#but also like. COULD a good adult get all of this done in one day?

[frogemeat]

Back on my shit for my relativity falls AU where Stan goes missing because I can!! And no one can stop me!

So let’s actually dive into the characters a bit more this time and their reactions to Stan’s disappearance.

We’re going to start with Mabel because I feel like in any universe Mabel and Stan have a special connection, one where they just understand eachother, y’know?

In my relativity falls au, Stan is reluctant to open up at first to Mabel. Surprisingly it was Ford who warmed up to her first. Stan, at first, is very distrustful of adults and people in authority in general (when I get you Filbrick, when I get you-) so he keeps distance between himself and Mabel at first.

He’s his usual rambunctious self, loud and unapologetic about, but he doesn’t rant to her about the latest addition of his favorite comic, he doesn’t let her look at his drawings and anytime she wants to spend one on one time on him he would turn her down. Eventually he warmed up to her, which is more my actual relativity falls au then this, so I won’t go into it (unless someone wants me to 👀).

So when I say Mabel worked hard, she worked hard to get Stan’s trust. And she’s proud of that dammit!

To her Stan is such a bright star who’s often overlooked by his genius of a twin brother (something she can heavily relate too) and she wanted to nurture his creativity. And she did!

She displayed the weird Frankenstein taxidermy he made in the shack, she taught him how to knit and sew and he even started to let her watch “the duchess approves” with her!

They grew close and Mabel started to see both the twins as her sons. She had suspicions that their home life was… less than good and she was SUPER unsure about sending them home after summer ended. She didn’t think the decision would’ve been made for her.

Weirdmaggdeon was over. They won. Steve (Bill’s replacement in this AU) is gone. But they weren’t celebrating. The only thought the three Pines had was…

Where’s Stan?

They searched the woods for him long at the r the sun set. She had to drag Ford back home when he started tripping over his own feet, his exhaustion evident. Ford tried to insist he was okay, that he could keep looking, that he needed to keep looking, that Stan was out there, he needed to continue. Stan would keep looking for him if their roles were reversed.

All Mabel could do was shush him as he cried against her shoulder.

Dipper stayed behind and kept looking and both Mabel and Ford went home without their other half. Long after Ford had passed out Dipper had finally come home, empty handed. They spent the rest of the night talking about what to do. They would check town first thing in the morning, they had decided. Maybe in his daze he had wandered out of the woods and one of the townsfolk’s found him. If not, they would go to the police, see if anyone had reported a small brown haired preteen wandering around. (

They also discussed the possibility of Stan being dead, but Mabel couldn’t even stomach the thought of it. They quickly stopped when Mabel started to cry.)

She had just met the twins, only known them for three months, yet they were hers. Her boys. Her babies. Her peanut and walnut. And Stan was gone.

The boy she swore to protect, the boy who pretended he was tough when he was really the sweetest kid she ever met.

Days go by and still no Stan. Ford refuses to talk to anyone, Dipper is out of the house for most of the day searching, and Mabel is left alone, surrounded by half finished knitting projects and echoes of a boy who’s laughter warmed her heart.

She cries a lot. That’s all she does for the first few months.

One day, after Ford’s parents (not Stan and Ford’s, just Ford’s, because apparently no one remember’s her little peanut outside of Gravity Falls) drops off all his stuff for his apprenticeship with Dipper, she’s pulls herself together, makes her famous Mabelcakes, and starts to rebuild. Dipper had done amazing keeping them together, but it was time for some Mabel magic.

Three years pass and the Stan shaped hole in their family doesn’t get smaller. Ford still turns to his right whenever he gets excited, Mabel still hasn’t watched the season finale of “the duchess approves” (she couldn’t finish it without Stan, not when he was so excited to show it to her), and Dipper sometimes still goes into the woods to search.

Ford is turning 17 in a few weeks. June 15th. She’s in Greasy’s after deciding that a snack sounded good after buying birthday presidents for her walnut and instead of Susan greeting her and taking her order like she has since she started working there, she was greeted with a new face.

A familiar face.

Even older, more pimply, and with a beanie pulled down so far it almost covered his eyes, she would recognize him.

Her peanut.

[ourceliumnetwork]

it is not slacking off to write or create it is not slacking off to do things that are fun i am not slacking off or procrastinating right now i'm allowed to do things i enjoy doing for fun including playing games and writing and such

[pepprs]

ok. giving myself 4 minutes to make this post and then i finish my homework. i just am so deeply miserable. i really think i made a mistake. i should not be in grad school. i only took a year between this and undergrad and i am still so burned out and mentally ill. im working full time. im only taking one class and this program is supposed to be so good and aligned with what i want and all of that. but i just cant stand having homework. i just cant stand it. i think i am not cut out for academia even though i work in academia. i think i will never get better as long as im still living at home but i have to get better before i can no longer be living at home but i cant get better until im not living at home and every day i still live at home saps away at my will to live quite literally. i should not have started doing grad school without regaining my will to live. without restoring my love for reading and writing that i used to have voraciously when i was younger and less deeply miserable. without recovering from the burnout. i think i made a mistake. i need a masters degree so bad so that i can be safe but i need to not have fucking homework when i already struggle to get through my days without school. i feel so stuck in my life and hopeless and helpless. i dont know what to do

[giantkillerjack]

YES!!!!THIS!!!!

Remember that if you want to do more of something, you have to do less of something else. It's that time of year where people set goals for the new year and they have plans and hopes and it's always focusing on what they want to do more of. More studying, more exercise, more crafting, more socialising, more making things from scratch. Okay, great. What are you going to do less of in order to have the time and energy to do more of those things you really want to do?

[frenchvanilla-mase]

fans are assholes | r. dias

summary: fans compare your pregnancy to fellow wags, leaving you to feel not so good.

notes: as requested! i don’t think i specified that it was twins but it still works. dad!ruben has to be my fav genre 🤪 i hope you all enjoy, some very cute at moments 💘 let me know what you all think! <3

IT WAS MATCH DAY, and although you were feeling rough like you had done the last 7 months, you had promised your fiancé you would make it to today’s knockout game rather than watching from home. he wanted you to support from the stadium, but he also wanted to get you out of the house too.

you were 32 weeks along and feeling very heavily pregnant.

yeah, it’s all fun and games when dating a tall man until you have to grow his unnecessarily large children.

all you wanted to do was lie down and moan this entire trimester, having nothing but a hard time with this one you were growing. you’d had every bad symptom imaginable, from the nonstop sickness and heartburn, to back and hip pain, difficulty sleeping and sore boobs, and now in the final stages you were experiencing braxton hicks, so yeah - all you did want was to lie down and whine. more than ever, you just wanted to stay in the comfort of your own home and nest.

“—you’re not even nesting though! you’re sitting here watching tv all day! get up and get ready!” rúben had said to you just yesterday morning after you’d told him you were too busy nesting to grab a coffee with him before training.

“mama, i think you should go tomorrrow . .” another sweet voice said from the sofa, glancing sympathetically in your direction.

your sweet boy, elias, didn’t want to offend you and make you feel like a slob, but he really wanted you both to go to his papa’s games. with school, you didn’t allow him to go to any late night matches which were always the majority, but tomorrow’s kickoff was 3:30pm and when he pitched the idea, you felt awful for feeling like you’d deprived him of some fun memories.

you really didn’t want to go, but your baby boy deserved it. he’d been working so hard in the last weeks of school and rúben would agree that you needed to take him - he wanted you both there just as much but he also knew not to tell a pregnant woman what to do - he wasn’t the one carrying an 8lb baby around in all summer.

“you nearly ready, baby?!” you called from your room, trying your best to look acceptable for today’s outing. you couldn’t remember the last time you’d done your makeup and styled your hair so neatly, baby dias was really kicking your butt that you hardly had any energy after a shower, let alone doing your makeup and hair.

you really needed them out so you could go back to your old self.

you didn’t remember pregnancy being this hard with eli. with him, you were able to get through the rest of school with him growing in your belly! taking notes and listening in class. sure, you had sickness and a sore back but that was really only at the start and at the end. given, you were younger and full of energy.

eli came along in the last of your teen years but you wouldn’t change anything for the world, same with rúben. he blamed that baby boy for being the reason he pushed himself so hard to get where he was today. he was such an easy pregnancy, and an easy kid.

being honest, you felt more unprepared for this new baby as a grown adult than you did as a teenager back in 2016.

with a few thuds across the landing and a solid jump at your bedroom door, you turned to see your 8-year-old all ready holding two thumbs up. with a man city kit on and trainers, he looked like rúben more than ever. seriously, if you got a photo of rúben back then, it was like looking at eli with a slightly different haircut. it scared you so much. “ready!”

traffic was always bad no matter what time you left, but you got there in one piece and already left eli with one of your closest friends and bernardo’s wife, ines, while you had to run to the bathroom even after such a short journey. jeans were longgg out of the equation so you’d gone with some loose, white trousers to go with the blue football shirt, hoping they didn’t wrinkle too much but still looked good with the outfit. “you are glowing!”

“no, it’s probably just my highlighter,” you pointed to your cheekbone as ines laughed cheerfully.

“no! you look amazing, what are you talking about?! i have missed you!” she couldn’t help but hug you again. “you’re ready to pop!”

she felt your bump and you huffed a sigh, pulling your sunglasses down, “i know, it feels like it.”

you didn’t really like being out this far along, not because you were afraid, but you were at that stage were you were starting to feel gross. like, you looked like a whale no matter what you wore or styled yourself to look like. realistically – you were one of the most beautiful pregnant women the internet had saw. truly, you may have felt like an elephant, but you were still posted on WAG accounts, getting shared by millions of women who begged they could only look as good as you when pregnant or better - envied you for still looking so hot while suffering the struggles of pregnancy.

how?! 😭❤️

life’s not fair!!!! 😫

what’s her secret?!!! 😍😭🙏🏼

but you could have gotten a thousand comments like that . . but all it took was the one bad one.

fucking hell, keep her inside 😂🫣

who is that??

🤣🤣🤣🤮🤮

a lot of the time you didn’t care because you knew how the internet worked, and you know the majority were sad-little-pathetic-football-fan men. they barely impacted you.

when it was women on the other hand . . .

“i just can’t believe one woman would say that to another woman,” you tilted your phone to show ines the replies. “what happened to the whole ‘girls help girls?’” you had to put your phone down before you ended up on a gossip page for arguing with people in your comment section.

“it’s always down to jealousy, babe. they hate you ‘cause they ain’t you,” she pointed, the same thing you had told her when she got her first negative comment, and you smiled at her attempt of making you feel better. she was such a good friend.

the internet was a weird place. your life was a weird place, you didn’t think there’d be a day people hated you for simply being with a person. you found it weird paparazzi followed you around when rúben was the famous one. you found it weird there were accounts dedicated to you when you didn’t do anything. it caught you off seeing people notice every little thing about you or knew things you forgot you’d explained. it did add a little bit of pressure knowing you were being watched and most likely compared to other beautiful WAGS. you’d be lying if you didn’t say you’d put on makeup in fear you’d be posted all over those news articles and WAG accounts.

you forgot how stressed matches made you until kickoff, two minutes in and already overthinking how this would go down. rúben had your heart fluttering nontheless with how he ran up and down the pitch, giving orders all sweaty and even repping the captain band for a bit. it made you feel real good about your baby daddy.

“come on, pa!” your son would shout when a bit of a ruffle would occur, his father speaking passionately to the ref with frustrating hand movements.

the halftime whistle blew and you let out a breath, fanning yourself as your body relaxed for a small moment. 0-0. “ma, i need to go to the bathroom.”

“me too, let’s go!”

perks of dating a footballer? renting out their own box for friends and family - including the private bathroom. no queues around hereee.

walking through the rows and steps, you couldn’t help but feel eyes pinned to you. ines would tell you because you’re a WAG of a player (you regret ever educating her on that term) but really you felt like it was because you looked like a whale making her way through the stands.

eli convinced you to do a lap of the stadium just once to ‘stretch your legs’ when really it was something he always liked to do as he believed it ‘made halftime pass quicker’. so hobbling around with few staff members recognising the kid (or rather seeing the clear evidence he was a mini rúben) , you strolled around the packed building, trying to squeeze past football fans, getting stopped once for a picture.

“thank you so much!”

“no worries at all,” you waved to the two girls, shooting them your kindest smile. they were so lovely, and even complimented you for ‘pulling off pregnancy so well’.

“you’re sLayiNg” eli mocked them, taking your hand.

“shut up,” you tutted. you appreciated being told you were still slaying.

“matt!”

the 8-year-old suddenly bolted to a familair security guard in a neon vest who was delighted to see the boy. “my man!”

you didn’t bother rushing over, you were out of breath as it was and decided to just lean on the wall while elias got his quick catch up, waving at matt instead. halftime was almost over. you should be heading back now.

“—not the best one though.”

“—no, sasha is definitely the best wag.”

i swear, the word ‘wag’ triggers you like nothing else.

you tried not to look around, but to your left, you could make out two bodies mingling with each other. both wearing light blue tops with stylish jeans and trainers, the two girls waiting outside the bathroom, trying to talk quietly between then in a mumbled manner.

you were a mum - you had mastered your hearing to hear the grass grow.

“–but sasha’s not pregnant?”

“–but if she was, she’d have a cute bump, not . . ”

their silence had you believe they’d glance in your direction, and it took every bone in your body not to stare dead on at them with a smile to let them know you heard every word - but you didn’t. you played oblivious and stayed watching eli, a forced sweet smile on your lips.

“–foden’s girl always has a cute little bump too!”

“–oh my god, yes. she’s stunning.”

“–he’s stunning too, to be fair.”

“eli, come on son!” you wanted to bang your head on the wall not wanting to endure the conversation anymore. now you’d tune in, you couldn’t tune out.

“–ok. bye matt! see you later,” he didn’t waste a second to return to you. “see you soon, buddy!”

you waved at matt and led him through the crowds, not meaning to hold his hand so tight until he pointed it out. “ow, ma, you’re hurting me.”

“sorry baby.” you didn’t sound sorry but you felt utterly hot and bothered. and not in the good way.

for some unreasonable reason, a small line of carts drove through the halls, and you stood against the wall as they passed by, holding your son by his shoulders. you could hear a small utter of whispers from your side but refused to turn your head. you really needed to fucking sit down.

