else.

[imminent-danger-came]

Lady Bone Demon: "I've seen it countless times before your meager existence. I've witnessed cities rise and fall. I've seen the world suffer famine, disease, war, and endless turmoil—an eternity of needless pain. I thought if I helped someone with real power, guided you to be better, I could make a true difference in the world! But I now see the only true way to create the perfect world, is to start with a clean slate."

(3x13 Time To Be Warriors)

-

Azure Lion: *laughs* "I'm flattered, truly, but...were it not for Sun Wukong bringing us all together, I- without you, none of this would be possible! Your courage to stand up to the celestial host has inspired us to finally take a stand, to make a true difference in the world! And I can think of none other more suitable to lead us on our conquest than you brother."

(4x02 New Adventures)

-

Make a true difference in the world.

[fluffypotatey]

*puts on my Professor glasses* Macky really knows EXACTLY how to talk to Wukong, let's dissect it! M: Looks like things are going smoothly. W: I say, you've been here the whole time, haven't you? M: FFM is your home, but it's also mine. W: Did you find anything? M: Still nothing, however. Now the Jade Emperor is no longer present. The Celestial Realm already gives me an unsettling feeling. M: Wukong...that kid. W: I understand. M: You have to go and talk to him. W: I know! But...he still isn't ready. M: I see. You're the one who isn't ready, yet. How did you even become a teacher! M: He has to be. We all have to be realistic. W: He's just a kid. We can't let him... M: Who says he's just a kid! Why is it him? When you chose him, did you know? W: I didn't know, I really didn't know! I just followed...a feeling. M: Are you not the least bit worried?! This child has all of your special powers, and he always runs into trouble. Have you never questioned this before? Not a single person knows where he came from. Is it not strange?! M: We still have no clue as to whoever let out Azure Lion. All your old foes returned in one swoop. Are you not even a little- W: Then what about you? You also suddenly came back. M: Argh- M: I say, someone must be manipulating us behind our backs. Especially Xiaotian. But they still haven't succeeded. W: Then tell me. What about you? M: Tell me do you want my help or not?! / W: Not long ago you were still against me! / M: I see, you're just a- / W: ...after I assume you'll teach me how to train my own disciples? ~ Xiaotian Interupts ~ M: Look. That kid has made you his idol. You're his one true hero, but you... W: But I what? M: He has to understand, he doesn't need to carry these burdens. You have to do better. You can really tell whose the chatty one in this relationship XD Wukong might be a lil annoyed, but he's tolerant. And Macky is a little playful turd as always. Where Wukong gets gloomy and concerned, Mac swaps between teasing and serious in a blink. Then things get a lot more strained and tense, but unlike their previous fights, it never escalates into violence. Never a growl, never a raised fist. They're right at the edge, and they drop it. I'm very much interested in the psychology of arguments and when it comes to people latching onto (1) thing a person says and relating it slightly off topic to avoid talking about that other thing, like Wukong is doing here. It's so cool seeing how physical they are in trying to visibly control their emotions around each other, and how they keep trying to hold themselves back from tearing in further, always pausing and halting, and switching to another thing. They're TRYING. Ugh. I think Mac was trying to give a comforting smile at the end, but it's kinda warped by the whole ~ everything else. ~ Anyhow, I like how this starts with Wukong establishing, or rather cementing to Macaque that he believes MK is a kid. And while Macaque argues against that, he did also say before that Wukong should talk to him. And they have their squabble, with Mac pushing Wukong's buttons to get him to say something, BUT the fact this gets resolved with he needs to understand he doesn't need to carry these burdens. YOU HAVE TO DO BETTER. Like of all things Mac could have chosen. He's playing right into what Wukong himself believes, that will overwrite the "MK isn't ready" thing. Because let's face it. Mac is right when he says Wukong also isn't ready for that talk yet. He's so down throughout all this, Wukong probably feels himself that he needs to be better. AND by appealing to the fact MK is a kid, without explicitly stating that, just a statement that cannot be denied, BUT is a subject that undoubtedly, even Wukong cannot avoid. Because he wants better for MK. For him to not walk down the same path as him. Macaque has basically nudged Wukong into having that talk he wanted with MK by reframing it differently from what Wukong wasn't ready for. Thoughts? Critique?

*squishes you* anon…anon, you’re telling me..that this was the actual dialogue between SWK and Macky in 5x01. that what i just read is the translated version of the Mandarin dub. correct?

ok ok cool. i’m cool. gucci. feeling fantastic lemme just

WHAT THE FUCK LMK

ok so i ranted in the tags but realized i forgot to say more things (also i was worried i’d exceed the tag limit bc that is a real thing what do you know!)

so, anon, you said Macky knows how to talk to Wukong and yeah agreed but for me it’s for of the sense of “Macky knows how to get his words under Wukong’s skin”

he knows how to let his words sink in and fester in Wukong’s mind, making him reconsider things or another to help speed up certain decisions or choices Wukong is hesitating on. and ain’t it fascinating how despite how long it’s been since either character have talked or interacted with each other, they still know the ins and outs of their behavior and thoughts.

Macky knows Wukong needs to talk to MK but is holding back. Macky after one answer from Wukong realizes that it’s Wukong who isn’t ready for that conversation and switches tactics to try and breach that mental block

Wukong, in a need to avoid the conversation, brings up the questions surrounding Macky’s reason for even being alive again because that is information neither have talked about and oh hey! Macky is avoiding that conversation too! and it’s an important one to have so he pushes for it, but Macky knows it’s being pushed to avoid their original discussion and is annoyed bc “classic Wukong, never wanting to delve too deep into topics where he’ll need to be vulnerable for” (especially when said vulnerability is with his newly re-allied ex friend Macaroni himself)

god i love them

[ribbittrobbit]

this is it, the wuvvy thoughts are here

ok to preface: i think that Rue is a very compelling flawed character, and i have lots of Rue feelings but I have more Wuvvy feelings.

Alright so Wuvvy is Rue's faithful right hand, she has shaped her life around Rue, following them and leaving her own court and giving up a position as a champion. Notably, Wuvvy has always willingly done everything Rue has asked, maybe even done more than that to the point of anticipating their needs, maybe that liberty will lead to her downfall. She repeatedly reassures Rue, of her love and support in pretty much anything and everything. The phrase "you know i love you, right?" is such a beautiful and tragic summary of her character.

Because she reassures them of her love by word and by action - and the rift is caused when Rue commands her. Up until that point Wuvvy was supportive of Rue's interest in Hobb, maybe not thinking too deeply about it, maybe just to validate Rue's feelings and make them feel good. But when she was made to burn the letter, something breaks. She would have done what was asked of her, but to be commanded at the slightest and maybe first hesitation Wuvvy has ever shown? and when Wuvvy's questions aren't even against Rue, she is deeply in favor of Rue chasing their happiness, she only expresses grief when they doubt themselves. That strikes me as deeply grave betrayal, to command a willing person whose only hesitation was fuelled by good intentions. And an argument can be made that maybe Wuvvy harbors jealousy but I think any of it comes after this moment, any doubt comes back to this command.

So she takes a liberty and acts in the name of Rue's honor, challenging Hobb to a duel for the offence of making them cry.

And Rue, Rue who believes in love and romance but is also volatile and confused and full of secrets and fear. Who is a master of weaving words and placating and putting on a show and putting the correct face on for whoever sees them. Rue chases romance, sheds their glamour, and still leans on Wuvvy for support in the midst of this rift: "but you'll stay by my side" and it's a statement, not a question. They remain assured of Wuvvy's support, why wouldn't they be? when they've been frequently reassured of Wuvvy's undying devotion and love. And what does Wuvvy say in return? "It's been very nice to walk beside you" and maybe that's the problem.

And we see the distance grow between them, they start to be out of sync. Rue says their thing about wanting Wuvvy to learn to exist, being worried that she is "bound by obligation and not love" and what does that even mean? what does that sound like to someone who has taken on obligation out of love? What does Rue expect Wuvvy to find by "existing", romance? why would they presume that?

And the final thing is "your contract is done, you are no longer bound by me". Oh to drop that on a person who does not view this as a contract. Imagine Wuvvy having the most important person in her life so solemnly say something that shows such a profound misunderstanding of her person.

Maybe they are both selfish and their relationship is needlesly complicated by unwavering devotion and inequality. In the end we see Rue chasing romance and the idea of love and being volatile and passionate. And Wuvvy loved a person or the idea of them, never making for a real understanding, never forming a true reciprocity.

tldr: a 10/10 tragedy of a person, wuvvy.

[thetomorrowshow]

Whumptober 9 - Obsession

title: oddly enough, i seem to be alive

fandom: empires smp

TRUST AU!!!! (it's super long jsyk warning on opening the readmore)

cw: graphic self-harm

~

"Hey," Pix says, softly.

When Jimmy doesn't respond, Pix clears his throat. "Jimmy."

Jimmy just watches, entranced, as the scrape on his arm slowly heals black up, blood pulled back in and skin melting together.

It had been an accident.

He'd been lugging a large branch, and it had slipped and scratched down his arm. There was no way he would have done that on purpose.

But staring at where the wound had just been, Jimmy kind of wants it to happen again.

"Jimmy."

He blinks, looks up. Pix is watching him, brows furrowed in an expression that Jimmy can't quite read.

Jimmy waits, and after a long moment of studying him, Pix gives a little decisive nod. "I'll stay another day," he says, readjusting the branch in his arms.

