#a waltz along the razor’s edge

[inksandpensblog]

why is LQ just a scared creature getting pulled around in this trailer 😭

[the3rddenialist]

[cheshire-cait-sidhe]

a waltz along the razor's edge ~ slay the princess

[indiweb]

⠀ 𐚁ྀ PERVERTED THOUGHTS ABOUT THEE ? ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ryōmen sukuna ⋆ satoru gojō ⋆ suguru getō

⠀" jjk men crushing hard on you as they .. please themselves. "

<– [ BACK ] : HOME [ NEXT ] : MLIST ㅤ→

明示的 ⌇ nsfw. fem!reader. masterbation. dirty talk. crying. begging. perv!characters. ( wc. 1.5k )

SINCERELY , YOURS TRULY Ξ ©INDIWEB, 2024

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⭒

⍟ RYŌMEN SUKUNA

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀his fist pumped steadily , eyes shut tightly with the edges of his razor sharp teeth sinking into the fabric of your underwear he’d stolen from your dorm the last time he was there. not that you’d notice , you were always oblivious to everything unless it was spelled out for you. plus , when he was rummaging through the drawer , there seemed to be about a hundred in there. if you were to notice , then that meant pigs were replacing airplanes in the sky.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀it was the dead of night and there was only one thing running through the man’s mind. you. you in that dangerously short skirt the university made all the women wear. the gym shorts that’s hugged your lower body so dearly he swore he could see your ass straight through the black fabric. the busty blouses you always wore to parties that were thrown off campus , buttons coming undone the more you drunkenly danced with your girlfriends on the floor.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀his hand was full of his base , fingers practically glued together with how much cum had stained them. sweat beads swirled his temples before trickling down the sides of his face and meeting at the crevice of his exposed collarbone. it didn’t matter that your undergarment was washed , it was the closest thing he had to tasting your sweet juices , so he’d take it. all he could ever do was admire from afar , and he’d be perfectly fine with settling on what he had at hand.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀" f—fuck , just like that. such a good girl , " he mewled pathetically , unbothered by the fact that his door wasn’t locked , and that anyone could waltz in at any given moment. especially you , whose belonging he’d stolen unprovokingly. though , he was wholeheartedly okay with that. he’d let you watch him all day if need be , that’s how much he wanted you. if seeing his desperate would get you to finally notice him , then so be it. at least you had him on your mind.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀his dick twitched every time a teasing thought swept his mind , whimpers prattling along the edges of his dry lips that hung open so pathetically. he found himself bucking into his grasp , imagining that it was you bouncing along him and not his own embarrassing hands kneading the flesh of his throbbing erection. that you were guiding to his third and final orgasm he tediously dragged on , mouth engulfing one of your breasts whilst his free hand groped the other. it was a down right terrible thing to imagine , but he couldn’t help himself. you’d bewitched him so horrifically he couldn’t stop himself even if he wanted to.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀he knew his imagination would never truly live up to you , but it’s all he had. the only interaction he ever sought out with you was the fantasy world he’d created in his head , like a demented teenage girl gawking over fictional men. he truly felt pity on his own self , but definitely not enough for him to stop. even if you yelled at him to , he’d never be able to bring himself to get over you. your mere existence drove him crazy , his once pride in his intellect being drowned out by the excitement he got whenever he smelled your signature perfume lingering the halls.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀tethered cries fell dryly from his quivering lips , liquids shooting onto his bare lower abdomen for the third time in a row. shuttered body shivers ran goosebumps along his silk skin , tattoos bubbling at the chills. heaved sighs were his only form of speech , hands dropping his heavy base and reaching for the nearest towel that he laid on his bed for the specific occasion. it wasn’t his proudest moment , but he’d be able to live with himself as long as you stayed ignorant of his existence. that was , however , until a gentle knock was hit against his door with a an even softer utterance of his name. " sukuna? " , had his blood running colder than niagara falls.

⍟ SATORU GOJŌ

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀the man was widely known around campus , mainly for being a charmer , of course. he could never stick to an agenda , always up to something knew every week. always up someone every month. he was passed around more than a blunt at a frat party. he didn’t mind it though , he knew he had the looks , the body , the technique. so as long as he was getting something in return , none of it mattered. none of the whispers made it to his head.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀despite everyone knowing almost everything about him , one thing they didn’t know was that he could never properly get off to any of the girls (or guys) he slept with. they all sounded the same , wanted the same thing ; a quick fuck a dip. and , though he’s never heard your sweet sounds up close , he’d always think back to your classes spent in culinary where you’d moan in delight at how good a dessert tasted. satoru didn’t know when his obsession started, but what he did know was that just the slightest thought of those noises had him creaming his pants on the spot.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀anytime he was amidst a lecture , mind wandering off and running free , he’d always somehow resort back to those moments and would have to excuse himself or he’d make an absolute mess in the auditorium seat. which is exactly what he’d done some time ago. he was caught up in some english lesson when his mind went astray and he could feel a fiery knot forming in his abdomen , the man scurrying to his feet faster than anyone could notice him out the door.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀he sat in the unisex restroom with the door locked , pants loosely pooling at his ankles with his pulsating tip already leaking out heavily. he could feel himself slowly losing his mind , jaw hanging open with incoherent sounds of pleasure chopping through the eerily quiet aroma that set in the room. every time he is hand glided to the top , he’d slide his thumb pad through the slit of his tip , whimpered sobs following closely behind.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀the man had never even talked to you , for crying out loud. let alone be within five feet of you , and yet he found himself letting off to your mere though any time he had a moment to himself. it’s why he always drowned himself in having sex with random classmates , imagining that it was you who’s folds he was sliding into. your neck he was littering in hickeys. your chest he kneaded at so carelessly. and , every time he did so , he’d have to force himself not to spill out right then and there.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀his entire body would tense as the cum that’d leak sooner than he planned , silencing his partner with his own mouth so he wouldn’t have to hear them anymore and would be able to only think about you and you alone , no interruptions whatsoever. it was a guilty pleasure , something he surely wasn’t proud of. he couldn’t believe that the girl he’d only ever admired from afar had such an impact on him.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀his thrusts would get sloppier the more you lingered his mind , ridding him utterly silent before he became a whimpering mess with your name drooling from his mouth. his quivering lip would tug between his teeth , hand reaching for his base as he slid from between the woman , pumping himself until he coated her abdomen in nothing but his sticky white seed. it wasn’t for her , and she knew that the minute she heard him cry out your name. she knew who you were , much like everyone else. so it was going to be one hell of a day when her friends found out the infamous playboy could only get off to the thought of you.

⍟ SUGURU GETŌ

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀your instagram has to probably be the most public thing about you. you were closed off. reserved. much like the man who had your socials pulled up on his laptop. he never once uttered a word to you , and you’ve never even looked in his direction. yet , he still found himself fisting his dick to you , imagining that he was bullying it into the depths of your cervix with you crying out his name. it was foul play , something you couldn’t waterboard out of him. a vile and inexcusable thing.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀but , of course , that didn’t stop him from leading into his second orgasm. the most he had to look at were bikini pics from last year , and frat party videos you’d drunkenly taken and still posted to the public eye. his dick twitched just from the sight alone , his pants already tossed into a random pile in his room. his mind wandered freely the more you videos played on loop , his pumps become more thorough with each stroke.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀he knew you had a second account , everyone did. but you’d never let him into it if you didn’t know him. so , he scrounged your main and made do with what was on display for him. his whimpers were calling out to you , balled fist delving into his desktop as he could barely contain himself. his thumb pad would slide through his slit with the intention of it being your mouth , utterly melting into his seat at just the thought of you taking his entire dick and gagging along his walls with his liquids tainting your perfect little mouth.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀he couldn’t help himself , never did. the only " play " he got was from imagining a night with you. because while yes , he surely was attractive, being the talk of the school and all. no one cared enough to actually befriend him. so , he stayed to himself and disregarded everyone’s vague whispers that were passed at any given time he walked by them. not like he’d genuinely care anyway , he had more important things to do. more important things to care about. which , obviously , were you.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀some would call him crazy for caring about a woman that didn’t even know his name , let alone acknowledge his existence. but that wasn’t the point. he didn’t mind if you knew about him. for all he cared , you could tease and taunt him for being a loner and he’d still admire you because at least then he could say you knew he existed. it was a twisted way of thinking , for sure , but he couldn’t stop. you had such an effect on him that he couldn’t stop. not now , and probably not ever.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀vigorous sweat beads painted his once clear skin , hair strands falling from his man bun all the while he hunched over in his seat. his back trembled with each movement he made , mewling and sobbing at the endurance. his tip leaked faster than a running faucet , white juices littering his fingers that grasped his dick. all he could do was cry and plea for you to let him cum , ushering that he would be good for you. though , he never once thought it’d get so bad. that he’d be so down bad he actually started talking to himself about you.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀" p—please , i’ll be a good boy. o'fuck! please , y/n! " he sobbed in hysteria , tears streaming down his cheek bones and meeting at his dehydrated bottom lip that hung open. if his desk chair wasn’t covered in his juices enough , it’d surely be drenched by the time he finished his last climax. he wanted it to build up for some time , enjoying the back arching tension that washed over whenever he finally his hit limit and creamed on himself. which is exactly what he did. he couldn’t stop it , not when the sight before him was you tanning at the beach in absolutely nothing , the " nude beach " sign slightly showing in the background. it was just your backside , but still , it was you so his mind jumbled into an entire mess.

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⠀MUCHOS GRACIAS FOR USING ©INDISPACE PROGRAMS

[lesbianweed]

A Waltz Along the Razor's Edge - Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut animated release date trailer

[g4zdtechtv]

Cinematech's Trailer Park - Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut (Multiplatform)

A Waltz Along the Razor's Edge.

[strangeracrossthestreet]

A Waltz Along the Razor’s Edge — Slay the Princess - The Pristine Cut an...

[cymorilcinnamonroll]

Samael's Song (Lucifer x Mary Magdalene Poem)

Love is poison, subtle pain

and this balm alone remains

Iron bars- no lover’s lips

Silence, in a hollow crypt.

Where no light can touch my form

And no scars my skin adorn

The aching skies all scream restraint

no pale flesh to play or taint

But oh, come night!  I crave release

At midnight prowls the pale beast,

Tanin’iver with hounds shall ride

Of my mount, a suicide

and I shall take a blackened bride-

some little lemming girl.

Bruises blossom, red on white

I plucked a rose or two from night

laid them ’round the coffin bright

and she spoke softly to me:

“Prince of power, lord of hours,

your sword is the hand of time,

revive Christ, Satan.  Spare His soul.”

I shall, but at what price?

Festering wounds on moon

last night, crater kisses

scream, I sigh…

A crescent smile, alone, am I.

The buffer betwixt death and life,

Aqua vitae, dissolved Lot’s wife.

Immortal cancer, spider bite

dosage makes the poison.

Lazarus!  Rise from the grave.

My puppets all crawl forth to play.

Strung with nerves, I play their skin

they bow to me, like violins

Bow and bend, my bow grates on

Grateful dead, now sing my song.

And you, my lemming- play along.

Danse macabre of those now gone.

Ring the bell, chime hour-child,

by your tune the dead beguile

from the waters far and wild

crawl the bones of memory.

“I know not what to dance,” cries she,

like Lilith by the Red, Red Sea

and I remember innocence

spread upon the sand.

She strings her guts amongst the skies

midnight’s jewels float softly by

night bled a bit, I suckled it

I’ll savor it come morning.

Play on shallow misery,

now cloak yourself in ecstasy,

let pain and bliss bind victory

to your will, necromancy.

My path shadow, razor’s edge

I push her to the brink of death

Her master, yea, the space of breath

in which we waltz- mortality.

I claim my price, she takes His soul

Sacrifice, to make Him whole

Christ rises from the flames of Hell,

three days enchained, now all is well.

The Magdalene’s dark workings drew

her Savior from the Styx’s dew.

He kisses Mary on the brow,

a boundless love their secret vow.

As Christ walks golden, in the sun

her maiden flesh will rot anon.

She cannot cheat my claim once drawn-

necrotic in the sickly dawn.

Magdalene, I bite your heel

your blood runs thin

as dreams congeal.

I lock my heart and

eat your pain

until you ride

night mares

again.

[yandere-wishes]

A Story Told In Maybes  {Part #1}

🗡️Yandere! Enma Yuuken x reader

🗡️Summary: Enma Yuuken lives on the fine line between "Hero" and "Villain" but his story will never end in a "happily ever after" or a "tragically ever after" it will only end in Maybe...

🗡 Edited by the amazing @tealyjade-libran

🗡️ Alternative title: How many times can Genie use "Damn" in a story...

Maybe in some other world, they could have been lovers

Imagine that...

picture it as vividly as a fresh stab wound to your heart. Sketch the vision of a red waterfall carrying away your life. 

Now picture two people. A young man and woman, sitting on a park bench, holding hands and laughing, inching closer and closer. 

Imagine love, happiness, tranquility...

But those things only exist in fairy tales. And his life was most certainly not a fairy tale. 

They were foreigners, outsiders, aliens. Banished into a strange land were twisted fairy tales, roamed the earth. Where magic and mischief came as naturally to the inhabitants as breathing. Where nothing mattered, because nothing was. Everything is and thus it isn't. Nothing made sense, and sometimes, in some rare moments of stolen repose, Enma Yuuken was scared that nothing would ever make sense again. 

All of it, every microscopic thing about this 'new world' was wrong, abnormal, twisted. 

Everything except his traveling companion. Another lost soul as disjointed and out of place as he was. Another ghost trying to survive in this matrix of a so-called reality. 

There was no shock initially, no surprise in not being the only normal creature to be transported to this bizarre world. Enma knew full well that he wasn't special in any way. Another foreigner being here was one of the few things that actually made sense. 

But as the old expression goes, everything comes at a price. 

Someone else just like him being here, being stuck in this nightmare, made sense. Yet the price of logic was a thread of hysteria that had woven itself deep within his battered heart. A maddening sense that gripped his lungs, robbing them of breath. That picked off pieces from his tattered mind, replacing them with clear cutout thoughts of her. It was always only her.

His companion in this broken world just had to be you. A frail, naïve little girl with no sense about her. Some pretty-girl protagonist straight out of the pages of Shojo Beats. The kind of girl who finds her happily ever after no matter where the hell she is. 

Yet he did not have that luxury, his life was dictated by a series of maybes and could bes. He was a secondary character at best, a background shadow at worst. With no purpose other than smiling and waving. And listening to the protagonist weep about their love-driven woes.

Some days, when the dreary bell chimed for the last time, when the students marched back to the solitude of their dorms, Enma would wander around the halls, squirming in his own misery. Pondering why, oh why of all the people, in all the towns, in all the worlds, did you have to be the one to wind up in this grim land along with him. 

Why fate always had to be so cruel, so domineering, thinking it knew better than the people whose miserable lives it toyed with. He wanted to be your lover, your prince, yours. But what would a guy, who doesn’t even belong in this backward world, have to offer some heroine-type sweetheart? 

🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️

The Ramshackle’s flickering porch light glows in the distance. Like a dying star beckoning him to a destroyed paradise. He knows what's waiting for him behind the worn door. He knows you'll be there standing by the cracked dinner table, laying out days-old sandwiches for dinner, while Grimm rangles with an expired can of tuna. He knows you'll smile with tears in your doe-like eyes as you retell the fables of your endeavors. Telling him in great detail how the so-called king of beasts overpowered you in the school garden. How the King of poisons stole yet another kiss. The tales go on and on. Never-ending, never stopping, never giving him the chance to scavenge the fragments of his shattered heart.

You play your role so damn well. You know how to be the damsel in distress, the poor thing in need of saving. It's repulsive, disgusting...but only because he doesn't know how to be the hero that you need. 

If he was being honest -something he rarely did nowadays- Those "prefects" were the root of all his problems. They were the evil that made this dark world an endless horror. They'd been the ones to drive him into the "caring older brother" role. They had twisted his hand, leading him to the role of the "side-hero" like a lamb to the slaughter. Made him into a prince charming in a world that ate princes alive and spat them out once more. 

They had sealed his fate with a few insults and loaded threats. With just a few longing stares overflowing with lust and envy. They were villains, in a world that celebrated sinners. A world that cheered when the dragon steals the princess and rejoices when the evil king sits upon his skeleton throne. They were villains in every dreadful sense of the damn word. 

