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xxxlovedandlostxxx · 2 years ago

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The Gemini Man: Love, Sex, Friendship, Style The Gemini Man

The Gemini man is a wordsmith and a master of communication. It’s not all idle chatter, or conversations about the weather with this man. He is an intellectual, always seeking more information and knowledge. Bright, quick-witted, and mercurial, the Gemini man is many things but he is never boring.

Symbolized by the Twins, a Gemini is both Master Jekyll and Mister Hyde, a mix of suave gentleman and salt-of-the-earth. The Gemini man can see both sides of any issue, and possesses an extremely balanced opinion on topics ranging from the mundane to the controversial.

You will often hear a Gemini man wax lyrical about the benefits of, say, yoga, and then stop to catch his breath and continue, “On the other hand…” He isn’t being flaky. It’s just that marvelous ability of his to weigh up all the pros and cons of any situation coming into play. This other side of the coin approach also means that the Gemini man often finds it hard to make up his mind. His mood can change on a simple whim. However, this also means he is extremely flexible and is happy to go with the flow.

The Gemini man is a jack of all trades, his intelligent mind bounding from project to project, and darting from one hobby to the next in a short space of time. He will have many interests, for example; gardening, reading, rocket science, telepathy, ancient history. Everything fascinates him and he is ever curious. He loves problem-solving and approaches challenges like a game, applying his cool logic to reason himself out of hairy situations.

A social sign, the Gemini man is most comfortable in social situations, holding forth on a variety of topics, ideas, and opinions. Gemini men love interesting company and are fascinated by the different and the exotic. Charming and congenial, the Gemini man is popular and effusive with his friends. Many celebrity Twins are authors or songwriters, for example, Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney. Other famous Geminis include Donald Trump, John F. Kennedy, and Johnny Depp. Love, Sex, Romance, and Relationships with a Gemini Man

Charming, flirty, and irresistible, he has incredibly high standards and may throw up a smoke screen or act unpredictably to hide his deepest emotions. The intellectual Twin is not always comfortable with the great passions that lie within him which are unleashed when he falls in love. For this reason, the Gemini man does not fall in love easily or often. Thoughts, not emotions, influence him the most, so get him talking about his opinions. He is a fun loving and roguish lover, with bold romantic gestures. Don’t read too much into them, though, because for a Gemini, this is just normal behavior. Game, set, and match – love is sometimes pure diversion for the Gemini man.

In relationships, Gemini men will often exasperate their partners with their objective reasoning in arguments. He isn’t being cold and unemotional; he’s just trying to be logical about it all. Luckily, because he is so good at communicating his thoughts and listening to his partner, arguments don’t happen often. Routine is anathema to the Gemini man, so the biggest threat to a relationship with a Gemini is boredom. His partner will have to keep up with his mental gymnastics or risk losing his attention. The perfect partner for a Gemini man is one who is practical, stable and won’t mind his madcap fancies. A partner must also be extremely intelligent and secure enough to provide him with plenty of space to roam.

Playful in the bedroom, sex is an adventure for the Gemini man. He wants to try new things, new toys, and new positions. Like all the other signs ruled by Air, the way to a Gemini man’s libido is through his mind. Mental games, rapid-fire riposte, sexual banter – all these things turn him on more than satin lingerie or candlelight ever will. His is a cerebral kind of sexuality, and he will use all the information at his disposal to please his partner satisfactorily in bed. The Gemini man is a generous lover, and seldom possessive or jealous.

He is generally considered most compatible with Libra, Aquarius, Leo, and Aries. See also Sun sign compatibility. However, there is a lot more to compatibility than only the comparison of the Sun signs. For example, how do your Venus signs compare? Find out Venus signs here. Discover Venus sign compatibility here. Understanding Gemini Men

With his smooth talking ways, the Gemini man is a natural charmer who has no difficulty making friends. This intellectual man can adapt quickly to a constantly changing world and accepts whatever challenges are put before him in a calm, positive manner.

Although he’s usually in control of his emotions, the Gemini man is always in conflict with the restless “twins” which can cause him to be alluring one minute and very reserved the next.

This quick-witted individual enjoys a feisty debate and is a difficult person to argue with. Money & the Gemini Man

The Gemini man watches his financial position closely and it’s quite normal to find him balancing his personal budget on a regular basis. It would be rare to find this man surprised with having insufficient funds in his account to cover a cheque he issued.

His portfolio will be based on logic and not emotion, so it will consist mainly of stable investments and a defined plan for long-term security. Fashion & the Gemini Man

The Gemini’s color is yellow, so you can count on this man’s wardrobe being anything but drab. There will be a variety of styles in his wardrobe, but the clothing is all in the latest fashion. Regardless of the occasion, the Gemini man will always have something suitable to wear.

Jewelry will be classy and not garish, just like his vehicle. His home and work environments will be kept neatly organized with everything having its place.

It’s not out of character for the Gemini man to spend an afternoon shopping for something and then leave the mall without making a purchase because he decided it’s really too much money to spend right now. Relationships & the Gemini Man

The Gemini man’s innate charm makes him quite popular and he is never lacking for party invitations. Being a good listener and possessing sound judgment, friends will often call on him for advice.

He can sometimes be logical to the point of being irritating, but his rationalization of an argument does allow him to see both sides. Romance & the Gemini Man

The adventurous Gemini man enjoys variety and constant stimulation which means that his bedroom behavior will keep a partner continually surprised and always pleased. More often than not, he will put his companion’s satisfaction before his own and this unselfish trait makes him an ideal lover.

This gentleman is a flirtatious one and enjoys the romantic side of dating and new connections. Although he may find it difficult to remain with a single partner, once he finds that special someone he becomes totally devoted to the relationship. Health & the Gemini Man

Bronchitis and asthma are common ailments of the Gemini man, so you’ll not normally see him smoking or working in dust-laden situations. Being an active individual, this man takes care of his physique and prides himself on broad shoulders and muscular arms.

The Gemini man tends to be a bit high-strung, so he does need his rest and shouldn’t make a regular habit of coffee, caffeinated drinks and the junk food he likes so much. Career & the Gemini Man

The Gemini man is an excellent communicator and multi-tasks well, but does require a constant challenge in his workload or boredom will affect his performance.

Confident and logical, this gentleman will find success as a lawyer, journalist, teacher, counselor, or broadcaster.

With his charismatic personality and gift for gab, politics, or high-profile sales offer tremendous career opportunity for the Gemini man.

#muse headcanons #Anthony Bennet / Anthony Paulo non Inquisitor Dragon Age verse #muse headcanons - anthony trevelyan

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shootybangbang · 3 years ago

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[Talking Bird] 17: In which beans are ruined

[Ao3 Link]

At the mention of Trelawney, Arthur dimly recalls a scrap of half-remembered conversation from last year, when he’d idled with the man in a Lemoyne saloon while waiting for a mark to arrive. The first flicker of your existence, passing him by unknown. Like the brief touch of a licked finger through candle flame: deceptively benign, with just a whisper of the burn to follow.

Somewhere between his first and second glass of whiskey sours, Trelawney had mentioned the burgeoning demand for opium in Chinatown. A former contact of his had recently left the high stakes poker circuit to get in on the profit, and he’d lamented the loss.

“It’s a shame,” he’d said, absently swirling the ice cubes in his emptied glass and regarding the swirling wood grain of the countertop with a pensive, faraway look. And for once, the sentiment had sounded genuine. Knowing him, the man was grieving a lost business opportunity more than anything else, but it’d been a long time since Arthur had heard him even bother to feign emotion for a stranger. “She’s not suited for smuggling in the least. Can’t say I can see this ending well.”

Less Trelawney’s gift for prophecy and more stating the obvious, now that he knows exactly who he’d been talking about. Prickly disposition, clueless when it comes to violence, and far too trusting of strangers. The cavalier attitude of someone who’d never been exposed to serious conflict and who, having since been exposed, lacks even the conviction necessary to put a bullet in the man holding her hostage.

And far too delicate besides.

When you’d pulled the blanket down your shoulders to untie your braid, Arthur had tilted his head back just enough to catch an eyeful of your backside. A pretty thing to put to paper: the wet swathe of hair draped over your shoulder, the faint shadow of your spine a dark curve flickering with the shifting of firelight. Soft, dappled lines wrapped in the body of someone who’s caused him nothing but grief in the past weeks.

The view had confirmed something he’d already been suspecting: your lack of threat to anything larger than a rat terrier.

Judging by your physique, you’d probably struggle to lift anything more than fifteen pounds. Maybe twenty, on a good day. A veritably pathetic amount of muscle tone with none of the etchings that rough living leaves behind.

Some foreign high society girl fallen on hard times, he guessed. But oddly, none of the clumsy caution people of that strata have when confronted with any sort of real work. You’d fallen into the rhythm of whittling bark off the cottonwood branches too comfortably for someone unacquainted with physical labor, handled the knife with a deftness that comes only from rote repetition.

“I knew Trelawney had connections to some gang out west, but I never thought…” You shake your head slowly, dazed by the absurdity of this new development. “Did he know? When I sold them those bonds, did he realize they were yours? And why—”

“Nah, he wouldn’t have known. I, uh… wasn’t too keen on tellin’ folk I got robbed by a woman.” He rubs the back of his neck and lets out an embarrassed huff. “Told ‘em the whole thing was a bust.”

Looking back, he may as well have told them the truth. The lie hadn’t done much to salvage his pride, and had prompted weeks of jibes at his own expense. Snide little asides from Micah, overt ridicule from Bill, and the painful ordeal of Sean.

“Gettin’ sloppy in your old age,” he’d quipped. “I’ll tell you what you need, Morgan. You need to let someone else hold the reins for a change. Someone quick on the uptake, someone young and hot-blooded and—”

“Get back to me when you’re done complimentin’ yourself,” Arthur had replied, already walking away.

“Wait, Morgan — take me with you next time you ride out! I’ll scout somethin’ out, and we can…”

Sean had been insistent as a mosquito and twice as annoying, but ultimately bearable so long as he had a beer in his hand or a pillow over his head. His own head, though he’d been sorely tempted otherwise.

No, what had really driven him to leave camp had been Dutch.

Dutch and his put-upon fatherly air, all stern mouthed disapproval and downward sloping shoulders. His pointed observations of Jack’s tattered jacket, well on its way to becoming a patchwork Ship of Theseus. Pearson’s dwindling supply of seasonings, so scarce that the stews have become bland to the point of near inedibility. The stocks of medicine running low, bandages boiled so many times that their fibers have since frayed to a cobwebbed consistency.

“I know you’re doing your best, son,” Dutch had sighed, casting a weary eye over his threadbare kingdom. “God knows you’re the only man I can depend on to get anything done around here. But folks are… well. Folks are struggling.”

Arthur’s eyes had slid momentarily towards Dutch’s tent, resting on the golden gleam of the gramophone and the crisp cotton sheets laid across the bed. An unbroken sea of white, with not a stitch out of place. And not twenty feet away, Hosea’s shabby lean-to, the older man’s bedroll bearing the same disjointed array of colors as the rest of the camp’s accoutrements.

Dutch always did have a taste for the finer things in life. A level of refinement proportionate to the depth of his ambition, which in earlier days had been tempered by kinder, simpler ideals. Feed those that need feeding. Shoot those that need shooting. Robin Hood-esque, with a western (and occasionally lethal) twist. Evelyn Miller had been a fixture even then, but in those halcyon years Dutch had not yet twisted the author’s words to the tottering worldview that he’s since constructed.

The gang’s nascent success had bred standards and attracted new followers. A ragtag flock all too eager to nourish their leader’s growing, malignant appetite for grandeur.

“Just one last score, and we’ll be clear of all this… this manmade rot.” Dutch said, gesturing in the direction of Blackwater. “But for now, we’ve got to play their game. Get our hands dirty for the time being so we can wash ourselves clean of all this when we’ve finally got the means.”

Arthur had departed under the pretense of retrieving the missing bonds (impossible) or locating some cache of similar value (near impossible), but in truth he’d done so primarily for the preservation of his own sanity. More and more these days, he’s been seeing cracks in the foundation of the man who’d given him this life, dragged him out of the gutter and set him with a previously unwavering sense of purpose. And it feels treacherous — traitorous, even — to take any of it into question.

But as always, the open road and the unabiding sky of the prairie settled him into a different mindset altogether. The cycles of flora and fauna in untouched wilderness exist completely separate from the artifices of men, with the legacies of countless tiny lives encapsulated in the fine grit of the dust to which all things return. And in that certainty comes an overwhelming comfort. Everything else seems trifling in the wake of the vast perpetuity of nature.

A few days spent wandering would do him good, he’d decided. Spend some time away from all the trappings of civilization, then rob some poor sap on the side of the road so as not to return empty-handed.

And then you’d ruined his plans entirely by literally walking into him as he’d been passing through Strawberry.

“Well,” you say, offering up a small, nervous smile. “What now?”