"I—I thought you were just staying—"

"To finish one hut, yes, but I was just thinking—it's very possible that your first recruits will be injured. They may not be up to constructing anything. We'd better build two, just to be sure."

Jimmy nods. That makes sense. He understands that.

"How are the wounds feeling?" asks Pix a couple of moments later, after Jimmy has laid the branch in the pile, ready to prop them all up leaning against each other like a tent made of branches.

"Good," Jimmy says, too quickly. "They don't—they don't even hurt."

They don't, that's true. But if he thinks about it too hard, he can still feel that sword carving its way down through him and he wants to vomit.

So he doesn't think about it. Easy-peasy.

"And your ear?"

Jimmy's ears twitch on instinct, the movements of the left one cruelly limited.

He remembers, so long ago, fWhip touching that ear, thumb tracing over the delicate spines, his hold so terrifying that Jimmy did everything he said to avoid injury.

Then, he'd been afraid of a tear in the fin. It would have been almost impossible to stitch it back together straight, leaving an ugly scar.

He hadn't even thought of the possibility of half of it just being slashed off.

The cut has healed over, but he's missing half of his ear, most of the fin chopped away. Sound echoes in a strangely muffled way on his left side, and walking makes him a little nauseous. He doesn't think there's a way to fix it, though. It doesn't really hurt, it just unbalances him a little.

"It's fine," he says, rubbing the back of his neck a little self-consciously. "I'm fine. Thanks."

Pix is watching him again, he realizes as he looks up. Jimmy shrugs, looks away.

His desire for Scott to be here hasn't changed. But Pix had said something about how there's no way to contact Scott without it being seen by fWhip's spies, and his work here is more important.

Sure, he wants to rescue his people. But he doesn't see how that's so important that he has to stay hidden in the woods of the No Man's Land outside the Cod Empire's borders. Wouldn't it be better to go to Scott or Lizzie and get their help to free his lands?

But Pix saved him—somehow—and Jimmy will trust that he knows what he's doing.

That night, Pix lays out in his bedroll by their little campfire and tells Jimmy that if anything happens or he needs to sleep before his watch is over, to wake him.

And after Pix is long asleep, Jimmy sits by the fire and stares into the embers, fingers itching and every nerve jangling.

With a sudden rush of energy, he reaches into the fire and plucks out a charred piece of wood, which he holds to his forearm.

It burns—quickly, painfully, his fingertips and his arm, but Jimmy's no stranger to pain and he holds it there until it becomes too much to bear. When it does, he tosses the piece of wood back into the fire and watches his arm.

His skin is bubbling up angrily, red and blotchy, his finger and thumb black with soot and stinging. 

But after an agonizing couple of moments and a splash of water, the blisters start to sink back into his skin, fading away with every passing moment, until quite some time later, his arm has little more than a tiny red mark, sure to vanish in time.

Jimmy rinses his finger off with some water from their shared waterskin, finds the pads of his fingertips normal.

His heart is beating too fast. Is he breathing too fast? He thinks he is. He remembers the way the pain felt, but he can't feel it at all anymore. There's no sign of it. There's nothing to prove that he even felt it.

He died. He stopped breathing, and his heart slowed and eventually stopped, and he died, no matter what Pix said.

And what does he have to show for it? A thin scar on his back? A missing piece of his ear?

He just burned himself, badly, and now he can't even feel it.

Jimmy takes in a shuddering breath, pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes. This can't—this can't be right. Nothing about this is right.

He stares again into the low fire, heart jumping at the possibility of doing it again. No one would even know.

He doesn't do anything, almost stuck there in indecision. And when the moon passes the predetermined point, he forces himself to stand and shakes Pix awake. Then he stumbles off to the pond to sleep, and just hopes that his head will be a bit clearer in the morning.

-

His old scars are beginning to fade.

He'd noticed it this morning, drying himself off after sleeping in the pond. There had been one, a nasty raised one on his forearm from when Joey broke his arm and it burst through the skin. Now it's faded into his skin, visible but not as dark as it had been, and his skin there is almost smooth.

There are others. The jagged one on his upper arm is nothing more than a thin line, the small brown scar on his ribs entirely gone. They're all slowly fading, some more like vague marks along his body rather than the ugly scars they once were.

He should be happy. He should be excited that his scars are fading, that his skin is clearing.

He isn't.

He panics, actually.

Jimmy used to look at himself in the mirror and hate his appearance. He would wish idly for his scars to miraculously vanish, if only to annoy Sausage. He would always wear a long-sleeved tunic to various meetings, ashamed of the many marks that a ruler oughtn't have.

But what he went through was torture. Torture, for several years, and then death.

He was tortured for years, and he has no proof.

Without even thinking, Jimmy grabs his new knife and carves carefully along one of the scars on his ribcage, pushing the knife in deeper and deeper as he can bear it.

He bites his lip to repress any noise, digs the knife in a bit further before yanking it out. There. That should do it.

Blood spills down his stomach, and Jimmy just stares at it, relishing the aching sting of the cut.

It hurts. It hurts a lot, actually.

But it feels so good. It feels like he's alive.

He makes quick work of his other scars, tracing the lines with the blade of his knife. And when that's all done, and his head feels a little woozy but his mind feels clearer than ever, sharpened by the pain, he stares down at his murky reflection in the pond.

He's absolutely covered in blood. It washes down his torso (and all over his body, really, the tally marks under his knee among others carved out), and Jimmy can really only feel glad that he hadn't put on any clothes yet. That's a sure way for Pix to find out what he's doing. Blood-stained clothes is a dead giveaway that someone is bleeding.

He's not really sure why he feels he needs to hide this. He just has some sort of idea that Pix wouldn't be all too happy about it, after all the effort he went through to make sure Jimmy survived.

It is a lot of blood, though, and Jimmy's fairly sure it isn't stopping soon, so he takes the scrap of cloth he has to wash himself with and wets it, runs it over his body.

It's water, apparently, that mostly fosters this new healing power. He can heal without it, but not very efficiently, and it will definitely scar. A damp rag should just act as a clotting agent, right?

It does—every cut scabs over, and Jimmy feels like something tight in his chest loosens as he looks down at himself, at his new old scars.

Perfect.

"Jimmy? Are you decent?"

Jimmy curses under his breath, dashes away the few tears that have gathered in his eyes. "No, no—um, give me one second!"

"All right, but hurry up, please—we've got another hut to set up, still, and I started designing a lean-to of sorts last night, so I might try that out. Also, are you all right if I come back later in the week with some tents? It might be more convenient to set those up in case of an influx of people."

"Yeah—sure, whatever," Jimmy calls in Pix's direction, pulling his tunic on over his head. "Sounds great."

"I was also thinking—I know we were talking about going for Bobsill first, but it may be best to go through farmhouses or hamlets on the border before trying to go to a larger village. That way, if Mythland has already reached Bobsill, it won't just be one man trying to infiltrate an army."

"Mhm," Jimmy says, probably not loud enough for Pix to hear. He cringes as his freshly-scabbing wounds stick to his tunic. Hopefully if he gets a bit of blood on his clothes, Pix won't notice it amongst the bloodstains already there.

He's come to hate these clothes, stomach turning every time he pulls them over his head. He died in these clothes, after all. He's washed them since, but the blood doesn't come out.

Pix had mentioned getting him something new to wear. Jimmy can't wait for that.

Then he just has to tug his boots on, and he can join Pix in building the next hut. His clothes chafe against his scabs, but that's more than okay. It reminds him that he's alive.

And the next morning, after Pix hugs him and leaves, Jimmy carves right back into his already mostly-healed scars.

-

Scott asks him, once, why his scales seem to be perpetually growing in. Jimmy panics, just shrugs and mutters something about scars.

He doesn't know how to say that he pulls them out in front of the mirror every morning.

It's a little like pulling a nail from the nailbed, but over the past month or so Jimmy's gotten good at wiggling them out quickly without making any sort of pained noises.

He only touches the scales that are trying to push through the scar tissue, of course. Those scars—the scars left from the Void—don't disappear. They don't fade with every swim, the patchwork marks stubbornly remaining on his face.

He doesn't mind that those ones don't fade. He doesn't want to have to stick a knife into his face every day.

But he does tug out the scales trying to grow in, every morning in the mirror (after re-scarring his body), before pinning his veil on and heading out for the day, holding himself carefully and hiding the winces at every touch from Scott.

By the evening, when they retire to their quarters, Jimmy has pretty much healed enough that the pain isn't an issue. He'll run a bath, then just rinse himself off enough that there aren't any scabs or lingering patches of dried blood, before he returns to Scott, looking as close to as he always did before.

It's exhausting, but it works perfectly. He spends every moment tired and pained, but the pain clears Jimmy's head and reminds him that he did suffer, that it was real. He won't let that fade away.

It works perfectly.

That is, until it doesn't.

One morning, Jimmy's in the washroom as he usually is, tongue sticking out a bit between his teeth as he digs his knife a little deeper into his side.

There must be some moisture in the air today or something, because his body keeps stubbornly healing this one wound. Jimmy wipes away some blood with a cloth, trying to get a clearer view of it.

It's already begun to heal again, the skin sealing up by itself. It's like his body is trying to tell him something. 

Something that Jimmy is resolutely going to ignore.

He pulls the knife out, blinks away a tear, and shoves it right back in—a little harder than intended—

Too deep, too deep—he knows instantly that he's gone too far, because his vision goes double and his stomach turns unpleasantly.