It's hard to be in love when all odds are against you. 

When your fate binds you into one role with no way out.

Like a rabbit hole made of quicksand. It dragged him deeper and deeper into intimate madness.

Maybe in some fair world, those leeching villains could keep their greedy blood-drenched hands off of you.

Maybe in a world where the sun never dies, you could bring yourself to love him.

Maybe he could have been the love interest, maybe, maybe, maybe.

It's always only MAYBE!

🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️

"Welcome home Nii-san," 

It's a sweet greeting that ties his guts into ribbons. His hands grow damp as his heavy eyes stare into yours. His lips curl into a painted smile, shielding you from the pain that's clawing in his stomach.

"Hi..(Y/n)"

His voice cracks and croaks like a dying frog. His lips feel abnormally dry and his eyes sting as if they've been pierced by diamond daggers. His steps are heavy as he plops down in his seat. The weight of his worries pulled him down harder than gravity ever could. He watches you through tried, restless orbs. Watches as you waltz over to your seat and sit down with the half grace of some future queen to be. It's bitter, dreadful, leaving a sickly toxin-like taste in his mouth. The mere thought that someday one of those, sinners, will take your hand and drag you to some kingdom far far away makes Enma want to claw his brain out with his bare nails. 

Enma's focus shifts over from his traveling companion to the silver-coated fireball licking his paws. Grimm's teal eyes scan him nervously before he offers a nervous smile, a rarity for the narcissistic cat. He's usually so talkative, so boasting, there was never a moment of tranquility with that cat around...

It takes a moment. A steel coated moment before the gears in Enma's head begin to turn. Before he can place his finger on the heavy abnormality weighing down the atmosphere. His nerves jolt to life, leaving a freezing sweat behind their trail. The room is spinning like a ballroom floor. Something's off, something big and obvious and hidden and...

Maybe...

"So..."

It's your sweet voice that breaks the tension creeping into the air. Melodic and luscious just like the sensation of a blissful dream. The room freezes in its tracks. The heavy atmosphere melts away like a cube of ice. Normality has one foot through the door. Behind it, hope and tranquility peek their heads through the tiny gap.

 Maybe just maybe everything is alright. Maybe it's just him, his stress and anxiety are starting to play cruel jokes on his wonder mind. Maybe he's just going mad. Yeah, that's the sanest conclusion to draw from all this. 

Enma cranes his neck to the side to get a better view of your face. Distress is scribbled all over your skin, like pristine razor cuts. You shift around in your seat, clawing at your uniform skirt as if the midnight black fabric is cutting off your circulation. Your fingers nudge the entrance to your pocket fiddling with something he can't quite make out. 

His voice is low, shaky, as he replies. The unusualness of the situation has him on edge. Nervous to the bitter bone. Maybe he was wrong, maybe his nerves were right to be wary of whatever this was. This uncertainty permeated the air-tight room. 

"What is it?" 

Slowly you drag out a white envelope flooded seven times over from your pocket. You stretch out your hand placing it in between his fingers. Enma throws a passive look at the note, his nose wrinkled up at the familiar scent that pervaded from the paper. 

"What's this?" 

It was rhetorical, asked out of dull, morbid courtesy. This time he didn't bother looking at you, in fear of seeing you look -lord forbids- gleeful. 

"A love letter, Grimm found it in our locker after class." 

There was a pause, lengthy, nerve-wracking, heart wrenching. Yuuken could hear the way your breath hitched in your throat, he could almost feel the excitement radiate off your body. 

"Can you believe it Nii-san? Someone actually left me a love letter!"

It hurt it really did, this time his heart didn't shatter. It simply broke, in two or three or maybe four. Who knows, who cares.  They had escalated from simple harassment and unsightly displays of public affection to leaving you love letters. How ungodly, how absurd, how brave...

He laments, eyes tracing over the fog of his breath as it wafts through the musty room. He wants to rip that damned piece of paper, shred it into millions so the words become ineligible, so you'll never read those horrible words again. So you'll forget that some damn fool other than him can actually love you. But he doesn't, he has too much self restraint and too much respect for his dear "little sister" to actually do it. 

His arm stretches over the table, skin illuminated by the dying candle on the center. He places the letter back safely in between your fingers. His eyes meet yours for only the second time that night. He takes in your face, Committing every piece of it to his miserable memory. The heartily glow in your crystal eyes, the faint schoolgirl smile dancing across your lips, the rose blush kissing your cheeks, the way the candle illuminates your skin, wrapping in a sparkling glow like the princess from those tales of old. You're mesmerizing in every way, it would be reasonable for other men to notice your elegance. No wonder those "prefects" were drawn to you so naturally like moths to a golden flame. 

"Who sent it?" 

His voice comes out like a block of ice, shielding away any and all his stray emotions. He doesn't want to know how doleful he is, he just can't have you taking pity on him. 

Your smile fades ever so slightly, your brows draw closer. Confusion is etched on your face. You haven't got a clue. 

"Well...I'm not sure, but they did say to meet them at the school gates when the clock chimes twelve."

Oh, joy, another fairy tale reference. It's comedic how fairy tales have begun to dictate his life. Everywhere he turns there's a grim tale awaiting him. Yuuken spares a quick glance at the crooked clock hanging by a loose thread. It’s a minute to midnight. 

"I should come with you" 

It's not a request but you take it as so. 

"No need to bother, I'll take Grimm, he could use the walk. He's starting to bulk up a bit"

"HEY! The great Grimm-Sama doesn't "Bulk up" He only gets more powerful!" 

Before the older male can protest, you're already halfway out the door. Grimm scurrying to follow you on all fours like a pesky rat. The door slams on your way out, leaving Yuuken alone with his morbid screeching thoughts. 

There goes the only good thing in his life. Into the arms of another. 

For a second he contemplates leaving you to fate, after all, who's he to disobey fate, go against whoever orchestrates this universe. But it's only a second, short lived and quickly died. 

Maybe he's a hero.

Maybe he's a Prince Charming.

Maybe he's a villain.

Maybe he's just some honorary older brother looking out for his kid sister.

Maybe, just maybe, he's your future lover;

and he'll be damned if he lets you slip out of hands. 

Enma's quick to grab his old practice blade from the overstuffed closet. It's not much, but it's all he has from the normal world, from his world. 

The door grates for the last time that night as he steps out into the cold midnight air. The stars blink in some sort of secret tongue, either warning him or encouraging him, he doesn't know. Nor does he truly care, for Enma Yuuken is done letting life and fate and villains decree his meaningless life. Here and now that's where he'll make his stand, he'll save you. Kiss you. Love you. Marry you. You, You, YOU

But there's still one nagging thought that screams inside his head as he dashes for the school gates. This world worships villains, prays at their feet, and hands them death and destruction on golden plates. And he's no villains, he's some sort of upside-down, in-between. Rotting alone in the border between Hero and Villain. By law of society, he's a reject, a useless foreigner, an alien, an outsider. 

and MAYBE he's already too late...

Who wrote the love letter? Was it the head of the savanaclaw dorm or maybe the head of the heartslabyul dorm ? Maybe it’s the ever mysterious  Tsunotarou... 

[punemy-spotted]

When The Stars Went Out

Summary: You know Helmut Zemo will find you in this and every life, so why pull the red thread any sooner? Ao3 Link

Warnings: Contains smut, some dubcon/noncon elements, references to being choked, aggressive abuse of astronomical terms and flowery language.

Notes: Inspired by this ask from @hope-to-hell, which proceeded to live rent-free in my brain until I turned moody concepts into an even moodier part of a soulmate AU. I. I got nothing. If someone could explain to me why Helmut Zemo makes my brain think only in abstract concepts and frantic half-baked truths, I'd appreciate it.

18+ ONLY, MINORS DNI

I do not give permission to have my work reposted anywhere I didn't already post it, and Ao3 is the only place I do.

Leave it.

You know better.

You know better than to pull that thread, red around your fingers. You know better than to let him know just how to find you. He will, eventually, so why make it easy?

The orbits of stars are long ones, and yet no less chaotic, flames flickering the coldness of space. You burn, spinning through the darkness, wound around the tear he leaves and he watches, peels back layer after layer, dragging you into an endless waltz.

You have two choices.

You have no choice.

Hydrogen fuses into helium fuses into carbon and you are born in the heart of the inferno, exploding outwards from the death of your stellar nursery and thrust into his arms, every lifetime bringing you together and tearing you apart.

Look at him. Look at the remnants he left behind, cast out into the nothing as he bores a hole through the universe and topples behemoths in his way, feeds you the poisoned flesh of his conquests and leaves cold fire burning under your skin. Burn and become just like him, bonded to the nothingness, decaying only when you and he have consumed every last pinprick. Burn or die and can you be sure he will mourn you if you fail him?

Leave it.

Helmut Zemo is a shell. A mask, a play, you know the void beneath his skin you touch it when he presses himself into you, his mouth hungry over yours. He is cold, ice under your burning fingers when you pull at the lapels of his coat, feel fur and fury in your hands and let him press you against the wall — did you think you could run forever, darling — you let him hiss threats against the hollow of your neck and breathe his true name into the air of this life.

One day I will tire of our game.

One day I will never let you go.

He leaves his promises in the bruises against your skin, the shape of his fingers around your throat as he drags confessions from the soft truth between your legs — he has learned the lies your tongue is all too happy to weave, when he hasn’t chosen to muffle your words, but the burning need coating your thighs is all the answer he will ever need.

One day the spiral will bring you too close and you will be trapped, bound to the inevitable resolution of the chase, rippling the fabric of the universe with every wave of your struggle — would he still want you if you did not fight, if you did not claw at survival and force it to give you that much more time?

Leave it.

Helmut Zemo is a scar on the fabric of space and time and you, little lamb, are trapped in the event horizon of his obsession, dragged deeper and deeper into the maelstrom of his machinations. He winds around you in the soft hours of the morning, presses you down into silk sheets and whispers adorations into your skin and listens to you beg to be held and freed all at once.

What are you running from?

Listen.

Listen.

Listen for his roar into the void, calling you, dragging you in, stop running from the inevitable and let him hold you. You are strong, strong enough to withstand the gravity of his obsession what are you afraid of, darling, don’t you know — let him savor you like the last meal he will ever have.

Let him bury himself in the softness of your affection — and it is your affection, no matter how much you play at otherwise — let him hold your gaze and drag his teeth along the fullness of your lips, let him call you all manner of sweet things and let the pressure be released let him fill you again and again.

Listen.

Watch.

Watch for the minute breaks in his control, when the sharpness of his smile thins into a razor-edged snarl, when he curses your plushness with a hiss and a thrust of his hips, sinking into you. Sing for him, won’t you, that delicate aria of your pleasure, all soft sighs and sweet whispers?

You love him. You love him and it hurts, because of course it does. He is boundless and endless and all-consuming, a wolf and you are so decidedly prey, if the sparks around you are any indication — these stars are cruel and angry, these stars feed not on hydrogen and helium and you, sweet thing, were a meal worth savoring. He whispers condescending truth in your ear and thrusts his hips, finds the swell of your breast and mollifies himself in the way you arch back to him, knows the feel of your surrender and the orgasm it draws out of him. This is the push and pull, the gravitational dance across a thousand lifetimes.

Who are you? Who is he? Who have you been, chased and chasing, loved and loving, every layer of your existence laid bare before you until you are both the singularity of your consciousness, wound together in the dying light of the cosmos.

Leave it.

But not him. Leave the echoes of your stellar past behind and let the nothingness take it. Take your disappointment, your anger, your fear, let him consume it all and show you the power in emptiness. Let him fill your ambition with his own, shed the layers of your doubt and fear. Burst — that’s it, my darling, let me feel you — and in the supernova of your combined pleasure, become one.

[emerald-amidst-gold]

WIP Wednesday

Is it just me or has this week been going kind of slow? It feels like Thursday, but no! It is WEDNESDAY! >:D That means it’s time to shaaaaaare! X3

So, I’m finally getting back into writing, but I’m doing bits and pieces at a time. I think I may have put too much pressure on myself, so everything I wrote and then read looked..bleh.��

However! Due to an ask that @the-dreadful-canine sent me, I found some inspiration! >:D

Thank you @noire-pandora for the tag! I send you all the hearts in the world! <3

Halamshiral brings out the best in the both the wolf and the dragon~ >:3

"She was friendly.", Fane said, face blank, arms crossed as he let his eyes follow after the elven servant that had just left where he and Solas were against the walls of the Winter Palace; the two of them keeping to the shadows and niches the soft darkness held.

He had sought out the Elvhen man, thankfully without much interference, to mention another spike in the air around them. There was magic somewhere in the palace, but he couldn't pinpoint its exact placement. Solas had agreed with his assessment after the first time, and the few times Fane had passed through this particular hall, the one lining the small courtyard, he had noticed his sky's brow furrowed slightly and his eyes glued ahead as if he were listening for something.

So far, neither of them had had any luck determining a focal point, but it had to be a rift; his mark proved that. It wasn't flaring violently, but the pulse was deeper than usual and his arm burned as the magic scorched through his veins. It was why, even after notifying the other about the fluctuation in the Veil, he had lingered.

Now, Fane wished he hadn't as his eyes continued to watch the retreating servant girl, her cheeks rosy and her eyes shining with something he knew all too well: infatuation. That would be fine on it's own, he wasn't one to judge or condone another's feelings as his very nature encouraged them to blossom, but the person that gaze was directed towards…

That was another story entirely. Why did he feel so...bitter? This prison of marble, gold, jewels, and stone was infuriating and confusing.

Solas chuckled, his eyes, too, following after the young woman, but they were still, clear, uninterested, but yet, Fane felt odd. "Indeed she was. Many of the servants have been. I believe they find my presence intriguing, and perhaps, comforting.”

"Makes sense. You have a certain air here. More relaxed, even if every shadow holds a knife. Confident, really. Makes you approachable.", Fane muttered out his observation absently, glancing down to be met with questioning orbs of blue-grey; the color was mixed due to the shadows dancing within and around them. They looked midnight in hue and they were trained on him now; no one else. “The responses to me have been the exact opposite. Not surprising, but annoying. I tried to question a pair of them outside this hallway, and they shooed me off.”

Solas gave him a small, but reassuring smile. “So I saw. Merely a precaution, I think, vhenan.”, he said, casting midnight orbs around once more, essences of lavender glinting from starlight. They landed upon a small group; three servants, each elven and they appeared to be wholly uninterested in ferrying about between the nobles. “Servants have long walked within the halls of power, unnoticed, but ever-watchful of those who see them only as inconsequential. Wariness is their greatest weapon against those who flaunt without reservation. The elves along these walls and in these dark corridors know what you represent, and so they keep you at arm’s length. ”

Fane hummed, pursing his lips a bit. "So, they’re fearful of me. Again, not an uncommon reaction.”, he said. albeit a bit bitterly. Typical. He should have known that was the case. Dressing a wolf in sheep’s clothing didn’t not make it a wolf, after all.

Except, he was a dragon. A dragon playing politics, playing with power. Fane was surprised he hadn't combusted as soon as his boots had touched the inner gate's threshold. The night was young, though. Sadly. Unfortunately. Miserably. How his sky, who was now leaning against the pedestal of a bust, appearing calm, collected, and enthused as eternal irises gazed up at him had done this almost day in and day out was baffling and honestly? Terrifying.

Solas shook his head. “No. Not of you as you are, my dragon.”, he denied simply, glittering jewels of deepest blue shifting like the sky just visible through the windows they stood beside. “They’re fearful of the power you possess. Elves have long been the victims of misused power. They wonder if you are the same as the Grand Duke, the Empress, the Duchess, or any here that have dealt a heavy hand without provocation.” A sigh and a warmer smile, midnight shifting to the paleness of moonlight. “However, I have seen gazes begin to linger among the groups each time you pass. They hold hope; a dream of opportunity. You are proving you are not the same, ma’isenatha. Unlike many, who believe themselves entitled. Continue to do as you’re doing, and a society will open up to you. Be patient, be mindful, and be true in a place rife with lies.”

Fane raised an eyebrow, keeping their gazes locked. “So, continue being a near ass to every atrociously dressed fop and priss that gets it in their head to waltz up to me?", he questioned before growling in the next moment. "The last prick I had the misfortune of walking within sight of nearly got a claw up the ass when they touched my arm.”