“—dias’ girl! look at the size of her!”

“–rob that’s so mean! she’s pregnant!”

“WOW!” eli stole your attention as he almost stepped out in front of a last minute one zooming by. you smiled, and quickly manoeuvred him on your way.

“keep going, keep going,” you shuffled behind him in the stands, but stopped amidst a waiting line as someone caused hassle. your foot kicked something. “oh i’m so sorry!”

you accidentally tapped your foot to a lady’s handbag, but she smiled and waved you off. “you’re alright, don’t worry!” shortly adding, “i’m not surprised!” glancing to your belly.

it wasn’t malicious, but it was about to be the last straw of some floodgates. “ha! i know . . I’m like a whale.”

“how far along are you?” her friend asked.

“about 7-8 months,” you smiled sweetly, ignoring the fact they didn’t assure you that you didn’t look like a whale. thanks.

“oh wow!”

“i know,” you fake laughed. why wasn’t this line moving?

“is it twins or just the one?”

you tried to stop your eye twitching. who in the right kind said that?! was that . . a backhanded compliment?! what that even a compliment?! or was she genuinely asking in a stupid and nosey manner? “no, but it feels like it,” you fake laughed, and they did too. twats.

“oh my! you’re so big!”

“he or she will be a big boy or girl,” the other corrected with her pint in hand, knowing her friend’s words had just flown out of her mouth.

“yeah . .” you were done with this conversation but you didn’t dare be rude. thankfully, the line moved, and they waved goodbye. “congratulations!”

“thank you!” you replied, turning back around, mouthing absolute knobheads.

“mum, i don’t think you’re a whale,” eli’s hand patted your own that rested on his shoulder, bringing you back down to earth.

your heart thumped and although he didn’t look at you, your heart melted to a puddle as you squeezed his shoulders and ruffled his hair, knowing you’d embarrass him with a kiss. “thank you baby. you’re always to sweet to me.”

and he was. you actually . . wanted to cry. shock.

“hey!” ines greeted. “where’d you guys go?”

you only shook your head and nodded to you son who was standing again, ready and recharged for more yelling. you felt ines squeeze your hand and you looked at her, “are you ok? you look . .”

“yeah, i’m fine,” you dabbed your eyes and put your sunglasses back on. “just . . stupid stuff, and then e said something really sweet and i just,” you held your heart which made her laugh and reassure her for the time being. “ok, but . . you can tell me, y’know?”

“just being emotional,” you said the obvious, making her laugh as you leaned into her for support.

you would tell her later, but right now, you were going to use the rest of the game as your excuse to start screaming.

-

the game ended on a win. you saw rúben briefly when the players walked around and applauded, and eli mirrored his excitement and happiness, waving and calling to him as he spotted you guys. he was ecstatic you could make it.

it was after 6 by the time you got home and settled. you were about to order food when you second guess your options, today’s events replaying in your mind:

look at the size of her!

sasha would have a cute bump.

you’re so big!

you knew you were pregnant but there were far nicer things to say to a pregnant lady. what a bunch of assholes.

instead, you cooked some carbs up for eli and made yourself a seperate dinner, feeling the need to watch what you were eating now - you’d be giving birth soon and all those pregnancy cravings didn’t just leave when the baby came. you weren’t silly - you weren’t going to deprive yourself of food, but maybe they had a point - why wasn’t your bump considered cute? was it hard to tell you were pregnant? what were you doing differently?

you were on the verge of calling sasha and asking her what she put in her green smoothies when the door opened.

“meu amor?”

“in here champ,”

something rúben didn’t expect to see what you lying on the couch with a salad balanced on your bump, and you munching away like it was a 5-star dish. “what’s this about . . ?” he smiled sceptically, dropping his bag to the floor.

“what’s what?”

“that.” he nodded to your plate.

you shrugged. “took a notion for it.”

“for . . a salad?” he clarified, looking down at you, entertained in some sense.

your craving for the last 5 months had been anything with chocolate frosting on it. rúben had watched you talk yourself out of buying a tub of it on its own because you knew if was weird and would have to bake go use it.

“yeah.”

to be fair, the salad was tasty, and you were enjoying it but . . at 7 months pregnant? rúben tilted his head. “where’s eli?”

“is his room.”

“he had salad too?”

“he had pasta and garlic bread.”

now he knew something was up. you? not eating garlic bread? italian in general?

someone had said something to you.

he looked at you concerningly, but he was too afraid to ruin the peaceful moment. you seemed calm. he had won a game and you were in a good mood today. baby boy or girl mustn’t be giving you too much trouble so that was a win in itself. so he just leaned down and kissed you lovingly. “hi.”

“hi,” you smiled, pecking him three more times before he rose again. “well done today.”

“thank you,” his hand touched your belly for about two seconds before you swept it off smoothly with your own, squeezing it instead. you smiled up at him again, “love you.”

he kissed you again trying to hide his confusion – but something was up. you were being odd. “love you too.”

and he left and headed for eli’s room, leaving you to let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding before slouching again and continuing with your dinner.

-

the rest of that evening, rúben was correct. you weren’t yourself.

your mind was somewhere else, and your head wasn’t out of your phone. constantly scrolling, you had overanalysed every picture captured of you today and tried not to nitpick. reading comments. comparing yourself. he wondered what you were doing.

but everyone else did have small bumps. everyone’s looked so cute. they didn’t use pregnancy as an excuse to eat whatever they wanted or slack with self-care. they still wore tight clothing. they still looked gorgeous. you began to compare yourself to all these other wives and girlfriends on the page, wondering how on earth they looked that good.

ummmm, ‘cause maybe they’re 12 weeks along and you’re triple that?

the next morning, rúben kissed you in the kitchen before leaving. “what’s that?”

“what?”

“that,” he nodded to the drink in your hand.

“a smoothie?”

“for breakfast?”

“well yeah,” you furrowed your brows, and he immediately shook his head, pulling that judgemental, disapproving look you sometimes wanted to punch. “no, no, come on, don’t be silly, now,” he almost laughed, “you need to eat something proper.”

“it’s a smoothie, it has everything i need in it?”

“y/n, make something to eat. you’re almost 8 months pregnant for crying out loud,” he looked at you seriously. he didn’t want to sound like he was scolding you or making you feel stupid but you knew he was worried about the lack.

overprotective rúben had always been a constant in your relationship but when you were pregnant — phew, “you got my baby in there.”

“–and he or she is looked after, it’s a healthy drink—”

he took it from your hand and kissed your cheek in the process, taking it with him to training with a smirk, “stop being lazy and cook.”

you were furious. you were actually annoyed that he had taken the drink himself and didn’t find it funny. he kissed eli’s head and the door closed, and you were left highly irritated.

you couldn’t see eli shrink, but he did, looking wide-eyed at the table as he considered his dad a brave brave man in that moment to do that to you - considering the look of your face.

and as a pregnant woman with her emotional struggling to stay in check - you lost it as they all blended together once eli was dropped off at school, sitting in a car park of a café you regretted going too now that you sat with your decaf latte and triple-choc muffin. the frustration quickly turned to tears as you had a moment, eyes in your hands, thinking over everything the last couple days.

yes you were pregnant, but was there a need to be that big? were you even that big compared to others? were you really that bad to look at? that unflattering? did it even looking like you were pregnant? the loose clothing probably didn’t help, but who wanted to wear tight clothing? pregnancy was hard - it was hard to glamourise it all the time!

you’d never cried over looking bad the first time you were pregnant, maybe once or twice when a pair of jeans didn’t fit or you couldn’t reach your shoelaces, but never over the way you felt about yourself. you actually were starting to feel disgusting, and it was embarrassing because you let randomers make you feel this way!

. . and then the pathetic-ness turned into anger because why were people such assholes?! how can they not keep an opinion to themselves?! making you feel bad about your baby!

. . and then the anger turned to guilt because your sweet little baby was just trying to grow and be healthy and you were upset over it. tears again.

you didn’t know how to fix it. the damage was already done, you had a month left, there was no going back now with salads and smoothies, you yanked your paper bag with your muffin off the floor, eating your money’s worth. rúben subconsciously popped into your head as he was probably eating some fruit salad or nutritious sandwich at this time.

oh rúben. you wished he was here but you also knew you wouldn’t want him near you at the minute, not when you weren’t feeling yourself and you had people in your comments telling you he was on his way of replacing you.

he would call you stupid, but rúben just wouldn’t understand. he wouldn’t get being on the other side, the built in competition that automatically comes with being a woman, more than ever with this lifestyle he had given you. one where you’re compared left right and centre with a certain standard to achieve.

you bet every handbag you owned, he’d screw his face up and go ‘are you serious’ if you told him your issue. he knew you were above anyone commenting stupid things on your posts and found it immature of you in a way if you did take those things to heart - i mean they were nobodies! jealous nobodies! but that’s easy for him to say, his comments are flooded with never ending support, guys praising him for his talent, physique and hard work and most girls telling him to hurry up and leave you. spamming with flame and tongue emojis, thirsting over your man just the way you did, only boosting his ego more which rúben did not need.

so you just felt silly, and picked at your muffin, accepting your were going to be a whale wag.

you felt like a slob when you got back home, staying on the couch after cleaning, and then crying except you were watching a movie to blame it on that.

you still couldn’t get comments out of your head, i mean what was an ‘expired wag?!’ or a ‘busted oven?!’ what did that mean? and why always the skull emojis?!

scrolling once again through photos of comparison, you scrolled onto a beautiful pic of your beautiful bestie, ines, and straight away phoned her. “hey.”

“hey! what’s up! what’s going on? why do you sound you out of breath?”

“why do you think?” you laughed.

“girl are you crying again?!”

and you started talking. you had to get things off your chest and you needed ines to make you feel better, to assure you and let you rant, and she happily did, after all, you’d always been there when she was having a moment.

“–what did rúben say?”

“nothing, i haven’t told him anything. he’ll just tell me i’m being ridiculous.”

“he won’t!”

“ines, he would, he’s not like bernardo. rúben’s harsh!”

“so are you! which is why i can’t believe you’re still crying over this!”

he was harsh in the good way, in the same way you were. you were both practical. real. realistic. you picked each other up and told each off when you were being ridiculous. pulled each other out their asses. brought you back down to earth.

but you just needed comforted at this current moment by your girl.

as you continued to chat and laugh more than you thought, the front door opened without your acknowledgment and rubes stepped through. freshly showered after a long morning of training, he instantly heard your voice rambling over the phone. he took notice of the tissue also crumpled on the floor by the door (you’d been carelessly tossing them for dramatic effect) and paused after he thought he’d heard a sad sniffle. he closed the door quietly and crept near the living room.

“i can’t help it, i do just feel . . blegh,” you felt like you were being ridiculous but you couldn’t help it. “like, why does everyone keep making a big fuss about it? am i really that massively huge or am i just not liked?”

he heard another woman’s laughter on your phone and recognised her as soon as she began talking to you, “y/n, i promise no one is making a fuss of it, it probably just seems in your face all the time because you keep going back to check. i promise the world is not broadcasting you,” ines chuckled sweetly, which followed your sad laugh also.

“well the wag world does!”

“y/n!” she laughed, “you’re overthinking it. i promise you have nothing to worry about. the only person who’s opinion should matter to you is rúben’s and everybody knows he has you on a pedestal!” rúben found himself smiling. he’d always been a fan of ines. “he’s called you his wife since you came to manchester! he’s always been proud to show you off, you look good - you look amazing! people are just saying that stuff about you to make themselves feel better.”

“mm, i guess,” you sniffed, holding your forehead. “i don’t know, it’s just been getting to me . . and i’m not saying to rúben because he’ll tell me i’m being stupid. i wouldn’t be surprised if he was leaving an hour earlier in the mornings to get away from me. it’s not like my looks can make up for my psycho-ness anymore,” you joked.

“y/n!” she tried not to laugh. “though, pregnancy psycho-ness is definitely real.”

it is, rúben mentally agreed also, though his heart still sank further as he heard you talk about yourself in such ways. he didn’t want to call you ridiculous but come on, you were pregnant! didn’t they all count as compliments to a pregnant lady?!

“it is,” you let out a sigh, “i wouldn’t want to be around me either, just this big angry rhino walking around the house,” you laughed together, “he goes to a paris event on friday anyway, he’ll get a break and have plenty of french models to—”

a clear of a throat had you whipping your head to the door, seeing rúben’s hard stare. your mouth went dry. “uhhh, ines i’ll call you back.”

you felt bad hanging up as she was speaking back, too shocked you’d been heard rambling for the last couple minutes. or probably longer! how long had he been standing there?!

“listen—”

“french models?! french models, y/n.”

“rúben, it’s not in context—”

“oh i heard the context, i heard everything,” he came in the room, not one spot of happiness found on his face. he was fuming. you could tell, and disappointed too, you felt like eli getting told off by him, throwing yourself back into the couch as he stood with that gruff, intimidating look, hands shoved in his pockets.

“you don’t get it—” you could already feel the tears welling in your eyes, though a pit of frustration was brewing in your chest hot and fast. this was going one of two ways.

“what don’t i get? you don’t tell me what’s wrong when i ask you!”

“‘cause you wouldn’t understand!”

“ok but what i do understand is my wife accusing me of what? getting to pick which ‘french model’ i want to take home next week?”

now your face fell flat, realising how ridiculous and cruel that sounded. you shouldn’t accuse him of that kind of stuff.

“rubes, i just—” your mouth felt dry again. tears brimming again, you could feel how hot they were. the words were on the tip of your tongue but you didn’t know how they were gonna come out.