What now, indeed. Arthur pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes. “Guess we take a visit to Trelawney’s,” he replies, already dreading the inevitable embarrassment of explaining the whole sorry situation to the man. “And if it turns out you’re tellin’ the truth, I’ll give you a ride from Rhodes to St Denis.”

You frown and furrow your brow. “Rhodes?”

“Yeah, Rhodes. Trelawney’s got a caravan there on the outskirts of town. You didn’t know?”

“You can’t take me to Rhodes,” you say automatically, as if stating the obvious. “I mean… look at me.”

“You’re a woman?” he asks stupidly.

“I’m an Oriental, you moron. And Rhodes is a fucking… it’s a fucking Raider town.”

“You’d be with me. I’ll keep you safe.”

You shake your head and set your mouth into a grim, flat line. “That’s worse. They might think we’re together. And they don’t take kindly to miscegenation.”

Your words have to them the quality of a veil being drawn back, exposing a corner of this country’s ugliness he’s not often been privy to. A familiar knot of guilt tugs at his innards, accompanied by the unpleasant, impotent sensation that surfaces each time he catches the ungracious stares of the crowd when walking into town with Tilly by his side. Each time he hears the practiced courtesy in a shopkeep’s voice drop away when the man turns away from him to address Charles. Each time he watches Lenny reread for the thousandth time the letter from his dead father, the creases in its paper worn so deep that it would have long since fallen apart were it not for the boy’s careful, reverent handling.

“You know those big plantation houses just south of Rhodes? They hire Chinese sometimes to work the fields. Cheaper than sharecropping, apparently.” The look on your face is drawn and bitter. The bite in your voice suggests something personal, the sting of an injury not yet healed. “One of the boys got involved with a white housemaid. He’d saved up for train tickets to Philadelphia, and they were… he was going to marry her there. Wanted an August wedding. The number eight’s lucky for us, you see. So August 8th, 1898… he thought it was all very romantic. Used to make this stupid joke that he wished he’d met her ten years earlier. Raiders strung him up in an oak tree a couple weeks before they were set to leave.”

Arthur’s tongue lies silent and heavy in his mouth.

You take in a deep breath that rattles with the failing determination of someone struggling not to break their composure, then look to him with a desperation so absolute that it seems almost indecent to witness. “Why don’t you just leave me here? Keep me tied up if you have to. Come back for me when you’re done with Trelawney.”

In the short span of time that he’s known you, you’ve made enough of an impression to warrant several conclusive classifications. A haughty, pampered little thing. An ineffective liar. A self-destructive fool — but not stupid. Definitely not stupid.

The sheer idiocy of your suggestion indicates a fear so deep that it’s completely severed you from your senses. Just a frightened little bird caught in a trap, scratching and clawing for the narrowest possible opening for escape.

“You’re tellin’ me to tie up a woman and leave her in the middle of nowhere? May as well just hand-deliver you to the wolves. No,” he says firmly, trying to shake off the unwanted pang of sympathy. Dutch had been right about one thing — the gang did need money, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let this opportunity for it slip away out of misguided compassion for a woman who’d literally robbed him as he’d bled out. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Soon as we near Rhodes, I’ll tie you to Boadicea the same way I did when we left Strawberry.”

You blink and utter a disbelieving, “Excuse me, what?”

“Reckon they’ll treat us both a hell of a lot nicer if they think you’re a bounty. Gives me plenty excuse for keepin’ you in one piece, too.”

Your face ventures on a quick journey through the five stages of grief. The grief in question being for the loss of your dignity. The blank look shifts to a glare. You open your mouth to spit out something no doubt acerbic and very rude, but a flash of uncertainty crosses your face and you quickly bite your tongue. Then you lower your head and squeeze your eyes shut. When you finally open them again, there is a defeated resignation in them that attests to a lost mental argument.

“You better ride slow if you don’t want a repeat of this morning,” you say wearily.

Arthur shrugs. “Can’t throw up if you got nothin’ in your stomach. We’ll just skip feeding you breakfast tomorrow.”

To his relief, the atmosphere lightens to blessed, familiar hostility. You tell him to go fuck himself. That you’ll literally fight him for the apples you know he has tucked away in his saddlebags. That maybe you’ll throw up anyway purely out of spite. That he’s a miserable piece of shit who you wish—

A sudden flash of lightning illuminates the outcrop for a fraction of a second, painting everything beneath it into harsh shades of white and black. It strikes as sudden and violent as a fiery whip crack, leaving behind it the bittersweet scent of burnt grass and a curl of grey smoke like a departing ghost. Its near-simultaneous clap of thunder drowns out your last sentence with an ear splitting boom so encompassing that the vibration of it seems to rattle down to the bone. The silence that follows has in it the anticipatory hush of the void prior to Genesis. You shatter it with a quiet but appropriately placed, “Jesus Christ.”

The land outside is hedged low in the horizon, and the vastness of its sky swallows all else. It crowns as its dominating feature the movement of its anvil-shaped clouds. They shift leaden and portentous, translucent bellied and lit up by the jagged tongues of lightning darting throughout quick and sporadic as pale dragonflies. Roiling violet like the murky blood of some vast organism, pulsing membranous over the prairie with a fury of near biblical proportions. And below, the buttes with their strange eroded shapes like scattered islands in a black sea of grass. In the torrential dark, their silhouettes flash ivory with every strike of lightning only to sink back into the hushed umbra of night.

There is a muted look of awe on your face, as if witnessing for the first time the true scale of a storm. Something that before now had been glimpsed only through the gaps between high-shuttered buildings. Tempests caught in concrete snares and, not unlike the men that build them, diminished until they are but a feeble whisper of their former selves.

“It’s beautiful,” you murmur. “I never knew rain could be like this.”

With a jolt of displeasure, he finds that the soft expression on your face renders you unexpectedly pretty in the fire’s flickering light, the amber reflection of it bright as copper in your eyes. A gentle chiaroscuro, the smooth line of your cheek and shadowed hollow of your throat the anchor points to which his eye is drawn.

You shuffle a little closer to the outlook’s rain-veiled edge. The roughspun blanket, still drawn tightly around your shoulders, shifts. Arthur quickly averts his eyes, but even so is met with a sliver of bare skin that runs neck to navel. The subtle outline of a breast, the mild fishbone curve of a rib.

And all at once he’s unbearably, disastrously hard, filled with a painful but directionless longing — not just for intimacy, but for the simple reassurance of another body pressed close, skin to skin and breath to breath. A kind of tenderness he’s been deprived of for so long that the memory of it brings not warmth but the brittle cold of hoarfrost. Absence like a thick pane of ice, the things he’s lost visible just underneath.

From the periphery of his line of sight, you’re but an indistinct blur in the vague shape of a woman. How appropriate then, that you should be the focus of this formless arousal. And how infuriatingly pathetic. He hadn’t lied when he’d said you weren’t his type, and yet here he is, his cock stiffer than it’s been in months at just the suggestion of a woman’s naked body.

In desperate search of both distraction and something to obscure himself with, Arthur pulls back the front flap of his satchel and fishes out your blue notebook. He glances briefly in your direction, already anticipating your angry shout of indignation — but you’re far too occupied with watching the progression of the storm to so much as glance in his direction.

The notebook’s contents are far more legible than he’d initially assumed. Most of the foreign characters seem to be either names or places, which makes it possible for him to pick out the main thread of most sentences.

Its first half consists of what looks like a ledger. Neatly organized columns with foreign characters and numbers that he hasn’t the slightest idea how to parse. When he flips past it, a slip of paper scrawled with the same strange, flowing text flutters from the pages and alights delicately into his lap. Arthur picks it up, and as he examines it, it occurs to him that he has no idea how to orient it.

Prior to this, he’d only ever seen Chinese characters painted on the roadside food stalls accompanying railroad workers on their long trek westwards. A strange, complex syllabary. He’d once read somewhere that each word of the language had its own unique character. A sort of pictograph that, when studied, relays its meaning to those who knew how to read it.

He scrutinizes the slip of paper in his hand, but finds himself unable to pick out even the vaguest of resemblances. The corner of the paper bears a square seal of red ink, inset with an intricate consortium of straight lines. Curiosity spent for the moment, Arthur slots the document back in place.

The rest of the notebook looks to be an odd mixture of field observations and long, ornate paragraphs about various landscapes. A few pressed wildflowers, field observations of city flora and fauna, crudely drawn animals reminiscent of the scattered petroglyphs he’s found carved in long-abandoned settlements. An earmarked passage describing the wetlands bordering St Denis, full of strikethroughs and hastily added phrases squeezed into the margins. Another describing what sounds like Cotorra Springs.

“The amber fields are dotted with sprigs of larkspurs and wild flax like blue-violet stars,” Arthur reads aloud.

You turn to face him so quickly that your wet hair arcs through the air like an ink-stained brush, scattering water droplets that sizzle and hiss when they fall into the fire. Wild-eyed as a spooked horse, but frozen into a horrified silence as he licks his finger and traces the rest of the line across the page, continuing, “And even further north, viridian-blue pools from which rise plumes of white smoke, the water still and clear as glass. Hills of black obsidian —”

You scramble towards him and, while clutching the blanket around your shoulders shut with one hand, slap the notebook out of his grip with the other. It lands perilously close to the fire, but you snatch it up without giving a second thought to the nearness of the flames.

“That’s private,” you hiss, hugging the notebook to your chest the way one might accidentally smother an infant.

“Thought it was fair turnaround, seein’ as you never extended that same courtesy to me,” he retorts.

The memory of that miserable morning after surfaces in him like a bloated corpse too persistent to stay hidden. His billfold emptied, ill-gotten gains vanished, and his journal speckled with smeared, bloodied thumbprints from beginning to end. Above a sketch of a mountain wildflower he’d drawn a question mark next to, the word “crocus ?” written in an angular, jagged scrawl.

“Yeah, because I thought you were going to die!” you argue back. “Figured you probably had your next of kin listed somewhere in there!”

Next of kin. The phrase pierces through like a stitch popped out of place, and Arthur nearly flinches. It’s an unintentional blow on your part, but nevertheless he deflects the only way he knows how. When bitten, bite back.

“Oh that’s real charitable, comin’ from the dope-peddler,” he jeers. “You save this compassion for everyone you fuck over, or just me?”

A clear and unguarded expression of hurt crosses your features. The same you’d worn when he’d had to pry his shotgun out of your hands. Forlorn, helpless as a wounded prey animal. But it passes quickly into a cold disdain, your head raised high again and your eyes hard as flint.

“Do you know,” you say quietly, lip curling with contempt. “I seriously considered cutting your throat when I finally realized who you were. I should have.”

Then you blink, forehead wrinkling as you sniff at the air. You glance at the fire, where his forgotten can of beans is beginning to burn.

Arthur curses. He hastily swipes one of his discarded riding gloves from the grass and pulls it on, then grabs the can and blows on its contents, fanning away its delicate wisp of black smoke.

You retreat to the far inner corner of the outcrop and frantically page through the notebook until you find the red-sealed paper sheafed inside. With a sigh of relief, you slump against the rough granite wall, the tense set of your shoulders loosening as though some secret string stretched taut through the frame of your body had suddenly been cut loose.

A sullen silence permeates the shelter, punctuated only by the grating scratch of metal as he scrapes burnt food off the edges of the can with a spoon.

“You forgot to mention that the whole place smells like shit,” Arthur says finally. He keeps his eyes on the can, attention focused squarely on the arduous task of excavating beans.

“What?”

“Cotorra Springs. Smells like week-old shit. Especially around the pools.”

The rustle of blankets. From the corner of his eye, he watches you tentatively scoot closer. “You’ve been there?” you ask. Your voice is still deeply reproachful, but touched with genuine curiosity.

“You haven’t?”

“No. I’ve just seen pictures. And notes from people who have.”

“Huh,” he says. He scrapes another carbonized mouthful from the can. “Could’ve fooled me, the way you wrote about it.”

You raise your eyebrows. “You think so?”

“Sure.

The corner of your mouth quirks upwards in a reluctant smile that unfolds like the breaking light of a clouded dawn. “Well, that’s… that’s good to know.”

“You writin’ a book or something?” he asks.

“That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” The smile wilts slightly, and you drop your gaze down to the notebook on your lap. “No. Just a favor for an old friend’s husband. The man fancies himself an explorer, but can barely string a sentence together. He’s paying me to pretty up his notes for him. Half of which I think are made up. There’s some bullshit in there about an enormous rainbow colored pond full of boiling water.”

Arthur laughs. “Naw, that bit’s true. I’ve seen it. It’s a hell of a thing.”

You seem skeptical. He doesn’t blame you. Even after having walked the rust-banded edge of that craterous spring himself, his memory of it still carries with it the preternatural awe of a place half-dreamed. He tells you about the slow gradation of color leading inwards from the rim. Ochre to cadmium, to turquoise, to a deep cerulean with the unreal brilliance of a painted ocean. Steam hanging like a pungent fog. Entire stretches of ground covered in a thick, boiling mud, bubbling ominous as something out of Dante’s Inferno. A constant gurgling of earth and water, as if he were treading upon some living thing in the midst of an infernal digestion.