There's a knife, almost hilt-deep, in his side.

It's not the first time he's accidentally gone too far. He did it that first morning after they won—while his whole country prepared to kick out the occupying soldiers, he was passed out on the floor of the washroom, his body slowly healing itself until he was able to wake up and crawl into the bath.

He'd done it again a week later, while preparing to visit Rivendell. He'd gone too deep on his thigh, pierced that same artery that had made it such a dire wound in the first place. Again, he'd passed out until his body healed just enough for him to get in the bath.

And now here he is, knife way too far into his body, and he didn't even start any water running before cutting into himself.

Jimmy's fingers grasp the handle of the knife, but it's slippery with blood and he can't get a good enough grasp to do more than wiggle it a little, which does nothing but make him gasp out in pain.

Okay. No need to panic. He just . . . he just needs to. . . .

His knees buckle and he falls onto his other side, biting his lip as it jostles all his other wounds. This has happened before. He knows this has happened before. He just has to get some water.

His damp cloth is out of reach, hanging on the edge of the sink basin. The bath is out of reach of his trembling arms, and he doesn't think he'd have the strength to turn the faucet, anyway.

Jimmy's just thinking it might be best to just sleep here a moment, let his body do a bit of healing with whatever moisture is already in the air, when the door opens.

"Sorry, I—Jimmy!"

He blinks, sees three—two Scotts, looking down at him in horror.

"Hng," he slurs, attempting a greeting.

In an instant, Scott's beside him, right hand frantic as it lightly touches him all over.

"Is someone in the palace? Who—Jimmy, the knife—I won't let you die, it's all right, I just need—I need a healing potion, or something, I need—"

"W'er," Jimmy forces out past his heavy lips. "Jus' . . . jus' w'er."

"Water! Right, right, er—I am going to have to pull this knife out, sorry—I'll put pressure on it, and—I'll start the bath first, don't move—"

Jimmy, of course, doesn't move. He just lies there, beginning to feel a bit cold.

Being cold isn't his favorite thing in the world. There are a lot of better ways to be.

Then he cries out, because suddenly Scott is right there again, yanking the knife out of his side.

"It's all right, I'm going to lift you into the bath now—"

His world tilts and slides together, and Jimmy bites the inside of his cheek to keep from vomiting—

Then there's water—crisp, cool water, all around him, enveloping him. Jimmy sighs a little, shifts—oh, he's in the tub. Right. That's disappointing. He likes swimming.

No. No, he has to stay focused. He was . . . he was cutting himself, he was fixing his scars, and then Scott—

No. Scott can't see this, he can't know about what Jimmy has been doing because—he wouldn't understand—

Jimmy sits up, ignoring the pull of his various wounds. He's going to be normal, act normal, and just hope that Scott didn't notice anything.

A hand pushes on his chest, and he looks up to see Scott, worry creasing his face.

"You aren't anywhere near done healing, lie back down," he says, something terribly sad in his voice. "We'll talk after."

Oh. He doesn't like the sound of that.

But Jimmy lies back down, anyways, his head sticking out of the water, and watches as his wounds slowly seal back together.

-

"So."

Scott looks at him, eyes crinkled sadly. "So."

Jimmy shifts uncomfortably in his spot on the couch, his scabs rubbing against his tunic.

He doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to know what Scott thinks. He just wants to pretend this never happened, so he can go see his Rivendell tutor before heading home and leading his country.

There's a plate of food on his lap, eggs that Scott had scrambled for him. Something about protein being good for blood loss.

Jimmy stares down at it, pushing the eggs around with his fork. He's hungry, but he doesn't really want to eat. He's scared of what Scott will say.

It's kind of messed up to recarve his own scars every morning. It's really messed up. Which means that Jimmy's really messed up in the head, too. What kind of sick person cuts themself every day to make sure they don't lose reminders of pain?

"How are you feeling right now?" Scott asks after a moment. Jimmy's stomach lurches; he grips his fork a bit tighter.

"Fine," he manages.

Scott sighs.

Scott’s going to break up with him. Jimmy knows it, suddenly—who would want to be with someone who purposefully hurts himself?

Tears gather in his eyes. He doesn't know what to do. He can't fix this.

"How long," Scott says, voice carefully unwavering, "have you been . . . hurting yourself?"

A tear spills free onto his cheek. Jimmy opens his mouth several times, can't speak for the lump in his throat. Instead, he shrugs, scoops up a bite of eggs and shoves into his mouth, forcing his jaw to chew when all it wants is to open wide in a sob.

"Okay," Scott says, sounding almost maddeningly calm. "More than just today?"

Jimmy forces himself to nod.

"Since before everything?"

He shakes his head.

"That's good to hear. And, er, it's all right if you don't know, but . . . why?"

Another question that Jimmy can't answer. He thinks he could answer it, if he had asked himself in the mirror, but here, with Scott waiting to break up with him after he hears how terrible of an answer it is?

Jimmy swallows his mouthful of egg and valiantly tries not to cry.

"Well, darling—I want you to remember that I love you. Nothing that you say will make me hate you. I just want to help."

That's what Scott thinks. He doesn't know the thoughts that go through Jimmy's head every time he digs a knife into his body. He doesn't know that in some sick way, Jimmy wants the scars, wants the memories of all the hurt.

A cold, pale hand lays itself on his own hand, stilling his anxious jiggling of his plate.

"Look at me, please."

Reluctantly, Jimmy looks up, meets Scott's eyes.

Scott doesn't look angry. He doesn't look disgusted.

He just looks sad.

"I want to help you," Scott repeats slowly. "I can't help you if I don't know why you're hurting."

Jimmy can't say it. He can’t, he can’t face the way Scott will look at him—

"If you would prefer, you can talk to Lizzie or Joel about it," Scott offers, and. . . .

Jimmy's automatic reaction is to refuse, because Lizzie's his sister (and a terrifying twelve-foot sea monster) and Joel is his best friend, but then it strikes him that if he tells one of them, they could tell Scott, and then Jimmy wouldn't have to see his reaction.

Which is how, only two hours later, Jimmy's sitting on the same sofa beside Joel, the same plate of eggs still in his lap.

He's wearing his veil, now, so at least if he starts crying again, Joel won't see it.

His scars are itching to be reopened, just to make sure they don't heal over too much. He doesn't usually take a morning bath, so they've probably healed more than they should have. He wonders if he can excuse himself for the washroom, take a knife to some of them before talking to Joel. It always clears his mind, too. Then he could have this conversation without losing track of it.

Then he remembers that Scott took the knife when he helped Jimmy out of the bath, and to get another one he would have to go dig through his drawers, and that would be suspicious.

"Scott told me a little bit about what's going on," Joel says quietly, interrupting Jimmy's thoughts. "He says he walked in on you . . . uh, hurting yourself? Do you want to talk about that?"

No. He doesn't want to talk about that at all. He would, in fact, prefer it if everyone forgot it happened so that he could go back to his routine in peace.

But Scott is worried, and now Joel is worried, and Jimmy owes an explanation.

He also knows that if he won't explain to either of them, they'll bring in Lizzie, and he doesn't want to worry her, too.

Joel lets out a breath. "Okay. Cool. Well, was that a one time thing? Or have you done it before?"

He can answer that. That isn't a difficult question.

"Since—every day," Jimmy forces out, voice barely above a whisper, his throat constricting against his will. "Every day since I, uh, woke up."

He feels the sofa go still under him as Joel's knee stops bouncing.

"Sorry—every day since—Jimmy, that's got to be three months ago, or more! Why didn't you talk to anyone?"

Jimmy cringes. This is why he didn't tell anyone—he doesn't want people to freak out over his personal issues. "It's not a big deal," he mutters.

Joel laughs incredulously. "Not a big deal? You—you—what, trying to kill yourself isn't a big deal?"

"I'm not trying to kill myself," Jimmy argues, turning to properly face Joel.

Joel looks—not quite angry, but definitely heated, hands curled into fists and a bit red in the face. If Jimmy were any less stubborn, he would have cowed, returning to his cold plate of eggs and his half-hearted shrugs.

But Jimmy's stubborn, and a moron, and he doesn't like false accusations.

"Right, then what are you trying to do, huh?" Joel asks, hands spreading wide. "Because when Scott calls crying about how he found you covered in blood with a knife hilt-deep in your ribcage, you start to wonder if maybe, just maybe, your idiot brother-in-law and best friend just tried to commit suicide and nobody even knew there was a problem!"

"I'm—I'm not suicidal!" Jimmy sputters.

"You sound pretty bloody suicidal to me."

Jimmy takes a deep breath, hot tears prickling at his eyes. He didn't want to worry anyone with his stupid problems, and now everybody's worried.

"I'm not, okay?" he says. He grips his long robe in his gloved hands, twists the fabric between his fingers. He doesn't even try to stop the plate when it slips off his lap, falling to the carpet with a muffled thunk.

"It's just—look, it's hard to explain."

"Start at the beginning, maybe," says Joel irritatingly, crossing his arms.

Jimmy swallows. "Okay. Um, so I died, right?"

"I do remember giving your eulogy, yeah. I also seem to remember you telling us that you didn't actually die."

"I basically died," Jimmy waves. "My heartrate went down too low to register as alive, so I died. And—and suddenly I'm awake, in—in a ditch, and just start limping my way across fields in the middle of the night as I feel my internal organs just sloshing about—"

"Gross—"

"—and Pix found me, and I almost died again, and I learned that I could heal in water."

