#anyway i definitely took the 'whatever is rotting your brain' as an excuse to write bsd so thank you for that sldkgfj

[zukkaoru]

🐝 “What did I say (that wasn’t what I meant)” ! (Idk if I was supposed to send a character/ship with it but just do whoever’s rotting ur brain atm <3)

“I’m fine on my own,” Dazai spits out. Not because he means it, but because he’s been alone for two years now, and he knows how to survive without help. Not because he doesn’t want Kunikida here, but because it’s easier if he never cares about anyone ever again. (In his dreams, he still sees Oda’s blood on his hands. He still sees the flames of Chuuya’s car. He still sees Ango’s glasses, shattered on the pavement after Dazai punched him in the face and Ango simply let it happen.) Kunikida purses his lips. He looks Dazai over once more, then tells him, “You’re not fine. But I don’t know how to help you.” “I don’t need help,” Dazai lies. He ignores the screaming pain in his chest, nestled somewhere near where his heart should reside. The tiny, insignificant, part of him that craves human contact so desperately it burns. His fingers itch to draw a gun. He isn’t sure if he wants the bullet in Kunikida’s brain or his own.“Just— Leave me alone.” “Very well,” Kunikida relents. “But if you’re not in the office tomorrow, I will come looking for you.” Dazai hates him. He hates that Kunikida walks away. He hates that Kunikida is always honest. He hates that Kunikida is good in a way Dazai can only ever pretend to be. He hates that, despite his best efforts, he cannot truly hate Kunikida. Far more than he hates Kunikida, he cares about him. And he really, really, shouldn’t.

or: after Oda’s death, Dazai swore he wouldn’t let himself love anyone again. but as he grows closer to Kunikida, he finds some promises are harder to keep than others.

fake fic ask game

[dilly-oh]

Trashy Romance Novel

    “Naruto, you frigging idiot,” Iruka began hotly, barging into the hospital room, “of all the stupid, brainless things you could have done, this is by far the-”

    He stopped. 

    The person lying in the small bed was definitely not Naruto. It was a grown-ass man with messy gray hair and a faded scar over one eye, the sterile white sheets pulled up over his nose, apparently sound asleep. Iruka stared at him for a long moment, dumbfounded, before it clicked. 

    Oh shit, he thought. This is the wrong room. I'm in the wrong room. I need to hurry up and leave before- 

    The stranger's eyes cracked open and he squinted up at Iruka in confusion.

    “...Who're you?” he croaked out. Iruka managed a rather articulate gurgle of dismay, frozen in sheer mortification. He considered the distance between him and the IV drip, wondering if he could dose the man back to unconsciousness before he could scream or buzz for a nurse. “Are those for me?” the man asked, sitting up in bed to regard the bouquet of flowers in Iruka's arms. He opened his mouth to disagree, but then the sheet slipped off the man's face, and Iruka suddenly thought giving him the flowers might not be such a bad idea. He definitely deserved a thank you after gifting him with...that. He didn't even protest as the alarmingly handsome stranger reached out and took the bundle of flowers, opening the card on top. 

    “You're a dumbass. Love, Iruka.” he read aloud, then looked up at Iruka, batting his eyes. “Aww, babe, you shouldn't have.”

    “Whoa whoa WHOA!” Iruka finally blurted out, his face burning half from embarrassment at the situation, half from the thinly-veiled flirting. “I'm sorry, sir, there's been a mistake. I'm in the wrong room and-”

    “You mean you aren't my doting husband I tragically forgot about due to amnesia and now you have to win back my love by passionately recreating the story of our romantic union?”

    “Excuse me, WHAT-”

    “Sorry, I've been reading trashy romance novels. They're the only books this hospital has. Can't blame me for trying.” The man shrugged, then reluctantly handed back the bouquet. “Who's the lucky person they're actually for? Must be someone real special if you're calling them a dumbass to their face.”

    “My kid brother,” Iruka explained with a sigh. “He's here with a head injury.”

    “Ouch.” The man winced in sympathy. “Poor kid.”

    “Not really. He head-butted a brick wall.” 

    “...May I ask why?”