“what is it? tell me,” he pushed, eager for you to actually get out what you wanted to say so he could help sort it. “i’m here to listen.”

and you did, you unleashed it all. “people are assholes. your fans are assholes. i’m sorry but i cannot believe the stuff people have no issue saying to other people - pregnant people at that! as if the 9 months aren’t hard enough, i have this mob of men and women on my back, judging and critiquing my every outting. i can’t do it anymore, it’s actually ruining whatever self-confidence i have left!” the tears were streaming as you began your rant, choking down sobs as you moved your hands, a fury behind all the sadness.

rúben crouched down, wanting to be nearer as you let it all out. “every day, every hour, i have someone online, reminding me off how big i am, how unflattering my paparazzi pic is, how whale-like i am! how hard it’s gonna be to shift this baby weight! i’m getting put in competition with every other pregnant wife and girlfriend of your teammate and showed how much better they pull it off! how gorgeous they look all the time! how their bumps are ‘cute’ and small and ‘suits them.’ i heard it myself at your game the other day! it’s like they’ve never seen an un-photoshopped pregnant woman before!” you met his eyes, realising you were probably being silly and that there were bigger problems in the world. “i just feel disgusting, rúben. i never felt like this with eli, i was in this perfect little bubble but this time so different. i don’t want to leave the house when i know a monstrosity of photos are getting taken of me, pointing out every flaw. i don’t have a cute, small bump! i do look like a whale! i can’t dress sexy! and i get what people are saying when they say it’ll be a bit before you can look at me again ‘cause god knows—”

“shh,” he quickly silenced you, placing a finger to your lips. his brows were furrowed as yours did, fed up of hearing you ramble about all the bad things about yourself. he felt pain in a way. he just couldn’t believe you actually thought these things about yourself. “wha— . . . are you being serious?”

“OH MY GOD!” you threw your arms up. see!

“i’m sorry, i’m sorry, meu amor,” his big hands softly caressed your legs in front of him, along your smooth thighs to stop you from exploding again, “i’m sorry. it’s just . . i . . it annoys me that you let these things get to you, these random, strange people that you don’t even know. you take their opinion over mine. so mine doesn’t matter, it doesn’t count?” he looked you deeply in the eye, “how does that make sense? explain that to me.”

your head hit the cushion as you groaned but rúben held your hands comfortingly. he didn’t want to make you feel stupid, but he wanted to hear your thought process. “to me, it’s like . . you have the choice of walking into a room full of all these people who hate you, and you know the hate you, after being in one full of people you love . . and you go into the hateful one and are surprised that all these people are saying all these bad things about you when you could have just left it alone and focused on the lovely ones - from people who matter to you! who are actually in your life! do you understand?”

you nodded along, entranced by his eyes and how they were able to ground you alone. “you know that i think you’re the best thing in the world. you know i would love you if—” he thought off the top of his head, “you had 10 extra toes. a third eye. if you had a cow nose. elf ears!” your hair slipped silkily through his fingers, “you know i think you’re the most beautiful woman ever even dressed in a trash bag. i would still love you if you did wear trash bags. if you had a cow nose. if you weighed the same as a cow. if you weighed the same as a baby cow,” you broke a chuckle at that. “i’ve loved you through our ugly teen years, when i shaved my hair and your eyebrows were stick thin,” you laughed more as he let out a breath of relief, “i loved you when with vomit down your shirt and your hair dyed that weird colour—”

“rúbennn . .”

“what? and i loved you when you had eli in your stomach, and he was big baby,” his hand touched your belly, moving it in the same motion he always did because that’s when he got to feel the small kicks of this baby dias. “i loved you even more even when i saw how he came out,” he shot you a wildered look.

you facepalmed, dragging your hand down dreadfully at the thought of having to relive that moment all over again in over a months time.

his features turned as his thoughts turned sour, “why are you letting stupid fucking people affect you?”

“i don’t know . . i guess ‘cause so many people are saying it i . . it must be true to some extent—”

“y/n—”

“seriously, rúben. i don’t have a cute, small bump. ines and rebecca are always such sweet—”

“Y/N! have you SEEN the size of bernardo and phil next to me! is it any wonder they’re small! their child comes out the same size as them!” his hand shot out with passion.

now your head was in your hand with muffled laughter, caught off guard by his statement. “seriously! seriously, now you’re supposed to be the smart one,” he tried to look at you, that loving smile shining your way as his heart sang at the sound of you laughter. “you’re shocked that me, that we, have big babies . . that ines has a much smaller bump than you . . are you serious? that rebecca has a smaller bump than you? rebecca, phil and elway stacked on top of each other wouldn’t even reach the height of me!”

“rúben,” you laughed, feeling an actual blush of embarrassment coat your face at how stupid he’d made you feel, but in a good way.

he was so right. what were you thinking?

“i’m like, the biggest guy on the team! sorry i didn’t realise that was gonna be a problem for you,” you lightly hit his shoulder to wrap up the sarcasm, still giggling. he looked at you from the floor, his hands still on you, on your leg on bump — the bump that he did make look small next to his hand. “and please remember you’re a month away from giving birth, you’re supposed to be a healthy size. and i been going to training an hour earlier ‘cause i know when this one comes along, i’ll not want to go as much and i’ll want to stay with you both. i’ll start working on my dad bod . .” he felt the small, subtle movement happening inside, but he could feel them if he kept still enough.

“you’d look good with both.” you rolled your eyes.

“and you’d still look better. y/n, you’re not a whale. please stop saying that,” he finally crept to his feet, climbing on the couch on top of you, leaning his arm behind your head. “you are the most beautiful-est woman to me and no-one, NO-ONE can convince me otherwise. you’re my standard of perfect, of gorgeous and sexy and all the rest of it. i’ve found you sexy before this baby, during this baby, and after this baby — i still get comments of people telling me how ugly i look when you’re next to me! you bring my value down!”

his arm wrapped around your neck while the other threw itself over your bump, shifting and snuggling into the sofa more comfortingly, you relaxed alongside him, the tears no trickling down but with good reason behind them as you were shocked to find your love growing even more for rúben when you thought it was impossible. “i don’t know what comments you’re seeing because all i see are the ones calling you a milf, and it takes too much time to try and report them all.”

you held his hand at your shoulder, his lips kissing your cheek repeatedly, over and over again. you knew how much he loved you. “yeah, you’re right. fans are just . . assholes.”

“fans are assholes,” he agreed, stroking your cheekbone, “. . don’t listen to them. you think i listen to everything they say about me?” he perked a brow.

sometimes! you wanted to say but knew better. it was rhetorical question, and you knew his sweet intentions.

“alright? i don’t so why should you? you’re hot stuff babe,” he looked at the side of your face, inspecting every little freckle and faint scar, he just wanted to never stop kissing you. “i love you the way you are. eli loves you for the way you are, and this baby,” he rubbed circles on your belly, “he or she is going to be so unbelievably lucky when they see who they have as their mam. i know it’s not the smallest bump but i think it’s the cutest i’ve ever saw, with my baby girl or boy in there,” he kissed the size of your stomach. he grew more and more excited each day as he got a day closer to meeting who was inside. he couldn’t wait. “. . who they get their good looks from and skill and personality - well, i mean i would like to take some credit for the both of those ‘cause i mean their daddy is pretty c—”

you playfully jabbed his side, making him laugh. “yeah, he’s the hottest one on the field,” you glanced at him, kissing his cheek.

one thing about him, he’d always blessed you with beautiful children.

“yeah, and their mum is coolest one at the school pick up,” his lips trailed along your cheek to your jaw, the slight scruff of his beard tickling you. “you’re the biggest milf to walk the planet–”

“rúbennn,” you chuckled, blushing at his words whilst trying to push him away.

“i’m serious,” he proceeded, peppering kissed down your neck, “and she’s coming to paris with me for the weekend so she can outshine me like she does at every event she comes to.”

you laughed at that, smiling dreamily as he proceeding to love on you.

“and eli?”

“elias gets to stay with his favourite uncle who owes a favour,” he winked.

“hmm. ok.”

“and i’ll give her a reason to cry if she starts thinking like that again,” he whispered in your ear.

your heart slipped a beat. “oh yeah?”

“ohh yeahhh,” he nodded, standing to his feet, not before a loud ‘smack’ echoed the room as he mimicked what your poor backside would get if you kept up that kind of behaviour. “see you upstairs, mama.”

you blew your hair from your face, heart thumping, your hands slowly crept up to your adorable little bump where you caressed it gently as he headed for upstairs, whispering softly, “you are soo lucky he’s your papai.”

your heart raced as he peeled his hoodie off, back muscles staring right at you as he headed for your room, you felt your insides begin to sizzle.

— but you were even luckier he was your husband.

[hellotailor]

Apologies if you've already done a post on this and I've just missed it, but can I ask for your take on the pyjamas worn by the cast of interview with vampire? I mean technically they're not a 100% necessary item, but just from a quick look there seems to be a lot of variety and they do change over the series

ok, i’m delighted by the specificity of this question, and it turns out that i have a VERY extensive answer.

there’s a lot of sleepwear in IWTV due to the volume of bedroom/coffin scenes, and like any other outfit, these costumes are shaped by characterization and historical period. for instance claudia initially wears a long, modest, frilly nightgown - an old-fashioned style that plays into her girlish doll wardrobe purchased by louis and lestat. however her sleepwear matures over the years, including a trendy lace nightdress with bloomers in the 1920s (note the rectangular silhouette), and a pink padded jacket/pastel robe outfit in 1940s paris. she's following contemporary trends while charting a visible trajectory from child to adult.

when i wrote about the Théâtre des Vampires coven costumes, i noted that while their wardrobes share certain themes (ie. monochrome patterns and stripes), they each have specific personal tastes. that holds true for sleepwear. in the S2 finale we see the coven going to bed in their coffins, with Eglee in a gorgeous (maybe 1940s?) robe, Celeste in a striped pajama suit reflecting her 1920s-30s cabaret style, and Armand in a plain grey set of prison jammies because he's Suffering.

of course, the star pajama outfits all belong to Louis and Lestat, playing into their wealthy domestic aesthetic in S1. they receive multiple bedroom/coffin scenes, and Lestat's gold Leyendecker robe is obviously iconic.

touching on the historical side of things for a moment, pajamas (as in a matching buttondown top and loose pants) were popularized in the western world in the 19th century, as a repurposed south asian import - kind of like how banyans became trendy among the upper classes in 18th century england. this was when loungewear started to catch on as a concept, both in terms of dressing gowns and smoking jackets (which you could wear while socializing at home) and actual pajamas, which became unisex in the 1920s.

back in his human life in the 18th century, Lestat probably slept naked or wore a shapeless white nightgown (and possibly a nightcap, the sexiest of garments). but in New Orleans he adopts Louis' lifestyle, which involves a luxurious wardrobe of fashionable menswear. they're both into shopping and looking good, and i think they enjoy the ritual of getting dressed together each night.

(i also have a personal theory that Lestat may prefer to sleep fully clothed because his formative traumatic memory involves waking up naked in the dark. after all, he doesn't need pajamas to stay warm, and he doesn't have a recent habit of wearing them in his human life like Louis does. then again, maybe he just enjoys having a new outfit for every occasion!)

in Dubai, we only get one scene (iirc) with Louis and Armand in their pajamas, lying in bed wearing outfits that tie into the striped prison bar imagery of their bedroom. Armand is in warmer brown tones (like his Paris wardrobe) while Louis is in black and grey, like the rest of his Dubai outfits. i'd also note that this is the one place where they're genuine in private, meaning that they aren't putting on a show for Daniel. so this is potentially Armand's most relaxed costume in the present day.

the fact that they're wearing this kind of old-school sleepwear feels very appropriate for their whole deal, imo. in the 21st century, a lot of people just sleep in boxers and t-shirts or whatever. there's a slightly 20th century vibe to wearing a full set of buttondown pajamas, and Armand's outfit reads as more stylish (and possibly more wealthy) than your average millennial guy. which makes sense! they're old men.

i think we can assume that every single thing in their Dubai home is ferociously expensive, even when it doesn't need to be. considering the way Louis gives himself a modern makeover in the finale, i do wonder if he'll switch over to sleeping in t-shirts etc next season, or if he'll stick with variations of the same sleepwear he wore during his mortal life.

p.s. all of my iwtv design posts are available on this tag!

[evilminji]

Dani should Kidnap The Clones.

It's basicly protective custody. Preemptive child services, if you will. NONE of these fuckers out here makin adorable clone baby just cause they want kids!

*kicks down the door to your shady lab* Knock Knock! ITS THE POLICE! *Walker's Shock troopers swarm the place as Dani secures the kids*

Look me in the eyes. You KNOW he'd love an excuse to enforce The Rules on people technically outside his jurisdiction. It's for The Children(tm)! Why, he simply had no CHOICE!

Meanwhile? Dani is shoving all these mal-adjusted Murder Clones into her Lair? Which is? Basicly a Door style Lair she hid inside Danny's Lair for safe keeping. It's shoved behind a vending machine just outside the observatory. And the inside? Goes on for DAYS.

Like national parks and every beautiful beach she ever came across. She smashed together the BEST sights and places she's found in her travels, like a collection. Always adding more. New waterfalls, new noodle shops, new fields of wine grapes. It's... beautiful. Snapshots of every wonderous little thing about Earth, stitched together.

They can't hurt anyone. Can't achieve their "objectives". Are just treated like actual individuals and the children they truely are. Are surrounded by other Clones. So it's NORMAL here. Just? All of it.

But also?

Dani and Dan? Teaming up to make History's Scariest Adoption Agency(TM). Dan runs it. Dan wants to know why EXACTLY you want a kid. Explain yourself to Dan. What are your references? Qualifications. He's doing a home visit to inspect the premises. He BETTER not find any suspicious Labs.

And? It just? Appears out of nowhere. It's powered by Zone Bullshit. One second you're thinking "oh woe is me D:> I will never have a child to fill my lovely home, because of all my Superhero Secrets and also because government bureaucracy!" And the next?

.....wasn't that an out of business taco bell? "Zone Adoptions"?

"....Free Clone Baby?"

Okay that is HIGHLY suspicious and as a hero you are basicly legally obligated to investigate. But now it's bigger on the inside? Fancy waiting room? You are being interrogated? Wait, no, you're supposed to be the one doing the-?

Somehow? You leave with your Clone Son from another Dimension. And a pamphlet. You're scheduled for a home visit in three days. You... you never told them where you live.

Somehow that doesn't seem like it will slow them down.

Did the Fae just Suprise Baby you with a clone baby? Can they DO that? W... what's happening? What days is this? Who ARE YOU PEOPLE?! HUH!?!?

Just? Imagine. IMAGINE. I was gonna say Bruce... but?

Damian.

He finds himself... pondering What Could Have Been. Had his Clones not wanted him dead. Wondering if he could have saved them. If, perhaps, he had found them as infants. Raised them. Could he have given them a good life? Been a good father?