Joel nods wisely. "Being a terrifying sea demigod, and all that."

"I didn't know any of that yet. But the longer I spent in water, the more healed I got—and then, the next day, I noticed my—my scars started to fade."

He pauses, not entirely sure how to proceed. Joel doesn't say anything, just waits.

"I couldn't let them fade," Jimmy says eventually, and his eyes slide away from Joel's face and down to the floor. "I—I know, it's messed up, but it was like—the only proof that I had been hurt was disappearing before my eyes, and I couldn't—I couldn't let that happen. So I—I started carving my scars. Every morning. To keep them from going away."

Silence.

"Why," Joel says slowly, "on this great bloomin' earth, would you do that?"

Jimmy cringes. He sounds angry. It's usually pretty funny when Joel gets angry, but it's definitely not something Jimmy can handle right now.

He doesn't even know how to explain it. He doesn't know how to put reasoning to his terrible actions. He's a ruler, and a good thousand years old or more—he ought to know better!

"Because," Joel continues when he doesn't answer, "I know that is not the way Lizzie raised you."

"You weren't there," Jimmy points out.

"Yeah, well, you can't even remember it, so let's assume I'm right. My wife wouldn't encourage you to hurt yourself because you feel some sick need to have scars—"

"I was gaslit for years," Jimmy interrupts, standing. Joel doesn't understand—nobody understands— "They convinced me that all the stuff I went through was my fault, and the only reason someone realized it wasn't was because of my scars! The only proof I have that it wasn't my fault is on my body, and I can't let it just fade away!"

"So you mutilate yourself." Joel stands as well, eyebrows low in a glower.

"I don't—" Jimmy pulls at his hood, wishing it was his hair. "It's not—"

He can't focus, he can't do this, his head is all twisted around and he's tired, tired from already having to practically heal himself back to life this morning, and he just knows that some of the scars are more healed than they should be at this time of day so he ought to cut into them just to make sure—

"I have to go," he mumbles, because that's all he can think of, he just has to get away to somewhere private and quiet where he can cry and cut in peace.

He starts to leave, but Joel catches him around the chest. "I don't think we're done talking! We need—"

"I have to go," Jimmy says again, and now there's tears gathering in his eyes and he can't do this—

He pushes past Joel and out the door, into the hallway, and from there he makes a break for it, running, robes flapping around his ankles, down as many confusing corridors as he can until he finds himself in some kind of cellar, barrels lining the walls, a cozy light flickering from bracketed torches.

There's nobody else here, as far as he can tell, so Jimmy curls up in a corner beside an empty barrel and buries his face in his knees.

He cries for a while, veil sticking to his cheeks, just letting out all the terrible feelings of getting caught and having to explain and being so twisted in his mind, all the shame and guilt and disgust. And when he feels that all his tears are gone, he digs his sharp nails into a shiny pink scar on his forearm, watches as blood beads up then streams down his arm with a growing calmness.

This is sick. He shouldn't find peace in hurting himself. He shouldn't have to do this to feel like he's actually alive, and not some undead creature.

Footsteps.

Jimmy pulls down his sleeve as quickly as he can, tugs his glove back on. And when the shadow of someone rounds the corner, he sees Scott.

Scott offers him a smile, he can tell. Even with the veil on, with the teary red eyes, Jimmy can tell he smiled.

Scott sits down beside him, far better at sitting gracefully with a skirt on than Jimmy will ever be. He sits there, quiet, their knees just barely bumping against each other.

"Your arm is bleeding," Scott says after a couple of long minutes.

Jimmy, fully knowing that his arm is bleeding, looks down. Sure enough, there's an ugly splotch of red against the pale green of his sleeve.

"Oops," he says dully, word a little distorted by his stuffed-up nose.

He's kind of beyond caring, at this point. Nobody understands. Why would anybody see this wonderful healing magic as a curse, like he does?

"I talked with Joel," says Scott cautiously.

Jimmy waits.

Scott waits, too.

Historically, Jimmy is not a very patient person. It usually takes about thirty seconds for him to give in when Scott is waiting.

But his mood has swung from terrified and upset to numb and indifferent. So he doesn't say anything, and after a bit, Scott continues.

"I'm going to be having a long talk with him about handling matters of mental health," Scott says, anger suddenly bursting from him in a wave of cold air. "He went about that in entirely the wrong way. I'm sorry for the hurt he's caused."

Hurt? Joel didn't really do anything, he just . . . he just responded in the way a normal person would. He didn't understand, and that's exactly right. Nobody should understand something this horrible. Some days Jimmy doesn't even understand it.

"I want you to know that I love you," says Scott. "I'm not going to stop just because you're struggling. I want to help you."

He'd said something similar this morning. Jimmy just shrugs. He's not willing to hope that Scott would actually be willing to help. Not if he knew the full story.

"Joel said something about you trying to stop your scars from healing?"

Right. He'd better explain, then, let Scott know upfront everything that's wrong with him.

"My body heals, right?" he says quietly. "And—and my scars were healing. And it scared me. I didn't want them to heal."

"You hate your scars, though," Scott puts in. Jimmy doesn't look at him, keeps his eyes trained on the floor. "You told me that you—that you're ashamed of them. Why did you feel like that?"

Jimmy bites his lip, searches for whatever it was that he'd told Joel.

"They hurt me for a really long time," he decides on eventually, and he's frustrated when tears start to burn behind his eyes. He literally just finished crying, he doesn't need to do more. "And I thought it was my fault. Until you told me it wasn't, and you only knew that because of my scars."

Scott makes a small humming noise. Jimmy looks up, makes eye contact briefly (he sees nothing but grief and love) before turning back to the floor.

"If they fade, there's nothing to prove that I went through any of that. And I know that's stupid, and messed up, but I couldn't—I couldn't just let that go. So I started . . . re-carving them. Just enough every morning that it would scar over again, and then by the next morning I could do it again. I'm sorry."

"And this morning?"

Jimmy shrugs again, idly wipes away a tear. "Accidentally went too deep. It's happened a couple of times. Not fun, of course—" he shudders, remembering the burning pain and the cold and the blurry vision— "but nothing that won't heal itself. I'm usually very careful about it."

A burst of cold from Scott, one that almost feels like fear on the back of Jimmy's tongue.

"Is that all?" Scott asks, voice trembling just the slightest bit.

Is it all?

Jimmy certainly wants it to be all. He doesn't want to have to cause Scott any more heartache.

And he remembers, vaguely, that first night conscious, Pix fast asleep, and how he held a hot coal to his arm just to watch himself heal. He remembers how the pain made him feel alive.

And just now, his fingernails digging into his arm to calm himself.

"I think so," he says.

Then he's utterly taken aback when Scott leans over and wraps him in a hug.

"Tell me if this hurts, okay?" Scott mumbles into his shoulder.

It does, a little bit. But Jimmy just puts his arms around Scott, awkward as the leaning hug is, and holds him close, as his instinct dictates.

He loves Scott. He loves him so, so much. He can't wait until they're married.

If they get married.

After a good minute, Scott pulls back, readjusts so that he can lean against Jimmy. Jimmy, naturally, lays his head atop Scott's.

"I'm not upset with you," Scott says, sounding a little like he's crying. Jimmy doesn't move to check, his heart leaping at the words. "I'm not mad at you. I love you so much, okay? I'm making a promise every day to stick with you, and I'm not breaking it."

Jimmy's breath chokes in his throat.

Scott isn't going to break up with him, probably.

And Jimmy is going to do everything in his power to make sure he never does. Even if that means stopping cutting. He'll do whatever it takes to be good enough for Scott.

"I have elves that work in mental and emotional health," Scott says. "I can get you in for an appointment today."

Does he want that?

There's something wrong with his head if he actually wants to cut himself (like he does right now, healed cuts itching to be reopened), and he wants to be better for Scott, so he probably should see someone who's actually trained for help.

But he doesn't really want to. He doesn't want to talk to anyone else about this. He doesn't want to lose his scars.

"Maybe," he hedges. Scott gently takes his chin, moves his head a bit further away to face him.

Reluctantly, Jimmy looks up into his eyes, the rest of his face obscured by the veil.

Scott's eyes are their normal, beautiful ice blue, lovingly soft yet determined.

"That is not a 'maybe'," he says firmly. "That is non-negotiable. You are going to try to get better, and I am going to help you, but you aren't going to stay like this. So I'll get you the appointment, and then we can treat the rest of the day like it's normal, if you like. But right now we're figuring this out."

That sounds like a lot of hurt.

But somewhere, deep down, he's really sick of stabbing himself.

"You're mean," grumbles Jimmy, resting his head back on Scott. "I've never done anything like this to you."

"You literally made me hug you that one time," Scott says drily. "Remember?"

Jimmy forces a laugh. "What, when you were afraid you were gonna freeze me?"

"And you knew that I could do anything if I put my mind to it," continues Scott. "Including control my freak ice powers. And I know you can control this, all right?"

Control is an interesting word, but. . . .

Jimmy nods. He can . . . he can try.

And for now, he leans on Scott, and wishes everything was just a bit easier.

-

It's hard.

It's hard to let go.

"Jimmy, what are you doing?"

Jimmy bites his lip. His health advisor told him to ask Scott for help when he got self-harm urges, and here he is with blood running down his torso and a knife held over his collarbone.

What's he supposed to do?

His health advisor also told him to not lie if he cut.

