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thequietmanno1 · 9 months

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Thelreads, MHA 284, Replies Part 2

1) “Why Bakugo? You think would suspect that there’s something wrong with the kid that didn’t had a quirk for 15 years then suddenly has super-strength, then less than a year before has energy tentacles and is training to be able to fly? I don’t see aaaaaaanything wrong here, it makes perfect sense his quirk would allow him to do that.”- If the other powers are as flashy and obvious in use as Black Whip, and can’t be subtly used in a fight, like for instance, using Float to get some extra air time mid-leap, then it’s gonna become really obvious really quickly that Izuku actually has multiple powers instead of just a weird singular ability, like everyone else does. And then people are gonna start wondering about him, about how this random powerless kid suddenly got multiple powers out of nowehere. Because the public does have a widespread perception of beings with multiple Quirks, but it’s not that of a hero, but that of the Black servants of villainy, the Nomu. And then people are gonna notice the coincidental timing of how everything started going to shit, starting with the League’s first appearance, right around when Izuku first joined UA. And then people are gonna be thinking “what’s this kid’s connection to the Nomu? Is he secretly a villain spy? Say, wasn’t there talk of a UA traitor some months back…” 2) “Honestly, I would love to see a floating power exploding, can just imagine Midoriya being yeet’s into the sky at mach 5 while people just stare at him getting smaller and smaller at the distance, until finally disappearing like Team Rocket.”- Coincidentally, Izuku’s new ringtone for his phone is “Rocketman”. No, but seriously, they need to be on edge for whenever the laser eyes Quirk starts manifesting, that power can go wrong very fast. 3) “And there ain’t no rest for them, like the songs always warned us about”- All Might never broadcast the information about OFA even after he seemingly killed the man whom the power had been cultivated to defeat. One reason was how personal the whole situation was, but the other, as he somewhat outlined to Izuku during the beginning chapters, is that his condition left him needing to pass his power on, but he didn’t know who to pass it onto. Taking the teaching job at UA wasn’t just to sort out which young student was worthy of the power, it was because only a young, innocent and idealistic child could be trusted to use it in a heroic manner at first. The adults of hero society are too cynical and in many ways concerned with the materialistic over the substance of the job. Even Stain, who shares All Might’s fervour, took that in the opposite direction to become a killer of those he deemed corrupt, showing just how easily those same convictions can be twisted and abused. And if the sheer power of OFA was backing those twisted convictions, then it’s be the second coming of AFO all over again. In many ways, in a world where it doesn’t have the enormous might of AFO to contend against and focus on fighting, OFA is actually a great liability and danger to the wielder than it is an asset. And even if Izuku does eventually overcome Tomura, he’ll still be struggling with the fact that he’s now a marked man for both Villains and heroes who might be hoping for their chance to take OFA for themselves, if they can convince Izuku it’s a good idea. It’s just like Spiderman: Far From Home, really.

4) “Oh, you’re gonna accuse All Might of hiding something? I hope that’s not the case All Might, because we’re way past the point where you should keep secrets.”- Well, in this case, he’s not exactly keeping it a secret, especially since he left evidence that Bakugo picked up on and is fine discussing it with him – it’s specifically Izuku he’s keeping in the dark about it, and that’s because he judges that, quite rightly, Izuku’s simply got so much on his plate that whatever concerns he’s got can wait a while longer until Izuku can better master the powers he does possess. It’s not keeping these secrets hidden forever, it’s merely delaying telling them to Izuku until he’s in a better position to cope with more burdens. 5) “All Might… I can’t believe you’re still doing this shit.

Yeah Yeah sure I bet you’re just ashamed about how Nana died, it probably was your fault and yadda yadda JUST TELL YOUR BOY ABOUT EVERYTHING ALREADY GODDAMMIT”- Well, you’ve had 19+ asks about this, so I won’t add more to the pile. I will just say that, this is the first concrete piece of information we’ve had on the 4th and prior users besides the 1st, as the ones prior to Banjo are those who are right in the Dark Age of Quirks, when AFO’s power was strongest and record keeping was at its worst, meaning there’s arguably very little to find out about them until Izuku can converse with the other vestiges more freely. And the only information we’ve learned is, that the 4th’s death was somehow special than the others’, and it may somehow still have an impact on Izuku himself, despite the gaps between them, which is All Might’s greatest concern. (MHA ch 257) 6) “Oh? Well, I mean, if it was a bit less than 200 years, and there was like, 8 people before Midoriya… Alright, okay, I think now the counting is starting to make sense… But alright, what`s the next quirk on the list? Do tell us, oh venerable All Might, holder of all the knowledge.”- And the minor hint here that there might be more to the deaths of the previous holders than meets the eyes, with All Might’s slight hesitancy about confirming the deaths of every one of the previous holders and the shadowed eyes. The number 4 is traditionally associated with death in Japan, and for some reason, the 4th wielder’s passing was especially noticeable compared to the others… 7) “I can hear the “tsc” of disgusted being uttered by this fucking tsundere. But yet, he didn’t deny it.”- This time, the disgust is aimed at himself, for his inability to fully swallow his pride yet and just apologise to Izuku outright, like some part of him knows he has to, in order to fully atone for his transgressions against him. They made up, but some things still need to be said for the healing to truly begin. 8) “OH HOLY SHIT WE ARE HAVING A MOMENT OF REALIZATION HERE?!

OH MY GOD FINALLY

Alright Bakugo, you’re good on my books. I still hold a grudge for the “jump out of the roof” thing, but I can let bygones be bygones considering you’re finally admitting that you were an asshole.

holy shit this chapter is a goldmine after tall.”- Bakugo always knew that Izuku was naturally more heroic than him, capable of doing the selfless saving deal on instinct that Bakugo had to put effort into, and that rubbed him the wrong way. Not only because it made him feel inferior to Izuku, but also because it’s just not natural for somebody to be that selfless. People are inherently selfish in some manner, for bad and for good reasons, and Izuku being so willing to give of himself without really thinking of the consequences is actually a really bad thing, something that Izuku is naturally blind to, but Bakugo always knew on some level that if he became he hero, he'd not only outshine him, but he’d quickly burn himself out doing it. Perhaps, underneath all the complex and layered emotions in their relationship, some deeply-buried part of Bakugo wanted to protect Izuku from himself when he wanted to make him give up on becoming a hero. As it stands, now Izuku has both the immense power and partial training to enforce his maniac “save everything” willpower into reality, he’s running the risk of eventually turning out like the legend of the Giving Tree, a Tree that gave and gave of itself selflessly for other’s needs until it was naught but a dead and desolate stump. 9) “Of course he doesn’t, it’s Midoriya, he never held that against Bakugo, he always wanted them to go back to being friends, it was I that was the one saying “No! Bad boy! Bad!” and spraying him with a water bottle every time he mentioned something along those lines”- And to fit further into the “endlessly giving” themes, Izuku would freely give out his forgiveness of Bakugo’s past transgressions at any point if it was brought up, whether or not Bakugo had done anything to really earn that forgiveness himself, which is why he’s kept quiet about it all this time, Bakugo doesn’t want Izuku to just plainly accept his apology, he wants to do something for him, that’d make him earn Izuku’s forgiveness for real. It’s refreshing that Bakugo’s stubborn pride is for once being used to justify why he and Izuku haven’t really made up for the right reasons – he won’t let himself be forgiven unless it’s preceded by him actually earning that forgiveness, in order to do it “properly”. 10) “A lot of people online would be mad at you making that comparison All Might, but I think it is quite fitting. Both did some fucked up stuff, hurt people they loved because of their obsession with being the best, and both realized their mistakes and are trying to atone for it, Endeavor by leaving his family and Bakugo by helping Midoriya.

That is the sort of character development I love, that is a redemption arc there. It’s not a goal, it’s a journey.”- A lot of people were comparing them even before this chapter, what with their spiky hair, flame powers, rivalry with the main hero/holder of OFA- losts of people were noting how Bakugo is basically Endeavour 2.0, but being given his own realisation and redemption moment whilst he’s still young and hasn’t made the kind of mistake you can’t take back yet. In a way, learning from the missteps of the past to do better in the future, especially since he also overheard the whole traumatic backstory from Shoto at the same time as Izuku and it probably resonated a lot more with him and his victory-obsessed streak than he was comfortable with. 11) “And you better say something before Shigaraki sees you and remembers when you didn’t want to join his League of Legends team back at kamino ward. He has never forgiven, and he has never forgotten.”- Somewhat Ironic to put it there, because presently Bakugo is faced with the very real fear that he won’t get the chance to actually apologise to Izuku like he wants to, and in trying to save him from himself and his mortal enemy he may wind up losing that chance and his lease on life at the same time. 12) “Oh, are both of them gonna jump in the fray to help Midoriya? Hide your roads, the big guy is stepping in once again!”- Bakugo doesn’t yet have his own Quirk’s firepower honed to the level of destruction that the experienced Endeavour can pull off, but he’s in much better shape than him. If he can make an opening for Endeavour to land a big damaging hit when Tomura’s injuries are slowly stacking, then there’s a chance they might actually be able to pull this off without Izuku having to finish his Farewell to Arms moment. 13) “OH HOLY SHIT SO MIDORIYA WAS HITTING HIM WITH 100% MOVES ALL THIS TIME?! AND HIS ARM IS STILL HOLDING ON

JESUS THIS BOY IS FUCKING PISSED FOR REAL”- The downside to Float is that, lacking self-population to help ground his attack attack in mid-air, Izuku’s higher-level attacks actually blow him backwards from his own inertia. It’s useful to “fly” with in a certain direction, as he showcased in the training with Uraraka, but when actually hitting somebody he’s gonna go flying backwards just as fast as they do. However, with Black Whip, Izuku’s ensnared Tomura and is using the tether to reel him back in for another blow again and again, no matter how far apart they’re knocked back. In essence, he’s turned Tomura into a human paddleball.

14) “MIDORIYA IS READY TO COMMIT MURDER HOLY SHIT WE DO BE IN THE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER AFTER ALL”- Mercy is a privilege afforded to those you can best with ease. Tomura’s made himself too strong for Izuku to do anything less than land the killing blow on him as many times as it takes to make him stay down. 15) “Midoriya that’s not the unexpected speech that you think it is, we saw you pretty much blow up every single bone in your body getting here, you really think we were expecting anything but you self-sacrificing in the name of protecting others? Pssht, my boy, what I am surprised is about is how there’s still solid bones on your arms after those last few minutes of fighting”- It’s not just that he’s sacrificing his well-being and potentially his life to stop Tomura. The doctor warned him that overdoing the ligament damage like he did against Muscular would permanently paralyse his limbs afterwards, leaving him crippled for life and incapable of being a hero, in much the same way that him being Quirkless handicapped him from getting the profession in the first place. Midoria going this far may have already done too much damage to his body to recover from. At this point, the worse outcome for Izuku isn’t that he dies fighting Tomura, it’s that he survives, but has to deal with the rest of his life stuck helpless to save others in danger around him. Izuku may very well be killing his hero career with every single blow he unleashes on Tomura, and it still might not be enough.

16) “And this was everything I ever hoped for him. I said a lot how even though I despised Bakugo as person, I always liked him as character because I could see the pride being carefully chipped away chapter after chapter, and in some cases that chipping was with a sledgehammer, but even so, it was a slow process until he actually changed.”-

@thelreads

#my hero academia #bnha #chapter replies #thelreads #mha 284

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everygame · 6 months

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Mighty Bomb Jack

Developed/Published by: Tecmo Released: 17/04/1986 Completed: 04/02/2024 Completion: Finished it with the standard ending and then used the Switch Online SP version to see the “best” ending.

There’s a few games out there that I categorise as “chippy” video games. Cabal. Robocop. Bomb Jack! Arcade games that would be in a beat-up, generic cabinet in the chip shop. A machine where you could barely see the screen for the ambient grease–plus the monitor is dull and burnt out anyway.

Do I view these games as such because specifically I remember seeing them in the chippy in my youth, not because Tecmo, Data East or Tecmo were all in on the chip shop industry? Of course. But Bomb Jack’s such a great example of a “chippy” video game anyway. It’s not the kind of game that’s going to draw a crowd in the arcade. It’s sort of off, visually, and in play. But if you’re waiting for them to do you a fritter, you’re going to put a 20p in anyway.

So what’s weird about Bomb Jack? It’s a single screen platform game, but it’s all about air control. Bomb Jack doesn’t just have a wee jump, he’s got this massive, drifty leap, and you control it by directing him with the joystick: up makes him jump higher, pushing down makes him fall faster. You’re trying to collect all the bombs on each stage, but preferrably in order--you always want to collect the next lit one. While you’re avoiding enemies of course, which is really what makes it so weird–you’re in this weird middle ground of not quite flying but trying to float and drift around the enemies that are seeking you. It’s like Pac-Man–you’re trying to nail your perfect route–but much messier. Less predictable.

Honestly, I sort of like Bomb Jack. I don’t think it’s a game you ever quite get comfortable playing–other jump styles are so much more ingrained–but there’s a pleasure to trying to execute your routes anyway.

Mighty Bomb Jack, however. Mighty Bomb Jack isn’t just Bomb Jack on the NES/Famicom, because it’s 1986, and while that might have flown before Super Mario Bros. (and it did: ports were massively successful on home computers in the UK) it’s just not going to cut it with savvy Famicom players. So Tecmo did what any sensible developer would do: they turned Bomb Jack into a platform game with scrolling levels, and then because that wasn’t enough, they made sure it was full of weird Tower of Druaga-esque secrets and warps. And for good nature, they kept in some single screen Bomb Jack levels because, well, it’s Bomb Jack.

The issue with Mighty Bomb Jack is immediately apparent. Bomb Jack’s big, drifty leap makes for a very strange feeling platform game where you have to like… go right. Enemies act just like they do in the original, too, meaning that you really just want to jump and drift them off screen immediately lest they seek you. Which actually makes most of the game sort of trivial because the levels are all short and once you know the pathing it’s all about getting through them as quick as possible. The warp system is also probably one of the most easily understood you can imagine (no Atlantis No Nazo confusion here) as you simply have to pick up the lit bomb last on each single-screen stage for it to skip you forward a full level. I’m not 100% sure this was as (originally) intended, because it would surely make more sense for you to be rewarded with a level skip for collecting every bomb in order, but it works because that’s still hard to do and if you skip a levels and die, you go back to the level you started skipping from. So there’s an interesting risk/reward there: you can choose to skip some levels, then purposefully not warp before an easier level to “save” your place if you think you might die later–or just use it to skip to how far you got in the game before.

Though I’m making it sound like a bit of a walkover, to avoid this there’s all that Tower of Druaga-type stuff. Levels are packed full of secrets that require you to jump in the correct place, or at the correct time, or multiple times, to make things appear. There are secret warps, secret treasure rooms, and you can’t beat the game with the “best” ending by warping there; you have to collect two crystal balls and 5 secret coins that (like all of these games) basically require you have prior knowledge to find. One of the most interesting things about Mighty Bomb Jack, actually, is there’s a completely obscure performance ranking known as “Game Deviation Value” and you can’t be too greedy because if you ever collect too many power-ups, you’re immediately sent to a “Torture Room” where you have to jump 50 times while avoiding enemies, just to go back to playing the game with all your power-ups removed!

Until you get to the very end–a punishing gauntlet of single screen challenges that throw you back to an earlier zone where you have to perform a challenging dance just to find a secret to get to the ending–Mighty Bomb Jack isn’t really that hard. It’s just very complicated. I haven’t even tried to explain here the system of powering up into different coloured Bomb Jacks because I’ve played all the way through this and I still don’t entirely understand it. This is a really good example of a team trying to hit the zeitgeist and overegging it entirely; but to be fair, if they’d just ported Bomb Jack instead even I’d be saying “well it’s just Bomb Jack, innit.”

Of course, when I played this, I abused the warping so I just played the single screen Bomb Jack levels mostly because I like those best. You cannae win.

Will I ever play it again? Switch Online is a bit unusual as it often puts up “versions” of games that are just essentially save states to the ending/second loop or whatever, and while some are pointless, I rather like that here they put out a “High Deviation Value!” version where you are right at the horrible ending gauntlet with everything required to get the best ending. I could have bothered to do it for real, but it’s unpleasantly onerous so I didn’t. Anyway, as a result I have no reason to play this again.

Final Thought: That said, Mighty Bomb Jack is a rare example where the North American release was actually easier than the Japanese version, with many sections of the original requiring you jump way more times than you would ever think to and the entire best ending locked behind weird tricks like having to go to the next section with your score ending in 70. I suspect this is why the High Deviation Value version exists because who on earth has time for that.

Hi. If you've been following this tumblr, you will be familar that I usually try and drive to towards my ko-fi after every article. However, I would instead like to ask you for a favour--could you check out the fundraiser my best friend Steven is running to help cover travel insurance costs? I know there are so many deserving causes, but Steven has a stage 4 brain tumour and it would mean the world to me if you considered donating, or sharing his page, to help make his remaining time the best ever.

#gaming #video games #games #txt #text #review #nintendo #nintendo switch #mighty bomb jack #tecmo #1986 #famicom

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phlve · 1 year

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The Extraverted Intuitive Type // Inferior Introverted Sensation

Intuition is a function by which we conceive possibilities. A sensation type would call this object a bell, but a child would imagine all sorts of things you could do with it. It could be a church tower, this book could be a village, etc. In everything there is a possibility of development. In mythology, intuition is very often represented by the nose. One says: " I smell a rat." that is. my intuition tells me that there is something wrong. I don't know quite what. but I can smell it! Then three weeks later the rat leaps out of its hole and one says: " Oh, I smelt it, I had a hunch there was somethig in the air!" These are unborn possibilities, the germs of the future. Intuition is therefore the capacity for intuiting that which is not yet visible, future possibilities or potentialities in the background of a situation.

The extraverted intuitive type applies this to the outer world, and therefore will score very high in surmising the future outer developments around him. Such types are very often found among business people. They are enterprisers who have the courage to manufacture and market new inventions. One finds them among journalists and frequently among publishers: they know what will be popular next year. They will bring out something which is not yet the fashion but soon will be, and they are the first to put it on the market.

Stockbrokers, too, will have a certain knack which tells them that a particular stock will go up, that the market will be bullish or bearish, and they will make money through sensing the rise and fall of stocks. One finds them wherever there is something new brewing, even in the more spiritual realms. They will always be in the advance movement.

It is generally the creative artist who creates the future. A civilisation. which has no creative people is doomed. So the person who is really in touch with the future, with the germs of the future, is the creative personality. Now the extraverted intuitive, because he is capable of sniffing the wind and knowing what the weather will be tomorrow, will see that this perhaps completely unknown painter or writer is the man of tomorrow, and therefore he will be fascinated. His intuition can recognise the value of such a creative person.

Creative people themselves are introverted and are so occupied with their creations that they cannot attend to the bringing out of their work. The work itself takes up so much of their energy that they, cannot be bothered with how it should be presented to the world, how to advertise it, or anything of that kind. Moreover, any kind of purposiveness poisons creative processes. Very often, then, the extraverted intuitive comes along and helps. But, naturally, if he does that all his life, he begins projecting a minor creative ability of his own onto the artist, and so he loses himself. Sooner or later such people have to pull themselves out of their extraversion and say: "Now, even if it is on a minor scale, what is my creativeness?" And then they will be forced down into their inferior sensation, and instead of attending to other people's crea-tiveness, they will have to attend to their own inferior sensation and to what might come out of it.

Intuition needs to look at things from afar or vaguely in order to function, so as to get a certain hunch from the unconscious, to half shut the eyes and not look at facts too closely. If one looks at things too precisely, the focus is on facts, and then the hunch cannot come through. That is why intuitives tend to be unpunctual and vague. A disadvantage of having this as a main function is that the intuitive type sows but rarely reaps. For instance, if one starts a new business, there are generally initial difficulties: the thing does not work immediately; it is necessary to wait a certain time for it to become profitable. The intuitive very often does not wait long enough. He starts the business, but that is enough for him; he sells out and loses on it, but the next owner makes a lot of money out of the same business. The intuitive is always the one who invents but who in the end gets nothing out of it. But if he is more balanced and can wait a little, and if he does not dissociate completely by identifying with his main function, then he is a person who can store up new things in all the corners of the world.

The extraverted intuitive tends not to attend to his body and his physical needs: he simply does not know when he is tired, he does not notice it. It takes a breakdown to show him. He also does not know when he is hungry. If he is an exaggerated one-sided type, he does not know that he has any endo-somatic feelings. Inferior sensation, like all inferior functions, is in such people slow, heavy, and loaded with emotion. Because it is introverted, it is turned away from the outer world and its affairs. It has, like all inferior functions, a mystical quality about it.

I once analysed such an extraverted intuitive type, a businessman who had started a great many businesses in a foreign country and had also speculated a lot in gold mines and the like. He always knew where possibilities were and made a large fortune in a very short time, absolutely honestly - quite decently - simply because he knew where to invest. He knew what was coming, what would happen in a few years, and he was always on the spot first and got the whole business in hand. His introverted sensation - he was rather a split personality - came up first as a very dirty, bad-tempered tramp who appeared in his dreams. This tramp sat around in inns, wore dirty clothes, and we did not know what this fellow wanted of the dreamer. I induced him to talk to the tramp in active imagination. The tramp said that he had been responsible for the physical symptoms which had brought the man to analysis, and that they had been sent because he (the tramp) did not get enough at-tention. So, in active imagination, he asked what he should do. The tramp said that he should, once a week, dress in clothes such as the tramp wore, go for a walk in the country with him, and pay attention to what he had to say.

I advised the dreamer to follow the advice precisely. The result was that he took long walks through many parts of Switzerland, staying in the most simple inns, unrecognized by anybody. During this time he had a great number of overwhelming inner experiences which came through contact with nature: the sunrise, and small things like seeing a certain flower in a corner of a rock, and so on. It struck right to the core of his personality and revealed a tremendous number of things. I can only describe it as experiencing, in a very primitive way, the Godhead in nature. He came back very silent and quieted, and one had the feeling that something had moved in him which had never moved before. His compulsory symptoms disappeared completely during those weekly walks. Then came the problem of how he could keep this experience and avoid slipping back when he got home to his own country. So we consulted the tramp again who said that he would let him off the symptoms if he would take one afternoon each week, go alone into nature, and continue his talks with him. The man then left. From his letters I learnt that he did this for a while, but then he slipped back to his old habits - there was too much work, he was starting three new businesses, and there were so many meetings. So he postponed the tramp, always saying, "Next week, next week - sure I am coming, but next week." And then he promptly got his symptoms back! That taught him; he switched back and walked regularly and was all right again. It then crystallised into buying a little farm and having a horse.