He gets emotional. Fatherly. He's about 14.

Dan's been around Ghosts too long to remember how humans age or how age relates to development. This one TALKS like An Adult. Must be one. Probably just short.

And Damian? Never backs down. The second Dan starts challenging him? His character is flawless and his morals divine. He has never done anything wrong, ever, in his LIFE. Fuck you. And on TOP of that? He not only will be the SINGLE GREATEST FATHER TO EVER FATHER, his home is the most loving and beloved ON THE PLANET!

In entirety of EARTH'S history, no less!

....what are they arguing about?

*is handed a baby and kicked out of Dan's adoption agency*

See you in a few days!

(o.o ) *happy gurgling from the baby* *Damian.exe has stopped working*

Smash cut, after Damian speed runs his stages of grief at his own Dumbass Life Choices, to his rocking back up at the Manor like? Congratulations, Father. I have brought you your first grandson! Do Not ask how I obtained him. It was likely dubiously legal but I will not be returning him. We have bonded.

And just? Annihilating the collective Bats on one go. You did what? You have What?! That is a baby! WHY IS THERE A BABY?! How is there a baby!? WHOS BABY!? *sirens going off and everyone panicking*

Will Damian be allowed to KEEP the Baby? Ha! Hell no. Bruce will. Damian is a child. But it will be a Needlessly Dramatic Bat Cold War Of Dramatic Drama to pry that small cherubic baby from his grip long enough for Bruce to fill out the paperwork.

Child thieving bastard that he is. How dare he. That is Damian's SON! D:<

*happy oblivious baby noises as Alfred feeds him in the background, while the Bats do their Dramatic Custody War*

@hdgnj @babbling-babull @hypewinter @nerdpoe @lolottes @mutable-manifestation

[too-much-tma-stuff]

Finally getting help (prt 4)

Masterpost

The bats worked through the night, coordinating and researching everything that needed to be done. Distortion showed up on the camera which they assumed was Vlad trying to get in but he didn’t manage it. After he finished trying from multiple angels including somehow from directly above (well Zatana did say invisibility, intangibility, and flight were the minimal powers they should expect from creatures of the infinite realms.) He turned human again and spent a long time banging on their front door.

He tried to call the cops but commissioner Gordon called Bruce directly to get the full story then told Vlad it could be dealt with in the morning. Zatana was also coordinating people heading to Amity, a full on raid of the GIW, and the Fentons.

Batman and Superman were collecting all the information that the raid team was sending out and workshopping public statements they could sent out to the public and the government about the unacceptable things they had found and the steps the JL was taking to fix it. The government was not going to be happy they knew, with the JL ‘over-stepping’ into their business and actually getting the word out about the atrocities a branch of their government and their pet scientists had been planning. The JL needed to get out ahead of it before the narrative could be twisted against them.

It was first thing in the morning when they did a live broadcast from the watchtower with Batman, Superman, and Zatana telling the world about the parallel world existing harmlessly along side their own, and the way the government tried to exploit it. The atrocities committed under the name of the Anti-Ecto acts with the ignorance of the public as a cover.

It was at the same time that Constantine, Dick, and Cas were raiding the Fenton’s home. Of course they were armed, but so were the bats, and they were used to fighting people who were armed. It wasn’t a particularly hard fight.

A redhead was sitting wide eyed at the kitchen table. “Can’t we just have one normal day!” She suddenly snapped but she was glaring at her parents, standing up and slamming her hands on the table.  “First you send Danny away with Vlad even though you KNOW they hate each other and it’s a school day and now this! What did you do to bring the heroes down on us!?”

“I don’t know Jazzybear!” Jack half whined as he was forced into power supressing cuffs to neutralize his minor super strength and sat down in the living room.

“I’m sure this is just a misunderstanding, don’t worry sweetie,” Maddie added, both of them were dressed in jump suits which did not help their supervillain vibes.

“it’s not a mistake mate, you’ve been messing with shit you really shouldn’t. And that portal in your basement is a fucking beacon welcoming a war. You’ve gone unchecked for too god damn long, we’re taking over things now.” Constantine told them before stalking down into the basement with Tim on his heels, Batman would be joining them as soon as they were done their press conference.

Cas stayed to watch the parents and Dick approached Jazz gently. “Hey can I talk to you in private please? It’s about your brother,” He said gently and she stiffened immediately. Looking at him in a way that made him feel like she could see straight into his soul and froze him to the spot. After a moment though she just sighed and nodded, beckoning to him to follow her upstairs, to a room that was probably Danny’s not her own. She sat on his bed and grabbed a bear that had been sitting on the edge, waving for him to sit at the desk.

“So, what do you know?” She asked with a sigh.

“Well, last night Vlad took Danny to a Wayne Gala, one of Bruce’s daughter Cas is really good with body language and clocked that something was wrong so she and one of the other kids got him away from Vlad and out of the party. I guess he really needed some adult support because he broke down and told them a lot, about the Phantom thing, the ghosts and… something you’re not going to like. But first I want you to know he’s safe, Bruce Wayne is a licensed foster parent and he’s taking good care of Danny, you can come live with them too if you want.

“We’re going to deal with the ghosts and the GIW and everything else now, I can’t promise by the end of this you won’t need somewhere else to go. I have a feeling if Batman and the Martian family have anything to say about this your parents will end up in prison for their unethical experiments.”

“As long as Danny is okay,” Jazz said firmly. “I was only staying to take care of him anyway, just get me emancipated and a scholarship for Gotham U so I can study while still being close to him I’ll be fine. I’m almost 18 as it is.”

Dick nodded, she was a smart and driven girl, she knew what she wanted, he could respect that. “Now, the thing you won’t like…” he trailed off and took a deep breath. “Danny is pregnant.”

“What!?“ Jazz blanched, gaping at him for a long minute. “That can’t be right! I mean I knew he was trans but he’s usually only interested in girls, how would he even-“ She cut off her eyes widening. “It was Vlad wasn’t it?” She gritted out with an expression the promised excruciating violence.

“Yes,” Dick said shifting awkwardly in his chair.

“Right.” Jazz said and got up, coldly calm. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be right back.” She grabbed a baseball bat from next to Danny’s bed that seemed to be glowing slightly then marched to the other side of the room, opened a cabinet and pulled out two odd looking guns. Before Dick could say much of anything she had vaulted out of the window and taking off down the street.

“Oh dear,” Dick muttered faintly before heading back downstairs. “Hey Cas can we turn on the news, some sort of local station?” He asked. Cas nodded and searched around for the remote, turning it on to find the channel was already on local news.

Vlad was already on there, talking about how it was awful Bruce Wayne had Kidnapped a local child Danial Fenton, and he could not be allowed to get away with this just because he was rich! But that didn’t last long, they watched for a few minutes before a blur of red hair and blue rushed past the camera.

“YOU TOUCHED MY BROTHER YOU CREEP!” Jazz said as she came out swinging and she must have quite the arm because her first swing sent him nearly flying off the stage. He scrambled to get up as she lunged at him again.

“Now Jasmine you’ve clearly been misinformed, I didn’t do anything-“ His muffled voice was cut off as she swung the bat again and he yelped as she hit him in the stomach.

“YOU GOT HIM PREGNANT! YOU DID THIS! YOU SHOULD BEHIND BARS NOT BEHIND A PODIUM YOU FROOTLOOP!” She shrieked as she swung again and this time he managed to dodge. The cameras following them as Jazz chased him down the street, the sound of his supplications and her shrieking fading out as they became more and more distant.

It took a frantic moment for the camera angle to switch to something else, maybe a drone, which was able to follow them down the street.

“You Don’t UNDERSTAND! I didn’t want to hurt him! I just wanted a perfect son! If he had just agreed to be my son none of this would have happened! When I knew it failed I told him to let them die!” Vlad yelled at her, though that did NOT seem to comfort Jazz at all. She had devolved into shrieking book titles like curses as she chased him with the bat and shot at him with the guns though her aim didn’t seem very good.

Well they had him admitting to it on camera now. As he watched a new actor joined the fray, a girl in a red jumpsuit holding a blaster.

“You did what to Danny!?” She demanded as she pointed the blaster at Vlad.

“Oh cheespuffs!” Vlad breathed, his eyes widening as Jazz trailed off letting who must be Red Huntress take over the chase as Vlad shouted about how he had made her! He had given her her weapons she couldn’t use them against him! Which did not seem to be stopping her.

The camera fuzzed out for just a second and then Valery was chasing a ghost with red eyes and a white outfit. Cas was laughing silently at the show and both of the Fenton parents seemed to be in shock. A few minutes later Jazz walked back in through the front door looking tired.

“Turn that off please,” she sighed as she put the bat down.

“Of course,” Cas agreed and picked up the remote again, turning off the tv. 

“Vlad didn’t actually do that, did he Jazzy?” Jack asked softly, he sounded so hurt, as if he had any fucking right!

Jazz looked at him blankly. “How many times have we tried to warn you about him? How many times has Danny told you he didn’t feel safe with Vlad? But as usual you couldn’t see past your own desires. I’m going to go see if the trenchcoat guy needs any help getting into your files,” She sighed before vanishing downstairs. 

Dick glanced at Cas, and then followed them, she would have no trouble watching the Fentons and staying quiet whereas Dick felt like he was about to explode. Batman joined them before long and between the three of them they shut the bulkheads on the portal and locked them, secured dangerous chemicals and devices, and downloaded everything they could. There were plenty of prototypes and blueprints, and stuff that could generously be called research.

It was obvious these people were geniuses but it was even more obvious that at some point they had become careless and obsessive. Half of the writing on the blueprints wasn’t legible, dangerous chemicals were not in proper containment, and the weapons were not locked up. Looking at all of this it wasn’t surprising that two of the people they had been involving in their research suffered exposure, it was a surprise more hadn’t. It was easy to tell when Bruce came down he was horrified, it was in the way he froze when he saw the lab, as if his brain was struggling to process just how irresponsible the Fenton parents had been.

“You must be Jazz, it’s nice to meet you. Danny speaks highly of you,” He finally rebooted to say when she waved at him. 

“I love my little brother, I always did the best I could to keep him safe from… all this,” Jazz said gesturing at the lab with a sigh. “I wish it had done any good.”

“You did plenty of good,” Dick put in. “Trust me, to a kid having someone care about them can make all the difference. 

“All those nights I patched him up after he came back from fighting ghosts. He healed fast but still. I can’t believe… he’s already been through so much and we knew Vlad was up to something! Ellie said she was our cousin but she looked just like him, I should have kept a closer eye on-” She cut off and shook her head. “He’s a good kid, of course if he couldn’t give the babies up, even if it would be better for them if he did. I hope he knows I’d support him either way, I hope he didn’t not tell me because he thought I’d be upset at Him.”

“I’m sure he didn’t,” Dick assured her gently. “Being a big sibling is hard, I know. But trust me you’re doing a great job, better than I did with my brothers,” he said, patting her shoulder. “You can ask him yourself later though. We have a lot to get done today to make sure he’s safe.”

She nodded stubbornly and doubled down on her work, directing them occasionally to where she knew they’d find more weapons or logs. She knew her way around the lab to a disturbing extent. 

Bruce and Dick both got a notification from Agent A saying that after a substantial sleep in Danny had woken up and was having breakfast. He seemed worried about the family but he was taking it alright, especially since he knew they were busy people. It did motivate Dick to clear things up as soon as they could so that they could get back to Danny though. The last thing he needed was More stress!

They had plenty of evidence of the Fenton parents breaking the law to call the police and have them taken away which gave them all the time they needed to strip the house. They got everything they could and decided to leave Constantine at the house to watch the portal until they could figure out how to shut it down completely without causing any damage. It seemed unstable so they didn’t want to risk it just now, especially without Danny’s input because according to Jazz Danny had made genuine connections in the Infinite Realms. 

They wrapped up this stage of the investigation before dinner after being up for about 36 hours. Of course they weren’t Done, there was still plenty to do investigating the government, how they’d gotten away with this and if they had any other nasty tricks up their sleeve. They’d have to manage any backlash from this unilateral move, and they’d have to figure out what to tell the public about Danny since Bruce would be fostering him. But all that could be done after having a family dinner with their new brother and a nap. 

part 5

@blacksea21090 @zline @sebas-nights @littlefeather345 @isnt-that-grape @idontgetpaidenoughforthisshit @shadowkatt99 @fantasticstoryteller @sithlordchimchnga @fanfictionforme2 @iamalittlefangirl25 @bushbees @yotsubaayase @genius11rare @thomasdimensor @ultimatebluff @lady-phoenix-of-tardis @vivavelle @phoenixdemonqueen @jaggedheart11 @amyheart19 @ashenfairytale @thedragonqueen1998 @quotesandanime @j-joshi @unknown707 @baby-glowstick @okami-love @felicityroth @blackroserelina @wanderwithwings @shephardking @stargirl1331 @supermcraig @tkiesai @thegatorsgoose @mushroomymoss @llavalada @drownthesun @theraccoonempire @ark12 @telidina @dasha022

Please subscribe to the masterpost everyone! the tag list is getting a bit to big for me to manage ^^;

[sofiawritesstuff]

Apologise

pairing: oscar piastri x norris!reader

based on the most recent race day events

warnings: a little bit suggestive towards the end but nothing major, lando being an ass but he makes up for it

(I love Lando and Oscar both, this isn’t to make Lando look like a bad person)

You knew it would somehow end up being tough at one point, although you didn’t realise how bad it was going to be.

Your brother and your boyfriend. The two most important men in your life, other than your father of course.

As teammates you would think it would be easier, but not when it was their own team that had created tension in the air.

Waiting in Oscar’s drivers room, your legs bounced with the thought wondering how on Earth you were going to support both of them.

The door flew open and Oscar stood with a proud smile, holding his P1 trophy in hand.

“I’m so proud of you baby” you smiled, opening your arms for him, you felt him sigh and he hugged you tightly, him nuzzling his head into your neck “Thank you” he mumbled against you.

“Is everything okay?” you asks pulling away from him “I’m happy, I really am but I think Lando is mad at me”

“Baby, Lando isn’t mad with you, he might be mad but he is mad with the team. Never you. It was team orders and he had to follow them. He’s probably just annoyed that he didn’t get another win, but he will come back and get another. Just like you will. Let’s go out for dinner tonight. We can celebrate!”