The mage smirked,  but it seemed...dark, eyes sharpening like metal at his last statement. “I would not call how you’ve been carrying yourself being a ‘near ass’, vhenan. It is far more nuanced than that.”

“Oh? How would you label my attitude then?”, Fane asked, keeping his eyebrow raised before a light of mischief and nostalgia flashed within blue, turning his curious expression into a blank slate. “What’s that look for?”

Something about the air was shifting due to this conversation. It wasn’t magic or anything, but it was...heightening, taking on a heady blend, power and emotion, present and past mixing with odd harmonies. Solas had mentioned something like that when they first arrived...

Solas hummed, eyes taking on a softer edge, primal darkness dispersing in both the curve of his mouth and the depths of his eyes. “It is nothing.”, he dismissed, the glint of nostalgia apparent upon every sharp line and curve of his sky’s face. Razor sharp eyes of blue steel shifted away casually once more, a single finger beginning to tap against where hands overlapped. “Suffice it to say, I am...pleased with this side of you as I am with every facet of personality you gift me with. The evening has been full of surprises, and hopefully, it will end on a high note."

Fane scoffed, leaning back a bit to rest against a windowsill; the marble was cool against the back of his legs and it helped soothe both his mind and the scars upon his legs. The material of his pants were better than most, but not what he was used to. “You’re just tempting the world to answer with that call, my sky.”, he said with a sidelong glance in Solas’ direction.

Solas responded with a sidelong glance of his own. “And what if I am?”, he retorted. There was something...cheeky about the elf’s tone and it wasn’t something Fane heard often, if at all. Yes, things were shifting, but not detrimentally so.

Fane kept his face blank, but he felt..light; a feeling of warmth in his chest apparent. “Then I would have to intervene on its behalf.”, he quipped, dropping his voice a few octaves and narrowing his eyes. These words falling from their mouths, mixing with shadow, candlelight, hushed whispers, and quiet refrains were interesting. They came with ease, they fell with grace…

...they sang with pride. That would usually terrify Fane, one of seven sins that could, but right now, with the sky gazing up at him from the side, body lax and garbed in black much like his own was, and expression titillating, ethereal, he was anything but frightened.

He was enthralled.

Solas hummed, eyes tempting with silent wishes. “My voice would harken a dragon to respond, would it?”, the mage pushed, or rather, pulled him in with that hushed question; the silk that Fane associated with his sky’s voice wrapping around his hearing like a gossamer sheet.

Fane shrugged a bit, bringing his arms up to cross them as he did so with his legs a bit; boots scuffing against pristine marble. He leaned back further against the ledge of the window now, but part of him wanted to inch away, ascend to the sky gazing up at him from hooded lids. “Wouldn’t be the first time. Remember,”, he began before pausing, a tight feeling of warmth ensnaring his chest as Solas’ eyes flashed with quiet indigo and so he pressed back with velvet. “...Fen’harel?”

*screeches* Why do I love these two being suave fools?! The brain worms are strong in this Chili’s tonight! 

Tagging (with no pressure, but all the court intrigue! >:3): 

@oxygenforthewicked @the-dreadful-canine @little-lightning-lavellan @varric-tethras-editor @dreadfutures @dungeons-and-dragon-age @blueheaded @drag-on-age @shift-shaping @cartadwarfwithaheartofgold and anyone else who’d like to share and revel in the court! *cackles* 

[hermannsthumb]

star crossed lovers and curses? TYSM for writing these btw I love your writing

64. Star Crossed Lovers & 98. Curses

from fanfiction trope mashup here

ANOTHER 2 YR OLD PROMPT….this concept seems sufficiently fairy tale enough for a little Mermay, perhaps 👁👁

so like. this got a lot longer than I intended because I was having so much fun with it. OH WELL

———————-

It was a real slap in the face–Newt has to admit–for the institute to deny him funding for this one. Ten years of thorough, groundbreaking, devoted research–ten years of PhD after PhD–ten years of no vacations, or weekends off, or even dating–Newt just assumed all he’d have to do was waltz into his supervisor’s office and they’d shell out however much he requested, no questions asked. That’s how it’s always been.

And yet here he is now, solo-manning a rented skipper with rented diving gear and a backpack full of disposable waterproof cameras, sunburned and dehydrated and miserable, all just because–

(“It’s stupid?” he said. “You think my idea is stupid?”

“With all due respect, Dr. Geiszler,” his supervisor said, not even pretending to be apologetic about it, “yes. We’re not going to pay for you to chase after the Loch Ness Monster.”

“That’s in Scotland!” Newt shouted, and then Newt started shouting some more, and he maybe had to be escorted back to his lab, but he wasn’t fired, at least, and the next day he cashed in ten years’ worth of hard-earned vacation and declared he’d be fucking off to the coast to pursue a completely legitimate doctorate in crypto-marine-zoology. Or whatever it’s called. He’ll worry about the name once he gets it.)

Two weeks into his spite-fueled expedition in the middle of the fucking ocean, Newt begins to wonder if this isn’t a mistake. He’s running low on food, for one thing, and what little fishing he learned as a Boy Scout can only take him so far. For another, it’s really hard to do this sort of work by himself. Though Newt usually goes solo for shorter expeditions, he’s used to having an intern or two tag along to help him take pictures on longer ones like this–or at the very least, provide enough conversation to keep him from going nuts.

But the biggest indicator so far that this is one giant waste of time is the fact that in the course of those two weeks at sea, Newt hasn’t found one single, solitary shred of evidence. No giant squid tentacles. No sea monster humps rising from the waves. No mermaid tails. He hasn’t even seen a shark fin, for God’s sake. Just endless, deep, blue.

Starting to thing this might be career suicide, Newt writes in his field journal on the fifteenth day. 

And then his boat is capsized.

Well, not really. His boat is almost capsized. Low in the list of Newt’s priorities for trip preparation–so low, in fact, it came in after pack razors and do laundry–was check weather report. It just didn’t seem important at the time, you know? He had other shit on his mind. It’s why the storm takes him by complete surprise.

Newt woke at dawn today to the sound of rain tapping lightly on the roof above his cramped quarters. The drizzle quickly became a thunderstorm. The thunderstorm quickly became–well, whatever this is. Waves smacking against the sides of the boat. Water sloshing onto the deck. A perfectly good cup of French press coffee upended all over Newt’s only map. 

His boat isn’t capsized, but it gives a great, shuddering jerk that sends Newt sprawling to the wood planks and grasping for anything to steady himself–his bedposts, the ruined map, a chair leg–and a great flood of water rushing in. Newt manages to scramble up in time for his jeans to spare being soaked. (He probably should’ve packed more than one pair.)

It’s at this moment Newt finally allows himself to panic a little.

“Fuck,” he hisses. “Shit. Okay, fuck. This is–” Another shuddering, wood-creaking jerk of his boat. Newt takes a few sloshing to the door and forces it open against the wind.

Iron-grey sea to his left; to his right; behind him; in front of him. The waves are angrier than anything Newt remembers from Boy Scouts. He flips up the hood of his rain jacket and stumbles out into the gale to lower the sails, or weigh down the ship, or something, anything to just–

There’s something pale bobbing out in the ocean some thirty feet away from his boat. A head, Newt realizes, a human head, a human head attached to shoulders, and his shock mingles with horror because oh, God, it’s a person! Their boat must’ve been wrecked by the storm–or they must’ve been thrown overboard–or both, Newt has to do something.

He cups his hands around his mouth and bellows in the direction of the mysterious bobbing head. “Do you need help?!”

Nothing. 

“Hello!” Newt shouts.

Whoever it is suddenly disappears under the water; without thinking, with nothing on his mind but saving the drowning stranger, Newt shucks off his leather jacket and dives under.

At least this time, he knows it’s a mistake.

Newt is warm when he wakes up. Warm, and dry. The sun is shining overhead; the boat is still; the waves are calm. There’s someone touching his neck–a hand, damp, and oddly chilly.

“Stop,” he mumbles, and swats them away. He’s trying to sleep.

The hand returns. “Stop,” Newt says, and swats again, more. viciously this time.

He hears a small, offended huff. The hand retracts, though not before depositing his glasses on the bridge of his nose and swatting back in return. “Well, I’m terribly sorry for attempting to return these,” someone says.

Newt’s eyes shoot open.

There’s a man above him–sharp-cheeked, brown-eyed, shirtless and pale, his short, dark hair plastered to his head like he’s just gone swimming. He’s scowling at Newt. There’s something familiar about him that Newt can’t quite put his finger on–until he does. “You were in the water!” he says, sitting straight up. “You were drowning!” He wracks his brains for the memory of that morning: a head bobbing in the water, Newt going overboard, the cold, dark rush of the ocean, his frantic, wheeling arms– “I saved you!”

“Not exactly,” the man says.

No, that’s not right. There was the dark rush of the ocean, his wheeling arms, and then two cold, sturdy hands pulling him up, onto his boat, pressing down on his chest, a cold, wide mouth breathing air into his lungs. “Holy shit,” Newt says. “You saved me! What were you even doing out here, dude? It’s–”

Then Newt looks down.

The head leads to shoulders, which leads to a torso, but below that– “Holy shit,” Newt squeaks again, and then, at a loss for anything else to say, “Can I take a picture of you for my field journal?”

Where there should be hips and thighs and calves below the waist is nothing but a long fish tail, curving and shimmering and brightly-hued enough to make Newt’s eyes sting. It tapers into two large, translucent, fanning fins, the left of which is misshapen, almost as if it were wounded somehow. The overall effect is gorgeous, frankly. Newt’s never seen anything so gorgeous in his entire life.

“No,” the man–merman–says. “Goodbye.”

He begins to wriggle to the edge of the boat. Newt reaches for him frantically. “Wait, wait!” he says. “Don’t go! I want to talk to you, please!”

A foot from the edge of the boat, one hand on the railing, the merman turns back to Newt. His eyes are narrowed. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Well,” Newt says. “You, obviously. You’re–” He sweeps his hand in a broad gesture across the merman. “You’re not human.”

“Yes,” the merman says.

“And you saved my life,” Newt says.

Another scowl. “Yes. You’re bloody lucky I was passing by,” the merman snaps. “What on Earth were you doing out here in the middle of a storm like that? You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”

Newt shoves his glasses up higher and scoots closer to the merman. “I’m a scientist. A marine biologist, technically.” And, if you were to get even more technical, only a fifth marine biologist. Newt tended to look at his doctorates in a glass-half-full way. “I was, uh, gathering research.” Suddenly it occurs to Newt that he and the merman might have cultural differences he never even dreamed of, and he flushes with embarrassment. “Wait, do you know what a scientist is?”

“Yes,” the merman snaps again.

“Right,” Newt says. He coughs. The merman’s scowl hardens. Frankly, legends of sirens luring sailors to their deaths aside, Newt didn’t expect merpeople to be quite so…bitchy. Maybe he just got stuck with the most foul-tempered one in existence–it’d be just his luck. “Well. Uh. My name is Newt. It’s nice to meet you?” He holds out his hand, and then remembers himself. “Uh, this is how humans greet people. You shake it.”

“I know,” the merman says, and then (in a way Newt can’t help but feel as somewhat condescending) shakes Newt’s hand with a firm “Hermann.”

Newt snorts before he can help himself. Hermann pulls away. “Hermann,” he echoes. “You know–”

“I know,” Hermann says again.

“It kinda sounds–”

“I know,” Hermann says.

“It’s just kinda funny,” Newt says, and begins to snicker.

“So is ‘Newt’,” Hermann huffs, and then, before Newt can stop him, he dives back into the ocean with a splash and a flick of his shimmering tail.

Newt rushes to the railing and peers into the murky depths below, but it��s no use. Hermann’s long gone. His first real, solid evidence of crypto-marine biology, and he couldn’t stop being himself long enough to ask a few simple questions.

“Shit,” he sighs. He makes note of the meeting in his journal anyway.

He sees Hermann again four days later. It’s a bright, sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, and–in a better mood than he’s been since he started out–Newt decides to take the opportunity to do some maintenance around the boat. Turns out Doc Martens don’t offer the most amazing traction on slippery decks, especially when you’ve somehow managed to wrap ropes from the sails around yourself and lose the ability to move your arms. Newt learns this the hard way.

Luckily, Hermann is there to catch him.

“You are a bloody menace,” he scolds, as a half-soaked–but safe–Newt blinks dumbly at him in the safety of his surprisingly sturdy arms. “What were you even attempting to do?”

“Uh,” Newt says. “Fix the sails?”

Hermann rips the ropes off of him effortlessly, then lifts him higher. Newt stays still, blinking, before he realizes he’s supposed to be climbing onto the deck, and then scrambles up over the railing. “There we are,” Hermann says, sounding equal parts smug and satisfied.

“Thanks, dude,” Newt says. “If you hadn’t been here–” He frowns. “Wait, what were you doing here?”

“Nothing,” Hermann says, too fast, and Newt grins.

“You were totally spying on me!”

“I was not,” Hermann snaps. “I was merely passing by. You’re awfully hard to miss. So–noisy.”

“Uh-huh,” Newt says. “Well, lucky coincidence. Can I interview you for my journal now?”

For a moment Newt expects Hermann to dip back beneath the waves, but–glowering up at Newt–he folds his arms and rests them against the side of the boat. “What would you like to know?”

Newt digs his tape recorder from his pocket and switches it on. “Everything.”

Hermann is a begrudging interviewee, but he’s an interviewee none the less, and answers each of Newt’s questions with only a small dose of sarcasm. He eats fish, like some larger fish might. He speaks English, like most fish don’t. He lives in a city populated with other merpeople, who have jobs and families and houses, though significantly different from the jobs and families and houses humans have. “Technically,” Hermann says, with a strange, furtive glance around, “I shouldn’t even be telling you these sort of things. Interacting with humans is considered highly taboo in my society.”

“Oh, shit,” Newt says, and inches forward. “Seriously?”

Immediately, Newt’s brain works overtime to concoct an exciting, Little Mermaid-esque scenario: Hermann’s dad as the strict king of the ocean, wary of humans because of some ancient feud, Hermann longing for freedom, Newt–well, Newt would be down with kissing Hermann to help him get rid of that fin. He’d be down with kissing Hermann regardless. Newt’s scientific interest in him aside, Hermann is pretty good-looking. And–well. The forbidden, star-crossed aspect of it all is kinda exciting.

“Yes,” Hermann says. “Humans have hunted merpeople for centuries. Or so I’ve been told. But…” His face twists strangely–the corners of his eyes crinkling, his teeth flashing into view–and Newt realizes he’s smiling. Awkward, and shy, and unpracticed, but smiling. “You seemed different. I took a gamble.”

Newt blushes, just a little. “Hunted,” he echoes. “Is that what happened to your fin?”

“My fin?”

“It’s injured on the left side,” Newt says. “Like something attacked you. Did a human do that? Or another predator, like a shark or something?” Do merpeople have to worry about sharks? Maybe they keep them as pets. That’d be cool. If Newt was a merman, he would have three pet sharks.

“Oh,” Hermann says. “Oh, no, nothing so dramatic. That happened when I was human.”

Newt drops his tape recorder. It narrowly avoids bouncing overboard. “When you were what?”

“When I was human,” Hermann repeats. “Did I not mention I used to be human?”

“Uh, no,” Newt says.

“Ah, well,” Hermann says, “yes, it was some time ago. Perhaps a hundred years.”

“You look good for a hundred,” Newt says, because Hermann can’t have more than a couple years on Newt’s thirty-five. To his surprise, Hermann snorts.

“Yes, see, I was involved with a man,” he says, “and–well, he wasn’t pleased when I wanted to put an end to things, move on, you know, pursue other relationships. Only there were a number of things I didn’t know about him. He practiced–mastered, really–a strange kind of magic. He cursed me. I’ve been stuck this way–half-human, never aging another day–ever since.”

Merpeople, magic, curses–this is too fucking good. No one is ever going to believe Newt if he publishes this paper. “What kind of curse?” Newt says. “Like, one that can be broken?”

“Presumably,” Hermann says.

“Do you have to learn a lesson?” Newt says. He pushes up his glasses and leans closer. “Does someone have to kiss you? Like a true love’s kiss?” Newt was never one for reading fairy tales as a kid–having preferred the much more interesting alternatives of poking slugs with sticks and rolling around in the dirt–but he knows that’s a pretty big deal in those kind of stories. Frog princes and shit.

