#and i don’t think this experience counted the original speak now | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

chimielie · 2 years ago

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there are many benefits to being a marine biologist

summary: Goshiki x F!Reader. Ponyo!AU. one part fairytale, one part growing up, one part love language exploration. you fall in love with a human boy and then move mountains to find him again.

word count: 8.7k

cw: nothing. gets better as it progresses imo

a/n: i started writing this maybe two years ago for a contest held by two users who are now both inactive i think? the outline for this planned for like two more acts, but i thought it should stop rotting in the drafts and i like it as is now. i do have quite a lot of worldbuilding not in the fic (mostly regarding goshiki's family, who i named after the original ponyo characters lol) so please, if you happen to read this and have questions about this little story that's been living in my head, feel free to ask :)

The day before he finds you, it storms like the world is going to end.

Seawater washes into the road as the sea swells in thick knots, rising and never quite falling as far as it should. Blooms of white—foam and algae and debris, and drowned souls if folklore was to be believed—swirl on the surface, which waits to break against the cliffs until the wave inflates to grotesque proportions, as though it’s a fist hammering against a wall. The wind tries to match the hysteric sea’s beat, and comes screaming in from the horizon, wrapping around whatever it finds in its path if it cannot blow through it and squeezing like a python. With it blows in the fog, until the atmosphere brings a river of milk, writhing over the pine islands so they become black spikes against which the ocean hammers.

Tsutomu stands against the back door of his home on the cliff, hands pressed to the glass, careful not to let his breath obscure his vision any further than the mist already was. Even inside the house—where the air is still warm, where the wind can’t creep in—he can hear the crash of waves and the shriek of the typhoon, even if they’re reduced to a low-crooning song punctuated by the steady rhythm of his mother’s voice.

“Transmitting from JA4LL. JA4LL. Come in, Koichi. This is Risa and Tsutomu.”

She’s been speaking steadily into the microphone for a few minutes already, and Tsutomu pads over to press his cheek into her side, fists his hands into her shirt while she pats him on the head. When the headset crackles to life, he jumps and she doesn’t. His parents’ voices wash over him warmly, and he relaxes, hoping the weather will calm soon so they can all go to Tashirojima together.

Sound asleep in a bubble deep beneath the sea, you don’t even know that there’s a storm on the surface.

“Wake up, girls.” You wake when your father speaks to you, swim eagerly to the border of filmy water and press your nose to it in a sort of nuzzling good morning kiss. “I—yes, good morning, hello—I said I’d take you all to work with me today, if you’d like—stop pressing on the bubble, you’ll pop it!”

You do happy flips when you’re let out of the little aquarium, linger at the back of the school of your sisters as your father quickly becomes engrossed in his work. He’s often distracted and always scatterbrained, but centuries of experience have made him an expert at marine wizardry. There’s little he loves more than his work, except perhaps your family, but he’s unfamiliar with the care and keeping of young goldfish and your mother is away right now.

This is how you slip away: with discretion from your sisters, distraction from your father, and a rush of excitement you’ve felt almost never in your entire life. It’s not that you don’t love your family, that you want to run away; it’s just that your sisters are all still babies, freshly hatched, and you get bored in the little bubble, always having to watch your father work and never getting to do anything. There’s no room for anxiety in your fish-body as you swim towards the surface, wriggling your fins frantically and buoying yourself with upward currents whenever possible.

The first sight of sunlight streaming through the aqua is mesmerizing, and you kick doubly hard for the remainder of the journey.

The surface is the most incredible thing you’ve ever seen. Exhausted from the swim, you flop onto your back on top of a passing jellyfish and stare in wonder at the coastline. There’s a road, and little metal vehicles crossing it, and houses tucked into every crevice in the hills. There are jagged cliffs that look like they were hewn in half by some godly hand (one of your uncles, maybe). And on top of the tallest cliff, there’s a little house, so small you can hardly see it, yellow and red and white, and you find yourself fascinated by it.

When he wakes, Tsutomu finds himself in bed, his eyes stuck together with leftover sleep. He remembers, just barely, being carried by his mother’s strong arms to his room, the press of her lips to his forehead. It’s not an unusual occurrence, so he starts his day as usual. Breakfast is leftovers from the fridge, his mother is still half-asleep sipping coffee at the breakfast table (she’s always groggier after a late night up speaking to his father), and he walks down the path to the beach, carefully balancing his favorite toy—a beach ball light enough for him to carry and shaped like a volleyball—in his arms.

It’s clear today, almost like there was never a storm at all. The sky is a cheerful blue dotted with puffy white clouds, the temperature warm enough to only require a t-shirt, not cold enough to make him uncomfortable. The sun shines down on the beach with a smile, the morning light nearly shining a spotlight on the red lump just above the waterline.

“Eh?” Tsutomu says to himself, walking closer and struggling to peer past the bulge of his volleyball. He sets it down carefully, stopping it from rolling away with his foot, and bends at the waist to look closely at you.

You stare, eyes bulging, back up at him. A little boy, the likes of which you’ve never seen before, fringe falling into his face, is the most magical thing you’ve ever seen.

“A goldfish!” He declares triumphantly as he identifies you. “Hello, Miss Goldfish.”

You flap a fin at him as best you can. He giggles and scoops you up in both hands, wading into the water and holding you just beneath the surface so you won’t dry out. You spin in his hands, and nuzzle his chubby palm.

“Tsutomu!” Someone calls from above. “Time to go!”

“That’s my mom,” Tsutomu says to you. “We’re going to work at the senior center. Well, she’s going to work, and I get to go to school right next to there, ‘cause I’m five years old.” He adopts a wise expression. Five is the oldest he’s ever been, and it feels very big. You splash. Me too! Me too! “It was nice to meet you, Miss Fish. My name is Tsutomu. I hope I see you again. Bye bye!”

He lets go of you gently, and turns to find that his ball has rolled into the water, a little too deep for him to reach without soaking his clothes. You, still watching the curious human boy, see the frown on his face, the tremble of his lips and watery eyes, and dart off quickly. When he looks down, you’re gone. He stands on the sand in front of the ball, watching it float further away, listening to his mother’s increasingly aggravated shouting for him to come up from the beach, and feels stuck with the tide of unhappiness rising in him. He reaches up with one fist to wipe at his watering eyes.

Shock overwhelms him when a stream of water hits the ball, pushing it against the current, intermittent splash carrying it all the way back to shore. His eyes stop watering from the pure amazement of it all as he watches a little red spark flash with every spurt of water, and he has to shake himself before wading back in to grab it.

“Thank you, Miss Goldfish,” he cheers when he finally lifts the ball clear of the surf. “You’re amazing!”

There’s nothing but pure childish admiration in the words, which makes you as happy as he is. You like this boy! He thinks you’re amazing!

You flip in the air, coming down with a splash that sends droplets of saltwater all the way to Tsutomu, who shields his face and twists his whole torso away with shrieking laughter.

“Tsutomu!” You say happily. He untwists to look at you, bobbing in the water.

“You said my name! You really are amazing!”

“Tsutomu!” You cheer, and then again for good measure.

“Tsutomu!” His mother roars, coming into view on the beach, and her ferocious tone hardly seems to dent his mood.

“I have to go now. Thank you a lot, Miss Goldfish,” he waves at you and begins walking back to his mother, who’s standing with her hands on her hips and her lips set in a scowl.

“Tsutomu!” You say in farewell, and begin the swim back home.

“Mom, I made a friend! I saw a goldfish, and she talks, too. She said my name! Isn’t that so cool?” Tsutomu bounces up to his mother with his fists clenched and raised in the air, as though he’s declaring victory, and her irritation dissipates almost immediately. She laughs and swings him up onto her shoulders.

“That is cool, but we’re going to be late. Think I can drive over before they open the drawbridge?”

You’re lucky your father doesn’t notice and you know it. For the rest of the month, you listen attentively as he explains, half-mumbled and face pressed up against a blackboard, the things he believes children ought to know: potionmaking, mostly, the way that those potions affect the environment, and the filthiness of humans. You try your best to be good, but you file as much information about magic away as you can and know in the deepest depths of your heart that it’s so you can see Tsutomu again.

You sneak away again, maybe every month, and rarely have to wait longer than a few hours for Tsutomu to come rushing down the path from his house, huge smile on his face, shedding his backpack and shoes. During low tide, he can reach what becomes a tide pool, and often he shows you things from his day-to-day life. You love hearing him talk, sometimes practicing human speech by following along with his words. He gives you a name, better than the one your father calls you, you think, shaping it in your mouth. While you watch with great interest, you never bring him anything.

You are a fish, after all.

As the years pass, your visits to the surface become more infrequent. You worry about your human-hating father catching you, and your education has intensified as you age. Your little sisters are starting to grow up and, though they’re still captivated by stories of your Tsutomu, you worry about fostering jealousy of the dry world in them. One daughter your father may not notice missing for a day, but where one of your sisters go, almost all the rest will follow.

“What does Y/N mean?” You ask innocently one day, when the two of you are eight years old. You bob in the water, and he sits on a rock, the surf spraying up around him but never reaching high enough to soak him.

“Mm,” he says, looking down and kicking at a pebble. “Beloved.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know,” his grin is childish, and the effect is only lightly diminished by the way he’s clearly struggling to maintain eye contact with you. You splash him, and he shrieks and falls into the water. Both of you come up giggling. Whatever the true meaning of his name for you, you know that whenever he says it, that’s what he means; and that is all that matters.

Although he waits patiently for you for many years, Tsutomu tells you one day with a serious face that he’s going to be going to school further away, in Sendai, and will have less time to spend watching out for you. You have a year left before this happens, he says, so your visits resume a near monthly routine. Sometimes, you simply spend hours after he’s left staring at the house on the cliff and imagining living there with Tsutomu and loving him the way he tells you his mom and dad love each other.

When he leaves for school, crying a little while you blink up at him, you absorb yourself in your studies. When you really, really miss him, you swim up to the surface and remind yourself that someday, you’ll be old and strong enough to live up there with Tsutomu. The next time he sees you, he’s twelve years old. People call him Goshiki-kun, not Tsutomu-chan, and his voice cracks when he speaks. On the train ride home from school, he worries that you’ll laugh at him, like his peers do, that the way he’ll surely tear up upon seeing you is unmanly.

It’s July, the month of salt-making rituals, and this becomes the marker of your visits to Tsutomu. To his immense relief, you still call him by his first name, you don’t laugh when his voice breaks, you throw your whole body at him to smack his cheek like you’re trying to hug him with your fins. You missed him as much as he missed you, he can tell, and the both of you spend hours catching up. You get two more years before disaster strikes.

The day you’re due to visit the surface, it storms again. You know what lightning is, now, know the acrid scent of sky-fire splitting the air, the brutal strength of riptides and currents. When you break into the air, you find that a gray mist lingers over the bay and the mood of the few people you see appears dismal. When you look up to Tsutomu’s house and see that it shines as cheerfully yellow as always, that yellow and red seems to creep into your bones until you feel sure that everything is alright. This is a kind of magic your father has not yet taught you.

This has always been your secret, safe harbor. You don’t expect anything to go wrong here—not when you’re accustomed to submarine chemical vents and shining anglerfish in the deep blue depths. Here it has always seemed safe, calm, kind.

You learn today why your father despises his former kin so much.

There’s silt in the water, probably stirred up by the storm that took away the cheeriness of the sky. One fish swims by you, its eyes bulging frantically. Then another, and another. It’s only when an entire school passes in the same direction that you hear the ship coming closer and realize that you should probably be heading that way yourself.

You’re too late, and so are the rest of them—something huge, bigger than the mouth of a whale, you think it must be, traps you, pressing you together with sifting mud and other scales and glass, like your father’s bottles. You try to move your tail and push yourself out, but you’re packed so tightly in with a million others doing the same that the action is impossible.

You’re starting to panic.

Then, the boat attached to the net you’re in swings around, taking you and everyone else with it, and you find yourself face to face with a glass jar. Worse, you find yourself slowly being pushed into it by the sheer unluckiness of your position and the crush of animals trying to escape the churning mud and human garbage.

You push more frantically than before, thrashing your entire body violently.

“No, no, no, no!” You wail, the words bubbling in the water. Then you fall through a gap in the net.

Unable to right yourself in time, you find yourself stuck halfway into the jar, and your wriggling only makes it worse.

You can’t—you can’t breathe. This was a mistake. You’re so scared.

You have to take the last resort. You send up a prayer to your mother—please, don’t let him be too angry—and send out a spell with the last bit of energy you have. A signal that will ripple all the way to your father.

You run out of oxygen, and everything goes black.

Tsutomu has been waiting a long time by the beach. He got up early to watch the sunrise, carrying a thermos of hot tea with him as he sat by the water and wondered what your life was like through the months you don’t see him. As he wakes more fully and the air starts to warm (though not by much) he walks alongside the waterline, testing how far he could go in without getting the hem of his pants wet, how long his toes could stand immersion in the cold seawater. He ponders why you keep visiting him, year after year, bringing him good luck and sunny skies.

You’re more to him than a symbol, though; you’re amazing.

As he settles himself, he starts to walk back to the tidepools, hoping you’ll be there. He knows it’s a little early for your visit, but you’re unpredictable; besides, he’s sure you care about your weird human friend as much as he cares about his fishy one.

Near the stairs, something rolls on the sand, flashing gold. Tsutomu squints at it, then picks up his pace. Shit, shit, is that—

It is. He picks up the jar, lips pressing into a pout when he sees that you’re unmoving. He runs up the steps to his home, taking them two at a time, all the while talking to you like you can hear him through the glass barrier.

He collects a bucket and stands next to the garden hose, trying to shake you out of your jar. He thinks that it would require too much force than would be safe to get you out, but you’re clearly suffocating in there. He squats on his heels, turning the jar over in his hands and wracking his brain for a solution.

“Tsutomu, you’re gonna be late for practice!” His mom rounds the corner, startling him, and he drops you. “Tsutomu—what was that?”

You’re out of the jar, but now you’re lying in pieces of shattered glass. Eyes round in distress, Tsutomu snatches you up and plops you into the full bucket of water.

“Nothing,” he says, voice suspiciously shaky.

“Okay, well, we’ve gotta go, so get in the car now.” She jerks her thumb towards the vehicle. He nods and peeks into your bucket. You stare up at him, as alert as ever, and he breathes a sigh of relief.

In the car, you swim happily in circles, raising your head out of the bucket to peer out the window.

“What’s in the bucket?” His mom says with interest, and he presses a hand over the opening of the bucket, trying not to giggle as you nuzzle his palm.

“It’s for a group science project—Mom, watch out, you’re gonna make it spill!” She side-eyes him, knowing her son has never been so conscientious of a school project or of his own messes before, but lets it slide. There’s no point in prying when there are only so many options to be found on the beach. The worst that can happen is that he lightly traumatizes some sea creature, and she doubts that Tsutomu’s conscience and childhood obsession with marine life could let him do that. Besides, she smiles to herself. The sea is basically in his blood.

