#anyways hi. I’m having the same crisis I always fucking have

[paging-possum]

I fear i may be better suited to being a science major with an art minor than an art/science major 😭😭

[vvitchering]

I’m replaying act 1 (for the fifth time) and when Gale is explaining his condition to you he mentions he’s “never told another living soul” about it, except for Tara. You’re telling me this man shut himself up in his tower for an entire year and didn’t tell anyone why and no one ever bothered to find out? He has so few people who care about him in his life that he fell into a depression and disappeared for a year and NO ONE thought to go and check on him and find out what was wrong? He’s had no one but Tara providing help and support until he meets Tav???????

[cravingpepsimax]

Headcanons for 30s!Stancest?

ohohohoh

so, obviously, 30s stancest isn’t canon compliant at-fucking-all. this means that when discussing it, you kinda have to ask how it’d actually happen.

personally, i’m a fan of “everything’s canon compliant up until the portal incident, which just doesn’t happen”. they fight, but the specific sequence of events that leads to ford being put in the portal just don’t happen. stan starts living with ford — he’s homeless, and ford clearly needs someone to take care of him because goddamn he’s in rough shape. he learns about bill and helps ford actually get sleep, handcuffing him/restraining him to the bed and only letting him out when bill’s not in control.

another 30s stancest headcanon that i LOVE is that ford is REALLY into stan’s mullet. didn’t get the opportunity to appreciate it in canon since he was sleep deprived and promptly sucked through the portal, but in an au without the portal incident, this isn’t a problem. sad that ford has to go through a “oh god i’m attracted to my twin wtfwtfwtf,” a “oh god the guy i’m attracted to has a mullet,” and a “oh god i think the mullet’s hot” crisis at the same time.

stan gets the unicorn hair so that a protective barrier can be made around the shack. could’ve either obtained it from a con or from violence — the latter’s more likely, but i think the former has some stupid looney tunes comedic potential. anyways, this is important so that 1. ford is no longer terrorized without having to install a metal plate into his head, and 2. it allows stan and ford to sleep in the same bed without the fear of bill taking over and fucking everyone’s shit up.

since the research grant’s realistically running out, stan does various odd jobs to bring in an income. though ford is very against using his research as a marketing ploy, stan’s still a con-artist. (though, of course, they still adventure together — it’s just that isn’t a viable career). stan is great at dealing with any kind of fae or fae-adjacent entity.

this is one of those rare instances where i think ford would be the first one to confess. stan doesn’t wanna say shit because he JUST got his brother back, and he doesn’t wanna risk not just losing him again, but being kicked out again and becoming homeless again. hell, i think stan would be so unwilling to risk it despite his feelings that ford would have to be the one to first make any moves or flirt with him, which has its own funny factor since there’s no way in hell he’s good at it.

stan’s pretty into weird supernatural drugs. half the time when they discover a plant stan’s first thought is “hmm… what if i smoked/ate/snorted/shot up this?”. this has ended in a fair share of… Situations. i will leave you to think about what these Situations may be.

i don’t think of either of them as being particularly physically affectionate, but when they sleep in the same bed, they pretty much always wake up cuddling.

[wxnheart]

Some Ghoap!Poly palooza please!! I’m losing my mind at work and those two (and the way you write them❤️) are keeping me sane 😭

𝐏𝐨𝐥𝐲 𝐏𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐳𝐚: 𝐋𝐢𝐯𝐞, 𝐋𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡, 𝐆𝐡𝐨𝐚𝐩 𝐄𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

Simon regrets not dropkicking Johnny for encouraging you to get that goddamn Live, Laugh, Love sign. Why the fuck is it in the bathroom? Why does it disturb his morning routine? Why the fuck hasn't he thrown it away yet? WHY IS IT A SQUARE?!

...Okay, anyway, while Ghost is having a crisis of faith in the bathroom, you and Soap are busy setting up the living room because the day will be spent on the couch doing shit else but being together.

You've had a shitty week, Johnny's had a shitty week, and Ghost is just having a shitty everything so this was needed. In Simon's case, this was abso-fucking-lutely necessary. Yes, he protested. And like always, you and Soap gave no fucks. ("Majority wins, L.t." "...Fuck off, Johnny.")

And so, you three are taking a well-deserved break, consisting of watching shitty movies, junk food, and pestering Simon. Ah, you're living the dream.

Well, you were until you three couldn't decide on a movie to start with. Simon grunted and suggested you three just have sex all day, Johnny shrugged his shoulders and left the decision up to you, and you just... you've seen just about every movie you could possibly think of. And shit, maybe an all-day sex-a-thon doesn't sound half-bad...

...So you settled to let the T.V. watch you three. Talk. And be intimate. No sex, just intimacy. With junk food. You got the ball rolling. Asked them about their week and all that. Did so while making yourself comfortable on Simon who's in the middle. Again. ("...Not a bloody bed, you two." "You are this time, Lt." "...Goddamn it, Johnny.")

Turns out that was just what you three needed. A chance to talk and vent and just reaffirm your love for each other. To fucking feel each other. The conversation evolved from there. You three also found out more than you thought you would about each other's upbringing. It helped put a lot of things into perspective; it also deepened your bond even further.

But of course, you being you, you had the question that had been on your mind for some time: "Would you still love me if I was a worm?" Simon said no with the faint traces of a smirk on his lips. ("Go to hell, Simon.") Soap just gave you an uneasy smile. That's when you found out he doesn't too much like creepy crawlies. Of any kind. AT. ALL.

And so you three spent the day away just doing nothing but being intimate. And letting shitty television shows watch you. Meanwhile, you're falling even deeper for these two and you don't wanna get up. Felt like a weight had been lifted off your shoulders. You didn't feel so shitty anymore. The same could be said of Ghost and Soap, too.

You have takeout for dinner 'cause no one felt like getting up to cook. Was the best takeout ever, too. Sleep came easily that night and damn, you really did need that day with those two assholes.

Come morning, though, Simon still thinks that sign is shitty.

[morallygreyyn]

I love your writing so much.

If it's not a bother, could I have a (maybe little bit ooc) scenario about Illumi realizing the people he hangs out with most (Hisoka and Reader, a truly chaotic duo) are dumbasses, but he loves enjoys having them around?

Thank you!!

those two idiots of mine (illumi x reader x bestfriend!hisoka) (scenario)

description: illumi has a semi crisis over his two self proclaimed best friends

authors note:  it’s not a bother at all and you’re so sweet anon! tbh this has to be my favourite request i’ve gotten so far. illumi dealing with his chaotic duo besties with begrudging love? sign me the fuck up <3

also this also had extrovert/introvert themes so i thought i’d include the mbtis of my boys

illumi: istj (according to a quick google search)

hisoka: entp (like yours truly) (i swear sharing an mbti with hisoka is my defining trait)

reader: whatever the fuck you are (insert your mbti here)

warnings: might be a smidge ooc, i really tried my best to make it have an authentic illumi feel but my guy is dealing with emotions so yk...

requests are open!

Of all the tiresome things Illumi had dealt with in his life, having you and Hisoka be his primary source of socialising might be top of the list. He couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment you all started to meet up regularly for various things, nor could he remember when you had self proclaimed yourselves his best friends.

You and Hisoka were both utterly ridiculous, often matching each other's wild energy as if you were on the same brainwave.

Illumi began to question his ‘friendship’ with you when you and Hisoka started debating whether or not ketchup was a smoothie.

“It’s a blended fruit.”

“But you have it as a condiment with savoury foods.” You argued, whacking the magician’s head with a newspaper.

He swatted you away with an amused hum. “That doesn’t change its nature.”

“You don’t drink ketchup.”

“Speak for yourself.”

Illumi quietly listened to his two best friends argue as you all sat round a table.

As he watched the two of you bicker back and forth, he was unable to fathom your unique stupidity. The assassin understood that individually, his friends were incredibly intelligent and capable people. However once together, you two seemed to share the collective intellect of a prawn. 

“Illumi!” The assassin was brought out of his internal suffering by the very source itself. Both you and Hisoka had decided that for some reason they needed a third person’s opinions on your debate. 

“I’m not getting involved.”

“C’monn, please?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“I’ll give Hisoka Killua’s number.”

“Ketchup is a savoury condiment, not a smoothie.”

You let out a whoop of victory, fist-pumping the air in your joy. “HA! Suck it Hisoka!”

“That’s no good, he’s biased.” Hisoka tutted, shaking his head and folding his arms. “You know Illumi always sides with you.”

“That’s because he loves me.”

“Unconfirmed by him.”

“Confirmed in his heart.”

“Does he even have one?’ Hisoka shot.

“Do you even have one?” You fired back.

“Touché.”

Illumi sat there locked in a daze, listening to his two best friends argue like children. Yeah, you two were both the biggest idiots he had ever met, but he wouldn’t change you for the world. Of course he would never say this, but it never stopped the two of you from trying. 

And so what if he loved enjoyed having the two of you around? Who would be able to tell anyway?

[lucifersresources]

taylor swift // midnights rp meme. 

edit/alter/change pronouns etc as you see fit!  

lavender haze. 

meet me at midnight. 

you don’t ever say too much. 

i’ve been under scrutiny. 

you handle it beautifully. 

all this shit is new to me. 

i’m damned if i do give a damn what people say. 

all they keep asking me is if i’m gonna be your bride. 

they’re bringing up my history. 

they’re bringing up my history, but you weren’t even listening. 

i just need this love spiral. 

maroon. 

we lost track of time again. 

you were my closest friend. 

how’d we end up on the floor anyway? 

i see you every day now. 

i chose you. 

we were shaking. 

how the hell did we lose sight of us again? 

ain’t that the way shit always ends. 

i feel you, no matter what. 

and i lost you. 

i wake with your memory over me. 

that’s a real fuckin’ legacy. 

anti-hero. 

i get older, but just never wiser. 

midnights become my afternoons. 

my depression works the graveyard shift. 

i should not be left to my own devices. 

i end up in crisis. 

i wake up screaming from dreaming. 

one day i’ll watch as you’re leaving.

one day i’ll watch as you’re leaving, coz you got tired of my scheming. 

it’s me, hi. i’m the problem, it’s me. 

i’m the problem. 

i’ll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror. 

it must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero. 

i’m a monster on the hill. 

did you hear my covert narcissism i disguise as altruism like some kind of congressman? 

life will lose all its meaning. 

she thinks i left them in the will. 

she’s laughing up at us from hell. 

snow on the beach. 

life is emotionally abusive. 

time can’t stop me quite like you did. 

i’m unglued, thanks to you. 

it’s like snow at the beach: weird, but fucking beautiful. 

you wanting me tonight, feels impossible. 

this scene feels like what i once saw on a screen. 

i’ve never seen someone lit from within. 

my smile is like i won a contest. 

to hide that would be so dishonest. 

it’s fine to fake it till you make it. 

i can’t speak. 

i don’t even dare to wish it. 

can this be a real thing? 

you’re on your own, kid. 

summer went away, still the yearning stays. 

i play it cool with the best of them. 

he’s gonna notice me. 

we’re the best of friends anyway. 

i hear it in your voice. 

i didn’t choose this town, i dream of getting out. 

there’s just one who could make me stay. 

i waited ages to see you there. 

you never cared. 

you’re on your own, kid. you always have been. 

you’re on your own, kid. 

i see the great escape. 

he loves me not. 

something different bloomed. 

i’ll run away. 

i gave my blood, sweat and tears for this. 

the jokes weren’t funny. 

i took the money. 

my friends from home don’t know what to say. 

there were pages turned with the bridges burned. 

everything you lose is a step you take. 

you’ve got no reason to be afraid. 

you can face this. 

midnight rain. 

he wanted it comfortable, i wanted that pain. 

he wanted a bride, i was making my own name. 

he stayed the same. 

all of me changed. 

my town was a wasteland. 

for some, it was paradise. 

i broke his heart coz he was nice. 

i was midnight rain. 

i guess sometimes we all get just what we wanted. 

he never thinks of me. 

i guess we all get some kind of haunted. 

i never think of him. 

i never think of him, except on midnights like this. 

question...? 

we had one thing going on, i swear that it was something. 

i don’t remember who i was before you. 

i just may like some explanations. 

can i ask you a question? 

did you ever have someone kiss you in a crowded room? 

what did you do?

did you ever leave her house in the middle of the night? 

did you wish you’d put up more of a fight? 

it was too much. 

do you wish you could still touch her? 

did you realise out of time? 

fuckin’ politics and gender roles. 

i just may like to have a conversation. 

does it feel like everything’s just like second best after that meteor strike? 

i’m sure that’s what’s suitable. 

vigilante shit. 

draw the cat eye sharp enough to kill a man. 

you did some bad things, but i’m the worst of them. 

sometimes i wonder which one will be your last lie. 

they say looks can kill and i might try. 

i don’t dress for women, i don’t dress for men, lately i’ve been dressing for revenge. 

i don’t start shit.

i don’t start shit, but i can tell you how it ends. 

don’t get sad, get even. 

i’ve been dressing for revenge. 

she needed cold hard proof, so i gave her some. 

picture me, thick as thieves with your ex-wife. 

she looks so pretty, driving in your benz. 

ladies always rise above. 

i’m on my vigilante shit again. 

bejeweled. 

i think i’ve been a little too kind. 

didn’t notice you walking all over my peace of mind. 

putting someone first only works when you’re in their top five. 

i’m going out tonight. 

best believe i’m still bejeweled when i walk in the room. 

i can still make the whole place shimmer. 

familiarity breeds comtempt. 

don’t put me in the basement when i want the penthouse of your heart. 

i polish up real nice. 

i think i’ve been too good of a girl. 

i think it’s time to teach some lessons. 

i made you my world. 

have you heard? i can reclaim the land. 

i miss you, but i miss sparkling. 

sadness became my whole sky. 

but some guy said my aura’s moonstone. 

you can try to change my mind, but you might have to wait in line. 

a diamond’s gotta shine. 

labyrinth. 

it only hurts this much right now. 

i’ll be getting over you my whole life. 

i’m falling in love.

i’m falling in love again. 

it only feels this raw right now. 

lost in the labyrinth of my mind. 

you would break your back to make me break a smile. 

you know how much i hate that everybody just expects me to bounce back. 

karma. 

you’re talking shit. 

addicted to betrayal. 

you’re terrified to look down. 

you’ll see the glare of everyone you burned. 

it’s coming back around. 

karma is my boyfriend. 

karma’s a relaxing thought. aren’t you envious that for you it’s not? 

my pennies made your crown. 

don’t you know that cash ain’t the only price? 

ask me what i learned from all those years. 

ask me what i earned from all those tears. 

ask me why so many fade, but i’m still here.

so many fade.

i’m still here. 

karma is the thunder rattling your ground. 

karma’s on your scent like a bounty hunter. 

sweet nothing. 

they said the end is coming.

the end is coming. 

everyone’s up to something. 

i find myself running home to your sweet nothings. 

all that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothing. 

this happens all the time. 

you should be doing more. 

to you i can admit that i’m just too soft for all of it. 

i’m just too soft for all of it. 

mastermind. 

the planets and the fates and all the stars aligned. 

the touch of a hand lit the fuse. 

checkmate, i couldn’t lose.

i couldn’t lose. 

what if i told you none of it was accidental. 

none of it was accidental. 

the first night that you saw me, nothing was gonna stop me. 

what if i told you i’m a mastermind? 

i’m a mastermind. 

now you’re mine. 

we were born to be the pawn in every lover’s game. 

if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. 

strategy sets the scene for the tale. 

the first night that you saw me, i knew i wanted your body.

i wanted your body. 

it was all my design. 

no one wanted to play with me as a little kid.

i’ve been scheming. 

i’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since.

i’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since to make them love me. 

this is the first time i’ve felt the need to confess. 

i’m only cryptic and machiavellian coz i care. 

you knew the entire time. 

you knew that i’m a mastermind. 

the great war. 

my knuckles were bruised like violets. 

cursed you as i sleep talked. 

spineless in my tomb of silence. 

tore your banners down, took the battle underground. 

flashes of the battle come back to me in a blur. 

my hand was the one you reach for all throughout the great war. 

i vowed not to cry anymore. 

if we survived the great war. 

you drew up some good faith treaties. 

you said i have to trust more freely. 

you were playing with fire. 

maybe it’s the past that’s talking. 

maybe it’s the past that’s talking-- telling me to punish you for things you never did. 

i justified it. 

i vowed not to fight anymore. 

i vowed not to fight anymore if we survived the great war. 

got a sense i’d been betrayed. 

that was the night i nearly lost you.

i nearly lost you. 

i really thought i’d lost you. 

we can plant a memory garden. 

there’s no morning glory, it was war, it wasn’t fair. 

we will never go back to that bloodshed. 

we’re burned for better. 

i vowed i would always be yours.

i would always be yours. 

paris. 

all the outfits were terrible. 

i’m so in love that i might stop breathing. 

i was taken by the view. 

romance is not dead. 

romance is not dead if you keep it just yours. 

levitate above all the messes made. 

i want to brainwash you into loving me forever. 

high infidelity. 

i didn’t know you were keeping count. 

you said i was freeloading. 

put on your records and regret me. 

i bent the truth too far tonight. 

i was dancing around it. 

do i really have to chart the constellations in his eyes? 

seemed like the right thing at the time. 

there’s so many different ways that you can kill the one you love. 

there’s so many different ways that you can kill the one you love. the slowest way is never loving them enough. 

do i really have to tell you how he brought me back to life? 

glitch. 

we were supposed to be just friends. 

maybe i’ll see you out some weekend. 

i think there’s been a glitch. 

i’m fastening myself to you. 

i’m not even sorry. 

i was supposed to sweat you out. 

our love is blacking out. 

the system’s breaking down. 

i’d go back to wanting dudes who give nothing. 

would’ve, could’ve, should’ve. 

if you tasted poison you could’ve spit me out. 

if you’d never looked my way i would’ve stayed on my knees. 

i damn sure never would’ve danced with the devil. 

the pain was heaven. 

now that i’m grown, i’m scared of ghosts. 

memories feel like weapons. 

i wish you’d left me wondering. 

if you never touched me i would’ve gone along with the righteous. 

you made me feel important. 

you made me feel important, then you tried to erase us. 

you tried to erase us. 

you’re a crisis of my faith. 

if i’d only played it safe. 

i miss who i used to be. 

the tomb won’t close. 

i regret you all the time. 

i can’t let this go. 

i fight with you in my sleep. 

the wound won’t close. 

i keep on waiting for a sign. 

if clarity’s in death, then why won’t this die? 

living for the thrill of hitting you where it hurts.

give me back my girlhood, it was mine first. 

dear reader. 

if it feels like a trap, you’re already in one. 

just run. 

pick somewhere and just run. 

desert all your past lives. 

if you don’t recognise yourself, that means you did it right. 

never take advice from someone who’s falling apart. 

bend when you can, snap when you have to. 

you don’t have to answer just cause they asked you. 

the greatest of luxuries is your secrets. 

when you aim at the devil, make sure you don’t miss. 

i prefer hiding in plain sight. 

you should find another guiding light. 