    “Because his stupid boyfriend walked into it and he had to, and I quote, 'defend his honor'.” Iruka paused, looking the man up and down. Despite being a bit on the pale side, he looked perfectly fine, pun very much intended. It was almost unfair how well he pulled off the hospital gown (although Iruka would much rather be the one pulling it off, wink wink, nudge nudge). “So...what're you in for?” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Was...was it the crappy romance novels? Did they rot your brain?”

    “I have an extremely rare, aggressive form of cancer with only two weeks left to live and the only cure is a kiss from my one true love...” The man swooned back onto the pillow and looked expectantly up at Iruka, who rolled his eyes. 

    “Yeah they definitely did-”

    “Alright you got me. Broke my leg.” He pulled the sheet off his lower half, revealing his legs, one of which was wrapped in a cast, propped up on some pillows. Several encouraging words from friends were scrawled on the white surface in marker, one of them a jarring green highlighter. It almost hurt Iruka's eyes to look at it. 

    “...How did you break it?” he asked, unable to contain his curiosity. 

    “I heroically threw myself in front of a speeding car in order to save the life of my beloved-” 

    “Okay how did you really break it?”

    “Tripped chasing after my pug at the park,” the man admitted with a weary sigh, his shoulders slumping in defeat. 

    “...Is the dog okay?” Iruka asked after a long pause.

    The stranger burst out laughing. It was a nice laugh, warm and contagious enough to elicit a chuckle out of Iruka, who was growing more and more intrigued. He couldn't deny the spark of attraction he felt for the other man, spontaneous as it was, and it seemed to be reciprocated. He didn't even know his name, but something about the man made Iruka want to know more about him. Maybe this was like some trashy romance novel, where the two would-be lovers met under unusual circumstances and fell instantly in-

    “Hey, Kakashi,” a man with short brown hair said, suddenly walking into the room, “I brought the next three volumes of your shitty porn series from the hospital library and a couple pairs of clean underwear, so you can stop fucking texting me the specific style and brand you want from home, you're so damn picky-” He stopped dead as he caught sight of Iruka, pausing for a beat, then glanced at the man in the bed, his eyes darting nervously between the two. “Umm...am I...interrupting something?”

    A cold pit of ice yawned open in Iruka's stomach. 

    Oh my GOD. Here he was, borderline flirting with some stranger in a random hospital room, when obviously the man already had a boyfriend and Iruka was just making a complete ass of himself. The flirting had probably been misinterpretation on his part anyway, and if not, the guy was a total dick. Either way, enough was enough. His face aflame with rage and shame, Iruka spun towards the door. 

    “I need to go.”

    “Hey, wait!” Kakashi or whatever his name was called after him. 

    Iruka was already out the door, ignoring the man's cries. Screw him, and screw Naruto, too. He was the cause of this whole mess. Iruka would just text him later. He was probably making out with Sasuke anyway and wouldn't even notice his brother hadn't popped in to visit. Iruka needed out of this hospital NOW. He turned towards the stairs, immediately got lost, and spent the next five minutes growing increasingly flustered as he stormed through the winding hallways, desperately searching for the exit. Why the fuck was the hospital so damn BIG-

    “Hey! Iruka! Hold up!”

    Iruka spun around to see Kakashi speeding towards him in a wheelchair, his boyfriend dutifully pushing him down the hallway at a dead run, IV dangling after him on its cord like a faithful dog. The wheelchair stopped with an audible squeal in front of him.

    “What- where did- did you steal that?!” Iruka hissed in outrage. 

    “Of course not, don't be silly,” Kakashi protested, sounding offended. “The guy it belongs to was asleep in his bed. I'm just borrowing it. I'll return it later. Anyway, Iruka-”

    “Were you flirting with me in there?” Iruka demanded, cutting him off. “Be honest.”

    “Abso-fucking-lutely,” Kakashi said without an ounce of remorse. “So can I have your number or what?” Iruka bristled. 

    “You're a piece of shit! I can't believe you, hitting on me like this right in front of your boyfriend! You have some nerve-”

    “Wait...boyfriend?” Kakashi cocked his head in confusion. “You mean Yams?”