Tsutomu rushes out of the car, managing only a “Thanks-Mom-love-you-goodbye!” before he’s dashing to the gym, gaze bouncing between your bucket and the ground to avoid tripping so fast watching his eyes makes you dizzy.

He sets you down on the bench closest to the court.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” He whispers, picking you up to make sure there’s no glass embedded in your skin.

“I’m okay!” You beam up at him. “Tsutomu rescued me!”

He smiles at that, blushing faintly, pretty eyes squinting, and you pop out of the water to splash him lightly.

“Hey, I have to practice in this,” he frowns.

“Sorry,” you say, abashed, but he shoots you a small smile and you know it’s alright.

Listening to Tsutomu explain volleyball is entirely different from watching him play it. You didn’t really understand it when he spoke, before, but now you understand the difference between a fishing net and a volleyball one, as well as other crucial aspects of the game. There’s a lot of yelling, and squeaking, and it’s a little hard to see from inside your bucket, but you don’t mind. You bob up every so often, trying to find Tsutomu on the court, though it’s hard when he moves around so much.

At one point, he jumps up and slams down the ball in what’s clearly a perfect line even to the untrained eye. Around him, his teammates burst into cheers (“Nice going, bowlcut!) and you get so excited you mimic them, whooping and doing a flip in the air.

“Eh? What was that?” Someone you can’t see says, and then Tsutomu is there, grinning widely at you from above, eyes watering slightly.

“Oi, Goshiki,” a boy with hair as red as your scales slides an arm around him. “What’s this you’ve got?”

Tsutomu opens his mouth, but you beat him to it, using the name he gave you without a second thought.

“Huh? Wow, you have a smart goldfish! Reon, come check out Goshiki’s goldfish!”

Reon simply looks at you and says, “Cool.”

“Be nicer!” The redhead says, smacking him lightly on the shoulder. “She can talk!”

“I can talk!” You echo. Reon repeats cool, unfazed.

“What are we looking at, Tendō?” A boy whose shirt reads Yamagata slows his jogging to a stop, one hand running through his hair as he looks at the red bucket.

“This is Y/N,” Tsutomu says. “I found her on the beach.”

“Are you going to eat that?” A voice deeper than the others makes you poke your head further out of the water than before. It’s a boy like the others, with greenish hair and a huge stature. He reminds you, oddly, of your mother. Big and bea-uti-ful!

“No!” Tsutomu yelps. “No, we won’t! Ushijima-senpai, sir,” he adds, voice calming to a lower pitch as he does.

“Are you sure?” Asks Tendō, a sly expression crossing his face. Tsutomu pushes him away hastily and steps protectively in front of you.

“Yes! I mean no! I mean—”

“Alright,” Ushijima-senpai says slowly. “Welcome to our practice, then. I hope you enjoy watching volleyball.”

“Enjoy!” You do another flip. “Watching Ushijima-senpai!”

“Okay—” Tsutomu says, picking up your bucket, looking around as he tries to find his way out of the circle of boys.

“What’s wrong with your fish?” A boy with long bangs and pointy features grabs the bucket and peers at you. You don’t like this pointy human. “Why is it talking?”

You say nothing, hollowing your cheeks in preparation to spit at him.

“Give her back,” Tsutomu narrows his eyes. “Careful, Shirabu.”

“Is no one else concerned about the talking goldfish?” Shirabu looks around at his upperclassmen. “What the fuck, Goshiki?”

“He’s right,” Ushijima says thoughtfully. “The fish could be a spy. For Karasuno, perhaps.”

“What?” Shirabu’s outraged yell is shortly cut off by Tsutomu’s fearful-yet-determined denial that you would ever do such a thing to him or to Shiratorizawa.

A deep sigh, sounding somewhat like it’s exhaling the speaker’s entire soul, interrupts them both.

“Can we please stop staring at Goshiki’s pet and get back to practice?” A boy with ash blond hair says, and immediately, a few of the others nod and disperse.

“She’s not a pet,” Ushijima says, while Tsutomu splutters incoherently. “Or sushi. She’s a friend of Goshiki. But you’re right, we should be practicing.”

“T-thank you, Ushijima,” Tsutomu says haltingly, eyes shining in admiration. “I really appreciate it!” The captain only needs to look back at him, his face unsmiling but not at all unfriendly, for him to continue. “And I apologize for distracting everyone, I’ll get back to work now! Thank you!”

The rest of practice goes smoothly, although you get a few lingering stares and an odd few minutes of interrogation from Shirabu while they’re on their break. He tries to explain that you can talk, and this is bad, and it’s a demon, to an old man with white hair, who merely hums when he looks at you and tells him to do an extra fifteen laps as a punishment for talking nonsense about magical goldfish.

Once the games have all finished and Goshiki’s changed into street clothing, though, something horrible happens. He’s picking you up, ready to transport you to his mother’s workplace so you can drive home, but then someone taps him on the shoulder. He startles, water sloshing over the sides of the bucket, and lifts up the bucket to his chest to prevent any further instability.

“Goshiki-kun,” a girl human says. “Could I speak to you outside?”

“Ouuuu,” you hear Tendō’s voice from across the gym. “Little bowl cut is receiving a confession?”

“Uh, um, yes, you can,” he says, and when you turn his cheeks are scarlet. “Let me just pack up the rest of my things, and I’ll m-meet you out there.”

“Sounds good!” She says, and you don’t like the cheery note of her voice or the way she brushes her hand against his bicep. You make a face up at Tsutomu, but he doesn’t seem to notice, lost in his own head.

You swim all the way to the bottom of the bucket, only to feel him poking you not a minute later.

“Don’t be grumpy,” he says. “Please? It’ll be just a second.”

You flap a fin at him and make an enthusiastic noise.

It is not, in fact, a second. You wait for an eternity (and you know about eternities) for the girl to stop stuttering her way through telling Tsutomu that she thinks he’s really smart, and she likes his bowl cut, and you can just see the word amazing forming on her lips before she says it. Her hand is stretching out, dropping something shiny into his hand, and you hate it, you hate it, you hate it.

You act before you think. Your cheeks puff up and you take a big breath in and then there’s water, all over her pretty pink cardigan. She shrieks and then starts to cry a little, and you stick out your tongue and blow a raspberry at her before diving back down, flipping your tail with sass as you go.

“I’m really sorry,” Tsutomu says frantically, offering her a wrinkled handkerchief. “It was an accident, I swear. I-I really appreciate your confession and, um, I’m glad you were comfortable enough soo that you could come to me, but, oh! My mom’s here, I have to go! Bye!”

You swivel and watch as he picks you up and bolts away; her tears seem to have dried a bit as she stares after him in bewilderment. Not for the first time, you wish you had two legs and hands to hold onto Tsutomu. You wish that you could stay on shore with him, and keep away all the girls like her forever.

You know it’s childish, but you don’t care. Does it matter that it’s an immature thought when it’s completely impossible?

In the car, Tsutomu is quiet. Even his mother seems to notice his pensive aura, and frames her questions about his day carefully to avoid sounding like she’s prying.

“What’s that?” She asks, and he unclenches his hand, looking as mystified by the object in his palm as you feel. It’s a pin, gold and pink and shaped like a heart. “Oh, my gosh, is that from your girlfriend, Tsutomu?”

“No,” he says immediately. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

You frown, bumping the red walls of the bucket, and he trails his fingers through the water. Something coppery floods your senses, and you dart over to nuzzle his hand instinctively. In his palm, there’s an angry red mark, oozing little droplets of blood. When you poke it, he winces.

It tastes weird when you lick it.

“Hey!” He jerks his hand out of the water. “Whoa.”

Where Tsutomu knew he had been pricked by the pin a few minutes ago, there’s no sign of injury, even though the water surrounding you still has a faint tint in places. You watch him with round eyes, and he offers you a smile and a pat on the head. Amazing.

“What did you think, Y/N?” You stick out your tongue.

“Girlfriends suck,” is your opinion. “Pbbbt.”

The wind blows the longer strands of Tsutomu’s straight hair to the side as he stands next to the garden hose, refilling your bucket with fresh water. Above you, the sky is a weak blue, it’s brighter shades concealed by layers of white mist. A lush, slightly overgrown garden is what hides behind the picket fence you can see from the seashore, full of plants that look so familiar to the kelp forests you’re used to, yet so different. The upper lands are so strange. You’re glad Tsutomu’s mom doesn’t keep her garden dry and cut into shrubbery, like some of the houses you saw on the way to his school.

“Who are you?” Tsutomu’s voice is stiff, like his form as he drops you into the now-full bucket of fresh water while you crane your neck to see past his legs.

“Where is she?” Booms a voice you know all too well. It cuts off when he sees you, lips pursed while you try to look as inconspicuous as possible. “Captured by a human boy? Bad, that’s very bad. Give her here—“

“No!” Your friend yelps. “You want to take her? Y/N, I’ll protect you.”

“Protection?” Your father sneers, his hair puffing up threateningly. “I felt her signal for help��very good, by the way, your spellwork is coming along nicely. Give her here, now, I’ll be drying out soon.”

“I don’t care! Y/N wouldn’t do that, we’re friends,” Tsutomu says, casting a glance down at you. You nod, your tongue feeling stuck.

“My daughter would not befriend a human—“

“Y/N loves Tsutomu!” You cry. A light blazes in his eyes at the words, and his posture straightens.

“And I love her!”

“Eh?” Your father looks between the two of you. “That’s nonsense, Brunhilda, you know what humans are like, and what’s a Y/N, anyway?”

“It’s me!” You flip in the air, surging with defiant energy. “It’s my name.”

You choke midsentence as a hand closes around you; the world goes up in bubbles, and all you can hear is Tsutomu screaming your name, over and over.

Over.

And over.

“Again!” You sigh and twitch your fins lazily, watching with hooded eyes as lines only you can see race across the model mountain, glowing faintly before they settle into the material. The warding spell is clean and simple, requiring no complicated incantations or strange ingredients. However, it needs time to sink in, and when a hermit crab scuttles over the map and right onto your now-invisible lines, the whole thing goes up in a puff of smoke.

“Y/N,” your father says sternly, having given up on Brunhilda some time ago, when you refused to answer to it. “This is meant to be a demonstration for your sisters. These spells require layering, you know, one spell to ward and a secondary spell to, in a way, ward that ward. This creates an effect…”

You say nothing, merely letting a current of water roll you onto your side, your eyes rolling up to stare at the ceiling. You can feel the sympathetic gaze of your father—you know that he didn’t intend for this to happen. He only wanted to save you; he couldn’t have known that Tsutomu wasn’t the threat. You know he worries about you when he thinks you can’t hear him. You hear his every prayer for your mother to come back, to make things right, to help you see things his way. It’s only on the third point that he loses you. You didn’t want things to be this way either.

When you lost Tsutomu, something inside you boiled up and nearly steamed over. You can only remember wanting to go back, to go home to him, desperately trying to rejoin him on land. You love your father, and you only want his understanding. He left behind his humanity for your mother; why can’t you gain it yourself for Tsutomu?

The lid had clamped down on that furiously bubbling emotion, and in response it had gone to sleep, simmering but never fully boiling away. At first, you had been unmotivated even to eat or wake when your sisters did. Four years later, you still miss him: you go about your day to day life just fine, but you lack your childhood verve.

Even now, you can feel yourself slipping into slumber, exhausted by just a few minutes of magic. Your father’s voice and the clamor of your sisters meld into a comforting hum, lulling you further. You barely register the feeling of your father carrying you to your aquarium, the whisper of his goodnight lost on your drowsing mind.

When he was fourteen, Tsutomu’s mother found him in the garden. There was a wet trail leading right off the bluffs, a red bucket lying on its side, and her son, sitting with his knees under his chin and crying his heart out. The garden hose was still on.

She didn’t ask what happened, just turned off the hose and crouched next to him, arm over his shoulders, until he looked up at her with puffy eyes and wordlessly followed her into the house.

Risa had always known that she could be a little sharp with her words, and so she used food to express herself more often when she wanted it to be soft and soothing. She mixed her son some tea, the way she had every time he’d gotten sick when he was little, slid two slices of bread into the toaster, and hoped that the warmth of what she gave him would travel into his heart and help it heal a bit. Tsutomu cried into the toast a little, once it had been lavished with butter and honey, but it was just sniffling and not silent sobs, so she didn’t mind much. Then they sat on the couch and she rubbed his back while old tapes of his very first volleyball games played on the TV.

Tsutomu never told her what had happened that day. He could tell that she was curious, but unwilling to pressure him, and he wasn’t sure how to explain it. She’d always spoken about you in the same manner most adults used to describe the imaginary friends of children, and correcting that assumption seemed beyond the dignity of the man he wanted her to see him as. He knew that she guessed that he’d knocked over the bucket and sent his fish back down into the sea, and it wasn’t an unreasonable explanation. Fourteen year old boys weren’t the most rational creatures, and he could very easily have been sent into a similar kind of spiral had the fish just been a regular goldfish. It wasn’t, though, and he’d never cried so hard over any girl since.

He misses you. Though it doesn’t ache as sharply as it did when the fear of facing off against your father was fresh in his mind, he still thinks of you with a pang of sadness. There had been a sense of belonging with you he knows was more than a fleeting feeling. He hopes you’re happy in the ocean, learning new magic and spending time with your sisters, and once you’re queen of the sea, maybe you’ll come visit him. He’ll show you his cross spike.

“Again!” Shirabu barks, and Tsutomu has no trouble complying. He empties himself of every concern outside of the game and slams down a serve, just outside of the zone he wants it to land in. Without prompting, he picks up another ball and does it again.

Over and over and over.

Electricity was already crackling in the air when he woke up.

Everything felt uncomfortable, like the pressure in the atmosphere would pop and the sky would fall down in flaming pieces around them. It’s gray, like it was the day you went home. You’ve been lingering even longer on his mind than usual, and he just hopes that the knot in his throat will go away if he hits enough perfect shots. It would probably help if his partner for the day weren’t allergic to acknowledging when he does something right.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Shirabu says. Tsutomu makes a face at him and serves one more ball, the sound of it hitting the ground echoing obnoxiously. These days, he and Shirabu are good friends, though they’re still hiding behind the thin veneer of antagonism they’d held for each other in their first years. Being teammates at Shiratorizawa means being bonded for life, after all. There’s no sense in fighting it. The powers that be (also known as Coach Washijō) are as inexorable as fate, after all.

During the school year, Tsutomu lived in the dorms, like most other academy students, but living a mere half hour ride away meant he often visited the school over summers, too. It’s a little bittersweet now to know that each day spent practicing in this gym could be his last; though he has some time before university begins, he’s not sure when graduates are supposed to lose access.

“I drove with my mom,” Tsutomu says, “so I’ll be meeting her at the senior center. You’re coming over to watch the Rockets game later, right?”

“Sure,” Shirabu says, slinging on his backpack. “I have to bring some homework, though, I have too much preliminary coursework already.”

“You asked for it, smartass,” teases his friend.

“That’s gonna be Doctor smartass to you.”