[starry-nights-garden]

Xdinary Heroes Reaction ✧ Asking them to teach you how to kiss

✧ Xdinary Heroes all members x gn!reader ✧ genre: fluff, reaction, implied friends to lovers ✧ warnings: none

Gunil:

when you bring it up to him he’s seriously surprised at the question

“You mean… like… from scratch??”

what else would you mean??

“You haven’t had your first kiss yet???” - goes on to rant about how gorgeous you are and how he can’t believe nobody has ever wanted to kiss you ??? (which may or may not make you blush)

eventually he’ll get serious

insists that he has to “set the mood” so he turns off all lights and places a candle between you two instead

turns on a playlist with cheesy romantic songs on it and well, now you’re starting to feel the pressure jxbxjx

as he notices you getting nervous, he takes your hands into his to give them an encouraging squeeze

tells you to simply close your eyes and to trust him - and you do as he said, but the shaky breath he lets out as he’s drawing closer does nothing to calm you down

that’s until he presses his lips against yours and you suddenly feel yourself relax

butterflies start running wild in your stomach as he brushes his lips against yours, kissing you properly, and now neither of you wants to pull back

when you eventually run out of air and are forced to part, you don’t know what to say

all you can focus on is the blush on Gunil’s face, and your own fast beating heart

Jungsu:

has an internal crisis as soon as you manage to gather the courage to ask him to teach you how to kiss

because on one hand he always wants to be there to help out a friend!!!

but on the other it’s against his principles to step over that kind of line with a person he’s not dating (even when he may or may not have a crush on said person…)

doesn’t know what to say so his mind leaves his body for a hot sec and he agrees without thinking

panics internally the moment he realizes what he just said, but when he sees how thankful and happy you are about it, he feels he just has to go through with it now

blushes so hard when you expectantly close your eyes as he leans in, and nopes out just when your lips are about to touch

apologizes frantically and prays you’re not upset, and somehow this situation is turning into a confession

“I’m so sorry… I don’t think I can do it… not when I like you so much and I don’t even know if you like me back…”

you chuckle at him now, because deep inside you kinda knew he had feelings for you, and suddenly you have the courage to simply go for it and kiss him

you smile into the kiss as you feel him moving his lips against yours carefully

it doesn’t take long for him to wrap his arms around you to feel you even closer to him, warmth washing over both of you as you continue kissing

Gaon:

gets super awkward in an instant after hearing your question

“You want me to what??”

you repeat that you want him to teach you how to kiss, and when he still looks at you in disbelief you start teasing him instead, assuming he hasn’t kissed anyone yet either

Jiseok immediately tells you you’re wrong, insisting he actually has tons of experience!!!

(((the “tons of experience” being that one time he had to kiss a girl as a dare back in kindergarten and then proceeded to rinse his mouth like ten times because “ew, a girl”)))

he still tries (and fails) to play it cool, leaning against the nearest wall while being absolutely awkward

but he agrees anyway, because there’s no way he could admit to you that you two are in the same position here now jdhdjjddj

and it’s not like you don’t notice that something’s off about him, so you decide to fuck with him a little bit :’)

you tell him to just stay where he is, and as soon as you walk over to him in order to grab his face with both your hands, his eyes grow wide

you press a clumsy kiss onto his lips that’s over in a second, and when you part he’s still staring at you in shock

you’re about to tell him how it wasn’t so scary after all and thank him, when suddenly he charges forward

smashes his lips against yours for a proper kiss, half lidded eyes not leaving your face when he pulls away

both surprised by what just happened, you just stand there staring at each other for a few moments, until your eyes find his lips again, and you wordlessly agree that you could simply practice kissing some more…

O.de:

he’s a little surprised when one day you’re alone with him and you start stuttering about first kisses and eventually manage to tell him you haven’t had yours yet

isn’t sure why you’re telling him this out of the blue, until you try and fail to say the question in your head out loud

that’s when it suddenly clicks

“Don’t tell me… you’re about to ask me to teach you?”

he’s grinning now - not because he’s trying to make fun of you, but because the implications sound tempting to him

you admit it eventually, and he’s quick to pull you close to him by your waist, taking your hand and intertwining your fingers, flustering you in the process

“Step one… make the other person’s heart race,” he explains, while you’re wondering what you’ve gotten yourself into here

“Step two…” - he leans in but stops just before your lips can touch - “tease them a bit. And step three…”

just when you expect him to close the distance between your lips, he pulls back, telling you that now would be the time to kiss the other person ?????

with a fast beating heart you attempt to complain to him

“It’s not that hard! You’ll figure it out once the time comes.” - he tries to reassure you but fails horribly

until eventually you manage to yell at him to just kiss you hshdjdjd

and well, though he is a bit taken aback by your words, he wouldn’t let the chance slip away

and so he draws near again, and this time without any intent of teasing you, he presses his lips against yours

Junhan:

very supportive as you tell him that you haven’t had your first kiss yet and you feel sad about that

will try to cheer you up, telling you that it’s not a big deal at all etcetc

but you insist, eventually confessing that you’ve been thinking maybe he could teach you how to kiss so you would gain some confidence about it!!

and that’s when goes ????

“What???” - he needs a moment for it to sink in

and then he lowkey panics

“Well, I haven’t had my first kiss yet either, so I wouldn’t know!!!”

his ears are beet red, but he somehow manages to mostly stay calm on the outside

laughs it off awkwardly and attempts to change the topic

but when you remark that you shouldn’t have asked and it was a stupid idea, he feels the need to comfort you

sighs and then turns to face you

“Fine, let’s do it. It’s just a kiss anyway." 

you both lean in to meet in the middle, sharing a quick peck that lasts maybe half a second

and even though it was almost as if you hadn’t kissed at all, Hyeongjun turns away immediately, in a futile attempt to hide his blush

and he’s not the only one whose heart is suddenly racing now…

Jooyeon:

simply laughs at you when he hears you ask such a ridiculous question

"Go do that with your boyfriend!”

well you would, if you had one!!!

so you keep stammering about, trying to convey to him that you’re 100% serious about your request

and well, now it’s starting to dawn on him too that you mean it

instinctively moves a few steps away from you, waving his hands in front of his body and shaking his head

“I can’t do that! We’re friends, I can’t take your first kiss away!”

he’s clearly panicking, and maybe now you’re starting to think that asking him wasn’t such a good idea

and just when you tell him to forget about it, he seems to change his mind

“Actually… if you really want to… I can do it…”

calms himself down surprisingly fast and makes sure to go slow as he approaches you and cups your cheek with his hand

asks if you’re ready, and when you nod, he presses a simple but soft kiss onto your lips

to his surprise, you kiss him back when he tries to pull away

he wouldn’t even think about questioning your reaction anymore, because telling from the way you soon have your arms wrapped around each other, not wanting to part, he knows he’s not the only one who feels that this is just right

“See? It’s not that hard…” - mutters these words to you in between kisses, as you’re somehow starting to make out…

[oh-soo-diabolik]

Family Trips and car rides.

warnings: swearing, emo life 👽🩵

<was thrown back in time with this one>

“Pass me the fucking aux, you breast-less bitch.” His words tickle the edge of your ear.

With his body looming over the driver's seat, the drive was going to be a long and difficult one. Sucking your teeth you forcelt shove the white wire into Ayato’s hand.

“If you play some trash shit, I’m killing us all.” you sneer at the red head.

A snickering captivates your attention, your eyes flicker to its owner. Laito Sakamaki. “Including you, Laito. Anyway, why do you always have to-”

A sudden sound of music blasting through the speakers, shakes the car. “Jesus Christ, Ayato. Give us a warning.” You pester on.

The eldest brother Shuu, jumps in from his comfortable position, his blue eyes sends daggers into Ayato’s skull.

“Yeah whatever,— why does Shuu get to sit up front? You belong to yours truly, so it’s apparent who should be in front.” Ayato mutters, as he shifts back into the middle seat.

The once quiet car ride now filled with the sounds of cursing and screaming, this was going to be the longest five hour drive in vampire history.

“Yeah and because you, I’m a Vampire, done without my consent may I add. So now I’ll be ignoring you for the next two hundred years.” you retort, your hands grip the steering wheel.

You were now stuck with them for an eternity.

<prayers to u reader san>

“Heh?! We live in the same house.” Ayato argues, you smirk in response as you glimpse into the rear view mirror at Subaru, who sat silently on the left of Ayato.

Dripping with anger and annoyance.

“I mean, Subaru did it for three hundred. I’ll get pointers from him if needed.” You snicker, Ayato glares at you, gritting his teeth. “Isn’t that right? Su.Ba.Ru~”

“Fuck you all, I hate it here. I want to die.” Subaru spurs, reaching for his airpods in his pocket. “Fuck, are we there yet?” he adds.

“Oi, Emo fuck, you think you’re the only one who wants to die?” Shuu chimes in, your eyes roll, they are the same as they were ninety years ago.

Only thing that seemed to change about them was their ‘human age’, they no longer the teenage boys you once knew, they were now college age and having an identity crisis, especially Reiji.

“Save the dying for after my birthday trip, why am I driving anyway? It’s my birthday.” You whine in annoyance, who in their right mind made the birthday girl/boy drive to their own birthday trip?

“Well, you’re the only one with a license.” Shuu says with a shrug, if you were in an anime you would’ve sweat-dropped by now.

You were always curious, how did an advanced species of creatures work around driving and insurance?

“So, how did you guys get around then?” You quickly shoot Shuu with a side eye reaction. Your tongue clicks as you notice the smirk on the blonde’s face.

“We have drivers.” was all he said.

“So why am I driving?” you question once more. “You fancy being a passenger princess?” You say with a teasing tone.

“Only if it’s you driving.” He grins, the sound of Ayato scoffing causes the blonde to stare at his brother. “What now?” Shuu says, his airpods wired casing, hanging around his neck.

“I want the front seat, lazy ass. Got too much dip on your chip.” Ayato taunts, Shuu howls with laughter.

“Fuck you and the dip. I’m the eldest, remember that. Her/Him and I fuck, not you.” Shuu continues to grill the younger Sakamaki.

“HUH?! I’ll kill you.” Ayato’s shouts, you let out a scream, you feel as all their eyes land on you.

“Now that I got everyone’s attention, shut up, my song is playing.” You mutter.

“Cut my life into pieces.” You begin.

As if creating a chemical reaction, the brothers (Subaru and Ayato mainly), begin to play their ‘role’ in the song. Subaru, guitarist, Ayato, the moral support.

“I should’ve burned in that village.” Reiji finally speaks up, his head leaning against the window as the car fills with laughs and terrible singing. Shockingly enough, Kanato was sound asleep, perhaps those edibles did come in handy.

end~

a/n; was in a goofy silly mood and decided to post this short fic for y’all. thinking of posting more like this. fanfic chap 2 is also coming soon ~ ya girls lazy.

[greenishghostey]

Oh, cute idea! Reader and eddie... getting married. But reader hates the feeling of jewelry, super uncomfortable with even tiny pieces. So they get matching tattoos instead.

This idea is SO SO SWEET!!! Personally, I don't really like having jewellery on my hands, so yeah love love this idea 😊

///

“You’re 1000% sure about this?” Eddie stressed, his nose almost pressed to yours. “There’s no backsies with ink. Can’t throw the ring at me if I piss you off later.”

You bumped your nose against his and stared back at him, hard and with comically wide eyes. “This was my idea, of course I’m sure.” You smiled. “Besides, wouldn’t throw anything at you, I’d tackle you. Big difference.”

“Brave words for someone I’m about to stick with a needle.” Eddie smirked, cleaning a small section of your bicep with an alcohol wipe.

You weren’t a fan of rings - on your own hands anyway. Eddie’s eclectic jewellery was totally fine. The weight and pressure of the metal around your fingers felt restrictive and a little bit gross. You had really sweaty hands and your sense of touch was sensitive at the best of times.

When Eddie proposed to you, he didn’t get you a ring because he knew you wouldn’t like it. Instead, the two of brainstormed ideas to replace the symbol of a ring.

He suggested getting a pet, a cat to roam around the apartment. You weren’t opposed to having a pet, but both of you worked so long that the little feline would be lonely most days.

Another option was necklaces. Both of you would have a small ring on a chain around your necks. This was the idea you were going to go with until Eddie misplaced his guitar pick necklace. He started ranting and raving that he’d end up losing the ring necklace too - the very thought of it stressed him out beyond belief. The guitar pick one had been through the laundry one Sunday in a pair of his jeans. The crisis was averted thanks to you.

So, it needed to be something on your person at all times and permanent. It was you who suggested tattoos at home. Eddie had done a few stick and pokes on himself and others over the years and he had gotten pretty good. You only had crescent moon you got tattooed on your ass cheek as a dumb act of rebellion. Another, more meaningful, addition would be more than welcome.

Eddie held his most simple silver ring against the cleaned area of skin, trying to decide where would look best and be the least painful. You and Eddie had gone back and forth about matching designs. Simple line circles is what you agreed on. It’s basically the same as having a ring - but it’s permanent and needs to be cling wrapped after you get it.

“Babe, this is gonna sting. You sure sure?” Eddie asked, furrowing his brows.

“It’s only a little circle. Plus, it’s you doing it, so I’m in the best hands I can be.” You reassured him. It was the truth. When it came to tattoo care, Eddie was so on the ball it was impressive. He said it was because he got a rash on his demon head tattoo and “felt like nearly rip a tit off from itching.”

“Been told I’m good with my hands, you know. Never had any complaints.”

“I’m the only person who you’ve had your hands on. Like, ever, dude.”

“And you’ve never complained, point proven.” Eddie stated, tilting his head at you to further his point. “Get my greasy mitts on ya and it’s all “uh huh, god yeah - fuck fuck yeah.”” As much as you hated to admit it, Eddie’s impression of your sex noises was actually pretty good. All the years of doing voices for D&D had done wonders.

You swatted at his thigh that was pressed to yours and chuckled with him. The cosy lamp light of your living room was the perfect atmosphere for the evening. It was just… everything. Eddie was always a bit of everything, and you savoured every second with him.

“Okay, back to the undying devotion ink.” Eddie smiled, pressing the ring firmly into your bicep so it would work as a circle guide. He really wasn’t confident enough to do a non-shitty circle free hand. You wouldn’t have minded either way. He could draw a square for all you cared and you’d still love it.

“I promise I’ll be fine, I’ll say if it hurts too bad.” You said, nudging his leg with your foot lightly and giving him a soft smile. “Gremlins is on at 8 and we’re not missing the start again.”

Eddie just looked you over fondly. It was a quick sweep of his gaze, but it was thorough. You had been worried about not wanting a ring - everyone wanted a ring when they got engaged, it was normal.