Halfway through his description, you flip the notebook to a clean page and ask him for a pencil, then begin scribbling down his words with an unceasing, determined hand. This bemuses him. That anyone might find his drivel meaningful enough to commit to paper is a new experience altogether. It’s an odd feeling, but not at all an unpleasant one.

That is, until you begin peppering his narrative with so many questions that it takes the better part of an hour to accommodate them.

What kind of plants grew there?

“Bunch of disgusting slippery shit around the edge. Algae or something. Other than that, can’t think of a single thing that’d lay roots in boiling water and sulfur.”

Did the mud boil like roiling water, or was it more the viscosity of a slow simmering stew?

“More like wet cement, really.”

Were there animals?

“No. Nothing there for ‘em.”

Birds?

“Didn’t see any.”

Insects?

“A shit ton of gnats, but not much else.”

How wide were the prismatic bands around the crater? What was the geology like? Did the surrounding forest taper off gradually in the vicinity of the spring, or was the loss of vegetation sudden and absolute as a drawn border?

“Give me your notebook.” he says, having finally reached the point of exasperation. “Easier if I just draw it for you.”

To his faint surprise, you hand it over without hesitation. He sketches out what he’s able to recall, all the while acutely aware of the madness of the situation. Fucking illustrating an account of his own wanderings for the woman who robbed him while they both sit in varying states of undress. Scribbling out a messy landscape in the same notebook whose contents he’d derided just a little while ago. Focusing all his attention on Cotorra Springs so as to ward away the unfortunate possibility of another inopportune erection.

The mediocre drawing he finally manages to scratch out would have disappointed him under any other occasion. Instead, he feels a warm flood of relief at its conclusion. If this doesn’t shut you up, then nothing will.

Nothing will, it seems. To his immense chagrin, the drawing sparks another round of questions. After silently admiring his work just long enough to spark hope of your satiety, you ask him about the species of the trees. Had he explored the nearby forest? Were there flowers? What season had he visited in? Was the acrid smell of sulfur present even here?

“Look,” Arthur says wearily. “You clearly come from money. Why don’t you just hire someone out to take you sometime?”

You snort at the suggestion. The corner of your mouth lifts upwards into something that’s only nominally a smile, and more the type of grimace that accompanies an old wound. “The only two men I’d trust enough to take me out into the middle of nowhere are dead. And with the money I owe, I can’t… I can’t just… you know what?” you say abruptly. “It’s getting late and I’m fucking exhausted. I’m going to sleep.”

And with that, you tug the blanket tight around your shoulders and huddle against the ground like a felled shrimp. You lay with your back to him, the words left unsaid hanging over you both like an unripe fruit of a question.

Arthur fetches his bedroll and unfurls it close to the fire. A battered pillow emerges from the worn tarp as he spreads it flat. After a moment of contemplation, he picks up the pillow and tosses it in your direction. It hits you square on the head.

Immediately, you sit up and snarl at him. “What the fuck is wrong with — oh.” You pick up the pillow and grasp it tight, as if at any moment he might change his mind and demand it back. Your small “thank you” is puzzled and uncertain.

“I’m gonna put out the fire,” he says. “You try to slit my throat in the dark, I’ll wring your neck.”

But the threat comes out empty and toothless, and judging by the renewed sarcasm in your voice when you tell him you’ll keep it in mind, you seem fully aware of it.

Arthur douses the flames by kicking dirt over the embers, which glow dim and vermillion for minutes afterwards, fading slow to dull, crumbling ash when the heat finally bleeds out of them. The pleasant smell of smoke lingers inside the shelter for a good while longer, but even that dissipates eventually, leaving just petrichor and the crisp, clean scent of early autumn rain.

The worst of the storm has shifted westwards. Water drips in a steady stream from the outer edge of the overhang, churning the ground below to a soup of mud. The cloud cover is still dense, but it’s thinned enough that moonlight gleams through the feathery underbelly in a pale and spattered mottle. With it, he can make out the dim outline of your body, the rise and fall of your chest in a slow, steady rhythm he sorely doubts you’d have the patience to feign.

He lies awake there in the dark for a long while, shuffling through a jumble of discordant emotion. It’s as if the pieces of several sets of puzzles have been mixed together and jammed into an incomprehensible mess, so hopelessly and thoroughly muddled that he can no longer tell where one thing starts and another ends. He sorts his way through it until the rain weakens to a grey drizzle and the drip of rainwater turns from the unbroken stream of a faucet to a series of droplets beating out an abstruse morse code against the ground.

In the end, he’s only able to definitively place a single solid sentiment. Pity.

———

Couple notes:

Arthur's understanding of Chinese is incorrect, but aligns with the assumptions a lot of Western scholars during that time period had regarding it. There was a big tendency to treat it like Japanese, which despite using some of the same characters, uses a completely different structure.

Cotorra Springs seems to be based off Yellowstone. The big boiling rainbow spring is actually real: it's called the Grand Prismatic Spring and seriously does look like something out of a fever dream. Yellowstone also does smell like sulfur in some places, but it’s not so much like week old shit as it is the potent fart of someone who’s eaten far too many deviled eggs.

No algae grows in the spring. It's actually cyanobacteria, but there's no reason Arthur would know this. It does look pretty gross up close.

#arthur morgan #arthur morgan/reader #arthur morgan/oc #fic #red dead redemption #rdr2 #my work #talking bird

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astringofmadhousefloozies · 4 years ago

Text

On Illness and Recovery, or: Sickfic, Baby!

You know the drill! Please let me know if you liked it, and check my Twisted Wonderland fanfiction tag if you want other shit I’ve done.

Contains coarse language and emotional whiplash.

~*~*~*~

Some things stay true no matter where you are; the truest, right now? Schools are disgusting fucking petri dishes, as your miserable cold will tell you. Your cough had only been getting worse as the days went on, with it came exhaustion and a chill that wouldn't leave your bones. You should probably be holed up in your dorm instead of going to class, but that had it's own issues that you were struggling to solve.

"Are you done yet? I want to eat." Grimm's nose, and little else, poked out from a pile of blankets on your bed.

"Nowhere close. Shh." You taped the last bit of plastic over the balcony entryway, and swapped the roll of tape for a heavy duty stapler. "Hold that right there."

The skull-faced ghost held a packing blanket over the plastic as you stapled it in place. By the time you were done, you couldn't see much, which at least meant you could no longer see your own breath. Maybe now, you would be able to feel your own fingers.

Ah, they joys of your own rotten, ancient place - you wake up with frost on your bedsheets and your washbasin shattered from the ice within it. There were other rooms in the place, but most had holes in the ceiling or were too big to heat effectively. So now, you were going to live in one room, that you'd yet to figure out how to run electricity to, and only leave for class or the bathroom. Even if you were ill, could anyone blame you for still going to class when your own home had a nasty quirk of being even colder than outside?

Anywho, it was time to do some homework. By the light of an oil lamp. In five layers of clothing. Curled up so close to a tiny fire you might as well be inside of it. While your not-a-cat complained the whole time.

Yaaaaaaay.

~*~*~*~

"You really should be resting."

You scoffed. "You just feel bad because you're the one who got me sick."

"You can't prove that, everyone's had a cold the past few weeks."

"No one else has been exploring my tonsils, dude."

Idia clapped a hand on your mouth, which you did not lick solely because you were wearing a cloth mask. "Quiet! That's secret intel."

"What? No it's not, everyone knows."

"I don't want to advertise. Then I'm a raid boss and you're the rare loot drop."

You elbowed him in his boney ribs. "No one's going to kick your ass out of jealousy. Just because I'm the hottest bitch in this place doesn't mean I've got universal appeal."

"You're still the only girl and people are weird about it." He placed the back of his hand on your forehead and winced. "You're too warm."

"How can you tell? You've got gloves on."

"That's how bad it is. I'll make some tea."

"I'm not drinking anything out of the damned lab equipment."

He frowned. "I've never had anything bad happen, it's cleaned correctly."

"You're smarter than that. One of these days you're going to grow a tail due to residue in the glassware, and I'm going to haul you around in front of god and everyone by it, going 'I told you so' the entire time."

He blanched, knowing that that was not an idle threat, and someone laughed. "I think I should make that happen, just so we can see that."

"Jade, no. No magic mushrooms for my man, or any other concoctionary bullshit either."

Idia looked ready to die, so to take attention off of him you leaned over and poked Silver awake before he fell face first in the potion he was working on. Logically, you know his narcolepsy was debilitating. Right now, you wish you could have borrowed it last night. You don't remember walking up during the night, but you must have, because why else would you be so tired?

He started up, mumbled "thank you" and went back to stirring as if he hadn't been about to drown in dubious magichemicals. God, you wished that was you right now.

"Idia, deal. You help me get through this class, I'll grab some hot food and go home."

He made a show of hemming and hawing before saying, "Grimm needs to let me hold him when I drop you off, and I will."

Ordinarily, you would have just said "Ask him yourself and don't be weird about it," and Grimm would have simply told him no until sufficiently bribed. But Grimm was still in bed at home, saying you kept him up all night, so instead you bumped Idia with your hip and said "What, you can't think to ask for better pussy to fondle?"

Of course, you just had to say something crass at the moment where everyone went quiet. Even Crewel raised his head and both eyebrows at you. The only reason you didn't get a riding crop to the face and a week in horny detention (where, you assumed, they punished you for being a bad girl indeed) was Idia, rapidly going through every stage of confusion and grief, with a few currently unknown to man. You'd intended to tease him, but that sheer amount of confused, horny misery on his face was just too much, and you laughed so hard you bent over.

And coughed. In a short time, there was no laughter left, only miserable coughing from the depths of your chest that left you on the floor with your eyes watering. Someone thumped your back a few times, and when you yanked your mask off to catch a proper, if shallow breath, your mask was full of a red-streaked, pus coloured slime.

A fur coat was draped over your shoulders as everyone made various noises of disgust. "Class dismissed. Let's get you to the nurses."

~*~*~*~

"How in hell are you still mobile."

"Pettiness and a desire to not freeze to death."

Crewel narrowed his eyes at you. "Both lungs."

"That is what double pneumonia means, Professor."

You could see his whip fingers itching. "Yes, well. You can't come to class like that. And... Is it really that bad in Ramshackle?"

Idia raised a hand. "It was really cold the last time I was there."

"Ugh. I told Crowley we should have razed the place for an expansion on my dog run." He looked at you with a curious mix of genuine fondness and even more genuine disgust. "I'm not putting you up until your place gets fixed, you'll leak all over my furniture. Anyone here going to babysit?"

"I've done perfectly fine in my own dorm, I don't need to become the pet of another dorm."

"Those little fairies said that if you don't stay on bedrest and stay warm, you will die. I am not filling out that paperwork." He looked to you classmates. "Speak up or I'm docking a letter grade."

Silver raised a hand. "I think we could do it but I don't think D- Lilia would let me. Malleus would end up trying to play nurse and skip class."

"Oh god, no, we don't tell him I'm sick until I'm safely ensconced somewhere, he would lose his damn mind and I'd try to strangle him after a week of it."

"There are no spare rooms in Octanivelle. However, I could try some experimental medicines I've been-"

"Jade, no."

Idia was quiet, before speaking up. "I... I don't know if Ignihyde has a spare room, or would be good for healing."

He'd not left your side since your collapse, and gone so full of writhing, barely concealed anxiety he'd broke through the other side and simply shut off. You didn't get it, it wasn't actually anything serious. The nurses had pumped you full of medicine, you'd be up and about a week or two at the most, instead of the month's worth of hospital rooms and bad food it would have been.

Crewel sighed. "Time to start checking the files to see where you can be squeezed."

There was a cough, from the fifth student so quiet despite his size. Everyone had honestly forgotten he was there.

When he spoke up, it was to you, and not anyone else. "There's an unoccupied room down the hall from me. I think the weather in the Savannahclaw dorms will be good for your health. You shouldn't have to stay where you won't be wanted, or get sicker. Would that work?"

You looked at him, assessing. You and him hadn't talked overmuch, and he didn't seem to mind. But as severe as he looked? You could see the sincerity in his offer.

"That should work. Jack, right?"

His ears flicked, and his tail twitched. "Yes."

"Thank you, Jack. You're very kind."

~*~*~*~

Easy to see why the room was empty. You suspected it might have been a storage room, or that there had been a monastic order in the dorm at one point. A single bed just fit the far wall, with a chair, a desk, a bureau, and little else. But the far wall had a large window, and the room felt... nice. And a hell of a lot warmer than than your room in Ramshackle.

"It'll make an excellent sickroom." You set your schoolbag and an entire case of tissues on the desk. "Thank you again, Jack. You sure it won't be any trouble?"