One afternoon a week he attended to his horse with what one could only call religious devotion. The horse was his friend, so to speak, and like a ritual he went to visit it and ride it and look after it every week. From then on he had peace. I am sure a lot is going on inwardly, but I haven't heard much from him except for Christmas cards saying that he was getting on all right. And, of course, photographs of the horse!

There one sees how the inferior function is the door to experiencing the deeper layers of the unconscious. This intuitive type got out of his ego and | ego purposes via this contact with nature and with the horse. One sees very clearly that even if the inferior function appears outside - in a horse, for example - it obviously carries a symbolic meaning. Attending to the horse was for him attending to his own physical and instinctual side: the horse was a first personification of the impersonal collective unconscious for him. It is important for an intuitive type to do this concretely and very slowly, and not immediately exclaim: "Oh, the horse is a symbol of the unconscious," etc. He must stick to the actual horse and attend to it, even though he knows it is a symbol.

Source: Von Franz on the Four Irrational Types

#personality theory #personality types #typology #jung #jungian typology #en #ne #en(f)#en(t)#enfp #entp #cognitive functions

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belit0 · 1 year

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Just Dance

Hashirama and Madara are rink hockey players. Izuna is a contemporary ballet dancer.

This is how I imagine Izuna dancing

Pairing: Uchiha Izuna / Senju Hashirama

“Come with me to Izuna’s dress rehearsal today after practice, there’s no way I’m sitting there for two hours by myself.”

Hashirama had no way to say no, as curiosity is far greater than him. He’s been playing rink hockey with Madara since they were both 4 years old, together on the same team and practically sharing a life, but this is the first time his best friend even mentions his younger brother’s business.

The relationship between Madara and Izuna differs from his and Tobi’s. While the two of them are close and do basically all the same things, the two Uchiha enjoy private space and living away from family extensively. It is no wonder why the Senju knows the younger Uchiha shallowly, after years and years of his best friend preventing the two from being able to have any sort of contact.

Thus it is that Hashirama sits in the back benches of a theater that looks too big to be real. His life is sports, of art he knows little and nothing.

Madara is fighting with his own phone since the two arrived at the place, carrying their luggage and making far too much noise to be part of the artistic environment.

Music plays and Izuna Uchiha steals the spotlight, displaying his skills in the solo he earned after hard work during the year. Anyone can confuse contemporary ballet with normal ballet, but the Uchiha has been practicing both dances since he was a child and knows the differences of each from beginning to end.

His body moves with an almost unreal fluidity, as if he were a ghost floating in the air. His legs follow his every demand and send him leaping all over the stage, leaving open mouths and cheers every time his instep touches the polished wood to spin without halting. Every pirouette performed is a point in his favor with the people who observe him, because if his performance was already a topic to talk about, now the witnesses of his dance are simply astounded with his level.

Hashirama can say exactly the same, trying to compile his thoughts and define the work of art moving in front of his eyes with a single word. It is impossible.

Some anger floods his senses when next to him Madara ignores Izuna’s entire choreography, fiddling with his phone and sitting like a dumb brute with his legs on the expensive theater seats.

“Dude, can’t you see what your brother is doing?”

“Shut up, I’ve had to watch stuff like this since the brat’s six. Nothing new.”

The Senju would have punched his best friend except for the piano stopping, showing Izuna had finished. A round of modest applause erupts from the stage, where the other dancers watch the Uchiha salute, but who stands out the most is Hashirama from the back of the theater who stands, claps and shouts loudly.

At the moment's excitement he forgot the young man never engaged in a conversation with him, let alone share a friendship, and Izuna’s gaze expresses pure confusion as he stares at him.

Quickly the Senju stops clapping and scratches the back of his head, sitting back down and sinking as deep into his seat as possible.

“You truly are an idiot, you know that?”

“Shut up.”

#senju hashirama x uchiha izuna #hashiizu #hashirama senju x izuna uchiha #uchiha izuna x senju hashirama #izuna uchiha x hashirama senju #senju hashirama #hashirama senju #uchiha izuna #izuna uchiha #izuna #hashirama #madara uchiha #uchiha madara #madara #naruto #uchiha clan #naruto shippuden #naruto imagines #naruto founders

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deerydear · 6 months

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I wonder if the man Beyond Birthday would have an opinion on astrology. He is "Beyond Birthday", after all...

In vedic/sidereal astrology (based on the actual current positions of the constellations in the sky), L would have been born when the Sun was under Libra....

I feel so randomly vindicated. In my head, I used to say "L is for Libra".

"I am... justice!"

(Ofc, he still has two Scorpionic placements... but the Sun was not yet in Scorpio on his birthday.)

Tropical is based on the positions of the stars as they were, roughly 2,000 years ago. There is a small calculation that astrologers are supposed to make every year to make the calendar line up with the physical objects. For some reason, many astrologers in western countries decided to stop making that calculated adjustment. (imagine if we stopped having leap years.) So now the two systems are no longer aligned.

Oh, yeah... Light would have been born under the Aquarius Sun, (which makes more sense than Pisces.) He has that Saturnian, structured influence, even if it is "the new order". (Pisces has no order, except ☯.) Aquarius comes off as a very serious sign, to me... Symbolically, he is the man who bears water from heaven down the earth. A sort of Prometheus figure, to my sense.

I'm not sure of their birth times or locations, so I couldn't say for sure where the moon would have been... but I get a sense that L would be born under the Aquarian moon. Light would likely have been born under the Libra moon.

The topic of birthdays is funny. I was born on a Friday the 13th, in october. I used to wish I was born on Halloween. I knew that if I flipped the numerals, 13 would become 31. L is a Halloween baby.

Misa would be a Sagittarius, too... Wild-card, buck-wild. Hot-headed.

Mello is a Scorpio sun baby. I like that better, because he is so serious.

Near has a lot of hard-hitters in Leo, but with Mars in Virgo. I like that, because he is childish in some ways, he likes to mock Kira and L. He is proud, and yet meticulous and cautious in action. Mars is inconjunct Mercury and Jupiter. Those two are conjunct, with Jupiter blowing up Mercury's thought processes like a bunch of big hot air balloons.

Mello's birth is interesting. The stars were set such that Mercury was all the way across the sky from Jupiter, to the point the two are pulling on eachother. Both him and Light Yagami were born with Mars in Scorpio. "Only I can do it!"

Incredible drive, determination... focus under pressure.

I'm curious. What zodiac sign do you think B would have been born under?

Do you think this question is offensive?

I feel like he would be "beyond fate", in a certain sense...

#astrology #I think the 13 : 31 thing is really funny #and L was 22 in August of 2002 when B set up the LABB cases

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lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks · 3 years

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fuck I still haven't done the rewrite of the Mutant Town AU that I specifically came off hiatus to write, like the Plant Witch Sam and Pharaoh Tucker posts were written to prep this au and I just got wildly distracted so uhhhh

yeah the concept is in the link but the gist is that the people and town becoming mutated by constant ectoplasmic contamination, we all know and love this concept right but I'm gonna expand on it

this is a direct result of the portal being opened, but they aren't getting infected from the portal, the issue is that creating a permanent opening into the ghost zone has weakened the veil between their worlds and Amity Park and the Ghost Zone sort of slip in and out of each other constantly

and because ectoplasm responds strongly to emotions (poltergeists being made from atmospheric emotions for example) it all tends to converge very heavily at the school full of hormonal teenagers

so Casper High becomes its own god damn cryptid, the teachers get so jaded about opening the door to a classroom and finding just a whole ass ghost zone on the other side that they just put a sign on the door telling kids to go to a different room, lockers swap contents with other lockers so kids have started putting their names on the inside so they know who's stuff they've just found

this also means the kids get super affected, like super affected, literally, they all get ghost powers, some are just physical mutations, some are just super abilities, or a general increase in natural ability, like a member of the track team getting super speed

it takes a while for Danny and co. to figure this out, Sam and Tucker should have been warning signs as they've spent the most time around ghosts and the ghost zone, but that's why the Witch Sam and Pharaoh Tucker posts are important

they have powers, but they thought they came exclusively from outside sources, they had no idea that their abilities were also strengthened and influenced by being highly contaminated by ectoplasm, which is why when one day Mikey sneezes and green acid shoots out of his nose and melts his desk, everyone is a little bit startled

the teachers have long since started using ghost detectors after the time Paulina spent a whole week overshadowed by Kitty, so Mikey gets a check over and other than the usual atmospheric reading Lancer gets nothing especially strong from him

there have been concerns about the gradually increasing ectoplasmic content in the air messing with ghost detector results, the devices have to be recalibrated constantly, so Lancer asks the one and only son of the local ghost hunters in the room if he has some other way to check

Danny's parents make him keep a few protective items in his schoolbag, so he tries some gear on him to see if anything comes flying out, but nothing does, Danny isn't too surprised seeing as he couldn't sense a ghost in the room anyway, but it definitely makes things a little concerning

even if it were a repeat of the Spectra incident and he wasn't being overshadowed, the Fenton's tech would have still gotten rid of whatever was causing this if it were an external influence

Mikey is sent home for the day and his parents are told to keep an eye on him

and then the next week, Star drops a pen off her desk and a strand of her hair whips out to grab it, she's also checked for ghost influence and sent home

a few weeks after that it happens again, a kid on the basketball team makes a leap to the net and stays in the air, they have to call in the cheerleaders to climb on top of each other to reach him and pull him down

Danny has been trying to figure out what's happening from the first moment with Mikey, and his parents have also been getting calls from worried parents who want to know if they can fix whatever's happening to their kids

over the next couple of months, every kid in the school has some kind of ability or mutation, Dash heals whoever he touches, which he discovers after punching Nathan in the face and curing his acne, Paulina turns invisible, which freaks her out at first until she realises it's great for eavesdropping, Wes can conjure fire (because I desperately needed him to have a polarising ability to Danny), Kwan becomes empathic and can feel and influence people's emotions

Valerie also had an early mutation that she didn't know about, when Technus gave her a new suit, her body pretty much just absorbed it as a part of her, Technus had not intended this to happen, and was pretty peeved about it, Valerie found out that she had stolen control over the suit when Technus had a big rant about it during a fight, and she put the pieces together once other kids started developing abilities

this whole thing causes a ton of chaos as kids are struggling to control what they can do, so Danny has to step in and help them out, he often has to run off to change into Phantom in order to protect everyone from an ability that's gone haywire, he ends up pretty much running ghost power training courses after school to help them control themselves

he's also gotten stuck in situations where he's had to step in and help someone without having the time to change forms, meaning he has to make up a cover story about having developed his own powers way before everyone else since he's been living on top of a portal for years, he only tells people about his ice powers

Jazz has always had a tendency to be able to reign in her emotions and keep a cool head, (the only ones who can really push her buttons are Danny and sometimes her parents, at school around other kids who look up to her she's often very in control) meaning she doesn't draw ectoplasm to herself all that much, and though Danny uses the excuse of having lived on top of a ghost portal to explain why he's already so familiar with using his power, it's actually not even remotely true, because the Fentons use specialised air purifiers to keep the atmospheric ectoplasm at a manageable level, the Fenton house ironically has the least atmospheric contamination compared to the rest of the town, that's how Maddie and Jack have had limited mutation to themselves (though they aren't wholly free, they've mostly just gotten physically stronger and tougher)

so even though Jazz develops her power a little earlier than everyone else's, it's not that far ahead, and she actually doesn't even realise she already has one until half the school has developed theirs

Jazz has the power to slow time in a little bubble around herself, she'd been using it without realising while studying, having gotten through hours of work in half that time, she always thought it was just her losing track of time or she was just getting faster at reading, she also spends a lot of time counselling other students and trying to help them sort out their problems, and they'd often comment that they felt like they'd been talking for so much longer than they had, again she just chalked it up to losing track of time

a lot of students had wondered why Danny developed a power early and Jazz hadn't, until someone walked in on Jazz helping a girl through a panic attack in the bathroom, and found them both talking extremely fast, a lot of her friends realised in hindsight that she'd been doing that unwittingly for quite a while, nobody had noticed because she always talked to people privately, so nobody outside her little time bubble had seen it happen

Sam and Tucker come clean about their abilities too, but they also don't give the full rundown, still keeping some things close to the chest to avoid standing out from everyone else

then there's the teachers

adults typically have a better time regulating emotions than teenagers, meaning much like Jazz they aren't drawing as much ectoplasm toward themselves, but this doesn't exempt them from developing something after a while, especially with the heightened stress of managing a school full of volatile super kids

Mr Lancer discovers that he can create shields, after an incident where he jumps in front of some students to protect them from another power gone awry

Tetslaff ends up with a sonic ability, able to project her voice like a megaphone (yes this is a Coach Boomer from Sky High reference don't @ me), Principal Ishiyama develops a physical mutation, growing to twice her size, she likes that she can tower over the students while delivering speeches, but she doesn't like having to stoop through doors all the time, she has the one to her office resized, along with her chair and desk

so as you can imagine, the town ends up erupting into chaos, a lot of kids very much misuse their abilities, Danny does his best as Phantom to teach people to be responsible, but sometimes he has to resort to literally kicking their asses to get them to straighten up

but for the most part, a ton of kids were already looking up to him, and are generally pretty happy to follow his example, especially the more popular kids, it's generally considered not very cool to get your ass kicked by Phantom, so weirdly enough a lot of kids get peer pressured into not causing any real damage or injury with their powers

this doesn't mean they don't absolutely misuse them, they're just more subtle about it

until a ghost shows up, a lot of the kids are more than happy to let loose to protect themselves and their friends, and Phantom for the most part is happy to let them, with some supervision of course, he still has to make sure nobody gets too hurt (including the ghosts)

the entire debacle makes Danny's life simultaneously a whole lot easier AND so much more fucking stressful

#lula's aus #mutant town au #danny phantom #you have no idea how hard it was to find the links to the other posts #tumblr's search system was fucking me around so much

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hongism · 4 years

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touch of the devil - k.hongjoong 18+

↣ pairing: hongjoong x fem!reader | ao3 version (mxm seongjoong) ↣ genre: angst, fluff if you SQUINT, nsfw, fantasy, supernatural, demon!hongjoong, emo rocker!hongjoong, there do be plot tho. ↣ wc: 9.0k ↣ summary: you came to make a deal with a devil sure, but this is the last thing you were expecting out of a night in a dingy bar. ↣ warnings: explicit smut, mention of death, demons, it’s actually really heavy on plot and angst and less focused on the smut ↣ a/n: again i know it’s my birthday but this is my present to you guys, i am a person who prefers to give rather than receive on my birthday and this was the first thing i wanted to work on during my hiatus!! i’ve got so much inspo and motivation rn that it’s crazy and i can’t wait to have everything all set out for you guys when im back :3

﹊﹊﹊

Everything about the air around you is heady and thick in a way that chokes you as you step through the fogged bar. This isn’t your sort of scene – not one you would typically find yourself frequenting on a Friday evening without even so much as the company of a friend – and yet here you stand with hands pressed into the pockets of your black leather jacket. There remains a dull thrum in the atmosphere of the club, a steady rhythm of bass and vibrations that makes your ears ring but you do your best to ignore it in favor of reaching the bartender.

“Just a rum and coke please,” you murmur, hand sneaking out of your pocket to lay a few bills flat against the wood counter. You tug your ID card out as well and flash it in the man’s direction when he raises an eyebrow at you, but upon seeing it, he relents and steps away from you to get the drink.

The question remains of why exactly you are in such a dismal and hopeless scene full of people too drunk off their rockers to even fumble around the bar with some sense of dignity. You, who is neither dismal or hopeless yourself nor are you drunk in the slightest (at least not yet).

The answer is simple. This is a breeding ground, a festering cesspool of desires and greed, and it is the prime place to find what you are looking for in terms of deals with the devil. Maybe not one specific devil, but certainly whatever demon you can get your hands on tonight. And you have quite the lot to choose from it seems, because as you glance around the neon-lit building, you can spot many pairs of red eyes glinting under the lights. You know you have no right to be picky — any and all of them will get the job done — but you can’t help but to note that none of them are as appealing as you imagined they would be. When your friend said that these demons thrived off of lust and appeal, you figured that meant they would purposefully up the ante in terms of physical appearances.

The disdain must show on your features as the bartender begins to speak again as he sets your drink down before you on the counter.

“None of them are for you,” he utters, and you twist back to look him in the eye.

“What do you mean?” You inquire, chin tilting to the side in question, and the man huffs out a small laugh.

“They have their prey already. Picked ‘em the second they walked through the door. All it takes is one look to figure out what these needy people crave from them, what appearances they need to take, what voices to use, what outfits to wear. For people like you, though, something more is required before the real games begin.” He points a single bony finger at your face, staring you down over the length of his digit like it’s the barrel of a gun, and that has you shifting in your seat a bit.

“Something… more?”

“One must have a particular level of certainty before coming to make a deal with a demon, ma’am. But you — you don’t seem to truly know what it is you want. And for that reason, the King will see you with no ruses or deception.”

On the contrary, I wouldn’t have dared set foot in here if I didn’t know what it is I wanted, you want to say. However, your attention is held rapt by his final sentence, the one that held unspoken promise to it.

“And by that you mean physical alterations?”

“You catch on quickly, Miss.” The man leans forward, tongue darting out to swipe over his lower lip, and you glance over the motion only once before pushing away from the counter. He notes the slight annoyance in your features a moment later. “The King will like you quite a bit.”

“When can I expect for this ‘King’ to present himself?” You prop an elbow up on the counter and give one last forlorn glance around the bar in the hopes that someone will come over your way, but it’s to no avail.

“Patience, human. The show hasn’t even begun yet.” He motions towards the middle of the bar, the starkly empty space with a glossy stage set in the center with only a microphone held delicately in its stand and nothing else. You had been hoping to make this a speedy trip — a quick in and out with your deal made and nothing else — but it seems you won’t be having that luxury. And it is a bit frustrating, honestly, to come to this place with the expectation of having a demon cater to you and your wants only to be told that you aren’t certain enough for these supernatural beings, so you’ll have to wait on a demon who won’t cater to you or come to you immediately.

You take a quick swig of your alcohol with the desperate hope that perhaps drinking will make you more certain of what you want, although you already know it won’t. The bartender offers a shrug in response to your annoyance then pulls away to tend to other customers, and you take it as an invitation to swivel in your stool and face the stage. It’s still fucking empty, but at least it gives you a better view than the old wood of the counter that now sits under your elbows.

“Leave it to men to make me wait on them, demon or not,” you mutter under your breath, breath fogging the side of your glass a bit.

You nearly choke on the liquid inside in your next breath because the swirling red neon lights come to a halt on the center of the stage, and the suddenness of the shifting lights startles you so much that you have to sit up straight and inhale deeply to keep from coughing on the alcohol in your mouth. The hazed mist hovering above the floor of the bar seems to swirl towards the stage under the beams of light. You watch the movements as though in a trance, slowly leaning forward until your elbows come to rest on your knees. Out of everyone in the bar, you seem to be the only one interested in what’s going on at the center of the room. Mind you, everyone else is preoccupied: demons with their humans, and humans with the mask-wearing demons who cater to their desires. And while you have no reason to be so intrigued by the scene before you, you truly cannot bring yourself to look away, especially as the dull thrum of music in the bar heightens and gains momentum.

There is no way of describing the sounds rumbling around you. Perhaps if you were fully in your senses, you would be able to distinguish the instruments and beats of the song, but the bass clogs your mind and leaves you squinting at the hazy stage. It could be poetic, the way a lone figure pushes his way through the crowds of the bar like he holds all the power in the universe, studded black leather jacket slung around his shoulders. And as the red lights come over him, you can see his features better. Dusty brown hair that shines a bit, one side exposed and cut shorter than the other, which has bangs that hang loose over the side of his face. Metal bars line both ears, another near the end of his left brow, and a final more intricate one that loops around the middle of his lip and connects to two long metal chains. You follow the path of those chains with your eyes, watching them trail downwards until they loop around his chest and disappear behind his jacket. It’s just a black turtleneck that he wears underneath the dramatic leather regalia and chains but somehow he makes the garment look expensive. You dare glance a bit lower, just enough to make out the frayed and distressed jeans that cling to his skin like a vice, leaving hints of enticing skin underneath to peek through. You can’t see his feet thanks to the fog, but you can practically hear his footsteps drumming in your ears with the rise and fall of his shoes.

Simply put, you are entranced by the sight of this man — if he can even be called that, because you wouldn’t find yourself at all surprised should he reveal himself to be a demon on the tail end of this encounter. He barely looks up from the floor on his trek to the stage, only stopping when he comes before the mic stand and exhales against it in a way that sends shivers down your spine. It’s hardly reasonable for any creature to hold your attention in the palm of his hand the way this one does, but there is no chance of you looking away now, especially as his voice begins to drawl through the microphone and coat your ears like honey. There are words, you recognize enough in the music to know that it should be a song you’re familiar with, but none of them truly process in your daze.

It’s all you can do to just sit there and watch his performance. Between the gentle sways of his shoulders and hips, the teasing drag of his tongue over his lower lip whenever there is a break in his lyrics, and the overall intoxicating nature his aura exudes, you are hooked on every breath he takes. You don’t realize how relaxed your body has become under his spell until it’s too late, and that happens to be the last note of the song as well. It is accentuated with the drop of the glass in your hand and a sharp shatter of the cup against the floor. And just as you inhale a startled gasp and break out of your reverie, his deep crimson eyes flicker over to find yours across the bar. Those twisting lips churn something ugly in your gut. You can’t find the strength in your body to move.

“Mine.”

Your heart leaps in your chest as the word leaves his lips, and while you can’t hear it grate against your ears, you can clearly read his lips enough to know what he’s saying.