However, you and Eddie had never really done “normal”, you guys worked so well because you both went with the flow of each other and no one else. Matching energy beat for beat. Melting into each other’s existences and moulding something entirely new. Eddie liked to think that’s what love really was. None of that fake mushy stuff that came from guys who didn’t even really like their wives.

“Remember you’ve gotta do mine after this. Then you can sit and tell me about how they made gizmo move in the movie.” Eddie quipped. Whenever he watched a movie with extensive effects in it, you would always talk his ear off about the ins and outs of how they worked. He called them your fun facts - because they were fun, to him.

“You like my commentary, hush.” You grumbled. The technology and skill behind the gremlin puppets was super cool, anyone would be lucky to hear all about it. “You’re mighty brave wanting me to stick you.”

“I’ll use the safe word if it hurts too much, promise.” Your soon to be husband was one weird guy, but he was your favourite brand of weird.

[thebrainrotsreal]

I’m interested in the idea of Mark and Kate interacting. With how the story focus on Mark’s journey it’s easy to forget he’s not the only punching bag character in the series. They’re both people who have been beaten down by life, who have fought against opponents stronger than them and lost spectacularly but somehow move forward and try to do good despite the odds being against them. Kate also seems to be dealing with some family drama too if the S1 imprisoned supervillain with duplication powers shares any association with her. I just like the idea of Mark talking to other superheroes his own age besides Eve.

OH SAME! They're such an underrated, if not like non-existent dynamic that would be so good, like hello????

Agreeing with every little thing you said, anon!!! They're both determined as fuck to do the right thing and keep moving forward, and if they both have family drama, that'd be perfect because they know exactly how the other feels! It's perfect scenario for bonding!!! Another shoulder to lean on! Considering there's drama with Eve & Rex, I'd image they'd be a breath of fresh air to each other! Plus, I always pondered how Mark, who often gets beat to the verge of death and keeps living anyway, (which hello high pain tolerance? or forced to have a high tolerance???) AND Kate, who feels every single clone death in agonizing scrutiny (which DAMN GIRL, SAME QUESTION BUT ALSO HOLY SHIT), can ALSO bond over those kind of death-like experiences. They can pop right back up, yeah, but that kind of agony has gotta fuck with you severely.

Kate especially whose been a hero longer than Mark has, and as probably felt herself die so many times and still has to fight anyway, just feeling yourself being ripped apart mid-battle is insane. WHICH IS TO SAY: MARK AND KATE DYNAMICS, PLEASE. Like unlike Rex whose shown to be dismissive of Kate's clones, Mark, in the very little 0.8 seconds of interaction, is polite! He doesn't dismiss them, and just outright asks who to face to be respectful! Granted he never gets his question answered, but still. Their dynamic could have bloomed.

Every day I wish they could talk. Kate get away from The Immortal, please, I promise there are better people to lean on, holy shit. Not to mention that so far her only intimate, or just more than friend/coworker dynamics are either the Immortal, which, man you are like over 100 grandpa, GROSS, or REX who used her to cheat on Eve. She needs a relationship that isn't romantic/sexual outright, which is not to dissuade shippers, but like holy shit she needs some friends. And so does Mark! They just feel like both incredibly isolated characters!

Basically their friendship would make so much sense! And it would do them both some good! Kate gets someone to lean on who can actually understand and empathize with the struggles, in family drama, in agonizing deaths, in pushing forward anyway because she wants to do the right thing, and Mark the same!

Plus, with s2 finale's leaving Mark fresh off the morality crisis of taking a life, and yet Future!Eve tasked him with confessing to Eve like he doesn't have other shit to process makes talking to Eve a fuck ton of pressure. The timing is almost comedic istg.

This scene will never not be utterly insane and hilarious to me. Like side step the fact you almost stayed stranded out here for years, ignore the fact there is a version out here who survived and became someone you "wouldn't like", ignore the fact you just killed someone exactly like how your dad nearly killed you, confess to me, Mark. LIKE GIRL. HELLO?

They just feel like perfect, potential friends! Like come on, please? Please. Let them interact for more than 0.05 nanoseconds. Fanfic writers where are you. Please. WE WERE ROBBED I TELL YOU! FUCKING ROBBED!

Ty again for the ask, invincible anon! :DDD

[compacflt]

you're a legend for referencing lauren berlant and michael warner in relation to your top gun fic and I'd like to think that they would say the same!! the stories that you've created are beautiful explorations of some of the biggest questions posed in queer theory: who are we in public? who are we in private? where is the line that separates the two (spoiler: there is no way to actually separate the two, no binary) and what are the structural forces bearing down upon all of that bullshit! I for one would love to see your questions about privacy and respectability explored with rooster and ice and mav. especially considering the generational cliff between them, with the aids crisis in the background of rooster's childhood when they were all the closest, in your world. anyway! you are an incredible writer and it's been a privilege to read you work :)

thank you so much for this ask!! yes i have spent so much time thinking about this. In March i started working on a new-yorker-style interview that tried to address a bunch of these questions. Since I didn’t do wip wednesday yesterday (sorry) here’s some relevant sections of that wip related to your ask. I don’t think it’s spoilers since I’m not sure id ever post this anywhere—you can see for yourself how entertaining the writing is and it’s overly political and didactic. Just a lame hegelian dialectic where im interrogating my own characters (at least, my own interpretations of them) on their politics. And I’m not an expert on any of this stuff (currently on the slow uphill climb out of the valley of the dunning-kruger graph—trying to learn). Nor am I fact-checking it & that feels irresponsible to post For Real. so just take this post as a fun (for me) exploration of what i (20y.o., ignorant, no editorial oversight, smooth-brained) think Might be some political implications of my fics, trying to write from a lib-moderate pov (tough!)

talking points I wanted to address:

The politics of ice’s career, both internationally & domestically (some wild navy scandals happened under his “tenure” [fat Leonard most pressingly—would LOVE to know how actual TGM’s ice & mav felt about that bc it was SO FUCKING CRAZY, navy officers & admirals having wild sex parties paid for by a singapore defense contractor (the details are so fucking crazy i can’t even say them here—one anecdote involves 7th fleet officers using WWII/Korean war general macarthurs historical memorabilia during sex acts—go read about it) a couple PACFLT RDMLs were charged with actual crimes, 60 admirals (of the navys total 160 admirals) were under investigation & both my and TGM’s ice & cyclone would probably have been two of them, basically if you were a pacflt officer in the mid-2000s-2010s you were under investigation it was so fucking wild]) —and another geopolitical look at the implications of both top gun movies (reagan weighs in from beyond the grave)

Ice and mav who can’t win—they want their relationship to Not Be A Big Deal. leave us alone. We’re Normal. we’re not Weird or anything. —but can’t understand WHY their relationship is so sensational/political—yes, boys, it is a big deal, sorry!! mavericks probably the last Ace the world will ever see & ice is the secretary of the navy and they’re married, fuck yes that’s newsworthy!!!

my version of Ice acceding to SECNAV at the intersection of a couple crucial contextual moments for the navy/military as a whole: 1. Recruitment is currently fucked. This interview takes place in 2020/early 2021, and things were bad then, but the numbers just came out for the Navy this year, and hoooooly shit they are so bad. And blame is falling along partisan lines like always: Ds blame low recruitment numbers on lack of benefits etc, Rs literally i am not shitting you are mostly blaming low recruitment numbers on the military going Woke. The USN has long been seen as the most obnoxiously woke/gay (derogatory) service to conservatives & there’s a lot of political baggage that comes with having a SECNAV who, while not openly identifying as gay, is openly married to another man. especially with a recruiting crisis like this one. 2. Withdrawal from afghanistan obviously. kind of a shit way for ice to end his career ngl. It Did Not Go Super Well. 3. rising tensions in eastern europe pre RU-UA invasion in 2022, what that means for the MIC and procurement, etc. 4. The joint chiefs openly declaring they (& by extension the military as a whole) would not support trump’s coup attempt post-J6—the end of that extremely politically polarized presidency—what does it mean for the following Dem president to then have a gay secnav after that? It’s HUGE. SO no matter what, Ice as SECNAV is going to go down in history. He just wants it to be for his actions, not the fact that he’s gay.

Icemav’s relationship with their identities. We really really don’t want to be known for being gay. “Ask me what my proudest achievement is, I’ll tell you without a second of hesitation—my family. Without a doubt. But does any military man really want to be best-known for his marriage?” We want to be known for being the BEST at our jobs, which we are. We’ve earned that title! There’s so much more interesting stuff about us than who we got married to.

AND how that is a liberal-moderate-conservative median-50% meritocratic WET DREAM of an ideology. an interview like this one is a straight fluff piece pre-ice’s confirmation to secnav—it lets him prove to the moderate liberals that he’s left-leaning enough to protect social justice interests in the USN, AND prove to conservatives that he’s right-leaning enough to not let identity politics/“woke bs” get in the way of the navy’s mission of providing a lethal maritime fighting force. the merits of this ideology are up for debate.

maybe helping the conservative viewpoint of that ideology: The fact that the Kazansky-Mitchell-Bradshaw-seresin family is so not-stereotypically gay. Like, look at these four guys. 9-to-11 combat kills between them (11 in my universe where ice gets an extra 2, 9 canon confirmed) in a period of history/modern warfare when ANY air-to-air kill is/was massively historically significant. Extremely macho & tough. They present themselves about as traditionally and toxically masculine as you could possibly get. Theyve KILLED PEOPLE. They’re not “soft” by any stretch of the imagination. Physically & emotionally they ARE extremely conservative, and there’s something to be said about the politics of that too—molding yourself into the shape of what you think a man should look like, just to avoid persecution, and then performing masculinity BETTER than even the men who would want to persecute you…!

Related to your ask: the modern/young ppl inclination to make sexuality SO political and public. When asked how he could reckon with joining a DADT-ruled navy, rooster answers: “hope I could do something to destroy it before it could destroy me.” When asked why he DIDNT use any of his considerable power to influence the repeal of DADT, ice answers: “it was better than the blanket ban that came before it. And maybe I’ve always wanted neither to tell nor to be asked.” the conservative respectable opinion that your intimate relationships ought to be PRIVATE, doesn’t matter if you’re gay or straight—just do your job, and preferably do it well. yeah, don’t ask and don’t tell. It’s not anyone’s business. ice doesn’t have a philosophical problem with DADT, because he agrees sexuality should be private & secret. —is it anyone’s business? whose business is it? How much of your personal life do you owe the public if you’re a public-facing individual like the COMPACFLT or SECNAV? all good questions!!!!

[starbiters]

I’m just gonna take a second to ramble abt my predictions/theories or just shit I would find funny abt the sun and the star <3

Will is gonna Med Student his way around the cosmic horror that is Tartarus being the body of an ancient deity

Like “oh shit if we’re inside his body does that make the monsters we’re fighting like, his immune system? Since we’re like unknown pathogen?” or “Human bodies r so weird already of course primordial god bodies would be fucked up n weird too.”

And Nico’s like what the FUCK how are you so CALM ABOUT THIS

The reason: Will had a crisis abt how he would feel and react if he was in the Magic School Bus as a kid. Ms Frizzle prepared him for these cosmic horrors.

We all know abt the Orpheus and Eurydice parallel but LISTEN LISTEN I swear I have a fresh take on it

Nico as Orpheus bc he has to put his whole entire trust in Will. He has to believe that he won’t be abandoned again. That someone loves him enough to fight tooth and nail to stay with him. He has to fight against all the trauma he’s gone through and the walls he’s built up to expose his heart and hold on to faith that he won’t be hurt again.

It’s raw proof of the changes and healing he’s gone through!! Being able to be vulnerable enough to openly love, care, and trust again despite all the risks!!

Will as Eurydice bc he needs to know that Nico genuinely deeply cares abt him in the same way he does for him. He’s spent this whole time putting everyone first despite his own emotions and feelings, he needs someone to put him first. Make him a priority, prove that he’s important.

He’s been on the sidelines this whole time. Compared to the rest of the demigods we’ve followed Will is very easily overshadowed, and I think it’s easy for Will to have developed some kind of mindset where he thinks everyone else’s lives and wellbeing is more important than his own.

Bc we always see Will taking care of other people, when have we seen someone take care of him in the same way? Having someone fight to protect just him?

This goes especially hard if it’s some kind of self-sacrifice situation that leads to the Orpheus and Eurydice parallel to begin with

This goes DOUBLY HARD if we throw in the Apollo cabin curse, where Will expected he was going to die from the start like all his siblings before him, but he went anyways bc he’d rather sacrifice himself than let Nico face Tartarus alone again

Idk both Nico and Will struggle with abandonment issues and self worth, but I feel this arrangement is the strongest and most emotionally impactful

I also rlly like the idea that Nico and Will are supposed to represent Balance and Unity vs Chaos and the Abyss

And that’s why the quest is just the two of them!

You can split them apart but ultimately they will always fight to find their way back together again, it’s the natural balance of the universe

I think it would be rlly cute if they reunite at the climax after being split for a portion of the quest and they get to have the cliche reunion kiss our love gives us the power to prevail type moment

A real #lovewins kinda situation

I also think it would be funny bc it would pretty much be gay ppl kissing demolishes the primordial deity of the abyss

I have a couple more but I didn’t wanna make this post too wildly long, but I’ll keep going if ppl want me too!

[dreamsndmadness]

hellooo!!!(sorry in advance for all of the rambling)

first of all, im absolutely gushing from all of the soft moments in ch9: feyd nearly crying from being cared for, paul helping feyd with his nightmares, and feyd being protective/caring in both the breakfast scene and throughout the spice field inspections :333. It was all VERY adorable and paul finally being unhesitating about his sexual relationship with feyd and them communicating (both implicitly with paul reading feyds body language and explicitly with paul making feyd ask for what he wants), it's all very rewarding in general :)

Also, ive just been thinking nonstop about all the stuff going on with paul. so, my first theory about pauls exhaustion was because he was staying up because of feyds nightmares waking up but then i re-read it and saw paul was tired even before they shared a bed, and then i remembered that lack of sleep is a common symptom of pregnancy so thats my leading theory rn, that OR paul is staying up late reading lol. im also so interested in what paul and lady jessica are plotting, they mentioned controlling feyd and learning more about him in the beginning and then theres the date palm scene. I remember in the movies that date palms are definitely on arrakis so my first thought was that feyd was being a paranoid little freak about it but then i thought lady jessica might be trying to assess pauls health or something?? its safe to say im super hyped for the paul POV

sorry about the length and INCREDIBLY half formed theories

( •̀ - •́ ) ₊˚⊹ ᰔ

The wonderful bowl100!!

I love your questions ☺️. Omg yay!!! I’m so glad you liked the chapter. I always have a crisis of confidence when I post new chapters 🙃. Yesss. The softness. Feyd cutting the fruit and making sure Paul eats was one of my favorite moments from the chapter. It’s so hard to write moments of tenderness from him without it seeming out of character. And then he can never be honest with himself about why he’s doing things or why certain things are making him feel certain ways. Man. This guy. Feyd used his words FINALLY!!! And yes!! I’m so happy for Paul. Starting to enjoy himself. It’s so important.

Okee so here’s what I can say. You aren’t wrong about any of your guesses per say. It’s been such a joy to write from Paul’s pov because he’s a much more emotionally evolved person so I can write him being like “ah yes. This is making me feel this way!”. So one of the biggest reasons for Paul’s exhaustion is that he has been having dreams. Some of them good, some of them pretty disturbing. And yes, we will be seeing them in the next chapter. He is also (not really a spoiler cause it’s in the tags) pregnant! Another big reason! That’s going to be a plot point of the next chapter as well.

Lol the date palm scene!! You’re right on both counts. Feyd is being a paranoid little freak. He’s like “they are speaking in code!!” No you weirdo, they are talking about date palms. However, I am going to give him a little credit because he did pick up on the weird energy of the scene which is basically due to Jessica trying to draw Paul out of his funk. She’s worried about him and thinks he’s not doing well, and she’s trying to cheer him up and also trying to subtly (probably too subtly) signal to Feyd to do the same. Which he kinda gets! Cause he then invites Paul to come with him on inspection and Jessica is like “thank fucking god you are so fucking dense”. To Feyd. Not Paul. Paul can do no wrong in Jessica’s eyes lol.

Anyway! All of your theories were pretty spot on and perceptive!!! Sorry it took so long for me to respond 😔. I’ve been sick this week and it’s been a struggle. I have most of Paul’s chapter finished (it’s sitting at 5,500 words right now 😀). And I hope to edit and post tomorrow!!

Thank you as always for your lovely questions. I look at your wonderful art every day 🥹.

All the best 🫶.

[subzeroparade]

I finished!!! With DLC and everything, now I’m a squid baby hanging out with the Doll for the rest of eternity. Super excited that my self-imposed ban on lore videos and fics are lifted, and now I can read!