"I've already cleared it with our dorm leader, he said he doesn't care as long as you don't rub phlegm on his things." Jack was a solid block of frown and muscle in the corner. "The window does open, you should keep it that way for circulation. There's a bathroom down the hall, there's showers in there. If you need anything or anyone tries to bother you, please let me know."

"Will do." You were already unpacking the few things in your bag, trying to get them arranged before another coughing fit took you.

"I can help get your things, if you need?" For a dude who was very do-that-shit-yourself, he was being very helpful.

"Idia's grabbing Grimm and anything else I'll need. He'll know what I want."

"I see." Silence, and more interesting ear flicks. "So."

"So?"

"You and him are..." He made a guesture with interlaced fingers.

"Yeah. Jealous?"

He snorted. "No. Just curious. He's a bit..." Hand wiggle.

"I'm a bit too. It works. Would have been nice if he'd gotten the hint before I had a ghost turn me inside out in front of him and everyone else."

"You know that's why you're so sick, right?"

You made a noise that was hard to decipher, that he used as cue to continue. "You never smelled quite right after that happened. Even after the healing. You're always a little..." He moved his hands, trying to grasp the right simile. "Like when a flower's starting to drop petals. Overripe."

How in the hell were you supposed to take that. What do you even say to that? Does everyone know you smell? Does -

"Oh god, you all know when I'm on the rag."

A single, curt nod, and you put your head in your hands and groaned.

~*~*~*~

A knock on the door

"Who is it?"

"Your worst enemy."

"Get your ass in here, Vil."

Vil had on... good lord. Mask, gloves, face shield. An absurdly fashionable CDC agent. "You look like shit."

"Thanks, Vil. Means so much coming from you."

He stayed by the door, ready to flee if a spare germ came floating towards him. "Heard you're out of commission. Thank the seven, I'll get some peace in my life."

You flipped him the bird, but smiled as you did. "Don't say that. I'll made a sheet ladder and mix sputum in your cold cream."

"If you do that I will personally burn your clothes and replace them with something decent that you will hate."

"Try. Come to gloat?"

"Just a bit." He set a large cup with a straw at the very edge of the desk, straining at arm's length as he did. "This should unfuck your throat somewhat."

"Such language!" You waited until he retreated to the door before you took the smoothie. It was... very, very purple, and smelled minty. "Trying to poison me, finally?"

He rolled his eyes. "When I decide to poison you, it's not going to be through something that obvious. You will never see it coming, and then I'll sell your corpse to Floyd and everyone will just think he finally decided to go full crazy and Riddle is next."

You snorted. "Honestly? I think he'd shit his pants if I actually returned the affection. One time I saw Riddle give him a genuine smile and he had to go sit down because he started shaking so bad." That might have been because the smile was caused by Floyd cracking his head on a doorway and falling flat on his ass, but the point still stood.

When he stopped laughing, he turned to leave. "Take at least an extra week to get better, for my sanity. And don't give the creature any, it won't agree with him."

"Shh, I just got him down for his nap-"

Grimm made a horrible snort from your feet and say up. "Food?"

You made a look-what-you-did guesture at Vil, but he left instead of helping you deal with your beloved yowling idiot.

~*~*~*~

You woke up coughing in the dark. It took entirely too long for you to figure out where the hell you were, and why, and you took the offered tissue with great-

"JaySUS FUCKING CHRIST" You jumped back so much it was only Malleus's grip on your arm that kept you from going through the open window.

"People are sleeping, please do not yell."

"Don't yell my ass, how long have you been there?"

He shrugged. "Since before sunset. Ortho was here first."

You leaned around Mal, to see Ortho sitting on the desk, scritching the belly of a drowsing Grimm. "Hello, Yuu. Your fever has gone down half of a degree since I took over."

The audacity of these idiots, you swear. "Both of you go home and go to bed."

"No. You need watching." Mal had not blinked once since you'd woken up, and how about that? His eyes glowed in the dark, or he had very strong eyeshine; either way, there was no iris around the blown out pupil. "You are very ill and need taken care of. I can do that, I took care of Silver when he was ill."

"Mal."

"Yes?"

"Do we need another boundaries talk?"

He frowned. "But you are ill."

"Mal, I will call Lilia and tell him what you are doing right now. I will personally write your grandmother and tell her you're neglecting your studies. I will get Leona down here and he will call you a simp until you go outside and fight him on compulsion."

"Those all sound terrible!"

"Ortho, don't kiss up because you're next. Why are you here and not home charging?"

"Idia wouldn't go home to sleep until I said I would let him know if you got worse."

You opened your mouth, and shut it again. Why's he so worried? You had to physically shove him out the door to go to his next class, looking like his heart would break, and he'd still skipped board games to fidget miserably in the chair Mal now sat in, looking ready to burst into tears every time you coughed.

Ortho seemed to read your mind. "He gets worried when people get sick. I got sick once."

Ah. That explained a hell of a lot that you were too polite to ask.

"... Okay, you can stay."

Mal perked up.

"You go home. I'll never go back to sleep if you keep staring all night, and you do need to sleep some."

Mal's face fell.

"You can come back tomorrow, after class."

He perked back up. "Goodnight, Yuu. I will see you tomorrow!" A brief kiss against your sweating temple, and he was out the same window he most likely came in.

"Hey, Ortho?"

"Yes?"

"If you can dim your lights a little, you can come lie down with me."

~*~*~*~

You were rudely poked awake by a giant asshole.

"Why are you in my nap room." Leona hovered over you with obvious displeasure.

You blinked and sorted yourself. Ortho was crammed between you and the window, hopefully dreaming of electric sheep, and Grimm was still dead asleep, the little bastard. "Jack put me up here because my dorm's a block of ice and I can't stay there on doctor's orders." Crewel might have a doctorate, it's not a lie.

"Why didn't he tell me?"

"I did." Jack was behind him, his own link in a chain of hovering displeasure. "You said it was fine as long as she didn't make a mess. I brought yogurt."

"Thank you-" More miserable coughing, with now everyone either rubbing your back or passing you tissues. Except Leona, who simply held back and watched. By the time you were done, he just nodded.

"I'm not moving you, but..."

"What."

"I'm calling in a favour next time Cheka gets pawned off on me. He likes you."

You'd argue that, but you liked the kid. "Aight. Everyone get out, there's too many fucking people in here and I'm discovering new and interesting depths of claustrophobia."

Leona didn't need to be told twice.

"I'll be back after class with your homework. Maybe at lunch with something. Not before then. Stay put."

"Oooo, oo. I'm going with you, big guy." Grimm scampered over. "I'll get bored here all day. You can just nap."

You rolled your eyes "I can just nap. Jack, if he sticks with you, he's going to want to eat everything you do."

"I'll manage."

"Would you like me to stay?" Ortho was finally up, or maybe you hadn't noticed him exiting screensaver mode.

"I'd like you to tell your brother that I'm not going anywhere. Use those exact words."

He nodded, a faint whirr as he did.

"I'll see you guys later, okay? I need more sleep."

~*~*~*~

Someone gently shook you awake, and said someone was leaning in the window.

"Hey, Kalim." Why'd you have to be the center of attention when sick, and therefore couldn't kiss anyone to thank them for said attention.

"Hi! I asked Jamil to make extra lunch for you!" He set a covered dish on your knees.

"Thank you. Was he okay with that?"

"He was when I said it was for you. Everyone's heard that you're laid up!"

"News travels fast. Am I about to get even more popular?"

"You're always popular because you're great. Feel better! Jamil said he'll have extras tomorrow too. See you!" And off he went.

You needed to tell Jamil thank you, but he would probably just tell you to just stop talking about abolishing the monarchy instead. (Not because he didn't support the idea, but because he didn't want to be punished for not keeping the idea from Kalim.) What did he make, anyway?

"Oh, curry. Sweet."

~*~*~*~

The days progressed roughly the same. Drowsing most of the morning, lunch, more drowsing in between laptop stuff, maybe actual sleep. Coughing up far less gunk as the days went on. And entertaining an absurd fucking amount of people. Everyone seemed determined to check on you, even people who you'd never seen before in your life; Ruggie made something like 10k madol charging people to try and see you through the window before you cursed him out. Your Heartslabyul boys dropped in every couple of days to relate shit that they hadn't simply texted you (along with a pile of pastries from Trey and handwritten instructions on recovery from Riddle, the latter far less appreciated than the former). Floyd dropped in once to mostly complain about how you weren't around to eat the mushrooms he picked out of his food, tried to convince you to let him carry you over to the Monstro Lounge himself, and when you refused, kissed the tips of your fingers and left pouting. Jack, true to his word, dropped in at least twice a day to deliver food and homework, and once spent forty-five minutes glowering at anyone approaching the bathrooms while you took a shower that ached on your oversensitive skin.

Some people were far more regular. Every day like clockwork, Malleus perched in your window and was the world's friendliest, most affectionate vulture. Twenty minutes after that, Idia would come in, sit in the chair, and exude such concentrated grief that you were at a loss for what to do beyond asking if he wanted to talk about it, to which he would shake his head and simply resume sitting there, tapping away at his screens until the next panicked flurry of activity every time you made a unhealthy noise.

"You are allowed to go home. I'm not going anywhere, and I'm much better than I was."

He just shook his head.

"I will come get you if something happens," Mal offered.

More head shaking, and a "no" from his tablet, before adding, "Never again."

"I'll call Ortho and make him tag you out."

"I said no. And Ortho is with Lilia."

Lilia, small, beloved pest, has what you like to think of as a compulsive need to parent. He was god knows how old, had raised at least three of your classmates that you know of, and seemed to consider you his newest fledgling. After hearing about what happened, he'd taken it into his own hands to fix Ramshackle to... well, not OSHA compliance, but you wouldn't be cold.

"Does he know how much I appreciate it? Appreciate all of you, really?"

"Of course he does. He loves talking about you. He wears that shirt you made all the time."

"Which one? I've made him seven so far."

"When do I get one?"

"When they make T shirts that'll fit over your horns." Something drooped in the corner of your eye, and you looked over to see Idia shaking himself upright. "Hey, babe. When was the last time you slept?"

He took an embarrassingly long time to lie through his teeth and say "Last night" through his tablet.

"Yeah, no. Get over here." You took a moment to drag Mal's hand down before he could just do a sleeping spell, or something equally well meaning but deeply inappropriate.

"No."

"Please?"

You held your arms out until he couldn't resist, and soon you'd arranged his head on your chest.

"You hear anything more sloshing around in there?"

He shook his head.

"I am on the mend. I... don't really know what happened before. And I sure as hell don't know what you did to get him back. But I'm not going anywhere. So rest."

He gave a faint nod.

"I will wake you, if need be?"

To both yours and Mal's surprise, Idia answered him with a pat on his leg.

"Thank you."

Idia was already asleep.

~*~*~*~

"Mal?"

"Yes?"

"Do you know what 'cyanosis' is?" You’d been stroking Idia's head for hours. Or minutes. Time flies, and you could not tell the difference.

"Not immediately, no."

"It's caused by a few different things. Hypoxia, hypothermia, that sort of thing. The blood in you doesn't have enough oxygen. So little that, instead of red, parts of your body turn blue or grey due to the lack of oxygen."

"I see." He looked intently, much as you did, at Idia's greyish nails and blue lips. "That doesn't seem survivable."

"Not if it's severe, no." The flames from Idia's head curled around your fingers, grasping at you even when he's not aware of it. "It's not something you see on someone as... lively as him. It's something I think about a lot. Whether it's to do with his magic, or that curse he won't elaborate on."

"I've heard rumours."

"Oh?"

"The Shroud family curse. Nothing concrete, for an origin. Madness, misfortune, and illness have plagued the family throughout history. Add in a trend of cousin marriage beyond the norm for upper-class families due to people not wanting to subject their loved ones to a cursed bloodline, and the tree is more of an notorious, ingrown shrub."

"That just sounds like shitty genetics and what happens to every family as the years go on, not a curse."

Mal shrugged. "is there a difference? Even in the sleeping curse my grandmother bestowed so easily, much of the power came for the fear of it. A girl grew up without her family because of the fear of it."

"True." You leaned down and kissed the top of Idia's head, feeling an unconscious smile as you did. "There must be a little hereditary something. He gets so anxious about this beautiful hair! He hates people looking at him, and he doesn't even realize it's because he's the most beautiful thing in any room he walks in."

"Thing?" Mal raised an amused eyebrow.

"Even the finest art in a museum doesn't have the benefit of being actually alive."

"Your capacity for love and beauty is enviable. Hunt would be jealous." He reached out and brushed a stray lock away from Idia's face, and you could feel another smile against your chest.

~*~*~*~

"Aight, so we've patched up holes in the walls, insulated the windows - Idia here," Lilia clapped Idia on the small of his back, causing him to make a distressed squeak - "smart boy, found some solar panels and we've got electricity up in your room, the kitchen and the bathroom by your room, not just the front room anymore! The rest we got the ghosts to help seal off to hold the heat in. I got you a space heater for your room, so you don't have to do a fire the whole time, and as long as you don't open the windows back up before spring, you won't freeze."