His eyes glint a bit in the darkness. It shouldn’t leave you wanting more, but that bitter taste of curiosity is nipping at the back of your throat, and you are far too intrigued to turn back now. You just want more. If he seems to understand that at all from the gleam in your eyes, he makes good on it, stepping off the stage and letting his hand drag over the mic in a way that is almost tantalizing. Step after step, he comes closer to you with his lips still curled into a smirk, and the way the lights hit him makes him seem to glisten and glow in the darkness. You don’t realize you’ve been holding your breath until he breaches your personal space and you release a shaky exhale that seems to fog in the air between you. He stretches a hand out to close the space between your bodies and curls his index finger under your chin. The touch is simultaneously hot and cold — your whole body seems to light on fire under it, yet at the same time, the chill in your bones deepens to an alarming degree.

“What is it you desire above all other things?” You can hear him now, loud and clear, and whilst you heard his singing beforehand, the simple rasp and lilt to his regular tone is something that has you unashamedly weak in the knees. “I can give you everything,” he whispers as he presses closer to you. Your knees brush against his form but he keeps on pushing forward until he’s slotted himself between them. The chain hanging from his lips rattles like a chime, singing its unknown song like church bells in the night, although you are far from God and heaven now. “All you need to do is ask.”

You cling to some semblance of reason while you can, knowing full well that it will all leave you soon enough, but for now, it lets you choke out a single statement that has the demon before you laughing under his breath.

“That’s not how it works.”

“And who are you to tell me how it works?” His finger curls a bit harder at your chin, and you can feel the blunt of his nail scraping over your skin. Your eyes are glued to his, so enamored and consumed that you can’t even think to look anywhere else.

In that moment, it is as though the universe is nothing but a speck of dust in the corner of your vision. Something so raw and whole like the man standing before you is all-powerful and vigilant in a way that has every nerve in your body at full attention, ready for whatever his next step might be. And that turns out to be quite the curveball as it seems because he leans closer to you, breath intermingling with yours, and you subconsciously curve your back into his touch to reach him closer. Still, even though you physically show how ready and desperate for the touch you are, he waits and glances over your features.

“What is it you desire from me, human?”

You have to vehemently restrain yourself from simply saying ‘you’ and getting on with it.

“Your name.”

“Is that all you would have from me?” As a demon, it is his life’s work to know the inner-workings of the festering desires of humans. You have no doubt in your mind that he knows exactly what is it you want, even if you are not sure of it yourself, and you do not doubt that he won’t use that to his advantage either. But that’s what you asked for in coming here, and that is exactly what you both expected and wanted out of this.

Perhaps it is shameful, but just for once, you wanted to surrender control. Too often are you asked to have everything set out and planned and under control, and too often do you find yourself wanting someone to just tell you what it is you should do. That could be why the bartender labeled you as ‘uncertain’ because even in this moment of vulnerability, there is still the thinnest thread of thought tethering you to that control. And as of now, you want nothing more than for this demon before you to break that thread.

“I would have your name before I asked for anything else from you. Calling you demon over and over would certainly wear out its welcome, no?”

“That all depends on the context, my dear. But… you can call me Hongjoong, if that’s suitable to your tongue.”

“Hongjoong,” you try, testing the way the name rolls off your tongue in such a delicate manner that the demon before you flutters his lashes a bit.

“Sounds so pretty coming from lips so innocent.” He tilts his head to the side, and the movement flashes the pretty expanse of skin below his jaw. You aren’t shy in the way you let your gaze slip over it before trailing back up to meet his eyes again. “Would you close your eyes for me, doll?” He doesn’t have to ask. He could just make you do so with no resistance but still, he asks as though you could say no if you wanted to. You don’t though, and as such, your eyelids fall shut and your vision turns to black for the time being. “Do you know who I am?”

“Th-The bartender called you the King.”

“And do you understand what that means? Truly understand with every fiber of your being?” The question is heavy on your bones, and it is one that you feel like you should know the answer to yet you can’t find any response to his inquiry. Perhaps he means to confuse you because you hear the soft huff of a laugh fall from his lips. “King of the Underworld, Lord of the Dead. Some would call me Pluto, others Hades, it varies from religion to religion and in every culture. Sometimes I pick up rather banal and common names, other times I find myself seeking something extravagant and luxurious. Now… Hongjoong will be a good middle-ground for us.”

You should be falling to the floor in absolute shock due to his words, but the steady finger under your chin keeps you steady. That and the growing fear in your gut as you come to realize that this man holds so much power in just his pinky finger and could absolutely crush you under his heel whenever he wishes. What are you to a god besides an insignificant fleck of dust on the pavement?

“And what of your appearance? Is that… manifested as well?” You dare to ask.

“I have many faces, yes, but this one is one I wear boldly and frequently. You could say it is my natural form. After so many millennia of fantastical myths and legends, however, I’m sure that would seem odd to you.”

“Are you truly a demon then?”

“King of demons, yes. Whether I am truly a demon myself is something that could be ambiguous, I suppose, but if they are all part of my creations, then would that not make me one myself? Though you could say they are all fragments of my own being, making them all mythical gods. It’s all a matter of perspective; however, I doubt that you came searching this place for a lesson on perspectives.”

“No, I came for…” You trail off, and that blossoming uncertainty from before presents itself again.

“There are two things your heart wants right now. One, I can give you with ease and grace, only if you would allow it. That desire is a fleeting one, however, and I do not think it is what you are truly after in being here. The second… that is a wish I cannot deliver, and I think you are more than aware of that. The reason everyone left you to me is because of what you want. It is a domain only I could ever touch.”

You blink your eyes open in haste, searching his deep crimson gaze for some sort of confirmation of the words. The demon dares to look forlorn and lets his stare drop to the floor rather than looking you directly in the eye. Confusion blossoms in your gut. Yes, you figured there was a slim chance that your wish could not be granted, but still you clung to the desperate hope that maybe there was just a small window of opportunity for such a wish to be granted.

“Death is irreversible,” the demon, Hongjoong as he wishes to be called, says in a quiet tone. “I cannot give that which you want more than anything else.”

“Then what can you give?” You ask, squeezing your eyes shut as tight as possible to keep your emotions from slipping out the corners.

“One of two things: I can give you time to speak with him once more or I can make you forget the pain.”

“And if I choose the latter?”

“It would make you forget everything about him and leave you with no memory of him at all.” Hongjoong exhales a small sigh, the bouncing rhythms of the bass rumbling against your ears along with the sounds of his breaths. “You need not decide right this instant. The payment will be the same either way, so we can settle that first if you’d like.”

“W-Wait,” you stammer. You dare to open your eyes once more. “How would I be able to speak to him if you can’t bring him back?”

“I cannot bring him back the way you want. He… he is gone, and though I am the King of the Dead, there are powers even I do not have. Bringing him back to life is impossible, but I can create a doorway for the two of you to speak through for a short period of time. I have no control over how long it would be, just a forewarning. That is all up to him and his willingness to see you.”

“I can’t imagine he wouldn’t want to see me,” you murmur, but the pang in your chest tells you otherwise.

“Sometimes, death and the underworld change fundamental parts of people. They are no longer alive, after all, and as such, those human vices and personality traits dissipate. How you knew him in life could be vastly different than the spirit who now resides in my domain. It is all a matter of weighing risks, my dear. What matters most to you? Remembering him or him remembering you?”

“So if I ask to see him, I would remember him but there’s a chance that he would have no recollection of me? And should I ask to forget, there will be no way of knowing whether he remembers me in the afterlife or not?”

“Precisely.”

That is a hefty bargain to weigh. It is almost too much for your shoulders just to think about it. One is starkly more selfish than the other, but if he’s dead, what good will selflessness do you? It won’t bring him back, that’s for sure. Either you are left with the painful realization that he does not have any memory of you in the afterlife, or you forget it all to avoid that pain. Maybe thinking about the payment before deciding would be a good idea after all.

“As for the payment? How many years do I owe you?” Demons have no use for human currency or trinkets that could be traded for favors. You can barter the only thing you have — years of life. Whether it shortens your lifespan or turns you into a personal slave for a certain amount of time, that is a price you must be willing to pay for such services. You are more than prepared to barter it all off right now if need be.

“None,” Hongjoong answers coolly, and you quirk a brow upwards at the nonchalance in his tone. “I do not deal in years of life. Not often, at least. My abilities are bound in… passion. Lovemaking, fornication, sex, fucking – whatever you wish to call it. Of course, it wouldn’t have to be that exactly, should you not desire that. The other option is a blood pact, a ritual that would take hours to complete, although both could take quite some time depending on your stamina.” There’s a breath of silence that allows Hongjoong’s lips to twist into a suggestive grin, and heat brushes the base of your neck as you fight off waves of embarrassment. “I cannot guarantee that the blood pact would be painless. With sex, I could at least provide some comfort that the pain would only be temporary; however, the choice is yours. Both are binding and would mean that you could never make a deal with another demon again, and you would be marked as mine for eternity.”

“What does being yours entail?”

“Nothing diabolical or unsavory, I promise. Just… when the time comes for you to pass on and join the Underworld, you would take a place at my side.”

“How many people have you laid claim to? Did they all agree to the same terms? How can I trust your word?” The questions tumble from your lips without relent.

“For what you desire, the cost is far less than what I would usually ask for. Those lucky enough to deal with me in the past paid less for their debts. The blood pact… the fornication… both are binding elements. The real cost is your service. Most have agreed to give me their servitude in the afterlife, all with their own places in my domain. That is what you would be offering as well. You will live just as long as you would without making this deal but make up for it after your death.”

“And that’s it?”

Hongjoong’s eyes twinkle a bit under the lights above your heads.

“What did you expect from me, doll? Savagery? Unfairness? Everyone deserves a fair price for what they want, regardless of station in life or status in society.”

“Deal,” you utter without any more hesitation, blinking up into Hongjoong’s dark orbs. There lies a lingering sense of regret in your gut, one that you cannot chase away no matter how hard you try, but you do not need to dwell on it any longer.

“And how would you like to bind our deal, my dear? Neither can be handled immediately. The blood pact requires special preparations for the ritual, but the other — I would not have you in such a place as dirty as this.”

“I-I, um, sex will work just fine,” you bite out, the skin of your cheek caught between your teeth.

“Then when the time comes that you are ready with your decision on what it is you truly want, all you need to do is take this—” Hongjoong retracts his hand from where it rests gently against the column of your throat and digs into one of his pockets. He pulls out a gilded card, one that is black and gold with flecks of red across the surface, but there are no other adornments to the material. “Tear it in half and it will bring you to our meeting place, and I will join you there to seal the deal. Should you decide that you do not want this after all, then all you need to do is burn the card. The decision lies in your hands, and yours alone.” He has to lift one of your limp hands and forcefully place the card into your waiting palm, closing his fingers around yours to make you cling to the item.

“I – th-thank you,” you stammer as you blink from your closed hand to Hongjoong’s features.

“The pleasure is all mine, doll.”

Those are the last words you hear from the demon before he slips away from you, the dense fog lingering in the air swirling up around his body, and within moments, his shadowy form disappears entirely from sight. The air grows cold around you once more. You are left with only the fleeting desire for that warmth to return, for you to feel less alone than you are in that moment, and even if it’s the briefest visit ever you just want one last chance to tell your lost lover how you feel without mistakes this time.

///

The night, as per usual, is cold and unforgiving. It allows for too many opportunities to be alone with lost feelings and thoughts. It has been weeks (if not months) since you visited that dingy club and your fateful meeting with none other than the King of the Dead. Yet you are still here, wallowing in the memories that you’ve been left to suffer with alone, and the gilded black card sits in your nightstand untouched. You open the drawer just to stare at it from time to time, when the nights are particularly rough, and it already had begun collecting a thin layer of dust the last few times you looked at it.

It isn’t that you haven’t made your decision about what you want from your deal with Hongjoong. The more terrifying fact is that you are fully aware of what it is you want, and you simply cannot rectify the guilt that comes along with the pure selfishness of your decision. The feeling is so potent that it swarms your every thought. You know it wouldn’t be an issue once you meet with Hongjoong; the demon will take it all away and leave you with nothing. You won’t even know enough to be guilty any longer, but the pain of committing to the decision is strong enough to make you sick to your stomach.

Wooyoung — the one who suggested you go to the club and make the deal in the first place — will not shut up about how worried he is about you. You won’t recall the deal or why you made it, so what’s holding you back? A temporary guilt that won’t exist longer than a few seconds once you’re actually in Hongjoong’s presence? As he said, you just need to swallow the feeling and get on with it. Prolonging the regrets any longer won’t do you any good.

You huff out a quiet laugh in the silence of your darkened room. The black gilded card taunts you again now, gleaming up at you through the shadows with its faint hints of gold and red. Maybe Wooyoung is right and the only way to get rid of missed opportunities is to forget about them entirely. Yeosang was but a chapter in your life, one that is past and gone now, and as Hongjoong said, there is no reversing death. Seeing him one last time won’t give you anything but pain.

You stretch a shaky hand towards the card in the drawer. It’s cold to the touch, dust billowing up with even the slightest touch of your fingers. You have to dig your nail under the material to pull it up, and once it’s safely set in your palm, you drag your thumb over the surface to brush the dirt away. No words on the surface, no sign that it has been touched by a demon, and not even a hint as to what it could possibly be for.

It is surprisingly flexible, at least moreso than you would have imagined, and you give it a few testing bends to see how easy it would be to break. Hongjoong simply gave you the instruction to tear it in half and that was all. You don’t expect him to suddenly materialize before you on a whim, but surely such a creation is bound by some sort of magic on his part. It is hard enough to believe that demons are real living creatures, but magic as well? Maybe you’ve passed on and just don’t realize it yet. Still, you exhale one last huff of air into the darkness before letting your eyes flutter shut. Taking the card between your hands, you begin to slowly rip the material until it separates with the force, torn in two mismatched pieces.

Nothing fantastical happens.

That fact alone is so overwhelmingly disappointing that you really think for a moment that Hongjoong was just some goth rocker in a stoner bar who pulled an elaborate trick on you. It can’t be too difficult to get your hands on some weird red-toned contacts and weave some elaborate story about being the King of Hell. You could do that yourself. Why did you think he was incapable of such a charade?

Because he knew what you wanted without you having to say it.

Yes, well, Wooyoung claimed that your regrets and grief were evident in your features every time he looked at you. Maybe Hongjoong could see it as well.

You fall back onto your bed, flattening your back against the mattress with a small shout of frustration. The urge to cry is strong; if you’ve spent all these weeks uselessly worrying over something that could all be a farce, you don’t even know how you would react. You squeeze your eyes shut tight, blinking away the tears that blossom in the corners there as best you can. The rolling emotions in your system distract you from the sudden shift in temperature, and before you know it heat washes over you and fills the void of cold in your body. You jerk but refuse to sit up quite yet, eyes flying open in your shock only to choke on air as a bright golden light fills your vision and swarms you with warmth. The cushion under your body doesn’t feel the same either; it is not your bed, it’s too plush and soft, too warm under you, and you feel like you are absolutely drowning in the sensation.

Gold flickers above you, twinkling lights that glisten like small stars above you, and the ceiling is so dark that you nearly think it’s just an opening to the night sky. You sit up in a mad panic. The gold and red decorations littering the far too lavish room barely process in your vision as you look for a way out, and you don’t even see the figure coming up along your side until he’s upon you. A hand stretches out to brush over your forehead. You nearly shriek in your state of terror, but the sound is all but stolen from your lungs instead.

“It’s only me, doll. You’re safe.”

Hongjoong. Ah, Hongjoong. Then… he was telling the truth. It wasn’t a farce or a deception meant to be a game. He claimed to be the Devil Incarnate, and here he stands before you in a room too rich and exquisite for words. You can’t find it in you to think he’s lying now.

You dare to glance up and meet his gaze, finding it so soft on your face that you have the audacity to blush under his stare despite the things you’ll be doing with him soon enough.

“Have you made your decision then?” He asks, tone soft and light. It isn’t one that demands an immediate answer. You know he could ask what took you so long to decide, complain about your hesitance, say that you kept him waiting for far too long — instead, he exudes patience with you, hand slowly combing over your forehead down to your cheek and brushing over the skin there with a touch so featherlight that you almost don’t realize it’s there at all.

“I-I have,” you whisper like the two of you aren’t the only ones in the room and it’s a secret meant only for your ears.

“What would you have from me first then? As I told you before, the payment is the same regardless of your decision, and as such, we can bind the deal first if you’d rather.”

You swallow around nothing. There is no harm in going through with the decision now, but your nerves are so frazzled and out of sorts that you almost desire the sex simply as a means of stress relief. Hongjoong steps in front of you, fully coming into view, and you are shocked at how… mundane he looks. You blink fervently at the man — demon, rather — and take in the gentle part of his hair, the soft glow of his skin that makes him look simply ethereal under this light. He hardly looks like a demon to you; his features are too smooth and perfect for that, from the curves of his lips to the even line of his nose. Although you suppose that’s all he wants you to see, yet it still seems oddly intimate to a certain degree.

“You aren’t worried that I’ll try to run away after my wish is fulfilled?” You ask. Hongjoong arches his brows at you, and his neutral expression slips into one of momentary shock.

“Where are you going to go, my dear? I brought you to this place, and you will need me to send you back once we’re done here.”

It sinks in at that moment how you are completely at his mercy right now. Not that you had any plans of running away, but the question was moreso just to test the waters, see if he is truly as merciful as his features make him out to be. The underlying danger in his tone proves your point and sends a chill down your spine.

“Is that something I ought to be worried about, doll? Should I claim you now to make sure you keep your end of the bargain?” The question sits on your ear like warm honey. It chokes you, fills your senses with Hongjoong’s scent, and you almost find yourself leaning into his curling lips before catching yourself. That seems to pique his interest in the very least, and his smile twists a bit more. “The decision is in your hands as always. I won’t do anything you don’t give me explicit permission to do.”

“Permission granted,” you mutter before catching a hand on Hongjoong’s collar. “Do it all.” You aren’t too worried about damaging his clothes as he’s not wearing anything drastically fancy or expensive-looking, and thus you twist your fist into a ball around the fabric of his black tee and yank him down to your height. He bends at the waist, hands catching on the mattress before his forehead can smack hard against yours. There’s a bit of tension in his neck, and that keeps him far enough back so that he doesn’t kiss you quite yet. It’s almost as though he is waiting for something else, eyes carefully tracing your features with great care before he settles on your lips, and a sharp inhale of breath follows before that thin line in his composure snaps.

His lips hit yours with a surprising amount of force, and the kiss isn’t at all what you were expecting — well, to be more accurate, you aren’t quite sure what you were expecting in the first place. It’s much more pleasant than you could have imagined though, and Hongjoong isn’t shy with the touch at all. His tongue is quick to swipe over your lower lip, hands darting upwards to brush over your sides before reaching your face, and he brings a knee down on the mattress to support his weight as he leans over you. You follow the motion when he pushes forward and lean back until you have no choice but to scoot back on the bed. Hongjoong moves with you with the same amount of fervor, still pressed to your lips without relent, and you don’t even think to stop as he completely drapes himself over your body, knees still up and supporting his weight. The cushion of the mattress dips by your head, a telltale sign that he’s placed his hands there, and you use that as your opportunity to stop for air. Hongjoong surely has no need to breathe like you do since he is undead, but he still pants above you, chest heaving as a pretty flush rises to his cheeks.

“Putting that much power in a demon’s hands is dangerous, is it not?” He mutters. You let your lashes flutter shut as he moves back to your lips, hot breath ghosting over your skin. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

“I’ll tell you if it’s something I don’t like,” you murmur, opening an eye to peek at him. He meets your gaze with a soft laugh, but your answer seems to please him enough to bring his attention back to your lips. You inhale as his tongue breaches your mouth and pushes into the wet cavern inside. There’s no chance for you to fight back for any sort of dominance because he only thrusts deeper and coats the inside of your mouth with his taste until you can feel his tongue brushing over your palate. A quiet moan reverberates through your throat and against his lips. You feel the barest hint of a smile in the kiss, then his lips are suddenly gone from yours. You gasp for air with the freedom. Heat pools in the depths of your gut, a pleasant one that leaves you wanting more, and you aren’t sure if it’s simply been so long since you last had sex or if Hongjoong truly has that effect on you.

He returns to touching your body a moment later, hands trailing to the row of buttons on your nightshirt, and one by one, he pulls them apart until the material is barely clinging to your skin. His lips replace his fingers then. First at your jaw placing a wet trail of kisses and soft nips that leave you with goosebumps. Then he reaches the midpoint of your sternum and rests the flat of his tongue there, tasting and teasing your skin until you can do nothing but writhe under him because he is taking so damn long. Your impatience is laughable to him, as evidenced by the quiet huff of air that leaves him next.

“I want to taste every inch of you,” he mumbles against the skin of your stomach, hands pulling your nightshirt away to expose more of the skin underneath. He makes good on his words, and that damn tongue traces lower and lower until he reaches the band of your pants and underwear. You instinctively dart a hand down to tangle in his hair. “F-Fuck.” The curse slips out when you give an accidental tug to the hair close to his nape, and you nearly think that you’ve hurt him in some manner until you catch sight of the blissed-out expression on his features.

“D-Do you — can I…?”

“Do it harder while I eat you out,” he growls. His fingers close hard around the remainders of your close, and you don’t even have time to nod before he’s yanking both your pants and underwear down in one fell swoop. It leaves you more than a little exposed — you’re suddenly nearly nude before the demon who is still fully clothed, and that realization draws your thighs tight together in a sudden rush of embarrassment. You swallow hard around nothing, eyes darting away from Hongjoong’s prying gaze.

All of a sudden, he shrugs your hand off his hair and sits back on his heels. You don’t understand what his reasoning is until you settle your eyes back on his body. He’s leaned back to start stripping layers of clothes off in a rush, hands fumbling and struggling to pull them away in an orderly manner. There is no composure to his actions, only a hastened fervor that has him tossing his shoes far from the bed along with random articles of clothes until he’s laid fully bare before you. You really try your hardest not to glance down at his… you know, but the urge is overwhelming. Before you can even catch a glimpse, however, Hongjoong is on you again, hands latched around your thighs and pulling you to the edge of the bed as he kneels before you on the floor. The sudden movement has you squealing in surprise, and that noise is broken off into a startled moan when Hongjoong’s lips brush through your folds without warning.