Not to diss Elden Ring, gods know I love the Lands Between, but Bloodborne’s story just hits different. With ER it feels like it’s all a giant family squabble, but in Bloodborne it’s the collective human hubris that fucked everything up. The Great Ones in BB seem to be way more sympathetic and often victims of men’s actions, where in ER the Outer Gods appear to be more malevolent. Idk, it’s almost like Marika and the Greater Will is a success story of how to commune with the Great Ones properly and establish a mutually beneficial world order compared to whatever they were trying to do in BB. From a “all soulsborne games are connected” perspective it’s pretty neat.

With that said, I’m dying to know your takes on the lore. I’ve always felt in the beginning (the beginning of the game as well, to a certain extend) everything was your normal level of Victorian horror——vampires, werewolves, hunters, scholars that seek higher knowledge, but all under control and supernatural events were few and far between, known only to certain individuals. It’s only until the event of the Fishing Hamlet and the establishment of the Healing Church, or even after the schism of the Choir and the Mensis, that things went publicly tits up. Are you in favor of the events of the game happened in literally one night, or that Yharnam is stuck in a limbo? How long do you think has passed since the heyday of Byrgenworth and the event of the game (I want to say 30ish years based on Willem’s age and since he’s the only one alive from that time it’s a good time indicator. But then again is he actually alive? Extending his existence through unnatural means sounds like something he’d totally do)? Did our action really change anything? Did killing Rom allow the Mensis Ritual to succeed by weakening the veil and beckoning the Red Moon, or they were going to succeed/already did anyway and we were just breaking the illusions that everything is “normal”? Since the Healing Church is a new power (although how they managed to build so many grand architectures in such short amount of time is beyond me, the magic in this world is not known for its construction powers lol), who ruled Yharnam before them in your headcanon? I read theories that the Vilebloods were the ruling class before the Healing Church and they themselves have Pthumerian ties, which is interesting and adds another layer to the conflict between the Healing Church and Cainhurst. But I don’t know how plausible that theory is.

So sorry for my rambling, I just have so many thoughts in my head and excited to share them with you before I do the same in your comment section 😭 Anyway, since AO3 is back up it’s great time to start diving into BB fics!

Wow this sure is An Ask :’)

First of all, congrats on becoming A Squid! Enjoy godhood. 

The rest of this under the cut for length.

BB and ER are certainly vastly different in their storytelling. I remain a big fan of how the spectrum of ER’s themes run from Greek tragedy to medieval succession struggles. Personally, I find the familial plot points of it to be the most interesting - as well as the vast passage of time and sense of decay and mythology imbued in the world. Admittedly I don’t care as much for shipping in ER - outside of writing Godwyn/Fortissax, obvs - because the legacy and mythos parts of it seem so incredibly rich by comparison (hence why I don’t write BB characters as being related, as many people seem to - I burnt out on family drama themes writing for ER).  

BB, by contrast, is somehow very immediate in its history, in its active crisis, and it feels very grounded in humanity in a way that ER does not. In ER I feel constantly reminded that we are a shitty little lowly Tarnished and cannot pretend to understand the millennia that have past - even since the Shattering - or the scraps we’re now sniffing at in the wake of all that. But humans in BB feel close enough to the gods that they’re compelled to reach for them - scholars, clergymen, institutions, etc - only to realise the gods are crueler and more incomprehensible than even those of ER, while the consequences of their actions are significantly and viscerally more personal. ER has gods as a product of divinity and mythmaking, and BB has them, in a weird sense, as a facet of the Promethean impulse gone horribly wrong. If you really want to know my take on some of these specific questions, I’ve answered similar ones under the ask tag - but am occasionally cagey about some of these, because I use them for plot points in future fics. I’d rather a reader go in not being too familiar with my speculation, and that my conjecture is a means to an end (storytelling) rather than just info-dumping of “here’s what I think happened” - but that’s just my personal inclination. (Which is not to say I don’t appreciate other people’s elaborate lore speculation because I do, and there are some great and heavily-researched headcanons that I don’t always share but love to rotisserie in my head.)

As for what I can answer - 

Are you in favor of the events of the game happened in literally one night, or that Yharnam is stuck in a limbo? 

Semi-answered this in a previous ask here but since cosmic what-the-fuckery is pretty abundant otherwise, I like parts of lorecrafting to be pretty grounded in opposition to that - so I do believe Yharnam folk experience multiple nights of the Hunt, a rhythm of descent into madness influenced by the moon and the slow dissolution of the Church. I think dawn comes for them, but they know the next night will be worse, each new moon another instance of the city unravelling around them.  

How long do you think has passed since the heyday of Byrgenworth and the event of the game? 

Touched on this a bit here. This is based on the pacing I establish in my own writing, but I give the events between the Hamlet and the PC Hunter’s arrival about 50 years, give or take. 

But then again is he [Willem] actually alive? 

I think about catatonic rocking chair Willem like a potted plant on a windowsill. Decorative. 

Did killing Rom allow the Mensis Ritual to succeed by weakening the veil and beckoning the Red Moon, or they were going to succeed/already did anyway and we were just breaking the illusions that everything is “normal”?

Hammering this out for an upcoming fic, because I haven’t entirely made up my mind - also about whether the Moon creates the Dream before Mensis usurps Mergo’s Nightmare, or vice versa - or whether the two happen around the same time, and what their separate or overlapping goals are. I do think Mensis has different goals than the Church, to a certain point. I’ve had some pretty interesting discussions with mutuals about this (and feel free to share thoughts if you have). 

Since the Healing Church is a new power (although how they managed to build so many grand architectures in such short amount of time is beyond me, the magic in this world is not known for its construction powers lol), who ruled Yharnam before them in your headcanon? 

I tackle this with worldbuilding in The Feast We Were Promised, if you’re inclined to read it. Tldr: nothing exists in a vacuum, certainly not in a society with the kind of complexity demonstrable in Bloodborne, so obviously there was both a system of belief and system of government before the Healing Church politicked and/or strong-armed its way into power. 

As for cathedrals (and this is where being a historian by profession is pretty useful in worldbuilding): you could built pretty remarkable structures with pretty efficient timing, especially in the late 19th century. To use a nearby example of my own, Sacré-Coeur basilica at Montmartre took about 60 years from scratch in the latter half of the 19thc (as in there was nothing there before, no minor structure) and that’s considered long - it probably would’ve taken less time without the multiple wars and upheaval over that timespan. Likewise, a structure like Notre-Dame (the Paris one, not the Montreal one) underwent extensive restorations and additions in the 19th century, especially under Viollet-le-Duc (whose students would go on to do the same thing to gothic cathedrals elsewhere in France), but the baseline of the structure was already there - which is what I propose in the case of Yharnam: that much of the city’s civil and religious urban structure was already present (perhaps in the form of Pthumerian ruins in some cases). As in most European cities, buildings sometimes date from the Roman Empire and are gradually embellished, redone, or expanded upon over the course of the following centuries/millennia when funds are plenty and the ruling class is willing. If you think about what Haussmann did to Paris in less than twenty years, I imagine that to be the kind of equivalent of how the Church “cleans” up Yharnam and modernises it. But it’s my own preferred headcanon to imagine Yharnam was a little underwhelming before the Church’s public works; it could’ve also already been a splendid, thriving city.  (I did some work on Viollet-le-Duc's gargoyles like a decade ago, I highly encourage checking out his early drafts of them, they are remarkable images).

I read theories that the Vilebloods were the ruling class before the Healing Church and they themselves have Pthumerian ties, which is interesting and adds another layer to the conflict between the Healing Church and Cainhurst.

I touch on this in Feast a bit as well, but I think it’s really open to interpretation and you can make all kinds of convincing and interesting arguments about Cainhurst’s Pthumerian legacy. Again, on a grounded level beyond cosmic fuckery, I imagine Cainhurst and Yharnam’s larger territories have a centuries-old conflict a la English vs the French type of situation, and every skirmish and hostility arises out of this longstanding hostility and struggle over land and resources. I do think Cainhurst is tied to Pthumeru, though, via actual legacy, in a way Yharnam is not; and so I think Cainhurst would have claim to the labyrinths and the Healing Blood in a way that would threaten the Church’s supremacy in Yharnam and have ultimately kicked off hostilities, etc etc, until you get to the Cainhurst Massacre. 

All that to say enjoy your squidhood and any BB fics you read :)

[eloeloanna]

I just wanted to say that I'm a little obsessed with your readings. I'm reading it little by little as if I were following a complex analysis of an already written biography about The Beatles. Haha. It's curious because your readings so far are very much in line with the perception/projection/assumption I had about their relationship, with some pieces of the puzzle falling into place.

With all that being said, I have several questions that I would love to see what the tarot would answer regarding this, and I am sure that time will come. =D However, after this last reading you did related to Mick Jagger, one of my main questions came to mind, which is:

Were there other guys in their game? Like… in a romantic/sexual way, or some thing like a experimentation of their sexuality, or even a kind of mind games (lol) to make the mother jealous? We know how possessive they were of each other and that girls could be threats and other friends too, so.. Were there those who gave reasons for this?

I don't know if it was clear. Anyway. =) I loved your Beatlemaniac witchcraft project. Please keep it. Loving it!

Hey, thank you for the feedback ❤️. I’m glad that you have liked the readings ❤️.

To have some kind of order, I made the following questions:

Did John experiment or feel something for other guys?

Did Paul experiment or feel something for other guys?

Did John and Paul purposely had these male “friendships” to make each other jealous?

So here we go!

-

Check my other readings! here

-

This was made for entertainment purposes only.

Did Paul experiment or feel something for other guys?

I think Paul since the beginning always felt some kind of “curiosity” about guys, but also knew that whatever he would do, wouldn’t do any good for him, so he didn’t try anything. I think he really was curious about the subject, but even when he had attention from guys, and thought that maybe he could do something, he just didn’t. He really worked on being firm in his convictions. I think it had to pass some time until someone “reliable” made a proposition that he accepted. This proposition wasn’t “romantic” If you know what I mean 😂. I think in his mind he thought he didn’t have a choice, so he accepted. He liked what happened, but his mind was a mess. I think another important proposition happened, I don’t know If was from the same person, but Paul wasn’t very keen on accepting it. It was like he knew it wasn’t worth it, but the other person was very manipulative. It was like doing this thing would “kill the vibe”. This part is very weird for me, because I know that the question is not directed towards John, but I feel like this last person could be John. Why? Because after all that happened, Paul actually felt very happy, and tried a lot to be near him. (Or probably the other John 😂 (many people have speculated about his ex assistant (but that is for another reading 🌚).

Did John experiment or feel something for other guys?

I think John knew somewhat of his truth, but put a disguise to project something different. John wanted to experiment, to let himself go, but it had to pass some time until he decided to do something. He consciously concluded that he wanted to experiment, to feel, to do whatever he wanted. When the opportunity came, he didn’t feel that good 😭. It was like “what the fuck was that”. I think he had an idea of what he wanted, but it was difficult to fulfill, he also felt somewhat stupid and inexperienced. So he tried very hard to have more opportunities. But it was like it was never enough. “Something was missing”. So yeah, he did.

Did John and Paul purposely had these male “friendships”, to make each other jealous?

Yes. They were possessive as fuck ☠️. Obviously, everytime they would do this shit they would feel bad, but they thought eventually this would give them some kind of “result”. After the crisis it would come happiness. I think it was some kind of power game, if I go far on this even a sexual thing (or a “soft” version 😂). The outcome would be very good but not enough, because there were feelings difficult to face.

I hope this is enough for you 😃 I really liked this one, they are so messy, I love them 😂😭

[sissytobitch10seconds]

Please, Please, Please

Fandom: Helluva Boss Summary: Blitz carefully folded up the last envelope and set it down on top of all the paperwork he had done over the last few days. The others hung heavy in his pocket as he prepared to deliver them and then make it to his final destination. He hoped the words didn't ring as hollow to the recipient as they did in his mind, that they brought some comfort and closure for the horrible things he had done. Warnings: Suicide attempt, heavy angst, rape mentions, abuse mentions, mental health crisis, and suicide notes Word Count: 18,452 Ship(s): Blitzo Buckzo/Verosika Mayday

Archive link!

A/N: Just like with all of my more recent Helluva fics, this is not Stolas Goetia friendly! I am of the opinion that he is an entitled, spoiled, racist raping abuser and has damaged Blitz unforgivably. This fic will represent those opinions, so if that's not your jam then you should just move on and let me have my fun. I hope that those of you who want to read this have a good time! I also love this song for Verosika and Blitz, it's so them and their toxicness. I want them to hurt each other into getting better lol. Thank you all so much for reading! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

1. Moxxie and Millie

 It was clear that an argument had been happening between the spouses about something serious before they had entered into their office, but the hostile attitude was towards the topic at hand and not each other.

“I don’t know, Mox, it’s not normal for the boss to just disappear and not answer his phone when it comes to work,” Millie huffed. She had her hands on her hips as she talked, mimicking the way that her sister moved when she was sassing someone. The two of them had been spending a lot more time together, and it was honestly interesting for her husband to see the way that they were becoming a cohesive being instead of two entirely separate people. He wondered how unbearable they were when they went to school together if this was how close they were when they were adults. 

“He just left us waiting on the fucking street for an hour, Millie,” Moxxie countered. He was upset and his voice was risen just a bit, but that was mostly because of the tone. He would never, ever yell at his wife no matter what.

“If this was a hang out or something then yeah, I would agree. It’s just strange for Blitz to abandon his business after all the work that he put into it,” Millie said.

“Blitz is completely irresponsible! You remember the massive load of paperwork that he gave me to do? Half of it was unintelligible and I found at least six different drawings of horses on it!” Moxxie rambled. 

“He does the important paperwork,” she said as she waved her hand dismissively at her husband. When she saw the way that his bottom lip was pouting out at her, she leaned over and gave his cheek a gentle kiss. “I’m sure that the two of you will work it out, you always do. You’re basically brothers anyway.”

“I don’t think that I want to be Blitz’s brother, things with his sister apparently didn’t go well at all,” Moxxie commented as he took the bag from his wife. He set it down on his desk and then began to unpack his things before he handed it back over to her.

“Thank you, baby,” she said. She began to do the same thing that her husband had done so that she had her waterbottle and all the other tools she would need for the day laid out in front of her. She then tilted her head to the side and asked, “Baby, was that letter on your desk before? I don’t think that we usually have to deal with the junk mail that the office gets.

Moxxie looked to what she was referring to and then jerked back like it was some kind of loaded gun or python. “He’s making me deal with the junk mail too?” he shouted. He reached for the letter and flipped it around. Part of him thought that it was definitely the junk mail that Millie had suggested that it was but some other part of him thought that there was a chance it wasn’t. If it turned out that his father had sent someone to their office to threaten him through letter then he didn’t want to throw it away. He had to know what his father was planning at all times so that he would be able to protect himself and his wife.

He flipped the letter back over so that he was looking at the envelope part instead of the names scrawled onto the front. The handwriting looked familiar, the letters different sizes and some of them obviously erased and rewritten so that they would be just a bit more legible. Immediately, Moxxie was able to identify that it wasn’t his father’s handwriting. That didn’t mean that Crimson hadn’t asked someone in his gang to write it for him before they stashed it in the office.

He leaned around the side of his wife and grabbed the knife that she always kept tucked into her belt. He hadn’t understood why she did that until he went down to Wrath and saw the difference in the respect towards women. Even in the Greed Ring mafia it was expected that women were to be respected for the power that they held above someone else. Gender was secondary to their station and connections. In Wrath, women were apparently considered to be secondary to men simply because of their gender and were often harassed for it. Millie had taken to carrying a knife with her at all times to protect herself from wild animals and concealing it so that she would have the upper hand against any man that decided to be a little too handsy with her.

He used the little knife to open the letter so that he didn’t mutilate the envelope like he always managed to do when he was opening their bills at home. He set the envelope back down on his desk and then flipped open the letter so that he could read what it said. Millie wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her nose into his shoulder so that she could read it at the same time as him.

Dear Millie and Moxxie,

I originally wanted to write you both different letters but a lot of the things I have to say are the same, so this letter is going to be in three parts. One for both of you, then one each for you both respectively.

Part 1: I’m sorry for being such a shitty boss to you guys. I know that I was the one to find you both in your shit situations and then get you somewhere better, and also the one to introduce you both, but that doesn’t mean I get to fuck around with your lives anymore. I should have learned to leave you both the fuck alone when you got married and I wasn’t trying to push you to date anymore. I honestly shouldn’t have done that in the first place and I feel really bad for it now. I hope that you guys did actually like each other and it wasn’t just me picking up on something that didn’t even exist in the first place. You two are my best friends and I was happiest when I dated (sort of) my best friend, so I thought that you would too.

That doesn’t mean that what I did was justified though. I know that I’m a total asshole and the stalking was a lot for you both. I can tell that a couple times I almost tore you apart with this job and the way that I bossed you both around. I hope that you can either continue doing this if you actually like it or go find something else if that would bring you more joy. I just wanted you guys to be happy and I went about doing it entirely the wrong way. I know that now, and I’m really fucking sorry.