“I don’t know,” Hermann says. “All I know is that this has been very irritating. I had a laboratory, you know, with all sorts of fascinating equipment. I was a scientist. And now–”

“Can I try kissing you?” Newt interrupts.

Hermann flushes and shuts his mouth. “Ah,” he stammers, “I–I’ve got to–”

He disappears, in another splash and glint of fin. It was worth a shot.

Hermann comes back a few days later, and he comes back after that, and after that. Sometimes Newt asks him questions about being a merman. Sometimes Newt asks him questions about his previous life as a human. Hermann seems to like talking about being a human more, for reasons that aren’t very hard for Newt to guess. He was born in Germany, like Newt, though was schooled somewhat prestigiously in England (which explains the stuffy accent). He walked with a cane and a slight limp. He owned a very nice and very expensive telescope, which he misses, and worries about the well-being of, constantly. Sometimes Newt tells him things about himself, too: about his myriad of tattoos, his studies, how the human world has changed since Hermann’s time.

One day, as Hermann watches Newt eat potato chips and transcribe one of his numerous interviews from audio to pen, he suddenly reaches out and touches the corner of Newt’s notebook. “May I read this?” he says.

“Sure,” Newt says, hoping that Hermann doesn’t flip back to last week and read Newt’s entry where he described, in great detail, his attraction to Hermann, and the incredibly steamy dream he had about him as a result of that attraction.

Hermann skims Newt’s notes quickly, politely ignoring the grease stains Newt left behind, then pushes the book back towards him. He didn’t read about the dream. Thank God. “You called me a specimen,” Hermann says. His eyes crinkle in amusement. “How impersonal.”

“Yeah, well,” Newt says, heart pounding a little, because if he didn’t know any better he’d say Hermann is being flirty, “can’t let my institution know I’m on a first name basis with my subject. Conflict of interests.”

“Now, tell me,” Hermann says, “what do you plan to do with the information you’ve gathered when you return home? A book? An article? An exhibition? If you’re going to ask to put me on display, my answer is a definite no.”

“Nah, nothing like that,” Newt says. The truth is that Newt has no idea what he’s going to do with his significant compilation of research about Hermann. It’d be one thing if he found evidence of Hermann’s whole colony, or even a merperson besides Hermann, but to go zooming back off to his superiors with nothing three weeks’ worth of tapes and maybe a photograph or two–and after that tantrum he threw last month–he has a feeling no one is going to buy a single bit of it. Maybe he’d have a chance if he took Hermann back with him and did display him, but throwing his friend on the mercy of a society that would gladly dissect him without a second thought is completely out of the question. Maybe he’ll just write a weirdly detailed children’s book. “I might just keep it for myself, actually.”

The answer seems to please Hermann. He toys with Newt’s chip bag for a few seconds before–cheeks going a shade pinker–he says “I feel I ought to confess something.”

“Be my guest, dude.”

“I was following you the other day,” Hermann says. “I was following you that first day, too. And–” His eyes dart down, away from Newt’s. “Before then, even. You intrigued me, and I wanted to know what you were doing all the way out here.”

Newt grins. “I intrigued you. Ha! Cool. Well, now we’re even.”

Hermann smiles at him.

The last Friday before Newt is due to turn back and set course for home, he finally gets his first sign of other human life out here in the middle of the ocean: a fishing rig, at least twice the size of Newt’s tiny little rental, motors up not too far away from him and begins to cast its nets. Newt, an extrovert at heart and only mostly sustained by conversations with Hermann (who has a tendency to disappear for days at a time), is so starved for social interaction that he bolts out from his cabin when he spots it and begins waving frantically at the crew.

“Hi!” he shouts. “Beautiful out here, isn’t it?!”

He gets a friendly wave back. Newt expects he looks half-crazed, from his wild hair, to his unshaven scruff, to the explosion of freckles across his cheeks and neck, so he can’t really blame any of the crew for their hesitance.

“How are the fish?” he continues to shout.

A thumbs up.

“Cool!”

A net is drawn up; it’s a decent catch, but nothing too impressive. Earlier in the week, Hermann explained to Newt that, this close to mer-territory, anyone would be hard-pressed to find anything but smaller fish. Merpeople are much better hunters than some humans with a boat could ever dream of being. “I’ve been out here for over a month,” Newt continues his one-sided conversation. “I was looking for sea monsters. Have you ever caught anything like that before?”

No, they haven’t. The net is thrown back into the ocean.

“Okay!” Newt says. “Just wondering!”

The faint sound of groaning wood makes him stop in his tracks as he turns to head back into his cabin. Groaning wood, and splashing. Loud splashing. Excited shouts. It looks like the fishing rig netted something big.

Newt–determined, still, to be sociable–cups his hands around his mouth to call his encouragement over, but the words die on his tongue almost instantly. There, tangled up and flopping around in the rig’s netting, is a very familiar glimmering tail with a very familiar tattered left fin. “Hey,” Newt shouts, “stop! You’re–that’s my friend, you have my–!”

For the second time, Newt dives into the sea for Hermann.

He closes the distance between the two boats in no time at all, and–powered by pure adrenaline, ignoring the yells of surprise and anger above him–begins hacking blindly at the net with his pocketknife. A few more pieces–a few more strands–

It spills open. Newt feels a Hermann-sized shape graze past him, and a moment later, Hermann breaches the surface of the water. He doesn’t look very happy. “They caught me in their net,” he spits. “As if I were–!”

Newt hugs him. It’s not very graceful, considering the circumstances, but it’s something he’s wanted to do for a while, and he’s too happy that Hermann won’t be dissected or stuffed or something to care. “You caught my friend in your net while he was swimming,” he tells the fishermen over Hermann’s shoulder, now moderately more calmly. “I thought he was–uh–going to drown.”

The fishermen are profusely apologetic, to the point where Newt actually feels kind of bad for them, and it takes him waving them off with assurances they won’t sue or anything for them to hastily speed away. Hermann doesn’t look away from Newt once the whole time, his expression soft and just a touch unreadable. “You came to my rescue,” he says.

“Well,” Newt says, puffing out his chest, “a little bit, yeah.”

Hermann kisses him. Newt responds enthusiastically.

He’s so worked up over it all–grabbing Hermann’s hair, biting his weird frog mouth–that he doesn’t notice that the gentle fanning of Hermann’s tail against him has become the slide of skin against denim until Hermann suddenly grips at his arms. “Newt,” he says, eyes widening, “Newt.”

Well, even then it takes a bit. Newt kind of has a one-track mind when it comes to this sort of stuff. “Mm, yeah, Hermann,” he groans happily. He goes back in for another kiss, but Hermann dodges it.

“No,” he says, “I’m–” He gives a little kick.

Oh. “Oh, holy shit!” Newt exclaims, and laughs in delight. “Legs! You have legs!” Naked legs, in fact. Long naked legs–of course he’s taller than Newt. Hopefully he has some clothing that’ll fit the guy.

“Legs which don’t swim very well, I’m afraid,” Hermann says. He’s giving Newt another broad, awkward smile. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” Newt says.

There goes Newt’s paper, he guesses, but–strangely–he can’t really bring himself to care.

[catchlalune]

When We Collide

authors note: YEs hello!!1 I’m back at it again with the angst because I really don’t know no better. Super special thanks to Mama Bel aka @skzctnightnight​ for being a super awesome beta reader and giving me some awesome feedback (and otherwise encouraging me to finish this lol) also this is a request for my love Clem aka @pockpop​ (who also came up with the title) 

Pairing: Female! Reader x Joshua Hong

CEO! Au, Enemies to lovers, mentions of college

Word Count: 3.9k (literally two words away from being 4k)

Warnings: this deals with unhealthy forms of expression, and a bit of an unhealthy relationship, if this is something that triggers you please for the love of bob DO NOT READ. I am not responsible if you ignore this warning.

You liked listening to Joshua Hong begging for you, more specifically for your assistance. The desperation in his velvety voice, the pout of his pretty pink lips, the wetness of those catlike eyes. Absolutely delicious. Any more desperate and he would be writhing under your cute black kitten heels. 

"And just why should I help you?" 

"Oh come the fuck on, you know why." It's half of a whine and half of a growl and it almost makes you shiver.

"Okay, maybe I'm crazy but did I just hear you say that aloud?" You narrow your eyes at him. 

Joshua is on the very precipice of losing his shit, falling over the edge into anger. And Joshua Hong is a very patient man; it seemed you were the only one who could ever get him like this. You reveled in the idea that on your word and your word alone his very sanity hung in the balance. Good, he sure as hell deserved it. 

You hated Joshua Hong with a stern bitterness that left a nasty taste in your mouth whenever you looked at him. It hadn’t even always been like this, but when he started to change so did your feelings for him. 

In college you two were close, albeit not nearly as close as he and Jeonghan but close enough in your own right. You two were proverbially glued to the hip until he switched into his business major, but he hadn’t started to change until senior year. He’d been working dutifully on his startup project and the many hours you used to spend together would dwindle to minutes, then seconds, and finally only passing glances of tired smiles in between lectures or study groups. Joshua didn’t even show up to group outings with the rest of you anymore. Jeonghan and Vernon had tried to make excuses every time but even they stopped trying to justify his absences and eventually Joshua was nothing more than a small blip on everyone's radar. This was the first time the image of him turned rancid in your mind. 

You had witnessed Joshua’s character development in his college years along with the rest of them, the shy freshman who came straight from Church choir practices into a much more outgoing sophomore, then a funny charismatic leader and finally into someone who flaked on his friends. Did he ever even consider you all friends? You knew switching majors would be hard for him especially in his third year, he had so much to make up but if you knew Joshua Hong you knew that his intelligence and patience would make up for any momentum that he lacked. Maybe it was your fault, you had encouraged him to go for it and in doing so encouraged the downfall of your relationship. 

After everyone graduated and Joshua really got his startup up off the ground he had tried to weasel himself back into your lives, and everyone welcomed him with open arms. Well, everyone save for you. It seemed you were the only one that remembered his betrayal, the only one that felt your blood boil every time he talked about his business ventures and traveling around the world. He had tried so desperately to talk to you one on one but you had successfully thwarted off his advances at catching up time and time again. You, the person he has always held so dear, you, who he felt knew him the most intimately. You who he wanted by his side the most, who he tried to be the best he could be for. He had thought there had always been an unspoken attraction and tenderness between the two of you, but maybe he was wrong, maybe it was just him. Joshua wasn’t sure why there was deep set contempt in the depths of your eyes when you looked at him. Especially not when he had loved you so dutifully, so gently.

There is something distinctly venomous about someone who is generally in a caring and kind disposition being cold to you that makes it feel all the more malicious and cruel. Even more painful is it when it is the person you would lay your life down for. Words that were normally displeasing became heated bullets firing one after the other: scorching, heavy, and stone solid in their weight. Every single time you spoke to Joshua your words were laden with a potent distaste he had no idea you even had in you, you had always been so soft and warm with him. He now knew what it meant to scorn someone who was kind, if only he knew what he had done. 

This continued on for years until the present, the iciness of winter melting into the rebirth of spring to the solid wall of heat that was summer into the cool refuge of autumn four times over. The relationship between the two of you only became worse with the passage of time, the minimal group outings you all had with him always ended with a scathing remark from you towards him. He grew to expect the animosity, and deemed that maybe you hating him was ultimately better than not speaking to him at all. He had put up with it for so so long, trying to get back in your good graces in the best ways he knew how but all his plans backfired. Joshua was floundering in his relationship with you and subsequently all of his friends. He felt it, every time he saw one of you he felt it. 

The tension was always bubbling in the air, so frustratingly out of reach but so real and tangible he could taste it like arsenic in his mouth. In this moment, Joshua sits across from you as you glare at him without any regard to his feelings. He thinks he can finally reach up and grab it. If atmospheres could be seen this one would be as thick and as black as any bottomless abyss. The wait of words not said heavy and suffocating. Hearts beating slow, breath easing in and out in silent whistles of timidness and the reluctance can be the vile taste on their tongues. No one ever wants to speak of how heavy bad things are, because if it is spoken it is real. No one ever wants to be seen as a villain and so they do not speak in this instance, because if they speak it they are real. But you have to say it because this is not a movie, it is not a book and you and Joshua are oh, so real. 

“You’re one of them.” 

There's a pain in both of your chests, hearts writhing in agony at the words you spit out in your frustration. You didn’t like sitting here in this stupid big office in this stupid comfy chair with his stupid presence. 

“You take that back right now (Y/N).” 

His eyes are hard and set and finally you see a semblance of the man you used to know, used to love. 

“No. You don’t get to tell me what to do, I am not one of your lackies. You’re an absolute greedy piece of shit.” You stand from your comfortable perch right after you say it but he stands with you, eyes just as defiant. 

“I said, Take. It. Back.” He reiterates, spite leaking into every punctuated syllable. 

“You asked me for my honesty Mr. Hong, so I gave it to you. Now if you’ll excus-”

“Explain it to me then.” 

“What?” You’re sure you give him a dumb look but he just swallows, you can tell by the way his adams apple bobs and he fixes you with another glare. 

“I said explain.” 

You have to laugh at that. What was there for you to even explain? If he hadn’t gotten it by now he never would. But, you indulge him anyway. 

“You think your cute little attempts at flaunting your wealth over us is welcomed? Do you think your never changing ‘gentlemanly’ act is wanted? We know you so much better than that.” Your words cut at him like razor blades, sharp and serrated and leaving trails of stinging hatred in their wake. 

“What? All I’ve ever done was-”

“Was constantly paid for everything? You never show interest in our group activities and when you do come you treat us like children. ‘Oh you don’t have enough money for this? Let me help you.’ ‘This bill is way too high! Let me pay it.’ ‘I saw you looking at this but it’s so expensive! Let me get it for you!’ Do you know how tiring it is to constantly be coddled? To constantly be reminded that no matter what we do we most likely will never have a sliver of the wealth you do? You’re rich, that’s good for you but some of us like to work hard and save up for the things we want! Some of us like pooling our money together and paying for an extravagant meal! It makes us feel good to know we can have some luxuries, it reminds us of just how hard we’ve worked!”

Your voice was loud now, biting and steadily shoving into his chest pushing him back down to his seat. 

“But I-”

“And the way you act towards us all? We’re supposed to be your friends but you don’t come to us with anything! You don’t tell us when you’re tired, you don’t tell us when you’re hungry, you don’t tell us when you’re hurting! You haven’t for six whole years! You faded out of our lives then thought you could waltz back in like nothing happened! Like you hadn’t discarded us for your fame and success. You think you’re lonely Joshua? You think you’ve been ostracized by us? Have you ever stopped to think for a single second that you did it to yourself? That in your clamoring for acceptance you pushed away the only people who accepted you before you had money?” Your chest heaves, face hot with the admission of your feelings. 

Finally it dawns on Joshua that the emotions he had mistaken for hatred in your eyes for all these years hadn’t been hatred at all, but pain. An unmistakable hurt that could only be left by someone you thought the world of. You had thought the world of Joshua Hong and he had let it slip between his palms to land directly on your chest. 

His mind is too clouded to notice the way you spit out fuck you into the clean air of his office and turn on your heels. It was hours before he looked up, the sun was starting to set, making the sky a pretty palette of pinks, oranges, and purples. The echo of your footfalls that had long since gone in the recesses of his mind, the air still smelled faintly of your scent and it drove him right back to the brink of insanity.

Joshua Hong was very tired, and very very lonely. The only words of comfort to him were the ones you left swirling in the air before you left him to sit there in a worn out slump. 

☆☆☆☆

“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you to talk to her.” Jeonghan speaks to Joshua over the edge of his crystal shot glass, eyes burning into him like the taste of soju burned down their throats. Joshua was another bottle away from being absolutely shit faced. The ambience of the bar leads them into a false sense of comfort, the billowing streams of smoke from ashtrays and smells of cheap booze lingering in the air as they relaxed into the uncomfortable steele of the bar stools. The Tipsy Fox wasn’t the most savory of establishments, the lights were always so dim you could barely make out your own hands if they weren’t five inches away from your face, though the bathrooms were always modestly clean they wouldn’t be that way for very long, it didn’t have a no smoking policy so the air was always thick with the smell of tobacco amongst other things-never mind the fact it was always humid. 