    “The fuck do YAMS have to do with anything-”

    “Hi, that's me,” the short-haired man said, raising a hand. “Yamato, actually. 'Yams' to my friends. Which is what we are. Just...friends.” Iruka scowled at him suspiciously. 

    “Friends? Don't fuck with me. You brought him underwear-”

    “Really close friends,” Yamato reiterated. “Also, roommates. It's awful. I can't get away from him.” Iruka studied him for a moment, but couldn't spot any hint of deception. The man's almond-shaped eyes were surprisingly honest.

    “So you two...aren't dating?” he asked hesitantly. Yamato gave him a horrified look.

    “Dear God, NO. Kakashi is the WORST. He's lazy as hell, procrastinates til the last minute, is perpetually late to everything-”

    “You are a shit wingman-” Kakashi began. 

    “He needs to know what he's getting into,” Yamato snapped at him, then turned back to Iruka. “Seriously, though. You should run while you still can. There's hope for you.”

    “Don't listen to him,” Kakashi cut in. “I'm a fucking catch. Which is exactly why you should let your flaxen hair down, rip your shirt open to reveal your heaving bosom, and throw yourself into my arms-”

    “Will you cut that out?!” Iruka burst out impatiently. “Life is not a trashy romance novel.”

    “You sure about that?” Kakashi said, quirking an eyebrow. “Because I met you in a hospital through total coincidence. After really hitting it off, we had a misunderstanding brought on by miscommunication. Then I chased after you in a fucking wheelchair to declare my undying attraction to you. If that isn't a plot to a trashy romance novel, I don't know what the fuck is. At least it's not raining right now.”

    “I dunno, it might be drizzling,” Yamato said, glancing at a window.

    Iruka paused, considering.

    “I guess it...would make a pretty good book,” he admitted quietly. “The only thing is...I'm not sure what happens next.”

    “That part's for us to write,” Kakashi said, his tone eager. “Only we can complete the story.”

    “Aaaaand I'm going to puke,” Yamato stated. 

    “Sorry, we crossed the line from 'trashy' into 'sappy'.” Kakashi shook his head. “Anyway. Iruka. Please, I'm begging you. Let me sweep you off your feet. Just...give me a chance.”

    “I'll do you one better,” Iruka said after a pause. “I'll give you my number.” Stealing a marker from the nearby nurse's station, he bent and wrote his cell number on Kakashi's cast, then straightened and held out the bouquet. “Here, you can have these. The message works for you too, I guess.”

    Kakashi accepted the flowers with a laugh, taking an appreciative sniff. 

    “And now, I shall ride dramatically off into the sunset,” he said with complete seriousness. “Come, my valiant steed. Awaaaay!”

    “I will push you down the stairs,” Yamato grumbled as he spun the wheelchair around and started back down the hallway. Iruka watched them go with a fond smile on his face, giddy with anticipation. 

    He was eager to read the next few chapters in his life.

    Including the steamy bits. 

(Written for @kakairu-fest KakaIru Month 2021, Day Twelve Prompt: Hospitals)

[feathery-dreamer]

Digger quotes

This took me way too long (two hours) solely due to tumblr lagging so much, but I feel it’s largely worth the trouble.

Digger-of-Unnecessarily-Convoluted-Tunnels (including offscreen narration)

(to the shadow child asking about what evil is) "Okay, morality in a nutshell. Don’t hurt people if you can avoid it. Don’t steal stuff unless you’re starving or it’s really, really important. Work hard. Pay your bills. Try to help others. Always double-check your math if there are explosives involved. If you screwed it up, you need to see it gets fixed. And don’t eat anything that talks. If it doesn’t fall under one of those categories, just do the best you can.”

“Listen, Grim Eyes, it’s real nice of you to come warn me about those things, but you will keep a civil tongue in your head when you talk to my friend, or so help me, I’ll march you back to that bridge and kick you off myself!”

I admit, I felt a little guilty about the squash. I mean, sure, they were just vegetables, but they moved and growled and they’d saved out lives. On the other hand, judging by the smell, most of them had started to rot anyway. Maybe if you’re an evil vampire vegetable, you’re happy to go out in the act of bludgeoning someone to death.