He didn't ask Scott for help, so he might as well follow the second rule.

"Jimmy?" Scott asks again, knocking on the closed bathroom door. "What are you doing?"

"Um," Jimmy says, looking down at himself. "I'm cutting?"

"Jimmy, unlock the door."

Jimmy sighs, guilt rising in his throat. He's not trying hard enough. He really isn't.

He doesn't want to be better.

He crosses the room to the door, pauses for just a moment to dig the knife into the skin above his collarbone, hissing between his teeth as it smarts. He pulls up a little chunk of skin as he withdraws the knife, rubs the blood from his hand onto some unbloodied patch of skin on his stomach, and opens the door.

Scott's waiting there, arms folded, and Jimmy can see in his face the way his heart breaks when he takes in the violent scene that is Jimmy's body.

"Sorry," Jimmy mumbles, face heating with shame. "It was a rough morning."

Which is true. He'd woken up with the itch under his skin, and then he'd had to message Joel and tell him he was fine after being entirely out of contact for the past week, which had been terrifying and made him feel out of control somehow, and then he saw that the scar above his elbow that had once been so gnarled and raised was nothing but a brown mark on his skin, and he hadn't been able to hold back the urge any longer.

Which is how he found himself here in the washroom, shirtless and veil-less and trousers rolled up above his knees, covered in blood as he'd slowly quieted the buzzing of his mind by cutting into himself again and again.

"Oh, darling," Scott says mournfully. He heads toward the sink basin and Jimmy's wet cloth there. "Let's get you cleaned up, all right? Then we can schedule an extra appointment with the health advisor."

Jimmy doesn't move when Scott beckons him to the sink, though. He just stares down at himself, at the blood leaking from the six or seven deep cuts he's already carved.

"Jimmy?"

It's terrible. It's absolutely horrible, and Jimmy's insides twist awfully when he says it, but it's all his mind is stuck on.

"I wasn't finished."

Scott tilts his head. "What?"

Jimmy flexes his fingers on the knife hilt. "I—I wasn't done. I can't just, just stop in the middle."

Scott looks at him. Just looks at him, eyes scanning Jimmy's body in a way that makes him want to squirm and shy away.

"All right," Scott says eventually, and he leans against the basin. He waves a hand. "Continue."

Jimmy blinks. He didn't expect Scott to agree. He kind of expected him to forcibly take the knife away and send him straight to his health advisor.

He waits, knife poised above his sternum, ready to make a quick, long cut. Scott doesn't even move.

Well, he isn't going to do it while Scott is right here. That's—that would be awful.

"Um. . . ." He looks at the door, then back at Scott. Scott folds his arms.

"I'm not leaving," he says, settling in a bit. "Either cut in front of me or don't do it at all."

He can't do that. He isn't going to hurt himself in front of Scott.

But it's the only option if he wants to finish re-carving his scars.

Jimmy lifts the knife again—at some point it had fallen to his side—and sets it on his sternum, ready to drag it down.

He tries not to look at Scott, but he sees him flinch out of the corner of his eye—

He lets the knife fall back to his side. He can't do it. Not with Scott here. He can't make Scott watch that.

He knows why Scott won't leave, but it seems stupid. Why can't he just let Jimmy finish cutting in peace?

"Sure you can't leave?" he tries half-heartedly. Scott raises an eyebrow.

Right.

He can agree, give Scott the knife, pour some water on his wounds; or he can get angry, yell at him, run out and finish cutting in peace.

The second option, while certainly appealing, is quite possibly relationship-ruining. He's always done his best to rein in his stubbornness with Scott, and he's learned in recent months that it's frequently better and safer to not fight.

Even though he twitches toward the door, even though the knife feels so right against his skin, even though there's nothing stopping him, he chooses the first.

He isn't going to do it happily, though, and he levels a glare at Scott (who just raises his other eyebrow) before stumping across the washroom and holding the knife out, hilt-first.

"Here," he grumbles. "Hide it, or whatever you did with the first one."

Scott takes it, a smile playing on his lips that's some combination of relieved and self-satisfied. Jimmy rolls his eyes.

It drops quickly, though, as Scott picks up the washcloth and sits Jimmy down on the side of the tub, cleaning his wounds one by one.

"I thought you were supposed to come to me when you felt urges," Scott says quietly, pulling back the cloth as the cut on his collarbone begins to slowly mend itself. "I was just in our room. You wouldn't have been bothering me."

Jimmy sighs, purposefully drawing it out so that Scott knows just how annoyed he is. "I dunno. Just needed to fix my scars. Didn't want you to stop me."

"I'm sorry. I don't know how hard this is for you, but I need you to come to me even when you don't want to. Or—if not me, someone. Your advisor, or Lizzie, or someone. All right?"

He's right.

Jimmy doesn't want him to be right. He wants him to be nice.

It isn't Scott's kindness that makes him want to marry him, though. It probably isn't one of the first qualities that anyone would associate with him. He may want Scott to be nice about this, but he's far more likely to be right—which is, sometimes unfortunately, one of his prominent qualities. He always seems to be right.

"Okay," he says begrudgingly. "I'm fine, though. It doesn't actually hurt me."

Scott scoffs. "Right. It doesn't hurt to cut? At all?"

"Well, yeah, it hurts, but not permanently—"

"Just because you heal well doesn't mean damage isn't permanent," Scott tells him, frowning at a wound that won't close. He reaches into the medicine chest beside them, pulls out a bandage. "I would say this has been very hard for you emotionally. For others, too. And you can't tell me that almost dying every so often is healthy."

Scott is, again, right. Regular and severe amounts of pain are bad for the psyche, according to his health advisor.

Jimmy sighs again, less intentionally obnoxious. "Why are you always right?"

Scott smiles, gives him a little kiss on the cheek. "It's my job as your future husband. Somebody has to take care of you."

"I'm still not happy with you, mister, but . . . it's good to know one of us knows what he's doing."

"I'll keep doing my best," Scott declares. "But you have your moments, Jimmy."

Jimmy snorts. "Right. Honestly, if I looked at the two of us for help, I'd definitely choose the savior king who took down a demon over the guy who died a couple months ago."

"You're forgetting that I basically died, too," says Scott. "We're both just that guy. And you're a demigod who single-handedly kept an empire alive, so don't sell yourself short."

Jimmy lifts his arm when Scott taps it, lets him treat a cut on his side.

"I don't know if you know, but you're kind of a local hero," Jimmy jokes. "Kind of hard to measure up to."

Scott chuckles. "Yes, I think I figured that out when Katherine showed me the new line of Smajor dolls at her local toy shop. Or maybe when Gem told me that her students were dying their hair blue? Or maybe when I was issued an official apology from the citizens of the Grimlands. There, all done. You can start getting dressed, I'll clean up in here."

Jimmy stands, grimaces at how stiff his wounds already feel. He would offer to help—that is his blood on the floor, after all—but he always feels a little lightheaded after cutting and it takes him long enough to get dressed, anyways. Better to let Scott take care of this, and that way Jimmy won't accidentally pass out while leaning over to clean the washroom floor and he also might be ready to leave right when Scott is.

He heads toward their shared closet, hand hovering over his favorite green tunic (he usually belts it over a brown long-sleeved piece to keep in line with the betrothal modesty laws) before choosing one of Scott's favorites, a sky-blue robe with gold leaf trim and wide sleeves, which Jimmy chooses to wear over his brown long-sleeved shirt, knowing that they absolutely won't match. Scott will be embarrassed and annoyed at Jimmy for wearing his clothes in public, and Jimmy's definitely still feeling like acting obnoxious.

Sure enough, Scott glares at him all through the political breakfast of that morning, when the elven lords and ladies eye Jimmy and barely restrain giggles.

And Jimmy ignores the itching of his scars and smiles.

-

It's only two days later, and he's about to cut again.

The itching is so strong, and Jimmy, though avoiding mirrors for now, catches a glimpse of his reflection in the pool that morning and can't help but notice how light his scars are.

He has a knife socked away behind one of the never-read books on his shelf. He's taken to hiding any knives he can find (there's at least three in his room, in various hiding places) and he goes so far as to pull out the book and stare at the knife there.

He made it an entire week, and now he can't go two days?

He's stronger than this. He needs to fight this urge. He doesn't want to, but he also, logically, does not want to cut.

Which is nice, actually. He's been craving it for so long; it's nice to genuinely not want to cut. Even if it's just because he doesn't want to let Scott down.

So how on earth is he meant to deal with this, when he's supposed to be studying in their quarters for the next two hours and he can't stop thinking about the knives he has?

Scott's in a meeting about rebuilding assistance with a representative of the Undergrove, so Jimmy can't just go hang out with him. It would be both illegal and improper to have an unallied ruler present at such a meeting.

He'd come up with other such solutions at the insistence of his health advisor, in case Scott wasn't available at any given time. But none of those options are very feasible right now, either—he could take a walk but would just end up returning here, still needing to do his studies. He could call Lizzie, but then he would need to explain the situation and he still hasn't found the guts to tell her of the matter. He could instead do work for his empire—he and Scott are going to be returning there in just a couple of days—but there's not really anything remote that he can do that hasn't already been done. And his last option is to take a nap, but he doesn't think he'd be able to sleep with this pulling at his brain.

Whatever he does, he can't stay in this room, Jimmy decides. It's too much of a temptation. He'd be much better off somewhere else, somewhere people are watching and he has to act normal.