“O-Oh god,” you gasp out. Hongjoong’s tongue gives a long and dragging pull through your heat, teasing some of the juices out of you with little restraint.

“Far from it actually,” he replies against your clit. A cheeky grin eats away at his features, but it quickly disappears as he returns his focus to your cunt. Your hand finds its way back down to his hair once more and tugs hard at the strands. Each tweak of his tongue through your folds has your legs jerking a bit, and he has to tighten his grip on your thighs to keep you from moving so much under his touch.

“I’m not — I w-won’t last, pl-please, I–” You can’t even finish the sentence as Hongjoong flicks the tip of his tongue right over your clit and cuts you off. He repeats that same motion, again and again, brings you right to the precipice of an orgasm only to tear you back down from it with soft kisses pressed to the outside of your folds. You can’t keep track of how many times he repeats that process, but it is more than enough to have you shaking from exhaustion and desperation even though you haven’t even been able to come yet.

“Are you going to beg for it, doll?” Hongjoong hums after what feels like hours of pleasurable torture. “I promised to make you feel good, did I not? You just have to tell me what you want.” His words are so taunting that it burns you with embarrassment. The need for that orgasm hangs on every nerve ending of your body, and you could cry just out of the need to come.

“Please,” you whisper in a tone broken from constant moans and cries.

“Be more specific.” It’s so cruel. He dangles the promise of pleasure before your eyes again, this time nipping ever so gently at your bud, and you really do cry this time, fingers digging harshly on his scalp. That draws a prolonged growl from his lips, and it reverberates against you so nicely that you could come from that. Hongjoong pulls his head back too soon though and the sensation is dashed away.

“N-No, no, please. P-Please, Hongjoong, I — please let me come. I need it, I need it so badly. Shit, just – just please let me come,” you wail as tears slip out the corners of your eyes and spill onto the sheets under you. That’s the breaking point for him as well, or so it would seem, because the next time his mouth brushes through your cunt, he doesn’t relent. You come undone on his tongue, riding out the waves of your intense orgasm as he fucks his wet muscle into your heat. He won’t stop chuckling either — a low noise that just prolongs the pleasure and makes you quiver from overstimulation. He doesn’t let up until a dry and choked sob pushes past your lips.

Suddenly he is back up on the bed, bent over your body to be eye to eye with you. His fingers trace over your wet cheeks then clasp hard around your jaw.

“Too much?”

“N-No,” you stammer through the wet cries. “So good. So so good.”

“Mm, can you take my cock too, doll?” He all but purrs the words against your skin. His soft and trailing kisses return to your skin, peppering the line of your jaw just past his fingers.

“Yes, please, I c-can. Please. I want i-it all.” You never thought you could sound so overwhelmingly desperate, but the tumbling sensation that swerves through your stomach as Hongjoong’s demeanor shifts has you falling into absolute shambles. He shifts your position, pushing you up higher to rest against the pillows, and you start to drape your legs around his waist. That must not be the position he had in mind though, because his hand clamps down hard on one of your calves and pushes it to the top of his shoulder. Before you can even blink, he does the same with your other leg, effectively folding you in half and into a position you weren’t even aware that your body was capable of. That shock is momentary as you feel the tip of what must his cock rubbing over your pulsating hole. You can’t do anything but ball your fists around the sheets under you and cling to them like a vice. It’s the only thing that can prepare you for his girth; the stretch may not be as much as you thought it would be, but it still stings like a bitch even after he bottoms out in you. That pain must be showing on your features – in the way your brows are tightly knit together and your eyes are screwed shut so that excess tears from earlier slip out.

The soft caress of lips touches your forehead. It’s so gentle and delicate that you nearly miss it in your efforts to grow used to the sensation between your legs, but Hongjoong repeats it time and time again until your breathing steadies and your chest stops heaving as much. It’s only then that he dares to resituate his hips. You crack an eye open to look at him, and it’s abundantly clear that he’s trying his hardest to hold back and keep from fucking into you with reckless abandon.

“I’m okay now,” you whisper, pulling a hand off the bedsheets to brush some loose strands of hair out of Hongjoong’s vision. “Please fuck me as hard as you’d like.” You snake the same hand around the back of his neck. When he still doesn’t move, you offer a sharp tug to the hair that falls over his sweat-slick nape, and that spurs him into action. His hips snap roughly against yours, pushing your back further into the crude curve it’s already in. Now that the dull throbbing pain has dissolved into a sensation of pleasure, you drown yourself in the drag of his member inside you. It’s quite possibly the best feeling you’ve had all night with the way his tip rubs over your bundle of nerves at just the right angle.

Hongjoong drops his elbows to the pillow under your head, and you greet him with a kiss that is mostly just an awkward clash of teeth for the most part. He gains enough composure to shift the angle to one that’s easier for both of you, hips still working hard as he rocks into you with the same force and speed as before. You are so lost in the euphoria that you can’t even feel your next orgasm sneaking up on you, but when it does, it pulls a noiseless scream from your lips. Hongjoong mouths at the corner of your lips as you ride it out. He still seems far off from his own high, even as he slows the pulses of his thrusts. You claw your way back from the high of your orgasm to grip his hair tighter and pull him closer to you.

“In me. I need you to come in me or not at all,” you demand through a huffed out sigh. It’s a moment of throwing caution to the wind, one that is quite worth it thanks to the expression of hunger and lust that fills Hongjoong’s face.

“You can’t just say things like that, doll,” he growls into the shell of your ear. You try to laugh but he interrupts you with a thrust harsher than any of the ones before. Every sound that falls from your lips now is stuttered and broken at the seams, and you let him fuck you with that same level of passion until he finally seems to tire and lose his rhythm. The only warning you have that he’s about to orgasm is the slight whine to his tone when he moans next. You push what strength you have left into clenching hard around his cock, and that is ultimately what tips him over the edge and pulls a delightful moan from his lips as he spills into your tight heat. He releases his hold on your legs, letting them slip away from his shoulders and back into a more comfortable position on the bed, but he refuses to move off your body.

You aren’t sure how long the two of you stay like that: with Hongjoong continually mouthing small kisses to the underside of your jaw and you just staring blankly at the glittering ceiling with a mind nearly empty. However much time passes doesn’t quite matter because once you recover your senses enough to be coherent again, you recall what is supposed to come next. Shaky hands find their way to Hongjoong’s arms and trail up to rest atop his back.

“Take it all away,” you exhale through a pant, hands clinging desperately to the milky skin of Hongjoong’s shoulders. “I don’t want to remember him anymore.” His chest heaves against yours, and a few loose strands of dark hair fall forward to stick to his sweat-slick forehead. This time when he kisses you, it is hot and searing, a brand against your lips, one that burns the inside of your mouth and sets your tongue alight. The sensation slips down the back of your throat, fills your gut, burns you from the inside out, and all your thoughts go hazy under the touch of his lips. With that one kiss, Hongjoong takes it all away. He gives into your desires, heeds your wishes, and grants you the ultimate peace and serenity you so deeply craved. He continues to cling to you like he’s never held something so desperately or lost in his infinite existence. You return the embrace in full while you can, strength already leaving you in the afterglow of your fornication, and you rake your nails down over his back if only to leave him with some sort of trophy to leave with. He is already leaving with your memories though, a trophy to hold close to his heart should there ever be a time when you ask for them to be returned to you. Perhaps in your afterlife, you’ll ask for them back, and Hongjoong would gladly give them should it be what you desire.

That is what he is, after all. As much as he takes, the Demon King of the Underworld gives in return, where he can with what he can. His duty, his bond, the sole purpose for his existence is to maintain that balance between giving and taking. But if it’s for you — a creature so lost, dismal, and hopeless — perhaps he can tip the scales a bit further in your direction.

At least, that’s what he thinks as you curve your body into his and press your lips with more fervor than before. That maybe, just maybe, endless years of his own hopelessness and confusion were all meant to lead him to finding this: a purpose in his undying life.

﹎﹎﹎

#atzinc #kdiarynet #kwritersworldnet #ateez smut #ateez x reader #ateez angst #ateez imagine #ateez imagines #ateez oneshot #ateez scenarios #hongjoong smut #hongjoong x reader #hongjoong angst #hongjoong imagine #hongjoong imagines #hongjoong oneshot #hongjoong scenarios

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writefightandflightclub · 4 years

Text

Trial by Fire (Part 1/3) Santiago “Pope” Garcia x GN reader

Summary: You’re finally introducing your new boyfriend to The Boys. It must be intimidating for your guy because, hello? Not only are they literally lethal, as well as infeasibly handsome, but they’re hella protective of you to boot. They want the best for you so, naturally, they make your guy run the gauntlet the whole evening. Santiago, though? Well. Given that he is secretly in love with you? Let’s just say he doesn’t handle the situation very well at all.

Genre / tropes: angst, friends to lovers, love confession.

Author’s note: I wasn’t planning on writing this (in fact I’m writing the opposite, where “Santi has a new girlfriend and you don’t take it well” as a series, loosely based around the 7 deadly sins); but, in the meatime, I wrote this to get back into the swing of things after a lil break. It’s just a quick one, but there will be a second and final part, if you want it! Let me know!

Word count: somehow, 4.4k.

Warnings: language, angst, best friends arguing, Santi being an asshole.

Rating: T

The boys aren’t being as awful as you had anticipated, at least. For the most part, they’re actually being pretty friendly, and although they’ve transitioned into grilling Dean about every aspect of his life, they are at least listening intently and smiling at his answers. All except for one fucker, of course; and, naturally, surprising no-one, the fucker misbehaving is one (1) Santiago “Pope” Garcia.

The group - the boys, yourself, and Dean- are huddled comfortably around the blazing warmth of the fire pit in Frankie’s yard. The dancing, oranged flames cut through the dark and cold of the crisp night, as you sit upwind of the smoke on scattered, mis-matched camp chairs.

Whilst the others are evidently enjoying the evening -faces painted with smiles, body language open and leaning-in to chat to Dean- that fucker Santi is leaning back in his chair, his jaw twitching in seeming aggravation, his arms folded, and his intense eyes needling your beau. In this dim light, with the firelight licking over the sharp planes of his face, he looks every bit like a trained killer about to leap out of the shadows and garotte someone. Well… a very petulant trained killer. His call sign should have been Mr. Grumpy Pants, you think idly.

What’s up with him this time?! you wonder.

He gets these moods sometimes. And, when it strikes him, he can be a little bit hostile - despite the fact he’s a puppy underneath it all. You had hoped that for once, maybe he would suck it up, and yet, your hopes had been in vain, it seems.

Every time Dean speaks, or touches you, or even laughs at another of the guys’ stories, Santi’s expression sinks further and further through layers of distaste; and, by this point, he’s eyeing Dean as though he’s a war criminal the squad have been sent to take-out. You half expect him to leap up and take down Frankie any second for fraternizing with “the enemy”, if you’re honest.

Truth be told, you’ve had just about enough of this. Your friend had better buck his ideas up, sharpish, or he’d be reminded very swiftly that you were Delta Force too.

For now, trying to ignore the bastard, you look back at Dean, and the sight of him in animated conversation with your buddies causes at least some of your aggravation to fall away. Things have been going well between you and Dean, even if you do say so yourself. Originally from Michigan, he now worked as a lecturer at a nearby music school. He was also a banjo musician in a bluegrass / synth power-pop mash-up of a band, which (sort of) explained his retro-inspired mop of brown hair and his thick dark moustache - majestic enough to rival Frankie’s. True, he wasn’t your usual type, but he was honest, and sweet and kind... Plus, he’d never killed anyone with his bare hands, which was rather refreshing too, if you were honest.

Safe to say, so far, things were working out. So well, in fact, that you’d recently met his parents for the first time while they were in town. So well, in fact, that -after keeping him purposefully away from the boys for as long as you feasibly could- you’d now brought him to meet your family. That’s what this squad was to you, after all. Your family.

Remembering sporadic moments from the past few months together, you smile gently as you listen to Dean talk. You watch him seamlessly integrate some tailored conversation starters you’d fed him ahead of time, and you gently squeeze his thigh in an act of reassurance and appreciation. He is feeling the pressure, you can tell, although he is handling it well. To be fair, you think, who wouldn’t feel the pressure? You’d been nervous enough to meet his parents, but this? A bunch of Delta Force guys and an MMA champion? This squad was lethal; literally -you’ve lost track of your combined kill count, though Will probably hasn’t, you are sure.

Aside from that though, most of all, they are your family. You need them to like Dean and vice versa, and you know that isn’t necessarily a given. You are a tight-knit group, with little hope of outsiders grasping the full extent of your decade’s old in-jokes, or the intense camaraderie instilled by facing a hail of bullets together. Plus, as the baby of the group, they were protective as all hell of you.

It came from a good place, you knew: they wanted what was best for you. But, there was a reason you’d delayed this meeting... It’s not as though they were threatening or anything. They didn’t do the whole “if you hurt our buddy, I’ll kill you” thing, for example (at least, not while you were present – you couldn’t vouch for what happened when you were out of earshot). However, after introducing a succession of boyfriends to them over the years, the squad had developed a well-rehearsed system for sizing-up your new squeeze. In the past, not all of your squeezes had made it through the gauntlet. It was a trial by fire, to be sure, and you were pleased that Dean has not yet been burned.

Of course, whilst the boys’ approval didn’t mean everything to you, you couldn’t deny it was important; perhaps especially this time, with this guy. And, out of all of the group, Santi’s approval meant the most to you. Always had. Probably because Santi meant the most to you, full stop. You simply couldn’t imagine having someone in your life that didn’t get on with your best friend. And, so, you are not overly thrilled at the reception Santi is giving Dean right now. The reception he had been giving him all evening, in fact. And the more you dwell on it, the more an anger bubbles forth from you. Even though you try to push it down, and focus on Dean, that fucker in the corner of your eye sends you.

“What’s wrong with you tonight, Garcia?” you blurt out, a little louder than intended, causing the amiable chat and giggles to stall, all eyes turning to you - then, in turn, following the direction of your fiery gaze over to Santi, who shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

Now, he leans forward. Looks back at you with a rare venom in his eyes. With a smug curl of his mouth, he dips to pick up his beer from the floor and takes a swig - buying himself some time. Trying to brush you off. Still, your gaze does not relent as he rests his elbows on his thighs, bridging his fingers together in the space between, thumbs sticking in the air.

Now, he engages, and he looks directly at Dean, his eyes sweeping dismissively over the entirety of his form. Now, he speaks, his voice filled with far more bitterness than the situation merits. “Nothing at all. I’m fucking peachy. So, Dean. You play the motherfuckin’ banjo?” he offers, and yet, it sounds far more like an accusation than a question.

What the fuck is up with him?

Wilting a little beneath Santi’s stare, as the ex-operative squints his eyes in his direction, Dean casts a helpless, sideward glance at you from his place in the circle, and yet, you are so stupefied by anger that you can do little to help.

“I think what my dear friend means to say -” Frankie dips in valiantly, smacking Santi pointedly on the thigh, likely hoping to smack some sense into him too “- is why don’t you tell us more about your music, Dean?”

Frankie’s eyes and smile are soft when he looks at you, surreptitiously exchanging a pointed look -what’s up with that pendejo?- and you are grateful that at least some of the evident tension is diffused when he picks up the slack in the conversation.

Santi and his mood swings be damned, and, feeling bolstered, Dean continues on.

“Actually, it’s going pretty frickin’ well with the band. It’s a side-gig to my lecturing job, but we’re planning a tour during summer vacation. The States -east coast- and Western Europe for now. Maybe headlining a couple of small festivals, if that pans out, who knows.” Dean relates, humbly.

“That’s great, man,” Will chips in, helping Frankie get things back on track. “We’ll have to come down to a gig soon, hear you play.”

“Actually, we have something to tell you about the tour, don’t we, babe?” Dean says bashfully, and he looks at you expectantly, waiting for you to pick-up the thread. You’d talked about it before coming today, and it had seemed like a great idea at the time, but suddenly, now that the announcement is imminent, your mouth is dry - as if filled with cotton. Still, you force a smile, and you’re not sure why, but you look anywhere else but at Santi as your lips form the words. “Yeah – kinda big news, fellas. I’m going to join Dean on the Europe leg of the tour. I’ll be leaving you losers behind for a few months.”

Dean’s face cracks into a smile and he reaches for your hand, looking made-up at the prospect. Still, while you will yourself to be fully present in the moment, you find yourself focussed on looking anywhere but at Santi, sure that his stare must be boring into the side of your head. You hadn’t told him yet. Unfortunately, at Santi is where just about everyone else ends up looking, as the fucker abruptly pushes his camp chair back and stands, storming indoors before anyone can hope to fathom it.

You exchange glances with Frankie, Will, and Benny, with Benny thankfully stepping-in this time to distract Dean from the obvious, and asking him which stops you two will be making, and which sights you plan to see.

“Look, man, don’t mind that tool. Got any sightseeing plans?”

What is Santi’s problem? Why can’t he give Dean a chance? Yes, you’ve made some mistakes in the past- been hurt, and Santi had helped you pick up the pieces -every time- but you had a good feeling about Dean. A really good feeling. Can’t he see that too?

Frankie throws a concerned glance back towards the house and motions as if to stand, but you beat him to it, wanting to get to the bottom of this. “I’ll go,” you insist, motioning for Frankie to stay put, and with a quick promise to Dean that you’ll be back soon (and a silent plea to your boys to take care of him in your absence), you do just that, walk-jogging across the grass.

When you step inside to the kitchen, you find Santi stood, hunched over the counter, his palms clasping the surface tight enough that his knuckles pale, and his head hung low, his shoulders rising and falling as he takes in exaggerated breaths.

“Well?” you ask pointedly, with zero tolerance for his bullshit. “What’s going on with you? Wanna explain why you’re being an ass to my boyfriend?” you challenge to the back of him, and he instantly whips around at the sound of your voice.

“I’m being an ass?” he asks indignantly, his eyebrows shooting towards the top of his head.

“Yes. In a nutshell. Yes,” you hiss, any other interpretation feeling impossible. You fold your arms and purse your lips, making it plainly evident that you are waiting for some explanation. And, oh boy, it had better be good.

Instead of explaining though, Santi simply huffs out breath, gesturing angrily out of the window. “That guy, really? That’s the guy you’re gonna go all in for? Go to fucking Europe for?”

That guy, you mouth silently, completely stupefied for a moment. You’re not sure exactly what your so-called friend is insinuating, but you are clear that you don’t like it one bit.

“What is your fucking problem?” you ask, punctuating your words with motions of your hands, as if you are trying to strangle the air in-between you in lieu of his neck. “Dean’s a catch. He’s hot, he’s sweet, he’s a nice guy. He’s there for me. He takes care of me.”

“Like I don’t take care of you?!” Santi exclaims, his voice rising and abrasive; and then, immediately after the words tumble forth from his lips, he steps back imperceptibly, as if startled by his own outburst, his hand rasping over the stubble on his chin.

“What in the...? This isn’t about you, you ass!” you bite back, face scrunching up in confusion. Your fingers come to your temples as you grow increasingly lost-off and perplexed, and seemingly, your riposte only makes Santi double down on whatever the hell he is complaining about.

“Who’s the one who’s always been there for you, hmm? Who picks up the pieces every time you make yet another dumb shitty choice with another shitty guy?” he rambles, gesturing his hand towards you dismissively.

You step back from him this time, just a little, tears spiking instantaneously in your eyes at such an unnecessarily cruel blow. He’s right, in a sense: you had always relied on Santi to heal you, not to hurt you - and yet here he was dealing these painful, incoherent blows out of nowhere.

“Shit, Garcia. If it’s that much trouble to be there for me don’t bother next time,” you snap, your voice breaking as the swell of anger and hurt and adrenalin sends tears spilling over your cheeks. “Don’t worry though, I don’t think I’ll need you again. In fact, I have a feeling this guy might stick. So, maybe? Maybe you should think about the fact that the only shitty guy around here is you.”

“You really think he’s good enough for you, hmm? He’s really who you want to end up with?”

You listen, aghast, as his tirade keeps coming. However, as Santi’s voice breaks with emotion part-way through his second question, you can’t explain it, but you feel an intolerable sadness in the pit of you. Even though you’re not sure what’s causing all this, what you’re barrelling toward, you want to thrust this sadness away from you. Push him away from you. You want to push away the knot in your stomach for fear that if you tug at that thread, you might arrive at an answer to his question.

Exasperated, overwhelmed, you roughly paw tears from your cheeks, not knowing where all of these feelings are coming from, in either direction. “Fuck, I... I don’t understand what this is. I don’t get it!” you say, waving your hands, palms-up, through the air. “Is this some macho bullshit? Have I pissed you off somehow?”

At that, the wave of Santi’s anger crests and breaks; as you wonder if you annoyed him. Then, as suddenly as his anger came it is waning, his eyes pooling with rare tears now. With a huff of breath he tears off his damn cap, tossing it aside to run a hand through his grizzled hair.

“No. No,” he backtracks a little, palms up in surrender. “You haven’t... I.... I just...” He pinches his lips in-between his teeth and looks up at the ceiling as his words trail off, perhaps trying to steady his voice before continuing. Or, perhaps he has nothing else to say to you. Perhaps he’s said enough.

You examine him. Still pissed as all hell, but worried now too, and ultimately, your love for your best friend slightly edging-out the anger. It’s rare that anything affects him like this, and you can’t help the sudden rush of concern.

Cresting too, you exhale a tightly held breath into the now silent, taut space between you, and your body sags - just a little. You chew over your words a moment, but when your voice comes back the volume is lower, your tone softer - and, although it cannot be considered friendly, by any stretch, it’s the best you can do right now.

“You know what,” you offer, generously, wrapping your arms around your own middle, stroking your forearms with your own fingertips. “I’m giving you a pass. You don’t even want to give Dean a chance? Then just leave, Santi. Just go. I’ll give the guys some bullshit excuse that doesn’t leave you looking like a total ass, because I’m not a dick to my friends. So just go, okay?” You pump your eyebrow at him indignantly and await a response, your manner stiff and unyielding.

Santi closes his eyes and knits his brow together, something like regret finally passing over his face and he shuffles guiltily from foot-to-foot.