Part 2: Moxxie, I’m sorry for the way that I talked to you. You’re really good at a lot of what you do and I had to bring you down because I felt insecure that I wasn’t as good as you even though I had been doing it for longer. I know that shit went to your head and made you feel like you were totally incapable of doing anything and that is abso-fucking-lutely not what I intended. You’re the best sharpshooter that I’ve ever met, you handle guns like they’re literally your fucking arms. You have compassion and intelligence that surpasses anyone else that I’ve ever met, which is really fucking impressive considering the dad that you came from.

I know that you were pissed about the huge stacks of paperwork that I gave you whenever I had to go fuck Stolas for the book, but you better get used to it because I’m leaving the business entirely to you. I’ve seen the way that you do it and your handwriting is way better than mine. Maybe the stupid bitches that own our building will finally close their yaps when they see your neat filing of the paperwork and shit. You’re smart enough that you can figure out how to get people to come and get more business without even breaking a sweat. Don’t worry about turning out like your dad when you’re running a business either, there’s no way that you could turn out like him. You’re too much like your mom.

Part 3: Millie, you’re the best fucking person that I’ve ever met in my entire life. You’re smart, funny, and strong as fuck. I’ve seen the way that people have reduced you down to either being Moxxie’s wife or angry, and that’s not who you are. The way that people ignore you in favor of me and Mox is the reason that I thought about making a whole letter for you in the first place. I know that I used to boss you around a lot and make you uncomfortable with some of my comments or by ignoring you when we were all hanging out as a group, but I never meant anything malicious by it.

While I want Moxxie to handle the paperwork, I know that you’re going to be best with the field work. He’s got good ideas when it comes to tracking down people and trying to figure out who they are, but you’re so much better at it. You can hunt someone down like it’s turning around in a circle. You’re fucking brilliant and you’re so good at your job. You also make a mean sister, so make sure that you hire on that Sally-Mae so that she can help you.

I hope that you can both forgive me for dumping all of this on you and making your lives more complicated for a while. I know that you’ll both adapt since that’s what you’re both good at. You don’t have to forgive me for any of this, by the way, that’s not the purpose of me writing these letters. I just wanted you all to know how I felt in a way that you could come back to as often as you wanted. I guess this is goodbye to both of you. Love you both, you’re the siblings I never deserved.

-Blitzo Buckzo

While she was reading, Millie tightened up and her breath quickened in her chest. When she got to the bottom she let out a twisted laugh that was half chuckle and half sob. She said, “Oh man, B sure knows how to make a joke, doesn’t he?”

“I’m not so sure that this is a joke, Mills,” Moxxie replied. He took her hand gently in his, threading their fingers together as he always did. He brought her across the floor so that they were standing in front of the office that Blitz had always used for himself. The front placard that had said his name with the ‘o’ crossed out in obnoxious red marker was gone, replaced instead with Moxxie’s name.

“He managed to find out your last name,” Millie whispered. Moxxie hardly ever used it because it reminded him too much of his father and where he had come from, but on the plaque it was hyphenated with his mother’s last name. It was what he had wanted when he was contemplating changing his name entirely so it was harder for the mafia to find him.

“Yeah, he did,” Moxxie whispered. He had always felt as though Blitz didn’t listen to him and just did whatever he wanted regardless of the consequences. After all, their boss and friend had brushed off every time that Moxxie had revoked consent for certain jokes or actions, like when Blitz had invited himself onto their anniversary date. It didn’t feel right that he had suddenly processed everything at once and was now acting like they had wanted him to so many times before. 

Now that he had it though, he knew that this wasn’t really what he had wanted. Of course he had wanted the jokes and the stalking and the inviting himself to places he was explicitly told he wasn’t wanted to stop, but he hadn’t wanted this. He had wanted Blitz to turn back into the person that he had first met, brash and a little rude but wholeheartedly himself.

“Is this fucking real? Why would Blitz just leave all of this to us?” Moxxie asked, even he could hear the way that his voice was shaking.

Millie took the letter off the desk and then read it two more times before she flipped it over to see if there was anything else. On the back was a picture of the three of them standing next to each other, crudely drawn as everything that Blitz drew was. She placed her hand over her mouth as tears began to well in her eyes and run down her face. “This- this doesn’t mean that he’s totally gone! Maybe Stolas offered him a job or something that sounded way more interesting than what he had been doing.”

“He and Stolas broke up over the crystal,” Moxxie reminded her softly. He walked over to his wife and wrapped his arms around her. The two of them stood there in shock and silence. Millie was praying to anything and anybody that would listen to her that her friend would come back. She didn’t even care if Blitz was still just as obnoxious and cruel as he had been before, she just wanted to make sure that she wasn’t losing another friend without anything to do about it.

2. Loona

Loona woke up when the sun began to creep through her blinds and heavy curtains. Blitz had installed both of them for her despite the fact that it meant they wouldn’t get the security deposit when they moved. He had told her that he wanted to make sure that she slept well, something that she had rolled her eyes about at the time. She thanked him for it internally every time she woke up because she was allowed to sleep as long as she needed to and only realized what time it was after she had risen. As a hellhound, her body tended to work with the daylight cycles of Hell, which meant that if she had a late night she would wake up as soon as the sun was up unless she had something else to stop it, like the blinds.

She rolled out of bed and grabbed her phone before she felt her heart stop in her chest. She had overslept by almost three hours, which meant that the others had all gone to work while she had been snoozing away the remnants of a hangover. She flipped out of bed and began the mad scramble that everyone did when they realized that they were late for work.

“He won’t fire you, he’s tried in the past and then decided that he couldn’t do it,” she reminded herself gently. It was hard to get rid of the panic and anger that came whenever she did something wrong, a remnant of having grown up in the pound. One day she was going to get close enough to Queen Bee that she could let her know how abusive and horrible those places were so that no puppy ever had to go through what Loona had.

She didn’t bother with a shower that morning, she brushed her fur down so that it was laying comfortably against her skin. She shed her night clothes and dressed instead like she always did for work, finally ditching the ripped baggy shirts that she usually donned and putting something more presentable onto her body. She had just clipped her hair back out of her eye so that she could do her makeup while she was on the bus when she stepped out into the main living space of her home. 

On the island, where Blitz usually left her breakfast on the days where she woke up on time, was a thick stack of papers. She walked over and picked up the one on top, which was a letter in an envelope with her name scrawled on the front in her dad’s handwriting. She had seen him write like that only when he was trying to make himself presentable, like when he had made his plea to their last landlord to not kick him out for being a hybrid. She had never expected that scrawl to be for her.

She carefully slit the paper open and then removed the letter inside. Her hands were shaking as she saw the careful handwriting and proper spelling on the other side. It took her a second to calm her panic down and start reading the letter properly.

Dear Loona,

I know that this letter is probably going to upset you and I wish that it wouldn’t because I love you so much. All I seem to do is upset you, though. That’s not your fault, it’s something that I’m really good at and have been my entire life. 

I always wanted to be there to make you happy and support you in all of your endeavors, but I can see now how badly I fucked that up. I should have let you age out of the system like you said that you wanted to instead of adopting you and then roping you into my shit life. You would have been happier if you had the chance to make your way in the world the way that you had always dreamed of. I just saw a lot of myself in you, the child that no one wanted and desperately needed a bit of love. I get how that sounds and I’m not expecting you to pity me, I just thought that a bit of explanation might give you some closure.

I should have known that you didn’t like the way that I was trying to parent you when you got me that first time. I know that you never meant to hurt me, you were just scared and the people at the pound treated you so badly that was the only way that you could properly handle your emotions. I don’t blame you for the way you acted or the times that you hurt me, because you were trying to protect yourself. All the gods know that I’ve done way worse to try and protect myself.

I just want you to know that I was trying my best to be good for you. I always had this dream of adopting a Hellhound because I know that they’re very undesirable when it comes to potential family members, and I was too. I didn’t expect to get someone that was almost an adult when I went to the pound that day, but I’m really glad that I chose you to be my daughter. You don’t have to define yourself as that if you don’t want to, I know that I can never be your actual dad despite what the piece of paper that got you out of the pound says.

Damn, everything I’m saying sounds like I’m blaming you. I promise that I’m not, I’m just so shit at this whole feelings thing. The main point is: I wanted a family and I didn’t ask you if you wanted one, I should have just acted like your roommate and boss. It would have been better for you because then you could have gone out in the world and found your real pack.

Well, now you can do that. I’m gonna be long gone by the time that you wake up today, but don’t worry about it. I rescheduled all the appointments that we had for today so that Moxxie and Millie can figure things out with the business and get some paperwork under their belts. I know that you never really liked working at IMP anyways, so I figured that it would be extra nice to not have to deal with me or work today.

The next part of this shit is probably the meanest thing I’ve ever done to you. I’ve written up a resume for you and a couple of fillable cover letters so that you can apply for other jobs. I don’t know what your aspirations are in life (which proves just how much of a shit father I am, ha) but you have some experience as a secretary and in magic which should get you an entry level position anywhere you like. I’ve given you some instructions on how best to find jobs and what to look out for when it comes to getting into shitty situations. The apartment is also paid off for an additional six months of rent, so you can either withdraw that when you move or stay until you get a job without having to worry.

I promise that I really did love you, Loonie. I’m sorry that I was too in my own way to see what you really wanted and give it to you.

-Blitzo Buckzo

She had only seen her adoptive father sign something with that name once before, so reading it at the bottom of her letter felt like a massive slap to the face. She turned around and saw that her adoption certificate had been taken off the wall and there was another envelope taped to the empty picture frame instead. When she opened that envelope, she found that it contained her birth certificate, personal identification card, and the adoption certificate on top of a lot of other important personal information. The papers on the table were exactly what Blitz had promised they would be, resumes and cover letters and instructions on how to make her favorite food.

Loona’s first instinct was anger. She picked up the envelope her letter had come out of and then shredded it. Even with rage blinding her eyes she wasn’t able to destroy the documents that Blitz had so carefully made for her, nor the letters that he had written her. She kicked over the stool next to the bar and then shouted as she cupped her toe.

The next thing that came was tears, pouring down her face and soaking through her fur so that she could feel them on her cheeks. She was glad that she hadn’t yet put on her makeup because it would be caked to her face uncomfortably. “They were gonna put me down, Dad. You don’t fucking age out of the pound, you die. You saved me from dying and now you’re gone. I thought you were always gonna be here for me, I thought that I was safe with you,” she whispered to no one.

Slowly, Loona pulled herself up from the ground and walked over to the couch. The horse blanket was folded tidily on top of a box that was marked ‘Blitz’s things’ instead of being over the back of the couch here he had slept since he had adopted her. She had always felt bad that he had given up the one room in the apartments that they shared for her. When she was a pup and with her first foster family, they had tried to crate train her in the living room. While that was scary, she knew that she would have been okay sleeping out on the couch when it was with Blitz. He had an air of calm compassion to him when he was with her, even if he got a little smothering sometimes.

She walked over to the blanket and then picked it up, wrapping it around her shoulders. It smelled like cigarette smoke and Blitz’s body wash and night sweat. It would have been repulsive to her sensitive nose if she hadn’t been desperate for her father in any way that she could get him. 

Eventually, she was going to have to text Moxxie and Millie to see if they knew anything about where Blitz had gone. He obviously didn’t want her to follow him, but she was sick of losing family members. He was part of her pack, even if she had never treated him like it. She was going to change that, now that she knew there was a limit to what she could do to Blitz with him staying. That was the only reason she had treated him so badly before, because she knew that he wouldn’t leave her even though she was cruel and unfair.

Misery and guilt for her actions washed over her. He had always just been trying to look out for her, that was why he had adopted her in the first place. Even now, when she had terrorized him out of his own home, he had still gone through so much trouble just to make sure that she was happy and comfortable without him. “I’m sorry, Dad,” she whispered as she wrapped the blanket a bit tighter around her body.

3. Fizz and Ozzie

Fizz sat perched on the top of Ozzie’s desk, dangling his legs in front of him. He was humming softly to himself as he wrote and rewrote the same email a dozen times, trying to figure out the best way to put into words the thoughts that were rattling around in his head. He had been helping Ozzie out a lot more than before, now that it was known that they were together, so he assumed that he should have been better at this than he currently was.

He was upset at Blitz again, which wasn’t really a surprise given that was how their dynamic seemed to work. He would make up with his best friend and they would grow even closer than they had been before, then they would get in some fight or argument that drove them back to where they had been at the beginning. He knew that each falling out had a different set of time on it, which was why the fire had taken him fifteen years to reconcile with Blitz about. This time it felt petty and weird, which might have been because it was the first fight that they’d had since the one where he’d been disfigured.

As Fizz had told Ozzie the night before, it wasn’t really a fight yet. Fizz was upset that he had given Blitz all their prototypes and top of the line sex toys for the night that he was going to spend with his sort-of boyfriend only to hear nothing in response from him. It was pretty standard for friends to tell each other details about their sex lives, especially when plans had been made with those friends for said sex lives. Fizz mostly just wanted to be back in Blitz’s life, between the business that he was now running at the daughter he’d adopted he felt like he had missed so much.

The imp let out a long sigh and then set his phoned down next to him so that he could find something more interesting to do. A pile of papers and envelopes sat next to him, beside the computer where Ozzie was typing away as he chatted with his employees. He scooped them up after placing his comical 3D glasses on and began to search for something entertaining. He was also being useful, he placed the reports down on the top of the monitor that Ozzie was using, which made them fall over the screen and onto the keyboard as he tried to type. The personal letters were tossed onto the floor so they could be walked on, which is what the creepy sinners deserved for trying to get personal favors from the Sin of Lust himself. One of said personal letters made him stop, though, as he saw that his name was also on it.

It was a handwriting that he barely recognized, something that drew up a memory from the time before he had been in the accident. He flipped it over and sliced the paper open with his finger so that he could pull the letter out from inside. His eyes widened when he caught sight of the name at the bottom and he began to read over it as quickly as he could.

Dear Fizz,

If you’re reading this letter than I am officially not your problem, though if you never read this letter then I’m still not your problem.

I know that I said I wanted to be friends again, and I wasn’t lying. I missed you so fucking much, I didn’t feel like a person without you. It was impossible for me to connect with anyone the way that I connected with you and that may have been because we met as kids, but I chose to believe that it’s because we’re soulmates. In a manner of speaking, of course.

I have a lot to tell you in this letter, but I wanted to start the whole thing off by thanking you and Ozzie for everything that you’ve done for me. You guys were the ones to try and save the bullshit deal I had with Stolas so that I could keep my business going and Ozzie was the one that sent me the crystal that’s going to allow Moxxie and Millie to keep the business running long enough for them to find their true passions in life. You both have done so fucking much for me and I didn’t deserve any of it, so hopefully it’ll trickle down to the right people who deserve it more than anyone else in the entire world.

I’m sorry for what happened to you in the circus. I’m sorry for not being more supportive of you and instead just beating myself up about it. I promise that I was never really jealous of you, even if I did have moments where I wished that I was as good as you at something or wanted my dad to be giving me the attention that he was giving to you. The real reason that I was being so weird in the last couple of months that we were together was because I was in love with you.

I know that’s a massive fucking bombshell to drop on you in a goddamn letter, but it’s the only way that I could do it even back then. For your birthday I was going to confess to you, but I was too worried that I wasn’t the type of person that you wanted to be with. I backed out after writing that stupid letter and even finding you a flower, the kind that you liked with all the petals still on.

I remember it so vividly too, because it turned out so shit in the end. I came to the gap in the tent where we always went on stage and I just looked at you. You were surrounded by all your friends and the elders of the circus and you were smiling. You looked so happy without me there and I couldn’t ruin that. Dad had just told me how annoying I was to be around and I didn’t want to ruin your joy. So I turned around and tried to get away as quickly as I could and I hoped that you hadn’t seen me. I pushed the idiot carrying your cake and I guess it fell to the ground and lit everything on fire, because the horses got out. The fireworks were really what did it, but I was the reason that the fire started in the first place.

I’m so fucking sorry that you had to go through all of that pain because of some bullshit that I did. If I had just been bold enough to get rejected or laughed at, like a real man, then none of this would have ever happened. 

I don’t know how to make it up to you Fizz.

With other people I can offer them money to at least make up from what I stole from them, but what I took from you can’t be replaced. You obviously don’t need any money for medical bills given the partner that you have, so I can’t cover that. The only thing that I can do is say that I’m sorry. A lot of things that I’ve done have kept me up at night but nothing has done so more than what I did to you.

I’m glad that you were able to get some new limbs that suit you well and I hope that they don’t cause you too much pain. I’m glad that you found a partner that loves you and respects you for who you are, on top of being able to stick up for you the way that you need. No offense, Fizz, but you’re kind of shit at telling people that they’re overstepping your boundaries. I know that it’s probably my dad’s fault and I’m sorry for that too.