Despite the short walk between the academy and the senior center, Tsutomu is soaked by the time he walks inside. He’s careful when taking off his raincoat and shaking out his umbrella, placing it into the designated stand, stamping his boots on the absorbent mat a few times to be safe. Just past the welcome desk, he can see his mother, pushing rambunctious Mrs. Suzuki down the hall, probably to her daily bingo game, where she’ll fleece the other players just like she’s done every day for years. Mrs. Fukuyo is sitting near the terrace doors, gazing out of the big window at the wet world outside.

“Hello, Tsutomu-chan,” she says, beckoning him to sit down, taking his hand in both of hers. “Or should I say Goshiki? You’re an adult, now, aren’t you?”

“Basically,” he says, lifting his chin. “One more week.”

“Oh, yes, you’re very grown up,” she says. “I remember when you were just starting secondary school. You were a bit skinnier then, and you wouldn’t eat fish.”

Tsutomu flushes.

“A lot can happen in a week,” says Miss Itoh, who often plays Mrs. Suzuki’s partner in crime when she deigns to attend bingo, as she passes by. “You be careful, Tsutomu, with all this weather. It’s bad luck.”

“There’s always weather,” sniffs Mrs. Fukuyo. “And we need the rain.”

“I’ll take care, don’t worry,” Tsutomu says politely. “You do the same, please.”

“Good, good,” Miss Itoh sounds distracted. “Happy birthday. Keep out of the rain, you’ll get sick. And don’t go sailing.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he stands to bow as she leaves the room.

“She’s crazy,” Mrs. Fukuyo sighs, half-joking. “But even a broken clock is right twice a day. You’re a good kid.”

“Thank you,” he says, stiff and awkward, cheeks glowing red.

“Tsutomu, there you are. Sorry to keep you waiting, I’m done now,” his mother lands a hand lightly on his shoulder. “Hello there, Mrs. Fukuyo. Doing well?”

“I am, thank you,” says the elderly woman. “Just telling your son what a strong man he’s grown up to be. He’ll take good care of his mother.”

“I will,” Tsutomu says with conviction. His mother’s pride beams down on him like the sun splitting the clouds.

“Thank you,” his mother says. “The storm rages on; we should probably go.”

“The roads aren’t safe,” says the the woman at the check-in desk as they prepare their rain gear to leave. “You should stay here for the night, Risa.”

Her jaw tightens. “I need to be there if Koichi radios in. We’ll make it just fine, don't you worry.”

On a nondescript day in August, you wake up.

Something tastes different on the current, and you feel almost like you’re regarding the world with new eyes again. You remember, with fierce and reckless abandon, what it is to love.

“Good morning,” you greet your sisters cheerily.

“Good morning!” They echo back, beaming at you. They feel it too, you can tell.

You eat your breakfast with gusto, examine your scales and scrub each until they shine. You kiss every sister you see on top of her red-gold head.

“I want to see Goshiki,” you tell your father, watching as his hair stands on end at the name, bracing yourself so the surprised jolt of power he emits doesn’t knock you down.

“No,” is all he can muster for a moment. “The human world isn’t safe. Look at what happened to you the last time you went up there.”

“I would have been fine because of Tsutomu,” you say, “And I’m even more powerful now than I was.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he snaps back. “They taint everything they touch. You’d have to-to literally, actually become a human to return to the surface. I don’t want them taking you. I don’t want you to get hurt.” You take a deep breath.

“Fine,” you say. “Then I’ll do it myself.”

You exhale with controlled force, closing your eyes and concentrating on the slow beat of cold blood in your veins.

“What are you doing?” Starts your father, nervously, but you don’t hear as you focus intently on the warmth spreading through you.

Pop!

You open your eyes, magic still swirling around you, and beam.

“Feet!” You chirp. “I have feet!” A little more pushing, and—

“Are those legs?” Your father shrieks. “Stop this right now!”

“No,” you say fiercely, and release an explosion of power so potent it rocks you backward. Seconds later, you realize that you’ve blasted a hole in the wall and the barrier ward; seawater rich with plankton rushes through, followed by barracuda with bulging eyes and squirming eels. You have hands, now, and something odd is happening to your scalp. You use one of the new extremities to reach tentatively up and pat your head.

“Hair!” Your sisters, freed from their own bubbles by the commotion, float around you. A shock of hair has sprouted from your scalp like a crop of coral. It tickles your forehead.

“I did it,” you say quietly, breathless. “I’m human.”

You look around for your father, but only see the tail end of him dashing into one of his back rooms, his nervous muttering echoing around the room.

Perhaps if you were human from the beginning, your mother would have taken you to the sea, held your hand as you beheld the glittering waves for the first time, and warned you never to turn your back on the ocean. Alas, you weren’t and she didn’t, so you fall with no resistance forward when a rush of water slams into your back, grinding your face into the floor and sweeping you away while you flail your little hands helplessly.

You’ve only felt so powerless in the water once before. Scrabbling for purchase as you freewheel through the halls of your home, you catch your fingers—there’s still a little rush of joy from it, you made them, you have fingers—on the spokes of a great wheel and cling for dear life. It creaks and turns, and you yelp, your words turning to bubbles that rise and pop against the ceiling, against which the water now reaches. The wheel turns again, and you try to hold your breath (something you’ve never done before) as something in the door clicks. There’s a moment where you think it’ll hold, and then you rock forward a little more, and it swings open. The ocean, eager to fill everything and make it its own, changes its course, and you tumble into the room, eyes widening when you see the enormous cauldron filled with something richly luminous and golden. Even submerged, the scent of the potion is strong, reminiscent of plant rot and blooming flowers, the same perfume that your mother exudes. For a moment, you gain breath, lungs and gills morphed and confused, and then you’re pulled back beneath the surface and pushed right into the pot.

You shut your eyes, the golden glow permeating even through your eyelids, and oddly enough, you can breathe like it’s pure oxygen. You can feel your spell being taken away from you, your limbs becoming fins, and you open your eyes.

I want to be human, you cry. I want to see my love.

The cauldron erupts, pushing you out of it on the top of a geyser. You hear popping noises and try to stand, looking down to see several of your sisters caught up in the fount of bubbling-over magic, thrashing joyfully as they try to wave at you with suddenly huge fins.

You wave back, and gasp involuntarily when you see your own hand. Five fingers, covered with soft skin, veins carrying warm blood and strong bones beneath it. Your sisters may have grown far more in the span of the last few seconds, but you’ve reached an entirely unfamiliar size and shape yourself. You stretch your legs, examining your toes, the way your dress—the same color as your scales and a little iridescent, just like they were—flows around you, and beam at your sisters.

Thank you, Mother. You bow your head quickly in short prayer.

“Let’s go see Tsutomu!” You call out, and your sisters leap in answer. The surface world is so different through the eyes of a human. Your head is turned constantly to the shore as you race on the bubbling foam towards the highest hill you can see, a speck of yellow and red on top of it growing closer with every step. Lights turn on and off in the windows of homes, a thousand little fireflies glowing smaller in the distance. Trees, shivering and shaking in the wind, make up the landscape, shaping it into something that looks almost soft from so far above.

The broad panorama isn’t without more minor detail, though: with some fascination, you see two glowing eyes staring at you from along the road. Their owner steps out of the shadows—a furry creature with pointy ears and a tail and a sleek white coat of fur. Another cat follows him into the light, this one black and her eyes shiny green, unlike the first’s calm blue. The white cat rubs his cheek along the other’s, winding around her while she stands stock-still. Quick as a minnow, the black cat swipes at him, but the white cat darts away, checking over its shoulder to see if she’ll follow. You beam broadly and speed up, eager to situate yourself in this strange and exciting new world Tsutomu comes from.

Tsutomu can’t remember a time his mother’s spent the night away from home. Every night, without fail, if she knows that his dad will be in the harbor, she sits at home and waits for him, beaming their signal in start-stop patterns, having whole conversations with him in flashes when the radio reception isn’t to be used. It’s not often he’s away from home, either; it makes him uneasy to be away from the open sea. A closed horizon is a strange sight to him, like being a bug trapped in a bowl.

His parents’ commitment to each other has shaped him, something he’s always known. In sickness and in health, they swore to each other, and they kept it. For better or for worse.

His mother certainly seems intent on plowing through the worst to get to his father, now, the rain hitting their windshield in sheets and the water sloshing around their tires. Tsutomu doesn’t protest at all, just hangs on to the grab handle and stares out at the behemoth waves.

A flash of red shines in the corner of his eye. He sucks in a sharp breath, twisting fully around. He squints, trying to make out shapes through the rain.

“Get back in your seat,” his mother blindly swats at him with one hand, eyes focused on the road. “You’re throwing off the weight distribution.”

Tsutomu ignores her, white knuckling the cushions of the car as he watches you, dancing in the rain, running with the waves. You duck and weave, your dress red against the cold, gray sea.

“There’s a girl in the water!”

“What? Where?”

His mouth lies, but his heart knows the truth, knew it as soon as he saw you.

“There,” he points, but you pull ahead of them, and then there’s nothing but lightning flashing in the distance. “Never mind. Never mind. We just—we just need to go home, sorry.”

“Right you are,” his mother says, and drives the gas pedal into the floor.

Tsutomu is a shipwreck. Tossed around on the waves of his thoughts, he finds himself cresting and falling, one emotion followed immediately by another. It can’t be you. It is you. Tsutomu doesn’t care what you are, just that he can see you again. He wonders if this is what drowning feels like.

Their wipers battle to slough off the buckets pouring from the sky, and Tsutomu’s heart drops to his soles when a smudge of red reveals itself just to be his old bucket, hanging off the fence. His mom parks and he tries to regulate his breathing, unbuckling his seatbelt and getting out of the car on shaky legs.

“Is that…” His mother says, trailing off, and his head snaps up, the car blocking him from whatever she sees.

He walks around, trying desperately not to break into a run, trying not to get his hopes up.

Barely audible over the sound of storming, the pat-pat-pat of rapid footsteps is his only warning before—

You crash into Tsutomu, both faces scrunching up from the impact, both losing your footing on the wet pavement and falling further into each other. He knows it’s you even with his eyes closed. He would know you in every world and the next; he would know you from the beat of your heart and the touch of your skin and the way he loves you, loves you, loves you.

For a moment, before you hit the ground, you feel like you’re flying with him.

You spill together onto the driveway like an egg cracked into a pan, still holding each other in a bone-crushing embrace. You inhale his scent deeply and nuzzle into his wet-rain-jacket shoulder, and he cracks his eyes open, afraid you’ll disappear when he comes back to reality.

Tsutomu says your name quietly, on tenterhooks, almost all the breath in his body taken out of him.

You lift your head and say his louder, eyes wide and bright and wet. He can’t stop his tears from welling up, but he can blame them on the rain.

You kiss his cheeks where the salt might dry, one then the other, soft as the breeze. Tsutomu can still feel your smile, unfading. The sky turns gold around you.

#sorry that u are a fish for most of this. if i had written the rest of it u would not be a fish the whole time #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu!! x reader #hq x reader #hq!! x reader #goshiki x reader fluff #goshiki x reader angst #goshiki x reader #goshiki tsutomu x reader #goshiki tsutomu x reader fluff #goshiki tsutomu x reader angst #haikyuu!! angst #haikyuu fluff #haikyuu!! fluff #haikyuu angst #hq angst #hq fluff #hq!! angst #hq!! fluff

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angelfrogs · 1 month ago

Note

If there is one interesting in-story similarity between humans and devils in CSM it is how both most humans and most devils do not seem to "get" Denji and Pochita's bond. Do you agree or am I imagining things?

I agree with you to an extent, mainly because I am of the perspective that humans and devils are more similar than anyone ever gives them credit for. I also think that anyone who does understand their bond doesn’t ever feel the need to speak on it.

If we really look at the people who make claims about Denji and Pochita (or make choices about them as if chainsaw man is an object) most of them are made by characters in positions of power who have trouble with empathy. Yoru, Makima, and public safety are the most obvious and glaring examples. I think this stems from an obsession with power that is also shared by these characters (I’m counting “public safety” as a character for the sake of simplicity, as there are many choices made by “public safety” that have unknown origins)… the reason none of them tend to actually succeed or understand what they’re handling is because they refuse to see Denji.

I’m going to focus in on Yoru for the rest of this, not only because she is most relevant to the current happenings in the manga but because I think she’s really the perfect character to use as a base example here: from the very beginning I’ve felt that Yoru’s main function within the story is to be wrong. She’s hasty, she throws tantrums, her plans don’t pan out, she’s consistently causing blunders for Asa, and though she’s introduced in a show of power and she has her moments of competence in battle it’s obvious that’s all she’s really capable of. She needs Asa more than Asa needs her. (though I’m not saying Asa doesn’t need her, she clearly does, but not to the same extent and not in the same way) In early chapters of part two there’s great care to set up Yoru’s character in a way that can be easily summed up as “she only cares about power, and she is wrong to think this way.” This set up is why people thought/think the crux of part two was going to be Asa “humanizing” Yoru sort of like how Power had been in part one, and while that could possibly be the endgame it’s certainly not true now, because while they have an abundance of similarities they have one fatal difference: where Power was a lair, Yoru is just wrong. Yoru is wrong when she says the most power comes from killing what you care about. Yoru is wrong about what chainsaw man is. Yoru is wrong about what interpersonal relationships are. Yoru is wrong to never see Denji, but rather a weapon in his place.

I also think Yoru is wrong to think that this fight, no matter the outcome, will fulfill her.

Part of why Yoru is wrong is because Asa is usually right, because if Yoru and Asa are meant to be opposites then where Yoru is war, Asa is community. But I don’t think Yoru is necessarily in this position because she’s a devil, but rather because she refuses to learn. As I mentioned earlier, Power and Yoru have a very similar position in the beginning of their stories: both of them are in a weakened state after a heavy loss, both of them have little to no social awareness, both of them take their frustrations out on the people around them, both of them are extremely arrogant and boastful. Both of them are devils. But the main thing that separates them is actually Meowy. While Power is not literally Meowy’s mother, she acts as such, she cares for Meowy and puts herself in danger to keep Meowy safe. She experiences these very “human” emotions and more importantly she acts on them. She realizes she has these feelings and learns how to show care. Yoru considers Tank and Gun to be her children, she feels a deep kinship with them, but she can’t fully seem to act on these feelings because she has an incorrect interpretation of what being a parent means. And you can make the argument that this is because Power is a fiend but Power isn’t the only devil to act like this (I cannot justify putting an entire rant about the Angel Devil here but KNOW I have one locked and loaded, know there’s another one about Nayuta, and furthermore! The fucking leech devil. It always pisses me off that I never see anyone talk about the leech devil when discussing the morality of devils but I digress) Yoru is also not the only character to trade “children” for their own personal gain, there’s a reason this is happening simultaneously with the deal between the aging devil and public safety (most specifically Tadashi Hasegawa). Yoru may be the war devil, but she’s not unique in the way she views power/personal gain, and she’s certainly not unique in the way she treats the people around her.

And I mean, people quite literally made her.