“I don’t know, it feels a little disrespectful to Lando”

“Oscar”

“Alright, sounds good. I’m going to get a shower before we leave. Maybe go check on Lando, he will want a little comfort right now”

“I’ll go see him now, call me when you’re ready” you kiss him gently before leaving, making your way along the hall to your brothers room.

Lando could get mad, yes. Just like anyone. But you knew today he was really mad. With the look on his face after the race. You knew you weren’t walking in to your cheerful brother.

You knocked the door before entering, you seen him throwing all of his stuff into his bag “Shouldn’t you be celebrating with your boyfriend?” he asks bitterly without glancing at you

“Lan-“

“No Y/N. I don’t want to hear it. Go away. Celebrate with the race winner”

You scoff causing him to look at you “Don’t you dare do that to me Lando, you know it was the team’s fault today. Not Oscars”

“Yeah take his side! I’ve been embarrassed enough today i don’t need a pity speech from my little sister. He probably waiting for you right now to go out and celebrate. Don’t worry I won’t tell him you were here!” he begins shouting

“Stop shouting at me! It was actually Oscar that told me to come talk to you. He feels guilty enough for what happened today he doesn’t need your bad attitude getting in the way either! If you’re going to blame anyone blame your stupid team and not my boyfriend”

“So you’re choosing your boyfriend over your brother? Okay”

“Stop twisting things! Have you actually lost your mind? Oscar did nothing wrong. He was hesitant on even going out tonight because he felt guilty towards you! Oscar looks up to you Lando, he’s done so much for you in races before. I’m done with this conversation. Come talk to me when you decide to be an adult and when you want to apologise to my boyfriend” you tell him, slamming the door behind you.

It was rare for you and Lando to have an argument, what made it even worse is you felt like you had to pick a side. Lando or Oscar. You knew what your brother was saying what out of anger, he would never actually mean disrespect towards his younger teammate.

But you couldn’t help but let the tears fall. It was a short lived argument, but also one of the worst you had ever had.

“Baby?” Oscar asks confused, popping his head out of the bathroom “What happened? Is everything okay?” he rushes over to comfort you, putting on him clothes while he does

“I’m okay, just a silly fight with Lando” you smile, wiping away your tears, he stops you holding both your hands with one hand and moving the other to your cheek, wiping the fresh tears “Let’s go back to hotel and go out for a nice meal”

“I’m not bothered about that right now, I’m bothered about you. It must have been a bad fight if you’re crying”

“This is your night Osc, let’s ignore everything else” you nod trying to stop the topic of conversation “Alright, I understand that you don’t want to talk about it right now but I hope we can when you’re ready, if it’s tonight or tomorrow. I hate seeing you cry”

“I’m sorry, I’m ruining your special moment”

“Hey, come on. You’re not ruining anything. Here’s a better idea. We will go back to the hotel, order room service and have a movie night with a bottle of champagne. Sounds like a perfect way to end this night of an eventful day”

“If that’s what you want”

“All I want is to spend time with my beautiful girlfriend. Come on” he stands up, taking your hand.

Leaving the paddock felt weird, usually you would have both McLaren drivers either side but tonight you only had one. But you had to remind yourself that this was Oscar’s night and nothing was going to ruin it for both of you.

He swayed your hands back and forth walking towards the hotel, he stopped for the few fans waiting close by for him, signing the notebooks and hats held out to him.

You smiled to yourself as everyone congratulated him, trying to ignore the sympathetic smiles a group of girls gave you as you waited.

As you got comfortable in your room and turned on a movie you heard a knock at the door, Oscar quickly got up to answer it

“I’ll get it, it will probably be room service” he kisses you, leaving the bed “Oh hi mate” you head Oscar stutter.

You knew the stutter, the same stutter that came from Oscar when Lando first found out that his teammate was dating his sister.

“Can I come in?” you hear Lando’s voice asks before the door closes. Oscar sits next to you on the bed while Lando stands at the end of it, playing with his fingers.

“I owe you an apology, both of you”

“Osc I’m sorry that I was rude to you earlier, I was so frustrated with the team and I took my anger out on someone which was wrong of me. I am disappointed with myself but I’m also really happy for you and I’m proud of you. It’s great points for the team and you”

“Thanks Lando, I appreciate the apology. I think we need to have a meeting with the team to discuss a better strategy so nothing like this happens again in the future”

Lando nods agreeing with him, before turning his eye contact to you “And to you, I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you, you were defending both of us and I took it the wrong way and I knew it. Thank you for being an amazing sister, I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you”

“You’re so lucky that you’re my favourite” you smirk, getting up to hug him “I love you” Lando whispers “I love you too, even if you are Dad’s favourite”

“Thats false, you are definitely your Dad’s favourite” Oscar jokes “See! you are Dad’s favourite” Lando agrees “You’re his favourite! Remember when I was 13 and I got grounded for a week because you threw and egg at me and it hit Dad’s car? I got grounded for that because he didn’t think that you would ever do that”

“Or the time when we had your birthday dinner and you were feeding the cake to the dog and you blamed it on Lando later on in the day when the dog was pooping everywhere”

“Alright, I don’t need the two of you ganging up on me! Thank you for coming to apologise Lan”

“Yeah and all is forgiven” Oscar nods “Good to hear, are you guys staying in tonight?” Lando asks pointing at the TV

“Yep, a good night full of room service and sex!”

“Ew! That’s disgusting! Why am I related to you!” Lando rushes out the room

Laying in bed a few minutes later, you hear a second knock at the door. You pull away from Oscar’s kiss, storming to the door

“Lando I didn’t realise you wanted to send Oscar naked so bad-“ you stop once you realise it was not in fact your brother standing on the other side of the door, it was room service and a poor innocent old man now knew that your boyfriend was naked on the other side of the door

“Sorry” you apologise, pulling in the tray and closing the door.

You hear a loud laugh from the bed and you rush over jumping on him “It’s funny”

“Oh it is! You’re never living that down baby” he smirks, flipping himself on top of you.

[sttoru]

♯ 𝐔𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐘 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐊.

⟣ sypnosis. kento has been extremely busy lately, going on business trips and so forth. he decides to surprise you by coming back earlier than expected. that’s how you end up finding your lover on top of you, showering you in his affection at 3 in the morning.

⟣ tags. nanami kento x female reader. fluff, bit of angst, suggestive towards the end. reader gets called 'sweetheart, angel, dear' wc: 1.8k

⟣ note. okayokay finally an adition to my event heheh ive almost forgotten about it but then i saw this prompt & was like . ok nanami , i must write this rnnn no delaying anymore so here i am :3 its also very bad. i hate it sm LOL i hope u at least like it t_t

kento often asks himself why he had returned to the world he despised — the jujutsu society; his old high school. the sprawling curses everywhere are the main cause of his current misery.

he had been sent out on missions left and right, not catching a break in hopes of reducing any more civilian causalities than necessary. kento had even thought that maybe his previous 9-5 job wasn’t as bad as he had considered it.

overtime was every day for the sorcerer now. that wasn’t the worst thing - no - the fact that he was pratically living a long distant relationship with his beloved irritated him most.

a thought he had in his high school days reoccured in a moment of distress: ‘why not leave all those missions to gojo?’

you were still pretty understanding of his situation. kento appreciated that, though the guilt still ate away at him whenever he tried to sleep. an empty bed welcomed him each time he re-entered his hotel room — you saw the exact same scenery when returning home to your shared apartment.

both of you were adults; both knowing that life was unfair. the two of you being unable to see each other from time to time was a part of your life. kento and you still maintained a healthy relationship. that was all that really mattered in the end.

11:49PM. . . tonight wasn’t unlike any other night; you were preparing yourself to go to bed—changing into your pyjamas after showering, snuggling to a pillow under the covers and texting your lover one last message.

‘good luck on your mission as always! stay safe, i love you.’

you stare at your phone screen for a minute longer than intended. even if you tried to be mature about it — you longed for kento’s warmth and undivided attention. you want him with you, his strong arms holding you to his chest as you rest, his deep voice sending shivers down your spine in the best way possible.

you sigh defeatedly and put your phone down on your nightstand. just two days until you could see your partner again. you can hold onto that hope to keep you calm.

despite you trying to stay positive, you tossed and turned in your bed as you thought about kento’s safety. there was always a chance of him not coming home to you — always the possibility of that bed to be empty for the rest of your life.

all you could do was pray for his safety in your head whilst your eyes eventually closed from fatigue, your mind drifting off to a deep slumber.

03:14AM. . . kento opens the door he had wished to have opened way earlier. the door that lead to the place where his heart lays; the person who claimed his heart and soul for eternity. you.

he didn’t think he’d actually do it. kento had originally planned to finish his last job as soon as possible and then get home afterwards, but there seemed to be a change in routine.

the special grade sorcerer simply assigned the mission to ino — the person whom he could trust most to finish the job in one piece. as much as kento dislikes to put his juniors in possible risky situations, there are also situations where it’s fine to depend on them. besides, the mission could easily be done by a grade one sorcerer.

kento sighs. the familiar scent of your home was one he could recognise from miles away. one that could calm his nerves instantly. it was that same distinctive scent you carry; thus why your lover sometimes calls you his home.

‘i can’t wait to be home’ ‘i want to be home’ ‘i’m going home’ — all these sentences, which kento has uttered before in earlier conversations, weren’t referring to a place. rather to a person he held dear.

“oh, my sweetheart.” the blonde man whispers under his breath as his eyes catch the shape of your figure under the blankets. he quietly enters the master bedroom and closes the door behind him, not making a sound as to not interrupt your well-deserved sleep.

kento slowly undoes his dotted tie, along with the upper buttons of his blouse. he probably needs to go take a good shower before he could settle down with you — but that’d risk waking you up.

you look extremely angelic in his eyes. especially with your left cheek squished by the soft pillow your head rests on. you never once fail to convince him that you are indeed the woman of his dreams; the woman kento ever had and will have eyes for. it’s like you get more attractive to him as the days go on.

“mh,” your sudden and soft groan makes him realise just how disturbing his behaviour could be interpreted as. kento’s body was hovering over your sleeping one and he was just. . . staring at you with a soft smile. a smile which he didn’t even notice had permanently found its place on his weary face.

kento sits down on the edge of the mattress, callused hand gently tucking you in properly, putting the blanket over your shoulders to make sure you didn’t get cold. he can’t rest if you’re not comfortable— even if he himself was exhausted to the point his eyes were starting to feel heavy.

yet that exhaustion doesn’t last long. it never does when kento’s able to see you again after a tiring week of countless missions and other jobs. your presence alone grants him the energy to stay awake and take care of you. and himself. you’re the reason he keeps it going.

“i love you so much, my beautiful girl — my angel.”

kento sure was a romantic. even when you’re unaware and asleep.

he couldn’t help it; the feeling stirring inside of him. the feeling of adoration and love for you. you are simply resting, yet kento felt an urge to kiss you all over, show you the unending love he has for you. but. . that’d probably be disturbing your peace. you are sleeping after all. he

not that that would stop kento.

your eyes flutter open due to a sudden presence hovering over you. your entire face and neck area was feeling ticklish, like someone was placing tens of kisses all over the skin.

strands of blonde hair is the first thing showing up in your blurry vision. kento’s face follows afterwards as his head tilts back up, the warmth against your jawline disappearing along with it —

“ah, i’m sorry.” a low and almost guilty chuckle tumbles out of his sore throat. the visible confusion on your face makes him let out another, “shh, shh, it’s just me, sweetheart.”

your arms flew around kento’s torso the second the realisation dawns upon you. your heart went from a slow pace to one that caused your entire body to warm up immediately; the adorable reaction and increase in heart rate not going unnoticed by your lover.

you wordlessly hug him — almost still in shock by the sudden appearance. kento doesn’t fight off your tight embrace, instead, welcomes it with open arms. the delicate kisses on your skin continue, each being placed with precision whilst one of his hands keeps your head tilted a little — rough fingers being a contrast of the gentle grip they had on your jaw.

“i missed you lots,” kento murmurs, eyes closed as he basks in the warmth of your body, his lips refusing to let go of your neck, “i couldn’t wait anymore. i couldn’t be separated from you any longer or i’d lose it.”

his gruff voice sounded even deeper than it usually would. maybe due to the overuse of it during his missions. the lone thought makes you pout — the thought of kento working super hard just to provide for you both.

“i missed you more, love.” you mumble, bottom lip trembling a little as kento’s hug triggers a whole lot of emotions in you. his hugs were special, his muscular arms giving you a sense of comfort you couldn’t find anywhere. no one could hug you like he did, “you did well. you did so well.”

those were all the words kento needed. his lips come to halt right above your collarbone, his breath a bit heavy from how much he's holding himself back from doing more. one hand moves from your cheek to your waist, fingers toying with the fabric of your shirt.

“thank you, dear.” kento says. his words carrying a load of unending affection. your simple words of appreciation and encouragement makes him shiver in delight. this is what he longed for; this is what he did it all for.

it was clear. the answer to his question - of why he had returned to the jujutsu world, to become a teacher at his former high school - it was all for you. to be able to be with you, see you and hold you like this. to have someone like you appreciate all of his efforts.

“may i?” kento asks through a quiet whisper as he gently removes the blanket covering your figure, his eyes darting down towards your cleavage. he's asking for permission to cross that barrier — to cover you in the love you deserve.

you just stare at the blonde man above you for a second. you watch as he climbs onto the bed with you; the bed which was once empty and dull, now suddenly becoming your favourite place to be at. your fingertips graze against kento's sharp cheekbones. a habit you always did when you were appreciating his looks.

“go right ahead.” you answer with a confirming nod.

both of you were touch starved and had been deprived from each other's embrace for way too long. now was the perfect time to make up for all the time lost.

kento wasn’t going to let the opportunity slip past him. he smiles at you, a gentle and handsome smile, whilst a few of his blonde locks fall over his left eye — his hands already prying away the blanket covering your shape. it was time to show you just how much he has longed for you.

“hold on to me, sweetheart. i’m not stopping until you realise just how much i’ve missed all of you.”