I’m glad that I was able to be back in your life for a little bit even though I really didn’t fucking deserve it. I put you through so much when we were kids and you were always so patient with me, something I also didn’t deserve. I literally stole your horns and all your limbs, and yet you still let me back into your life and tried to save me when I was ass deep in the worst deal that I ever made.

If there’s anything that you want of mine then just reach out to Moxxie and Millie, they’ll be running IMP in my stead since I won’t be around to do it anymore. Loona might also have some of my stuff but anything that she takes I want her to keep. We were never really all that close since she was an adult when I adopted her (basically) so I doubt that she will take anything.

Thank you, Fizz. Thank you for being my best friend and my first love and so much more shit that I can’t figure out right now.

-Blitzo Buckzo

Fizz’s hands were shaking when he got to the bottom of the letter. His entire body was shaking, in fact, which was the only way that the tremors were able to get all the way down into his fake appendages. He could feel tears welling in his eyes as he remembered the last time that Blitz had said things like this to him. His voice was shouting as he called for his partner, “OZZIE! OZ! HELP!”

The Sin flinched away from his computer in a split second and rushed over to his partner. He scooped Fizz off the table and then cradled him close. Ram and Bull were pushing against the confines of the flames on Ozzie’s head as they tried to get closer to the one that they loved but were unable to. “Fizzy, what’s wrong?”

“I think that something went really wrong with Blitz when he tried to romance Stolas,” Fizz said. “He wrote me this big long letter about how he wasn’t going to be bothering me anymore and apologizing for everything that went wrong in our relationship. Oz! The last time that he said things like this to me he ended up sick for a week and almost fucking dying.”

“You don’t mean…” Ozzie whispered, his eyes going wide with shock. He took the paper from Fizz and then his eyes began to glance over it all to take the words in.

Fizz nodded his head as quickly as he could. “Shit, Oz, I don’t know his employee’s numbers or even who his daughter is! Were we really friends? Do you think that he would keep this kind of information from someone that he was actually friends with? He said that he felt really lucky to be back in my life in the letter that he wrote me, but that could just be something that he was making up to make me feel better about his death. Oh my Lucifer, I really don’t want him to die,” he was babbling almost incoherently at this point, but there was no way for him to stop.

Ozzie reached out with one hand and took hold of Fizz so that he was forced to be a bit calmer. It wasn’t something that he did very often, but he knew that when his lover was in a blind panic it was the only thing that would affectively get him to settle. “Fizz, I can call Stolas. All the royalty have each other programmed into their phones for emergencies so it’s not going to be an issue to be able to contact him. I’m sure that we’ll get his half of the story and be able to piece some things together. Surely Blitz is just being a little dramatic about the stone or something,” he reasoned. He wasn’t sure that even he believed himself when he said it like that, but it was the only thing that he could come up with that wasn’t the bleakest of realities.

Fizz nodded, “I would really like that.”

The two of them sat next to Ozzie’s desk, down on the ground in forms that were almost the same size. It wasn’t often that the Sin shrunk down now that he didn’t go into his public anymore, it was too dangerous to show something so vulnerable to the Sinners that populated his ring. He reached over and took Fizz’s hand so that their fingers were woven together in a show of physical support for the other. He scrolled through the contacts on his phone until he found one for the aforementioned Goetia and then dialed it.

It rang for a few minutes before Stolas answered, smiling widely. “You Majesty, what an honor it is to get a call from the Sin of Lust himself! What can I help you with?”

“We have a couple of questions for you, Stolas,” Ozzie said. He had been wracking his mind about the meeting that the two of them had about the crystal, before it was derailed by Fizz getting kidnapped. He had a lot of questions that he wanted to ask and now was the perfect time, it would get him even more information about Blitz and his whereabouts.

“Of course, I would love to answer any questions that you have about myself and my abilities,” Stolas answered immediately.

The sucking up that other demons usually did towards Ozzie had gotten old after he stopped being a teenager. It was rather annoying to have someone that had so much power at the tip of one of his feathers fawning over him like some kind of lovesick schoolgirl hoping to get her clit sucked. “When you and I were talking, you mentioned that you were in a relationship with someone that you loved but didn’t love you back. Would this happen to be Blitz?”

“Uh… Sire, I’m not sure why you need to know this information,” Stolas said. He had set down the book in his hand and was now pacing around his desk with the cord for his phone wrapped around his feather-fingers. It was eery to watch the way that he changed from the cool fawning persona to something so panicked and diverting around the question that had been asked.

“Please just answer me. Was the person that you were in a relationship with that ‘wasn’t right’ Blitzo Buckzo?” Ozzie asked. He could feel the grip of Fizz’s prosthetic on his hand tightening as the imp began to get more and more worried for his on-again-off-again best friend.

“I’m not sure what his last name was! But, uh, yes. I was in a relationship with an imp named Blitzy,” Stolas answered.

“Blitz, and he’s a hybrid,” Fizz corrected him.

“It’s okay, baby, I got this,” Ozzie said softly to his partner. He was able to see the way that the imp was becoming more and more distressed as time went on. If his suspicion was true and Blitz was going to commit suicide, then every single second that they wasted was a second that they could be helping him. Ozzie knew that it was stressful not knowing how long the letter had been there nor when Blitz was planning the end, if he really was. “Stolas, you mentioned something about your relationship not being right? What was that, why did you need my crystal?”

The Goetia stuttered through a couple of non-sentences before Ozzie repeated the questions, implying that he was getting sick of waiting and was going to become upset if he was not given a proper answer soon. “Well, it’s rather complicated. I don’t want to get either of us in trouble, Sire, but I know that I have to answer you because you asked me a direct question. The imp stole my grimoire from me so that he could have the ability to travel to the human world, for hits that would get him more money and keep his company afloat. I didn’t want to just report him to the police because the night after he took my book he showed me the best time that I’ve ever had.”

“What did you do?” Ozzie asked. Even across the phone, he was able to tell when someone had true intentions about things like lust and sex. It was a common misconception with people that rape was something driven by lust, but instead it was more in the domain of greed or envy. Someone had something that someone else wanted, so instead of fostering strong emotions between two people and bringing them down into the depths of his Sin, they would simply take it and bastardize the art of seduction. He was getting that feeling now, the sourness of someone taking what they wanted while the other person was staunchly against it.

“So I struck up a deal.” 

“What kind of deal?” Ozzie immediately asked.

“Well, I thought that it would be nice to actually have someone that appeared to care for me servicing me, sexually. I said that I would lend him my book outside of the full moon and the days that I needed it for work, like the Harvest Moon festival, if he would come and ravage me like he did the first night that we were together,” Stolas explained. “But-but after the night that we spent together at your club, I realized that it was wrong to try and ask that of him so I decided that I was going to end the deal. It was why I asked for one of the crystals, sire. I wanted him to be able to choose to come to me.”

Ozzie and Fizz turned to each other, eyes wide and horrified. Ozzie hated forced sex, it ruined the art of seduction and lust. He had made that explicitly clear when he was loaning out the crystal and when the Goetia had come to him. Stolas had even assured him that he would never do something like use a love potion when he was actively in the process of coercing a being of lesser magic and status than himself into sex on a monthly basis.

Taking the silence as an invitation to share his feelings instead of abject horror, Stolas continued, “The cruel man barely even considered the thought that I loved him, though. I poured my heart out to him and I was so vulnerable! For the first time in my entire life I let myself show who I really was. He was my best friend and the first person to make me feel special and yet he thought that I was trying to make it a sex thing! Then he wouldn’t even apologize to me and accused me of looking down on him. I have done no such thing, I hold him such high regard and that was why I hired him to be my sexy, sexy bodyguard. Can you believe that he would do something like that to me? At least Verosika seems to be on my side, I think that’s why she’s been spending more time with Blitzy. As a way to try and get him to see that I was just trying to help him so he’ll come crawling back to me.”

The conversation quickly tilted into what Stolas was going to do with the hybrid once they were back together. It was all deranged, sexual acts that would take at least two hours of negotiation to do safely with a strong safeword and boundaries already set up. By the way that the Goetia had described the relationship beforehand, Ozzie knew that they didn’t have the precedent to do what needed to be done.

He slammed the phone down next to him so that the call was ended and the room rang with eery silence. Fizz had the one hand that Ozzie wasn’t holding pressed over his mouth as his eyes swam with tears. “I can’t believe I encouraged him to do things to that bird when he didn’t want to. I gave him items to try and save his fucking company instead of telling him that you had offered a crystal through Stolas. Shit, we really should have asked more questions about that.”

“We were trying to do the right thing, Froggy. Unlike Stolas, we actually respect people’s boundaries. Now, I’m going to call Verosika while you call Barbie. Maybe with the four of us combined we’ll be able to get to the people closest to him and figure out where he is,” Ozzie said as he began to fish around for his personal phone instead of his Sin one. They would get this figured out, they would find him before he did anything that couldn’t be undone.

4. Barbie

Barbie shook herself as she stepped through the portal that her crystal made and back into Hell. She shook herself off to try and rid her hair of the dusting of snow that she had gotten while outside. She liked her new job more than she liked the one before, when she had been abusing young humans to try and pedal heroin. The drugs that she encountered in the human world had barely any affect on her, but they did remind her of what it had been like to be happy and high instead of having to deal with her emotions. It was a lot easier to seduce people into giving in to their wanton desires than it was to watch them do what she wanted to be doing.

“Welcome back,” one of her coworkers called with a small wave of her hand.

Barbie was now working with the concubus court as a sex worker. She had a crystal that she used to go up to the human world and seduce potential future sinners, but she also serviced hellborns and sinners that had enough money to pay for it. That meant that she had her own room where she could service people, both those whom wanted the company of a pretty girl such as herself and those that wanted sex. She had her own studio apartment in the upper levels that allowed her to have some privacy without being totally alone. 

“Thank you,” she smiled. She walked up to the desk in the front foyer of the building and then took her key off the wall, handing the Asmodean crystal to the attendant so that it could be locked away in the vault on the lowermost floor.

“You have a letter, dropped off by someone that looked like a more impish version of you,” the woman said as she began to dig through the pile of mail and papers on the desk. She finally located it and then handed it over to the hybrid before she returned to her work.

Barbie assumed that it was a piece of junk mail or more of the borderline creepy letters that she got from previous clients thanking her for what she had given them. They were sweet sentiments, usually from beings that had been alive back when the world was a very prudish place, but it had always freaked her out. Part of that was because of the letters and notes that she would find in her costume, dressing room, and tent back when she was part of a circus. She had been a child and teenager back then, so it was really upsetting to know that full grown adults were sneaking around her things to give her something that she hadn’t consented to receiving. Now that she was an adult, she found it kind of creepy to get those notes and letters because these people were quite literally paying her for her services. She wasn’t going out of her way to do something nice for them, they were paying her to do something that she had offered down on the big blackboard in the foyer.

She road the elevator up to her apartment and then opened it up. She shut and locked the door behind her, setting her key down on the hanger beside where she placed her coat. She removed the letter from the pocket as she turned her music on and let the sound float through her little apartment. It was so nice to be able to have her own space after so long of having to share with other people, it made her feel like her own individual instead of part of a twin set.

Barbie jumped up on the counter as she flipped the letter around to the front. She felt her heart drop down into her stomach as she saw that her name was written in Impish, something that she hadn’t seen since she was in the circus. She knew that this was Blitz’s handwriting, she had seen it over and over again when he had been forced to do the call sheets and chore lists by their father. She had no idea how he had managed to find where she was living this time, other than being the most competent, annoying stalker that she had ever met in her life.

“Fucking dickhead,” she mumbled as she prepared to throw the letter away. Part of her still doubted that it was her brother in the first place, though. She knew that he wrote more legibly in Impish than he ever would in English or the other languages that the humans spoke. They had both been taught how to write and read in that language thanks to their mother’s heavy ties to the tribal ways that their father had never bothered with.

There weren’t a lot of people that knew that she was a hybrid. She had always looked more like her mother, a succubus, than her father, so it was hard for people to tell that she was an imp when she wasn’t twirling around with one. She had used that to her advantage when she had started her new life in the Lust ring, and it was one of the reasons that she was able to apply for the job and a crystal in the first place.

If someone had figured out that she was an imp, then it could put her job in jeopardy. There was always a small chance that it wasn’t her brother who had written her the letter, or that he had gone entirely off the deep end and was threatening the life that she had made for herself again. She couldn't let that happen, she couldn’t let him ruin everything that she had worked so hard to get. She was clean, she had a place to live, she had steady work that brought her a lot of fulfillment. 

She took the letter back into her hands and then looked it over again. She had to read it, she knew that her mind wouldn’t let the topic drop until she had found out what lay inside of those damned pages. So she slit the top of the letter open with one of her paring knife attached to the magnets in her kitchen counter. She pulled the letter from the envelope and then stared at it like it was somehow going to immediately disappear because she wished it.

She then opened it up and let her eyes scan down to the bottom of the page. It was definitely Blitz writing her, which made her have the impulse to throw it away again.

Something about being in a more stable environment, with friends that understood her issues with substance abuse and supported her journey in recovering from it, made her pause. She had loved her brother like she loved herself at one point, he had been her right hand and her best friend. He had always come to check on her when she was in rehab and he had tracked her all the way to the human world so that he could check on her and make sure that she was still healthy.

He had ruined her life, twice, but he cared about her. She knew how badly their father had treated him, so the least she could do was give him a chance by reading his letter.

Dear Barbie,

I feel like I should have sent you this letter a long time ago, but I kept clinging to the idea that things were going to go back to the way that they were before the fire for some reason. I totally understand that’s never going to happen, you made that really clear before and I should have listened.

I know that the blame for that still lays heavy on my shoulders, but I promise that it was an accident. I didn’t mean to push the cake over or startle the horses. I never would have done that, but I regret it so much more because I know that the fire was the thing that killed our mother. I know that you will never forgive me for that and it’s entirely in your right to hold that against me because, honestly, I still hold it against myself as well. 

I totally understand your reasoning for wanting nothing to do with me and I should have respected that a lot sooner than I did. All you wanted was to be able to make a new life for yourself and I kept ruining it. I ruined your life the first time when I caused the fire and then you got more into your drug habits. I stalled your life way too fucking hard by continuing to visit you in rehab even after the nurses banned me and I had to start climbing through the stupid fucking windows. I ruined your life when my business intersected with yours and we killed the client that you were using to pedal heroin. I’m probably going to ruin it again just by sending this letter to you and for that I’m really, really fucking sorry.

The only thing that I ever wanted for you was for you to be happy. You’re my sister, my twin, and I love you so much. I know that you never really liked being my twin because it meant that we were a set instead of you being your own person. Back when we were in the circus, I used to ignore that because it really hurt my feelings. It was so much easier to pretend that it didn’t exist and still hold it against you than it was to look at why I felt like that and break it down properly.

I’m sorry that I made your life so shit, Barbie. I promise that I did love you.

The only reason that I’m writing this letter is to tell you that I’m not going to be your problem (or anyone’s for that matter) any longer. I’ve decided to take myself entirely out of your life and the equation of Hell. 

I know that probably sounds really scary, but I promise that it’s going to be easier for you to deal with that you think of. The elders in our circus always said that having a twin was like being half of a coin, having an opposite and a whole somewhere out in the world. I don’t think that we were ever really like that, you only ever wanted to hang out with me when your friends weren’t around or when you thought that Fizz and I were getting too close. You also made it really evident the last time that we saw each other how little you want to do with me, so when I’m dead you’re barely going to have to worry about anything anymore. You might be thinking that death sounds like a really permanent solution to just having my sister not want to see me, but there’s more reason for it.

I recently found out about a party that one of my exes was holding because I totally destroyed her life, you probably met her when you were in rehab together. I realized that I can’t keep doing this to people. Everyone that I meet gets hurt in some way because I am fundamentally a bad person. I can see now how badly I hurt you, and Verosika, and my daughter, and my employees (they’re my only friends, which tells you how fucking pathetic I am) and the last partner that I had. I feel bad for the last one, he said that I made him feel even worse than his abusive ex and I thought that I was only doing what he had done to me. I don’t know, I just know that I’m shit at being a person and everyone that I come across ends up getting hurt.

I already sent a letter to Fizz, so you don’t have to worry about telling him what’s going to happen. I just wanted to let you know that you don’t have to worry about me coming into your life and messing everything up again. I’m not your problem anymore, I’ll be some other realms problem. I’m sorry that I overshared so much in this letter, I guess the old habit of being your twin is going to have to die with me because I just couldn’t stamp the little fucker out. 

I hope that whatever your life turns out to be brings you happiness and you are as happy as you want to be. I love you so much, Barb.