“Grim Eyes, this is Murai. Be nice to her. The ladder goes all the way to the bottom of the mine shaft, but there are no landings, if you get what I mean.”

I could have wished for a lot of things, not having fallen into the crevasse among them, but if wishes were ingots, beggars would smelt, as great-aunt Ironbit used to say.

(about ghosts) “They say the chief designer of the Great Warren comes by occasionally to check how the trusses are holding up. Mind you, there’s a family legend that if you leave dishes in the sink for more than a week, the spirit of great-great-grandmother Rakefast manifests to yell at you.”

I hoped she [Murai] wasn’t too upset that we’d upstaged her glorious destiny speech. I mean, glorious destinies don’t do anybody any good. But if you’re expecting one... well...

“There really aren’t that many evil men out there. It’s mostly just good men working at cross-purposes.”

Ganesh statue

“Without the mad, we would be deprived of many fine saints and holy men.”

“The Earth is so old, and home to so many strange things, that there is hardly an inch of ground that was never home to a shrine, or a god, or a battle, or some magical oddity. Even under the ground, you yourself have said, there are old gods, old prophecies, old lost things. It is not odd that this bound god should be here, in this place. If anything, it is odd that we are not constantly hip-deep in such magical echoes of the past.”

“Good morning, burrower. I am both impressed and alarmed by your ability to circumvent the Veiled guards.”

“I do not think that the burrower would thank us for the prayer, my child, nor would it help. We have been given a task to which gods are unequal, and so it is left for mortals to see to the end.”

“Hold for as long as you can, but the gods do not doubt your courage and they do not require your death.”

“You are angry, burrower, that the gods would so disrupt a life for so little? Well, perhaps you are right to be. But consider... Murai is young. She has all her life ahead of her, and she is still a hero. The hour may come when she stands astride the fulcrum of the world, and it will be the courage learned in that doorway - or the good sense learned traveling with a wombat! - that tells her where to push.”

The village hag

“Listen, you pea-brained idiot, I don’t care if Jhalm’s tapdancing naked on a griddle, you are not waking my patient up!”

“Ha! I’m a hag. I’m the next best thing to untouchable. They may not like it, but no god in a hundred miles looks kindly on hassling healers.”

“Reattach parts? Sure. Although one in ten go mad and try to kill their owners. It’s not a big deal if it’s just an ear, mind you - best they can do is homicidal wiggling - but a rogue arm can do a lot of damage. And there was a suicidal big toe two villages over, always stubbing itself-”

Surka the bridge ‘troll’

"I’m not [leprous]. They wanted a captain who wouldn’t fall apart under pressure!”

“Oh, aye, y’got t’defend your lads! Anybody spoke ill ‘o the Rotting Dogs, I’d ave their lungs for a ‘ammock!”

“Fine lads, trolls. ‘Earts ‘o gold and brains ‘o granite. Practically pirates.”

Boneclaw Mother

“Now, I do not quite believe that you have nothing to hide. I smell secrets on you, Little Mother, and some of them are familiar. There are people you are protecting. Even so, I smell no malice in you. A shame, really. Malice might help to cushion you from things to come.”

“When you’re blind, daylight’s only good for sunburns. Besides, we’re both too old to waste what’s left of our lives on sleep.”

“Look, I could give you some claptrap about gods and ancestors and righting ancient wrongs and doing one’s part as a good citizen of the mythological cosmos, but it all boils down to ‘because I said so.’ So get tracking.”

“Grim Eyes, I do love you, but you don’t have the brains the gods gave an eggplant. The thing only works on people you’ve lived with for years who think their motivations are a lot better hidden than they really are.”

“Let’s not waste both our time, son. You’re going to keep saying ‘I’m busy, come back later’ in as many ways as you can, in hopes of finally making the senile old savage understand what you’re saying. Eventually you’ll figure out that I understand perfectly well what you’re saying - savage I am, but senile I’m not - and then you’ll move on to diplomatically phrased threats, in hopes that we’ll go away.”