It's almost physically difficult to make himself leave, but Jimmy grabs his books on the history of musical tradition in Rivendell and his study journal and leaves the room, wandering the palace until he finds the meeting room where Scott currently is.

He sits outside the room (a servant pulls a chair into the hallway for him, despite his insistence that he didn't need one, that he was fine on the floor) and does his best to study while he waits for his fiance to have a break.

After about an hour, he's startled by the door opening, a guard leading the Undergrove representative into the hall and away, followed by others from the meeting.

Jimmy waits until all the official-looking people have filtered out, muttering to each other and shuffling papers. Then he pokes his head in, finds Scott sitting in his grand chair at the head of the table, Ilphas at his side. They're murmuring with each other, examining papers before them, and Scott rubs his eyes and lays his face in his hands.

Jimmy doesn't say anything, but Ilphas looks up, raises their eyebrows, and stands, patting Scott lightly on the shoulder.

"You'll cheer him up," they mutter to Jimmy as they pass on their way out. "The meeting is on recess, you have fifteen minutes."

Jimmy nods, sidles into the room. Scott looks up when he gets close, lines around his eyes softening.

"Hi," Scott says as Jimmy takes Ilphas's vacated seat. "How has studying been?"

Jimmy thinks of his time in the hallway, trying desperately not to roll up his sleeves just to scratch at his arms, or head back up to his room to fix his scars. It had been a constant struggle, and he hadn't gotten more than page read, the words blurring before his eyes.

He hums noncommittally, taps his gloved fingers on the table before him. "How was the meeting?"

"Good, I think," Scott says, glancing down at his papers. "Just difficult. Our alliance with the Undergrove is about as strong as it can get, which is always good. The problem is, I have an empire of my own that was under enemy rule to take care of, and we're spread thin enough with other allies. We're trying to figure out what Rivendell has spare of that the gnomes could actually use. There are at least five other people who need to be present for this, though, so it may go on for several days."

"Hm." Jimmy shifts a bit, ready to preemptively wince when his stomach presses against the table, but there's no wound there.

He hadn't carved it open, after all.

Instantly, Jimmy feels his entire body break out into sweat, the itching becoming a hive of ants crawling under his skin.

He needs to fix his scars. He needs to cut, or else they'll disappear and they're already starting to disappear and he can't stand it.

He isn't supposed to be cutting. He's supposed to distract himself.

But Jimmy's doing all of the right things! He left the room with the temptations, he tried to focus on something else, he found Scott. He did exactly what his health advisor told him to do, and it didn't work. He just needs to fix his scars, he needs to leave the room and go get his knife and lock himself in the washroom—Scott would never know, he knows how to hide it, he could just get it done—

"—entirely confidential, of course," Scott is saying distantly. "But basically, Shelby's afraid that—"

"Scott," Jimmy interrupts, voice too loud. Scott looks up from the table, and Jimmy just knows his eyebrow is raised, even if he can't well see it. "Yes, darling?"

Right. He isn't even going to think about it, because if he thinks about it, he'll chicken out, he just can't let Scott down.

"I am about to cut myself," Jimmy says, detached and calm. "There is a knife on my bookshelf, second shelf behind the red book on the left. There's another one between my mattress and my bedframe. Could you please remove them?"

Scott stares at him for a moment, before shoving back his chair. "I—yes, of course—are you all right if I leave you here?"

"Maybe leave me with Ilphas," Jimmy forces himself to say, despite the way his head screams at him. If he's alone, he can at least scratch himself with his sharp nails. "I—I shouldn't be alone."

He should be letting Scott rest during this break, not bothering him with his dumb mental issues. He should actually be a normal adult for once and handle his own problems.

But Scott taps his shoulder as he passes by. "Thank you for coming to me," he says seriously. "You did everything right. I'll see you in a moment, and I'll send Ilphas in here."

Then he's gone, and a moment later, Ilphas ducks back into the room.

"Milord," they nod to Jimmy. Jimmy nods back, tugging his gloves up a bit from where he'd started to subconsciously pull them off.

Jimmy doesn't speak. Ilphas looks awkwardly between him and the hall, then, with the uncomfortable air of forcing a conversation, says, "The music of Rivendell? How do you find yourself enjoying it?"

"The—the music itself, or, uh, the study?"

"The study," they clarify. Jimmy chews on his lip for a moment.

"It's strange, studying music," he says. "I guess I didn't think about the fact that people must do it."

"How did Cod music come about?"

Jimmy shrugs. "I don't know. I think I pioneered it, though."

Ilphas tilts their head. Jimmy does not elaborate.

He does vaguely remember tying two clam shells together to make a noisemaker, one that had quickly spread in popularity and he still sees as a percussion instrument in Cod culture. Why study Cod music when he was there for its development?

"How old do elves get?" Jimmy asks suddenly as the thought occurs to him—are there elves here who might have seen the development of their culture, as Jimmy had seen his own?

"One thousand and two-hundred is the oldest an elf has lived to be," Ilphas says, sounding weirdly proud. "We are among the longest-lived of the species of the earth. Even the fae tend to live for under four hundred years. The gnomes have a lifespan slightly shorter than humans, and the inhabitants of the ocean and the Codlands—do correct me if I'm wrong—do not commonly live longer than one hundred and fifty years, and often shorter, depending on the breed. Which is why elves have historically kept to themselves, and rarely married outside their own—there is no one who can match our lifespan."

It almost feels pointed. "Well, you won't have that problem with me," Jimmy says offhandedly. He so badly wants to tear through his sleeve, stab his pointed nail into his upper arm. He can't stand this, he has to go fix his scars, he has to stop Scott from taking his knives.

He takes in a long, slow breath. He can control this urge until it passes.

He blinks, and realizes that Ilphas is frowning at him.

"Pardon my asking, milord, but is the Cod lifespan not typically under a hundred years? Lord Smajor will likely live to be over a thousand, praying all goes well in his reign."

Oh. Right.

"I'm . . . I'm kind of older than I look," Jimmy says awkwardly. "I'll . . . I'll probably outlive him, honestly. If all goes well in—in my reign."

"Outlive Lord Smajor?" Ilphas sputters. "Perhaps, if he were already well-advanced, but he is barely an adult! Aeor willing, he will—"

"I'm back, thank you, Ilphas," Scott says, entering the room. "Apologies, it was urgent. Do you mind if I have a moment alone with my betrothed? And," he adds, as Ilphas inclines their head and moves to leave, "give us ample warning before entering again. Five minutes alone?"

"Five minutes," Ilphas agrees, casting one more confused look toward Jimmy before leaving and closing the door behind themself.

Scott barely hesitates. He crosses the room like he has an urgent mission and sweeps Jimmy up into a hug.

Jimmy can't help it; he smiles, throws his arms around Scott's neck.

"I'm so proud of you!" Scott says, and he lets go of Jimmy only for a moment to release the clips on both their veils, letting them slip down.

Scott isn't kidding—his face is positively beaming, as tired as he still appears. Jimmy's really not sure why. He hadn't even done anything, except want to hurt himself. "I didn't do anything special," he mumbles.

"You came up with a plan, and you stuck to it," says Scott. "You took initiative by asking me to remove dangerous items from your room. You fought your addiction to get help. That's incredible, Jimmy!"

But it isn't. He didn't do anything.

And he doesn't like that word.

"It's not an addiction," Jimmy says, looking away. "It's just me being dumb. Don't—don't call it an addiction when I could stop at any time, I just keep choosing to mess up."

Scott frowns. "Jimmy, you came in here because you were fighting an urge to self-harm and you needed me to make sure you didn't. Do you want to cut?"

Does he?

To some extent, he does. He wants to check on his scars, make them dark and ugly again, tug the shimmering scales out of his face and from his knuckles. He can't lose this.

But Jimmy's so tired of hurting. He doesn't want to be trapped in this endless loop of nearly killing himself every morning for the next however-long he lives.

He feels like a child, trying to lug around a wagon of useless rocks, each one collected from a meaningful place, but useless all the same.

"I don't know," he whispers. "I don't think I want to."

"You don't have to call it an addiction," Scott says gently. "It's an alarming word. But when you're repeatedly hurting yourself and you don't want to, it isn't normal."

He says something else that Jimmy doesn't understand as he turns his head to check the door, Scott's voice becoming distorted in his bad ear. When he turns back, Scott's smiling softly.

"You're two days sober," he says, voice bursting with something like pride. "And you're already taking all the right steps."

"Two days," Jimmy groans. It feels like it's been weeks already, his scars constantly nagging at the back of his mind. And he has to be clean from self-harm for—for forever?

He isn't strong enough for that. He doesn't want to be strong enough.

"Three days tomorrow," Scott encourages. "Three days is enough. And then four days after that. One day at a time."

Scott is too perfect for him. He's such an excellent person, and Jimmy just can't measure up.

One day at a time.

"I can try that," Jimmy says. Scott smiles, one gloved hand coming up to rest on Jimmy's jaw.

"I'm right here, okay? Every day."

And then, at Jimmy's little nod, Scott closes the gap between them and kisses him.

Scott's a good kisser, if Jimmy does say so himself. He's responsive, and tends to let Jimmy lead, and Jimmy really wants to lead right now.

He lightly scrapes one of his sharp lower teeth against Scott's bottom lip, smiles against Scott's mouth when his partner actually moans a little, lets his lips fall further open. So ridiculously sensitive, his lover is.