-Blitzo Buckzo

Barbie screamed as she dropped the letter down. Her hands were shaking as she scrambled for her phone or her keys or something. She had to do something, to find her brother and stop whatever stupid plan he had come up with. She had lost her mother to the fire that had sent her life on this downwards spiral and her father to liver Cancer not long after. She didn’t know what she would do if she ended up losing her brother, her twin, too.

Before she had time to decide what she was going to do, her phone rang and she scrambled to answer it. “Blitzo?” she asked, not even checking the caller ID before she accepted the incoming call.

“You got a letter too? Barb, this is really bad!” Fizz replied instead of greeting her like he normally did. “If he managed to find you and wrote you a letter then this means that it isn’t a joke.”

“Do you know where he is or how to get in contact with someone closer to him?” Barbie asked. She had pushed him away from her so hard when they had last been together and yet her heart still ached when she thought about the fact that she was no longer in the innermost circle of his life.

“We were hoping that you had contact with someone that was closer to him than we are. I mean, the two of you are twins so I guess I assumed that you would have met his daughter or friends or something,” Fizz explained. She could hear the panic that was settling into his voice and almost felt it resonate through her bones. If she didn’t have the key that he needed to get to Blitz then it was possible that there was no way to reach out to him before he did something that couldn’t be undone. 

They had been in this position before, back when they were teenagers. Their life felt so endlessly complicated and difficult back then even though they didn’t know the half of what it would become in just a few months. She could still remember the sheer panic that had run through her when she had saw her brother drenched in the black blood from the cuts on his arms, his face still bruised from where their father had taken out his drunken anger on him. She remembered what it was like begging her mother to get up so that they could get him to a clinic in the nearest town and save his life before he bled out. Fizz had been there with her during that time too, which certainly wasn’t helping with giving her the feeling that she had already walked this path once before.

“I… I never forgave him for the fire. My therapist said that it would be good for me to cut out everything in my life that brought me pain, back when I was in rehab, so I had to make him leave me alone. Fizz, I think I helped cause this. I was the only thing that tied him back to his old life and now he’s going to be gone too. I can’t lose another family member!” she cried. She didn’t realize how desperately she had missed her brother until she was thinking about the reality of never being able to see him again. Cutting him out of her life was one thing, it allowed her to have the ability to go back and see him if she changed her mind. If he was able to go through with this, then it was going to mean that she had lost her entire family because she simply hadn’t reached out to them when she should have.

She could barely hear the words that were coming in from the other line of the phone as she tried to quiet her breathing. She didn’t want to lose the rest of her family, even if they weren’t the closest anymore. Fizz’s shout of her name brought her back so that he could hear him repeat himself, “That’s not going to happen! Ozzie is calling one of his exes, the one that he spoke to most recently that hasn’t been sexually exploiting him. We’re going to find him before he manages to do anything and then we’ll prove to him that while he does need to work on his fucked up parts, we still want him to be around so that he can actually do that.”

“You’re right! This is Blitz we’re talking about. All we have to do is challenge him into actually doing this and then we’ll be golden, he’s so stubborn that there’s no way that he could forgo a challenge like this,” Barbie nodded. She was quiet for a moment before she asked, “Fizz? Do you think that I could come stay with you until we find him? I don’t feel safe right now and I want to be able to present him with something to be proud of when we do find him.”

“Yeah, I’ll have one of the drivers pick you up and we can wait this out together,” Fizz immediately replied.

Barbie felt her shoulders immediately sag when she knew that she had him to lean on in some form or another. Perhaps her therapist had been wrong when telling her to cut pain from her life before it had the chance to tempt her, because Fizz had the chance to hurt her really badly and yet he was helping her more than not seeing Blitz ever did. She hung up the phone so that they could text while waiting anxiously for any change in the case.

5. Verosika

After a long night of performing at Ozzie’s, the only thing that she wanted to do when she got home was sleep for several hours. She knew that she had to find a healthier lifestyle, but the one that she had was fun and inspiring and exciting. She got very little sleep and used to have to drink herself into a stupor to forget the horrors that had come from her previous recording studio, but she was somewhere safer now. Ozzie was sponsoring her so that she could get properly clean and she had people around her that truly loved her.

She drove through the high metal gates of her community and then down the long, pink driveway to her home. It was massive, made of mostly windows so that she could see the gorgeous views that her hilltop abode afforded her. After clawing her way out of poverty to get to the place that she was now, and fighting alcoholism the entire way, she knew that she deserved this. Her home was what she had made of it with her own money, time, and effort.

Verosika stepped out of the car and walked into her home with her Hellhound following behind her. She wasn’t the type of demon that had hired him on while thinking that he was going to be a literal dog, she was far too smart for that. She had hired him as security after someone had broken into her house and tried to rape her. Apparently being a part of the concubus court meant that she had to deal with even more sexualization and a stronger expectation that she would ‘like it’ because she was an inherently sexual being. She shuddered at the memory and reminded herself that wasn’t going to happen.

She had Vortex to help keep her safe and she was now somewhat friends with Prince Stolas after helping him get over their shared ex. She had done that to a lot of other people before, but part of her knew that most of the floosies and idiots that she heard had some dealings with her ex were just coming to her parties for fun. They didn’t need the help that she was offering, they barely knew Blitz and so they hadn’t had their hearts broken by him the way that she and a few others had.

For the most part, he was good at making sure that he kept his distance from people so that they wouldn’t get hurt when he got bored and then chose to move on. She was one of the few acceptions to that, he had told her that she was special and he had laughed at her jokes. He had even sung with her when she had created the song that she had wanted to give to him for their one year anniversary. She supposed that telling him she loved him was just too much for him to handle, because when she woke up the next morning he had gone with her credit card, car, and heart.

Despite the heartbreak that followed her like death followed Sinners, she was doing pretty well for herself. Ozzie’s was a stable place to work and that allowed her to have the routine that she needed to avoid drinking because she was just too bored not to. She had stable income that allowed her to have the pleasurable things in life that she had always lusted after. She had a stable mind that wasn’t constantly yearning after a man that had turned her down years and years ago.

She paused when she heard Tex come back into the house. “Apparently someone brought some mail to you and knew the detail that they asked to make sure that it wasn’t stalkers,” he said as he approached her.

She felt her stomach do a flip about that. She had been getting way too many creepy letters and packages to feel completely safe in her own home, despite the security on the outside and inside, thanks to Tex and the compound, being really good. She had begun to set a sort of password system that would prevent anyone that didn’t know the answer from leaving her anything. It had ended up being a secret that she had shared with the aforementioned hybrid back when they were together.

“May I see it?” she asked as she held out her hand. Tex nodded and handed the letter over to her, placing the rest of the bills down on the pile in the corner. That was what she was planning on doing that night when she woke up from sleeping but wasn’t ready to go to work yet. It appeared like her nap was going to be delayed to the point where she wouldn’t be able to get to it.

She slit the envelope open and then began to read the letter, immediately recognizing Blitz’s handwriting. It was simply a neater version of the note that he had left her when he had taken all of her things and run down to Wrath.

Dear Verosika,

You’re probably really scared and confused about why I left this letter for you. To put it shortly: I’m going to kill myself.

I know that feels like a really harsh way to begin a letter, but I thought that it was a good way to get the message across as succinctly as possible. You’re the first person that I’ve told that to deliberately. I told Fizz and Barbie that I wasn’t going to be their problem anymore. I told Loona, my daughter, that I was letting her have the freedom to do whatever she wanted without me hovering around her anymore. I told my employees that they were taking over the company for me. You were always different than the other people in my life, though, you had this way of drawing the truth out of me even if I didn’t know that it was the truth at the time. I trust you with this information and I know that I can’t lie to you anyway.

I’m sorry for all the shit that I put you through when we were together. It doesn’t excuse anything, but I did want to tell you why it was so hard for me to believe that you did actually love me and why I panicked so hard.

When I was younger, I was part of a circus. You already know that, as well as the fact that my twin hated me for something that I did when I was in it. The thing is, I was best friends with Fizzarolli because he was also a member of that same circus. I was in love with him, though. I was going to tell him how I felt on his birthday but my dad had just terrorized me again, to the point where I didn’t feel like I was even worthy to be Fizz’s friend let alone be in a relationship with him. I ended up causing a big fire through a lot of accidents and incidents, but it left Fizz completely fucking scarred. He lost his horns and his limbs and would have ruined his career if it weren’t for Mammon and Ozzie.

I had seen what my love did to other people and that made me scared to give it to people that I really, really loved. A few had managed to squirm their way underneath the walls that I put up, you and Loona mostly. I managed to get over the whole anti-love thing with Loona because she was my daughter and not a romantic partner, but unfortunately I can’t say the same for you.

I did love you, and that was what had scared me about our relationship so much that I had to go and wreck it all. You were more beautiful than any of the legends about concubus say, you were funny and witty and snarky in a way that actually meshed with mine instead of competing against it. You held me in all the right ways, so that I could actually sleep. You made me feel important and like I was worthy of something.

I guess that’s why I panicked and decided that it was impossible for you to actually feel that way about me. I’ve been told my entire life that I’m a piece of shit so it’s a little hard to believe that other people believe I have the capacity to not be exactly that. I hope that this made any sense, I’ve been crying for hours so my brain is a little fucking fried.

Apologies don’t mean shit, I learned that at the party that you threw. By the way, there’s a check in the envelope for the money that I stole from you, the hotel room, and your car. I was trying to make shit up to a lot of the other exes that I had, but I’m going to be totally honest with you. I didn’t think that I needed to apologize to a lot of those people. They got too attached to me or decided that there was something there that I had explicitly stated I didn’t want.

Do you wanna know something weird? Stolas tried to make my apologize to him even though the only thing I did was get upset at something that he did that triggered me. We weren’t even in a real relationship, I was having sex with him so that he wouldn’t throw me in jail.

Shit, that sounds a lot worse than I thought it would. Basically, I stole a book from him so that I could travel up to the human world for higher paying assassin jobs, trying to give my daughter a better life and all that shit, but he found out about it. Dickhead called me while I was on a job and then started going on and on about how he didn’t want me to get in trouble so he was going to do me a favor by offering me a deal. I ended up screwing his brains out once a month for almost a year despite the fact that I prefer to be on the bottom, but I think that you’re one of the only people that knows that.

He ended it by giving me a crystal and saying that he wanted to end things. I didn’t know how the crystal worked at first, it found out by looking up some concubus tutorials online. I thought that he was going to end my business and negate my ability to take care of my daughter in one swoop, so I panicked. You know what I do when I panic. I beg, then I insult, then I get mad. I didn’t really feel like I was insulting him this time, I was mostly just telling him what I actually thought about him because I was finally allowed to. He got pissed and then threw me out.

Some weird part of me wanted him back, though. I guess it was the part of me that didn’t want to be alone. I would rather be with someone that has no interest in me outside of my dick and his fetish than be totally on my own. I’ve always known that my friends are really just my coworkers and my daughter resents me for adopting her when she could have aged out of the system. I guess all the hate and hurt that I’ve caused really slapped me across the fact after that party that you threw.

I think it’s going to be better for everyone overall if I’m just not here anymore. I killed my own mom by being stupid, I turned my friend into a quadruple amputee, I drove away everyone else that could have ever loved me. I regret doing that to you the most, I think. Everyone else already hated me before I forced myself into their lives, but you never did. 

I love you so much, V.

I guess that’s why you got the full scoop, I still love you like we’re together even though it’s been years since we broke up. I hope that you can find love and peace again. I’m gonna do it at our spot, so that you can’t go there with someone else. It’s the most selfish thing that I’m going to do in my life, kill myself in the place that was special to us when we were together. I guess I haven’t really changed all that much.

-Blitzo Buckzo

Verosika threw the letter down on the table and grabbed her keys. Blitz had sent her the letter at some point that day, because the office was closed at night when she had been working. “Don’t follow me!” she shouted after Tex as she opened the door to her garage and then rushed inside. She could barely get out of her compound quick enough to sate the adrenaline that was rushing through her. 

When her phone began to ring with a call from her boss, she removed it and answered it. Her shoulder kept the device pinned to her ear so that she could focus on weaving around the sparse traffic of the early morning. “I’m not going to be able to perform for a while, sorry.”

“It’s actually not about that. I wanted to ask if you knew anything about Blitz’s whereabouts. I know that he’s your ex and the two of you don’t really get along anymore, but Fizz and I aren’t in contact with anyone in his life that’s any closer. We received a rather concerning letter and we wanted to check on him to make sure that he was alright,” Ozzie explained hurriedly.

“I guess he was telling the truth when he told me that I was the only person that he told about his full plan. I got a letter too, one that told me he was going to kill himself in our special place so that I couldn’t make memories with someone new there,” she explained. She was gripping the steering wheel so hard that her pink knuckles had turned gray with the blood that was being forced around them. She was sucking in her breaths as she tried to focus on simply driving and not panicking.

“Are you already on your way? If you tell us the spot then we can come after him and help you if things are worse than you’re anticipating,” Ozzie said. She was having a bit of trouble hearing him over the blowing wind that was tossing her hair from side to side. Despite that, she was able to make out the sounds of another person talking in the background and items rustling around while they got ready to leave.

Verosika immediately replied, “No! The worst thing for him right now is being made to feel like he’s a spectacle. He’s going through something really rough right now and he needs to be supported.”

“Do you think that you’re the right person for the job?” Fizz asked. 

“What’s that supposed to mean, frog face?” she demanded. She usually wouldn’t snap at Fizz like that, the two of them had become fast friends with each other and got along thick as thieves. The only reason that she was being so testy and borderline cruel to him was because of how worried she was for Blitz. She knew that he struggled with things like depression, but this was something else entirely.

“I just meant that you hold that annual hate party for him and I don’t think that someone that’s willing to go that far over their ex is the best to talk them down when they have a bullet pressed against their head,” Fizz replied quickly. It was a reasonable assumption, in all honesty, since she had forgotten to explain herself to them properly.

She huffed as she continued to speed towards the place where she always met her love. “Do you really think that someone that earnestly hated another person would throw a party dedicated to them every year? I like partying, but not that much. I’m still very much in love with Blitz, Fizz. I’m going to find him and I’m going to bring him home safe and sound. Promise.”

The other end of the phone was silent for an achingly long time, to the point where she began to wonder if she had driven through a dead spot. Finally, Fizz said, “You better. If I never end up seeing my best friend again then I will never forgive you, Mayday.”

She let out a breath as she let her phone drop down next to her and focused entirely on driving. She didn’t even care of the expensive custom case that she had just purchased for it survived the trip it made down to the floor. She wanted to see Blitz and she wanted to see him now, so that was the only thing that she could focus on.

Verosika only stopped when she got to the little outcrop that would lead them down to their spot. They had been young when they had dated each other, barely out of teenagerhood with the stupidity still clinging to them like sweat on the highest summer day. That meant that they often just drove around until they found a place in the woods where they could make out, maybe fuck, or just be alone together so that they didn’t have tow worry about other demons judging them for what they did. They had found their spot by brushing off of the main path onto a social path, and then going through a small splitting in the clover. It was a beautiful location, bright ever-present cherry blossoms circling the greenest sorrel that she had ever seen in her life. Flowers and wild berry bushes surrounded the outside as well. A very powerful Overlord had come through into Lust there, which was why it was such a unique place. The Overlord had fallen a couple of exterminations ago, which meant that it was left abandoned for them to find.

She was trying to remember every single twist and turn until she finally happened across it again. Her heart was pounding in her chest and her blood was rushing in her ears when she saw the slumped over figure of the hybrid that she had loved so dearly. She knew that her life would be so much less without him, despite what she had told him over and over again.

“Blitz!” she cried. She didn’t know why he had dropped the last letter of his name, but if that was what he wanted to be called when she was going to do it. Verosika took off through their meadow and then dropped down next to him, relief flooding through her when she saw no sign of black blood amongst the beauty. All she saw was the tears stained cheeks of her ex-boyfriend and a quivering body that needed to be soothed.

“How much of a fucking coward am I?” he asked, dropping the gun down by his side. “I prepared all of this for a fucking month and then I couldn’t even go through with it. Gave everyone these stupid letters and drew up all this paperwork, only for my damned finger to get stuck on the trigger.”

“I’m so glad that you didn’t,” she whispered. She picked up the gun and then emptied the bullets out of it, tucking them into her pocket. She flicked the safety back on as she let the gun itself drop back down into the sorrel. She had never been one for weapons, not when she was the weapon herself. She didn’t know how to disarm it properly.

“Why?” Blitz asked, tilting his head back so that he could look at her properly.

Verosika knew that it was a tender situation and she was sober enough to know what that meant, that she should be treating Blitz kindly. She was unable to stop the hysterical giggle that burst through her mouth and into the air between them. She slapped a hand over her lips and immediately said, “I didn’t mean to do that.”

Blitz inched away from her so that he was sitting underneath one of the cherry trees, staring at the never-ripe fruit. “I guess it was pretty selfish of me to tell you that I wanted you to move on and find someone that really loved you before I tried to kill myself in our spot. I can do it somewhere else, if you want.”