[bunny-jpeg]

hello, could i get nanaimo bars with a martini and glass of water on the side with Max Verstappen? also love your little bakery it’s such a cute idea and love your work too!

bakery menu

want to suggest your own order? check out the menu! there are tons of prompts for you to choose from to customize your order! and thank you for this lovely person for submitting an order!! i have still been under the weather, but i'm glad that i can finally get back into the groove of writing!

nanaimo bars ("who's my pretty girl? c'mon say it.") + martini (mafia au) + glass of water (aftercare) served by max verstappen (formula one)!

cw: smut/pwp, mafia au, aftercare, librarian!reader, lingerie, gentle sex, size difference/kink, missionary, max is in love, mafia boss!max

you remembered the first time you felt max's gaze on you. most would've froze at the feeling, like getting ice in the back. but, instead you turned around from the shelf you were in front of and asked, "do you need help looking for something?"

it had been the first time in his adult life that max actually felt a little intimidated. he could easily dispose of you, you had recently moved to the netherlands and had no real social circle. but, you leveled your gaze at him. it was so kind, that it left him a little scared. people were rarely kind to a man like max.

if he had taken off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves, you would've seen the kind of man he was. instead he cleared his throat against his fist and said, "i was wondering if there was a pay phone, my car has broken down and i was always told that libraries were good at helping people." he smiled at you.

you looked at him briefly and said, "alright then sir, we don't have any pay phones. but we have a phone at the front desk you can use. just let me finish up here and i'll be happy to help you."

he then followed you akwardly as you took the elevator with the empty book cart in tow. he even offered to push it for you as you led him to the front desk. you didn't even notice the small whispers and lingering gazes on the both of you, instead you got the phone and held it out to him to dial.

max knew from that moment on that you were going to be a part of his life. in any capacity he could have you, at an arms length or bone crushingly close. and over time, the more you saw of him. you thought the closer the better.

now even after three years together, the lion of holland was still in your space. when he could, he'd visit you at the library branch you worked at. he'd linger around you until it was time for your break. then you two would have lunch together in the small room in the back, amongst the stacks of returned books.

by year three, you knew who max was. he didn't try to hide it from you, he was very honest about it all. what he had done, but you in return simply asked, "if we ever broke up, would you kill me for leaving?"

and max shook his head quickly and said, "no. i could never, even if you were the one to stab me in the back. i could never harm you." and you accepted him. as long as you could still work at the library, you'd love him with all your heart.

even though your job was less than dangerous, but max worried about you being so available to the public. you knew that max kept tabs on you from time to time at work, you had become familiar with the men of max's circle. and sometimes they'd sit at the library. you simply just continued your work.

but on fridays you got to go home early, so you quickly grabbed your belongings and headed into the car. you threw yourself in the passenger side and pulled him in for a soft kiss. he took you by the face and made a soft noise into the kiss.

"someone missed me." he remarked with a chuckle as he placed his hand on your thigh, giving it a good squeeze.

"i was looking forward for today all day. it came in yesterday, and it felt like my shift went even slower than usual!" you sighed dramatically before you giggled at the feeling of your lover's lips on your neck.

"i know, i know. this gift you bought and didn't tell me what it was. you know i don't like secrets. or surprises." he gripped at your thigh for a moment.

you held his strong jaw in your hands, and beamed at him, "it's not easy to keep secrets from you, max. i usually don't keep them, but i wanted this to be special for you. since you're leaving for england in a few days."

"i know, my treasure." he sighed, "but i promise to bring you back something. as a thank you for waiting for me to come home." he leaned in once more to kiss you softly on the lips.

dinner left you feeling anxious, once you were finished you left your boyfriend in the living room while you scurried off to the bedroom to get changed. you felt your pulse quicken as you pulled out the large black box from under the bed.

you got dressed quickly. it wasn't anything too special, it was a white mesh bra and panties, with embroidered details on it. what made it stand out to was not that the embroidery was of flowers or something sweet, but rather lions. something strong and powerful, and your lover was known as the lion of the netherlands, so it was only fitting.

the stockings you wore were a similar colour and before you knew it, you had opened the door to your bedroom and called out, "max, you can come in now!" before you shut the door and almost tripped over yourself getting to the bed. you sat down and tried to pull off a sexy pose, but ended up looking silly.

so you sat there on the edge with your feet dangling just above the floor, you kept your shoulders back to highlight your breasts which were barely covered by the embroidered designs. it was either this or a collar with max's name on it.

the door opened and max stilled in the doorway at the sight of you. his heart leapt as he admired your beauty. the air got caught in his throat and he coughed a little bit. he then said, "you're beautiful."

and you got flustered at his simple words. usually you felt a little insecure, the shape of your face, the size of your eyebrows, the softness of your stomach. you were a librarian, not a model. but max looked at you like you belonged on the cover of vogue.

he approached closer, he started to undo his button up. his chest was so exposed, lined with tattoos that were symbols of his past. he swallowed as he dropped the expensive shirt onto the floor. he worked his belt off and soon he was in nothing but briefs as he got into bed with you. those strong arms wrapped around you with his nose in your hair.

"this was your little surprise, schat." he said in a low tone, his large hands roamed your body, "this was what you had bought for me. thank you, thank you, thank you." he kissed at the side of your neck and you moaned a little bit. you felt the heat in your gut.

"i wanted to make it special for you." you said as you looked into his blue eyes. you beamed at him with your hand on his bare chest, "see they have little lions on them!"

he chuckled and leaned in for a sweet kiss, "it's perfect, my love." he could feel the thump of his cold heart as he smothered you in another kiss. his fingers found the tiny waistband of the underwear and pulled them down.

"i love you, max. all of you, every last scar and tattoo, every last inch of you. i'm lucky to love you." you giggled when he grazed a calloused thumb across your clit. you moaned a little bit and leaned into his touch.

your lips touched once more and his hands found the clasp of the bra. he groaned against the kiss and his erection throbbed against his briefs. he wanted you, this little surprise was beautiful.

the smartest woman he knew also happened to be the more beautiful. he could recall many times you'd bring him a cheesy romance novel and read it to him while he basked in your warmth.

"i love you." he said as he got you onto your back fully. his hands lightly palmed your breasts before he got up on his knees and between your legs.

he eyed your curves, bare in front of him. he palmed himself through his briefs before he got them off with a little help from you. both pairs of hands on his torso and soon he was nude. back between your legs, his hands roamed his thighs for a moment as he got your legs around his waist.

"you're beautiful." he said, "so beautiful." he leaned over you and kissed you on the lips as he slipped his cock into you. every time he had sex with you, or rather made love to you, it felt like a dream.

you blushed a little and wanted to cover your face, you squirmed a little bit at the sweet words that came from your lover's mouth.

"who's my pretty girl? c'mon say it." he coaxed out of you as he thrusted against you.

you said meekly, "i'm your pretty girl."

he chuckled and planted both hands on either side of you for a good angle to thrust his hips against you. he felt the thrill of pleasure in his head as he moved against you. oh, you looked divine. he said softly as he moved his hips against you, "je bent zo mooi, ik wil alleen jou."

you blushed a little bit, "really, no one else."

he shook his head before he leaned in for another kiss, "no one. no one else ever. since the moment i saw you at the library, i knew that i had to be with you."

the praise left a curl in your gut as the two of you moved together. the kisses were deep and you felt the warmth of your lover around you. you panted between the kisses, your heart leapt at the feeling of him so close to you.

"i could never hurt you." he said, "i'd rather skin myself alive then you be without. you are my world, the thing that keeps me human. that i still have a heart."

you replied softly, "max, you've always been human." you pulled him in for a soft kiss as you wrapped your legs around him more. you two moved against one another, you giggled between moans.

"you are my beating heart, my treasure.' he said softly as he continued to move against him. the pleasure was pin pricks across his skin as he thrusted up into you.

you moaned against him, feeling the tug in your chest from his kind words. you knew that max was a dedicated man, when he set his sights on something he'd see it through to the end. that didn't stop with just work, he wanted to make sure that he gave you the perfect life.

and you didn't ask for much, you enjoyed your job and all you needed was his love and support through anything you wished to do. as you kiss once more, you felt his warmth against you.

the two of you moved against one another, you then kissed passionately. his kisses lingered on your skin, he gripped onto the bed under your back and he groaned a little at the sensation through his body.

"please."

"mine."

"forever, my dear. i'll keep you in my heart forever."

his words were honey in your blood, you felt the thrill of him in your body as you clutched onto him.

"i love you."

"i love you too."

you clutched onto your lover's shoulders. your strong, handsome lover. one of the scariest men in the country, if not the continent. he could kill anyone if he so desired, but with you, he was so loving and sweet.

he was your man, and despite all the fear he could instill. he loved you, and that love was felt in every thing he did for you. you kissed him deeply once more as you climaxed. you moaned into the kiss and he continued to thrust up into you. a few more steady thrusts of his hips and he finished inside of you, in the process pulling you in for a deeper kiss.

he slowed his pace and said, "my beautiful girl. please, please let me love you forever."

you pressed a kiss on the small scar on his cheek, an act of sweetness as you replied, "of course, always. you and i are together till you get tired of me." you giggled.

he pulled out and laid down next to you. he draped a heavily tattooed arm across your middle and gazed at you with love in his eyes. his breathing started to even out. he wiped his forehead free of sweat with his other hand before he snuggled further into your side.

he peppered your face with kisses, asking you quietly if you were alright. if you needed anything. he was the king of after care, even when the sex was as gentle as it could be.

he worried for you, as you worried for him.

you looked at him and smiled. there was a sparkle in those blue eyes. he then closed them and stayed close to you. he sighed contently.

"thank you for the gift. i almost tore them off of you, but i want to see them on you again. if i'm the big scary lion, then you're my lioness." he linked his fingers with you then kissed the top of your hand, "now and forever more." <3

[kwanisms]

Kinktober 「10:28」 — k.soonyoung

» seventeen menu | hoshi menu | kinktober masterlist «

➮ weretiger!Soonyoung × fem!Reader wc: 3.3k summary: Normally during his heat, Soonyoung stays as far away from his girlfriend as he can for fear of scaring her away but he can’t help himself when she comes by to drop some soup off seeing as he told her he’s sick. genres/themes/au: smut; supernatural, horror, thriller; non idol au, monster idol au warnings: adult dialogue, female reader, supernatural and horror themes, mentions of: food consumption, cat anatomy; sexual content (18+ mdni), see smut warnings under the cut! taglist has been moved to reblogs join my taglists! kinktober taglist is CLOSED! Strikethrough means I cannot tag you.  MINORS WILL BE BLACKLISTED & BLOCKED. AGELESS BLOGS WILL ALSO BE BLOCKED.

a/n: sorry for skipping two days in a row. I will be tacking those on at the end of Kinktober just like the others I missed so don’t worry. Jisung’s I just lost track of time and Christian’s fell on game day and I didn’t even realize it. I’ll get them done and added to the end of Kinktober, I promise lol anyway, here is our resident cult leader, Soonie and his tiger agenda. Thank you so much for reading! Please let me know what you thought and as always, this is a work of fiction and all characters are not reflective of their respective irl counterparts. for entertainment purposes only.

smut warnings: teratophilia (aka monsterfucking), heat cycles, rough sex, unprotected sex (just don’t do this. Use protection lol), non-human genitalia (like yunho, Soon’s got a barbed d!ck because cat. Don’t like it, don’t read it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ idc), scent marking (f receiving), biting (f receiving), use of pet names (hers: baby, kitten, beautiful, etc.; his: babe, Soonie, baby, etc.), I think i got all of them but let me know if I missed any! kinks: heat cycles + rough sex dialogue prompt: ❛❛ You heard me. Take. It. Off. Now. ❜❜

═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════

“Kwon Soonyoung, I know you're home! Let me in, damn it!”

Soonyoung raised his head as he sat with his back against the door. He'd lost track of how long he'd been sitting there while you stood outside his apartment door, knocking, ringing the bell, demanding to be let in. He'd lost track of how many times he'd almost given.

Almost.

It's not that he didn't want to see you, he did. He wanted to see you more than anything, but he knew if he let you into his apartment, he wouldn't be able to stop himself from jumping you. Especially now that he could smell you.

It was always a rough time for him when he went into heat. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn't just female animals that went into heat, males also went into heat too and as a weretiger, Soonyoung was no exception. He'd spent most of his formative years dealing with it on his own and for a long time, he avoided being intimate with anyone because of the weird physiological changes to his body.

Unlike many werecreatures, Soonyoung's curse was a generational one and he was not bitten or scratched. His was passed from father to son and inherited by blood. The changes lay dormant until a boy started to go through puberty. By the time he was 18, Soonyoung had gone through just under two hundred and thirty full moon transformations.

And now, at twenty eight years of age, he'd been through over three hundred and fifty transformations. His heat always came the week leading up to the full moon. He was always consumed with an insatiable need to fuck something and he was very good at holding himself back.

Until you came along.

The sweet, caring, and unsuspecting girl who lived across the courtyard from him in the same apartment as him but on the other side of the complex. From his balcony, Soonyoung could see your balcony and the windows that looked into your apartment. 

You kept an assortment of potted plants on your balcony and had installed some sort of netting or mesh to sort of close in the area which made sense because as soon as it went up, he saw an orange tabby cat lounging at the top of a cat tree.

Know you liked cats gave Soonyoung the drive to talk to you the next time he saw you in the courtyard with what he thought was little success but his poorly executed joke still managed to make you laugh and get him your number.

From then on, he was hooked and the moment you invited him over for dinner, he was a goner. One date turned into two and then three and soon, he had the privilege of calling you his girlfriend.

You both maintained separate spaces in the building and he found it kind of cute, his girlfriend living across the courtyard from him. Your cats, which he learned there were actually two, were the sweetest creatures on earth and absolutely adored him. The girl, a white one with orange markings and long fur, was named Pad Thai and the boy, the short hair orange tabby, was named Cheezit. 

Soonyoung had taken to calling them his children and joked with his friends that you had full custody and he got visitations. It was a joke you took in stride and accepted fully, sending silly videos of the cats pretending to use your phone and making silly voices for them, speaking to their dad. It often made his day all that much brighter when he couldn’t come visit you.