In plain words: not fit for a billionaire. Not that Joshua had really cared about his image much after the conversation the two of you had. It had been nearly a month by now and though Vernon and Jeonghan had offered solace in their company they had definitely relayed that they most definitely had the same ill feelings though not quite as intense as you. He confronted (or more like cried to) everyone else later that night after your conversation and it left his soul feeling weary. Woozi and Minghao had chided him and when they listened to his reasoning they had asked if he had even listened to your words. They were not as forgiving as Jeonghan and Vernon (especially Minghao, who was what seemed to be your new best friend? When had that even happened?) but not nearly as stingy as you had been.

Over the course of the month there were some hard feelings and some disagreements but nothing that wasn’t able to be ironed out with long open-minded conversations. Finally everyone had come to the agreement that if he worked harder at just being present in general then it might restore the friendships much faster. They were so patient and so willing to speak with him he felt like you had completely blind sided him. He flip flopped between understanding the logic behind your ill feelings towards him and not getting how you could be so uncompromising when everyone else was. The latter was what he was feeling at the moment confiding in Jeonghan. 

“I just don’t understand Han, how do I fix it if (Y/N) won’t let me?” 

There’s a few beats of silence before Jeonghan sighs and pours each of them another shot. Joshua downs it as soon as it’s filled and Jeonghan sucks his teeth. He made a mental note to not pour anymore drinks for him. 

“Shua, you’re both going to drive me insane. Why can’t you two just talk to each other like adults instead of putting me in the middle of it?” The question is more rhetorical than anything else as he mutters it to himself but Joshua still hears him, a faint sparkle lights up his brown eyes. 

“She talked to you about me?” 

Jeonghan shifts back in his seat and gives his friend a long hard look. The dim lighting only made the bags under his eyes appear darker but he still looked good, Joshua always looked nice. His eyes shift past Joshua to your visage which draws more than just his glance as you walk into the dingy bar. 

Even for a normal person you'd look like a mirage, silky green dress hugging your frame like a dream and face made up in a natural look. You carry yourself with an air of confidence that you've hardly ever done. Jeonghan could tell you were more than feeling yourself tonight. 

It doesn't take Joshua long to catch the way Jeonghan was no longer paying attention to him so he turns to the direction his friend is looking and he swears his heart almost falls out his ass. You have finally crossed the bar to them and for a second Josh forgets all the years and pain and thinks you'll be settling in next to him for a long conversation about whatever for however long. Even with you wearing the color he most despised you look simply ravishing. His face heats up, feeling absolutely touch starved as he takes in the way your hand curls around your glass after getting your drink. How long has he been staring that you've had enough time to order and receive it?

“You know, it’s impolite to stare.” You don’t spare him a glance, instead sipping the cool drink from the glass in your hand. 

“How can I not when you’re so pretty?” You stop, glass half way raised to your lips with the feeling of fire etched beneath your skin. 

“I am so sorry, he’s really drunk right n-”

“I’m not drunk, I just thought she should know.” 

Jeonghan was trying to fix it, and had Joshua just let him there wouldn’t be this weird tension hanging in the air. They watch as you finish bringing your drink to your lips and take a large gulp before placing it on the polished wood to look at Joshua. 

Again, you don’t exchange words but you do take him in wholly. From the disheveled look of his silky cream colored button down (that had three buttons undone), to the messiness of his blue hair he was currently carding his hand through, to the faint flush on his cheeks, the way his black slacks fit his thighs, all the way to his eyes- brown and full of so much unspoken you had a feeling if you let the words fall out of his lips they would tumble around for hours. Yes, Joshua Hong was a sight. Ethereal sitting in an old bar while lighting the place up, you wondered if he felt the hungry stares from everyone else. For a moment you forgot all the ill feelings, feeling just as hungry as they looked. 

You finish your drink before standing with a sigh. 

“Come on, you need to sober up...before you do something stupid.” 

Jeonghan and Joshua blink at you before the former tries to suppress a smile, he fails miserably. 

The Tipsy Fox isn’t the most savory of establishments but it leads to a long night of you three eating hangover soup together as Jeonghan tells really bad jokes to get everyone to laugh. And when it is finally over after the sun begins to peek its head over the top of the horizon and you are alone in your bed with a full tummy you think about how it reminds you of the past. You wouldn’t admit it out loud but it feels so good your heart melts and feels a lot less frozen. You really wish you could hate Joshua Hong. 

☆☆☆☆

The next time you two meet it’s been a week since your heart has begun to thaw and you weren’t expecting to see him here at all, had you been you definitely would be wearing something much more flattering. But the more important thing was, how had he even remembered this old place? An old run of the mill rinky dink bookstore surely could’ve been easily forgotten by someone who probably didn’t even have time to read books anymore. Did he have time to read books anymore? Is that why he never had time to speak to any of you? 

“I didn’t expect to see you here.” Josh flashes you a warm smile that makes that fire ignite under your skin again.

 He couldn’t have come at a worst time, here you are sat on a stool (courtesy of the store owner) in leggings and an oversized sweater with a copy of Song of Solomon perched between your fingers. In an effort to look uninterested in his presence you languidly run your gaze up and down his body before looking back at the pages. Hopefully the sweat on your palms wouldn’t make the hardcover slip right from between them. Was this always the effect he had on you or had it just been because of that spark you felt a week ago?

“That makes two of us.”

“Toni Morrison is a good author.” 

You have to pick your head up to look at him not expecting the two of you to talk over each other, a wave of confusion crossing over your features. Joshua on the other hand just laughs, he wears that particular shade of mirth well. It makes your stomach churn. 

“You weren’t expecting me to be here either?”

“She is a good author.” 

 You crinkle your nose and Joshua laughs even harder. His laughter warms up the quiet store in a way that has the owner popping her head in the aisle with a small smile of her own. An old woman much older looking now than she was when the two of you were still in college. Back then things had been much easier, and the hole in the wall bookstore was a safe haven even when you didn’t need to study and the library was packed. The two of you had just happened upon it on a random late afternoon walk and it had quickly become your place. A little pocket of normalcy in the chaos of campus life, a place that when you stepped in felt as though space and time was at a stand still. 

Now, Joshua sits across from you at the small table the two of you used to use to study waiting for your tea to cool as the old woman talks your ear off about how Joshua had been a faithful regular and even bought the property when she had been in danger of losing it all. She doesn’t leave until your cup is finished and Joshua has nearly melted into the cushy chair beneath him. You stare at him for a while before you say anything again. 

“You remembered?” 

You remember telling Joshua once that you would love it if the two of you could buy it from the old woman one day so you could run it in your old age. He had agreed heartily but you were sure it was just from the mixture of exhaustion and alcohol the two of you consumed. It was only a passing comment though you had definitely meant every word of it. 

“I remember everything about you.” 

You bristle at the comment, how could he say something like that so nonchalant and act as if he hadn’t? 

“You don’t mean that.” 

He takes a long sip of his tea and takes his time setting down the porcelain. The look he gives you is a mixture of sad and weary and you almost wish you hadn’t said it. Normal people would have sighed or shown any form of displeasure, but not Joshua Hong. He sits with you and stares with a level amount of patience that makes you itch. 

“How could I ever forget something important to someone I love?” 

“You don’t-”

“Please, I’ve always loved you. Do you think I’d be sitting here if I didn’t? You may not believe me but I’ve always told you in my own way, though I’m not very good with those words.” 

You swallow thickly feeling like a piece of cotton is lodged in your throat and won’t move. This was not something you were prepared to do today. 

“The way you expressed your pain wasn’t very healthy but the way I dealt with my career wasn’t very healthy either. Shutting each other out and not talking hasn’t been working for the last six years, so can we try something different?” 

His voice is pleading, forcing you to look into his eyes. Had you made him look like that? Did you look the same? You could feel the wet stinging at the corners of your eyes now, threatening to spill over and splatter against the table top like silent gun shots full of repressed emotions. 

“Something different?”

His lips tilt upwards at your question, finally feeling like he was making some progress. 

“Why don’t we start by meeting here every Wednesday to read together and talk about our feelings and then once we’ve both gotten better coping mechanisms we try something more?” 

It doesn’t even take you half a minute to answer him. 

[heauxplesslydevoted]

Could’ve Been (Rafael x MC)

Title Inspo: Could’ve Been - H.E.R feat. Bryson Tiller

Summary: Casey realizes that letting go of a relationship is harder than she thought

A/N: 1) Me? Writing an Open Heart fic that isn’t about Ethan? Shocking. 2) This would’ve been up much sooner had I not started watching Real Housewives (quality hour of television, btw) and gossiping with my mom.

Tags: @drakewalker04 @canknot @akacalliope @senseofduties @badchoicesposts @ermidc @thatysn @paulfwesley @zodiacsign1 @choices-lurker

~v~

The rest of the city is calm, despite how she feels. Casey Valentine is exhausted. She just got off of a 36 hour shift at the hospital, most of her body feels like dead weight, and she wants so badly to go to sleep, but her brain refuses to shut off.

She rolls over, nearly colliding with Rafael. Her boyfriend is sound asleep, and she'd be envious if she wasn’t so content with the image of him. She’s never said it about a guy before, but Rafael is so attractive, he borders on angelic at times. His smooth brown skin is illuminated by moonlight, his long eyelashes curl along the apples of his cheeks, his lips are slightly parted, and she can hear his tiny breaths pass through as he breaths, the muscles in his arms and legs are loose and relaxed. Her eyes travel the planes of his body, loosely covered by her sheets, leaving little to the imagination.

Casey sits up in bed, ignoring the sheet as it falls from her body, and simply stares at Rafael. Moments like this, moments of stillness and tranquility are so hard to come by considering their hectic jobs and lives, and now that she’s stumbled into one, she doesn’t want it to go to waste.

Unconsciously, her fingertips reach out to touch the few strands of hair that are dangling in front of his face, and she gently grazes his forehead in the process.

He whimpers slightly at the contact and Casey freezes, hoping he doesn’t stir any further. It doesn’t work, as Rafael’s eyes flutter open slowly, adjusting to the world of consciousness. After a few dazed moments, his eyes settle on Casey and a smile forms on his face.

“Hi.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You can wake me up anytime.”

“No, you were sleeping so peacefully. Trust me, I know how hard good sleep is to come by.”

“I can fall asleep again,” Rafael says, his voice still hoarse and thick.

“No need to brag about it, Superman,” Casey teases.

Rafael chuckles softly at the nickname. He rolls over and wraps an arm around his girlfriend’s waist and pulls her in closer to him. She revels in his warmth. He was always her personal heater, his body running warmer than she’s used to with other people.

“Why are you up, my little insomniac?” Rafael asks, running a hand through Casey’s hair. Craning his head slightly, he sees the time on the alarm clock. 2:18 AM.

“I can’t sleep.”

“What’s up? Is work okay? Is sad or outlandish cases plaguing your dreams?”

“No. I’m actually on a winning streak at work.”

She can’t put her finger on it, but she can’t shake the anxiousness building in the pit of her stomach. There’s no justification for the feeling, and that’s the annoying part.

“Do you think you’re nervous about officially joining the diagnostics team?”

While she still had a few more months left in her intern year, it’d be over before she knew it.

“Maybe.”

“Well whatever it is, I hope it goes away soon,” Rafael continues.

“Me too. But in the meantime, you need to get back to sleep. What time do you need to be up for your shift?”

“7:30,” he answers. His fingers find her back and he strokes the soft skin along her spine. Casey shivers at the contact and moves closer to him, as if that’s even possible. She swings her leg over his, the heel of her foot coming in contact with his calf, as if she wants to test out just how intertwined they can be.

Maybe it’s her nervous energy, maybe it’s because she’s bone tired and wants to be cuddled like a spoiled toddler, or maybe it’s a combination of both, but the urge to cling to Rafael is overwhelming. Not necessarily sexually—though she’ll never not have sex with him if that’s what it turned into—but she craves the intimacy of his touch, the warmth of his body, his scent, all of him.

The pad of her thumb touches his jaw, drawing lazy circles. “I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, but you’re beautiful.”

“No one has ever called me beautiful before,” Rafael admits, and Casey can see a scarlet blush creeping onto his skin at the compliment.

“Well you are. I’m going to start saying it more.”

“I like it,” Rafael murmurs before capturing her lips in a kiss. She parts her lips, a silent invitation for him to deepen it, which he happily accepts. She hums in appreciation as his tongue finds purchase in her mouth, pushing, exploring, and his hands, simultaneously rough and gentle, finally settle at her side.

Her heart speeds up, and for a second there, she’s sure it stops beating altogether. Being with Rafael might be something she never fully gets used to. No matter how familiar he is, her body and mind still react like he’s something so pure and so rare.

After a while, he finally breaks the kiss, and she’s buzzing, dizzy and delirious, like she’s drunk on him. She doesn’t know how he has this effect on her, but she doesn’t mind.

After what feels like forever, Casey breaks the kiss and pulls back. They lock eyes and she’s pulled in, his brown orbs reminiscent of dark chocolate.

It’s in this moment that Casey Valentine realizes she’s stupidly and irrevocably in love with Rafael Aveiro. It’s all consuming and burns her from the deepest parts of her core, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

The confidence and security that comes with the realization tears at her defenses, lowering her guard. Whatever anxiousness she felt earlier dissipates as time ticks on. She doesn’t have time for that, not when she’s in the arms of the man she loves.

She must have a crazy look on her face, because Rafael gently squeezes her. “You okay? Why are you staring at me like that?”

The three words are on the tip of her tongue, but she swallows them. Instead, Casey kisses him once more. “Again, just admiring.” She yawns. “Let’s go to bed.”

“You think you’ll be able to go to sleep now?”

She nods and smiles giddily at him. “Positive.”

~v~

Casey startles herself awake, a cold sweat covering her skin. She pants, a hand flying to her chest to calm her beating heart.

“Raf, I–”

The words die on her tongue as she realizes that she’s in bed alone.

It comes flooding back to her. Sora came waltzing back into town, and Rafael broke up with her, saying he needed to see if there was still something there. She scoffs. Because stupid high school girlfriends still carry that much weight in your late 20s.

The memories cut Casey like a million tiny razor blades, piercing her skin and exposing her to the harshness of the real world. A chill settles in her bones, and she wraps herself in her thick comforter. It’s not enough, and it doesn’t compare to Rafael’s embrace in the slightest.

She’s done a decent job of compartmentalizing. She’s curt with him at work, she avoids group interaction, she got rid of all of his clothes shoved deep in her closet and her drawers. She doesn’t allow herself to think of Rafael.

And her stupid subconscious ruined it.

Now that the floodgates are open, he’s all she can think about. Where is he now? How are his grandparents doing? Do they like Sora? Do he and Sora pillow talk in the middle of the night, sharing secrets and talking about their days? Does he let her wake him up at all hours?

She should’ve told him she loved—loves, it’s still very much present tense—that night. If he knew how she felt, maybe they’d still be together. She should’ve had sex with him that night, if she knew it was going to be their last one together. She wouldn’t have done laundry and changed her sheets the next day because right at this moment, she’d do anything to smell him on her sheets again. Maybe that’s why she was so on edge: her intuition knew the breakup was coming, but the rest of her was blissfully unaware.

Casey allows the facade to drop, and the regret and ‘should’ve/could’ve/would’ve’s’ invade her brain for a minute. Up until now, she’s refused this, the mourning for her relationship with Rafael, because she knew she’d break.

Tears fall from her eyes quicker than she can blink them away. She doesn’t want to cry. She isn’t ready to open up that gaping wound the size of Texas that’s in the center of her chest because of this.

Before she can stop herself, she rolls over and grabs her cell phone, unplugging it from the charger. It’s incredibly late at night/early in the morning, but Casey doesn’t dwell on the time. Instead she scrolls through her contacts until she finds his name. There are no cutesy nicknames, no string of emojis, just a simple R. Aveiro.

Her thumb hovers above the screen for a long time, long enough for the doubt to settle in. She’s making a mistake, right? No one in their right mind is pathetic enough to call their ex in the middle of the night, especially sober.

Deciding she has nothing else to lose, Casey says fuck it, and calls anyway.

It takes 3 rings for Rafael to answer.

���Hello?”

Her breath catches upon hearing his voice. She just woke him up with this call, she can tell by the sound of his voice. Sleepy Rafael is easily one of her favorites.

She’s so caught up, it’s easy to forget that he’s still on the line and she hasn’t said a word.

“Hello? Casey, is that you?”

Casey counts silently in her head before nodding. “It’s me.”