I guess the point I’m trying to drive home with all this is there’s no vice unique to devils, nor is there a virtue unique to humans, which is not only why both humans and devils misunderstand the relationship Denji and Pochita have but why they’re able to have that relationship in the first place.

This kinda got away from me but I hope that this is at least a little bit what you wanted to hear about!

#chainsaw man spoilers #chainsaw man #yoru csm #asks #okay I mean it when I say this REALLY got away from me.. originally I had typed out that I was going to focus on Yoru ‘for a moment’#then I made it all about her so I went back and changed it to ‘for the rest of this’….. embarrassing #originally I was going to actually talk about Barem Makima and Fumiko but alas #your ask got me started on the topic I get the most passionate about: human vs devil morality #but yeah! thank you for the ask! I always appreciate it!!!#read my terrible words

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skelswritingcorner · 9 months ago

Text

A Question, A Scar-Covered Body, A Sister?

Part 2 of A Stranger, A Vessel, An Experiment! Read the first part here.

Synopsis: After the incident on the Lost Light, First Aid brings Ailith (canon name of reader characters) to her original destination of the clinic.. However, there was a gift waiting for her when they arrived. Angst galore.

She/Her pronouns are now used when referring to the reader character.

Word Count: 5K

Warnings: SFW, Mentions of blood, mentioned kidnapping, mentions of unethical experimentation, probably some other stuff

(Edit: I forgot to turn some layers back on when I originally saved the image oop- It's fixed now)

Before the story…

It was a broadcast from Earth, of an interview with a black-haired woman. “Miss Makayla MacArthur,” the interviewer asked, “what motivated you to join the Intergalactic Negotiations Program?”

Makayla sighed, “Twenty something years ago, my twin got abducted. They were alien creatures, and they took her. I strongly believe that she’s still alive out there. This is the best opportunity I have to find her.”

The interviewer’s face softened, “I’m sorry that happened to you, Makayla. What will you do when you find her?”

“It depends. Will we realize that we’re sisters when we meet? I’ll try to bring her back to Earth, even if it’s for a brief moment. She doesn’t know about our niece! A family reunion would be in order. We’ll have so much to catch up on.” She put her hands in a steeple.

“Do you have something you plan on giving her?”

“Well…” Makayla sighed, “I plan on giving her a box and a letter. I won’t refer to her by name though.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, it’s been twenty years! I don’t think my sister remembers it, so I don’t want to call her something she won’t recognize.”

The interviewer leaned forward, “What else will be in the box?”

Makayla started counting on her fingers, “A few photos, and clothes. We’re identical twins, so what fits me is probably gonna fit her.”

The interview went on for another twenty minutes, and eventually concluded. The blue-visored Cybertronian finished recording the interview. He had a feeling that this could be relevant.

✩✩✩

“So,” Ultra Magnus looked at Rodimus, “the small object was in fact, a ship. Is that correct?”

Rodimus nodded, “And it had a human inside it, who is currently in the medbay recovering from her injuries.”

“Along with that,” he scrolled through the datapad, “there were documents about experiments, most likely performed on her. Ratchet did a scan that confirmed this as well, along with other various injuries.”

Rodimus gave the datapad to Magnus, who looked at the report. He tilted his helm. “What’s with this thing slightly above the pelvis?” He pointed a digit at a white shape around the pelvic area, overlapped by a crescent-shaped trauma area.

“Beats me. I’m pretty confident that it’s deep inside her.” Rodimus shrugged.

“Maybe there’s another document we haven’t gotten yet explaining it. Hidden in a more obscure place.”

“That’s probably the case. Anyway,” Rodimus stood up, “I’m gonna go ask Ratchet about Y/N’s condition. If Megatron is confused, explain the situation if he hasn’t gotten one yet. Also, inform the others on Cybertron.” He didn’t wait for an answer, simply leaving the office and walking to the medbay.

The doors to the medbay opened, and Rodimus saw a familiar gray figure.

“Megatron?!”

✩✩✩

When you woke up, the helms of several people were looking down at you. One you recognized as Perceptor, another being Drift, but there were a few unfamiliar faces. One had an orange face with yellow eyes with a mask covering his mouth, another that was white and purple and had horns coming from their forehead, a blue one with a single yellow optic, and a gray one with red optics.

“So this is the human you all have been speaking of?” The gray one asked.

“How in Primus are they so small?!” The blue one asked. Loudly. Making you get up and give them a stink eye, even if it caused you a bit of pain.

A chuckle to your left distracts you, “I don’t think it’s a good idea to crowd around someone that’s injured.”

The blue one rolled his eye, “Whatever you say, eyebrows.”

The doors opened, and someone entered the medbay.

“Megatron?!” Rodimus yelled.

Oh. You know that name. Other mercenaries have warned you about a giant robot with that name. If you caught his eye, you were doomed. After all, the group he led destroyed the homelands of several mercenaries you knew.

“Perceptor explained everything to me,” Megatron said, “I just had to see for myself. Humans usually aren’t present in this solar system.”

“Well,” you cracked your knuckles, “I haven’t seen any humans other than myself during my travels. Also, most of the people who hire me don’t know either. I like to keep my identity… well-hidden from the masses. I barely know who I am anyway, so it’s easy to do that.”

“You don’t even know yourself?” Ah, the purple one is speaking now.

“It’s hyperbole, but technically true,” you rolled up the sleeve of your left arm, “I don’t know my family, my ancestry, or any way to return to my birth planet. All I know is that I was experimented on to be sold as a smuggler. That, and the skills I acquired after years of being a mercenary.”

The purple one put a clawed servo on his chin. “Tailgate told me as such.”

Rodimus walked up to you. “How did you even end up like that, anyway? The injuries, not the… subspace thingies.”

You sighed. Might as well explain it now. “It was when I was doing a job,” you explained, “I got myself hurt pretty badly, but my client didn’t get a scratch. They tried to have me go to a clinic nearby after the job was done, but I told them that I’d be alright.”

“Why did you do that, though?” Drift’s optical ridge furrowed, “Your client knew you got hurt, why didn’t you heed their advice?”

“The moment I receive my payments in full, the contract ends. They are no longer my client, and therefore no longer obligated to show concern about my wellbeing.” you growled out the last part.

“You should’ve listened to them, though.” You sighed at that comment.

“As I said earlier, I was experimented on,” you justified yourself, “if I went to another clinic, they’d essentially keep me captive and do a bunch of tests on me. That, and I don’t know if any of them are connected to the experiments and will try to bring me back to that wretched place. And I’d rather not have to deal with them again.”

“Why do you go to one specific clinic, then?” The purple one asked.

“Cyclonus, I think that might be too-” you cut off Drift from saying anything more.

“It’s because the sister of the mercenary who took me in works there. The people there were the first to treat me with empathy, despite me being so difficult to them the first time. All the other clinics I’ve been to, they’ve been too scared of me and think I’ll mangle them.”

They’re all looking at you.

The blue one laughed, “You, scary? You’re not scary at all!”

“I think that’s when she’s wearing her mask and cloak, Whirl.” Drift said. You nodded, confirming his guess.

“Anyway,” Rodimus ordered, “let’s give the human some privacy. Perceptor, Brainstorm, you both plan on asking her about the documents that have been translated, right?”

“Correct.”

“I’ll leave you two to it then.” Rodimus left the medbay, followed by most of the others. Perceptor and the one with the yellow eyes stayed. That must be Brainstorm.

Perceptor took out a datapad, looking over at some data. “I’ve looked through all of the documents, along with Ratchet’s scans of you. I’d like you to confirm some things.”

“Go ahead.” You gestured.

“According to these documents, you’re from Earth. Do you have any memories of that planet?”

You shook your head. No shit you didn’t remember anything, you were a year old! “Some species don’t have memories until they’re a few years old. I was taken at roughly eighteen months old, way too young to form memories.”

“That’s strange. We Cybertronians remember everything from when we were first created, excluding amnesia.”

Perceptor wrote something on the datapad before asking another question, “Were your eyes originally golden?”

“Nope. I’ve read those documents multiple times, my eyes were originally brown.”

“Isn’t gold also the color of the subspace openings on your body?”

Well, damn. “Yes? It was also the case for the other experiments.”

“Now, a third question. Do you know what this thing is?” Perceptor pointed to the intrusion shown on the datapad.

Right. That. The documents explaining it are in the subspace on your left arm as far as you recall. As it was inside your uterus, however, it’s something very few know about. And you’d rather not explain to a bunch of mechanical beings something you only know the basics of.

“I think that’s none of your business, Perceptor.” you crossed your arms. They likely don’t have ultrasounds on the Lost Light anyway, so it’ll be hard for them to find out.

The mech grumbled. “You’re making this difficult for yourself, Y/N.”

“Explain why you want to know what it is so bad then.” You stared directly into his optics, “Because it’s pretty fuckin personal. And don’t just say ‘I need to know for scientific reasons’ either. You better have a good justification.”

“Because it might be a dangerous object that could kill you, and may need to be removed.” Perceptor justified.

You scoffed. Based on the documents you stole, it just prevents fertility and menstruation until removed. Prevents uterine lining from building up. All the uterus-having subjects (or an organ with similar functions), including yourself, had it implanted once puberty was entered. So far, there’s been no complications.

“I’ve had it for twelve years and it hasn’t killed me yet.”

“How has it not-”

Laughter. You and Perceptor looked at the source: Brainstorm laughing his ass off.

He composed himself, “Sorry, sorry. It’s just the way you two are bickering. I’m confident that the object is medical in nature. It’s meant to prevent pregnancies, correct?”

Right on the money. “Surprised to hear you figured it out without cutting me open to check, but you are indeed correct.” you put your hands on your hips.

“So I am right!” Brainstorm smiled with his eyes. “Also, can you show us how the subspace works? Are you able to pull something out?”

Say no more. You put a hand in the subspace on your left arm, pulling out a mechanical object. Something you won after a bet.

“That’s… an optic. An actual optic. How did you get this?” Perceptor asked.

“I got it after winning a bet.” you replied.

“What kind of bet would lead you to owning a Cybertronian optic?”

“Drinking contest. I don’t know why they even placed the bet in the first place, it’s common knowledge that no matter how much I drink I physically can’t get drunk. I’ve tried several times.”

Brainstorm chuckled, “If you could even consume highgrade, Swerve would love you as a customer. It would be a good experiment if you could.”

“That would be one of the few experiments I’d consent to,” you chuckled, “once my injuries have finished recovering, that is.”

Oh. You just remembered. “I just realized that I should probably go to that clinic. I lost a good amount of blood, I might need a blood transfusion.” you grimaced.

“That makes sense. I believe Ratchet and First Aid were communicating with someone at the clinic you mentioned. You had the coordinates set on your ship’s navigator, correct?” You nodded at Perceptor’s question.

“It’s possible that holoforms may need to be used to get you there,” he commented, “I don’t know how large the facility is.”

“It’s pretty big, actually.” you replied, “I’m probably their smallest regular patient, which makes some things a bit difficult to do. Most rooms are about four times my height. I’m sure at least one of y’all can fit without feeling cramped.”

Well, at least the smaller ones. Probably First Aid.

“I’ll inform Ratchet, then.” Perceptor nodded, then left the medbay. Brainstorm quickly followed.

You’re gonna need a plan. Your main grappling hook was taken from you while you were asleep, and those two likely have it. You have spares, yes, but you’d rather have all of them in case one breaks. You also need to find where your ship is, as most of your supplies are still inside along with your spare clothes. What you’re wearing right now is bloody, and you’d like to wear something that is not covered in your own blood. The magnet boots should help when dealing with the Cybertronians and navigating the vessel.

Along with that, you need to figure out how to deal with them if any try to kill you. The blasters in the subspaces should work at least a little, but do you have any weapons that can give you an advantage? You have cable cutters, but that will only work if their cables are exposed. Can any of your blades cut through their armor? If you’re able to, you might need to see if any weapon dealers around these parts have anything that can give you the ability to fight them. Trying to sneak away for long enough to get them is another story entirely, though.

The door opened. Ratchet and First Aid walked in, with First Aid beelining to you. “We established a connection to the clinic!” he exclaimed, “When we told them about you and your injuries, they told us to bring you there as soon as we can. Also, apparently there’s something for you there? They said it’s best if they tell you about it when you arrive.”

“As long as you can get me to my ship so I can change out of these blood-covered clothes.” you said. It’s likely the best way for you to figure out where your ship went if they can bring you to it.

“The ship’s probably with Nautica, she wanted to check it out. I’ll escort you there.” First Aid picked you up with a delicate grip, likely to prevent accidentally hurting you. Given the strange condition of your body, however, you’re probably gonna end up dislocating a joint before he harms you.

Entering the room, you saw a purple and yellow Cybertronian. Most likely Nautica.

“Hey there! That must be the owner of this ship, right?” She reached a servo to you, “I’m Nautica. Nice to finally meet you!”

You couldn’t do a proper handshake with Nautica, so you just held her pointer finger and shook it.

“I’d like to enter my ship to get something. Is that alright with you?” you asked.

“Of course! I made sure to clean the blood where I could. Had to use my holoform to do that, though. Here, I’ll carry you to it.” she picked you up gently, transferring you to the entrance of your ship.

“Thank yo- ack!” you stumbled, quickly being caught by Nautica.

“Be careful!” she exclaimed.

First Aid grabbed you. You didn’t know how he got up to where you were so quickly, but before you knew it he was holding you up. “I’ll help Y/N. It’s probably a bad idea to let her be alone for a long period of time with her blood loss anyway.”

Oh, this might get uncomfortable fast. You were fine with First Aid seeing you all battered up and bloody, but the concept of him watching as you got changed made your stomach flip. And you’d rather not show your tits and bits to someone you’ve only known for a single solar cycle.

Before you could protest, though, he carried you to your ship. While he did put you down on your feet, he waited a bit before letting go. He even followed you to your quarters, where you hastily grabbed a crop top and a pair of pants. You’d grab a jacket after changing. When he tried to follow you into the bathroom, you put a hand over his chassis. “You’re not going in here. I don’t know how y’all view nudity, but for us we usually don’t do that around people we’ve only met for a day.”

“Oh!” First Aid backed up, “Sorry about that. Nurse instincts, I guess.”

You walked in, closing the door behind you. There’s no windows in the bathroom, so he couldn’t peek even if he tried. You knew he had innocent intentions, nothing perverted or anything, but you needed some time to yourself.

Quickly removing your blood-stained clothes, you ran some water and used a cloth to clean some dried blood off your body. After cleaning what you could, you put on the clean clothes. You’d usually not wear a crop top, but at this point you didn’t care. You had a jacket anyway.

You looked at yourself in the mirror, holding a hand over the stitches. Despite Ratchet being significantly bigger, the stitches were done expertly. You looked at all your old scars, and at the subspace entrances on your body. Never were a fan of looking at ‘em, it always reminded you of the fact that you’ve been mutilated. Not enough to be unrecognizable as a living being, but enough that people would stare if they knew. It’s why you covered yourself entirely. Strangers have no right to know what’s going on with your body after all, why should they look at it? Of course, you couldn’t do that with the ones on this vessel; they all know. Might as well not hide it.