Soonyoung had yet to tell you about his condition, only mentioning that he wasn’t like most guys, urging that he wasn’t just saying that and that it was a thousand percent true. He just hadn’t found the right time to tell you exactly how different he was. How does one even go about telling their partner that they’re a weretiger?

It was a conversation Soonyoung knew needed to happen but it just hadn’t yet. Which is why he was stuck in this situation now with you pounding on the door to be let in.

Soonyoung had started telling you that his once a month disappearance was just him coming down with something. He started with the usual excuses, the flu, the cold, stomach flu, even covid but he was starting to run out of excuses. He also hated using illness as an excuse because your immediate response was to offer to bring him medicine and food, usually in the form of soup, stew, or broth. He always gave the same excuse for not opening the door.

He didn’t want to get you sick.

At first, you took it as your boyfriend being cautious and caring but soon, you started to get suspicious and he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep up the charade much longer. He was going to have to come clean and tell you the truth much sooner rather than later.

A conversation he had been dreading ever since asking you to be his girlfriend.

The wood behind him shook as another series of loud knocks rang out, no doubt you beating your fist against the door. “Kwon Soonyoung!” you shouted. He sighed, squeezing his eyes shut, as if it might make you leave faster. He felt awful. He hated ignoring you but in his mind, it was for the best when he was in heat. He couldn’t risk scaring you off and losing you.

Another series of knocks shook the door, which was surprising given your somewhat smaller stature. For one so little, you sure were strong. And loud. “Kwon Soonyoung! If you do not open this door right now, we are done!” 

Soonyoung’s eyes opened quickly and he turned his head to look back at the door. ‘She wouldn’t…’ he thought to himself. “I mean it, Soonyoung! If you don’t open this door, consider us through!” Something in your tone made him scramble up to his feet, hastily pulling at the locks separating you from him. He could tell you weren’t kidding.

He kept the chain on, opening the door only a few inches as he looked out into the hall at you. He held his breath as he took in your frame. You’d showered recently, he could smell the scent of your shampoo and body wash, mixing with your natural scent and making his cock twitch in his pants.

On your face was a furious expression and his heart sank immediately. If he had cat ears, this is where they would flatten back against his head in fear. You were terrifying when you were mad. He’d never been on the receiving end of your anger before nor had he really seen it in action.

“H-hey,” he stammered. His eyes dipped down to see the thermos in your hand that no doubt held a homemade soup, stew, or broth of some kind but he couldn’t be sure with how tightly the lid was screwed on nor with how overpowering your scent was.

“Don’t you hey me,” you said, your eyes narrowing at him. “Open the door and let me in.” Soonyoung grimaced. He wanted more than anything to let you in but he knew if he did, there was no telling how he’d react to having you so close when he was aching, burning, to be touched. It wasn’t a good idea on many levels.

“I don’t wanna get you sick,” he murmured, keeping his voice low. You scoffed, placing a hand on your hip and looking every bit the sassy girlfriend he knew and loved. “Don’t try that bullshit with me,” you snapped. “I know you aren’t sick,” you added. Soonyoung’s eyes widened as he looked up from the thermos in your hand to meet your hardened gaze. “Wh-what?” he breathed. 

“I spoke to Jihoon,” you started to explain. “He told me the truth.” Soonyoung’s stomach sank as the realization that his best friend had outed him to you. ‘Well fuck,’ he thought. It looked like he was going to have to have a talk with Jihoon.

“So let me in. We need to talk.” Soonyoung sighed and closed the door, undoing the chain before pulling the door open for you to enter his apartment. He shut the door behind you and prepared for the storm.

You didn’t unload on him immediately, instead sliding your shoes off and walking towards the kitchen where you set the thermos down. He followed, hands tucked in his pockets as he watched you move around his kitchen, pulling out a bowl and a spoon from their resting places.

You placed the bowl down next to the thermos and unscrewed the lid silently, pouring out a very hearty looking stew. It smelled amazing, the scent of meat, herbs, and potatoes invading his senses. “Jihoon said you aren’t exactly sick. Just that during this time, you don’t feel well,” you said as you finished pouring the hot stew into the bowl, setting the thermos down and pushing the bowl towards your boyfriend, holding out the spoon.

Soonyoung glanced at the spoon and the bowl before looking at you. “Here’s what’s going to happen.” you said leaning over the counter. Soonyoung’s eyes dipped down to your chest, the curve of your breast visible down your shirt from where he stood. “You’re going to take the damn spoon and eat while I talk. Sound good?” 

Soonyoung nodded, moving to sit at the kitchen island and grabbing the spoon from your hand. The moment your skin met, electricity and heat spread throughout his body, the urge to pounce on you from across the counter trying to take the reins but he managed to push it down and simply started eating.

You watched him take a few bites before speaking.

“I know you’re a weretiger,” you said softly, drawing his attention as he looked up at you, his mouth full of bits of beef and potatoes. “Jihoon told me everything. I will admit I’m a little shocked you didn’t tell me all of this but I can’t imagine it’s an easy subject to bring up so I’ll give you a pass there,” you explained. “That being said, I wish you would have just told me the truth. Did you think I would judge you? Did you think I would leave or break up with you?” 

Soonyoung swallowed the food in his mouth before speaking. “I didn’t know what to expect, actually,” he answered truthfully. “I was less scared about you finding out about me being a weretiger and more scared that I—” he hesitated, looking down at his bowl of food. You followed his gaze. “Finish eating,” you told him. “I have more to say anyway.

By the time Soonyoung had finished his bowl of stew and ate another at your insistence, you were sitting on the couch, Soonyoung resting over your legs as he hugged around your waist, his face buried in your stomach, a deep rumbling emanating from his chest as he purred happily. You stroked his hair, massaging his scalp with your finger tips.

“This is nice,” you said softly as you combed your fingers through his hair. “Mhm,” Soonyoung hummed. Silence fell over the two of you for a few minutes before you couldn’t stop yourself from asking a question that was at the forefront of your mind.

“Soonie,” you said softly, gently tugging at his hair. “Hmm?” he asked, not lifting his head or opening his eyes. “Can I ask you what you meant earlier about being scared?” You felt him stiffen under your touch before he finally lifted his head, looking up at you. “Wh-what about it?” he asked.

You brushed his hair back from his forehead, cupping his cheek at the same time. “What are you scared of, babe?” Soonyoung took a deep breath before pulling himself up to sit. “I’m scared of frightening you,” he finally answered, glancing at your hand before reaching over to take it in his.

“Of frightening me? How would you frighten me?” you asked, giving his hand a reassuring squeeze. Soonyoung looked down at your joined hands before speaking. “You know how when we’re intimate?” he asked softly, not looking up as you nodded. “Yes,” you replied, a small smile on your lips. “Well, when the week of the full moon approaches, I start to… change,” he continued.

“My body starts to change.”

You sighed, rolling your eyes as your smile spread. “Is this about your heat?” you asked nonchalantly. Soonyoung’s eyes widened as his gaze snapped up to meet yours. “Y-you know about that?” he asked incredulously. You nodded, your smile only growing. “You think I’m going to learn that my boyfriend is a weretiger and not look up what all of that entails? I know everything, baby. Your heat, your transformation cycle, all of it. I also know your curse is familial and not transferred by bites or scratches. Jihoon told me that part though,” you said, reaching up to brush his hair back again.

“And I already know what happens to your cock, so there’s no need to explain that to me.”

Soonyoung’s eyes widened comically. “I learned that on my own by reading. Jihoon did not inform me of that part,” you added, reaching up to bop the end of his nose with the tip of your finger. “I know all about the sexual changes, the heat cycle, the penile spines, copulation, all of it. I know everything.”

Soonyoung wasn’t sure whether he should be impressed, alarmed, or relieved. He felt a mixture of all three as he sat there on his couch with you. “Do you also know about the insatiable urge I have to be buried inside you whenever you’re around?” he asked, noticing how your eyes widened slightly. “No,” you answered softly before a smirk started to form.

“But now I do.”

Soonyoung could feel heat creeping up his neck towards his face at the same time heat settled in the pit of his stomach. A new smell invaded his nostrils. The smell of arousal but it wasn’t his own. He glanced down quickly before looking back up. “Can you smell me?” you asked, tilting your head to the side, the smirk still present on your face. He nodded slowly, holding your gaze.

You leaned back against the arm of the couch, spreading your legs slightly. Soonyoung’s eyes fluttered shut as the scent hit him stronger. He could feel his cock painfully hard in his pants. “Baby,” Soonyoung said softly as a shiver ran up his spine, that insatiable need to bury his cock inside your warm cunt starting to take over. “If you don’t stop me,” he continued, opening his eyes to meet your gaze.

“I won’t be able to stop myself. I’ll…” he trailed off as your hands moved, sliding down your body. “I don’t know what I’ll do,” he said, swallowing thickly as his eyes followed your hands. “Maybe that’s what I want,” you said softly. “Maybe I want you to pounce on me.”

Soonyoung turned his head, averting his gaze as he tried to steady his erratic breathing. He felt the couch move and then your hand under his chin, turning his head to face you. “Don’t look away from me,” you said in a low voice. “I don’t want to hurt you,” Soonyoung whispered, reaching up to cup your cheek. “I promise you won’t,” you replied, leaning into his touch.

“I want you to let it take control. You need this,” you continued, taking one of his hands and guiding it between your thighs, pressing his fingers against your cloth covered crotch. “Pin me down, Soonie. Fuck me like I know you want to.”

Soonyoung let out a sound between a moan and a growl as he closed the distance,  the hand on your cheek sliding to the back of your neck to pull you into a bruising kiss, his tongue immediately sliding into your mouth. You moaned as he pushed you back onto the couch, pinning you down with his weight alone. 

You could feel his erection in his pants press against you, rutting slightly. “I don’t think I can wait,” he murmured against your lips, hands moving to pull at your shorts. “Then don’t,” you urged as he pulled back, fingers working to undo the tie of your shorts. He made quick work of them, pulling them and your panties off. “Shirt off,” he grumbled as he pulled his own off.

You watched him instead as he undid his pants. He glanced up at you. “What’re you doing?” he asked, his hands stilling. “I’m watching you,” you replied. “He glanced down at your shirt. “Shirt. Off,” he repeated. “What?” you asked, feigning ignorance. “You heard me,” Soonyoung growled as he stared you down. “Take. It. Off. Now.” 

You let out a giggle before complying, pulling your shirt off as he resumed undoing his pants and pushing them down, kicking them off before leaning over you, lips kissing a path up your chest to your neck. “Turn over,” he whispered in your ear.

You did as he asked, rolling over onto your stomach as he leaned over your back. You felt him rub his cheek against your shoulder. “What are you doing?” you asked with a chuckle. “Marking you,” he replied simply. “Don’t worry about it,” he added as he grabbed one of the pillows and guided you to lift your hips, placing the pillow under you.

With your hips raised, he guided the head of his cock to your slit, gathering your arousal on the tip before starting to push into you with a guttural moan. You gasped as he stretched you, the spines on his cock creating a rough but not entirely unpleasant texture as he bottomed out.

“Oh shit,” you gasped as he pulled back, the spikes raking your walls slightly. He thrusted into you harshly and you cried out. Soonyoung leaned over your back, covering your mouth with his hand. “The neighbors will complain, kitten,” he whispered in your ear. “You have to be quiet.”

He gave you another harsh thrust, slamming into you roughly as he set a brutal and unrelenting pace. “Is it too much?” he asked breathlessly. You shook your head, biting into your bottom lip to keep from screaming out in pleasure. You couldn’t hold back when you felt his teeth sink into your shoulder. “Fuck, sorry baby,” he panted as he pounded into you.

“S’okay,” you gasped, walls spasming around him as he send you hurtling towards your orgasm which hit you, the strength making your legs shake as he continued to fuck you through it. “Are you okay?” he groaned as your cunt continued to flutter around his cock. You nodded in response. “Y-yes,” you gasped. “I’m – ah! – M’fine — oh god, Soonyoung!”

A second orgasm washed over you and still he kept thrusting, not showing any signs of slowing down. You knew by the end of it you were going to be a bruised, panting, sticky mess but you couldn’t be bothered to care now that he wasn’t holding back and showing you a new side to him you’d never experienced. As he sent you toppling over the edge of your third orgasm, he finally came without warning as he sank his teeth into your shoulder again as his load exploded inside you, painting your walls in his sticky white essence.

“Fuck!” he growled as he buried his face in the crook of your neck. “Sorry,” he murmured, pressing wet kissing against your skin. “Didn’t mean to yell in your ear.” You merely chuckled as you shook your head. “It’s fine, babe,” you replied. “Was I too rough?” he asked suddenly and again you answered with a shake of your head. “No,” you answered. “That was great. In fact,” you said as you lifted your head.

“I’m coming over more often to help with your heat if it means you’ll fuck me like that.”

©️ kwanisms 2024 | all works on this blog are protected under copyright. Do not repost, continue, or translate my works. All graphics made by me.

[c-cocco]

Omg, I was thinking more about this being post if/when they get back from hell after 5 but them doing it as kids would be adorable! I'm sure acting out the various sword fights would be a good way for Dante to get Vergil to play with him more (combining both his interests, tho honestly ever since I saw the hc of Dante liking Shakespeare years ago it's never left my mind).

I headcanon that Vergil spent a lot of time in libraries growing up. He would gather knowledge there, spend the night there often, and it reminded him of life pre-tragedy and comforted him. He still finds libraries to be a comforting place for him, considers them like a security blanket in a way.

[ckret2]

Chapter 58 of human Bill Cipher in a quantum uncertainty state between being and not being the Mystery Shack's prisoner:

Everything you've wondered about how Bill survived his execution.

Let's rewind a couple of days.

####

Friday, 11:00 p.m.

"Welp," Mabel said, "I've got the rest of summer to try to get the whole story out of him! Goodnight, Dipper!"

Dipper's stomach flipped with guilt. "Yeah." The rest of summer. Mabel left for Portland in the morning. "Goodnight."

He lay down, pulled his sheet back up, and stared at the ceiling.

####

Friday, 11:04 p.m.

It took less than five minutes before the guilt won.

Yeah, no, nope, nuh-uh, Dipper couldn't do this. Not to his sister. He rolled over and hissed, "Psss, hey. Mabel."

"Hm?"