“It’s almost 4 AM,” Rafael says.

Her cheeks burn at the statement. The embarrassment that she dismissed a few short minutes ago is present and in full force now.

“Is everyone okay?”

She misses when they were able to talk late at night with no pretense. There didn’t need to be an emergency with their friends. They were just Rafael and Casey.

“Y-yeah, everyone is okay,” she answers.

“Are you okay?”

No, she thinks. “I’m great.” Fucking liar.

“Okay.” 

There’s an awkward pause on the line, and Rafael yawns. He sighs heavily and she can feel it in her bones that he’s about to hang up on her. 

“I’m sorry for calling,” she starts, “I just...I don’t know, I guess I just missed hearing your voice.”

“And I’m sorry for unloading this all on you right now,” Casey continues. “But if I didn’t talk to you, I’d probably have a panic attack.”

“It’s fine, Case. I’m still your friend, you can wake me up anytime.”

Those are the same words he said to her during their last sleepover, and this time, she doesn’t try to fight the tears falling from her eyes. Maybe he said it on purpose, maybe it’s a sign from the universe that things will eventually be okay, or maybe it means absolutely nothing. Whatever the case, it sends her into a tailspin.

She wants to scream at him for being so dense. That's not good enough, it’ll never be good enough. She doesn’t want to be his fucking friend, she wants to be with him. She wants to fall asleep in his embrace, and wake up next to him. She wants things to go back to the way they were.

Her throat constricts and aches at the effort she’s putting into not sobbing into the speaker.

“Are you still there, Casey?” Rafael asks, concern laced through his voice.

“I’m still here.” If he hears her voice crack, he doesn’t bring notice to it, and she’s glad. “Again, sorry for bothering you. I have the early morning shift at work, so I should really get to bed.”

“Oh, of course.”

She’s caught in an awkward limbo of wanting to get off the phone as soon as possible, as if to save herself from anymore humiliation, but at the same time, she’s afraid to hang up on him. 

“Can you be the one to hang up?” She pleads. “I can’t bring myself to do it.”

Rafael swallows thickly on the other line. “Sure thing. Goodnight, Casey.”

“Goodbye, Rafael.” The finality of the words is staggering, and she’s shocked she actually managed to spit them out. She sniffles quietly.

But he doesn’t rush to end the phone call. Time drags on for a while and they both sit in comfortable silence. It becomes apparent that Casey isn’t the only one having a hard time letting go, and the fact brings her a tiny slice of solace.

But like all good things, the moment comes to an end. Saying goodnight once more, Rafael hangs up and the call ends with a resounding click.

And just like that, it’s over.

Whoever came up with the concept of closure is full of shit, because now Casey feels worse than she did before.

[ahtohallan-calling]

(Prompt) Litot-verse: The harvest festival the year after the main story. -🍂

THANK YOU for sending this ahhh it was so nice to revisit this verse, i miss these extra-sweet kiddos 💕

My Anna,

I hope Olaf remembered to deliver this to you on time. I wrote it before I left for the mountain; we don’t often get postmen up there.

I’m sure by now I’m missing you terribly. I’m probably sneaking glances at that photograph we took at the wedding every chance I get and annoying the rest of the harvesters by talking about how my wife is the most beautiful thing in the whole world.

I wanted to ask you something, though: would you go to the Harvest Festival with me? I still don’t like to dance with anyone but you. I promise to comb my hair and wear the vest you made me if you’ll wear your green dress. 

I love you more than anything. I’ll be home the evening before the festival. I hope you’ll wait up for me; as much as I hate leaving you, the reunions almost make up for it.

Your loving husband,

Kristoff

“What’s it say?” Olaf demanded, bouncing on his toes, and Anna laughed.

“It’s not for you, silly,” she teased as she took the kettle off the stove and carefully poured the steaming water into two mugs. He’d finally started actually drinking tea with her and not just milk, though like Kristoff he always wanted at least three sugars.

“I know, but I didn’t even peek this time,” he whined. 

“Did you used to peek?” 

“Yeah. You guys made me go back and forth so much I got bored of just walking.”

She let out a huff of surprised laughter. “You little imp!”

“Well– I don’t do it anymore.”

“We don’t send letters anymore!”

“Except this one. And I didn’t peek even once.”

Anna sighed as she passed him his tea, relenting. “He asked me to go to the Harvest Festival with him, that’s all.”

“Why would he do that? You’re married, it’s your job to go to stuff with him.”

“It’s romantic, Olaf.”

“Just seems like a waste of ink to me,” he muttered, taking a sip of his tea. “I’m not doing dumb stuff like that when I’m married.”

“We’ll see.”

—

Patience had never been one of her virtues, but she hoped God or whoever it was up there would understand why exactly it was especially difficult today. Kristoff had been going for two and a half weeks on his last ice harvesting trip of the year. Normally he went for only a week or less at a time, but when he’d hurt his shoulder and ankle repairing his grandfather’s roof this summer, he’d been out of commission for close to a month and was trying to make up for lost time and coin. “It’s alright,” Anna had reassured him, “I’ll just keep my salary this month, it’ll make up for it.”

It would be more than enough, the payment the Crown gave her for her work as a diplomat. But each month, after setting aside a small amount as savings, she donated the rest back to the kingdom and its people, to the orphanage or to the hospital or to the widows or to anyone else who needed it far more than she did. And so they lived on the money Kristoff made as an ice harvester in summer or as a repairman year-round or as his grandfather’s aide when someone came to the village seeking medical care.

Kristoff prided himself on that, on knowing that each drop of sweat that rolled down his back went towards keeping their house warm, to keeping them both fed and clothed, and she was proud of him, too, for pouring his heart into the work.

But he had insisted on going, and now she missed him terribly, and two and a half weeks was an awfully long time, especially around this time of year when it reminded her of last fall when they had both thought they’d never see each other again, and so she had been pacing for the last half-hour, having already finished every chore that needed to be done and those that were close and those that probably would never need to be done at all.

The sun was just beginning to slide behind the hill when at last a broad-shouldered figure came into view at the end of the road that led to their little cottage, and immediately a smile blossomed on her face. She flew out the door, running as fast as she could without risking harm, and he ran, too, until he caught her around the waist and swept her off her feet, spinning her around and around until she was dizzy and laughing and on the verge of tears of joy.

“I missed you so much,” she managed to gasp out as he lowered her back to the ground.

He kissed her then, his mouth tender and excited and heated and somehow relieved against hers. “I missed you, too,” he murmured, and she melted against him, her hands pressing down on his shoulders as she stood as tall as she could on the tips of her toes to keep her lips pressed to his.

Seeing her efforts, he chuckled and swept her up into his arms, kissing her forehead as he carried her back towards the cottage. “I can walk, you know,” she teased, looping her arms around his neck.

“Yes. But if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather hold you like this.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s all I thought about doing the whole time I was gone. Well– almost all.”

He kicked the door shut behind him and didn’t set her down until he reached their bed, and then she found out what almost entailed.

—

They spent the next day together in each other’s arms even when it didn’t make sense; Kristoff kept his arms wrapped around Anna’s waist as she made their morning tea, and she held his hand tight as they wandered through the waving sunflowers to choose which ones they would cut and bring with them to decorate the tables that night, and both of them kept stopping to kiss each other at every opportunity that presented itself.

Finally, though, it was time to get ready for the festival, and Kristoff half-heartedly attempted to wave Anna off as he sat in front of the mirror and pulled out his razor.

“But you look nice with a beard,” she said, settling her hands on either side of his face. “I like it.”

“It’s not really a beard yet, just a bunch of mess.”

“It’s terribly handsome,” she said sweetly, leaning up to kiss the underside of his jaw and prove her point. “Makes you look very rugged and mountain man-y.”

He chuckled at that and set the razor aside. “You’re very persuasive. I can see how you get all the visiting diplomats to eat right out of your hand.”

“And I don’t even have to kiss them to do it,” she said cheerfully. “You’re a much tougher nut to crack. Maybe you ought to be doing the meetings with me.”

He wrinkled his nose in distaste, and she kissed the tip of it. “Think I’ll stick to my ice, thanks.”

They dressed slowly, pausing between each button and lace to kiss each other, and by the time they were fully clothed they were both rosy-cheeked and wanting, each of them half-considering taking it all back off.

“We shouldn’t,” Anna said regretfully as she slid her hands down the front of Kristoff’s vest, pretending she was doing to so smooth out nonexistant wrinkles. It was the one he had worn at their wedding, the one she had labored over for weeks, embroidering each night for a few stolen moments at a time in order to surprise him. She’d learned from the older women in the village how to do it this way, how to imitate the style the others on the mountain wore, and he had wept when he saw her work– and wept again when she had walked down the aisle towards him wearing a veil that she had embroidered around the edges in exactly the same way.

It matched the dress she was wearing now– forest green because that was his favorite, and she had remembered even though he had only told her once. He loved it even more now that he could see how it brought out the copper fire in her hair as it cascaded over her shoulders, unbraided and free, the way he liked it best. The sight of her standing before him, flushed and pretty and smiling so brightly at him, took his breath away, the same way it had over a year ago the first time he had taken her to a festival like this. He wanted to keep her to himself, to celebrate the harvest in their own way; the only decorations they would want for were blooming in their garden, the only music they needed was the wordless melody she would hum in his ear as they waltzed through the living room, and the sweetest wine he would ever taste was the press of her lips against his, somehow always filling him up and still leaving him wanting for more.

But they would be missed if they didn’t go, and so with one final kiss he took her by the hand and led her outside.

—

She wasn’t embarrassed not to dance like the others anymore, not now that everyone in the village knew the truth. They had welcomed her with open arms from the start, but now their kindness overflowed as they clapped along with her on the outskirts of the party, or asked for her help in setting out food, or simply sat and kept her company while she waited for the slower music to begin and for Kristoff to set down his lute and come to join her.

To her surprise, though, when the band began to start playing a song she had only heard before in the city below, Kristoff turned to her and beckoned her over with a grin. She went over shyly, and he bowed his head to whisper, “Will you sing this one with me?”

“But I–”

“It’s a duet. It’ll sound funny if I try to do both parts.”

“But I’ve never sung in front of people before.”

“You sing for me all the time.”

“That’s different,” she insisted, flushing, but then he gave her that sweet smile he only ever spent on her and started singing, and how could she do anything but follow along?

When the song ended, her heart was racing as the crowd’s applause swept over her. Exhilarated, she caught Kristoff’s hand in her own. “Was that good?”

“Perfect,” he said, and when he kissed her the crowd only clapped louder.

They all paused then to eat together; she beamed when she saw how quickly the loaves of bread she had slaved over that morning and the bowls of the last of summer’s produce from their garden disappeared. Olaf insisted on sitting beside her, scarfing down food so fast she couldn’t help but laugh and say, “Slow down, you’ll make yourself sick!”

“Grandpapa says the more I’ll eat, the more I’ll grow,” he said around a mouthful of pie. “And that at this rate I’ll be taller than Kristoff.”

Kristoff snorted into his glass beside her, and she set his hand over his where it rested on the bench, squeezing softly. “I don’t know if you’d want that, Olaf. I mean, do you know how often he knocks his head on doorframes?”

This time he didn’t bother to hide his laughter. “Eat all you want, buddy,” he said affectionately to the little boy. “Then Anna will have someone else to bother when she needs help getting something from the top shelf.”

“You’re lucky I love you,” she said drily, and he leaned down to kiss her cheek.

Olaf wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Never mind. I think I lost my appetite.”

—

After dinner, when the songs were sweeter and the dances slower, she set her hands on Kristoff’s shoulders while he wrapped his around her waist, and they floated along to the melody together under the light of the moon, contentment settling over them both the way twilight was blanketing the crags of the mountain that rose above it all.

“Can you believe,” Anna asked him softly, “that we get to spend the rest of our lives doing things like this?”

His arms tightened around her, but he didn’t respond; she knew he was thinking of how close they had come to never having another moment like this, how they had gotten so lost from each other and only barely found their way back. She leaned her cheek against his shoulder as their movement slowed further, until they were only barely swaying back and forth. She slid one hand over to settle above his heart, relishing the steady, familiar thrum of it against her palm.

“It’s yours,” Kristoff murmured as she did so. “All of it, forever.”

They stayed that way for a long while, until a yawn escaped him despite his attempts at concealment. Anna tilted her head up to look at him, a smile curling at the corner of her mouth. “You just got back last night. You must be exhausted.”

“We can stay a little longer if you want. I know you’ve been looking forward to this.”

She shook her head. “Not nearly as much as I was looking forward to just having you back at home with me.

They said their goodbyes and drifted homeward together, hand in hand, both of them still wearing besotted, dreamy smiles even as they opened the door and slipped inside. Their clothes came off far more quickly than they had been pulled on, but Kristoff’s yawns were growing more frequent now, and so they both slipped into their nightclothes and settled into bed, lying nose-to-nose beside each other.

Anna let her hand drift up to cup his cheek, letting her fingers trace slowly over the strong line of it before trailing over to his nose, stroking slow, even lines down the bridge of it as his eyelids fluttered shut.

“I don’t want to sleep yet,” he murmured, though he yawned in spite of himself.

“Why not?”

“I don’t want the night to be over.”

She laughed softly and traced her fingertips over his lips before leaning forward to press a soft kiss there. “There’s always tomorrow.”

[feelingfredly]

By Invitation Only

Summary:    Bingo Square # 10

"I'm sorry, this is a private apocalypse.  You will have to leave."

The door looked like every other door in the alley.

“You're sure this is the right place?” His question disappeared into the sounds of the night—hovercycles revving the next street over, the whirring of an ancient ventilation system trying to work against the humidity of the night, and the constant murmur of people getting on with their lives, totally unaware that they were living next door to the deadliest gang in the history of civilization.

They called themselves  Ningyōzukai— The Puppetmasters—and according to Kisuke’s latest calculations they were responsible for the deaths of almost five million people over the past three years.

“Is anyone ever sure, Kurosaki-kun?  Perhaps this is Schrödinger’s door; the monster is or is not there until you open it. However,” the snarky philosopher voice was replaced by normal Kisuke voice in his ear—also snarky, but  more  somehow, “my calculations indicated an over ninety-seven percent chance that this is a primary viewing site for Aizen’s operations and a sixty-four point three percent chance that he is actually in attendance this evening. They are the best odds we’ve had so far.”

Just then, a sleek black Arasaka limo turned into the alley.  That kind of wealth was definitely outside the local demographic.

“Looks like the odds just went up.” Ichigo ducked farther back into the shadows and touched his visor jack, activating the heat sensor.  In the city it usually wasn’t useful, too much ambient interference, but this close body heat was hard to miss.

“Two passengers and two guards. Only two pulse pistols, but there’s a signature that might indicate vibroblades—three I think—on the one on the left.  Definitely some extra bells and whistles.” Kisuke sounded almost bored as he relayed the information. Well, he’d seen Ichigo take on twice this many targets without sweating, so maybe he was. With Kisuke it was hard to tell.

He rolled his shoulders and shook out his sword arm. The nanite armor on his hands flexed and he allowed himself a satisfied grin. Almost time.

The four exited the car and headed for the door. Ichigo focused on the two passengers, trying to get a good view for Kisuke’s scrapers. More data was always useful.

“Do we recognize these people?” he asked.

The larger one was male, brunet, and handsome in a too-pretty kind of way.  He looked to be in his late thirties, but for anyone with an aesthetician on speed dial that didn’t mean much.  His clothes screamed money, from the snow-white haori he wore over his suit to his actual leather boots, and he was clearly amped, with two visible jacks on the shaved side of his head.  He didn’t have any tracks on his face, though, so he probably was limited to human vision. His companion, though, clearly wasn’t.

Tall, thin, and sharp-edged, the second man almost glowed in the low light.  His hair was silver, his skin so white that Ichigo suspected that he’d had a full-body tattoo, but it was his eyes that gave him pause.  The man barely opened them, but Ichigo could see the mirror-sheen of military-grade optics from across the alley. That and the silver tracings that circuit-boarded his skin marked him as loaded with biosoft, it was just a question of what kind.

Ichigo didn’t think he made any noise, but the ghost turned and looked right at him, and he braced himself. Shit. There went the element of surprise. 