The manic feeling that she had been battling was suddenly gone, all at once. The seriousness of the situation returned to her as she reached out and took his hand. She rubbed her fingers over his knuckles using her other hand, just how she knew that she liked it. “Blitz, I don’t want you to kill yourself at all. I know that I throw that stupid party every year, but it’s not because I actually hate you. I love you more than I should, given all the horrible things that you’ve called me over the years. I make that the theme of my Halloween party every year to try and trick myself into actually hating you when I know that’s impossible. I’ll never be able to hate you.”

“You’re joking, right?” Blitz asked. His expressive eyes were numb and dead, like he didn’t even have the energy to fake a reaction for her.

“Of course I’m not joking! This isn’t really the type of situation for it,” she shook her head. “Blitz, there’s a reason that I’ve never had another partner other than the fucks I do to keep my magic going. You completely fucking ruined my ability to love anyone else because of how charming and quick witted and smart you are.”

“I don’t believe that,” Blitz said as he turned his head away from her.

“Why not?” she demanded.

“I’m fucking impossible to love! Okay?” he shouted.

She flinched back but didn’t get up and leave. She’d had enough fights with him and talked to enough people to know that this was what he did. When he knew that things were getting rough in his head, he pushed people’s buttons and specifically did things that he knew would make them leave. He was looking for someone that would stay when things got to their worst, when he was at his worst. He had never been able to find someone that had done that, everyone that he had ever gotten intertwined with was so self-centered that they had done what he wanted and abandoned him because they didn’t care enough to put in the work. She hadn’t, of course, she had been left in a motel with no way to get him. She wasn’t going to leave him now either, not when it could mean losing him forever instead of just for years.

“Why do you think that?” she asked.

“Stolas,” he mumbled. When she didn’t reply, he took it as she had wanted him to and began to rant about what the Goetia had done. “I snuck into that party you threw, right? I found him because he was the last person on my list to apologize to when I was trying to prove a point to him. I don’t fucking know how but we ended up getting to the topic of our relationship and I asked him what he would even see in me, why he wanted to change what we had from transactional sex into a romantic relationship.”

“What did he say?” she pried. She had remembered what Blitz had written in her letter and suddenly her stomach turned. Concubus were above imps in the rankings, but Blitz’s hybrid status was very unknown by those he worked with. Stolas’ song, the one that he had sung when she had offered him the mic at her party, was now leaving a bad taste in her mouth. How dare he ask those questions of someone that he had coerced into sex and how dare she call Blitz a motherfucker for not loving him back?

“He said that he wanted someone that cared for him and wanted him around. It was soap opera bullshit, it had nothing to do with me. Why would it? I was a novelty to him, something new and exciting. He didn’t give a shit that I was a whole person with my own thoughts and feelings, I was just the person that awakened his sexual drive. I wasn’t anything more to him than an animated doll that was at his beck and call. He didn’t want me, he wanted someone to love him like he was in a soap opera. If some brand new person had walked up to him and confessed their love then he would have accepted it. This guy got me a fucking crystal to do my job with and made a deal with me so that he could see me more often and it didn’t even have to be me, he just wanted anyone to be there.”

Verosika fell to her side so that she was sitting beside Blitz, closer than she had been before. She felt shock and horror rushing through her, creating a maddening cocktail that made her head hurt. She asked, “He really said all of that?”

“I’m not creative enough to think up that kind of plot, V,” he huffed.

She shook her head and said, “You’re right, that was a stupid question. I’m so fucking sorry that happened to you, baby. I should have gotten your side of the story in the breakup. I should have done that with a lot of your exes, so many fucking stories came out at later parties that put them in the wrong.”

He gave her an unsure look but still leaned into her side when she placed her arm around his shoulders and brought him closer to her. It was easy for them to fall back into the dynamic that they’d had when they were together, she didn’t expect anything different. She brushed her fingers over the place where his horns protruded from his skull and got him to let out a lazy, relaxed purr.

She didn’t want to break the silence that they had fallen into. His warmth and breathing against her side was reassuring to her in a way that she wasn’t quite sure how to explain. She had always adored the shorter hybrid, but she had never realized how truly terrifying it was to her until it was staring her right in the face. The longer that she dragged out the silence, the longer that she sat in the moment of peace that she had created, the longer that she didn’t have to think about the alternate ending to her arrival at their spot. She took a deep breath as she prepared to break that moment and face the music. 

“Blitz, you were right when you said that we were in Hell.”

“Oh?” he asked, that shit-eating grin that always made her what to kiss him covered his face and she almost rolled her eyes. A smile pulled at her own lips as she continued the motions that had made him relax in the first place. 

“The shit that you wrote about Stolas in that letter, it’s what convinces me that the people down here are crappy. The royals are too close to all the Sinners that are sent down here by God, they get tainted. They don’t spend enough time around the Hellborn to learn about why we were here first or why we’re more important than them. Stolas never should have done any of that to you and I’m so sorry that he did,” she said.

“I probably deserved it, the forces of the universe likely sent me down that route so that I would end up removing myself from the world and stop hurting people,” Blitz mumbled. It was a better explanation that what she thought that he was going to try and throw at her, but it still made her blood boil to think about the person that had made him think that way. She hated herself for encouraging Stolas to sing that awful song about how he hadn’t been in the wrong and Blitz was always in the right. If only she had kept her head on straight and let go of the hate that she had for the first boy to ever actually break her heart.

“You didn’t deserve shit, he took advantage of you like all shitty people do,” she shook her head. “I want you to stick around, I love you.”

“You don’t mean that,” Blitz whispered. He turned his head towards her to tuck his face away into the sweater that she was wearing from her recording session early that morning. She took the opportunity to wrap her arms around him and hold him close, like she was going to be able to save him from the wrath of the world with nothing more than sheer force of will.

“I mean that more than I’ve ever meant anything in my entire life. If you had been in my apartment when I found out that you were going to kill yourself then you wouldn’t doubt me for even a second,” she whispered against the side of his head. “I love you and I want you to stick around. I’m not going to be able to do the work for you when it comes to getting that head of yours figured out, but I can support you and encourage you. Like how you tried to get me sober when we were together,” she suggested.

He tilted his head up so that he could look at her and then asked, “Promise?”

“I promise,” she nodded. He sniffled and buried his head back where it had been before. She allowed him to cry into her sweater, even though she was going to have to get it dry cleaned when they got back to her home. She didn’t care, twenty dollars for dry cleaning felt like nothing compared to the comfort that her beloved needed to derive from her so that he felt as though he could actually live through this bout of pain.

When he had finished crying, she took his hand and led him back to the car. Blitz had to be buckled into his seat and was basically catatonic as they drove all the way back to his home in Pride. She had seen him like this before, but usually substances or a massive fight had happened before. She kept the music of the car off and chose to just sing along with the wind, she knew that her voice had a lulling affect on him.

They reached his apartment and he took her hand almost as if it was a subconscious action, like he couldn’t imagine a world in which they weren’t fighting and he wasn’t holding onto her. She felt reassured by the motion, like she had given him something more to fight for.

She walked him up the stairs to his apartments and then opened the door to reveal two imps and a hellhound sitting around the kitchen island while looking very somber. The imp with black hair immediately reached down to her waist and grabbed a knife, while the hellhound pinned her ears back and growled. Blitz flinched back into Verosika and for a moment she worried that they had come into the wrong apartment, before she remembered that these were the employees that had been with him while they were having their Demon Duel.

She was worried that she was going to have to put herself in the middle of them and then drag Blitz to her home, which would make it a lot harder to watch him and make him comfortable. When he was going through such a traumatic event, he should be in the place where he knew that he was safe. He had made his apartment into a safe place, even if he had no real bed and all of his things had been packed up so that they could be disposed of after his impending death.

The girl with the black hair set her knife down on the table and then rushed to him, flinging her arms around the hybrid. “Boss, I thought that you were really gone for good! I kept telling Mox that we had to look for you, that this wasn’t something that you would just do because you got bored. It wasn’t until we came back here and saw the letter that you have given to Loona that we knew something was really up. I’m so fucking relieved that you’re okay!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay,” Blitz replied. 

The way that he said it made it sound like he was trying to convince himself that it was true as well. Verosika felt her heart breaking in her chest all over again. If she had put her emotions to the side for a single second and asked him about why he had done those things to her, she might have been able to see what was wrong with him before it had actually happened. She longed to reach out to him and wrap him up in her own arms, instead of watching someone else do it, but these were people that were just as close to him as she once had been. They were worried for him and they deserved to have a chance to love on him like she’d had when she was bringing him back to safety.

“Sir, I promise that I wasn’t trying to imply that you would just get bored of the company! I think I was just in shock because this doesn’t really seem like something that you would do unless you were in a lot of trouble. When I said that this seemed like something that you would do, it’s because whenever your past comes back it seems like that past wants to kill us,” Moxxie rambled.

“Or steal our parking space,” Blitz nodded as he glanced back at Verosika.

“You deserved it at the time. And you ended up winning fair and square,” she shrugged. She pressed a kiss to the base of his horn and then went to the living room so that she could tidy up some of the things around the apartment. She had never been a very clean person in general, but she was itching for a drink to make her emotions quieter and knew that cleaning would be able to distract her hands from impatient searching.

“Is there something going on between the two of you?” Moxxie asked as he pulled back from where his wife had brought him into a hug with Blitz. 

“Kind of? It’s complicated and I’m fucking wiped, so I don’t really have the energy to get into it tonight,” he answered with a shrug. He looked up from his employees and then looked towards his daughter, which made Verosika stop and turn towards him so that she could watch what was going to happen. “Hey kiddo. I’m sorry if I worried you, but if you don’t want me here then I can pick up my things and go home with V for the evening. She said that she was willing to give me her spare room for a month or two if I needed it.”

“You… You stupid fucking idiot,” Loona replied. She hadn’t looked up from the kitchen island, her fingers playing with the knife that was laying there from Millie earlier. She brought both of her hands up to her eyes as she released a long whine and then something that sounded very similar to a sob. “I thought that you had left me too! I thought that you had abandoned me when things got tough like everyone does even though you fucking promised me that you were never going to do that.”

“Oh, Loona,” Blitz whispered. He pushed past the two imps that were standing around him and then walked over to her with his arms open. He paused when he got close to her and then took a step back, like he wasn’t entirely sure that his advances were wanted. 

She turned to him and launched herself at him. She buried her face into his neck and then began to heave massive, wet sobs into his shirt. He brought his hand up and rubbed her back, before using the other one to pet her hair so that it wasn’t getting snot and tears into it. It was sweet, even though their massive height difference honestly made the entire scene a bit comical. 

Verosika returned back to setting things away so that the apartment was more tidy. Soon, Moxxie and Millie had joined her as they unpacked the carefully stuffed boxes so that books were back on their shelves and clothes were in tidy stacks in the hamper in the corner. She was definitely going to help the duo look for a two bedroom apartment or buy Blitz some furniture once this was over. Sleeping on the couch wasn’t too bad when it was a fold out, but the item that he currently had looked like it would be more fitting in the back of a dumpster somewhere.

Eventually, the two stopped hugging and fawning over each other. Moxxie and Millie left so that they could get some food, as it was apparently the Wrathian thing to do when someone was upset. Loona helped get the coach set back up with all the pillows and blankets that had been on it before. Meanwhile, Blitz went to shower and change into something comfortable. Verosika texted Fizz and Ozzie to let them know everything that had happened and only put her phone away when she got a promise from them both that they would wait a day or two before they lectured Blitz about scaring them like that. 

Instead, they just messaged him and let him know that they loved him. Barbie did the same thing, Verosika saw the notification of the text on Blitz’s phone while he was getting food in the kitchen with the others. Things were far from over, but Blitz was safe right now an that was what had mattered most.

+1 Stolas

Things had been better for Blitz, recently.

He had gotten into therapy with someone that actually cared about his mental well being instead of just his dollar contribution to their company. It was nice to be able to talk to someone about how he felt without the fear of them telling him how disgusting and degenerate he was because of it. He was able to work through a lot of his self loathing with the help of a trained professional, getting to the point where he was able to objectively find things that were bad and fix them without trying to disintegrate every part of what made him himself in the process.

Verosika was helping a lot too. She picked him up and drove him to every appointment that he had, both to make sure that he would go and so that he had someone to take care of him afterwards. The post-therapy time that they spent together eventually warped back into date nights. She would take him to nice movie theaters and fancy restaurants, spoiling him with the money that she had gotten during her time as a famous pop star. He would take her out to the greasy diners that he loved and walk around parks with her. 

He couldn’t afford much, not since she had helped him get a two bedroom apartment just outside of Imp City. She had a lot of money to throw around when it came to getting furniture for him, but it was easier to accept those things as gifts rather than depending on another person to pay his rent. Loona didn’t seem to mind the girlier things that filled up their apartment as Verosika put her own decorative spin on things, she mostly just liked having her own space while also knowing that her dad was being taken care of.

The business was going really well too. Blitz had stepped back in as the boss once he got to a place where he felt stable enough to do actual paperwork. He took more input from Moxxie and the two of them worked together so that they could draw in the highest amount of clientele. It was a little harder to run multiple hits when they only had one opening to the human world, but they made it work regardless. Moxxie stopped overthinking things when he was working with Blitz and just got down to the basics of what they needed to do, which allowed them to carry out their hits as cleanly and precisely as they needed to.

On top of spending actual quality time with his friends, the people that he viewed as the family that he had lost, he was also spending time with people from his past. Barbie came to a therapy session with Blitz once a month and the two of them talked about what had happened to them when they were kids and then the problems that they faced when they were adults. Fizz and Ozzie invited Blitz and Verosika over for game nights every other week, and Blitz invited them to the family movie nights that he had with the rest of IMP.

He had just returned home late one Friday night. Loona was out with her hellhound friends, something that she had expressed she really wanted during a therapy session that he had with her so that they could get their boundaries properly sorted out. He was still worried about her being hurt the way that he so often had been when he was her age, but he also understood that he needed to let her make her own bad decisions. Mille and Moxxie had just taken Blitz out to dinner so that they could celebrate getting a massive swarm of clients that paid very handsomely, so much so that they could afford to buy a car that ran nicer than the van did and give it specifically to their company instead of relying on Blitz to use his personal vehicle.

He sighed as he sat his keys and wallet down in the basket that Verosika had put on the sorter next to the door. He then slipped off his boots and put them where they belonged. He felt more like he had an actual place in the apartment now, somewhere that his things belonged in. It was better than what he’d had before, like his things were simply dumped on top of furniture that didn’t belong to him and thus making him exist in a space that was not truly his own.

He then bent down and picked up the mail that Loona had placed on the sorter from when she had popped back home to change and redo her makeup. He sorted the things that were supposed to go to the company and had somehow ended up with him, leaving them by the sorter so that he would pick them up when he went to work the next time. He tossed the junk mail into the recycling bin and then paused when he saw the overly loopy handwriting on the front of an ornate letter addressed to him.

He sat down on the couch in his living room as he contemplated opening it. He hadn’t actually gotten around to talking about Stolas in total detail to his therapist yet, there was so much that he had to unpack about his life that it was still sitting on the back burner. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to hear what the Goetia had to say, not when it had totally torn his life apart the last time that he had thrown caution to the wind for him.

Blitz didn’t know how long he sat there with the letter clutched in his fingers, staring down at the words like they were suddenly going to come to life and coerce him back into sex. He knew that was what had happened to him now, he had talked to Verosika about it and she had let him know exactly what words went with what had happened to him and his feelings. Apparently it was pretty common in the show world and the concubus court for someone with power to extort their prey so that they could get sex while pretending like they were helping the victim out. It was exactly what Stolas had done to him, but extra scummy because of the level of power imbalance at play being even more massive than the differences within the concubus court.

He could almost hear the words that Stolas had said to him, the words that made his skin crawl and his stomach roil with disbelief.

When have I ever looked down on you?

I can’t believe you think so low of me.

You’ve come to ravage me.

You didn’t even come when that Striker friend of yours tried to kill me!

Have you come to seduce me?

You are so cute when you are serious.

I have more wine in the house.

Not a single one of their interactions had ever made Blitz happy. He had thought that he needed to feel guilty for using Stolas so that he could spy on his employees at Ozzie’s, but that action paled in comparison to what Stolas had done to him. He had felt guilty and wrong for breaking the deal and stopping the fight for it to continue. He hadn’t even been the one to say that they should change things or that he didn’t want it anymore, even though he hated every minute of it that he had suffered through. Somehow, Stolas had made him feel as though it were his fault that the prince had chosen to alter things and then hadn’t liked how it had turned out. Everything was always Blitz’s fault in that particular relationship, and he now knew that shouldn’t have been the case.

Blitz stood up and threw the letter into the recycling bin with the junk mail. As far as he was concerned, it was.