“I see a warrior with an army at his back preparing to kill one brave, half-mad girl with a broken arm. I would think that would be the concern of any decent creature.”

“I know exactly what is at stake, captain. You are trying to convince yourself that whatever cause you follow is worth that girl’s death. (..) I know all about gods, captain. I know that a god that demands a child’s life is not a god worth saving.”

“Daughter, given what you had to work with, I think you probably did the best that could be done. There was a great deal of fate involved here, and you cannot defeat fate with scaffolding. And I never let anybody use fate as an excuse for incompetence, so take what comfort you can.”

(about convincing Jhalm to leave) “Nine times out of ten, you just have to rub their nose in what they’re actually doing. People get carried away with their own righteousness and tend to gloss over the consequences. show them they’re about to run off a cliff and... well... And just in case, I had Owl Caller mix up a couple of his best poisons and paint them on the claws of my left hand. (...) Well, if he’d been one of the real crazies, I figured I could get one good swipe in, and that would’ve ended the matter. Might’ve taken a couple of hours to kill him and probably we would have all died, but you take out people like that as soon as you can, before they start raising armies and sacking continents and so forth.”

Grim Eyes

“There is no dishonor in an honorable madness.”

(about wombat mating rituals, with Digger’s corrections) “...Okay, let me get this straight. You go to the camp of your beloved- (Burrow.) -and you take your blushing lover in your arms- (Well not in public.) -and you whisper in his ear, ‘my darling, my carrion-scented flower, you gnaw my liver- (Definitely not.) -let us enter into a binding legal contract together until the stars fall from the sky, as determined by subparagraph F, section 12- (Blood and shale, no.)”

“I am amazed that a species with so little romance in its soul manages to reproduce at all.”

“I’m a hunt leader. It’s not all sticking animals with sharp objects, you know. I realize you have this strange notion that you are the only competent individual in the world, earth rat-”

Murai

“It is nothing, honored Digger. After the first moment, the pain is merely excruciating.”

“Perhaps there are many destinies, honored Digger, waiting for whoever stumbles into them. I do not know. But this needs doing now, and that, I think, you understand.”

Misc

Ed: “Evil is having reason. Always, many and many. If hunter beats mate, has reason, always. Mate is lazy, burning food, is stupid, is speaking on and on. [...] Is punishing world for not being... like in head. Is always reason. World should be different, is reason. Is only good is not having reason. Little one hugs, no reason. Digger-mousie giving name to nameless, say ‘Ed’, no reason. Skin-painter paints skin on child, no reason. Just is.”

Shadebones: “Forgive our manners, little creature - that we may well kill and eat you is no excuse for rudeness.”

Shadow child: “Anyway, the slug said that you had to take me with you, and if you didn’t, there’d be a terrible catastrophe and we’d all be salted and dipped in beer. (...) He also said that you were a pig-headed vertebrate and you probably deserved whatever happened to you, but he wouldn’t send an earwig to a fate like that, and anyway, if you all got salted then everybody’d get salted eventually. What’s salted mean, anyway?”

Hegi: “Sulk? Sulk?! A thousand years I’ve been working on that glorious destiny speech, and no, it has to be wombats. No dignity, no glory, just - wombats!”

Descending-Helix: “By tradition, Quartzclaw, I should probably have some wise old elder words for a youngster off on their mission to save the world, but I don’t think the world’s in any real danger, and you seem to have been doing just fine on your own. So I’ll just tell you what I told my own boys when I sent them off - Do your best, try not to screw it up, and remember that your mother worries if you don’t write.”

Herne: “That priest girl’s nice enough, and nobody can accuse her of being a whiner, but she’s dragging destiny around behind her like a screaming toddler. That sort of thing is dangerous. Destiny’s rough on innocent bystanders. Sure, I’m a little curious about how it all works out... but I’m a lot more curious about what living to a ripe old age will feel like. If you and the hyena had a bit of sense, you’d shove her through the door of her temple and then get as far away as possible before things start to explode.”

Veiled patrols: “I had a slug cuss at me the other day. Said I stepped on a leaf he was reading. - What did you do? - What could I do? I apologized and got him another leaf!”