It was just his fucking luck that with all his upgrades the guy was probably faster than he was.  On top of that, with the past two weeks of constant rain Ichigo had finally given in and reprogrammed the soles on his boots so he didn’t slip in the runnels of unidentifiable muck that ran through Karakura’s alleys, sacrificing a fraction of his agility on the altar of not slipping and landing on his ass if he had to make a quick getaway, and then today, irony being the  only  constant in his life, the rain was nowhere to be seen. The night sky was clear, and the alleys were cleaner than they’d been before the deluge, a momentary mirage of civilization in the desert of concrete ruins that lined the edges of town, a sparkling clean carpet welcoming this man and his entourage in the warm Karakura night.

The moonlight was too weak to fight the hazy halos of light around the windows, acid-washed LEDs casting long green shadows, pink neo-neon burning on a peepshow marquee at the end of the alley, and over it all the scrolling data Kisuke was feeding him, but Ichigo’s attention was fixed on the ghost.  One heartbeat. Two. And… nothing. The man tilted his razor-sharp chin to one side and paused but made no move and raised no hue and cry. Then they turned to the door and the danger point had been passed.

“Odds have increased, indeed, Kurosaki-kun. That is Aizen Sosuke, your target for this evening.”

A bullseye flickered in his visor and settled not on the ghost, but on the brunet. Ichigo looked a little closer.  He’d only seen vids of the man before and Aizen looked different in person—no glasses, the lab coat and meek posture of a scientist traded for a confident swagger, his whole aura altered.  No one would suspect that this dangerous-looking man was the mind behind the cybernetics of HuecoMundo or the charitable works of his Espada.  This  man was the Puppet Master himself, here to sell death and destruction to the highest bidder.

“The man with him is Ichimaru Gin. Reports indicate that Gin is a fanatic follower. He was picked up as a child from the wastelands outside Tokyo after the food riots in ’67.  After that he was first in line to receive many of Aizen’s new products. He’s probably more synth than human by this point.”

Ichigo nodded his understanding, knowing Kisuke’d register the movement.

“With both of them there, plus the personal security and the site security, this may be more than you want to take on by yourself. You can track them tonight and I’ll contact Byakuya and see if he and Renji can join up with you later.”

Ichigo knew the odds weren’t great, but he couldn’t shake the image of the last town the  Ningyōzukai  had targeted.  Unwilling to pay Aizen’s protection fees, they’d gone into the pool of possible targets, and then the boss of the next town to the west had bid heavily for them to be next on the program.  The betting window was thirty days—how much damage the attackers would take, how many casualties in the first 24 hours, how long the citizens would hold out, how long it would take to decimate the population—and the actual destruction took less than a week.  Matsuo was nothing but a ghost town now, the citizens occupying cells in the neighboring boss’s body bank, the illegal organ sales filling his coffers obscenely, with Aizen getting 40% off the top.

No. He couldn’t put this off if it meant another town being destroyed while he twiddled his thumbs.

Ichigo shook his head once and Kisuke sighed, but he could hear the satisfaction in it.

The two men and their bodyguards had made their way to the door, the brassneck minding the door bowing deeply to them before allowing them to pass and closing it behind them.  The pause allowed him to get a good look at the locking mechanism and the points of weakness in the frame, and Kisuke almost cackled as he dove into the building’s mainframe.

“Alright, Kurosaki-kun, if you’re certain.”

Ichigo smiled. “Is anyone ever certain, Urahara-san? Perhaps I’m simply…”

Kisuke cut him off. “Perhaps you’re a congenital smart-ass just waiting for someone, smarter and better looking, to come along and teach you a lesson in manners?  Yes. I can totally believe that. Now, if you don’t mind, Kurosaki-kun, I’d feel better about this if you actually focused on the job at hand.”

He laughed under his breath. “Okay, Kisuke.  If you insist. I’d almost think you were worried about me.”

A short huff filled his ear. “Worried about training your replacement. I have invested far too much time in you to sacrifice it all because you weren’t paying attention.  Now. The door is on a separate circuit from the rest of the building. They really don’t want anyone just cutting the power and waltzing in, but the software hasn’t been updated in a while, so just…”

Ichigo ignored the rambling.  Kisuke always babbled when he was thinking.  He walked across the alley and knocked on the door.

A screen to the left of the doorframe lit up and the brassneck peered at him through the grainy camera. “Who are you and what is your purpose?”

Ichigo gazed blankly back at the camera and repeated the message he’d memorized.  “I am Chikamatsu Monzaemon, here to tell tales of sewamono and jidaimono and to move the puppets on their strings.”

The brassneck nodded. “Please place your hand on the scanner.”

Ichigo took a deep breath and pressed against the biolock, waiting for Kisuke to work his magic.

“You know if you’d waited a few more seconds I wouldn’t have had to rush.” Kisuke sniffed and the lock buzzed its approval of his fake palm print.

“You love the rush,” Ichigo murmured fondly as the door swung open.  The doorman’s robotic face registered a blip of confusion but decided to ignore whatever Ichigo was saying, clearly limited in its processing, the real security being the system that Kisuke was currently battering into submission.

“No weapons are allowed past this point.  Please move forward to the weapons check and place them in the tagged locker.  You will be given the code to retrieve them when you leave.”

Ichigo turned on his heel as if to follow the robot’s directive, only to stop and spin back, trench knife in one hand and katana in the other, the smooth swing of the blades separating the brassneck’s head from his body.

“I’m sorry,” he said, standing over the sparking remains, “but I refuse to make Aizen-sama’s acquaintance so underdressed.”

Kisuke snorted in his ear.  “No one is there to hear your dramatics, Kurosaki-kun.”

Ichigo kicked the head to one side, like a soccer ball. “You know that you’re the only audience I need, Kisuke. How’s the progress?”

His partner hummed. “I’ve isolated the main viewing room from the rest of the security system.  They shouldn’t know you’re coming.”

Ichigo flexed his arms. “Best news I’ve had all day. Patch me in.”

He stepped over the sparking chassis on the floor and headed deeper into the building.

Information flickered across his vision—floorplan, heat signatures, data ports, ventilation system—ahhh…  that’s what he wanted. The largest of the private viewing booths.

Currently it showed four human or human-adjacent heat signatures, and three that were probably sentry-bots.  There was one void, which meant that someone in there was wearing a skinsuit made to prevent their being seen on surveillance like this. 

“The readings I got of Aizen in the alley showed a normal heat signature, Gin too.  Watch out for the mystery player.”

Ichigo laughed under his breath. “You say that like I wouldn’t, Kisuke.  You know how careful I am.”

The data streaming into his head turned a lurid pink and flashed HA HA VERY FUNNY for a split second and he had to smother another laugh.  It was a constant battle between them, each telling the other to be more careful and neither listening very well. The key, though, was knowing when to listen.  After the past few years with Kisuke, Ichigo thought he knew that pretty well.

Urahara Kisuke took risks that most would balk at, but rarely with Ichigo’s well-being, and never without a damn good reason. Ichigo, in turn, would follow almost all of the other man’s advice… until he didn’t. It worked for them--probably because they knew it wouldn’t work for anyone else.

The other hallways were mostly empty.  Two of the upper halls had service bots, probably loaded with food and drinks for the gluttonous members of Aizen’s little club.  Each one there by invitation only available for an extortionate price.

“How many viewing rooms are active?”

Kisuke hummed. “There are six active, but only four are currently occupied. One on the ground floor, one on the first, and then the other two are all the way up on the top floor.  Must be high rollers to share a floor with Aizen himself.”

Another hum. “According to the datascrape, tonight’s target is,” he cursed softly under his breath, “Huangshi. Outside Wuhan. Close to a million citizens.  Run by a warlord who goes by—oh, this explains a few things— Huangdi .”

Ichigo parsed through his Chinese history and came up short.  “Okay, it may explain things to you, Kisuke, but I don’t get it.  What does the Yellow Emperor have to do with Aizen choosing  this  city to destroy?”

He darted down the long, dark hallway, making sure that the cameras he passed were still offline after Kisuke’s first take-down.

“Well, it wouldn’t mean anything if the occupant of the front row to tonight’s cataclysm wasn’t a self-styled  Yandi . He came up through the ranks of one of the newer populist cults in Wuhan, but really started making a name for himself after he had several biotic alterations that turned him into a walking flame-thrower.  He killed at least a half dozen cultists by burning them to a crisp before turning his new-found talents on the management. He took over the whole group in less than five months, earning the nickname Flame Emperor of Wuhan.”

The dots were beginning to look connectable.

“So, Huangshi is run by someone who is setting himself up as Huangdi, the Han Emperor that ended the Yan dynasty.  Subtle. Why not just take out a hypersign that says, ‘I’m coming for you, Fuckboi?’”

It was always this way.  Fight like hell to take a territory, then become unsatisfied with what you have, only to take more and more until a bigger fish comes along and swallows you whole.  Unfortunately, this time it wasn’t just one greedy fish paying the price. No, a million people who just happened to be unlucky enough to share a city with him were going to pay, too.

“Who are the other viewing parties?  Yandi’s entourage?” Readouts showed a total of twelve people in the two lower rooms.  And look at that… they shared a ventilation shaft.

“No. The group on the ground floor are Aizen’s bodyguards. I’m predicting they are just watching to pass the time between patrols. Second floor seems to be a potential client here with an investor to size up the opportunity Aizen promised them.” A note of bitter satisfaction crept into Kisuke’s voice. “What a shame that when the time comes for them to sign their contract their bank accounts will contain nothing but dust.”

Ichigo followed the floor plan until he found the central exhaust fan for the heating system.  It was spinning gently, simply circulating air rather than actually trying to vent anything. He pulled a pair of canisters from the bag slung low across his back with one hand, and a collapsible baton from a holster on his thigh with the other.

“Can you isolate the exhaust fan on the ground floor?” he asked.

“It would take a minute or two, why?”

Ichigo snapped the baton open and stabbed it into the grate over the fan between the moving blades.  The fan shuddered and groaned but stopped. Perfect.

“No reason,” he said, popping the canisters open.  Each can was filled with a combination of tech-ticks—nanites that attached themselves parasitically to wetware that wasn’t hardened against them, rendering them useless over time—and a potent knock-out gas.  It would only take moments to flood the lower viewing rooms and remove those people from the equation. The damage from the tech-ticks would be permanent and expensive to repair—really, one of Kisuke’s best inventions—but it would be a small price to pay for the terrible decision they’d made to associate with Aizen and his lot.

He pulled a vibroblade from his pack and sliced through the grates covering the branching ventilation shafts and then dropped the gas grenades into them.

“Start sleepy time countdown now,” he said. 

“Anyone ever tell you you’re too soft-hearted, Kurosaki-kun?” Kisuke didn’t believe in leaving targets free to rejoin a battle. He was more efficient than that. Ichigo, though, didn’t figure the people in these rooms would join the fight to protect Aizen.  The security staff looked like bakebrains and wannabe bioroids who’d signed on for a paycheck. The clients might want to stay on the bastard’s good side, but when it was their skin on the line it was more likely they’d run from the building as fast as their hardware could carry them. The tech-ticks would slow them down and mark them in such a way that they could deal with them later if they persisted in their homicidal tendencies, but he didn’t sign on for wholesale slaughter, even if it would make him safer in the long run.

“Soft-headed, maybe,” he murmured, “but never soft-hearted. Why?  Are you accusing me of having a heart, Kisuke?”

The man on the other end of the line snorted. “Yes. You’re a sloppy, sentimental, bleeding-hearted man that secretly watches kitten and puppy videos when he’s supposed to be doing recon, and your countdown is at zero.  The occupants of viewing rooms one and two are incapacitated. I have, in case you’re interested, placed chrono-locks on the doors from the outside. They will not be leaving for twelve hours, even if the sedation wears off before you’re finished here.  You’re welcome.”

Ichigo grinned. “You’re the best, Kisuke.”

“Yes. I am.  Now focus. You’ve got a job to do.”

He backtracked to the main corridor and down to the elevator banks. “Which one is operational?”

The data readout in his left eye flashed a yellow rectangle over the nearest set of doors and he pressed the call button.  Kisuke had deactivated the other transports to prevent any  other  party crashers from interrupting the evening.

The elevator was old and noisy—nothing like the high-end security droid guarding the hall when he finally arrived at the top floor.

Kisuke was muttering again about time—he always wanted more—but Ichigo took one look at the guardian and knew this was up to him.

“I'm sorry, this is a private apocalypse, you will have to leave." The sentry droid looked disturbingly human, except it hovered two inches off the floor and Ichigo’s sensors read three different power supplies.  Its face was painted more elegantly than the most expensive joyboys in Tokyo, and its clothing cost more than Ichigo’s hoverbike.

It was really too bad.

“Private, you say?” He stepped towards the droid, blocking its vision as he dropped a microfilament whip down along his thigh and shook it loosely. “I’m sure I’m allowed.  I have an invitation from Aizen-sama.”

The droid cocked its head to one side. “Invitation? I was given no information about any other guests for this apocalypse.  I must insist that you leave, at once, or I will be forced to treat you as a threat.”

The power supply located in the droid’s upper left torso showed a rapid increase in activity, indicating pop-ups in one or both of the arms.  Whether they were for sleeper darts or bullets was anyone’s guess. Ichigo breathed in, once, and focused on the microfilament he couldn’t feel.

“Allow me to assure you,” he moved—weight balanced on the ball of one foot, knee bent, as he swept around slashing through the droid’s carapace in four precise cuts… three placed directly through the power supplies so there’d be no regeneration, and the fourth across the eyes to stop any potential visual records from being scraped from the droid later. “I’m supposed to be here.”

The pieces tumbled to the floor, the deep pile carpet muffling the sound, and Ichigo stepped over it, moving on towards his next target.

“How’s the bank coming?” he asked.

Kisuke made a satisfied sound.  “The Red Emperor’s coffers have been emptied.  I skimmed ten percent and the rest is now sitting in a Westphalian bank account waiting to be used towards reparations for damages that might come from tonight’s scheduled cataclysm.  If we somehow manage to prevent it completely, well, then we’ll just have to figure out something else to do with all that beautiful filthy lucre.”

Ichigo had no doubt that Kisuke had already mentally spent every credit.  He might be easy, but he certainly wasn’t cheap.

“Excellent.  When Aizen tries to take his last pound of flesh in payment and finds nothing but bones, hopefully he will call off the attack.  Can’t imagine that he’s ever offered services pro bono.”

No.  Aizen Sosuke hadn’t a shred of mercy or generosity.  Terrible qualities if you wanted to befriend the man, but excellent if you wanted to predict or manipulate him.

Ichigo moved silently to the viewing room Kisuke marked on his readout.

“The mystery player has moved across the hall and is now confronting the Red Emperor.  You’d better get in there if you’re hoping to end the evening with minimal bloodshed,” he warned.

Two steps down the hall and then a pause at the locked door, throwing a glance over his shoulder at the last room on the floor.  Aizen’s room. No movement showed through the heat sensors. They could be sitting having tea for all he could tell.

The other room, though, was falling into chaos.  He could hear shouting through the door, faint but definite, and then a single scream, like a wounded animal.

Too slow, apparently.

He pushed the door open and stood back from the opening.  No sense in making himself a target right off the bat. The mystery player, though, wasn’t interested in him.

“The Ningyō No Masutā is gracious and forgiving, but he is not a fool to be taken advantage of.  He offered you your dreams, and for a mere pittance, and you have insulted his honor by not fulfilling your promises.  Since it seems that there may have been outside influence in this, you will keep your life—this time—but do not confuse his intentional generosity with blindness.  Your responsibility to him is your responsibility to protect and guarantee, even if interfered with.”

The speaker dropped his sword—an actual  sword , it looked ancient—and bowed his head.

“Spread the news of his greatness and be thankful that you can.”

The room was in chaos.  Several people were sobbing and there was blood everywhere.  A small woman kneeled crouching before a huge man dressed in dark red silks, his belly held up by a suspensor belt, holding her crimson skirts against the bleeding stump of his arm where a hand should have been.

The hand was on the floor.

The speaker was short and dark, braids bobbing around his head like little snakes, and his eyes were completely white.  He was probably blind, in the technical sense, but there was no way he didn’t see everything happening around him.

Ichigo could see silver filaments running along the length of his bare arms.  He wasn’t  wearing  a skinsuit…  it was  embedded in his skin. He couldn’t imagine the hours of work, the expense, the pain, necessary to make such a thing happen.  It was incredible.