You puff out air through your teeth and shake your head, as you observe this Delta Force hero; the bravest man you know in many ways, but still too cowardly to tell it like it is. To admit that he’s in the wrong. You are afraid to say that even as his gaze comes back to you, misty-eyed, you have little sympathy for his plight. You are sure it is of his own doing. You are almost as sure that he won’t open-up.

“You know,” you begin, breaking from your position and gathering up a fresh cooler of beers from the fridge, turned away from him as you speak. “I brought Dean to meet my family. Do you understand that? I didn’t have parents and siblings for him to meet. I have you guys. You’re my family.”

Still nothing. Nothing but silence greets you. Nothing but a pained expression on his face, his brows drown together and the artificial light of the kitchen highlighting the harsh planes of his face as you look over your shoulder at him, waiting for some reaction. Some admission of guilt. None comes. He simply slots his hands into his jean pockets, looking sheepish.

“So,” you continue, greeted with a brick wall, “fuck knows why you don’t want me to be happy, but I am. I’m happy with him. Thanks a ton for shitting all over that.”

You don’t even bother to look towards him this time, instead placing the last of the clinking, condensation-adorned bottles into the carrier, resigned to head back out without him, and without any apology.

“I’m sorry,” he finally says, and your head whips towards him in surprise.

He looks it - sorry. He looks apologetic. Deeply so. He looks sorry for this, for every way he’s ever slighted you, for every time he’s hurt you, even in ways and moments you never knew about. He looks sorry down to the pit of him, and it catches you off-guard when you see it freely offered there in his eyes.

Even so, this is a stubborn man. There’s an apology, but there’s no explanation. Nothing to explain his behaviour. So, even though it seems genuine, it also doesn’t seem like enough.

It doesn’t appease you, and yet, all you can bring yourself to do is sigh deeply.

You know Santi better than anyone, but there’s always been a part of him that has seemed out of reach, even to you. You’re not sure -never have been- whether to be scared or excited by those unknown parts of him. Not sure whether the impasse hints at buried secrets too dark and deep to bear, or whether it hints of a possibility of something more. Something deeper or something better you could have together, if only he would let you in. You don’t know, and you never have, but all you are sure of is that you have constantly teetered on the edge of that abyss, too much left unknown to know all of him, however much you may have wished to. He’s entitled to his secrets, of course, but you hate how they hurt him.

With a little sympathy now, you examine his watery eyes, and when your voice comes back this time, it is softer and slower than you intended. More tired than you expected.

“You know, Dean wants to be with me. And he tells me so.” You casually dip down to pick-up the cooler handle, eyes still fixed on your best friend. “He might not be Delta Force… he might be a banjo player from Michigan… but even he’s brave enough for that.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Santi says, bristling all over again, his hand rasping angrily over his stubbled jaw, and yet, you decline him an explanation. Instead, keeping your own secrets now, holding back, you head towards the door, beers in hand.

Still, you turn back to him. You might be angry, but you still care for him -more than you could say.

“If you figure out what’s up with you, let me know, and I’ll be there for you. Whatever you’ve got going on, you know that, right? But this? This isn’t okay, Garcia. You might think that I make dumb choices -you ass, by the way- but I’ve watched you hit self-destruct so many times instead of dealing with your feelings. Maybe you should look at your own life, huh, instead of shitting all over me for trying to be happy? Shit, at least I fucking try.”

His eyes shift from side to side in the room, the muscles in his jaw twitching, chin jutting forward, and his thumbs locked in his belt loops. He can’t quite bring himself to meet your gaze; at least not until you are disappearing through the threshold; until it’s almost too late. Why can’t he ever manage anything unless it’s too late?

“Wait!” he pleads, but you cut him off, before he can speak. Even though, truth be told, you’re not sure he would muster anything to say at all, even if you gave him a chance. He’s so used to holding back.

“No,” you say firmly. “Forget it, I’m done. I still love you- you’re my best friend. But, fuck, just go home, and get out of my sight, Santiago. I’m so pissed with you right now.”

And so, you turn away, and when his words finally do come, they are spoken to the back of your head. They are spoken without you ever seeing his lips move, and you wonder if he ever said them at all, or if this might be some cruel trick of the night. Some witching hour spell. That is, until you turn towards him and you see the words painted clearly on his face too.

“Fuck it. I’m in love with you.”

I’m in love with you.

Why can’t he ever manage anything unless it’s too late?

You’re not sure what reaction he was expecting, but you almost choke on the sudden lump in your throat. You feel a taste of bile rising-up into your mouth. An intense, resurgent anger fills you, which near makes the room spin, and makes your hands and your legs tremble.

Even if a hidden, unconscious part of you has been waiting, hoping for these words all these years, when they finally come all you can feel is... royally pissed off.

“Oh. No. No. No,” you repeat, words gradually increasing in volume, looking at Santi as if he has mortally wounded you, rather than offered that confession. “You do not get to do this to me.”

You see a hard swallow bob down his throat, a near-instant regret on his face, and your heart pounds in your chest as you reel with the implications of his words.

The coward. The fucking asshole. He waited until now? All the times things had gone to shit, and he waited until you were happy?

“All the times...” you accuse, your tone as bitter as the taste in your mouth, the metallic tang of blood as you feel a rushing in your ears. “All the fucking times. All the chances, Santi, and you do this now?” you continue, your finger sawing through the air, wagging accusations at him, even as your voice wavers, as your hands notceably tremble. “No. Fuck you, Garcia. Fuck you.”

You want to cry, or scream, but you are too angry. So angry, that it eclipses anything else which might come to light. So angry that you almost come full circle again, beginning to stabilise out at eerily calm.

Santi looks down at the floor, and exhales air, chuckling disbelievingly to himself, then lightly nodding his head, lips pressed tightly together. His feet shift agitatedly below him as he brings his endlessly familiar eyes back up to meet yours. This time when he looks at you, it hurts. You remember bullet wounds, and you swear that was nothing compared to this.

“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say to me, hmm? Fuck you, Garcia?”

“What the fuck were you expecting?” you say, launching your words before you realise the implications of them. Yes, you know fine well that your boyfriend is sitting outside, likely wondering where you have got to. But, if you had the wherewithall to have thought about it, you would know exactly what Santi was expecting, despite all of that. You would know that a part of him must be expecting, hoping, that when he told you, you might reciprocate. That you might love him back.

And, would that be so outside of the realms of possibility? Would it be so hard to imagine that the deep, magnetic, and unshakeable friendship you shared could be something else? Something more? That you could tip over the edge you had long been teetering on? Maybe it could, or maybe it could have, but right now, you can’t see past the flashbang he has just dropped over your life, and it is clouding your vision.

You were happy. You are happy. Fuck him for doing this now.

Why would you fall into the unknown for him, if you never knew whether he would catch you? If you never knew whether ruin or safety awaited you if you let yourself tip? He always held back.

What the fuck were you expecting?

Your words linger in the space between you, and in lieu of any other lifeline, realisation dawns on Santi’s face. Realisation that, although he jumped, you are not intending to catch him either. But how could you catch him, with your arms already full?

And, so, he slowly nods his head once again, his eyes beading with glassy tears and his hand grazing over his chin in a self-soothing gesture. Wordlessly, he sets his jaw and he abruptly replaces his baseball cap on his head, padding a few steps forward to stand opposite you, sucking all of the breath from your lungs. This time, when he looks at you, you see all of your past, but you still can’t see beyond that. The abyss still scares you too much.

Like this, facing each other down, eye-to-eye, the silence in the room grows sharp as a knife, refined to a point. So, when Santi abruptly turns to leave in a sharp, determined trajectory, without so much as looking at you, it is as if he has dragged the blade across your skin in an equally swift motion. As if he has left you open and bleeding-out, having delivered a mortal wound with the act of his exit. You’ve felt like this on the battelfield before, and in life, yet he was always there for you. Always there to patch you. To pick up the pieces.

Instead of screaming open-mouthed for help, this time, you simply watch him go, and now you are the wordless one, mustering nothing but a gasped inhale of breath before your vision blurs with tears - as you watch his hazy form disappear along the hall and out of your sight.

“Santi,” you call pathetically, your voice small and weak and teary, barely making it past your throat, and he doesn’t hear you. He doesn’t hear you but even if he had, you’re not sure anymore if he would have stopped.

When Santi slams the front door behind him, you shudder with it in its frame, your hand coming to your chest as if to hold your heart inside your opened-up ribs, and you close your eyes against the jarring sound, tears spilling down your cheeks, your face screwing-up into a shined, contorted grimace.

Entirely lost, now alone, you bizarrely wish for the room to be filled with anger again, instead of the intolerable sadness - which all too suddenly takes hold of you as your emotions crest and break. It is all you can do to stumble forward a few paces and hunch over the countertop, finding yourself in the exact position you had discovered Santi in. You stand, bracing yourself with your arms, fingers clutching the edge of the worktop, and your head slumped forward, tears freely spilling out of you as your chest heaves.

You wonder whether he’d held himself in this same position because he had felt an intolerable sadness too. An intolerable sadness at seeing you happy.

Suddenly you could understand it.

That fucker. Santiago “Pope” Garcia.

I’m in love with you.

The words echo in your mind, but this time, if you’re honest, you’re not wholly sure if they’re his, or yours.

PART TWO IS HERE

#santiago pope garcia x reader #santiago pope garcia #santiago garcia x reader #triple frontier #triple frontier x reader #triple frontier fanfic

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sehunniepotwrites · 4 years

Text

caught in your web | m.l

🕷SYNOPSIS— in which you can’t stand mark getting hurt anymore, not when you’re madly in love with him 🕷GENRE— mcu!au, spiderman!au, fluff, suggestive 🕷PAIRING— spiderman!mark lee x person in the chair!reader (gn) 🕷WORD COUNT— 1771

🕷WARNINGS— mentions of violence and battles, cleaning wounds, making out (lmao)

🕷AUTHOR’S NOTE—day two of my mark lee breakdown and i came up with this. i have been in love with the idea of spider!mark ever since i’ve read @xiaomoon‘s leap of faith and i finally got to write my own version of peter marker ;;; hope y’all enjoy this! (briefly edited, some mistakes may remain!)

—🕸🕷—

You don’t exactly remember how and when it all went down, but to sum it all up, your best friend of all time is Spiderman and you’re his person in the chair. You’re the J.A.R.V.I.S. to his Tony Stark or are you his F.R.I.D.A.Y.? You can’t be his Karen because his Karen is the user interface of his current suit— never mind that, that’s not really relevant.

The most important takeaways from this are that:

your best friend, Mark Lee, is the newest addition to the Avengers

you’re the mastermind behind the computer that guides him through New York City

And lastly, you’re in love with that dumbass of a superhero.

At first, you were mad that Mark didn’t tell you. Then, you were quite surprised that he kept a secret from you for that long— that boy has a hard time keeping his mouth shut.

When you first found out, Mark in full superhero garb entered his room through the window while you were impatiently waiting for him on his bed with a Death Star Lego set in hand. You dropped the almost complete set out of shock and it shattered to pieces. Mark, with his red and black mask in hand and a suit that clung to his surprisingly fit body so perfectly (like honestly, when did he look like that?), made you promise that you would never tell his Aunt May. You linked your smaller pinky with his own, swearing not to tell but on one condition— that you could be his person in the chair.

Being behind-the-scenes while in the chair is extremely thrilling. Sure, you have no superpowers to contribute to the fight but you have the brains and the technology to help Mark in any way you possibly could. You tell him the best possible route with Karen backing you up and Mark will blindly follow. You are his tracker, eyes in the sky, and his safety net—you have his complete trust.

The worst thing about being his person in the chair, though, is watching Mark get hurt in action and knowing there is not much you can do about it without physically being there. Watching the person you love get hurt—no matter how enhanced their body was—is beyond taxing. You never know if he’s going to make it and it kills you inside when you’re barking commands into your headset, calling for Karen to activate the best mode to get Mark out of the battle site. It tears you to absolute pieces and that’s how you ended up here, in your bedroom with violent tears running down your cheeks.

Mark is laying down on your bed with his torso resting against your lap. His mask is discarded somewhere on your bedroom floor while the top half of his suit is peeled off his injured body. You’re crying, hands trembling as he’s gasping for air and wincing every time you attempt to clean a wound.

“How could you be so reckless, Mark?!” you scold him through a hushed whisper. You press another alcohol-soaked swab onto a cut. He hisses, his hand squeezing your knee to keep him from screaming. “You’re an idiot!”

Mark is groaning, body twisting and turning while sinking his teeth onto his bottom lip. You can tell he wants to scream but your parents are home and you don’t want them to walk into this gruesome sight. They think you’re just up to your usual game playing.

“I had to!” Mark argues back. His nose is scrunched up and you can just see how much pain he’s in. You want to do nothing but kiss the pain away but there were more pressing matters to attend to, like disinfecting all the cuts scattering his body. “They were heading this way, to this neighborhood. To you!”

God, you hate how headstrong and stubborn he is at times. “And that matters why? I can easily reroute you and you know that! For some reason, you chose not to listen and now you’re badly hurt and you’re bleeding a lot and I can’t even take you to the hospital and—”

“Hey, hey, hey, no, no, no. None of that, okay? It’s fine, I’m fine.” He must’ve sensed how the panic was seeping through your veins with his spidey senses or maybe Mark just knew you well enough.

“See?” Mark gestures to an arm you had already patched up. The cuts you already tended to look so much better than before and the bruises are healing faster than the normal rate.

“I’ll be fine in a day or two, bubs,” he reassures you with a pained smile. That didn’t reassure you at all.

“That’s not the point!”

“Then what— ow, fuck, you’re pressing too hard, ow— what is?” Mark tries to wriggle away and you press a hand onto his firm chest (oh my god, seriously, how is he built like this?) to keep him still.

You’re done dressing his wounds and you take in the number of supplies you’ve used to tend to him.

The battles out there are getting worse and the teenager just comes up more battered and bruised. You don’t know much longer you can take seeing your best friend like this. You’re so caught up in him and you can’t leave. You feel as if Mark shot some of his web fluid at you and suddenly, you’re just trapped in this ridiculous web of love and you can’t fight your way out of it.

“If you keep acting recklessly, there will be no more friendly neighborhood Spiderman!” You can’t stand the thought of Mark being gone. The world out there was tough to live in as it is but a world without your idiotic best friend with superpowers? You can’t even imagine it.

“What if I want to be more than that?” he asks, his voice dropping lower than his usual volume,

“Well, you can’t be more than that if you’re dead!” you hiss back at him. “And that’s something I don’t want to see!”

He flinches at your tone.

“No, wait— ugh, that’s not what I meant,” he lifts a hand to run through his hair. “What if I want to be more than just your friendly neighborhood Spiderman?”

“Mark, I really don’t get what you’re saying.” You look down at him, confusion buzzing through your features. “And that’s saying a lot.”

“What if I wanted to be more than just Spiderman to you? Because— I don’t know, that’s all I’ve wanted for a while now? Besides, like doing this whole Avengers-slash-saving the world thing?”

You blink at him, trying to process his words as Mark rambles on, his bare back still pressed against your thighs.

“Do you even get what I’m saying? I don’t think I’m making any sense. Shit, how do people do this?” Mark continues as you try to make sense of his ongoing rant.

“Do what?”

“Confess to the person they like? Is there, like, a step-by-step guide or something because I don’t think I’m doing this right,” he replies fairly quickly before he realizes what came spilling out of his mouth. Mark’s face turns as red as his suit and his eyes are as wide as his mask’s lenses; you’re sure your face is mirroring a similar look.

You swallow and clear your throat, trying to organize the many revelations running through your scattered brain. “So, let me get this straight.”

“Yeah, uh, sure,” Mark almost squeaks in disbelief.

“You almost died in my arms just now and you’re worried about the proper way to confess to me?” You laugh in disbelief. What a typical Mark thing of him to do.

“Well, uh, yeah, ‘cause dude, I’m pretty sure you know this but I haven’t done this sort of thing before.” He’s avoiding eye contact, clearly embarrassed by the situation. His hands are playing with the ends of his suit, a tell-tale of his nervousness.

You grab his hands, pulling them away from ruining the fabric, and squeeze them gently. “You’re such a nerd,” you tease fondly.

“Hey!” he yells back at the insult.

“But it’s a good thing that I, um, like nerds,” you manage to cough out, a heat seeping through your cheeks. Your confession is barely above a whisper but Mark’s enhanced senses help him pick up your words perfectly. His body freezes for a second before his head snaps up.

Mark’s brown irises lock onto yours, hope swimming through them. “You—you do?”

“Yeah,” you let out a breathy laugh. Your hand runs up the side of his neck to comb through his hair. You feel him shiver at your touch and you shyly smile at him. You’re nervous but you shouldn’t be—Mark’s your best friend.

“There’s this one nerd running around the city in a red and black suit. Ever heard of him?”

He’s laughing at this point and all your worries disappear. “Yeah, I think I have. He’s pretty cool.”

“I think he’s pretty cute, too” you confess, dipping your head down to move a bit closer to him. Mark meets you halfway, his hand wiggling its way to clasp the back of your neck. Your heart is beating so hard against your chest and the butterfly wings are tickling your stomach at the proximity.

You touch your forehead to his, nuzzling them together and he lets out a deep chuckle that sets your heart ablaze. “I guess you could say I got caught in his web,” you tease. You hear him suck on his teeth.

“Just kiss me already.”

“Only if you promise that you’ll listen to me and be more careful out there,” you reply, boldly pressing a kiss by his mouth. He chases your lips and you quickly pull away.

“Ah, promise me.”

“Promise, yes, I promise,” he groans. “Just let me kiss you.”

The word “okay” barely leaves your mouth before he pulls himself up to press his body against yours. Mark slots his lips against yours and you sigh into him, breathing in his scent. It starts off as innocent but the kiss takes a turn when Mark breaks away to slide off your lap. He keeps his hand behind your head and lowers you down to lie completely straight on your bed.

Mark climbs on top, knees on either side of your hips as he captures your lips again. Your fingers fly to his hair and he lets out a noise as your nails scratch his scalp. “Love you,” he whispers into the kiss.

“Love you, too,” you smile as you tug him even closer.

Yeah, you love being Spiderman’s person in the chair but you think you love being Mark Lee’s person a hell of a whole lot more.

#neowritingsnet #mark lee #nct mark #mark scenarios #mark imagines #mark fanfic #mark fluff #mark lee x reader #spiderman!mark #nct scenarios #nct imagines #nct x reader #fuck i am so whipped for mark lee

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novelconcepts · 3 years

Note

FOUND IT!!! Consider this an official ask for 3 and 14 combined! #wheee

smiling into a kiss and play wrestling

Having a best friend again is strange. She’d gone so long imagining the phrase as a sort of neon sign staked firmly in the past: Best Friend, already spoken for. Eddie had always been it; no other volunteers need apply.

But Eddie’s gone now, out of her life, living out wherever his might go in another country altogether, and Dani finds the position has--slowly, without really planning for it--been filled once more. Not that she planned for it. Not that could ever could have.

She didn’t come to Bly looking for Jamie, and if you’d told her the gardener who refused to so much as meet her eyes, much less introduce herself, would become the most important person in her life--well. Life is full of surprises.

There is so little of Eddie in Jamie, she sometimes wonders how both could have occupied the same shape in her heart. Sometimes wonders how Eddie--who prized cleanliness, routine work hours, dinners at his mother’s once a week--would look at Jamie, if he could see her. Jamie, all tousled hair, happiest with a cigarette between her teeth and both hands buried in soil. Jamie, who has never kept a nine-to-five, never craved Sunday afternoons with her parents, never looks at Dani like she expects firm posture, bright smile, neat clothes.

They couldn’t possibly be more different--and yet, somehow, Jamie is her best friend. Unfair to think it, maybe, but she might be the best friend Dani’s ever had. Her sense of humor is dark, her vocabulary wallpapered with curse words and shorn letters; she smells of nicotine and sunscreen, dresses in wrinkled flannels and torn jeans. Where Eddie looped an arm around her shoulders, Jamie nudges her with bony elbows; where Eddie pressed his lips to her temple, Jamie leans carefully away. Different, in every measure.

And it isn’t that she likes Jamie more. That wouldn’t be fair--not after so many years in Eddie’s company. It’s just that when Jamie looks at her, eyes bright, dirt smudged on one cheek, sometimes, she feels...

“You’re thinking,” Jamie observes. She doesn’t say it the way Eddie would--the way he always pointed out when she was clenching her fist under the table, or picking at her nails, his voice edged with concern bordering on condescension. Her voice is light, her lips curved in a small smile.

Eddie never quite smiled at her like that. Or, if he did, it didn't pluck the same chord in her stomach. Not that that matters. Not that that affects the sincerity of friendship.

Not that it’s making her feel weirdly flushed this afternoon.

“Am I not allowed to think?” she asks. The sun, she thinks, is responsible for the goofy smile on her face. The heat of the day, which stretches on and on the way only early July knows how.

“Not arguing,” Jamie says. “One of us ought to.”

She’s on her knees, pulling weeds, her face shining with sweat. There’s something about days like this--afternoons where the kids are occupied helping Owen bake cookies, leaving Dani to nurse a glass of water and pleasantly-meandering conversation--that feels almost too good to be allowed. Eddie would have wanted to do something with a day like this: hike, or clear up the yard, or go visit family.

Jamie, on the other hand, pushes to her feet and surveys the bed she’s spent all day working. “Think that’s good enough for a break. Here, budge over.”

Dani obediently scoots to the edge of her seat, amused when Jamie flops down half in her lap. A year of working at the manor, and Jamie’s gone from a woman who couldn’t make eye contact to save her life to this: gangly limbs tossed haphazardly over Dani’s, sweat-slick skin sticking where it lands against Dani’s shoulder. It’s too hot for cozying up like this, but she can’t seem to convince herself to push Jamie away.

“There,” Jamie sighs, tilting her head back against the plastic of the lawn chair. “Christ, feels good just to breathe.”

“You breathe,” Dani says, “and I’ll think. Together, we make an almost-functional human being.”

“Almost,” Jamie says wryly. Her hand loops around Dani’s, teasing the sweating glass out of her grip long enough to take a sip. Dani nudges her.

“Could get you one of your own, if you ever learned to ask politely.”