"Thanks, guys. One question."

"Yeah?"

"What did you do to my room."

Lilia smiled. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're a walking prank and can't keep out of there, what did you do."

"Nothing this time! I promise!" He held his hands up. "At least you can stay home for the next few days, Crewel says you gotta be back Monday or he's going to start making funeral prep."

"I'm literally better, but if he does that I get to help. Always wanted to plan my funeral, I have very specific ideas about what flowers to use and preferred corpse disposal."

"Maybe you should go upstairs and not talk about funerals and their associated things."

"Sure thing, dear."

After settling in your room, most everyone cleared out, even Idia. The only person still there was Jack, looking this way and that with a stern look.

"Hey, Jack?"

He grunted in assent.

"So like, why'd you put me up and help take care of me? We've hardly talked before then."

He sighed. "You've been very nice to me."

"You sure? I'd remember you."

"Uh."

"Jack?"

~*~*~*~

It was a beautiful day, if chilly in the wind. The sun was warm, the trees turning, and you just came across one of your best friends.

"Hi buddy! Are you lost today?"

The very large dog shook it's head and pressed into your knees.

"Okay, you wanna walk with me? Come on."

You'd found this enormous white Malamute wandering campus the first time a few months ago, and after checking in with a few other students who kept laughing when you asked if he was their dog, simply decided to enjoy your new friend and run and play. He was very smart, and initially standoffish, but could not resist a friendly face and good ear scritches. Today, you and Buddy here simply ran around like a couple of idiots after a lost soccer ball until it was time to go eat.

"I'll see you later, buddy. Bye!" You held out a hand, and after a firm shake, kissed the point where his snout met the rest of his face. "Stay safe, I love you."

Buddy made a low grumble and rubbed his paws over his face, and you went off to supper.

~*~*~*~

"You couldn't have told me?"

"How do you explain that? 'Hey, I run around as a wolf sometimes and you mistook me for a lost dog so you lovebombed me and I was at a loss and by the second time it was too awkward to say anything'?"

"I've been playing with you for months! I let you run with Crewel's dalmatians!"

"I run with them as a person, too, that's nothing special."

You pinched your nose. "Everyone must think I'm an idiot."

"I'll deal with them. I'm sorry, Yuu."

"I know. You are my good boy, after all."

His tail started wagging in spite of itself, and you laughed.

#twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland fanfiction #jack howl #idia shroud #malleus draconia

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adowbaldwin · 3 years ago

Text

Baldwins secret - Part 24

You could hear the heavy hit of his shoes against the tile all the way in Australia, his blood sizzling in the Antarctic and the over tick of his brain in Tuvalu.

He had lots of things to say, and he wasnt sure where to start.

Diana almost lept out of the plush brown leather chair she had sunk into as the door burst open "GET OUT" she wailed

"ME?" he seethed "YOU" he pointed "ARE IN MY LIBRARY"

She closed the book with a heavy thud, pushed herself up and levelled her eyes "this house belongs to your daughters, not you"

"First you just up and RUIN everything i mean A FUCKING WITCH AND A VAMPIRE?" He babbled on pacing around the room "GOD and then you fucking birth a child thats the sweetest most delicate toddler ever HOW DARE YOU" concerned ears and a furious Matthew tumbled in one after another

"Baldwin you need to step away from my wife" he hissed, a hard shove pushing him backward

"OH" Baldwin laughed "AND YOU! You killed Philippe AND THEN YOUR SON FUCKED MY DAUGHTER AND TOLD ME ABOUT IT AFTER VENISON!" He practically wailed "ILL NEVER BE ABLE TO LOOK AT DEER THE SAME"

Boudicca bit her lip trying not to laugh, the last time her father had thrown a hissy fit like this was when he uncovered Fabiana did not like Bordeaux. Usually the things he ranted about were not entirely what he was upset over. The girls had all learnt to just let him get over himself.

They all listened bewildered as he ranted on, from how he thought his new tailor was a Russian spy to 15 reasons why Matthew was an idiot.

"AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD" He turned to Augusta "HES GOT A FUCKING MAN BUN! How is he supposed to protect you from an enemy if HIS HAIR IS IN HIS FUCKING FACE?" He looked distant, sick riddling in his face "Oh God was i in the house" he squeaked "did you" he grimmanced "my daughter while i was here?"

Jack couldnt answer, but his silence spoke volumes "i think im having a heart attack" Baldwin slowly lowered himself to a chair, eyes wide and frantic "You had rudies with my daughter in her childhood home that i shared with my dead wife"

"If it makes you feel better ive had sex with Keiko in every room of the house, including your room" Fabiana smiled sweetly "the bed posts make for excellent leverage"

He whimpered "Its all your fault. If you had not of stepped back into Rome none of this would have happened" he squinted his eyes at Diana, unsettling and incensed

"Baldwins right" Baldwin looked to Matthew shocked. Maybe he was not so intollerable after all "If Diana had not of timewalked, you would not have broken your promise to Sienna not to hurt Jack and she would still be here. Because lets be honest brother her leaving is the reason you are angry, is it not?" Matthew challenged

Nope, he was still stupid "Dont be so ridiculous. Her loss" his voice dropped off at the end, solemn

Time for some home truths for the asshole "And lets be completely transparent brother you are angry because you spent the last two millennia hopping from one trophy wife to another and you finally found the one that fit, and yet you ruined it all in seconds" Baldwin didnt like being tested. He also decided he was over his heart attack

"I think im done now" he rose from his seat stalking toward the door

A hand landed on his shoulder "Oh no you dont" Matthew had him against the wall, arm rested over his windpipe "I will not have you ruining Jacks happiness" his lip curled up "You either accept them or-"

"Or what?" Baldwin snarled "You will destroy what?" He pushed him away, angry vein popping in his neck "There is nothing i have left that i have not already destroyed on my own brother so dont waste your time making idle threats"

The door trembled as he flung it open, quiet audience reeling and trying to understand what just happened.

Augusta turned to Fabiana "You've had sex in my bed?" She asked disgusted

Proud smile plastered on her face "Your ensuite is my favourite place. Your detachable shower head is the strongest, makes Keiko gush like a collapsed dam"

"I think im having a heart attack" She quietly whispered, leaning her head on Jacks shoulder

"I think im having a baby" Diana whispered tightly, squeezing her eyes shut

"Oh look!" Fabiana giggled clapping her hands like a giddy child "Diana is gushing like a collapsed Dam"

#adow #a discovery of witches #fic #baldwin montclair #diana bishop #baldwins secret

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ace-attorney-prison · 3 years ago

Note

I really like the ‘Jacques and Jack H. knew eachother’ headcanon thanks to you and the anon who suggested this. So, did you think Jacques reacted to Jack’s death at all? And if he did, does he have any feelings or opinions towards the murder case’s outcome?

(Jacques and Jack headcanon ask)

The prosecutor's lounge was a popular place for idle gossip.

Today it was centered around Miles Edgelord; apparently, he'd just lost a case for the second time. One of his co-workers is claiming that she was watching the proceedings, and saw Edgeworth intentionally trying to help the defense at one point.

There's some contention about that- no way would Vom Karma's protege purposefully throw a trial. He's too proud for that. What reason would he have. Yada yada.

Someone suggests that the reason is the defendant himself: the Steel Samurai. Or, well, the actor who plays him, that is. It's not exactly a secret that Edgeworth has an affinity for that show.

The words are a blur in the background as Jacques reads the newspaper, catching himself up on recent games and athletic activity for the sole purpose of noting other people's blunders and getting a good kick of superiority out of it. Bits of information stand out here and there, but overall, the chatter is confined to his subconscious awareness.

Then someone says a name that makes him look up.

He frowns, replaying the words and then turning them over in his head. Why does that name sound familiar? And then his breath stops momentarily.

"Wait. Did you say Jack Hammer?"

His co-worker looks up. "Yeah. You know, the action star? He played the villain in that show, apparently." Snort. "Which makes his death pretty ironic."

Jacques's lips tug down in a frown, and he pulls up the browser on his phone to look up the incident. Sure enough, he recognizes the face.

It had been years since they'd spoken, and it wasn't like Jack played a particularly important role in his life, but... he can't help but wish, just for a moment, that they'd written each other more.

Sure, Jack played a minor role in the world, but his presence was still a nice accent to the environment. It's sometimes difficult to comprehend how the outside world can rudely take things from him without his knowledge or involvement.

What a buzzkill.

The chatter drifts to Jack now, and the details surrounding his murder. The blackmail, the attempted murder of his director, the framing of his co-star.

His mind is a numb haze as the words pass over him. It's interesting, it's shocking, it's understandable, it's making him wonder if Jack could have been a threat to him if they'd known each other better, whatever it is, it's irrelevant now.

And he doesn't wish to be in this room any longer.

With a short hum, he gathers his things and heads out, planning to do some vigorous training to shake the news from his thoughts and get back his usual high.

(thank you so much for your thoughts anon!! this was interesting to think about and write! jacques is an overlooked character and i'm always happy to give him more development)

#Jacques Portsman #Jack Hammer

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dustedmagazine · 3 years ago

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Music for Films, Vol. II: Chick Habit

For good and for ill, Quentin Tarantino’s movies have been strongly associated with postmodern pop culture — particularly by folks whose reactions to the word “postmodern” tend toward pursed lips and school-marmishly wagged fingers. There for a while, reading David Denby on Tarantino was similar to reading Michiko Kakutani on Thomas Pynchon: almost always the same review, the same complaints about characters lacking “psychological depth,” the same handwringing over an ostensible moral insipidness. Truth be told, Tarantino’s pranksome delight with flashy surfaces and stylistic flourishes that are ends in themselves gives tentative credence to some of the caviling. Critics have raised related concerns over the superficiality of Tarantino’s tendency toward stunt casting, especially his resurrections of aging actors relegated to the film industry’s commercial margins: John Travolta, Pam Grier, Robert Forster, David Carradine, Darryl Hannah, Don Johnson and so on. There might be a measure of cynicism in the accompanying cinematic nudging and winking, but it’s also the case that a number of the performances have been terrific.

The writer-director brings a similar sensibility to his sound-tracking choices, demonstrating the cooler-than-thou, deep-catalog knowledge of an obsessive crate-digger. Tarantino thematized that knowledge in his break-through feature, Reservoir Dogs (1992). Throughout the film, the characters tune in to Steven Wright deadpanning as the deejay of “K-Billy’s Super Sounds of the Seventies”; like the characters, the viewer transforms into a listener, treated to such fare as the George Baker Selection’s “Little Green Bag” (1970) and Harry Nilsson’s “Coconut” (1971). As with the above-mentioned actors, Tarantino has sifted pop culture’s castoffs and detritus, unearthing songs and delivering experiences of renewed value — and thereby proving the keenness of his instincts and aesthetic wit. “Listen to (or look at) this!” he seems to say, with his cockeyed, faux-incredulous grin. “Can you believe you were just going to throw this out?” And mostly, it works. If the Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling” (1974) has become a sort of semi-ironized accompaniment to hipsterish good times, that resonance has a lot more to do with Tim Roth, Harvey Keitel and Co. cruising L.A. in a hulking American sedan than with the Disney Co.’s Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).

In Death Proof (2007), Tarantino’s seventh film and unaccountably his least favorite, soundtrack and screen are both full to bursting with the flotsam and jetsam of “entertainment” conceived as an industry.

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In just the opening minutes, we see outmoded moviehouse announcements, complete with cigarette-burn cue dots; big posters of Brigitte Bardot from Les Bijoutiers du claire de lune (1958) and of Ralph Nelson’s Soldier Blue (1970) bedecking the apartment of Jungle Julia (Sydney Tamiia Poitier); the tee shirt worn by Shanna (Jordan Ladd), which bears the image of Tura Satana; and strutting under all of it are the brassy cadences of Jack Nitzsche’s “The Last Race,” taken from his soundtrack for the teensploitation flick Village of the Giants (1965). Bibs and bobs, bits and pieces of low- and middle-brow cinema are cut up and reconstructed into a fulsome swirl of signs. And there’s an unpleasant edge to it; the cuts are echoed by the action of the camera, which has been busily cleaving the bodies of the women on screen into fragments and parts. First the feet of Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito), propped up on a dashboard; then Julia, all ass and gams; then Arlene’s lower half again, chopped into slices by the stairs she dashes up (“I gotta take the world’s biggest fucking piss!”) and by the close-up that settles on her belly and pelvis, her hand shoved awkwardly into her crotch.