Walking out the bathroom, First Aid was just standing there. At least he didn’t try anything, that was reassuring. You went back to where your jacket was, back turned to him.

“What’s that purple and blue thing on your back?” he asked. An innocent question.

Shit.

You always knew that you bruised easily, most likely a consequence of a condition you have but don’t know the actual name of, but you didn’t expect that the fall from yesterday would bruise you.

“It’s a bruise. I don’t know why, but it’s pretty easy for me to get bruised. It’s an organic thing, it takes a few days to heal. Don’t worry though, as long as I’m careful it won’t hurt.” you explained, putting on your jacket. “I’m ready now, let’s go to the clinic.”

First Aid picked you up, being mindful of your back. Nautica helped the both of you down, but not without making a comment about the fact that he was holding you.

“That worried? You’re holding her like she’s made of glass.” Nautica commented.

“Y/N’s still my patient, and is still recovering!” he countered, “Also, humans are way more fragile than Cybertronians! It makes sense to be careful!”

Oh, if he knew about how roughly you’ve been tossed around in fights. Or how roughly you’re often treated in general. In fact, being treated so softly was unfamiliar to you, but a welcome unfamiliarity. How they’re gonna freak out if they pop a limb out its socket if that happens will be priceless when it happens.

The both of you walked, well, technically just First Aid since he was carrying you, to a smaller ship docked in the vessel.

Why is Rodimus there?

“Hey, Captain!” First Aid greeted the orange mech, who was waiting by the smaller vessel.

“Yo! I wanted to get here before you two left. How’s Y/N’s condition?”

“The usual. I did experience some blood loss, so I might be at the clinic for a solar cycle or two. That, and I’d like this injury to be documented with them.” you replied.

“Also, there’s a nasty blue and purple spot on her back that she says is fine but I’m not sure if it is.” First Aid added. If you could, you would’ve covered his mouth. You couldn’t though, so you gave him a stink eye. Fucking snitch.

Rodimus took a bit to reply, “Oh. I’m neither a medic nor an expert on humans, so I’m not going to try reassuring you.”

“Aaaaanyway,” Rodimus started walking away, “Mags needs me for a meeting since Y/N is probably going to have not much choice in staying on the Lost Light with those injuries. Something something ‘We need to inform the officials on Cybertron about the organic on the ship.’ See you two later!”

You looked up at First Aid, “Who’s Mags?”

“Ultra Magnus. He was the one who noticed your ship and the blood coming out of it, surprisingly. Best not to call him Mags though, something about shortening a senior officer’s name being an offense.”

You understood that. A lot of people in important positions don’t like having nicknames, likely because it makes them appear less threatening if they accept a nickname. It’s something you’ve weaponized when doing non-bodyguard work, but the people here don’t need to know that.

When you and First Aid entered the ship, the coordinates were already set. First Aid placed you near the navigator, making sure that you wouldn’t fall.

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

Luckily, the ride was rather smooth and quiet. Neither of you said anything until the vessel docked.

“We’re here, I’ll carry you to the entrance.” First Aid picked you up, and carried you there.

✩✩✩

“Welcome! What’s the purpose of your- Y/N?!” the receptionist jumped up from her seat, walking up to the both of you.

“What happened? Why are you being held by a Cybertronian?!”

“Y/N was injured badly, a spike impaled her, a cut on her back, and what I think is a bullet hole in her right cadulen.” First Aid explained. “We didn’t know that her ship was the one sending an emergency signal at first. We patched her up as best we could, but she mentioned needing a blood transfusion since she lost a good amount of blood.”

The explanation eased the receptionist. “That’s good. I’m glad that she’s alright. I’ll inform the doctors right away.”

Using her communicator, she informed the doctors on call. After a minute, an all familiar face walked up.

She was a being with four yellow eyes and light red skin, with tendrils coming from her skull neatly tied behind her. Relatively human, but still noticeably not. This is the one person who you consider family right now; Doctor Daule. You call her Aunt Daule, however.

One set of arms held a datapad, with the other set crossed in front of her. She had to look up to see you.

“Eirii told me. Are you able to walk?” she asked.

“Oh! Sorry,” First Aid set you down, making sure that you could stand before letting you go, “She stumbled some time ago, so I thought it was best if I carried her. I’m also a little uneasy about transferring my patient.”

“Don’t worry,” Daule smiled, “I’ve known Y/N for years. You can trust her with me. Besides, a group of humans just came by last solar cycle. I took a DNA sample from one that looks a lot like her, and she gave me something to give to Y/N.”

Wait, someone that looks a lot like you? You’ll have to ask later. Aunt Daule supported you with her right arms. “You’re also a medical professional, correct? You can come with me, I have some questions for you.”

First Aid followed the both of you. Aunt Daule walked you into a room where the IV was just finished being prepared, setting you down on the bed. As a nurse prepared your arm for the IV, you asked a few questions.

“You said someone that looked like me was here, right? Do you know their name?” you asked.

“She said her name’s Makayla.” Daule answered.

“Is she still here?”

Daule shook her head, “No, she left the same day she came. Makes sense though, she had to bring her injured colleague to us. She wanted to stay in case you came by, but her Captain needed her somewhere else.”

Oh. Guess reuniting with family needs to wait.

“You mentioned getting her DNA, is there a match? Do you need another saliva sample? I haven’t eaten anything in the past solar cycle, so I should be fine on that.”

“It matched pretty quickly, said there was almost no genetic deviations between either of you too. Anyway,” she walked over to pat you on the head, “I’m going to talk with him for a bit,” she gestured to First Aid, “the nurses will check you out. I’ll be back soon.”

They both left, leaving you with the whir of machines and the feeling of lightheadedness slowly leaving your body as the blood dripped into you.

✩✩✩

The two walked into an office. Daule sat down in the chair. “We should introduce ourselves. I’m Dr. Daule, I mostly take care of the smaller species at this facility. I was also Y/N’s caretaker for some time.”

First Aid nodded, “I’m First Aid. Currently stationed on the Lost Light as the Chief Medical Officer-in-training.”

“You’re a medic, that’s good. That means some of these concepts should be somewhat familiar to you. But first,” she put her top hands in a steeple, “how did you end up finding her? From my knowledge, Cybertronians are not only rare around these parts, but also one of the largest species in the universe.”

“We noticed an emergency signal coming from a vessel, and one of the people captured what turned out to be her ship and put it somewhere. Eventually, the second in command noticed that the entrance was open and that there was a blood trail leading out. I was with the CMO preparing the medbay. We were able to take care of her, but as I’m not that familiar with organic biology, I had a feeling that it would be best to bring her to people who can actually treat her.” First Aid answered.

“I’m glad that you found her and did all you could. In fact, I think it might be best if she stays with you until she’s fully healed.”

The mech stalled, “Why do you say that? It’s likely best if she stays here, right?”

“Well,” Dr. Daule grimaced, “there’s been a recent incident that’s making our clinic a little bit packed. Y/N doesn’t need to be here for too long, probably just a cycle or two then have her return to get the stitches out in fourteen cycles. Besides, she needs to socialize more.”

“Oh! That makes sense. Just give me the care instructions, I’ll inform everyone once I get back on the ship. It’s best if we all know so we can prevent Y/N from being reckless.” First Aid nodded.

“Once the nurses come back and tell me what’s going on, I’ll write a care plan. Make sure she doesn’t do anything strenuous, the stitches might break." She said, “Also, there was no dressing on the stitches, so we’re going to add some. I’d rather not have the stitches redone if possible, they’ve been done rather well.”

“Anyway,” Dr. Daule got up and walked to the door after grabbing a box, “I’m going to check on her. This is what her sister asked me to give her. Follow me.”

✩✩✩

The nurses did plenty of checks on you, along with putting dressing on the stitches. After some time, Aunt Daule and First Aid returned. There was a blue box held in her lower arms.

“What’s with the box?” you asked.

Aunt Daule brought the box to you. “Your sister brought this to us. Said this was for you, in case you were alive. I know it feels weird to get something from someone you haven’t known since infancy, but try not to think about it too much, Y/N.”

You opened the box, opening the letter. It was in the language the planet you were raised on spoke.

My dear sister,

How long has it been since you were taken from home? Twenty years? We couldn’t even hold our heads up back then, and now it’s possible for us to meet again at a bar and drink together. I miss you so much and I’ve known you for so little. It’s ironic in a way; identical twins who won’t even recognize each other. You’ve shaped my life in so many ways. Even as you were declared dead, I never stopped searching for you. I’d look up at the night sky and wave, imagining you waving back at me. I went into astronomy, learned all I could about the world beyond Earth, with the thought of meeting you again.

I joined a space exploration program for the possibility of seeing you again. I knew you were somewhere out there. If you’re reading this, then I was right all along.

I know the possibility of you being alive is slim, but if you are, I’d like you to have these. The clothes you have might look weird on Earth, right? I bought some and washed them for you. I don’t know what style you like, so I mostly went with simple solid-colored stuff. Mostly black. I feel like you’d like black.

On the back of this letter are some coordinates and addresses. These are the places mom, dad, and I live. And our big sister too! I can’t wait for you to meet our niece. When we meet again, tell me your name, okay? I want to address you properly.

Your long-lost twin,

Makayla MacArthur

P.S. We have a weird gene that makes it so we can’t get drunk no matter how much alcohol we drink. You might’ve figured that out already, though.

Opening the box, the first thing you saw was a picture of a little girl next to two swaddled-up infants. The girl had black hair and brown eyes. Two pieces of paper had names, and the one on the right simply said ‘When you tell us your name again.’

It was you. You and your sisters. Another photo, far more recent, was of an older woman holding a child. The note on that said, ‘It’s our niece! Hope you don’t mind Chloe using your old name for her middle name.’

There was a third picture, with who you believe is Makayla, in a night blue uniform. She looks almost exactly like you, without all the experiments and scars. Brown eyes instead of your golden colored irises.

You thought you were a lost cause. That nobody would be looking for you on Earth. Oh, Makayla, how she proved you so, so wrong.

MacArthur. MacArthur. Y/N MacArthur. It’s going to take getting used to having a family name. An identity beyond being an experiment.

“Also, apparently the elasticity of your skin and flexibility isn’t normal for humans. According to your sister, it’s because of a condition called Ehler-Danlos Syndrome. I’ll explain some of the other things she explained once your scars are healed.” Daule added. “I’ll write up a care plan for you. You’ll be staying on the vessel that found you until you’re fully recovered.”

Honestly? You’re fine with that. The people on the Lost Light have all been kind to you so far, especially First Aid. Kinder than most people from the planet you’ve lived on for your whole life, despite knowing nothing about you.

“That’s fine with me.”

“Well then. Rest up, you’re gonna need it Y/N.”

#transformers x reader #first contact au #mercenary!reader #transformers first contact au #transformers perceptor #transformers ultra magnus #transformers drift #transformers first aid #transformers nautica #transformers brainstorm #transformers megatron #transformers g/t #giant/tiny

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oddballwriter · 1 year ago

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Vintage Cooking

Summary: You and Marc decide to make a vintage meal from the 60s for fun because it looked awful. Turns out it is awful and making jokes is the only way to get through it.

Warnings: Jokes about being a miserable housewife and mentions of the '60s drugs era, all of these of course being jokes. Gender-neutral reader.

Author’s Snip: I got this idea from watching this video with Tyler Williams and Safiya Nygaard where they make this abomination of food and just thought "That's great, I'm using that for something.".

I’ll shut up now. Enjoy! And don’t be afraid to request.

Word Count: 602

Marc looked down at the array of ingredients on the counter. They seemed like something for a simple normal dish until his eyes landed on the box of jello powder in the collection that made him cringe with regret for what you and him are about to make.

"What the hell are we doing?" he pondered to himself out loud. "We're cooking like it's 1960, Marc." you laughed. Marc looked over at the reference image that you had on your phone, seeing it in all its should-have-stayed-in-its-era disgrace. "And why are we making this?" he asked like he wasn't originally on board with making it for kicks. "Because it looked disgusting and we both agreed that it would be funny to make it and try to eat it." you explained in a polite matter-of-fact voice as you pulled up the recipe and instructions, first of which being making a boiled chicken broth to make into jello.

After being assaulted with the smell of the broth after boiling as instructed straining the water into a bowl, and setting the chicken aside, you gave Marc the honor of making the jello part.

"What were these people on?" Marc mutters under his breath as a stirs the pot with a whisk. "I want to say drugs but that was the mid-60s. This was made in 1962." you mention, "Suburban nonsense." you settle on using as an explanation. "This is just complete suburban nonsense." you say. Marc laughs, "Suburban fuckery, you mean." he says.

As Marc kept whisking in the pot, he speaks again, "There had to be some housewife back then who was wondering how the hell someone comes up with this.".

"I think they were all too fucked up on wine to care." you joke. "I think you need to be fucked up on alcohol to do this without regretting your life choices." Marc comments back.

After having banter about the lives of people in the 60's, and making the chicken broth into a chicken stoke, it was time to build up the actual forming of this awful dish. You both place the pieces of veggies and other things into their assigned layers laughing about having a weird desire to get the placements right and not have the pour of jello ruin it.

After a few hours of layering, pouring, and repeating till the pan was filled, it was time to release your vintage abomination and take a slice. "I'm regretting everything." you laugh nervously as you cut into the gelatinous creation. "This is a bonding experience but in a we-are-both-regretting-this way." Marc said.

"Okay," you say as you set the two plates down with their slices, "Do you want to feed them to each other all cliché newly-weds style?" you ask. "I would love nothing more." Marc says as he cuts a piece from the slice and you mirror him.

Finally tasting it was truly something. You chewed it for a bit before abruptly stopping and just letting it sit in your mouth because you didn't know how to react. Meanwhile, Marc kept chewing it, but still looked displeased with the end result. After swallowing he looked at you, finding that you took the trash can and spat into it.

You both stood there in silence before smiling then grew into laughing.

"That was the worst," Marc said. "If I were a husband coming back from a long day of work and you made that shit I would have just left." Marc joked through his laughing. "Maybe they were on something more early on in the 60's after all." you joked as well.

#moon knight #moonknight #moon knight x reader #moonknight x reader #marc spector #marc spector x reader

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lovevalley45 · 19 days ago

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#fictober24 - day seventeen

"Strangest thing I ever heard."

original fiction (power payback) (continuation of this fic)

word count: 1837

tw: general medical stuff

“Your friend is a botanokinetic, right?”

Magni turned in his chair to see Hillson hovering over the edge of his cubicle. “Yes. Why do you ask?”

“Odd call just came in. There was a guy found half-dead in his apartment by his coworker. BCPD suspect foul play, but the guy is a burnt out botanokinetic.” Hillson rested his arms over the top of his cubicle wall. “I told them I’d send a guy for a second opinion.”

“Yeah, I can do that.” He saved what he had been working on and stood. “I’ll head down to the station now.”