“Don’t like me polite,” Jamie says with a shrug. “My brand is prickly-yet-charming, and we both know I’m your favorite for it.”

“Technically,” Dani corrects, “Flora is my favorite. Mainly because she doesn’t make me remind her to say please.”

“Please,” Jamie says without missing a beat, “keep pretending you aren’t captivated by my winning personality.”

Dani laughs. “Oh, is that what I am?”

“Mm.” Jamie takes another sip, reaches over her to set the glass down on the table, closes her eyes. “S’what you were all pensive about just now, I’m sure. How entranced you are with my witty banter.”

“Entranced,” Dani repeats.

“Beguiled. Mesmerized. Drunk with adoration.” Jamie’s face is pink, a bead of sweat neatly lining her upper lip. Dani only realizes she’s staring a fortunate beat before Jamie rolls her head to the left, peering at her with lazy amusement. “Go on. Tell me how much you love me.”

“Love how ridiculous you can be, maybe.” And how sweet, and how unquestioningly soft, though she doesn’t see a need to put that into words--or a way to do it without sounding entirely out of her head. The heat, she thinks, is absolutely getting to her.

It’s the heat, making her want suddenly to slide an arm between the plastic back of the chair and the cotton of Jamie’s tank top, pulling her even closer. The heat, making her want to displace the normal back-and-forth ease of friendship with something else entirely.

She’s had a best friend before. She’s never quite wanted to do with Eddie what she is, more and more, thinking about with Jamie curled up beside her.

Distract, she thinks, because Jamie is still watching her with that half-lidded expression she gets when the sun is particularly bright, the day’s work has been well-tended, and Dani’s shoulder is a cushion beneath her head. More and more, it’s been feeling like a dangerous sort of moment, Jamie’s face lingering near the crook of her neck. Jamie’s breath coasting down the neckline of her dress. Jamie’s smile sweeter than should be allowed, given the grumpy way she slouches around the grounds.

“Thinking,” Jamie says, her voice almost soft. Dani shakes her head.

“It’s not illegal.”

“Is,” Jamie says, “if you’re gonna just stare at me all googly-eyed while you do it. C’mon, what gives? Is today some holiday I’ve forgotten?” She sits up a little straighter, her face comic in its sudden concern. “Shit, Poppins, it’s not your birthday.”

She almost wants to say it is, just to watch Jamie turn fascinating new shades of maroon. “No--just--it’s hot.”

Jamie sags back with palpable relief. Her arm is freckled, Dani notices, beyond the norm; the summer is drawing all sorts of secrets from her skin, and it’s suddenly painfully tempting, the urge to trace her nail along these newfound constellations.

Distract, she thinks again, more urgently this time. Without thinking it through, without considering the consequences, she dips two fingers into the glass of water and flicks the still-cool moisture directly into Jamie’s face.

Jamie, to her credit, hardly jumps. She’s just blinking at Dani like their conversation has taken an unanticipated left turn into another language, water dripping from the end of her nose.

“Okay,” she says. “If that’s how we’re playing it.”

Her arm reaches across without hesitation, replicating Dani’s playbook: two fingers dipped, flicked, landing back in her lap as Dani sputters.

“You got me in the eye.”

“Cooled you off, though?” Jamie asks, almost politely. Dani laughs, and suddenly, it’s war. There’s barely enough room on the chair for the both of them to sit like adults, much less to squirm around, hips knocking, legs tangled up as the remainder of the glass finds its way--droplet by droplet--into Jamie’s face, down Dani’s neck, sometimes missing entirely and disappearing into the sizzling summer air.

Dani is ultimately the victor, an upset decided when she grasps the glass--now containing maybe two inches of water--and upends it directly over Jamie’s head. She’s laughing almost too hard to breathe, particularly when Jamie gives a firm shake of her hair, looking like a rumpled dog after a bath.

“That,” Jamie says in a low, dangerous tone, “cannot stand.”

She’s up before Dani can stop her, sprinting toward the garden hose uncoiled in the grass. Dani twists in her seat, knees drawn up to her chest, arms extended.

“Don’t you dare!”

“All’s fair,” Jamie says, almost apologetically, depressing the trigger.

They are, Dani notes somewhere in the back of her mind, full-grown adult women. They are thirty years old, gainfully employed, responsible for the upkeep of an entire house and the well-being of two small children.

They are also now chasing one another across the lawn, Dani sopping wet, Jamie laughing so hard she nearly trips over her own feet taking a corner too fast. The hose is growing more and more tangled by the minute as she dashes in a zig-zag pattern, periodically firing a jet of water over her shoulder, and Dani has no prayer of catching up--not with her shoes squelching, slipping on wet grass, her lungs clenched around a soundless jag of laughter.

Adults, she thinks, as Jamie makes the insurmountable error of trying to bolt past her like a quarterback dodging a tackle; she makes a successful leap over the tangled hose, but forgets at the last second to factor in the edge of the lawn chair. Dani has her around the middle before she can dart out of reach, the both of them tumbling over in a cackling heap of grass clippings, puddled hose water, freckled limbs.

They’re rolling, shouting wordlessly around giggles, Dani struggling to pry the hose out of Jamie’s hands. It’s harder than it looks; Jamie is small, but strong in an annoyingly wiry sort of way. Even when Dani manages to get her onto her back, the water is inescapable, dousing in short jets across her chest, down her arms, pooling awkwardly between them.

“You are,” she laughs, “a child.”

“Could a child do this?” Jamie replies, jerking upward at the hips with unexpected force. Dani rocks up with her, one hand grasping the sodden front of Jamie’s shirt for balance, and drops back down without budging from her seat. Jamie releases an oof as her back makes rough contact with the ground again, giggling too hard to successfully shove Dani over.

“Yes, actually, I think a child would be exactly that effective,” Dani informs her. Her body has never felt quite this alive, her muscles aching with the effort of an unplanned run. Jamie, chest heaving for breath, is practically glowing.

“Just want to remind you,” Jamie says, “you did start this.”

“Does that mean I win?” If she hasn’t, she can’t imagine it would feel any better than this: straddling Jamie’s hips in the soft grass, cool water seeping down her back, her dress sticking pleasantly to warm skin. Jamie allows the hose to drop from her grip at last, her head tipped back, eyes closed.

“Call it a draw.”

“What if I wanted to win?” She slides a hand up without thinking, pinning Jamie by the wrist before she can decide to take up her watery weapon again. Jamie draws a deep breath, face flushed, grinning.

“Guess you’d have to work harder for it.”

Children, Dani thinks--but suddenly, it doesn’t feel childish anymore. Suddenly, she’s overly aware of her dress rucked high around her thighs, of how short Jamie’s shorts really are, how her body is considerably less obscured than usual with her shirt plastered to her frame. Suddenly, she’s aware of Jamie’s hand flexing against the grass, pinned beside her head with a loose enough grip to break--though Jamie isn’t breaking it. Isn’t even trying.

Jamie is, instead, gazing up at her with hair mussed, eyes bright. Jamie, whose free hand is sliding up to rest along the curve of Dani’s hip.

She’s Dani’s best friend, like he was, but this doesn’t feel like it belongs in the same category as late-night stories swapped by the fire, or letting each other steal the vegetables the other doesn’t care for off their plate. This feels like a category all its own: the way Jamie licks her lips as Dani’s head lowers, the way Dani’s fingers graze the freckles painting her wrist on the way up to notching her palm against Jamie’s.

Her hair is wet, and Jamie’s face is sweaty, and there’s so little romance to the whole picture, it takes her by surprise. She’s always thought there should be talking before a thing like this, at least--a decision made on equal footing.

“I don’t have to,” she says, even as Jamie is saying, “Do you want to?”

Children would laugh again, go back to wrestling, go back to how it all felt just a few minutes before. They are not, Dani notes as she lowers her head--as Jamie shifts up at the shoulders to meet her--children.

She’s hyper-aware of all of it now: the sun beating against her shoulders, the hand Jamie is using to grip the back of her dress, the exact angle of Jamie’s mouth parting beneath her own. Her tongue is gentle, brushing Jamie’s, and the sound Jamie makes into her is anything but.

She’s smiling, she realizes, so hard, it hurts--that deep, wonderful hurt of laughing too hard for too long, of slipping in the grass and landing in a heap with someone who couldn’t help catching her on the way down. She’s grinning into Jamie even as she’s kissing her, even as she’s letting her body stretch out to press Jamie more firmly against the damp ground.

And Jamie, fingers curled between her own, making soft sounds of appreciation into the kiss, is grinning right back.

“This was your plan all along,” she accuses, brushing the hair from Dani’s eyes when they break for a breath. “Awful lot of work, for a kiss.”

“All’s fair?” Dani suggests--and she genuinely, honestly cannot decide which she likes more: the way Jamie kisses, or the way Jamie kisses and laughs at the same time. All of it, she feels, goes a country mile beyond best friends. All of it goes a country mile beyond anything she could ever have dreamed up, walking away from him the way she did.

It couldn’t possibly be more different.

#fanfiction #ficlet #the haunting of bly manor #dani x jamie #damie #physical affection tag #bit of an AU route solely to capture the Light and Airy of it all #but I'd say it suits any version of 'em

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operation-619 · 4 years

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What if the reader is an alien that has the same power as superman and stronger than Homelander? The reader works at the Vought and doesn't know the corruption in it until Butcher told the truth. Homelander acts soft on her when they see each other, and Homelander was still confused about his feelings and put his ego shit first. I kinda wanna see Homelander battling the reader when she was trying to protect Ryan and Butcher while Maeve hasn’t arrived yet. She will make him bleed.

Even the strongest man Bleeds.

Edited 17-01-21

Homelander x Alien! Reader

Warning: mentions of blood, language, mentions of death and murder. Violence read at your own risk.

Bold italics- inner dialogue, Bold- the past.

WC - 3.1k

Masterlist

“The compound V is what makes them, supes. It’s not real and the golden boy, your Homelander, is the most corrupt motherfucker I have ever met. We need your help (Y/N). Please?” his voice was hoarse, the stress in his words were leaking onto his face. She could see the worry on his face, but she couldn’t bring herself to believe the men in front of her.

“You’re lying to me. Billy Butcher, you have a lot of nerve coming here, you and your gang are mortal enemies to Homelander right now. It’s not safe.” The muscular black man scoffed at her statement and leaned back against the seat. He seemed relaxed but his eyes constantly sweeping the place told (Y/N) otherwise.

“I swear, come back with me and I will show you everything. Please?” his eyes crinkled at the sides as he pulled his face into what looked like a poor attempt at a pleading face. (Y/N)’s mouth was just forming the word ‘NO’ when the man called Mother’s Milk chuckled and leaned forward.

He whispered, “he doesn’t ever say please,” and stood up from the booth and walked out of the café. Her mind was racing, weighing the pros and cons of her current situation. She considered whether or not they were just baiting her into a trap, but she was confident that she could make her way out of it. But it isn’t everyday that two men come waltzing into her favourite café, sit themselves down like they own the place and cough up a semi-convincing story about the corruption at Vought.

“Fuck it,” she whispered under her breathe, “fine I’ll come, it’s good to go out your comfort zone once in a while.” The smile on her face made Billy look at her with confusion painted on his rugged features. She stood, and gestured Butcher to show her the way, “just so you know, I don’t believe you at all.”

(Y/N) replayed her past movement in her head carefully over and over again, and yet she still could not believe how naïve she truly was. But here she is sat in a car that smells like Old Spice, waiting for Frenchie to get the speakers ready. She threw her head back against the headrest and released a shaky breath; everything she believed and knew had been a lie to her. Including John. ‘Oh dear god John, what have you done?’ Her thoughts were getting too loud, they were screaming at her asking how she could’ve been so stupid to not know.

‘How could you not know?’

‘It was right in front of your face you idiot’

‘Your really are a cunt!’

(Y/N) squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her temples, the stress of all the sudden information was taking a toll on the woman. Whimpering under her breath, she opened the car door and inhaled the cold air. Closing the car door, she leaned against it and watched as the group of friends conversed amongst themselves. The plan was to set off the sonic device and John to go over and destroy the source, and when he does Billy and Becca will drive and get Ryan. She still didn’t know why she was needed, (Y/N) was still processing the information she was given 48 hours ago.

“Okay, 15 minutes and everything will be all set,” the French accent let her know who was talking, but she wasn’t paying that much attention when she felt the hairs on the back of her neck arise.

“Get in the cars!” she whispered harshly, her arms waving about ushering the people back into the cars. (Y/N)’s breath shallowed once everyone was in their respected cars, she creeped forward and looked upwards, watching as the uncovered Nazi zoomed by. She vividly remembered the moment she had met that woman. (Y/N) never trusted that woman, something about the way her heart leaped when an opportunity to hurt someone arose. (Y/N) also didn’t like the way John was towards her, all bark, and no bite- vulnerable.

(Y/N) had never seen John so vulnerable around anyone except her.

The metallic taste in the air is what told (Y/N) that Stormfront had just flown by, the hair on the back of her neck relaxed and so did her posture. Walking over to Butcher, she waited until he rolled down his window before she spoke; “She’s seen the leaked news, my guess is she is going back to Vaught to see what caused that, fiasco.” She heard another window come down, not doubt Frenchie and the others.

“Was she alone?” without turning around she nodded. (Y/N)’s tongue ran across the bottom of her teeth before she turned around and faced the two cars, the cars holding the people that brought the truth to her naïve and simplistic eyes. “What exactly am I doing here? Because, you have the weapons, metaphorical and physical to defeat them. So please, tell me why I am here?” her eye followed the movements of the human bodies getting out of the cars. She could see the look on Becca’s face, and she didn’t like it.

“We’re gonna use ya.” Her (E/C) eyes shot towards MM, he stood there tall and domineering, with his hands on his hips. “Starlight, or Annie told us how soft Homelander is on you. And if things go south, you are our pawn.” (Y/N)’s hearts faltered.

“You humans are so pathetic. I mean, I am old. Older than all of you put together, so I have seen shit that no one can imagine. But the one thing that never changes is the utter stupidity of you homo-sapiens, the selfishness and carnage that I have experienced puts my species to shame.” (Y/N) paced back and forth, her anger evident as black veins started to appear under her (E/C) eyes.

“(Y/N). Please, MM didn’t mean it like that,”

“I did. I did mean it exactly how I said it Becca,” (Y/N) stalked the movement of the vigilante group. Her hearing was being drowned by the loudness of her beating hearts. She watched as Becca stepped forwards and stopped right in front of her.

“My son, who was conceived in the most- my son is in there. I don’t know if you have had children before. But I am not going anywhere until I have my boy in my arms. So please, help me.” (Y/N) flinched when she felt warm hands placed onto her cold shoulders, echoes of her past resonating inside her head. She now understood the look on Becca’s face, the look of a mother- a childless mother that no longer understands their purpose in life. Because she was one.

“Okay, but I want this on my terms.”

The little boy was screaming when (Y/N) landed behind John, crying for his mommy to wake up. She looked around, seeing the two women laying lifeless. She was too late to save them. The metallic taste in the air was getting stronger the closer she walked towards the pandemonium. The woman that confided in her mere moments ago, now lay with blood flowing out the cut in her neck. She watched as Butcher tried to stop the bleeding his white hands now crimson. His whole body covered in blood, soaking him to his soul.

Turning her head, (Y/N) saw John knelt next to Stormfront or what is left of her. The burnt woman mumbling in what sounded like German. “Ryan- ‘her attention went from the barbequed supe to John, ‘did you do this?”

“He didn’t mean to John,” she watched his whole-body flinch at the sound of her voice, she was happy to see his face finally, to get some sort of justification. But the feeling that shot through her body was the complete opposite, the look in his eyes reminded her of herself, and she didn’t like it.

“What are you doing here, I thought you left?” he surged forward and cupped her face, (Y/N) placed her hand on his chest and the other on his hand. She closed her eyes and inhaled her John deeply. “(Y/N), you have no idea, I. I don’t understand.” The beating of his heart grounded her for a moment, everything around them disappeared for a moment as the two of them were caught in their own bubble. But (Y/N) knew the bubble had to be popped. And she had the sharpest needle to do it with.

“John, what happened on the plane.” She was met with silence, the hands gripped her face harder, but her eyes still remained closed. “You left them all to die, didn’t you?”

“I did not leave them to die, I tried to save them. You know this (Y/N), why are you asking me this.” His mouth was talking but his heart told her the truth. Releasing a soft sigh, (Y/N) stepped back from John and finally opened her eyes. The bubble burst when his blue eyes met pitch black, her pupils had flooded the white out leaving a demonic presence behind, the black veins appeared all over her body pulsing violently.

“I know everything John, you have been lying to me. I trusted you, and you know that.” He started to mutter words that didn’t make sense to her, his hands anchored in his hair. (Y/N) watched as the great Homelander fell apart right in front of her, Earths favourite and mightiest hero crumbled under the pressure of words.

“Now let them go John. Please?” when his blue eyes met hers, the look rivalled hell itself. His jaw twitched, tongue pocking out to lick his bottom lip. He never broke eye contact with her, his eyes tracked her like predator to prey. (Y/N) moved cautiously, never turning her back to John. Once she was stationed in front of Butcher and the kid, she placed her right arm out and behind her. (Y/N)’s ears were ringing, the power surging through her was immense and yet she felt weak. Weak, it wasn’t a word her species spoke, and she never heard of such a word until she came to earth. Vulnerable, weak, powerless, helpless, defenceless, and fragile; all these words are now part of her vocabulary, and she was feeling every single one of them as she looked at the man she had come to love.

(Y/N) had given him not just one but both of her hearts. He was the first person that offered her his hand when the rest of this new world beat her down with their harsh words, he taught her how the ways of her new life, he was her new life. (Y/N) may have been a celestial being, but she knew when something wasn’t right. At first, she thought John was just trapping her, the distance – although not physical – was fluctuating between then constantly; first John welcomed her with open arms, then he kept her at arms-length when they got too close and then the cycle repeated.

But through all the shit he had put her through, she was still there for him. until now.

“We are going to leave, and you will never trouble them again.” Her vision was sharp as she watched the wrecked man in front of her chose the option she hoped he wouldn’t.

“You know I can’t do that, he’s my son.” And with that he charged towards them, eyes red with hunger and rage. His path changed when he felt a fist connect with his cheek, sending him flying into a tree. His world spun, staggering up onto his feet he made eye contact with the shell of the woman he loves. Her black eyes reminded him of a starless night, an abyss that was forbidden to travel.

Something cold dripped onto his lip, and out of instinct his tongue licked it away, he thought nothing of it until the unfamiliar taste of blood slithered its way down his throat. His naked hand came up and delicately touched his nose, he hissed in pain when his calloused hand touch it, retracting his hand he look in bewilderment at the blood sat there taunting him on his hand.

“You broke my nose,” his voice was meagre but loud enough for her to hear the vulnerability in it.

She turned to Butcher and the child hurriedly telling them , “get away from here, quickly,” and before she could turn back around, she was pinned to the muddy floor. Her face caked in the mixture of blood and dirt; she could feel John’s breath on her neck. Without a second thought she flung her head back and used the distraction to spin around and wrap her hand around the heroes throat. (Y/N) paid no mind to the thoughts pounding in her head, she wasn’t about to let them stop her from – whatever she thought she was doing.

“(Y/N) … (Y/N). please.” the air around them froze, she wanted answers but standing here with her hand around the nations saviour’s throat was not the way she needed to get them. “You lied to me John, the one person who promised to never lie to me. You betrayed my trust.” She threw him to the ground.

“You had me working for monsters. They never helped people!” the wind started to pick up around them, her (Y/H/C) hair danced ferociously around her face, a face that was covered in black veins pulsating in rage. (Y/N)’s head snapped to the right when she heard a twig snap, her vision was met with Butcher and the kid watching her in astonishment and fear. The kid was hiding behind Butcher, just his head poking out watching (Y/N) beat up his father. And god did he look like John.

(Y/N)’s body moved before she could even realise what was happening, her left hand came up to stop the blow coming her way and then she knelt down, using John’s momentum against him, she throw him over her shoulder. But the outcome wasn’t in her favour as he managed to land on his feet. And then he was charging at her. Punches were thrown and bodied flung everywhere, (Y/N) couldn’t bring herself to kill John, but it felt good to hurt him.

“He’s my son (Y/N). He needs me!” his words were met with a foot to his chest.

“No one need you John, not after what you did,” her elbow jabbed into his stomach, causing his arms to release her waist, she looked at his body lying pathetically on the forest floor. Americas strongest man, the embodiment of patriotism and pride had fallen to his knees.

“(Y/N), you have and always will need me’, his blue eye sparkled with malicious intent, ‘no one wanted a freak roaming our home, but because I stood by your side, they welcomed you. But the moment I’m gone. You will be nothing. But a monster to the people you love so much.” Blood came flying out of his mouth as he spat his words at her. His armour had crumbled and all he had left was his words.

“Stop” the alien smiled at the hero on his knees, her eyes only moved off his body when she felt a presence next to her. John started to get up, but (Y/N) swiftly moved forward, wrapping her arm around his neck, and gripping his hair with her free hand. She forced him to stay down, on his knees.

Maeve came into sight, moving cautiously like she was afraid he would brake from his bond. She stopped when she was right in front of the disgraced hero.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” (Y/N) could feel John shaking in her grip. The two looked at each other in silence for a while, their eye contact unbreakable. (Y/N) spared a glance at Butcher, who was still stood in the same place.

“You’re going to let them go,” the man in question scoffed but immediately fell silent when (Y/N) tightened her grip on his hair. He cleared his throat, moving subtlety before answering the Queen.

“And if I don’t?” his ego spoke louder than the words coming out of his mouth, he was confident that everything was going his way. Both Maeve and (Y/N) knew that. But the moment Maeve held up the recording of the plane (Y/N) could physically feel The Homelander admitting defeat. The cries of the passengers echoed through her head, along with the bullshit lie the man in her arms fed her. ‘there was nothing we could do, the terrorist had too much control I tried to save them (Y/N). I tried.’

“You’re going to stop hunting Starlight, you’re going to leave me and Elena alone. Or I release this.” there was no room for argument, and he knew that. But he had to open his mouth. “If you do that, I’ll destroy everything and everyone.” (Y/N)’s grip tightened, she dragged his head backward and brought her lips to his bloody ear. Her voice was cold, no hint of vulnerability, no hint of emotion.