Jimmy's about to go a little further—he really does love kissing Scott, it feels like taking care of him in some odd, protective way, it makes him feel like he can do something right—when a knock on the door startles them apart.

The door opens a crack, and Ilphas calls in, "Milords, it's been seven minutes, so you had really better make yourselves decent if you aren't."

Jimmy blushes; the blood drains from Scott's face.

"Just one moment," Scott calls over his shoulder, standing up straight from where he'd been leaning back on the table.

He fixes both their veils, and Jimmy cracks one last smile at him, hidden by the thin green fabric.

Then he's being ushered out of the room, and many more people are being ushered in, and Jimmy has to return to his studies for another half hour before heading off for a walk through the gardens.

The itching under his skin quiets just a little.

And Jimmy lives one day at a time.

-

It's about a year later when he relapses.

Jimmy's had a bad day—he's been in meetings all week, trying to see if the House Blossom Alliance can be reformed, and it's been stressful all around. And then today, in one of those meetings, fWhip had made it clear that he believed Jimmy had entirely invented the years of torment at the hands of him and Sausage and Joey.

It had been a moment where Jimmy had floundered. His hands had clenched into fists, bile had risen in the back of his throat, he'd stared hard at the table while Katherine called for fWhip to behave himself.

And now, arriving home in Rivendell, Jimmy can barely hide in his room fast enough.

fWhip's right, there's no proof that any of it ever happened—there's no way to verify it, no way to show that Jimmy had been through everything because none of his scars are more than faint lines now except the ones from the Void, and those ones have a clear origin that isn't necessarily fWhip—and Scott doesn't count as an eyewitness because he's Jimmy's husband, he's biased, he could be lying about seeing any of it because Jimmy doesn't have any way to corroborate his story and everything itches under his skin and it's so bad—

Moving almost by instinct, Jimmy stumbles up from where he's collapsed on the floor, up and over to his bedside rug. He pulls up a corner of it, and there the knife is.

It's been hidden there for at least a year, its oiled sheath still showing Jimmy's fingerprints from when he'd last touched it to hide it.

He barely thinks for a moment, his stomach going all cold as he realizes what he's about to do—he's been clean for a year, he can't do this he doesn't really want to does he?—but he thinks more about where he's going to start and how to keep himself from being interrupted than he does anything else.

He locks himself in the washroom, strips off his brown leather waistcoat and green tunic and surveys his torso for a moment.

There used to be a scar, long and thin, right down his sternum. He traces his skin there lightly with the tip of the knife, hair standing on end.

Then he pushes the knife in.

It hurts. It hurts a lot more than it used to, he thinks—it's been a while since he was properly injured, and it's hard to think when there's a knife in him.

After the first cut, he falls back into the routine as if he'd cut just yesterday. His hands find the vague spots that were once twisted scars and carves them out by muscle memory, stabbing the knife deeper and deeper as his hands shake and his knees go weak.

And then he reaches the scales on his face and his hand falters.

He's covered in blood. He's absolutely soaked in it, his face stark-white against all that red.

He relapsed.

The knife slips from his numb fingers and clatters to the floor. Jimmy feels himself sway, the sight of so much blood making his head woozy.

He sits down, hard, on the floor, the world tilting a little. He isn't going to—it isn't that bad. He's definitely done worse to himself, even if it's been a year.

A year. He was clean for an entire year, and all of that is now gone.

He kind of doesn't want to clean up. What's the point? He might as well keep cutting and never stop, seeing as he's already lost literally all of his progress.

But he doesn't, for some reason. He doesn't touch the scales on his face and hands, fully grown in now when he'd never let them before.

Instead, he follows old routine. He gets his wet cloth from the basin and wipes down his body, watching the wounds slowly scab over until no more blood is seeping out. Then he pulls his tunic back on over stinging wounds, leaving the waist coat for another day, and rolls his trouser legs down.

Now what is he supposed to do?

He wants to keep it hidden. That old itch that had been a quiet background noise for many months now is roaring for attention, pushing and pulling at his mind.

He can't tell anyone about this, or else they'll make him stop.

Which—he wants to stop. He literally wants to stop, but he can't stop thinking of ways to hide it, to keep his knife as his own and cover the marks he's made.

He isn't going to do that. He isn't going to hide things from Scott anymore.

So Jimmy sits on their bed and gets out his communicator, tapping out a message to his husband with trembling fingers.

I need help. if you're busy don't worry about it it isn't urgent :)

Jimmy tosses his communicator across the bed, hugs his arms around himself. Why did he send a smiley face? That was dumb. Then Scott will turn up later and think that it isn't an actual issue, even though Jimmy relapsed and everything is suddenly so bad.

But he can't bother him by telling him it's important, because Scott is currently in his weekend planning meeting to prepare to go to the Codlands for the next week, and that's very important and if Jimmy interrupts it Scott might not be able to go home with him this week.

So he waits there, hugging himself, his cuts hurting just a little too much for him to forget them.

He doesn't cry. When he used to cut, it would disconnect his emotions. His head would clear a little more with every dig of the knife, and he would finish feeling numb with a buzz of satisfaction.

The satisfaction feels more sickly than anything else. He sits there, stewing in the feeling, staring at nothing.

He can't act normal. He's not sure how he thought he would be able to pretend that nothing was wrong. He can't even do that while alone.

Jimmy waits there, feeling rather small, curled up on the end of their bed. He doesn't move. He doesn't even readjust when he feels a cut on his side pull open and stick to his tunic. Shame. He liked this tunic.

He's not sure how long he waits before the sitting room door opens and he hears Scott take off his boots. He knows it's Scott, instinctively—Scott always turns the doorknob when shutting the door so that it closes softly, and Jimmy knows exactly the sounds it makes when Scott pulls free the laces of his boots and sets them on the wooden rack.

Sure enough, Scott comes through the bedroom side door, offering Jimmy a soft smile before unclasping an official-looking cape of sorts (his wings shake themselves a couple of times) and laying it on the back of his desk chair, setting his crown on the desk.

"I got your message," Scott says. "Sorry I took a little while, I only had a few more items of business to take care of before it was all finished. How was your meeting? How's Katherine doing?"

Jimmy stands, twisting his hands in the fabric of his shirt, carefully not looking at the cut across his lower palm that he'd made just earlier.

"Um, she's good," he says, not quite meeting Scott's eyes. "The meeting didn't go the best."

Scott clicks his tongue, lifts a necklace off himself and sets it on the desk beside his crown. "I should've been there. I don't like it when you have to talk to any of them without me there."

"Gem and Katherine and Pix were there," Jimmy says. "He wasn't going to attack me. He just . . . he said some stuff."

"I'll kill him," Scott says instantly. "I'm the Champion of Aeor, I can take him, easy."

"And I'm a thousand-year-old demigod, we all could take him," Jimmy reminds him. "But that's not really . . . that's not what I need help with. But it's related, I guess."

"What, did fWhip do something?"

"Not . . . not exactly."

A frown creases Scott's face. He crosses the room, sits down on the bed, and pats the spot beside him.

Jimmy joins him, almost reluctantly. It would be easier to just tell him from the doorway, then take off running before Scott can get angry or sad. But he sits beside his husband and does his best not to flinch when Scott's wing comes to settle around him.

"You're upset, darling," Scott says, tone careful and soft. "What's wrong?"

There's no tears. Not yet. Only a feeling like he's going to throw up.

"I relapsed," Jimmy manages, voice barely above a whisper. "I cut myself. I relapsed."

"Oh . . . oh, love. . . ."

"I didn't mean to," he adds. "Just—fWhip said some things and I couldn't get them out of my head."

"I'll kill him," Scott says again. "I'm actually going to kill him, he made you feel like that and—"

"Scott. . . ."

Scott stops at Jimmy's small, pleading word. He pauses, then takes Jimmy's hands in his own.

"I love you," he says seriously, and Jimmy's heart flips at the reminder. "Whatever fWhip said means absolutely nothing to me, okay? You are incredible, darling. Now, do you need any medical attention? How bad is it?"

Jimmy's about to wave him off, say that it isn't bad at all. He's never liked to admit to pain.

But he's learning how to be better. He doesn't want to lie to his husband.

"I'll be fine," he says carefully. "It was pretty bad, though. I—I really messed up. I basically just, uh, stopped short of my scales."

Scott breathes in and out, slow and steady. Then he looks Jimmy hard in the eye.

"I'm glad you're okay," he says, face determined. "I'm sorry you went through that. Do you have anything that I need to keep safe?"

"Knife," Jimmy says. "It's in the washroom, on the sink. I cleaned up, so don't worry about . . . anything."

Scott nods, squeezes Jimmy's hands before slipping away, through the sitting room and into the washroom. After a couple of moments, he returns, smile a little tight around the corners.

Jimmy swallows back that horrible ill feeling. He was an entire year sober, and one little mocking statement from fWhip sent him right back to day one.

“I failed,” he whispers eventually. Finally, tears burn at his eyes.

He failed. An entire year.

“You didn’t . . . that doesn’t change your worth,” Scott tells him, once again weaving their hands together. “It doesn’t change anything. You just keep trying.”

“Yeah, but—it does, really, because—”

“Failing doesn’t mean you’re worthless,” Scott says strongly. “It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It only means you try again.”

Scott knows that. Jimmy knows how deeply Scott struggled, those weeks living in the refugee camp, with feeling like he was anything but a failure. Scott’s worked with those feelings for a very long time—Jimmy still remembers from the other month how Scott held him so tightly and almost cried over that first time that he was late to answer Jimmy’s messages, so long ago, how badly he felt he’d failed him.