“Oh, no. You’re going to Bright City General.”

Damnit. Magni hated hospitals. Although, he hadn’t met many with a perverse love for them, so maybe that was just the general opinion on them.

“Fine.”

“I’ll tell Detective Pallas that you’re on your way. She’ll be happy to see you.” Hillson gave him a grin that didn’t reassure him.

As Magni drove from the office to the hospital, he wondered what exactly his boss thought it meant that his friend was a botanokinetic. He guessed it was fair; he’d spent enough time with the Marottos to learn how botanokinesis could manifest. But he was far from an expert.

Detective Pallas, a tall, Black woman with lots of curly hair, was waiting for him when he came in. She seemed impatient, foot tapping as he walked up. He could guess her cooperation was not voluntary today.

“Mr. Quinn,” she said. “I thought this case might be a bit too organic for you.”

“I have experience with botanokinetics,” he told her.

“Mm.” As he signed in as a visitor, Pallas gave him the run down. “Our victim, for the moment, is Chester Holt. 25, male, works as a sales rep for a dentistry equipment company. His coworker, Fernando Diaz, stopped by to check up on him and found him unconscious.”

“So you think it’s foul play.” He stuck the badge to his chest.

“Might be. The paramedics on the scene gave me the run-down. Strangest thing I ever heard.” As they walked to the elevator, she explained, “The obstruction in his throat was a bunch of flowers. Loads. Fully rooted down his airway. They had to operate on his airway to try and remove them.”

Magni winced. “Sounds painful.”

“Yeah. Vic’s still recovering, can’t really speak. The coworker who found him offered to talk to us, but he has a different story.”

“Okay, let’s hear him out.”

As they went up to the third floor, Magni recognized where they were heading - the Talent ward. It’d been about a decade since Sprout had been admitted for her burnout, when he’d spent hours here trying to cheer her up.

The hospital room Detective Pallas led him to similarly held no life. He wondered if they’d enforced the same “no live flowers” rule or if it was just too soon.

The man in the bed - presumably Chester - was hooked up to a ventilator, his eyes opening slightly as they walked in. He was pale, black curls played out on the pillow under him. The glimpse of his eyes that he got revealed multicolored irises - one bright emerald, the other warm brown.

Beside him, another man sat with an anxious look. There were bags under his dark brown eyes, his chestnut hair rumpled. He stood with wide eyes when he saw Detective Pallas.

“Am I being arrested?” he asked.

“No. I just want you to give your testimony again.” Pallas seemed to remember that Magni was standing there. “This is Mr. Quinn, one of our consultants for Talent-based crimes. Mr. Quinn, Fernando Diaz.”

Fernando sat back down. “Right. Okay. I don’t know much about Talents, but I heard what his talantologist said. They don’t think it was someone else.”

Magni was inclined to believe him, but Pallas asked, “Mr. Diaz, if you can just tell us what happened again?”

“Yeah. So, I was coming by Chester’s place to bring him soup. He was feeling under the weather the day before. I thought it was just a bad cold. But when I knocked, he didn’t answer. I was worried. He had sounded awful, and I thought- I don’t know what I thought.” He started to wring his hands. “The door wasn’t locked, so I came in.” At this, he glanced at Pallas, like he was ready to be reprimanded.

“You were just trying to see if he was alright,” Magni said, only to receive daggers from Pallas. “What did you see?”

“Blood.” Fernando laid his hands out on his knees. “The bathroom door was open and the sink was covered in it. That, and flowers. Little purple ones?”

“Geraniums?”

“What was the state of the victim when you arrived?” Detective Pallas asked, ignoring him.

“He was laid out of the couch. I didn’t see anything in the throat, but I could tell he was having trouble breathing. And he wasn’t conscious, I couldn’t wake him up, so I called 911.”

She glanced over at Magni. The testimony wasn’t helpful, but he asked, “Were you aware that Mr. Holt was a Talent?”

“No. I never suspected.”

He looked over at Chester, who had closed his eyes. But he could tell he was still awake. That information wasn’t a surprise.

“Did you think he was keeping any secrets?” Detective Pallas asked.

“No, Chester would never. He wasn’t that type of guy. I guess aside from being a Talent, but-” Fernando sighed.

Chester’s eyebrows furrowed. Magni wondered what he was thinking about. It must have sucked to be talked about when you couldn’t even respond.

“You said you talked to his talantologist. Do you remember their name?”

“Dr. Merlo. I think.”

Now that was a familiar name.

“Thank you, Mr. Diaz.” Magni turned to Detective Pallas. “I’ll talk to her.”

“Alright. I have a few more questions for Mr. Diaz here,” she said.

Magni nodded and stepped out into the hall. He was ready to go to the nurse’s station when he caught the doctor stepping out of another room. It hadn’t been that long since he’d seen her; Dr. Merlo wasn’t his doctor, but he’d had to ensure Sprout didn’t skip out on her appointments enough that he saw her around.

“Dr. Merlo?” he asked, stopping her.

“Oh. Hello.” Behind her round glasses, she blinked, before recognition set in. “Yes. Magni Sempers. I remember you.”

“It’s Quinn, now, actually.” Magni cleared his throat. “I’m with Hillson and his consulting agency now, helping the BCPD look into what happened with Chester Holt. I know you can’t say much on his Talent and his previous burnout, but-”

Dr. Merlo straightened her coat. “I understand. Can we step into my office?”

“Yeah, of course.”

He followed her into her office - a small space that seemed more like a closet, with just enough space for them both to sit. But it provided a nice bit of privacy.

“Just like with Ms. Marotto, I was Chester’s talantologist at the time he had his burnout. It was a few years after hers. It was an odd case - the flowers had began germinating inside his lungs and started to choke him out.” Dr. Merlo folded her hands on top of her desk. “You know how kinetics’ abilities can be triggered by emotions, even without their realizing.”

“I know.”

“That was what his mother had suspected. Whereas sometimes it can be anger, or fear, grief can be just as strong of an emotion. The reasons Talents often experience burnout in their teenage years isn’t just because they don’t have as much experience with their abilities, it’s because their emotions can be so much more intense. Add hormones, and-” She mimed an explosion.

“So what happened?”

“Burnout by broken heart,” Dr. Merlo answered. “And it manifested just like this.”

“You never thought there was any foul play,” Magni said.

She shrugged. “That’s what I told the detective. I’m just not sure what could have triggered a flare up.”

He thought of Fernando, the slight pain in Chester’s expression when he talked about if he had any secrets. “I think I might know.”

When he headed back to Chester’s room, he went up to Detective Pallas. “Can I have the room to talk to Mr. Holt alone?”

She looked at him skeptically. “You’re not gonna get much out of him.”

“I’ll get what I need.”

“Alright.” Detective Pallas sighed. “Mr. Diaz. Mr. Quinn needs the room.”

“Okay.” With a wary glance, he followed the detective out of the room.

As Magni took Fernando’s seat, Chester opened his eyes again and looked over at him.

“Relax. I’m not here to shake you down.” He crossed his legs. “I talked to your doctor.”

Chester closed his eyes again and leaned his head back into the pillow.

“That Fernando’s a good guy. He sat here with you this whole time?”

He nodded, or as much as he could with the ventilator. But he didn’t meet Magni’s eyes.

“My friend says I can be a little too saccarhine for my own good. I love a love story, you know? And Dr. Merlo told me that your burnout, the one that planted those seeds, was set off by a broken heart.”

This time, he looked back over at him, eyes more aware than they’d been the whole time he’d been here. But there was no anger, only sadness.

“You love him, don’t you?”

Chester raised his hand, gesturing towards the pen and paper on the table. Magni handed the pen to him, holding the paper steady as he wrote: DON’T TELL HIM.

He sighed, leaning against the edge of his bed. “I’m a terrible liar, so I’ll just be honest with you. I can’t keep your secret. Unless you want the police to keep chasing an attacker that doesn’t exist. But if we’re being real…” Magni glanced out the door. “I don’t think you’re such the fool that you think you were. If your choice of flower means anything.”

Again, he beckoned him to bring the paper close. THANK YOU.

“You’re welcome.” Magni stood back up.

As he left the room, Fernando came up to him. “Did you get anything out of him? What happened?”

“Ask him yourself,” he told him.

Detective Pallas narrowed her eyes, walking beside him to watch Fernando go back inside. “What did you do?”

“Nothing. Just confirmed that it wasn’t foul play. And maybe played Cupid.”

“Damn. Who knew a techno-geek like you was so soft-hearted?” she asked.

“Rude.” He stepped back. “I’m going back to Hillson. I’ll send you a detailed report and the invoice for my excellent matchmaking skills.”

“Jesus.”

Once he was out of the hospital and back in his car, Magni took out his earplugs and opened his phone. He ignored the technochatter of a dozen notifications and called Sprout.

“Hey. Remember those fanfics you read in high school?” he asked her.

“How do I know you’re about to tell me a wild ass story?” Sprout replied.

He grinned. “Trust me. You’ll love it.”

#alli writes shit #fictober24 #power payback #magni quinn #hanahaki #continuing to make hanahaki a legitimate medical condition in power payback #also if u can guess the blend of influences for the detective characters... congrats u know me too well

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depressedbagpipe · 1 year ago

Text

Enchanted (Prince Caspian x you)

Part II

Words: 3681 Warnings: caffeine, me forgetting how to properly write, also me forgetting the source material, ALSO me trying to write cute descriptions but failing miserably. A/N: again, i don't live in nyc, nor am i an architect so yeah. also, I'm taking for inspiration neil gaiman's short story 'the problem of Susan' that i haven't read so, again, don't look too much into it. sorry for the absence, but mental health is a bit scarce lately. Taglist: @just-levyy, @sergeantbuckybarnes

Part I - Part III

“Alright, tell me how you got here again?”

You sat your mug down on the coffee table, leaning back on the comfortable armchair as you stared at Caspian.

He sipped his mug, somewhat enjoying the bitter taste of the dark liquid his reticent host had served him.

“Well, I was enjoying my morning stroll around the Narnian woods, you know. Cair Paravel was a bit far but something in me made me continue walking. And then I found this… thing,” Caspian kept talking, yet the longer he went on, the more you frowned.

You tried to keep up with his retelling, only catching bits of information about lions and fauns, but everything that came out of his mouth became weirder by the second. Only after he finally closed his mouth you realized you still had no idea where this person had come from.

“Right… so, um, we’re talking about… some… extra-terrestrial experience? Paranormal, perhaps?” you tried again, but Caspian’s frown made you discard the idea rather quickly. “Alright, so Narnia. And who are these friends you’re looking for? The Pennies?”

“Pevensies,” he corrected you, but there was no malice in his deep voice.

“Right, Pevensies.Who are they?”

That threw Caspian into another tangent, describing how these friends of his were centuries-old royals who ruled before he did, but somehow made their way back a few years ago to help him fight his uncle.

Your coffee had gone cold by the time he finished. “So, like, is this some sort of… Hamlet situation?” you offered, failing to find the right words.

“Who is that?” he asked again.

“Hamlet?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t know Shakespeare?”

“Shakespeare?”

“Forget it.”

“Alright.”

His accent was cute, at least, you thought. And what originally was fear of the strange man sleeping on your couch, now had been replaced by utter confusion.

“So, they’re British,” you spoke again.

“The Pevensies?”

“Yeah. You said they’re from England, right?” you asked.

“Yes, Spare Oom.”

“I don’t think that’s a place,” you frowned, your mind swirling with possibilities.

“Have you ever been there?” Caspian asked you, with big dark innocent eyes.

You shrugged. “I’ve been to London once if that counts.”

“Do you think you could help me?” he spoke, and again, his eyes seemed to speak their own language.

There was naivité, and anxiety, and kindness. It was safe to say you had never seen eyes such as those.

You shrugged again, picking up your coffee, if only to give your hands something to work on, and an excuse to ignore his piercing stare. “I guess. Do they have Facebook or something?” You cut Caspian before he could talk again, noticing the way his nose scrunched in confusion. “Alright, is there any number, or address, that we can track?”

Caspian’s frown didn’t waver.

“I… don’t think so,” he left his mug on the small table, bringing his hands together. He stared at them with a lost expression, and his shoulders seemed to get smaller with every breath he took.

It broke your heart to see him like this, even if you couldn’t even fathom where this strange man had come from.

You had woken up that morning with a clear mission: getting him out of your apartment. You blamed your migraine and your smeared cupcake, as you opened your eyes and turned in bed a few times before checking the hour. For a second, you even thought that it could’ve been a dream. A weird, unfiltered, and totally bizarre dream. This was New York, after all. You had definitely seen weirder. But then you heard a muffled thump from the other room, and you somehow knew your guest had fallen flat on the carpet, probably tangled in the blanket you had gracelessly covered him with before locking yourself in your room, and it all came crashing down on you again. You had let a complete stranger crash on your apartment, and though it wouldn’t be the first time, it still felt wrong for some reason. He wasn’t a regular man, but you still didn’t know what his presence would turn your life into.

You would have stayed in your bed forever, waiting for Caspian to get the memo and exit your life, but curiosity got the best of you, and slowly, you got up despite the slight chill that settled on your bones on the cold Monday morning, and you faced whatever fate had in store for you waiting on the other side of your door.

Making small talk had not been an option, either. As soon as Caspian saw you he stood up nervously, standing by your couch again with his hands behind his back and his hair ruffled. Again, you thought he looked cute. He had immediately tried to talk, but you had held a finger in the air.

“I need caffeine first,” you only responded.

You prepared two mugs, mentally facepalming yourself for not asking him whether he even wanted coffee, but you had never been a morning person and you had more important matters at hand.

And that’s how you had found yourself on the armchair, staring at Caspian with a small glare, only grasping bits of his story, but not enough to provide clarity about the hazy situation.

“Alright,” you said after taking a deep breath. “Well, Caspian…” you doubted. “Should I call you ‘your Majesty’ or something?” you asked him first.

He let a soft chuckle, and for a second, you believed that sound was the only existing key to happiness. “Just Caspian.”

“Well, just Caspian, let me be frank with you,” you prepared yourself, sitting straighter on your seat and looking at him with what you believed to be a ‘harsh’ expression. “I still have no idea who you are, where you come from, and where you’re going. I still can’t believe I let you stay the night here, and, if I’m being honest, I’m having a bit of a hard time believing everything you just said,” you noticed Caspian’s sullen look, but you kept going. “I don’t know if you hit your head too hard on the concrete or if someone’s larping sword caused you some internal bleeding, but you need to understand that what you’re saying sounds insane. But,” you took a gulp, looking down at the floor for a second before meeting his somewhat hopeful gaze. “If what you’re saying is true… I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I’ll help you.”

His entire face changed completely. A new spark illuminated his eyes, and it made you proud to be the cause of it. “Really?”

You found yourself nodding before you could answer. “Yeah. Though, it won’t probably be easy, Caspian. So, please, for your sake and mine, don’t put too much faith in this.”

He nodded, but his smile didn’t falter. And you wished it never would.

“Okay. I can promise that.”

“Good. Now, I guess we need to find out more about these friends of yours, right?”

He nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah. You would love Edmund.”

You nodded along, not even knowing who he was talking about. “Whatever you say, pretty boy.”

You said that as you got up, completely missing the faint blush on his cheeks.

***

Caspian looked ridiculous in your ex-boyfriend’s clothes. You had insisted he wore something different, take a shower, and have a proper meal, before even thinking about leaving your place that morning. Your ex had been a little shorter and lankier than him, so you couldn’t help to eye the way the shirt clung to his torso, making his arms look bigger. You even had to shake your head to physically remove your gaze from him, the casual attire feeling so domestic on him yet out of place. You didn’t fail to notice the many faint scars that littered his arms. For a second you wondered if he kept more of those hidden elsewhere, but you didn’t ask. It was small things like those that had you doubt your sanity. Every so often, you found yourself thinking that maybe he was being honest with you, but you didn’t give yourself time to think about what the repercussions would be if you were, indeed, hosting a fictional man on your couch from a different realm. A realm where animals talked and magic existed.

You had also profusely apologized for your cooking skills –several times. If he actually happened to be a king (which you doubted, but in the tiny odd chance that he was), you didn’t want to make a complete fool of yourself and throw him some burnt steak. You had felt this pressure before, especially with your parents, and even your ex, but with Caspian, it felt different. You had been looking carefully at him as he tasted his spaghetti, and the look of pure delight he sent you made you want to become a professional chef, even if the pasta was a bit undercooked and the sauce a bit too salty even for your taste. Anything to see his look again.

Caspian behaved like a newborn, and it didn’t help that he was a curious young man. You had noticed at first how he looked everywhere around your apartment, taking in every small detail, carefully touching and prodding whatever was in his sight. But now, two hours later, he had already made himself at home and clearly didn’t understand your annoyed faces and curt responses.

“So, you can communicate with other people through this?” he eyed your phone warily.

“Yup.”

“And you command it to do your bidding?”

“Sure.”

“Are you a witch?”

“I wish,” you laughed at his horrified expression. “I could send you back with a flick.”

Caspian looked seriously at you. “In my land, witches aren’t all that welcome.”

You frowned. “Damn, don’t tell me you guys are afraid of powerful women too.”

He didn’t get the sarcasm in your voice. “The last witch that ruled in Narnia almost destroyed my kingdom. If it hadn’t been for Aslan and the Pevensies, not even I would be here today.”

You wanted to joke, you really did. But his voice was grave and deep with emotion. One look at him was all it took for a chill to cover your lungs. But then again, you weren’t one to back down from a fight.

“And what did she do that was so horrible? Did she accidentally unleash an eternal winter over your land?” you joked. Your eyes swiftly moved towards your DVD collection, falling onto Frozen’s case.

“Yes.”

Thankfully, you weren’t drinking, otherwise, you would’ve choked to death.

He wasn’t looking at you anymore. His eyes were hard and set on the wall behind him.

“It happened a long time ago, but Narnians still fear those dark times.”

“I’m… sorry,” you answered, but it felt empty even to you.

He shook his head. “That’s why I need to go back. I don’t know what brought me here, but I cannot leave my kingdom unprotected. Only Aslan knows what sort of dangers they may be exposed to while I’m gone.”

This time, you properly looked at him. The creases in his forehead, and the worry evident in the bags under his eyes. He couldn’t be that much older than you, but for a second, his concerned words made it seem as if he held the weight of the world on his shoulders. And that was too much of a burden, even for him.

He was standing rather rigidly in your living room, lost in his memories, despite never having seen such horrors. But the legends, the myths, the songs, and the tales, were abhorrent. A world without light, and happiness, only ice. A world where magic was divided by magic itself, and he knew that too well. And despite having always been kind and generous, some sick joke of fate had brought him here, to you, and he still didn’t know where that was. He thought about his people, his kingdom, constantly. But the cotton of his dark green shirt felt soft on his scarred skin. Whatever product you had forced him to use in his hair smelled of fruits he hadn’t eaten in months and that weird long yellow-ish food you had made him had tasted better than it looked. He was feeling oddly energized as well, and you obviously didn’t mention the coffee to him. Maybe he would think you were a witch, too.

You broke the silence, unknowingly saving Caspian from himself. “You said Aslan’s good, right?”

He blinked. “Yes.”

“Then, maybe this is a bit of a stretch, but hear me out. If you’re this… all-generous king or whatever, and this… evil witch is long gone, who’s to say it wasn’t Aslan himself who brought you here?”

You surprised yourself with that question. Certainly, you did pay attention, after all.

Caspian looked at you, carefully considering your words. “It might be a possibility, yes.”

Nodding, you continued. “And your friends? They left because, and I quote, ‘learned everything Narnia had to teach them,’ right?”

He nodded, suddenly feeling desperate. “That’s right. Aslan himself told them.”

“Then who’s to say Aslan didn’t send you here because there’s something for you to learn as well?”

You were crazy. You sounded crazy. You couldn’t believe that you were playing into whatever Caspian’s game was, but it seemed pretty evident to you. If the king was right, it seemed the only possible explanation. And somehow you knew, the man before you wouldn’t hurt a butterfly, despite the faint scars in his bare arms telling you otherwise, as well as the sword propped against the entrance’s wall.

Caspian remained silent, but his eyes widened. He too knew you were right. Aslan wouldn’t do something as grand without a reason.

“Perhaps… finding my way back is part of the challenge,” he spoke slowly, setting his eyes on you.

You could only shrug. It felt like he was having this big spiritual moment, and you, ever so skeptical, didn’t know what else to offer him.

“Perhaps,” you repeated. “You know what they say. ‘Maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way,’” you joked.

Caspian didn’t seem to get that. “That certainly sounds wise, my lady.”

You nodded with a pout, looking anywhere but at him. “Alright. Let’s look for the Pennies.”

“Pevensies.”

“That’s what I said.”

***

“Hey, Anne,” you greeted the nice lady at the front desk of your favorite local library.

“Oh, hello, dear! Long time no see! How was your Thanksgiving? You spent it with your parents, did you not?” she greeted you back, throwing a thousand questions in your direction as she usually did.

Caspian noticed the way your shoulders tensed at the mention of your parents, and though he didn’t want to pry, he knew he would be soon asking you about that.

“Yeah, um, it was good. Listen, my friend and I are in a bit of a rush here,” you motioned to Caspian quickly. “Do you have any… information, on English families? Like their lineage? Possibly in the past century?”

Anne eyed you questioningly. “I think we do have some records around here, but it may take me a while to reach them,” she explained. “Why the sudden interest? Is this for your work?”

You nodded slowly, knowing there was no way you could explain your situation to anyone without them thinking you had suddenly gone mad. You still think you kind of were, but the man trailing after you like a lost puppy was a good indicator of the contrary.

“Indeed.”

Anne clapped delighted. “Well, in that case, I shall fetch those documents for you!” she quickly got up and disappeared through a narrow door, no doubt leaving for the archive behind her.

You sighed as you leaned on the desk, staring at the library where rows of books lined up the walls. Caspian copied your movement and he too stared at the nearly empty space before him.

“So, your work, huh?” he asked in a soft whisper.

Even though you were the only ones standing there, it felt wrong to speak any louder.

You nodded. “Yeah. It wouldn’t be the first time I had asked her for the weirdest things.”

“What do you do?”

You paused. “Spiritually, I’m an architect. In reality, I work at an office.”

“A what?”

You sighed again. “It’s this place, where you… work, pretty much every day. And you just… do stuff.”

Caspian looked at you, knowing there was more to it. But he also noticed the way you seemed to sigh more than necessary, and struggled to find the right words. It all kept adding to the mysterious puzzle you were, but Caspian wasn’t ready to ask yet.

He nodded in fake understanding, despite still having no idea what an office was. “Right. Sorry for asking.”

You shook your head. “It’s alright, really. I just… don’t really like my work that much.”

Caspian widened his eyes. “What do you ever mean? Architects in my country are treated as royalty. Creating any building is pretty much considered magic.”

You snorted. “Right. Well, I should’ve thought about that before moving to New York. There really isn’t that much space here to build anything anymore.”

“Then why do you keep living here, if you hate it so much? Aren’t you free to roam around your kingdom?”

You paused. You knew that, deep down, he was right. There really was nothing tying you to the city. Your family lived elsewhere, and you knew the scarce friends you had here wouldn’t miss you that much if you left. You liked your apartment, and the views, and the nightlife, but you knew other places in the world could offer you as much and more. You even thought about Caspian’s life in Narnia, and you wondered what your life would be like there.

Just his audacity made you angry. “It’s not that simple, Caspian.”

Thankfully you didn’t have to say anything else, because Anne was soon by your side once again, with several folders in her frail arms. Caspian quickly took the papers from her, and you raised your eyebrows when you noticed the way his arms flexed under the weight.

“Oh, thank you, dear. Okay, so I believe this is all we have. Be careful, some of them are really old and could easily fall out of their bindings,” she warned you, before sitting back down on her chair. “I’ll be here if you need me.”

“Thank you,” you said under your breath, your heart picking up for some reason.

You led Caspian towards the desk at the back, away from prying eyes and ears, and forced him to sit down next to you. It was your favorite spot, the quaint corner at the far end of the library, surrounded by literary classics that no one ever seemed to look for. A big window decorated one of the walls, giving you as much light as needed as you promptly opened all the folders and carefully placed them all over the table, fast eyes scanning the words.

“Alright, we already tried tracing your friends on the Internet and that didn’t work, so this is the best we got,” you said with a whisper, knowing Anne would not hesitate to throw you out if you made noise.

“Books are the pathway to knowledge,” Caspian said as he crossed his arms. Again, you couldn’t ignore the bulges that formed on his biceps.

You shook your head, registering his words. “Right.”

And that is how you spent the rest of the afternoon, reading about old English family lines, World War II’s mass mobilizations, and railway accidents that shook entire nations.

Your eyes were almost red by the time the sun finally set, and you couldn’t hide your yawns any longer. Caspian was in no better shape himself. At some point, he had dropped his head on the table and his eyes were almost closed. A few stray hairs were framing his face, even after you had put his hair in a small bun earlier. You totally didn’t enjoy the way its softness felt between your fingers, and Caspian totally didn’t close his eyes in enjoyment when he felt your hands tread through his wild mane.

And only after you yawned for what it felt like the hundredth time, you found something. Literature Professor Hastings, on childhood, fantasy lands, and grief. The article was one of the first things you quickly discarded, but as you looked around the papers, a sentence stuck out to you from one of the sprawled loose papers. “A family of four suddenly became a family of one.” You reached for it with a frown, and you would’ve read it entirely if it hadn’t been for the faint bell announcing the library’s closing time.

You shook Caspian awake, and though he pretended to not have been almost asleep, he got up anyway and helped you gather all the documents.

“Will you be keeping that?” he asked when he noticed the article in your hands.

With a bite of your lip, you nodded. “I don’t know why, but… I have a feeling.”

Caspian looked serious. “Then, by all means, keep it. Intuition is only a powerful ally in my world.”

You stared at him as you both walked back to the front desk, quickly giving everything back to Anne and checking the article out.

Stepping out of the library, you took a deep breath, turning to Caspian. You took a few seconds to admire the city lights reflected in his eyes, but you composed yourself. Not even twenty-four hours ago you were still on a train coming back to the city from a dreadful weekend, and now you were helping a random man go back to the kingdom of Narnia (which, according to Google, didn’t exist).

“Hey, remember what I said this morning? About not getting your hopes up?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Good. We’re still at it.”

“Got it.”

“Dinner?”

Caspian smiled. You noticed the wrinkles in his eyes when he did so, and you thought you wouldn’t mind seeing those again.

“Sure.”

Part III

General Taglist: @angiewhoohooo, @azaleaniath, @mishaandthebrits, @celestialcharles

#prince caspian x reader #prince caspian x you #prince caspian fanfiction #the chronicles of narnia #enchanted #prince caspian au #bagpipe writes #the chronicles of narnia au #alternative universe

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bunny-lou · 2 years ago

Note

Hi! I was looking for someone who could write a story where Carlos has Tourettes? I don’t really mind what happens tbh, but I’d prefer it if it was Jaylos :) if u can’t that’s okay, could u recommend anyone else? :)

Hello @jatpanddescendantsfanartdump, I am so sorry it has taken me this long (over 2.5 years) to fulfil this request, I hope it is worth the wait!

As someone who does not have tourette syndrome, I did some research before writing. I used the Mayo Clinic, the CDC and some interviews with Billie Eilish speaking about her experience with this disorder. If anything about this is inaccurate, please reach out to me!

---

Auradon probably has a name for whatever Carlos does. They have names for lots of things, Evie has read about some of them in the medical books her mother keeps (which aren't used for medicine of course, but for the description of drugs for the skin, what could work for crow's feet and smile lines and age spots), things like Down Syndrome or Anxiety (which Evie thinks she may have, but a prince wouldn't want that, so no she doesn't).

But those don't describe Carlos. It's not anything that keeps him from being a clever little mad scientist or keep him from running faster than Junior and Third can keep up with. But it's something Carlos does that gets him into trouble sometimes.

Not in Weird Science though.

"-and that's how carbon is recycled from the atmosphere to the biosphere!" Yen Sid announces as he puts down his chalk. "Any questions?"

"That's how carbon is recycled from the atmosphere to the biosphere." Carlos mutters in his seat. It's soft enough that no one outside of their little table hears it.

Evie had thought it strange at first, but now it's less strange and more...Carlos. It's just something he does. He even does it to her sometimes and even at the beginning, Evie hadn't thought he was mocking her. She thought he was repeating her words to remember them, but it's not to remember. Carlos hasn't taken a single note this entire class, he probably has the whole textbook memorized, so it's not to retain the information. It's just...Carlos.

Yen Sid seems to understand it in the way Evie does, maybe even more. He never has gotten angry at Carlos for repeating him or interrupting class like the other teachers. Usually, Yen Sid doesn't react to it at all unless it's with a small smile at Carlos, sometimes a head tilt.

Auradon must have a word for what Carlos does and Yen Sid must be aware of it, Evie is certain of it.

Class is dismissed and students scatter like bugs, jumping from their seats to be the first out the door. Evie and Carlos wait for most of the class to clear out before rising from their seats.

"What's for lunch today?" Evie asks as she gathers her books. Of course, she doesn't plan on eating much of anything beside the wilted celery in her bag.

"Rancid spaghetti," Carlos tells her.

The repetition isn't all the time, either. It's often random and sporadic, unless Carlos is on edge, like when the bullies are more aggressive or Cruella is in a mood. It's worsened by anxiety.

(Which princesses absolutely do not have.)

(But Carlos might, but also maybe not. It fits somedays, but not on others, not in this specific question.)

They take their seats in the cafeteria, right next to Mal and Jay. It's still a new thing, the four of them being not friends, but something of a gang. Evie is tentative around them, still trying to learn what her place is and where the lines are, but Carlos seems to fit a little better, but he's known them longer.