She could feel his bones quaking under her arm as she tightened her hold on the man she had come to love. The man that made everything feel less painful, the man that she called a true friend. But standing here in the middle of a forest with two dead women, a sobbing child and a emotionless man; she realised that what her people said about the human race was true. And John had proven that to her. It took everything in (Y/N) not to simply break his neck but she wanted him to hurt.

She wanted him to bleed.

So, she looked up at Maeve and signalled her to get the two boys out of here, she wanted to be alone with him. she willed herself to calm down, she knew she wasn’t in the right headframe to talk to John because if she did so now, his head would be lying two feet way from his body. So, she whispered to the man calmly, hearts no longer racing with hatred or fear. She let the venom in her voice speak for itself as she whispered to Homelander. But she let man she loved hear the pain in her voice, because the man she was holding was not her John, her John had died the moment Butcher and Mother’s Milk sat down across from her in the café. However, (Y/N) had comfort as she let the ten simple words leave her mouth, because she knows that no matter how much Compound V is pumping through his body. Even the Strongest man bleeds.

“If you do that Homelander, I will make you bleed.”

|=|=|

Hello beautiful people, I hope you enjoyed my little piece, feel free to leave comments about what you liked and didn’t like, I’m okay with a bit of constructive criticism I believe it will help me get better, and if you want anything else.

#homelander x reader #homelander #the boys #violence #angst #blood #queen maeve #alien reader #extraterestrial #the boys x reader

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barricadebops · 3 years

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And He Falls With a Smile

Summary: In 1823 Feuilly arrives in Paris. In 1824 a man in a daring red waistcoat invites him to a student organization where despite his orphan status, Feuilly gains a family in the throes of rebellion and revolution. Read on AO3 here.

1823

In many ways, Paris is quite unlike the south. The city bustles with more people than Feuilly had ever seen in Aigues-Mortes. He will likely have to take a while to become accustomed to the constant crowds in the streets, the way everyone seems a stranger to each other.

However, to his due consideration, Paris is also in many ways quite akin to the south.

The language of French rolls easy off his tongue like the rhythms of Provençal and Polish, and casts no doubt on his employability when it comes to dealing with coworkers at the fan-making atelier. The streets are still lined with the poor who cry out for help, for just one sou while the haughty bourgeois stroll past leisurely, and there are still women thrown on the ground—prostitutes from destitution, children begging for alms instead of attending school, and there is so much misery that surrounds him when he steps foot in the city, and the orphan boy thinks that there has not been much significant change here, that he will work here until he dies never having known a true family.

Feuilly’s only family has been the concepts of France, Poland, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Italy—simply put, the rest of the world, the people of the rest of the world.

So, Feuilly resolves that he shall adopt the people of Paris too.

________________________________________________________________

1824

He meets a man by the name of Bahorel, down by the schools of law.

Three francs does not buy a man much. It hardly puts bread on the table. It certainly does not provide for better clothes than what Feuilly dons everyday. And only in his scarcely selfish dreams, do three francs provide him with a place at the universities of Paris, where every bit of knowledge is put within his reach with thought only of reading and reading and reading until his brain tires and he nods off to sleep, blissful in the knowledge that he will not have to rush awake the next morning to catch work.

But three francs does not lend him that reality. Three francs only lets him gaze wistfully outside the buildings and think of a life where he could read better, where he could write better, where he wouldn’t have to waste away toiling at the fan-making atelier—where others would not have to toil away—others who are younger, who are needy, who should be going to school. People from France, from Poland, from Greece and Hungary and Romania and Italy. People from around the world who deserve better than to have their inherent right to an opportunity, an education, a leap at life—taken away from them.

L'École de droit de Paris is teeming with young men, all affluently dressed, all hailing from wealthy families—men who care not for why lawyers are so prudent, why law needs to be so heavily examined. It is filled with men who walk without casting a glance at Lady Themis, their patron, who stands disappointed—though she may be blindfolded—knowing that her supposed guardians do nothing to bring about justice, to bring about her divine right. It is filled with bourgeois young men with haughty airs, fake smiles, and cold graces.

L'École de droit de Paris teems with such young men when classes are let out. For now, Feuilly can enjoy its tranquility, its academic aura without the glances thrown his way. Peasant worker.

So no one can really seek to blame him for the irritation that rises within him when he feels a man crash into his side, throwing him off balance and sending him sprawling onto the hard cobblestones of the campus.

"Are you quite alright?"

Feuilly has the strong urge to snap at the hooligan present above him now that he was not alright at all, not since he disturbed some of the only moments he is allowed to breathe free with his rough tumbling.

But he stops short. Something about the man's smile—though he must admit, it seems rather rude to smile in a situation like this—halts the words on his tongue.

The man, or well rather a boy since he looks like he cannot be much older than him—is smiling brashly, unabashed in his humour. Though he wears the red coat of a man bound to be wealthy, there is a certain quality in the way he holds out his hand to Feuilly, without disgust, without turning his nose up at him, without thinking that he is a great saint for doing so, that makes Feuilly think that he cannot possibly be of the bourgeois, and without thinking, Feuilly takes the proffered hand and rises his feet. As he regains his footing, the man nearly sends him back down by delivering a mighty clap on his back.

"My sincerest apologies, my good fellow. Here you were, wasting away your time like a respectable gentleman should be doing, when I so rudely crashed into you. But I do believe this is a fortunate coincidence! To meet another sensible individual—it is not everyday you have the great opportunity to meet another idler—they seem rather scarce in this dull profession. I do know of just one other, but unfortunately Bossuet is forced to remain in Blondeau's class—what amusement! Imagine Blondeau really considering that being kicked out of his class is a punishment! I fret for poor Bossuet who shall come out having truly come into possession of knowledge on property law. Just imagine!"

Much as Feuilly may have tried if he really did want to, he could not imagine, considering he was not actually a student of law, not to mention that he had absolutely no clue who this Bossuet was.

"But—" the man continues on, and Feuilly vaguely realizes that at this point he should make haste to mention that he is not actually a student of l' ècole and that he really should be heading back to the atelier, but the man barrels on, "say, I have not seen you in any class before. You certainly must be younger than I, for there can be no other way to explain it."

Feuilly flushes. How could this man seriously still go on believing that he was a student here when he saw the way he dressed and held himself?

Clearing his throat, he shook his head and clarified, "You're mistaken, Monsieur. I am not a student of the school."

The man's eyebrows furrow for a moment before his smile returns with massive force. "And I thought you could not possibly get better!" Feuilly's gaze darts up curiously. "How fortunate indeed!"

At this, Feuilly's mind staggers a little, and he bristles at the way the man's words rub on him. Did he think it was fortunate that a poor man like him could not afford an education, a right all deserve? Did he think it was fortunate that children lacked the opportunity to acquire knowledge because of the situations they were born into?

This man had to be of the haughty bourgeois, there was no doubt about it. His bold, rather daring waistcoat definitely spoke a testament to the statement.

There was work to be done at the atelier, there were fans to be made, money to be earned, another day to be lived. Feuilly needed to head back and throw this man out of the recesses of his mind, for he did not have any space freed up there either.

And yet—

And yet, Feuilly finds that this man is so incredibly wrong to have said what it is he said, and, well, someone must correct him one way or another—

"Forgive me, Monsieur," he says stiffly, "but I see absolutely no reason as to why this is a good thing. Do you really laugh at the thought of an orphan being unable to find the money to pursue an education?"

For the first time in their spontaneous conversation, the man's face is thrown off guard.

"Pardonnez-moi ?" His brows wrinkle before he bursts out with a hearty laugh. "Oh no! My dear fellow you have it all wrong!" The man grins and for a split moment Feuilly is sure he is the slightest bit mad. "I—of all people! I could never make fun of the peasants—my own parents are peasants, mon ami, it is why they have common sense."

There is something in this man's bold words that has even Feuilly amused enough to crack a smile. Perhaps he had simply misjudged him; though he would likely never understand Feuilly on the full on accounts of actually still having parents that evidently did love their son, the man hailed from a peasant background, so of all things, he was definitely not stuffy like the rest of his new-class, though the daring red coat did write him into Feuilly's books as just the slightest bit reckless—such was the effect of the colour red clothed on such a brash man.

He lets out a resigned sigh; at this point he absolutely has to get back to the factory if he wants to clock in on time. But the man is still grinning at him, and Feuilly cannot help but feel the urge to stay.

"Your words undoubtedly ring true, and it speaks a testament to the kind of life you have been made to lead." All at once, his face turned serious. "We need more men like you at our meetings—come join us, I beg of you."

Meetings? What sort of meetings could this man have been talking about?

Unless…

Feuilly was not illiterate. He had caught whisperings of secret Jacobin societies, groups that hid themselves away from the gaze of the King as they would secretly plot rebellion. A man of the people, the true common man, Feuilly too had been eager to join these groups—but where was the time? He hardly had any time to go back to the pathetic little apartment he had managed to scrounge up money for, how could he find himself time to attend Republican meetings?

At the atelier, the clock was surely ticking away, bringing Feuilly closer every minute to being late heading back to work. "I'm sorry," he turns away and makes to head off. "I find myself unable to join, unfortunately, at the moment."

There is an elbow at the crook of his arm easing him around. "I urge you to reconsider, Monsieur. There is always room for new recruits, and I assure you that your input will always be valued." He opened his mouth to argue when the man put up a hand to stop him. "Your time needn't be an issue—we are all but students, we will uphold your responsibilities if need be. But your word—your word will be no doubt incredibly valuable. Please think of it."

Feuilly hesitates; in the sky, the sun burned bright in indication of a rapidly approaching afternoon. "And what do you call yourselves?"

The man's eyes twinkled. "Les Amis de l 'ABC," he replies rather cheekily.

Les Amis de l'ABC? Somewhere, the name strikes at Feuilly's core. The Friends of the ABC. Surely an educational group—that was something he could support—and something he could personally understand, too.

"And what is it exactly that your group does, Monsieur?"

"Well, in name, we are dedicated to the education of children." (L'ABC). The man's smile turns a little sharp as he lowers his voice. "In reality, we… Well, I suppose you would have to come see yourself, would you not? Though I suppose if you ponder our name long enough, you should figure out anyways.”

ABC…

Abaisse.

Les Amis de l’ABC — Les Amis de l'abaisse.

The Friends of the ABC—the Friends of the abased.

A rather clever name, if he had to be quite honest. So it was as Feuilly suspected.

“And who exactly makes up your group?” he asks, attempting to keep up his inquisitive tone even as he moves to clasp the man’s hand.

The man laughs. “Well, if—when we succeed, I imagine we shall become a group that will belong to some measure of history, though that’s not why do what we do.”

“Succeed?”

“Yes! I have no doubts that we shall do exactly that. The question is, Monsieur, will you be there with us when we do so?”

There is no reason to say yes; in fact, there is every reason to say no. The minutes are still ticking by and the factory foreman is not a forgiving man, especially not towards orphans who need the job more than he needs the orphan, and there was never any time to join such organizations, and so many of them are run by bourgeois boys who did not know what they spoke of, never truly knew what it was their goals should be, why would they accept Feuilly among their ranks—

And yet, there is just something about this man, something about the aura he exudes, something brash and reckless but accepting, even if his words do not always come off that way, that makes him hesitate from immediately flatly refusing and turning to get on with his day, something about the unspoken promise held in his words, something about the name—the Friends of the Abased.

He heaves a breath and looks up at the sky; it’s approach towards afternoon and the way campus seems to hold its breath, ready to release when the professors adjourn their classes signals his inevitable tardiness at work.

He glances at the sparkle glinting in the man’s eyes—there is an entire future, a lifetime held within the promise of the society that the man informs him of that Feuilly is yet unaware of.

“Well where is it that you meet?”

With a mighty thump on his back, the man slings an arm around his shoulders, using his arm to point his finger towards the horizon in the direction of the north-east. “Follow the streets until they take you towards the Café Musain at Place Saint-Michel, near six tonight. Ask a patron to lead you towards the backroom—a male, however, for we do not allow women to enter—with the exception of dear Louison, that is—surely you can understand the delicate nature of women, my own mistress would tremble at the talk of rebellion and she is one to laugh at about anything I should think to say—and surely you shall see me there. And if I should be late—for it is not unheard of that I should be out late talking to others of the same cause—tell them you were asked to join by Bahorel.”

Feuilly swallows. Seemed rather a large commitment he was signing onto before even truly attending one of these meetings.

“I shall ensure my best efforts to attend one of your meetings then, Monsieur Bahorel,” he says at last.

“And we shall ensure our best efforts to work towards that future in which orphans are allowed to pursue the education they seek.” The man—Bahorel—tips his hat. “Now you must pardon me, Monsieur—”

“Feuilly,” he interrupts. Bahorel inclines his head in sign of having listened.

“—Feuilly,” he says, “but the afternoon approaches and classes will soon be adjourned for the rest of the day, and I must deploy myself to the mighty task of finding Bossuet and listening to his new complaint no doubt against Blondeau, and then head off with him to find young Enjolras and de Courfeyrac too, for though the former may be able to sway a crowd with his words, especially with his second-in-command by his side, those two cannot hope to find their way through the university streets and—”

“Thank you, Monsieur Bahorel, I shall hope to see you then, tonight," he interrupts, only the slightest bit ashamed for having done so; he really does need to be on his way.

If Bahorel takes offense to his interruption, he makes no sign of it; rather, he clasps his hand, and says, “Thank you, Monsieur Feuilly. Your presence will be greatly appreciated. No doubt everyone will be pleased. I look forward to seeing you sit amongst us.

Feuilly tips the ragged hat he has on his head in response.

This is how it begins.

________________________________________________________________

1825

It is ten at night, a most indecent time for respectable men to still be outside, and yet Feuilly can see no sign of Enjolras tiring while he listens with bright eyes to what Feuilly has to say on the subject of the partitioning of Poland.

It was indeed a topic of great rage and indignation for Feuilly, that date of 1772. How was it that a monarchy, a tyranny, had the right to strip a people of their identity? Of their nationality? He exclaimed as much to Enjolras, who watched on with awe.

"But how can they have the right? To tell a people that they no longer have the ability to climb atop their tables and exclaim 'I am Polish! Here I stand free in my country of Poland! ?" Running a hand through his fiery hair, he fumed just as he thought about it. "The audacity!"

At the table, Enjolras scoots closer, looks up at him with wide eyes. “Indeed. Tell me more of it.”

He glances at him, and, briefly, he allows himself to ponder the person sitting in front of him. Feuilly hesitates to call him a boy, though, at nineteen years, that is exactly what he is.

It is simply that, despite his excessively youthful face, there was something in Enjolras' eyes that gave him the feeling that the boy had already lived for hundreds of years, made him feel as if he were seated in front a man who had already, in some previous existence, traversed the many revolutions of the past.

And yet—

And yet, despite that, not having gone unnoticed by any of those few members who attended the meetings, it is Feuilly who Enjolras evidently idolizes—reveres, even.

And it is a fact that Feuilly cannot fully comprehend; of all the people Enjolras is surrounded by, all the people he has to idolize—Combeferre or Joly or even Bahorel—he sees first and foremost Feuilly, a poor orphan who struggles to read when Enjolras himself could make his way through the thickest of volumes with ease.

Feuilly does not think less of himself for his background, but how often can a man go on surrounded by people who excelled in a variety of skills than he could only ever hope to gain without feeling the occasional pang of self doubt?

He allows himself a smile. “But I thought you had already read about this, Enjolras? Combeferre tells me the matter is one that incenses you quite the bit—rightfully, might I add.”

He thinks of how strange it is—at the atelier, no one gave second thought to anything Feuilly had to say, so he never really thought to say anything anymore to his coworkers or his foreman who he knew would either ignore him or dismiss him straight away.

But Enjolras listens. He listens to the words of a poor orphan boy, and despite his upbringing by his parents that likely taught him not to pay heed to the words of a man like Feuilly, he instead leans forward, always leans forward at every meeting whenever Feuilly raises his voice to contribute, and he listens breathlessly and nods and says But of course, and Yes you’re right, and But if you could please tell us more, we need more of what you have to say.

Enjolras nods vigorously. “Yes, of course, the stripping of the autonomy of any nation is an injustice—it is simply that hearing you speak of it is all the more informing.”

Feuilly quirks an eyebrow at him. “And why would that be?”

“Because you are all the more knowledgeable of this, of course.”

He huffs a laugh. “It was not as if I was there when they put down the first partition. I am hardly an eye-witness, nor would I say more knowledgeable than you.”

In front of him, Enjolras reaches a hand to grasp at Feuilly’s. “But you are! For as well as I understand it, I could never truly know what kind of an effect such a monstrous event could have on the common man. But you, Feuilly, you know so well, for you have endured far worse than I have, you are a much better man than I am, surely you must know you have my eternal respect—”

As he blushes, Feuilly briefly thinks of scolding Enjolras for proclaiming Feuilly better than himself only on the grounds that he was born in a different circumstance.

He squeezes Enjolras’ hand back. “Do not declare yourself a lesser man than me, Enjolras. Over this past year you have demonstrated the fact that those of the upper class can still have compassion and the skill to identify injustice, and you have made me feel all the more welcome amongst your ranks.”

Enjolras smiles. “Les Amis de l’ABC would not be what we are without your inclusion, my friend. It is for people like you that we fight, it would hardly be a cause if we did not have your voice present with us. The gratitude should be coming from me to you for trusting us, for joining us. You make us who we are Feuilly.”

And Feuilly is just the slightest bit blown away by Enjolras’ words, for while he knew Enjolras held a special sort of respect for him, he had never imagined that his reverence shaped up like this.

“Will you tell me more about Poland?”

He glances down at Enjolras, who stares up with hopeful eyes, and he smiles.

“But of course.”

________________________________________________________________

1826

It is not unheard of that Jehan Prouvaire should be sitting quietly in his corner after meetings, staring dreamily at his paper as if he could see entire meadows and forests scrawled on it rather than the lushious words he pens to create his poetry.

“The stars are not out and yet you gaze at your paper as if you can already see the constellations they form,” he says as he lowers himself into the chair next to Prouvaire, having been beckoned over.

Prouvaire blushes and smiles softly. “Every constellation has a story tied to it, and poetry seeks to do much the same. Poetry is how our ancestors spoke of their tales around the fire.”

“Is that what you will be writing about today? The stars?”

Prouvaire hums and shakes his head. “No. I think I should like to write in Polish today.”

Jerking slightly, Feuilly looks at him, confused. “Write in Polish?”

He nods. “Yes. I think of it often, you know, and I feel it’s an injustice, the way the Polish identity has been stolen from the people, almost as if their right to thought has been taken. I figured, would it not be prudent, then, of me to write a poem in Polish, and reaffirm their status?”

Nodding vigorously, Feuilly agrees, “Yes, of course. Your words hold the utmost merit, and I’m glad to see you acknowledge this through your words. I can think of no better way for you to express your thoughts about this than through your sacred form of writing.”

He props his chin on his hand and leans forward. “Yes, but I seem to encounter a problem in that I do not know how to speak Polish. My friend, I only have one favour to ask of you: will you help me construct this poem?”

Feuilly blinks. Of all the honours he could have been bestowed with… For Prouvaire, reading and writing poetry was one of the very fundamental things that kept people humble. To connect to nature, to hear of stories past—it is what both allows humans to soar amongst the beauty present in the world, yet keep them humbled and grounded to work on what needed to be improved. For Prouvaire, poetry is his form of worship, his devotion to the miracles of the world before him, present in front of him, and the one yet to come.

“You would choose to ask… me, to help you?” he asks, bewildered at the thought of him sharing something so close to his heart, to his spirit.

There is a sort of sparkle in Prouvaire’s eyes, a look he reserves for when he gazes at wildflowers and oats growing in meadows, or for when he hears the nightingale sing—a look so impossibly soft that he can use it only when he finds himself looking upon a being he believes deserves to be showered upon with love and written about with the utmost tenderness—and it is present in his eyes when he gently places his hand atop Feuilly’s and says with the utmost solemnity, “My friend, I could think of no one else who I would trust more for such a matter.”

Feuilly is rendered speechless. Both with the love he feels for his friend, and by the astonishment at the trust his friend shows in him.

Feuilly hopes the world will see Prouvaire's soft verses and name him with the likes of Keats, whom he idolizes.

Jehan hopes that one day the world will read his poem—the one he writes now, that tells the story of a common fan-maker who spoke Polish and still strived to see the possibilities of the entire world despite the world never having strived to see the possibility in him—and understands the adoration that he and the rest of his friends had for a man who was made up of a thousand different nations and came from a thousand different stories and had with him a thousand different plans for the future.

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1827

The sky is dark and Feuilly’s perception of time has been skewed by the long, insufferable hours spent at the atelier crafting fans while harbouring a most dreadful headache.

He does not see that the clock has struck much past seven, much past eight, now half an hour after nine, and that his foreman kept him detained much longer than he realizes, taking advantage of the evident illness that has Feuilly dazed and unaware. With much effort, he pushes the door to the café open and stumbles towards the backroom where he expects his friends will be.

Upon reaching the backroom, he leans a hand against the frame and struggles to comprehend the image of an empty room, one where the meeting has clearly adjourned.

Well, mostly empty.

“Feuilly?” At his side, Combeferre reaches a hand to place on his shoulder, a steadying presence among the rushing winds that seem to have found their way into the café. “Are you quite alright?”

He coughs—once—twice—three times into his fist. “Well I do find myself in a bit of confusion,” he admits as Combeferre gently takes him by the crook of his elbow and seats him at a table. “Has the meeting for today been cancelled? I would not have imagined that everyone would be busy all at the same time.”

Combeferre tilts his head and looks at him peculiarly. “The meeting?” He frowns. “My friend, are you well? The meeting ended about an hour and a half ago.”

Furrowing his eyebrows, he coughs twice more as he shakes his head and says, “No, that cannot be. Surely it cannot be so late. I had only just seen the clock, look, there, it says…” he trails off as his eyes fall upon the small hand halfway towards its path to the painted ten, then glances back at Combeferre sheepishly. Clearing his throat, a rather painful task to do considering just how raw it feels, he manages to scrape out the words, “It appears I have missed the meeting. I apologize, I did not realize just how late it had become.”