As often happens in Tarantino’s movies, furiously busy meta-discursive play collapses the images’ problematic content under multiple levels of reference and pastiche. The film is one half of Grindhouse (2007), Tarantino’s collaboration with his buddy Robert Rodriguez, an old-fashioned double-feature comprising the men’s love letters to the exploitation cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. In those thousands of movies — mondo, beach-cutie, nudie-cutie, women in prison, early slasher, rape-revenge, biker gang, chop-socky, Spaghetti Western and muscle-car-worship flicks (and we could add more subgenres to the list) — symbolic violence inflicted on women’s bodies was de rigueur, and frequently the principal draw. Tarantino shot Death Proof himself, so he is (more than usually) directly responsible for all the framing and focusing — and he’s far too canny a filmmaker not to know precisely what he’s doing with and to those bodies. The excessive, camera-mediated gashing and trimming is a knowing, perhaps deprecating nod to all that previous, gratuitous T&A. His sound-tracking choice of “The Last Race” metaphorically underscores the point: in Bert I. Gordon’s Village of the Giants, bikini-clad teens find and consume an experimental growth serum, which causes them to expand to massive proportions. Really big boobs, actual acres of ass. Get it?

Of course, all the implied japing and judging is deeply embedded in the film’s matrix of esoteric references and fleeting allusions. You’d have to be very well versed in the history of exploitation cinema to pick up on the indirect homage to Gordon’s goofy movie. But as in Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino doesn’t just gesture, he dramatizes, folding an authoritative geekdom into the action of Death Proof. In the set-up to Death Proof’s notorious car crash scene, Julia is on the phone, instructing one of her fellow deejays to play “Hold Tight!” (1966) by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. Don’t recognize the names? “For your information,” Julia snorts, Pete Townsend briefly considered abandoning the Who, and he thought about joining the now-obscure beat band, to make it “Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick, Tich & Pete. And if you ask me, he should have.”

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It’s among the most gruesomely violent sequences in Tarantino’s films (which do not run short on graphic bloodshed), and Julia receives its most spectacular punishment. Those legs and that rump, upon which the camera has lavished so much attention, are torn apart. Her right leg flips, flies and slaps the pavement, a hunk of suddenly flaccid meat. Again, Tarantino proves himself an adept arranger of image, sign and significance. Want to accuse him of fetishizing Julia’s legs? He’ll materialize the move, reducing the limb to a manipulable fragment, and he’ll invest the moment with all of the intrinsic violence of the fetish. He’ll even do you one better — he’ll make that violence visible. Want to watch? You better buckle up and hold tight.

Hold on a second. “Hold Tight”? The soundtrack has passed over from intertextual in-joke to cruel punchline. It doesn’t help that the song is so much fun, and that it’s fun watching the girls groove along to it, just before Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) obliterates them, again and again and again. The awful insistence of the repetition is another set-up, establishing the film’s narrative logic: the repeated pattern and libidinal charge-and-release of Stuntman Mike’s vehicular predations. It is, indeed, “a sex thing,” as Sheriff Earl McGraw (Michael Parks) informs us in his cartoonish, redneck lawman’s drawl. Soon the sexually charged repetitions pile up: see Abernathy’s (Rosario Dawson) feet hanging out of Kim’s (Tracie Thom) 1972 Mustang, in a visual echo of Arlene’s, and of Julia’s. Then listen to Lee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) belt out some of Smith’s cover of “Baby It’s You” (1969), which we most recently heard 44 minutes before, as Julia danced ecstatically by the Texas Chili Bar’s jukebox. Then watch Abernathy as she sees Stuntman Mike’s tricked-out ’71 Nova, a vibrating hunk of metallic machismo — just like Arlene saw it, idling menacingly back in Austin, with another snatch of “Baby It’s You” wisping through that moment’s portent.

For a certain kind of viewer, the Nova’s low-slung, growling charms are hard to resist, as is the sleazy snarl of Willy DeVille’s “It’s So Easy” (1980; and we might note that Jack Nitzsche produced a couple of Mink DeVille’s early records, connecting another couple strands in the web) on the Nova’s car stereo. Those prospective pleasures raise the question of just who the film is for. That may seem obvious: the same folks — dudes, mostly — who find pleasure in exploitation movies like Vanishing Point (1971), Satan’s Sadists (1969) or The Big Doll House (1971). But there are a few other things to account for, like how Death Proof repeatedly passes the Bechdel Test, and how long those scenes of conversation among women go on, and on. Most notable is the eight-minute diner scene, a single take featuring Abernathy, Kim, Lee and Zoë (Zoë Bell, doing a cinematic rendition of her fabulous self, an instance of stunt casting that literalizes the “stunt” part). Among other things, the women discuss their careers in film, the merits of gun ownership and Kim and Zoë’s love of (you guessed it) car chase movies like Vanishing Point. One could read that as a liberatory move, a suggestion that cinema of all kinds is open to all comers. All that’s required is a willingness to watch. But watching the diner scene becomes increasing claustrophobic. The camera circles the women’s table incessantly, and on the periphery of the shot, sitting at the diner’s counter, is Stuntman Mike. The circling becomes predatory, the threat seems pervasive.

If you’ve seen the film, you know how that plays out: Zoë and Kim play “ship’s mast” on a white 1970 Dodge Challenger (the Vanishing Point car); Stuntman Mike shows up and terrorizes them mercilessly; but then Abernathy, Zoë and Kim chase him down and beat the living shit out of him, likely fatally. In another sharply conceived cinematic maneuver, Tarantino executes a climactic sequence that inverts the diner scene: the women surround Stuntman Mike, abject and pleading, and punch and kick him as he bounces from one of them to another. The camera zips from vantage to vantage within the circle, deliriously tracking the action. All the jump cuts intensify the violence, and they provide another contrast to the diner’s scene’s silky, unbroken shot. The sounds and the impact of the blows verge on slapstick, and our identification with the women makes it a giddily gross good time.

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So, an inversion seeks to undo repetition. Certainly, Stuntman Mike’s intent to repeat the car-crash-kill-thrill is undone, and predator becomes prey. But, as is inevitable with Tarantino’s cinema, there are complications, other echoes and patterns to suss out. For instance: as the women stride toward the wrecked Nova, while Stuntman Mike pathetically wails, the camera zooms in on their asses. Bad asses? Nice asses? What’s the right nomenclature? To make sure we can put the shot together with Julia’s first appearance in the film, Abernathy has hiked up her skirt, revealing a lot of leg. Repetition reasserts itself. In an exacerbating circumstance, Harvey Weinstein’s grubby fingerprints are smeared onto the film. Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios is credited with production of Grindhouse, but Dimension Films, a Weinstein Brothers company, handled distribution.

When the film cuts to its end titles, we hear April March’s “Chick Habit” (1995), with its spot-on lyric: “Hang up the chick habit / Hang it up, daddy / Or you’ll never get another fix.” And so on. Even here, where the girl-power vibe feels strongest (cue Abernathy burying a bootheel in Stuntman Mike’s face), there are echoes, patterns. Note how the striding bassline of “Chick Habit” strongly recalls the pulse beating through Nitzsche’s “The Last Race.” Note that March’s song is a cover, of “Laisse tomber les filles,” originally recorded by yé-yé girl France Gall. The song was penned by Serge Gainsbourg, pop provocateur and notorious womanizer. The two collaborated again, releasing “Les Sucettes,” a tune about a teeny-bopper who really likes sucking on lollipops, when Gall was barely 18; the accompanying scandal nearly torpedoed her career. Gall refused to ever sing another song by Gainsbourg, and disavowed her hits.

Again, that’s all deeply embedded, somewhere in the film’s complicated play of pop irony and double-entendre and the sudden explosions of delight and disgust that intermittently reveal and conceal. Again, you’d have to know your pop history really well to catch up with the complications, and Death Proof moves so fast that there’s always another reference or allusion demanding your attention as the cars growl and the blood spurts. Too many signs to track, too many signals to decipher — that’s the postmodern. But perhaps we have become too glib, assuming that all signs are somehow equivalent. Death Proof insists otherwise. Much has been made of the film’s strange relation to digital filmmaking, of the sort that Rodriguez has made a career out of. Part of Grindhouse’s shtick is its goofball applications of CGI, all the scratches and skips and flaws that the filmmakers lovingly applied. They are digital effects, masquerading as damaged celluloid. Tarantino cut back against that grain, filming as much of the car chase’s maniacal stuntwork in meatspace as he safely could. Purposeful practical filmmaking, for a digitally enhanced cinematic experience, attempting to mimic the ways real film interacts with the physical environment and its manifold histories. Is that clever, or just more cultural clutter?

Amid all the clutter that crowds the characters onscreen, and their conversations in the film’s field of sound, it can be easy to lose track of the distinctions between appearances and the traces of the real bodies that worked to bring Death Proof to life. Which is why Tarantino’s inclusion of Bell is so crucial. She provides another inversion: Instead of masking her individual presence, doing stunts for other actresses in their clothes and hair (for Lucy Lawless in Xena: Warrior Princess, or for Uma Thurman in Tarantino’s Kill Bill films), Bell is herself, doing what she does best, projecting the technical elements of filmmaking — usually meant to bleed seamlessly into illusion — right onto the surface of the screen. And instead of allowing one group of girls to slip into a repeated pattern, bodies easily exchanged for other bodies, Bell’s presence and its implicit insistence on her particularity (who else can move like she does?) breaks up the superficial logic of cinema’s market for the feminine. She disrupts its chick habit. There’s only one woman like her.

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Jonathan Shaw

#music for films #chick habit #jonathan shaw #dusted magazine #death proof #quentin tarantino #reservoir dogs #grindhouse #Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick & Tich

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itsallmightbitch · 5 years ago

Text

Stitches (Part Two)

Ya’ll, I wasn’t planning on posting this yet but when I actually checked, I realised that if I didn’t- Part Two was going to be over 12,000 words. So I had to split it again. So, you can look forward to a Part Three! I also, sort of, accidentally maybe, wrote a teeny tiny lil’ bit of plot.

Tagged: @kittygonyan @mrsreina (If you’d like to be tagged in Part Three, give me a shout!)

Pairing: Villain!AllMight x Reader

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Blood, Swearing, Threats of Non-Con (Not made by our boy All Might and not said explicitly though).

Word Count: 6800+

Summary: A phone call makes you question just how the biggest bad in Japan feels about you. You discover just how All Might was injured and things get just a lil’ bit steamy.

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He was gone for over half an hour and you’d spent that time preparing the dressings you’d need for him. The wound was in a semi awkward place- just below the dip of his collarbone, so you’d had to dig out the gauze tape.

All the while, you attempted to calm the rapid, dizzying beat of your heart.

Those damn breathing exercises that Ivy had taught you were doing jack shit, especially with the feeling of his hands still imprinted firmly on your hips.

Were you really going to do this tonight?

It wasn’t as though you hadn’t danced around him for months now, the unyielding pull of his orbit spinning you closer and closer until the inevitable collision. But as you stood on the precipice, feet towing the line and looking into the abyss… there was still some trepidation.

Was he just doing this to prove that he could get into your pants?

Where the hell would it even go? He was, at his core, a villain and nothing you could do or say would ever change his nature.

Not that you would want to. You weren’t here to ‘fix’ him in any other way but physically.

Yet, despite all of the reservations that swam in your head, you couldn’t deny the chemistry that had always bubbled between you. Especially in those moments that you forgot just who he was and he was just idling around your apartment with you. Those moments made you just as hot as when you saw him pummelling some wannabe hero on TV.

Making him coffee while he fixed your kitchen sink. Actually… finding out that he could fix a kitchen sink had been jarring enough. Bickering over which movie to watch, when you knew he was going to win like he always did- but arguing with him for the fun of it anyway.

That day you’d found out that he did a fucking wicked impression of Endeavor and you’d howled with laughter- then caught him looking immensely proud of himself afterwards.

Even now, the memory of it made your lips quirk in a stupid smile.

Seeing that side of him made it so easy to separate him from the man the rest of the world saw. They weren’t privy to all the things that made him unique. Would it really be so wrong of you to give in?

The filthy promise he’d made still rang in your ears.

Slow, hard and all night long. Your thighs clenched in anticipation.

Your phone buzzed cheerily on the side table and the coffee you’d made for yourself in his absence sloshed against the side of the mug when you jumped.

An unknown number usually meant one of two things. Either All Might was calling you to ask how to perform some horrible mutilation on a person without them losing too much blood- or Ivy was calling for a chat.

Since the former was currently using up all of your hot water- seriously, thirty five minutes now- you correctly guessed that it was the latter. You answered, immediately perking up at the sound of her voice.

“Babes, is that beefy idiot of yours there? His little henchmen have been tearing apart half of the city trying to find him,” she said, not even bothering with hello. You tutted. Of course he’d just up and vanished without giving anyone a hint that he was okay.

“Hi Ivy,” you said pointedly and you could almost hear her roll her eyes at your insistence of politeness. “Yeah, he’s here.”

She grumbled.

“Ugh, will you please tell him to call off his goons before I have to kill any more of them for disrespecting me,” she said, like murdering henchmen was all too taxing for her. You knew differently. She was probably enjoying the change of pace. You half smiled, shaking your head.

What exactly was your life? Passing messages between villains like some kind of sentient answering machine.