"Look at the haul!" Jay counts his stolen trinkets on their table, in plain sight of the original owners. He has watches and earrings and wallets spread out.

"Look at the haul," Carlos says quietly, but a smile plays on his lips.

Mal twirls her spaghetti before eating it, speaking despite the food in her mouth. "Where's your food?"

Evie pointedly eyes her celery and Mal frowns. It's a thing of tension between them, but neither of them is familiar enough with their little gang to say something directly.

Evie is both dreading and eagerly awaiting the day Mal asks.

Carlos has no food in front of him, so Mal carelessly slides her tray and fork in front of him. He blinks at it, then at her.

"Eat, runt."

He grins before picking up the fork and taking a bite.

"Dad is gonna be stoked!" Jay picks up a scratched diamond from his pile. "The shelves have been a little empty lately. This ring will sell for so much."

"This ring will sell for so much." Carlos says. "And Maddie is going to hunt you down to get it back."

"It is very pretty," Evie eyes it fondly. She'll have jewelry like that some day, shiny and expensive and for everyone to see.

"Yeah?" Jay spins it between his fingers. "You want it, princess?"

Before Evie can answer, Jay is slipping the ring onto her middle finger. It's a little big for her bony hands, but Evie still gasps in delight anyway. "Oh, thank you, Jay!"

"Thank you, Jay." Carlos says next to her, much quieter than before.

"Are you sure though?" Evie looks at the jewel. "What about the shop?"

Jay shrugs. "I've got plenty for dad to sort through and the day's only half way over."

"The day is only-," Carlos snaps his mouth shut midway through and they all turn to him. His mouth opens and closes for several moments, hands spasming on the table, before his quirk wins, "-half way over."

It's rare for Carlos to be bothered by his unusual behavior, he makes no effort to hide it from Evie or their classmates, but something about Jay, and maybe even Mal, has him trying to control something that he can't.

But Jay, ever the smooth talker, breezes right past it. "How was Weird Science? Were you upstaging all those idiots with your genius?"

Carlos blinks and looks away. "Yes. I mean fine. I mean fine and then yes. We learnt about carbon transfers." He takes another bite quickly before passing the tray back to Mal.

"Ah, so you can tutor me when I fail again?"

"You won't fail. I'll help you study this term."

"Ugh, that sounds so boring," Jay groans, loud and dramatic and completely pathetic. "I mean, the tutoring part. Hanging out with you is never boring." He grins and winks at Carlos.

"Hanging out with you is never boring." Carlos says back and this one doesn't seem like he's just repeating Jay's words back.

Mal nudges Evie's foot under the table. "How long until they need a room to themselves?"

Evie doesn't quite understand what that means, but Mal's voice isn't malicious, so she just giggles before taking a bite of her celery.

"I'll let you have some of my spaghetti if I can have some of your celery?" Mal offers, but her tone has a little more bite to it, a tone that Evie isn't supposed to refuse.

Still, she hesitates. The spaghetti, even old and slightly bitter, smells so much better than her sad celery, a dull shade of green. Surely, a little bite won't hurt.

They swap foods, Mal immediately munching on the veggies as Evie twirls the smallest bit of noodles onto her fork. She takes her first bite, warm and heavy, and tunes back into Carlos at her side.

"-so then plants take that carbon and use it during photosynthesis-"

"That's how plants make food, right?"

"-that's how plants make food, right. But then that carbon gets transferred to the animals that eat that plant, then carbon is transferred to whatever eats that animal, so it goes on forever, getting recycled again and again."

Evie will one day learn that special, hidden word that Auradon would have for Carlos. Maybe she'll share it with him, maybe she won't. Whatever it is, having a name for it wouldn't change Carlos.

She takes another bite of spaghetti as Carlos continues explaining science, occasionally repeating himself, and she smiles.

#descendants #carlos de vil #jay descendants #evie descendants #mal descendants #jaylos #rotten four #core four #descendants fanfiction #my writing #filled request #jatpanddescendantsfanartdump #carvie

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probabludaistkf · 6 months ago

Text

a flower blooms in early winter chpt 1 - the meeting

word count: 2262

Chapter summary:

you are taken in by the former demon lord Vox akuma. You immediately realise the danger you’re in but soon you find maybe he’s not so dangerous.

an: hi this is my first fanfic please be nice it is intended to be fluff and (very mild) crack. This fic is platonic as well and sfw.

The snow burns against your skin, your wounds sting in the bitter cold and your lungs ache as you gasp for air clinging to the last bit of life you have left. The sound of footsteps ring in your earâ€¦ someone’s comingâ€¦

You wake up in an entirely new environment, the new smells plague your nose and the lights are blinding, your head spins as you try to recall what had happened.

“Ah, finally awake are we?” You turn to see who spoke, to be greeted by a demon of a tall and muscular frame with pale skin, his hair long and black with red highlights, his voice is deep but he speaks to you softly. You are recognise him immediately as the great demon lord Vox Akuma. Upon realising the danger you were in you bear your fangs and claws and began to back off of his couch but you were too light headed to fight and the lights looked as though they were spinning.

“Hey, no need to stress yourself. I won’t hurt you.” As he reaches out an arm to touch you, you swipe at him and make a dash for the door. You don’t get far as you trip on your own foot and your chin slams into the floorboards,

“Careful!” He rushes to your aid but you swipe at him again growling and puffing the fur on your tails to make yourself look more intimidating.

“C’mon you’re hurt.” You back away as he slowly approaches “Let me help you.” He smiles softly and reaches a hand out. This time you bite him as hard as you possibly can hoping he’ll leave you alone.

“Fine then.” He retracts his bleeding hand “are you hungry? I made us some food if you’ll be willing to eat.”

Before you can, your stomach responds for you with an awkwardly loud growl. The demon chuckles softly as he rises “I’ll take that as a yes then, follow me.”

You contemplate following as his footsteps trail off but you find that your stomach has led you to the kitchen anyway. Looking out a nearby window you see that it’s midday,

“You’ve been asleep for a while now. I was kinda worried.” He pulled out a chair for you and reluctantly you sat “I did some research and it said the best thing to help you was soup!” You were proudly presented a bowl of meek looking soup. You grimaced at the sight of such humble food but upon seeing the demon’s twinkling eyes, you ate. The soup was mild and easy to swallow and the flavour or each component was simple but came through so clearly. To put it simply it was the perfect soup. You almost felt bad for making such a face; he probably worked very hard on it. Without a second thought you downed the entire bowl. Vox was pleased with himself and happily ladled you another bowl full and another and another and another until the pot was empty.

“Good. Well done for eating.” Vox gently pat you on your head the moment you let your guard down so you scratched at his forearm leaving quite the deep gash “so what was a kitsune like you doing in this part of the woods? There are humans here y’know.”

“Of course I know!” You snap back “ they used to worship me.”

“Oh. Tell me more”

“I used to have a shrine north of here, I think, I don’t really know where I am.”

“You’re in a human city.”

“So you decided that to protect a yokai at risk of being hunted and experimented on by humans to take them to a city full of humans?”

“It’s fine, many yokai have blended in here.”

“â€¦”

“Don’t look at me like that, I’m telling the truth here”

“Fine. Anyway the shrine was originally home to some silk weavers. They had a rat problem so I took advantage and in return I was cared for. Generations later I still remained except now I was worshipped for bringing the family fortune they’re a major designer brand now. The family business is owned by the second eldest son now but out of jealousy his older and younger siblings decided to sabotage the whole family by paying some people to hunt me down. I tried hiding in the old shrine but they found me there. I’m probably still being hunted.”

“I seeâ€¦”

“Anyways it’s my turn to ask you a question now.”

“Ask away!”

“What were you doing in the forest milord?”

“It’s been a while since I’ve been called that. I was out for a walk with a few friends. We were being silly until we heard screaming and gunshots. Your hunters were arrested by the way. So we don’t need to worry about them.”

“I’m sorry, we?” You quirk an eyebrow. “No matter, I must leave now, I am grateful for your kindness milord.”

“Hang on, are you seriously leaving?”

“Yes, why?”

“It’s still too cold outside and you have no proper clothes! I just saved you from dying of hypothermia and you want to go out there again?”

You look down at the torn rags that covered your body and tutted, these had cost you quite a bit well not you as you weren’t the one who bought them. All those days in the forest had ruined your garments. It’d be wise to stay but if you stayed you’d be at great risk as well.

“I guess I have no other choice then. Eat me.”

“I’m sorry what?

“Eat me. If I leave I’ll die. Don’t you find that a waste to let a meal wander off uneaten?”

“No??? I don’t eat people anymore???”

“He’s gone vegan or maybe he’s gone mad.”

“Rude much?”

“You’re a demon you can’t survive without eating souls. I’ve lived long enough to know what you guys are and your eating habits.”

“Is that why you were so afraid of me earlier?”

“Yes but now I know it’s the slow and painful chill of the snow or my soul being painlessly eaten so I’ve made my choice. Eat me.”

“For the last time NO! I won’t eat you! Anyway you’re full now, right?”

“Correct.”

“You should really have a bath. Respectfully, you smell.”

“Dammit.”

“I assume you can bathe yourself.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll run you some water then.”

And with that Vox was off. You could hear the dreaded water filling up a bathtub and your skin crawled. There was nothing wrong with water except how heavy it makes your hair and fur. You shudder at the thought. The bath must be avoided at all costs but how?

Vox had returned withs towel in hand

“Ok, bath’ s readyâ€¦. Where are you?”

He searched calling out for you being careful enough to even check his cabinets. Considering your size you could hide anywhere. He even checked outside on his balcony and front door.

“You were just hereâ€¦” he said, scratching his head. You flinch as he opens the door. Surely he won’t find you here.

“Hey kid! Where did you go?”

You hold your tongue for now. You can see his white socks from under the bed. Surely he won’t look there right? You flinch again but harder as you see his knee drop to the ground and his head begins to peak under. Surely not.

“Nothing.” He sighs and so do you “just kidding.” You bite hard when he grabs you from under the belly.

“How did you find me? Also I’m no ‘kid’.” You queer

“Boxes don’t sweat. And you sweat quite a bit.” He checks the many wounds you’ve left on him “why are you hiding? I thought we've established I’m not going to eat you.”

You pout and puff your cheeks, ears drooping. Now you really have to take a bath.

The bath water is a decent temperature and you don’t have to ask Vox to change the water for the eleventh time because the second you touch your tails the water turns brown. You can finally sit and relax. When you return from the bathroom you find Vox has prepared some clothes for you. They’re absolutely massive on you, comically oversized. There’s also a note which reads “I’m sorry if they’re too big they’re the smallest ones I could find. If you need me I’m in the kitchen making dinner. You can entertain yourself with the TV! You do know how to use one right? ~Vox ^_^” you sigh and march yourself to the kitchen.

“Milord.”

“Yes?” he snickered. You looked ridiculous in his shirt.

“Do you have a brush that I could possibly use for my tails?”

“Um.. yeah sure lemme go get it.”

Now you could relax, brush your tails and watch TV in peace. You reach for the remote and put on your favourite show: Bluey. It might be immature and childish but honestly there’s nothing else you’d rather watch. A few episodes had passed when,

“Oh hey. What you watching?” You frantically reach for the remote and change the channel “what’d you do that for?” He grabs the remote and changes it back. “Ah, Bluey, I heard this show was good. Is it really?” You dare not look him in the eye nor respond. How could you embarrass yourself in front of Vox like that?

He hasn’t even watched five episodes yet and he’s already crying.

“Milord?”

“I’m not crying, it’s the onions!”

“Suuureâ€¦.”

“I should really check up on the food.” He sobs. And so he exits the room wiping his eyes. You continue to watch until there’s a knock on the door outside.

“Oh yeah I invited some fox friends of mine. I’ll open the door, don’t move!”

Hearing his footsteps move towards the door you decide to peek around the corner. In the doorframe are two kitsune. One is dressed in an orange and grey suit with a detective cap that hides his ears and his jacket is draped over his shoulders.There are various mysterious stains on his shirt and coat. His hair is short and grey but cut very choppy and you think his orange sunglasses are a bit tacky. And that belt. If you could even call it one. The other was a woman and BOY was she stunning. Her hair was a silky silver and it came down in long locks which curled around her shoulders. Her makeup done perfectly, especially around her eyes and her ears were tall and fluffy. Her tails were equally fluffy, they were wispy and covered in thick, gorgeous fur. Her kemono greatly complemented her makeup and was highly ornate it was definitely made by the family brand. Her gaze trails past Vox and to you.

“Is that the cutie you were telling us about?” She smiles and waves towards you. Blushing slightly you retreat back around the corner.

“I guess they’re a little shy.” You can still hear how soft her voice is from the living room.

“Far from.” Vox retorts

“Anyway. So are they ok considering the whole incident?” The man asks

“They’re well enough to give me attitude. It’s probably starting to get cold. You should come inside.”

“Thanks man!”

You scramble to change the channel trying to think of something cool that would impress the vixen who was now approaching. Oohh what to put. Her footsteps grow closer. What to put. She’s really close now.

“Hi there honey.” You jump at the sound of her voice “Oh, there’s no need to be scared.” The beautiful vixen raised you up into her arms and gently pat you on the head. “What were you watching?” You bury your face in her shoulder as the Bluey intro sounds.

“BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! BLUEY?!?” The male fox is practically dying laughing. “What are you four?!”

“Actually I’m four hundred and sixty-five.” Your face burns from embarrassment

“Aww. Leave them alone mysta.”

“I just find it stupid that they watch kids shows like a little baby.”

“Hey Bluey is NOT just a kids show!” You hear Vox chime in from the kitchen

“Yeah, I’ve actually watched a few episodes myself. It’s really good.”

“You’re not serious Nina.”

“I am. You wanna watch some together.” She gently scratches behind your ear, the perfect spot.

“I swear if that trash-eating mongrel opens his mouth again I’ll sew it shut.” Nina simply chuckles at your remark

“Who are you calling trash-eating? we’re both foxes!”

“Y’know Mysta they’re not wrong.” Vox finally emerges from the kitchen presenting bowls of chicken katsudon for both of his friends but none for you.

“Quit glaring at me, yours is coming.”

You were quite impressed with how much alcohol Nina could handle. She finished a whole bottle of wine all by herself. Half a second bottle of wine in she was absolutely bawling and so was Mysta and Vox. Three fully grown adults crying their hearts out to Bluey. Normally in such a situation you’d stand from a distance and glare at them like the pathetic little worms they are but if it wasn’t for Nina clinging onto you like a teddy bear. You can’t blame her. The camping episode made you cry for the first time too. But Mysta’s bawling is absolutely ridiculous. And the way he and Vox scream, shaking each other like little girls when Jean Luke and Bluey meet again is beyond moronic. But it is quite a sentimental moment.

“I take back everything I ever said about this show. Kid, I am so sorry.”

“I’m not a child.”

#Cat chatter #a flower blooms in early winter #fanfic #vox akuma #nijisanji #luxiem #vox akuma x reader #platonic #x reader #platonic love #nijisanji en #nijien

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