Scott knows how it feels to be a failure.

Jimmy’s pretty well-acquainted with it too, to be fair. He’s felt like a failure for most of his short memory.

But that’s okay.

“I’m a loser,” he tries half-heartedly.

“Don’t say such things about my husband.”

Hearing Scott call him his husband releases some of the tension Jimmy’s holding in his chest and he collapses onto Scott, his wounds twinging. Scott huffs out a laugh, falls back against the bed, pulling Jimmy down with him.

“The urge is a lot stronger, now,” Jimmy warns Scott, voice partially muffled by his husband’s tunic. “I might . . . I might fail again.”

The last words come out small, shameful. Scott hugs Jimmy tight.

“Okay,” he says simply. “I wish I could fight it for you, but I’m here to support you, no matter what.”

That’s all Jimmy needs.

He can do it, he thinks.

“One day at a time, darling.”

“One day at a time.”

[sorikufeels]

https://www.tumblr.com/pondrea/748403783611105280/dont-you-recognise-me

amazing art by pondrea (link above!!!) got me feeling things (the art is so good op!!!!!! 💚) and now i need to yap about this scene lol it’s of the moment zexion disguised himself as sora to riku in com.

(i hope it’s ok to post the link here! let me know if not!)

i’m CONVINCED what zexion said to riku as sora this still haunts riku to this day. it wasn’t even sora who said all that, but i’m sure the fear of how it played out in com actually playing out with the real sora scared riku to death. the fear of this happening led to him walking away from sora first, not even giving him the chance just in case there was a repeat scenario. sure, there was a lot of self hatred and feeling like he didn’t deserve to see sora as well, but the look on riku’s face tells you that this scarred him. this was his biggest fear. he rather fade to darkness than go through this again and isn’t even willing to risk that it could go another way.

anyway, this is just context for what i actually want to talk about lmao

so this is probably one of worst moments for riku right? utterly rejected by his best friend and now that friend was willing to kill him for who he is now. and it wasn’t even real.

but you know who that was real for? sora. in hollow bastion. utterly rejected by riku. his only means of defense taken, basically left to die. and then riku fought him tooth and nail until he lost and sora let him run away.

you know who got closure for their version of this scene? riku. he got it when sora fell to the ground on his knees in the world that never was, when he said he looked everywhere for him and told him he was still riku no matter what. sora told him exactly what he needed to hear to reassure him that sora didn’t think any of things riku feared he did. sora telling him specifically that he was still riku no matter what showed riku that sora stills wants him around. even if he looks like their enemy and even if he did some real awful things, he’s still riku and that’s enough. riku as he is is enough for sora. always has been.

you know who never got anything like that? sora. in fact, the conclusion that sora found to get him through is that he’s not enough. his friends are his power. alone, he has no strength. he only made it through by relying on a complete stranger he managed to befriend. if beast wasn’t there or if he refused to go with sora, would he have survived? he had magic but that would run out eventually. would he have even made it to the room he fights riku in?

i don’t think he thinks he would’ve. in kh3, he says alone, he’s worthless. he’s held that sentiment this entire time. no one told him otherwise. (until riku’s sacrifice but it’s murky about whether sora even remembers that at this point. but even if he does, it wasn’t like the scene in the world that never was. sora was able to dictate exactly what riku needed to hear with no imminent threat and riku was not emotionally compromised like sora was in the keyblade graveyard. riku was able to process everything sora said. that is a far cry to sora screaming in agony over all his friends dying, sora believing wholeheartedly that he's nothing without them, and riku just saying he believes in him. sure, thats what sora needed in that moment to save everyone, but it's not a response to his fears and insecurities established in kh1 like how what sora says to riku is a response to his fears and insecurities established in com.)

at this point, i think it’s obvious that sora knows riku’s changed from kh1 and that he doesn’t believe the same things. sora knows he cares based on his actions and how he saved him too and we know as an audience how dedicated he is to him. but it fucks me up to think that riku got that verbal closure while sora never did. that riku got to start healing from that awful moment but sora really never did.

just,,,, please please please please let them talk about what happened in kh1 i am on my knees begging

extra thoughts: didn’t think of this at first so sorry it’s a little disconnected, but maybe the reason riku is so horrified in that moment in com is because he realizes this is what he put sora through. maybe he made this connection himself and feeling what it was like to be on the other side of it, on sora’s side, horrified him. what’s worse, in riku’s mind, is that riku deserves to be in this position and deserves to be rejected due to his past actions. but sora never deserved it. maybe that contributed to why the self loathing spiral got worse after com.

[starflungwaddledee]

What Starstruck Dee theory have people made that is your favourite?

there have been quite a lot, and i genuinely love them all!

early on i think the most popular theory was that she was possessed or had been possessed at some point, most likely by dark matter. she actually debunked this theory personally, but i think people just assumed she was lying! 😂

my favourite part is not any one theory, but watching a shift in thoughts over time as more things are revealed, and seeing people share theories/work together in comments and reblogs. i like the "OOHHH WWWWHAT...!?!" moments a lot; whether they are a reaction to my storytelling or to other folks' detective work!

early theories revolved around how she was weird for a waddle dee, or at least a native of popstar. despite my never explicitly confirming anything to the contrary, theories have now broadly shifted to assuming she is not from popstar at all, and most people do now generally agree she's not really a waddle dee.

i don't recall exactly who first came up with each theory (though some big players are @the-void-is-a-disappointment who did a huge amount of early deetective work and encouraged me to build it as a story for solving, @shibuya-toasted-with-extra-cream, @graycoin and @jojo-schmo) and i'm not sure which of these theories are still held by anyone

but here a few of my favourites, roughly in order that they started appearing...

♻️ she's a total mimic species like kirby or void, copying things around her either by intent or by accident 🗑️ similar to above, but she's an incorrect copy or a "beta" mock-up type of a waddle dee 🧚 that she was just born different, like a fae changeling, and might have been hidden away when young as a result 🕰️ she is something totally inorganic and/or mechanical, created by or like the clockwork stars or stardream, perhaps wish contingent 🥇 sometimes attached to the above, she was created to serve some sort of Greater Purpose. she might have failed at it or been flawed, and was subsequently discarded on popstar 🌠 a dozen and one wildly different things connected to the "falling star that hit her". alien life form on the meteor transferred into her on impact. infection by intergalactic bacteria/dark matter. simply massive concussive trauma that fucked up her signature (back when we thought that was the only thing wrong with her). the star was magic and fused with her. she hatched from it and is literally a star herself. probably missing some here. 🪐 waddle dee from a different place/planet. this one is quite a sensible theory, given that we do see many quite different dees! 🤍 she is a fragmented piece of void/void termina. this one in particular i know is @shibuya-toasted-with-extra-cream 's ongoing theory and she's put in a lot of really cool work towards it! ⚔️ she's somehow connected to the heroes of yore. this theory i think has only started popping up since galacta knight has become a reoccurring visitor in her storyline and we've started asking questions about her familiar looking magic spears, but you can certainly 1hko @moonverc3x with this one 🧿 she's connected to the matters. sometimes soul, because it's sometimes star themed and lacks a token representative. where as a connection to dream might link her to fecto forgo/fecto elfilis in some way (a creature also well known for a catastrophic meteor attack). i've also seen folks confident that she's connected to heart matter as well, probably again due to everyone's favourite grumpy swan showing up

this is all i can think of or locate right now, but there's been a pretty wide range of things. i feel there has been a rather interesting transition over time from "she's a messed up waddle dee" to "she's probably connected to a universal superpower of some kind" which i am genuinely really really thrilled about?! 😂 what a glow up for a pathetic little wawa!!!

i'm also personally really fond of seeing how people's existing biases influence what they can find and draw connections in. for instance: i know @jojo-schmo loves the forgotten land and elfilis, and digs into those connections and draws out some really cool stuff because her knowledge is already so specialised! i think this is the true highlight of working on this story for me, people theorising and engaging in the lore, and laser pin-pointing things that tie into our personal faves-- the way we tend to do with kirby lore as a whole-- is such uninhibited delight

i sincerely hope people will enjoy where starstruck's story does go, in the end!!

[maenecoon]

inspired by @/bluestjayy !!

i've only been writing for 1.5 years on ao3 and i've been blessed to have met so many supportive readers and friends along the way ^^ this year has been pretty special bc i finally started writing multi-chaptered fics (that somewhat have plot lines, lol). i used to shy away from doing those but gathered the courage to do so just a few months ago, and i'm very grateful for all the support i've gotten <33 thank you guys from the bottom of my heart!

mmyoao has a special place bc i really really enjoy bdsm aus/dynamics in general, and i have so much i want to explore in that fic. especially the side couples that don't have the main spotlight (kinnporsche, chanbig, khunpolarm). i just wish someone could pick apart my brain and translate all those ideas for me LOL. and puppy boy has so much more to give but aaaa college is busy as fuck and it really never stops, am hoping i'll be able to get a better control of work life balance and not succumb to the weight of academic pressure 😭😂

also i know i say this a lot but i'd really love to chat with y'all ^^ lmk what you think about my fics, writing, kimchay, what you like or dislike, what i could improve on, etc! i know i'm not a perfect writer and i'm bound to have preferences/fallacies, but i hope my writing has been enjoyable nonetheless! have a good year ahead everyone~