“Hold on. He’s in the shower,” you said, escaping the soft light of the living room and heading in the direction of the still -goddamn it- running water. His clothes were piled where you’d told him to leave them and you were oddly touched to find that he’d arranged them in a way that the bloodied parts weren’t on your carpet.

He could be considerate when he wanted to be.

Biting your lip, you eventually worked up the courage and knocked on the door. You knew that he was grinning from ear to ear, probably expecting you to barge in and simply toss your panties over your shoulder while you were at it.

Hmm. There was plenty of time for that later.

“Did you miss me already, sweet thing? Am I that irresistible?” he said, his tone all deep and buttery and the image of him stark naked and soaking wet stole your voice for a moment. You couldn’t help but wonder if he was taking so long because he was- taking care of himself.

Your stomach whirled pleasantly at the thought of him stroking a hand along his thick-

“Hey! Don’t forget to tell him that they have like, zero manners. I’m appalled at how rude they all are. This is no way to treat a lady!”

Ivy’s irritated voice turned away from the phone for a moment. A crunch and a half-halted scream told you that she was more than handling herself against All Might’s minions.

You licked your bottom lip, squeezing your eyes shut and trying not to picture him behind the damn door again. Otherwise you’d never get out the words you needed to say. You’d get your chance to join him later, when your dumb obligation as his doctor wasn’t coming first.

“Um, Ivy says your little minions are out of control again. You might want to deal with that, big guy,” you informed him and you heard him swear loudly, a colourful mix of words that would have made a sailor blush.

The water, at long last, shut off.

You hadn’t really considered what would come next, despite the fact that he’d clearly left his pants- and by extension- phone right next to where you were standing.

The door opened and you suddenly had a face full of muscular, soaking wet chest. You barely even noticed his smug expression, too busy trailing your eyes down and focusing with laser like precision on the trail of blond hair that started at his bellybutton and vanished underneath his towel.

All Might had a fucking happy trail. How had you not noticed it earlier?

Oh yeah. All the blood.

You had died. You were dead and buried and this was Heaven and of course your version of Heaven would have a soaking wet, naked super villain in it.

Every brain function ceased and all you could register was the heat of the steam billowing out from behind him and the aching urge you now felt to catch the lone water droplet that was rolling down along his abdomen with your tongue.

It dipped into his bellybutton then out again, before soaking into the towel that he’d slung low around his hips.

“You know, as much as I’m enjoying your reaction sweetheart,” he rumbled, openly amused by your gaping, idiotic staring. “I do need my phone before I lose any more men to the sewer rat.”

“I fucking heard that, you jackass!” Ivy screeched and you were brought back to reality, aware that your face was now glowing red.

He leaned down past you and fished his phone from his pants pocket and you could feel the sweet, water warmed heat of his skin as he passed so close to you. You resisted the urge you suddenly felt to throw your legs over your head.

You didn’t even know if your legs could do that and Ivy might not appreciate having to wait any longer for a reprieve.

When he straightened up, he grinned at you and it was… different than his usual cocky smiles. This one was toothy and almost soft and his free hand came up to your chin, gripping it much like he had earlier. Except this time, it wasn’t to threaten you.

It was to bring your lips to his in a nipping, hard kiss that took the air out of your lungs.

Hnnng.

“Soon kitten,” he murmured, biting your bottom lip once more playfully. “Don’t forget, this was your bright idea.”

He winked at you before retreating back into the bathroom. You remained standing on the other side of the door for a long moment, cursing yourself for being so worried about him when you could be splayed out underneath him right now- morals be damned.

You only remembered that Ivy was still on the line when you heard her voice asking if everything was okay.

Fuck, it was more than okay. Not long from now, you were going to have that between your legs. More than ever you wished you hadn’t skipped all those yoga classes because this was going to be... challenging.

Said legs carried you shakily back down the hall and away from the temptation to break the door down while you waved your bra over your head.

Sexy.

“He’s um- he’s calling someone now,” you cleared your throat, choosing not to sit on your bloodied couch and instead canting your hip against your dining table. “Sorry Ives. If I’d have known he was AWOL I’d have made him call sooner. I know what those idiots are like…”

His henchmen were notorious for running riot without him there to rein them in. He was, surprisingly, like seventy three percent of their impulse control. It was a shame he lacked any himself.

“You know, I’m not even surprised any more,” she tutted. “He could have at least let one of his lackey’s know before he went and squared up against- wait-” Her voice paused just as she reached the bloody good bit and you fought the urge to interrupt. “Maybe he’s been too busy to phone anyone… Wanna tell me what you’ve been up to?”

Ivy knew what had gone down tonight by the sound of it. But she was also distracted and you knew you would get nowhere without indulging her curiosity first.

“Oh yeah, he’s been super busy getting a big ass gash on his shoulder stitched up. Not much time for phone calls,” you hedged slyly. Ivy didn’t need to know he’d also been busy with his mouth on your neck while you attempted not to moan like a a porn star. Definitely a detail that could be left out.

“Not going to lie sweets, I was convinced you were going to say getting a blowjob.”

“Fucking hell, Ivy.”

“What!? There’s nothing wrong with getting busy after a life threatening situation. I’m amazed that you both have so much restraint,” she said and despite your irritation over these villains all up in your personal life, you couldn’t find it in yourself to disagree with her out loud. “You said he was all sliced up? Did he tell you how he got it?”

Interest?

Piqued.

“No! He’s being really secretive about it,” you said hurriedly as though Ivy would hang up on you at any second. She wouldn’t but you were far too eager to hear this story and your brain refused to function normally. “Do you know?”

“I’m not technically supposed to, but well… henchmen talk darling, especially under the threat of pain…”

“Ivy spill,” you said, dragging the word out into a whine. Ivy loved to tell a tale but you were impatient now. You wanted to hear what had happened before he came out of the shower. Not just because you didn’t want him to catch you snooping in his business but also because there was the promise of fantastic sex to come too.

“Oh sweets, do I have a story for you,” Ivy squealed gleefully. Your heart beat hard in your chest in anticipation and you hoped that she wouldn’t drag it out too much. “I hope you’re sitting down for this because it’s just, mwah-” she made a kissing noise and you snorted.

“Ivy, come on. While I’m still young.”

“Tut tut, there’s no rushing a good thing. Or do you like it fast?” she teased, flirtatiously.

You rolled your eyes and tutted into the phone, not in the mood to be teased. At least… not by Ivy.

You checked over your shoulder- in case All Might had snuck up on you or was lurking in the doorway. He had a habit of doing that, just to make you jump. But he was nowhere to be seen, probably still on the phone, berating one of his second in command for their bad behaviour.

You hoped it was Shigaraki getting a talking to. That guy gave you nothing but bad vibes.

“So, I take it you remember last week, when you and I dished about that weirdo you treated? You know Hinata Cash?” she said his name almost cautiously as if worried that being too quick would bring back the memories before you would be able to handle them.

You made a strangled noise that could have been agreement as your brief but memorable encounter with Hinata Cash came rushing back from the deep, dark part of your memories that you’d shoved it into.

A chill raced along your spine.

“Are you okay, sweets?” Ivy asked cautiously.

“M’fine,” you said, clearing your throat. You wouldn’t let the mere mention of the creep make you uncomfortable. Ivy still paused until you reaffirmed that you were okay with talking about him though. “What about him? Is he still being a disturbing son of a bitch?”

Your bravado was all show. You both knew it, but Ivy continued like she bought into your act.

“Well, it turns out he was quite the talking point in some circles... Not enough to play with the big boys like your honey bun,” she said, probably giving the phone a shit eating grin. You didn’t even berate her for it and the teasing tone she’d aimed for fell away awkwardly. “But he was doing enough to get himself noticed. He’d started coming in to the Golden Cat on weekends. A few of the girls there told me about him…”

“All good things, I bet,” you said, rubbing your arm nervously. There was really no reason to feel nervous, not with your door locked and All Might in your bathroom, but that didn’t stop tendrils of unease winding around your neck.

“He started going by Scissorhands- Ugh, it was tacky if you ask me,” she sniffed primly. Never let anyone tell you that Ivy wasn’t a class act, you thought fondly. Still, the name made your insides twist uncomfortably. From what you’d seen on the snippets of news reports that day- he’d certainly lived up to his chosen name.

You had never been truly frightened in all the years that you’d been treating criminals. Even during that first meeting with All Might, you had never felt like you were in any immediate danger- so long as you kept your mouth shut and remained respectful.

But Cash…

He was the type to cut your throat because he didn’t like the colour of your curtains or some shit.

His entire visit had deeply unsettled you and set you on edge for days afterwards. Even now, despite the fact that he hadn’t delivered on his ‘promise’, you couldn’t really settle.

Every movement he’d made that day, every little twitch of his hands had caused your body to recoil and had it not been for the tight hold you had over your Quirk, you might have done more harm than good.

Thankfully, it had been a straight forward procedure but from the way your body trembled, you’d have thought it was your very first time all over again. He’d picked up on your nerves from the moment he’d sat down, leering whenever you flinched.

Glass and debris had become embedded directly under his left eye from the bank robbery he’d partaken in, just hours before. It had been on the Channel Five news, which was partly why you were so on edge. His fingers had still been bloody from the security guard he’d literally torn apart.

Heavy set, with wide shoulders and contrasting sharp features, you knew that had he made a move that day, you wouldn’t have had a chance to fight him off.

The shaking of your hands had thankfully been negated by your Quirk.

Precision wasn’t the most amazing Quirk in the world but it was particularly useful in your line of work. Being able to hit your target despite the shaking of your hands had saved you precious time.

Quick, yet terrified, you’d cleaned up his face and as politely as you could, tried to see him out. But his hand had clamped down on your thigh, too high for comfort and your whole body froze- your eyes staring unseeingly past him.

You couldn’t breathe in anything more than quick, frightened gasps. He seemed to revel in them.

You felt like a rabbit in the jaws of a wolf, seconds before the deadly bite.

He’d leaned in close, his breath repulsive and sour and you’d thought of a million ways to escape in those few seconds- none of them even remotely useful.

“I really appreciate this, Doc. It’s hard to find a woman with steady hands like yours...”

He had lifted one of them, examining it.

“Wonderful quirk. So useful... I can see why All Might likes you so much. I think I quite like you too.”

You had prepared for the worst. Mentally written your last will and testament and prayed to God that when he was finished with you he would just leave Marco be- the thought of him harming your cat suddenly far more prevalent in your mind than what was going to happen to you.

Strangely though, he’d simply gotten up from the chair, stroked your cheek as you sat there like a statue and then let himself out. Not before throwing his parting remark over his shoulder, though. The one that had been haunting you all week.

“I’ll see you again real soon, honey.”

Naturally, you hadn’t gone after him for the payment he’d skimped out on.

Hell to the no. Instead, you’d locked your front door, hyperventilated for a good fifteen minutes on your living room floor and then much to your embarrassment… you’d called All Might.

For the first time ever.

You had passed the call off as some dumb suggestion that he come over for pizza and a movie, like you were best friends and not potential-fuck-buddies. You hadn’t even had the strength to hide the tremble in your voice, nor the will to throw in any bravado. It had been a brutally honest call- one that you had never wanted to make.

It was like letting him see the real you. Removing that final barrier between you that might hold you back from feeling anything real. That conversation had changed something, you thought. Something deep.

“H-Hey! I know I never call like this but... I-I… Could you come over?”

Your voice had been small and shaky, with you on the verge of tears- even though you would rather die than let them fall over someone so vile.

There had been a pause on the other end, mid-way through whatever sarcastic thing he’d been about to berate you with.

“Please?”

You had added that without even thinking about it, voice catching and the grip of Cash’s hand still burning on your thigh. You had thought, in that silence, that he was going to brush you off. Either that or demand to know what was wrong. Thankfully, he did neither.

“Ten minutes.”

The longest ten minutes of your life. He had found you pacing a hole in the floor of your living room and petting the ever-loving bejesus out of Marco- stressed to the max. You’d locked eyes with him and he hadn’t even had to ask if you were glad to see him. Your face said it all.

He hadn’t asked what had happened and you hadn’t told him… but he’d stayed anyway. A real villain, that one.

“Sounds about right to me,” you scoffed, tone disgusted at the thought of that… that man. “Ives, I don’t scare easily, you know that... but I know full well what he wanted and it wasn’t a back rub. What does this have to do with why All Might turned up injured?”

You felt unsettled at having him brought up out of the blue. You’d been quite happy to forget all about him and the way that his gaze had made your skin crawl.

“Everything. The word should be getting out any minute now, about our dear departed Tim Burton knockoff.”

You paused, startled and unsure if you’d heard her right.

“Departed?”

“Oh, he’s very, very dead darling,” Ivy said lightly, as if she was just telling you the weather for the day.

The relief that washed over you was momentous and almost made your knees give way, causing you to grip the table for support. He was dead. You were free of the lurking shadow of fear that plagued your days and nights. The one that robbed you of decent sleep because you were jumping at every little noise in your apartment.