Combeferre smiles sympathetically. “Evidently. Your presence was greatly missed at the meeting, Enjolras looked rather down about it, but nonetheless we understood, though we thought it was simply because you were working.

Burying his head in his hands, he croaks, “I was supposed to be working regular time. I don't know how I didn't realize the foreman had me working late without informing me of it.” At this, Combeferre’s eyes darken a shade.

“You cannot let this go unprotested, Feuilly,” he says, the slightest bit angry, though Feuilly knows it is not anger directed towards him. “Your foreman has no right to do so; we will go back tomorrow and demand he pay you what you deserve for working the extra hours you did.”

Raising his head, Feuilly looks up, a little surprised at Combeferre. “It will not work, Combeferre, for all that I would like it to. The foreman has plenty of people available to replace me should I start to fuss. Though it is wrong, you must know that he has the power to keep me longer without paying.”

Combeferre runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “However much power he holds, he cannot go against the principle of the matter and expect no retaliation. It is settled; we will go and speak to your foreman.” When Feuilly opens his mouth to speak, Combeferre holds his hand up and halts the words on his tongue. Silently, he reaches forward and gingerly places the back of his hand on Feuilly’s forehead, tutting at the heat that comes away. “Tell me how you feel,” he commands.

Feuilly frowns. “It is really not that much of a concern, my friend—”

“Feuilly,” Combeferre pinches the bridge of his nose before looking up at him again, “in about a years time I shall begin my internship at l’Hôpital Necker; as of right now, I have enough medical knowledge—well, really, anyone has enough medical knowledge—to diagnose you with the fact that you have caught a cold—no doubt from the rainy season we have all found ourselves trapped in—and while it is nothing serious, it can become something of a concern if you do not rest and allow me to take care of you.”

Feuilly looks away. “While I do not doubt your knowledge, Combeferre, you needn’t bother yourself with—”

“What is more so a bother, Feuilly,” Combeferre interrupts him once more, and does not even look the slightest bit embarrassed for doing so, “is when one of my friends fall ill, and instead of taking the time they need to get better, they only continue to work until it is worse and their recovery becomes all the more difficult.” He watches as Combeferre rises from his seat, holding out his hand when he says, “So, for my own convenience, if you believe—unjustly, may I add—that your own convenience is not worth it, please come back with me to my apartment so that we can have you back on your feet in mere matter of days rather than weeks.”

As Feuilly allows himself to be hauled up, his arm slung around Combeferre’s shoulders, for he does not believe he has the strength in him to stand a single second more on his own—he marvels at what it is he must have done that warrants fate to provide him with friends who care for him like a mother or father would their own child, though Feuilly is not well acquainted with the feeling.

________________________________________________________________

1828

Even before he feels Courfeyrac’s hand clap down on his shoulder, Feuilly can feel Courfeyrac approaching—because that is simply the kind of person he is; his aura is boisterous and bubbly, a loud that made you grin rather than cringe away.

“My friend!” Courfeyrac exclaims. “My friend, my friend, my very good friend!”

Feuilly smiles as he knows what is inevitably going to come up. “As much as you may ask, Courfeyrac, I simply do not have the time to stand out in the middle of the street only so you can ‘save’ me in front of that Genevieve girl you have recently taken a fancy to.”

Courfeyrac looks taken aback for a moment before he begins to laugh. “No, no, I was not speaking of that. Besides, I have most recently been made to come to sense that I do not need anyone to play the part of a man in distress who needs to be saved—as long as I somehow end her near Bossuet, I shall allow him to carry on with the way he already lives, and soon enough I shall have saved him from his own stupidity in front of her!”

At another table, Bossuet indignantly pipes up, “Hey!” In response, Joly waves his cane dismissively.

“Calm yourself, Aigle de Meaux, his facts are not incorrect.”

As Bossuet and Joly begin to bicker in that lighthearted way friends so often do, Courfeyrac turns his gaze towards him, and Feuilly finds himself blinking, trying to figure out what exactly it is Courfeyrac will be asking him as a favour, for he knows the beginning of their conversation is exactly what Courfeyrac will do every time he seeks to extract a favour from someone.

And whatever it is, Feuilly already knows he will be saying yes, for not only does he love his friend enough to do anything for him, he is sure that had it been Feuilly asking for the favour, Courfeyrac would have already been up from his seat heading off to help.

“Out with it, Courfeyrac,” he encourages with a smile. “What is it that you evidently need me to do?”

Courfeyrac grins. “You know me so well, my dear friend. Well, the matter is,” he lets out a long-suffering sigh, “my parents have been writing incessantly to me in hopes that I will, at their side, attend the ball of one of their long-time friends.” Courfeyrac grimaces. “I shall depart for Avignon in a week’s time.”

Feuilly blinks, confused. He could hardly grasp at what this entire affair had to do with him.

“But Courfeyrac, you have always struck me as a man who delighted in dressing in a nice coat and going dancing.”

Waving a dismissive hand, Courfeyrac huffs impatiently. “I like to go dancing with my friends. I would rather not have to suffer by my parents’ side at some ball surrounded by a crowd of people who cheer at the sight of the 1814 Charter.”

At his mention of the Charter, Feuilly allows himself a little laugh, his mind straying to a recent memory of Courfeyrac throwing a copy of the very same thing in the fire during a heated debate with Combeferre.

Calming himself, he manages enough breath to ask, “That is all good and fine, but what do I have to do with all this?”

With a beam, Courfeyrac shuffles closer to throw an arm around his shoulders. “So,” he begins, “all I ask from you is a small favour.” At Feuilly’s silence, he continues, “I want you to attend with me.”

At this, Feuilly nearly spits out the coffee he had taken in his mouth.

Once he finishes choking, he adopts a look of astonishment and asks, “Me?”

Courfeyrac’s grin is one of sincerity; try as he might, there is no sort of a joke written on his face. “Yes.”

Clearing his throat, he asks, “But… Why would you ask me of all people?”

At this, Courfeyrac frowns. “But why ever not you? I cannot think of a single reason why I would not ask you.”

He feels a humiliating blush stain his cheeks as the many, many reasons why he should be amongst the last people Courfeyrac should ask crosses his mind. For God’s sake, even Grantaire is a more preferable option—he, at least, hailed from a wealthy family, and so has the knowledge of the sort of behaviour and etiquette to be employed in such situations.

With a sad sort of smile, he places his hand on his friend’s shoulder and says, “Find someone else to go with you, Courfeyrac. I’m sorry, I truly am, but I must deny you this one thing.”

Courfeyrac’s frown deepens. “But why?”

Must he really push this issue?

Well, Feuilly is not ashamed of who he was, but it really is a little rude making him say the words.

“Courfeyrac,” he sputters, “I haven’t the faintest clue how to behave at such a social gathering. Neither do I… neither do I have the money for the sort of lavish clothing no doubt one is expected to wear there.”

Courfeyrac’s mouth flattens, and it is a rare moment that Feuilly sees him so frank. “Your background has not rendered you a scoundrel, Feuilly—I have only ever seen you act as a man should—honest and down-to-earth. You’re exactly the kind of person a man should be like, and frankly I do not care much for the opinions of my parents’ friends, and I believe you needn’t do so either. As for clothing, if you will not allow me to purchase you new clothing, I shall simply ask Combeferre to borrow his, on your behalf.”

His little speech shocks him. “But,” his voice is a little weak, “why would you ask me?”

At last, Courfeyrac’s face brightens once more into the sort of face he was famous for amongst his friends. “My friend! You are such interesting conversation! I cannot think of another person I would rather have by my side as I am forced to endure another gathering of insufferable royalists.”

Feuilly struggles with his words. Courfeyrac would have him attend the ball by his side? Once more he finds himself searching Courfeyrac’s face for any hint of a cruel joke, but finds none.

At his silence, Courfeyrac rises from his seat, grinning widely, for silence tends to give the impression that the opposing side has fallen into agreement. “Excellent! So, Tuesday next week we shall depart. And I shall begin my valiant search through Combeferre’s wardrobe!”

Feuilly remains astonished in his seat.

________________________________________________________________

1829

If he has to be completely honest, Feuilly does not talk very often with Grantaire, and so, Feuilly finds he cannot really come to a conclusion about him. He sees that the man is doubtful of their efforts, loud and rambunctious, and is drunk, always seems to be drunk.

But there is also a sort of melancholy present on his face when he thinks no one can see, when he does not constantly keep up that smirk as he goes on his next drunken ramble, a bitter and sardonic expression when he hears the rest speak of revolution and he finds himself too tired to even inject himself into the conversation. He sees a yearning, impossibly broken look grace Grantaire's face when their leader starts to speak or makes to smile or cries when upset or rages when he is furious—he seems to look as if he is reaching for something he can never quite have no matter how he stretches his fingers whenever Enjolras does anything, really.

Feuilly does not know much of Grantaire. So, he thinks to speak to him.

"Grantaire," he sits down next to him and inclines his head in greeting when Grantaire looks up from where he had been staring hard at his bottle of absinthe.

"Ah! The fan-maker makes time for me at last!" Grantaire cries as he spreads his arms wide. "Yes, young Feuilly, what is it that you find yourself in need of a drunk for?"

He ignores the young comment, only meditating briefly on the fact that he is the same age as Grantaire, and instead, hoping to forge a connection to the man, asks, "Did you really study under the guidance of Gros?"

Grantaire bellows out a loud peal of laughter. "My good fellow," he slurs, and Feuilly worries for how much he has had to drink tonight, "you must not believe everything that comes out of this drunkard's mouth."

He furrows his eyebrows. So he was lying?

"So you lied?" he asks in clarification. "You never did go to art school?"

A smile twists up Grantaire's face. "I only just told you not to trust everything I say. And yet! And yet, what is the first thing you do after I give you advice?"

He was beginning to get a little lost here. "I’m not quite sure I follow. Did you attend art school or not?"

Grantaire leans back in his chair. "Yes and no!"

"Yes and no?"

He grins at Feuilly. "A tale worthy of the likes of pleasant idlers, I am afraid, and while you are pleasant enough, you are anything but an idler—you cannot possibly hope to enjoy it."

He leans forward. "And yet, I find myself curious enough to hear of it nonetheless."

"Well," he starts, and for a moment, Feuilly fears that Grantaire will start on another one of his rather infamous rants, and while it is not that he is exactly opposed to them, but more so, he needs to get home so he can get however many hours of sleep Joly ordered him to get. "I certainly did attend classes at first. But the pretentiousness of it all! No man can tell you better that artists are amongst the most pretentious people to grace this hellish landscape we call earth. And the nude models were hardly anything to look at! I could get myself a better whore for less than a sou! Or better yet, not pay at all when it is me that such women always want!"

For a split second, Grantaire's gaze drifts, and when Feuilly tracks the movement of his eyes, he ends up looking over to where Enjolras stands at the table near the front, regarding Grantaire with a strong look of disappointment as he holds Grantaire's stare before returning to whatever it was he was discussing with Combeferre.

Grantaire tips his bottle towards the ceiling.

"No, I made the decision that no more would I waste away somewhere I knew I would rot. So instead I spent my time pilfering apples."

He huffs a laugh. “Pilfering apples? The ones used to model fruit?”

Within Grantaire’s eyes, Feuilly sees a mischievous sort of glint. “The very same.”

“And now? Do you still attend?”

He shrugs. “From time to time, though, I must ask why you think to ask me. My good fellow,” he reaches forward and lays a heavy hand on Feuilly’s shoulder. “I should think to ask you, rather, on your own painting.”

Feuilly flushes a little. “I haven’t the slightest of time for painting, Capital R.”

“And yet what little you have painted deserves to be hung up next to the works of Géricault!” Grantaire cries once more, and despite himself, Feuilly grins a little.

“It is hardly anything compared to Géricault.”

Grantaire waves a dismissive hand. “Bah! All these names—Géricault, Prud’hon, Delacroix—all of them are insufferable men who catch one whiff of fame and lose themselves to their pretentiousness. Your one work, young fan-maker, would be worth more than any of those scoundrels’ paintings put together.”

And Feuilly cannot help but gape, for this man in front of him, the very set definition of a skeptic, who once told their group, on his own whims, that believing was for the foolish and that he had no wish to believe in anything that would earn him an early death—he now sits here telling Feuilly that he finds meaning in his work, more meaning than in the works of the greatest painters to exist.

It leaves him shocked beyond compared.

Attempting to gather his thoughts once more into a state of decent coherency, he proceeds to ask, "Do you paint anymore?"

For a moment, just one quick moment that Feuilly admits he would not have caught had he not been looking closely, Grantaire's eyes flicker over to where Enjolras appears to be moderating some sort of a debate between Combeferre and Courfeyrac, laughing at something Courfeyrac must have said, and he notices the way Grantaire's face twists bitterly.

"Yes."

Feuilly does not ever ask what—or who—his subject is.

________________________________________________________________

1830

The weather of Paris in the spring signals the approach of a storm the Friends, unknown yet to their knowledge, will find themselves fighting in when the people decide in the season of July that tyranny must not be allowed to continue, and will resurrect barricades all throughout the city in the name of a free France achieved through a revolution that sees the overthrowing of King Charles X.

But for now, it is spring and the rain beats down upon the poor the hardest, upon those who have less shelter, fewer clothes, scarce food, and only in abundance do they have misery.

Feuilly counts himself lucky that he has a roof over his head, even if it is one that freezes in the night’s cold, and in the summer, swelters in the day’s heat.

Joly, however, does not seem to think so.

“I simply cannot allow you to go back to your flat when the rain beats down on our heads like this!” he cries, ignoring Feuilly’s several protests to the idea of spending the night at Joly’s residence, after Joly had taken one step into Feuilly’s own apartment and declared it uninhabitable in their current temperatures. “There is more than enough room at my residence, and I will not have one of my own falling ill when I had more than enough resources to prevent the ailment.”

“I wish not to intrude,” Feuilly repeats for what must surely be the hundredth time. “You already find yourself housing Bossuet, too, and—”

“Feuilly,” Joly scrubs a hand across his face, “helping a friend is hardly any bother to me. In the six years we have known each other is this how you expect me to behave?”

And Feuilly stops short, because Feuilly, who has never had a family—who has never had a mother or father or brother or sister—could hardly ever have imagined in his life that would have a friend—that he would have several friends—who would care for him—who would love him—like this, enough to offer up the chance at a residence that must look like a palace compared to his own shabby room, even if for one night.

“I simply… I simply would not want to cause any burden,” he mumbles.

Joly’s face splits into a bright grin, the one everyone who knows him is familiar with, the one that gives reason to why they all call him Jolllly. “But my friend!” he exclaims. “The more people to house, the more amusing the occasion, no?” Armed in one hand with his cane and the other holding Feuilly by the elbow, he begins to lead him towards his apartment. “Come! We shall make merry by the fire and drink to our heart’s content today—and we will not have to worry about rationing our drinking, for Grantaire is not here, either!”

“Make merry by the fire? But I regret to inform you that the Yuletide season is well past us,” an amused voice says by their side. As they both turn to the left, a familiar, laughing bald head makes itself apparent to their eyes.

Feuilly snorts. “I have not known you to be one to turn down an opportunity to nest by Joly’s fire, Bossuet. I find that I would rather while away the time in the false pretense that Christmas is still upon us rather than spend the hours shivering in the rain—would you not?”

“Bossuet can handle a little rain, what with the two sous in his pockets, he may even be able to manage a meager coffee,” Joly teases, carefully bringing the tip of his cane to rub at his nose.

“Really?” He raises an eyebrow. “Do tell, how does one manage a coffee at just two sous?”

“With enough grovelling at my door once he realizes that his endeavour is an impossible one and he owes me for the medical supplies I would inevitably have to purchase to bring him back to health after shivering so long in the cold.”

Bossuet bellows a laugh as he makes way for himself in between Feuilly and Joly, draping an arm around each's shoulders. “The grovelling will not be necessary, Jolllly, I shall tag along anyways. I would never decline, having found myself in the company of our dear friend Feuilly.”

Feuilly shoots him a confused look. “And why might my company be so desirable?”

Bossuet and Joly both laugh as if he had just told them the most amusing joke, but Feuilly cannot quite catch what it is that is so funny about what he said.

“Friends do not ask each other why their company is desirable, Feuilly,” Bossuet simply says.

And Feuilly feels something warm in his heart turn to a roaring fire, despite the chill of the rain.

Later, when he finds himself tucked into one of Joly’s armchairs, a blanket around him, he feels Joly lay a gentle hand upon his shoulder, looking at him most earnestly.

“I beg you think not of this as charity, my friend, but rather as something a friend would do for another. Nay a friend—more a brother.”

And with that, Joly leaves to prevent Bossuet from setting himself on fire in the kitchen while Feuilly struggles to blink back a wetness that threatens to slide down his cheeks, though his feelings are far from any sort of sorrow he has felt before.

________________________________________________________________

1832

He is hungry and he is thirsty and he is tired and he knows he is going to die.

He also knows that not only will he die in triumph, but he can imagine no other group of wonderful, extraordinary, familiar people he would rather die with.

Enjolras has already delivered news of their abandonment. Now, they sit and listen as he speaks of the principles of their fight, of the principles of their deaths, and Feuilly can think of no better speech he has ever heard in his short life.

He realizes, with a jolt, that Enjolras has turned to him. “Listen to me, Feuilly, valiant worker, man of the people, man of the peoples. I revere you. Yes, you see the future clearly, yes, you are right. You had neither father nor mother, Feuilly. You adopted humanity as your mother and right as your father. You’re going to die here—in other words, to triumph.” He holds his gaze for a second longer before he continues.

And Feuilly nods. Because he believes in Enjolras. He trusts in his words.

He knows he will die. But what better cause could there be?

He wishes they had succeeded, he had hoped, had so ardently believed that the people would rise with them.

But if the people do not wish to answer the call of revolution, he knows it will not succeed. He has accepted this.

And he realizes it is okay. He has come to terms with it.

He dwells on Enjolras’ words.

You had neither father nor mother, Feuilly. You adopted humanity as your mother and right as your father.

And, he quietly thinks to himself, I have adopted my friends as my brothers. And there is no one I would rather die beside. There are no other people who I would rather see smile one more time, or hold one more time, or laugh with and cry with and sit with one more time.

When he had first arrived in Paris, back eight years ago, Feuilly had resolved that he would adopt the people of Paris just as he had adopted those of the rest of the world.

He never imagined he himself would be adopted in turn.

________________________________________________________________

Rather than the bullet, Feuilly feels a sort of warmth spread through him instead. He lifts a hand to place at his side, where his blood begins to seep through his shirt and waistcoat.

He thinks of Bossuet’s laugh when he comes up with only two sous in his pocket and still offers Feuilly a drink.

He remembers why Joly was named the way he was, remembers his jollity in just about every situation Feuilly had found himself and Joly trapped in.

He nearly laughs at the thought of Grantaire’s rambles, and he sympathizes with his pursuit to find a family after his own had thrown him out. He sincerely hopes he will find the family that Feuilly did, too.

He recalls the feeling of Courfeyrac’s warmth, recalls how he kept the group together, how he shared that warmth with everyone no matter who they were, even if they were orphans like Feuilly.

He remembers Combeferre’s care, the way he always seemed to keep one eye open to look after everyone in the group, the way he never stopped making sure Feuilly got enough sleep, or had enough food, or rested enough, and he thinks that the world has just lost one of its greatest doctors.

He smiles at the memory of Jehan’s empathy, how his eyes seemed to see right through anything, and the way he always knew when to sit with Feuilly and ask him if there was something he wanted to share, something weighing down on his chest that was suffocating him, something that seemed to be relieved only when Jehan would smile that soft smile of his and tell him that he always had him by his side.

He can still feel Enjolras’ passion light up the barricade, recalls how his passion showed when he preached of a free France, when he spoke of the plight of the poor, and remembers the way that passion would soften into reverence when he would sit with Feuilly and listen to what he had to say, despite the fact that all his life he was likely taught to disregard men like him.

He remembers Bahorel’s bravery, how could he ever forget? He remembers that reckless smile, the bold behaviour that led to him taking his hand after being toppled to the ground, remembers that single question Bahorel asked him that would change his life forever, and he wishes—he cries at the thought of never having had the chance to say thank you, to tell him he is the reason why Feuilly is content to die in the situation he has found himself in.

Feuilly thinks of being born into the world with no family, no one to call his own.

Then he thinks about leaving it having found the men he loves, he loves—oh Lord above he loves like he could never love a mother or a father, he loves these men so much that it tears his heart in two thinking of each and everyone dying—he catches a glimpse of Enjolras being backed up the stairs while the National Guardsmen continues to prowl their way towards him and he sees Combeferre glance towards the heavens as his chest is speared by three bayonets and he sees Courfeyrac fall to his side having been shot once, twice, three times, and he sees Joly and Bossuet look towards each other as they are both shot side by side and he remembers the strength in Jehan’s voice when he cried out one last time in the name of the world they had sought to build and he remembers Bahorel’s spirit being the first to leave and he remembers, remembers, remembers, and it hurts so much, it makes him ache with a pain that makes him want to scream and cry for he cannot imagine the thought of having finally found his family and then having them torn from him, one by one, he hurts so much and surely God cannot be so cruel that he snatches their dreams, snatches the only people he knows he will ever love away—

And then he finds peace. Because as he bleeds out, he hears a voice, clear as the dawn drawing above the new day, cry out Long live the republic! and it is Grantaire, and he can almost hear Enjolras smile when he hears what he knows is the final report resounding, and in Combeferre’s eyes there is a sort of divine trust as his eyes remain affixed to where he believes he will find salvation, and there is a sort of tranquility in Courfeyrac’s eyes, and he sees the way Joly and Bossuet are still looking to each other even in death, and he thinks of how Jehan went out exactly as he wished, with strong words on his tongue, and he thinks of Bahorel’s fighting spirit and how he died doing what he thought was right.

His hand grows damper and hotter as his blood seeps out quicker and quicker.

The world may not remember their names in history—but Feuilly knows they will have a permanent place in his.

Like Combeferre, he casts his eyes towards heaven, and he thinks he can see Bahorel hold out his hand like he did eight years ago.

He can’t wait to have his life change again.

And Feuilly falls with a smile.

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