“Kaname Tōsen,” Kisuke murmured. “I didn’t realize Aizen had his claws so deeply in him.  He’s… not the same. Be careful, Kurosaki-kun. He’s a zealot, and you know how unpredictable those can be.”

Ichigo digested that bit of information.  For Kisuke, that was a serious warning.

As if he knew he was the topic of conversation, the man in question spoke.

“You, Kurosaki Ichigo,” Tōsen didn’t turn towards him. “You are late.  My master is waiting for you across the hall. Do not make him wait longer, or his impatience will become mine.” With that, his sword twitched, as if hungering to be unleashed.  Impatience indeed.

“Well, then,” Ichigo nodded at him, “since you seem to have this under control, I’ll just scoot along.  Anything you’d like me to pass along?”

His unflustered response was a roll of the shoulder. “I need not tell my master anything.  He already knows everything he needs to. Now go. Quickly.”

The order itched between Ichigo’s shoulder blades, and he hesitated, almost wanting to linger just to see what the other man would do. But if Aizen already knew he was there, there was no point in delaying the inevitable, even if his natural reluctance to follow orders was being challenged.

“This wasn’t the plan, Kurosaki-kun,” Kisuke’s voice was very bland, which meant he was worried. “It is one thing to surprise a snake when it’s sleeping.  It is another to challenge it head on.”

Ichigo rolled his shoulders and walked toward the door at the end of the hall.  The floorplans indicated that it opened into a large room that ran the whole front of the building.  This high up, it probably had quite a view. He wasn’t going to miss that.

“Do you have eyes on the main room?” he asked.

“No.  Haven’t been able to get eyes.  The plans indicate cameras were installed, but I can’t find a trace of them.  Aizen probably had them removed.” 

Made sense.  Almost anything was hackable if you were good enough, and Kisuke was definitely good enough.  The only option would be to dumb the room completely. Heat signatures would be reliable, still though.

“Am I still looking at a party of two now that Tōsen is out of the picture?”  He had two stun grenades, but they were touchy in close quarters like this. His two knives were better… and he was better with them.

“Gin hasn’t moved since he entered the room, which is a little concerning because it could be a mirror, but you won’t be able to tell until you get in there.  I can say that there are only two heat signatures in the room. I just can’t tell you where they’re going to be. Let me check just one more thing.” Kisuke sounded frustrated, and Ichigo knew he was probably chewing through every piece of data he could scrape to find out something—anything—that would be useful.  Sometimes, though, you just have to take the jump and hope for the best.

“Kisuke,” he said, “it’s now or never.”  He kept his voice soft and gentle, but they both knew that once he made up his mind there was no going back.

Kisuke sighed, and Ichigo thought he could hear a shudder in it.

“Don’t turn your back on him.  Gin may look dangerous, but Aizen  is  dangerous.  And don’t…” his voice cracked just once. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Ichigo laughed—a sharp, dark thing—and he remembered the first time he met Kisuke, standing over three unconscious bodies that had mistakenly thought the tall, pale gaijin would be easy pickings. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

And then, as if summoned, the door opened.

He walked the last steps down the hall, the hilts of his knives shifting loosely against his back and thigh, and he paused infinitesimally outside the threshold, foot raised but not crossing, and that was when he saw it.  A microfilament spool mounted just at the edge of the door’s frame—a sudden and terrible surprise for anyone incautious enough to waltz in uninvited, the weapon poised to take off an arm or a head, whatever was unlucky enough to be in the way.

“Good evening, Aizen-san,” he said, pitching his voice to carry into the room ahead of him. “I was told to hurry because you were waiting for me, but I can only hope you don’t think me foolish enough to  lose my head  over such an invitation.” He snapped out his short knife and stabbed it into the door frame, breaking the mounting piece from the rest, causing the microfilament spool to fall to the floor with a clatter. “I didn’t expect much from you, but I have to say I’m disappointed in your hospitality.”

Ichigo gambled that there would be no other weapon in the immediate vicinity and walked through the door.  The room was filled with light from golden lamps on low tables around the space, and the beauty of the Karakura night poured in through the bank of windows.  Aizen, tall, dark-haired and handsome, his dangerous swagger from the alley still very much present, stood facing him with a look that balanced somewhere between annoyed and entertained on his face.

Ichigo recognized that look.  Kisuke wore it often.

“My hospitality is typically reserved for honored guests or friends or family.  You, Kurosaki Ichigo, are on none of those lists. Although,” he paused and looked him up and down suggestively, “you might be able to persuade me to add you.  If you prove interesting enough.”

Ichigo couldn’t completely stifle his laugh. “Oh, really?  And just what would you find interesting? I somehow doubt our definitions would align.”

Aizen sauntered across the room towards him. “I wouldn’t be so sure.” His voice dropped to a purr. “I mean there has to be something about you keeping Ki-chan entertained.”

There was dead air in his ear.  Not radio silence—dead air. Kisuke had cut the line. Why had Kisuke cut the line?

“He gets bored, you know,” a second voice sounded behind him.  Gin. Gin was standing behind him. “Your Kisuke. He likes the chase. The rush. He ain’t so much with what comes after.”

You love the rush.  How many times had he said that?

Aizen watched the expressions play across his face and smirked. “Don’t tell me.” He clapped his hands gleefully. “He didn’t tell you.”

Ichigo saw red.  Fuck that  .  He didn’t care  what the guy knew about Kisuke, he wasn’t putting up with that shit.

“Tell me what? That you’re a murdering bastard who’s destroyed almost a dozen cities and deserve to be chopped into little pieces and fed to the koi outside the Summer Palace?” Ichigo cocked his head to one side and cast a look up at the brunet. “No, I’m pretty sure he told me all that.  In those precise terms, actually.”

Gin barked out a laugh and Ichigo breathed a little easier as the tall man crossed the room to the low couch and slung himself out across it.  Keeping Aizen in front of him would be much easier if he didn’t have to worry about the ghost behind him.

“That sounds just like him.  He always got—colorful—when he was bitter over something and trust me… he’s bitter.” Venom dripped from Aizen’s words. “Bitter that I moved on without him.  Bitter that I took his little idea and turned it into something  so  much bigger.  So much…  more. Ki-chan just couldn’t see the big picture.  This is what dreams are made of. Infinite power.  Infinite knowledge.”

“Infinite crazy, you mean.” Ichigo stepped towards the brunet. “If Kisuke isn’t here with you creating your made-to-order apocalypses, it’s because he doesn’t  want to be.  He doesn’t want any part of it.  Or any part of you. Get real, Aizen-sama .”

There was a tiny intake of breath in his ear.  Kisuke.

“Gin!”  Kisuke could have whispered it or shouted; Ichigo was too focused on the hand on his shoulder and the blade at his throat to tell.

The ghost really  did  move faster than he did. Luckily, not faster than Kisuke’s nanites. He hoped. He leaned back a little against Gin; if the other man thought it was to get a little space between his carotid and the sword…  well, it wasn’t illogical.

“You see,” Aizen was still talking, allowing Gin to hold him as a captive audience, “that’s where you’re wrong.  Or one of the many places you’re wrong. My Ki-chan  is  here—through you. He’s watching, and listening, and taking his voyeuristic pleasures just as he always has, he’s just lazy.  He lets us do his dirty work for him, and he just sits back and  revels  in it. And we let him, because we love him.”

Long legs ate the few steps between them and Ichigo was forced to look up to meet Aizen’s gaze. Equally long fingers gripped his chin and forced it even higher before he pressed their mouths together, sharp teeth digging into the soft meat of Ichigo’s lower lip, his vicious tongue swiping up the blood welling up there.

“Aren’t you…” Aizen closed his eyes and let out a breathy sigh, “delicious. I can taste the boosters in your blood.  Ki-chan has outdone himself. Maybe I  should  keep you around.  It might help keep Ki-chan more…  amenable.”

Ichigo had had about enough. He shifted, rolling forward onto the ball of one foot and then dropping his full weight.  The surprise bought him a split second and with it he struck his elbow backwards into Gin’s torso, wresting a gasp from the ghost, and his face from Aizen’s grasp.

“Now, Kisuke .”

A whisper sounded behind him, slowly growing louder, and he knew if he looked back that the hundreds of tech-ticks that had been riding on his back would be warping his view of the bodyguard, each one latching onto something, anything, that it could eat away at, like tiny techno-piranha.

Aizen laughed. “Do you think I wouldn’t have hardened Gin’s bioware against Ki-chan’s little toys? I thought you were smarter than that, but I guess you  are  just a pretty face.”

Ichigo felt Gin’s hands fall away and heard him groan.  “Aizen-sama,” he gasped, “something is wrong.”

A ferocious frown spread across the brunet’s face. “No! It’s not possible. You were updated before we left.  I made sure.”

Breath racked through Gin’s chest. “Urahara must’ve changed something. I…  I don’t…”

The instant of confusion was all Ichigo needed.  He raised the trench-knife in his hand and gritted his teeth as he punched it through Aizen’s chest, just below the glowing orb imbedded in his sternum.

An almost fond smile crept across the taller man’s face and he shook his head slowly. “So… not just a pretty face after all. You have conviction as well. I hope Ki-chan got a hi-def recording of this. I want to see it. I want to see it with  his  eyes.”

Aizen’s expression tightened, his lips twisted in a grimace of pain, and Ichigo braced himself for the blood and the screaming… but they never came. Instead, like water breaking against a blade, everything that was Aizen Sosuke shivered and shimmered around his weapon and then burst into a million pieces, waves of nanotech crashing to the floor, dead.

“Shit,” Kisuke cursed in his ear. “It was a doppelgigai. He’s improved the life-sign imitation since the last time I had to deal with one.  Damn it all.”

“Well, well, well,” the voice behind him sounded much less breathless, and Ichigo spun to face the ghost. “Wasn’t sure what to expect from you, but  that  was worth the price of admission.”

Gin’s color was normal, and his breathing natural. Apparently—another fake.

“Amazing recovery,” Ichigo said, slowly stepping away from the skittering pile of Aizen-that-was.

“Isn’t it, though?” Gin put away his sword and raised his empty hands. “It won’t last long, I’m afraid.  I’ll have to fry a few circuits before rejoining Aizen-sama, but it’s worth it.”

Ichigo made some quick calculations and came to an unexpected conclusion. “Not a fan, then?”

Gin cocked his head to one side. “The man’s a monster.  Brilliant, but doesn’t have enough soul left to fill a shot glass.  I got close to try to take him out, but he’s beyond me. He might not be beyond your friend, though.  Aizen’s got a real blind spot about the blond.”

Ichigo could understand.

“The next apocalypse won’t be so easy to derail.  Mining town called Ganymede. The army there is poised to attack, and Aizen is taking his pound of flesh in the form of Yttrium.”

Kisuke murmured in his ear. “He must still be working on those superconductors. We can’t let him get his hands on it. There’s no telling what kind of damage he’d do.”

Ichigo nodded to both of them. “Rare metals are key. So, what’s the play?”

Gin stretched, his long body lean and deadly, and smiled. “I don’t have one.  I just have a message for your fella—next time, don’t miss.  He’s coming for you,  Ki-chan, and he’ll take your little strawberry here down the instant he sees him next time.  You can’t hide from him anymore.”

He swung a long thin finger back and forth. “Tick tock, tick tock.  Your time has run out.”

“Catch you later, Pretty,” he winked at Ichigo, and then, like the ghost he resembled, opened the door and disappeared.

Ichigo ground his teeth. “Strawberry, my ass.  I’ll choke that puff of smoke the next time I get my hands on him.”

“Worry about Gin later,” Kisuke was already feeding his data stream with new maps and directions. “Get back here.  New data. New plans. Hurry, Kurosaki-kun. And please,” Kisuke cleared his throat, “be careful.”

***

It took three days to get home.  Three days where every question he threw at Kisuke over the comms was deflected or ignored completely.  Three days of impersonal data overload with hundreds of names, faces, events, weapons, plans, and everything that could possibly tie them together being thrown at him.

“Enough, Kisuke,” he finally said, choosing radio silence over the artificial lightness of his tone, or the cold distance when he was so far in his own head that there was nothing Ichigo could do to reach him. “We’ll figure it out when I get back.”

Silence hung between them, but it was the open line that gave him hope. Kisuke hadn’t shut him out.  Not yet.

Not ever if he had anything to say about it.

Finally, at the end of his journey, Ichigo stared into the optical scanner above the door, and then did a 360° turn before pressing 6 of his ten fingers against the biometric lock keypad.

“Tadaima!” His voice echoed through the stairwell and he started up it, taking the spiral steps two at a time.  Gods, he was glad to be home.

He dropped his gear beside the stairs and toed off his boots, moving quickly through the living room and down the hall to Kisuke’s work rooms.

“Kisuke?” he called.

“In here, Kurosaki-kun,” the voice came not from the labs but from their bedroom.

That, Ichigo thought, could be either very good, or very bad.

He crossed the threshold and saw Kisuke’s bags packed and sitting beside the door, silent witness to the shit that was about to go down. Very bad it was.

“I am most relieved that you have returned safely,” the blond was sitting on a little chair by their dressing table, back rigid, the ridiculous green and white striped hat that he preferred casting his eyes in shadow.

Ichigo hated that hat.

“Why?” he asked, dropping bonelessly on the bed. “Looks to me like you’ve made all the decisions you wanted to make already.  Didn’t need me for any of it.”

Kisuke lurched forward a little. “That isn’t…”

“Isn’t what, Kisuke?  Fair? Isn’t the polite spin you were going to put on it?  Cut the crap. You’re running, and whether it’s because you’re trying to protect me or running back to Aizen, what I have to say clearly doesn’t matter, or you wouldn’t have already made up your mind.”

Kisuke’s shoulders dropped a fraction. “I haven’t.”

Ichigo pushed himself up on his elbows. “You haven’t what, Kisuke? Packed?  That isn’t what it looks like.”

“I did that the first day.” His voice was softer than usual, missing the snarky edge that carried it over the comms to him on jobs. “I don’t think I’ve ever moved faster in my life.”

Ichigo laughed at that.  Kisuke could strike like a viper in a fight, but the idea of him packing in a hurry? Not your typical Kisuke.

“Why?” He almost didn’t want to ask the question.  He figured he already knew the answer.

“I was scared. Angry. Needed to do something.” Kisuke shrugged. “Couldn’t get the image of Gin’s sword at your throat out of my head.  Packing seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

It had taken him years, but he’d learned the hard way that pushing Kisuke into a corner rarely gave him the responses he wanted.  This time, though, he pushed. “And now?”

Kisuke breathed in slowly and let it out even more slowly. Once. Twice. “Now I’m not so sure.” He looked up, pushing the brim of the hat back so Ichigo could see his eyes. “I’m still scared. Still angry.  Seems to me, though, that if what I’m scared of is losing you, then leaving is a 100% probability of fulfilling that fear with no help from the Asshole at all.”

What I’m scared of is losing you … Ichigo felt his breath hitch at the words and he forced himself to nod. “The math does seem to work that way.”

The older man made a noise in the back of his throat. “So, if you’re not  too  upset over finding out that Aizen and I used to be involved, or that he’s using my technology to commit these atrocities, then I…” his voice faded away.

“Then you’d what?” Ichigo pushed again.

“Well,” his voice was small but steady this time, “I could use some help unpacking.”

Ichigo couldn’t stop the relieved laugh that shook his frame. “Is that all?” he held out a hand for Kisuke’s, pulling him off the chair and onto the bed beside him.

Kisuke stretched out, wrapping his long arms around Ichigo’s waist. “Yes.  Well, that and tracking down the money behind the attack on Ganymede, hijacking the yttrium, getting Gin away from Aizen, and possibly stabbing the real bastard in the guts this time.  But, no hurry. Just the unpacking first.”

Ichigo buried his nose in the junction between Kisuke’s throat and collarbone, breathing in deeply the scent that always brought him back home, no matter where they were, no matter what madness Kisuke was planning.

“I think I can manage that.” He dropped feather-light kisses against Kisuke’s skin. “At some point we will have to have an invitation made up, though.”

Kisuke squirmed.  He was always a little ticklish there. “An invitation? For whom?”

Ichigo held his partner tightly, the fear and anger of the past few days bleeding out of him as he allowed Kisuke to hear the smirk in his voice. “Aizen-sama, of course.  We wouldn’t want him to miss his own apocalypse. I can’t imagine anyone who deserves one more.”

For the rest? They had all the time in the world.