“Is it bad that I just wanna say ‘Oh thank God’?” you replied, breath knocked from you. Ivy laughed. She sounded just as pleased as you felt.

“You won’t be the only one, I’m sure. He must have put up a halfway decent fight, if it took you that long to stitch up a little old cut,” she said, pointedly as though waiting for you to work things out. She was probably disappointed that she didn’t get to see your reaction when you did.

Oh. Holy shit.

“All Might killed him!?” you squeaked, then lowered your voice drastically in case he heard you. “Are you fucking with me right now, Ivy? Because that’s not cool.”

You didn’t really know how to feel about it, if it was true. You were more than relieved that the looming shadow of Cash was gone forever but regretful that somehow, All Might had found out what you’d tried to keep from him and had gotten himself hurt in the process of doing something about it.

“It’s true,” she said, confirming it. “You and I both know I hate giving that overrated blowhard any credit… but something had to be done about him. Cash had it coming, either way. There are plenty of girls at the Golden Cat who’ll be glad to see him gone.”

You swallowed hard. Your silence was more you being concerned over All Might’s well being than over the fact that he had killed a man tonight. He’d killed plenty of people in the time you’d known him.

That wasn’t about to destroy the image of him that you had.

It was more the deep seated worry that always gripped you when he was involved in something dangerous. Usually, you could worry yourself sick over the news broadcast and at least then, if anything happened, you would know.

But tonight, he’d gone out there and gone one on one with a man who could rip people apart from the inside out- and you hadn’t even known. What if he’d never come back? What if he’d died because of you and word would get back to you, weeks down the line that you would never see him again?

Something horrid lodged in your stomach.

“Won’t he get heat from other villains?” you asked to distract yourself, rubbing the top of Marco’s head as he trotted past- blissfully unaware of your minor breakdown. “Isn’t there some… I dunno… Code of conduct or something? Honour among thieves?”

Ivy snorted, obviously amused at your blatant lack of knowledge. You would think that someone as deep into the criminal underworld as you were would at least know a little about how things operated. But no.

You chose to remain blissfully ignorant.

“Hmm, well here’s the thing. The King makes the rules and All Might, well… as much as I’m loathe to admit it, he wears the crown babes. Who the Hell is going to argue with him?” she asked and you bit your lip, the fear of retaliation lessening.

It was no secret that he was both feared and respected- enough to keep even the toughest of the tough under his thumb. There wasn’t a Hero or Villain in the world who could realistically take him on, one on one, and win.

That thought relaxed you and the horrid sensation lessened. It didn’t leave entirely, but it receded enough that you could breathe again.

“Anyway, to cut a long story short… Cash wasn’t exactly secretive about what he liked to do to girls. He was always running his mouth and tonight, he came in absolutely singing about some pretty little Doctor that he’d fallen head over heels for…” Ivy said sourly, obviously not enjoying this part of the story.

You enjoyed it even less. It didn’t take a genius to work out just who that Doctor was. Your hope that he’d just been trying to scare you when he threatened to see you again had been futile, apparently and you were suddenly so glad that you’d asked All Might to stay that night.

“ You’re pretty well known yourself around here, sweets. Did you know that?”

You hadn’t known, no, but you kept quiet.

“It didn’t take long for a few of the regulars to work out just who Cash was talking about. Word got around like wildfire and eventually got to old Shigaraki himself. From what I’ve heard through the grapevine tonight, it took five and a half minutes from Shigaraki calling his boss, until All Might was storming the Golden Cat.”

Damn, there had been you, badmouthing Shigaraki not ten minutes ago in your head. If it hadn’t been for him telling All Might, who knows what would be happening to you right now?

You made a mental note to be extra nice to him the next time you saw him.

The thought that Cash had been interested in you made you shudder, sickened at the thought of him even thinking about you like that. Your body felt grimy and you resisted the urge to run to the bathroom and scrub yourself clean.

All Might was officially your fucking hero and he could pry that word from your cold, dead hands.

Sure, he would be horrified at the implication but that didn’t make it any less true. Maybe that’s why he’d brushed off your questioning earlier, being difficult when you wanted to know how he’d been injured.

You caught yourself grinning stupidly, attempting to hide it by biting your lip. You realised that there was no point. Ivy couldn’t see you anyway.

“So, I think the message is officially loud and clear. No-one fucks with the good Doctor,” she laughed, all angelic and sweet and you beamed down the phone, laughing along with her. You felt a heady sort of rush as the realisation that you were safe again sunk in. That the villains you had helped and minded and treated like people over the years had heard that you were in danger and had come to the rescue in their own way.

The realisation that… that he cared. Deep down, past his angry and irritable nature, he really cared.

“Ivy, I-”

Without warning, two large, muscular arms wrapped around your waist from behind and you might have jumped had All Might not buried his face into your neck and rumbled a low, lazy growl, like a bear waking up from hibernation. He nuzzled you with a deliberate slowness, lips pressing warm against your throat.

“You still talking to the sewer rat?” he murmured, sounding annoyed because he knew you wouldn’t hang up on her just because he said so- and so he would have to wait as patiently as he could until you were done.

On the other hand, it was an opportunity to rile Ivy up as much as possible.

“It’s Vagabond, you overgrown man child,” she hissed down the line, all previous goodwill towards him gone from her voice.

All Might ignored her, choosing instead to tug you back until you were plastered against his chest and he could lay his kisses along your shoulder- even though he still had to stoop down to reach. How did he even get so tall? Your breath caught in your throat, longing and gratitude fighting for the number one spot.

He wasn’t going to stay patient for much longer and neither were you.

“Listen, I gotta go, Ives. Love you, babes,” you said quickly and she cackled manically, well aware of where you were rushing off to in such a hurry. This was only proving her right. She would be insufferable for weeks now.

“Love you too, sweets! Try not to break anything. Like the building.”

You hung up to the sound of her laughter and turned in All Might’s arms, surprising him when you pulled him down for a kiss. You were long past the point of worrying about morals and right and wrong. There couldn’t be anything wrong in wanting him like you did. In knowing that he protected you and cared about you in his own way- no matter if he never said it out loud.

He broke away, smirking.

“Someone’s eager,” he ground out, hands sweeping up along your sides. His thumb brushed the underside of your breast and you pulled in a shaky, uneven breath. “I bet you’ll be fucking soaking…”

Well, he wasn’t wrong. Those intense eyes trailed over your face, lingering on your lips until he locked his gaze with yours.

“Thank you,” you blurted out, without meaning to.

One of his eyebrows quirked, amused.

“You’re thanking me for making you wet? That’s a new one on me sweetheart but sure. I’ll take the credit where it’s due,” he laughed cockily, one hand on the back of your head as he dove forward again and kissed you roughly. This one was all teeth and tongue and your knees shook, suddenly feeling thankful that he was holding you up.

You moaned softly, powerless but confident under his touch.

There was no pushing him back, no sliding your tongue into his mouth because the man was a force of nature and practically every inch of him was pure muscle. So you were content to let him take what he wanted from you, for now. Later you would find a way to turn the tables- to make him the quivering pathetic mess.

Right now, all you wanted was to find out all of the ways he kissed.

The angry ones, the lust filled ones, the sweet ones. The good morning kisses and the I’m happy to see you kisses and all the fucking kisses in between. You were off to a great start. You sighed, tangling your fingers in his hair and stroking your thumb in a circle on his scalp.

He melted under your touch and deep down you revelled in the fact that he was just as affected by you as you were by him.

“I um,” you stuttered, swallowing hard when you reluctantly pulled away from him. He looked as though he wanted to follow your mouth but for a change he let you speak. “I didn’t mean thank you for- for that.”

“For what?” he asked knowing full well what you meant, his tongue darting out over his bottom lip.

“For…” Your face heated quickly, without you even realising it.

Without warning, a hand was shoved between your already shaky legs and he pressed upwards, cupping your pussy and dragging a half halting, surprised moan out of your throat. He almost took you off your feet and your fingers wrapped over his biceps to steady yourself.

“For. What?” All Might asked again, applying pressure in all the places you needed pressure applied. Oh you were well and truly fucked and he hadn’t even gotten you naked yet.

“Cause if you’re blushing now, kitten, then I can’t wait to see what you’ll be like when we really get going,” he continued, nuzzling along your cheek and rubbing his palm over your aching pussy. “M’not a mind reader. You have to tell me what you want. Where you want me. How hard you want me to pound into you. I wanna hear you sobbing my name like it’s the last fucking thing you’ll ever say tonight. Think you can do that for me? Hmm?”

You were gripping his arms for dear life, trying to focus on the steady heaving of your lungs. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“Yeah, yeah, I can do it,” you promised, almost without hearing the words come out of your mouth. “I promise.”

“Good girl,” he purred encouragingly and you just about lost your shit for a few seconds, along with any sense you might have had left as the praising words repeated on a loop in your head. “Now, I’ll ask again. What weren’t you thanking me for?”

He was grinning wickedly against your cheek, eyes boring into yours.

“For making me wet,” you responded finally, when your tongue no longer felt like it weighed a hundred pounds and you remembered how to speak actual words and not just garbled syllables.

He groaned- actually groaned like you were the one touching him, instead of the other way around and it sent a shivering wave of heat spreading out at the base of your spine. Your clit throbbed mercilessly under the heat of his palm.

“Christ kitten,” he said, voice hoarse. He didn’t pull his hand away like you thought he would though. You were still sensitive from your little dry humping session earlier and the pressure he was applying was agonising torture for so many reasons.

You both knew he would pull away though if you even tried to set the pace. He’d made it perfectly clear that he was in charge.

“Now, what were you thanking me for? You’ve got me all curious.”

You felt dizzy and the words didn’t exactly come easily. The heat radiating off of his bare chest was intoxicating and so was the sight of all those well defined, rippling muscles so easily within reach. You indulged yourself, seeing as you hadn’t been able to earlier. You lightly trailed the pads of your fingers over his pectoral muscle and down at a steady pace, over the hardness of his abs and then to the tempting, glorious V shape that led under-

Your smile came unbidden to you and he noticed, knowing immediately what you were grinning like an idiot about. He was wearing the pajama pants you’d gotten him.

They were simple, nondescript pants like any guy would wear but… you’d gotten them in his favourite colour and he’d actually put them on.

You’d expected him to either stay in his towel or well, just get the clothes out of the way entirely.

“Yeah, yeah,” he snorted, releasing you when he realised that he’d gotten your attention in an entirely different way. The loss of sensation between your legs was more than worth it to see him standing there, a little awkwardly, with his arms crossed. “Don’t be a jackass about it, for fuck sake. I just didn’t want to have my dick out when I was eating dinner.”

“Like that would bother you,” you beamed and he grunted something petulant that you didn’t hear.

“You gonna tell me what you’re thanking me for, or what?” he said after a moment, ignoring the obvious erection that was tenting the front of said pants. You found it very, very hard to ignore but dragged your eyes up to his face after a moment anyway. His self assured smirk was expected.

He knew how attractive he was and what it was doing to you. Damn him.

“Cash,” you managed to say after a moment and it clearly didn’t answer his question. He looked at you like you were an idiot.

“You… want cash? Here was me thinking you weren’t a whore,” he cackled, pleased at his own cleverness. You were less amused, punching him lightly in the arm. The shaking of his shoulders didn’t stop but at least he was no longer laughing out loud.

You were trying to spill your heart to the big jerk and he couldn’t stop mocking you for more than five seconds.

“Come on! Stop being a dick,” you scowled, arousal now tainted with annoyance. He rolled his eyes and scrubbed a hand over his slicked back hair, his laughter dying after a moment.

“Alright, alright! Explain yourself, woman,” he swept his hands out, metaphorically giving you the floor.

“Hinata Cash,” you elaborated, expecting the penny to drop. But when he continued to look lost, it slowly dawned on you that he’d never even bothered to learn the guys name. All he’d known was that he was going to do something to hurt you and… that had been enough for him to go on. Your heart thrummed in your chest. “Um, Scissorhands?”

Much like they had earlier, his eyes darkened, flashing a sudden warning that it wasn’t something he wanted to discuss. Unlike earlier though, you ignored it. Answers to your question were just out of reach.

“Why are you bringing up that motherfucker?” he asked gruffly, then swept past you almost dismissively before you could answer. He disappeared into your kitchen, his back to you. Not the reaction you had been expecting. The heated air had vanished- as had the playfulness he’d exuded moments before. “Way to kill a mood, doll.”

You suddenly regretted opening your mouth. He hadn’t told you- and if he hadn’t told you, there had been a reason for it.

“Shit,” you hissed softly to yourself, listening to him stomping around the kitchen behind you.

You turned and followed him, pathetically useless against the part of you that longed to be near him. Besides, there was no taking it back now and you were burning up with curiosity.

Why had he killed Cash? Why had he even bothered himself at all?

Most of all, you wanted- no needed to know.

Had he done it for you?

-------------------------

(Part One) (Part Two) (Part Three)

#all might x reader #all smite x reader #all smite #all might #bnha #BNHAFF #smut

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