"Listen," Dipper said. "I hate Bill, okay, but I care about you, and also I think Bill might be part of a prophecy, so, because of that—I... There's something I need to tell you."

####

11:15 p.m.

Bill hadn't even had time to start dreaming before something dragged his mind back into the waking world.

There were white points of light as he passed through the hazy twilight of half-sleep. Those lights were his eyes. Lately, every time he started to wake up, he'd been seeing his eyes in the distance.

This time, there was one right in front of him, so bright it almost blinded him. He thought he could see something in the light.

He touched it.

And then he woke up, laying on his cushion bed as usual, watching as Mabel slid out of her room, crept near, and knelt beside him. She shook his shoulder. "Hey, Bill. Wake up."

And then he woke up—which was strange, considering he'd just done that—and stared at the dark inside of his hoodie.

He pushed back his hood. There was Mabel, crouched next to him, just like he'd "dreamed." Huh. Well done, Cipher, it seems you've just learned a new trick.

He tamped down his excitement; he could figure out what to do with this trick later. For now, he had a higher priority. "'Sup, kid?" He pushed himself up on an elbow, roughly flipping his hair out of his hood so it wouldn't keep tickling and choking around his neck. "It's the middle of the night." He yawned and mumbled, "Not that it makes a difference to me, but..."

"Shhh! We've gotta stay quiet," Mabel whispered. "I need to get you out of here. They're gonna kill you."

He sat bolt upright. "All right," he said. "You have my attention."

####

Dipper refused to say how, but according to him they'd synthesized just enough fuel for one shot with their fancy quantum whatever gun, and they couldn't make any more. They planned to execute Bill once Mabel was gone.

Mabel could just open a door for Bill and let him escape in the middle of the night—but that had dangers of its own. Bill would have to travel to a hiding place on foot—and his shoes were crap for hiking—his feet were also crap for hiking—and he'd only have until the adults started waking up and realized he was gone. Even if he kept moving all night, the adults would probably be able to cover the same amount of ground in a couple of hours, he'd probably inadvertently leave a trail a mile wide, and the forest's local supernatural population would definitely snitch if one of the Stans asked if they'd seen anything.

Plus, it wouldn't be very hard for the adults to figure out that Dipper had cracked and Mabel had helped Bill escape, and then everyone was in hot water.

They needed a way to cover Bill's escape to make it harder for the adults to pick up his trail, to give him as much time as possible to get some distance from the shack, and to delay Mabel getting in trouble. ("And Dipper," Mabel said. "Sure," Bill said unenthusiastically.)

But if they could, it would be best if they found a way to ensure the adults never even thought to look for Bill, Mabel never got in trouble at all, and the Quantum Destabilizer could never be fired again.

It was possible, Bill said. It wasn't guaranteed, but it was possible. They had a good chance. A very good chance. In fact, never mind, he'd decided it was guaranteed, they'd pull this off easily.

All they had to do was fake his death.

He knew a way.

####

11:45 p.m.

Dipper was stirred out of a drowsy near-sleep by the door creaking open and a couple sets of footsteps shuffling in. He rolled over and squinted across the room.

Mabel was quietly collecting craft supplies—pens, papers, her small starter sewing kit she used for repairs. Bill climbed into the loft to grab some musty pillows and blankets that had been stored for years in a cardboard box.

"Mabel?" Dipper mumbled.

Mabel put a finger over her lips. "Hey Dipper," she whispered. "You can go back to sleep, we'll be up in the loft."

"Doing what?"

"Scheme-y stuff. Don't worry about it." She flung her arms around Dipper, whispered, "Thank you," and ran across the room to grab her backpack and the height-altering flashlight.

Dipper glanced toward the loft. Bill was waiting at the top of the ladder, a dark vaguely-triangular silhouette, only his eyes visible as they reflected the dim light like a cat's. Dipper had had more nightmares than he could remember about waking to find Bill hovering in the dark above him.

Bill's gaze flicked from watching Mabel to staring at Dipper. They made eye contact. Bill didn't say anything.

Then Mabel climbed up the ladder, supply-stuffed backpack slung over her shoulders. Bill gave Dipper one last silent look, then turned away to follow Mabel to the back of the loft.

Dipper rolled over and tried to fall back asleep.

####

The plan was to create a dummy that looked like Bill to take the Quantum Destabilizer's shot in his place, while the real Bill got as far from the shack as the weirdness barrier around town would allow.

Bill told Mabel that the dummy didn't need to be complicated: he had an enchantment that could make it completely convincing. All he had to do was write out a spell and leave the paper over the dummy, and anyone who looked at it would be convinced it was really him in the flesh.

Similarly, sneaking Bill out of the shack didn't need to be complicated. They could shrink Bill down and stick him in Mabel's backpack, and all she'd have to do was come up with an excuse to get out of the car and set him free before they left town. 

The hard part would be the choreography of the whole thing. They needed Bill to put in an appearance that morning, to prove it really was him walking around; and then go somewhere that Mabel could hide him away without anybody noticing; and then ensure that nobody would see the Bill dummy until they were safely out of range, just in case. "The enchantment's pretty good," Bill said, "but the more people see it and the longer they get to look at it, the less potent it gets. And all it'll do is make the dummy look like me—it won't be able to walk and talk. It's best if the only person who gets a good look at it is my executioner."

The word executioner made Mabel shudder. It would probably be Ford, wouldn't it? She knew he thought he was doing the right thing. She knew it wasn't the first time he'd tried to destroy Bill. She knew she'd been fine with it last summer. She even knew that Bill would be okay. But all the same, she wasn't sure how she'd look at Ford the same way.

Once they had the dummy set up somewhere away from the family's prying eyes, they had to discourage everyone from trying to approach "Bill" until they were ready to kill him. And, ideally—just in case the executioner tried to speak to Bill or the enchantment otherwise failed—they should stage it all in a way so that no one would think Mabel had been involved in the escape plan.

The solution was obvious.

"I live to cause drama for no reason," Bill said. "I upset mortals recreationally. Can you act?"

"Can I act? Pshhh!" Mabel flipped a hand dismissively. "Maybe you were too busy badly impersonating my brother to watch, but last year I kind of staged an entire puppet show performing and singing as every character."

So it was a plan: they would stage a fight.

They were sitting in the very back of the attic loft, behind stacks of forgotten boxes and abandoned junk, beneath the meager light of the loft's window. Bill didn't need the light. He had a pen and paper and was writing out his enchantment's spell while they talked, long lines of inscrutable text. It was so dark that Mabel couldn't even see what language he was writing in, but that was fine; Bill had said that if she read his spell—if anyone read it—it would break the enchantment.

"Whoops," Bill said, "yeah, afraid I missed your whole show! I was too busy backstage trying to avoid your friends and looking for a way onto the catwalk."

Mabel shook her head in disapproval. "You would have liked it. There were live pyrotechnics and lasers and fog machines and a giant tentacle monster war and seventy-four songs and puppets!"

"I'll admit, sounds like a killer show. How about gore?"

"There was a whole song about my love interest getting his legs chewed off in the war," Mabel said. "The sock puppets don't have legs, but everyone knows your own imagination is a lot scarier than anything you actually see."

This kid could have a brilliant artistic career as a serial killer. "That's familiar. Is this war based on that 'cats versus the giant octopus' dream you keep having?"

"Yeah, and you'd have known that if you'd actually watched the opera! Too bad you missed the whole thing," Mabel said. "I guess you were just too busy being evil to appreciate the simple joys of a good, clean, non-villainous puppet show."

"Oh no, I can't believe my actions have consequences," Bill said flatly. "What would I ever have done if you hadn't enlightened me."

"Died, probably."

Bill glared.

"You know! Like you did last summer? As a consequence of your—"

"You shush."

Bill shoved Mabel away when she started to laugh, and held the enchantment up between their faces so he didn't have to look at her. He read his work over, then folded the paper in half and half again. "Hey, maybe you can put on an encore presentation sometime." Bill carefully inscribed four symbols in a square on the folded paper. "I promise I'll laugh at the jokes and fake cry at the sad parts."

Mabel shuddered. "No way. I'm never touching that show again. Too many bad memories."

"Awww, how come?"

Mabel stared at Bill.

Bill said, "Oh, right."

"Yeah," Mabel said coldly. "Thanks."

Bill shrank back. He leaned against a cardboard box, not sure where to look, drumming his fingers self consciously on the floorboards. Trying to figure out the right thing to say to make it better.

"Hey," he said. "If you ever change your mind about reviving the show... can I play the reverend again?" He grinned.

Mabel wadded up a paper and chucked it at Bill's face.

####

They agreed that scripting out every bit of the argument would make it sound too fakey; and anyway they were going to do this on no sleep and with no time to practice, if one of them forgot a line mid-argument it would ruin their entire plan. Bill said he was great at improvisational acting (which Mabel suspected was his way of trying to make "great at lying on the spot" sound good), and Mabel was a pro at getting into character for pretend games, so this should be easy. They just needed to choose a few topics they could realistically argue about.

So they started making a list of things that would totally infuriate each other.

"I can't think of anything that would make me furious," Bill said. "Outside of something serious like a murder attempt, anyway. I'm an even-tempered triangle! I don't sweat the small things!"

"You got sooo mad when I forgot to tell you about my Summerween plans."

Bill grimaced. "Right," he muttered. "That." 

Teasingly, Mabel asked, "Are you still grumpy I made plans?"

"I was not grumpy you made plans. I wasn't grumpy at all! I just would have appreciated if I'd known sooner, I planned my whole evening assuming I'd have somebody around to open doors—"

He saw Mabel's increasingly amused smirk, stopped himself, held up a hand, and said, "I'll save it for tomorrow morning."

Mabel wrote down the idea beneath four ideas she'd already scratched out. She'd temporarily removed the crystal from the height-altering flashlight so she could illuminate her paper while she wrote. "The concert will definitely come up tomorrow morning! And you can act like that's the first time you heard about it."

"Sure, no problem. We haven't talked about the concert where your uncles could overhear, have we?"

"I don't think so."

"Then that's perfect. I can pretend to be mad you didn't tell me." Bill forced a smile. "All right, your turn." He rested his elbow on his knee and his cheek on his fist. "I realize that, apart from the unfortunate meat suit, I'm the most flawless person you've ever seen—" he ignored Mabel's raspberry, "—but for the sake of argument, just imagine something you might get mad at me for."

"Um... insulting Dipper?"

"Now that sounds fun. But no, can't risk it, he'd be too tempted to jump into the argument," Bill said. "Besides, what if I said something you agreed with?"

"What! Why would I agree if you insulted my brother?"

"He smells like a sweaty ferret and when he has a crush he turns into a creepy little stalker."

Mabel laughed. "Yeah, he does. Okay, um..." She went silent for a moment, tapping the butt of her marker on the paper. 

She stopped tapping; and then quietly said, "I'd be so mad if I thought you were trying to keep me from hanging out with my friends."

"Oh, I could do that easily." Bill reviewed his wording, decided a human could take that as a threat, and quickly amended himself, "Could pretend that I'm trying to do that easily. You know I'd never, but hey, the adults here are ready to believe the worst about me—"

"You promise?"

"Sure I promise!" He processed the question after he'd already answered it. "Hold on—you think I'm the kind of person who would do that?" He was, but he didn't want her to see him that way.

She shrugged, looking down at her idea list again. "You've done it to other people."

"Name one!"

"Grunkle Ford and Old Man McGucket."

Oh, of course. That snitch of a backstabbing ungrateful ex-student, bane of Bill's entire miserable postmortem existence. Had to find as many ways as possible to make Bill look bad, didn't he. "All I did was tell Stanford that hick was a coward and a flake. I didn't make him do anything! If he agreed with me, that's on him." Bill crossed his arms irritably. "And Specs was a coward and a flake. Is it a crime to be right?"

"But you ruined their friendship on purpose, didn't you."

Bill tried to find a graceful way to wriggle around the direct accusation that excused his actions without contradicting whatever she might already know. "Did not," he said.

Mabel frowned at him.

Bill averted his gaze. "So! That's great. Trying to keep you away from your friends. Something I've never done to you but would be a really good thing to fight about. What else."

Mabel sighed and looked over her list again. She wrote something, scratched it out; started another line and scribbled it out; and then said in exasperation, "Your morals are terrible."

Bill had to clap a hand over his mouth to keep his sudden laugh from waking Dipper. "You've got too many morals, it's your biggest character flaw. How many does one person really need, two or three? That's an easy topic, arguments about morality can drag out for hours!"

"We probably only need to fight for like ten minutes, right?"

"Sure. List done! That's everything we need."

Mabel heaved a sigh of relief. She read over the list, glanced at the flashlight she was reading with, and said, "I should get extra batteries. It'd be the worst if we got you way out of the shack and then the batteries died while you were still small."

Bill wasn't sure about that. Being so tall for weeks on end felt awkward and wrong. His limbs were always in the way. He bumped into things he should have been able to slide between. The more time he spent in this body, the more he wanted to spend a month at the size and thickness of a greeting card. He joked, "Hey, I don't know; it'd be easier to hide..."

"Yeah, and easier to get squarshed." Mabel turned off the flashlight and picked up her backpack. "I'm getting batteries."

While Mabel was downstairs, Bill picked up her list to see what topics they'd found to argue about so far:

Weirdmaged

Making me think you were Blendin to get the

Kitten fists meow meow

Almost killing me

Not sharing Summerween plans

Trying to make me kill myself by

Ruining Glove Story

Insulting Dipper

Insulting Waddles??? (too lovable!)

Weirdm

Mabeland Isolating me from everyone

Spray painting your eyeball

Weir YOU'RE TOO EVIL!!

I'M TOO NICE!!! ♡

He reread the list, feeling his guts writhe and twist involuntarily.

Yeah. Those were all the things he'd decided not to bring up, too.

At least they were in agreement on what they didn't want to talk about. That was true friendship, right? Friendship didn't mean never hurting each other; it meant mutually agreeing never to talk about it again.

He read the list a third time.

####

A spare pair of Bill's black leggings and a pair of black socks would serve as half of the decoy body, stuffed with old bedsheets and half a pillow that Mabel had sized up with the flashlight so it was closer to Bill's actual torso size. For the time being, the top half of the decoy was constructed out of a flannel shirt; Bill would have to put in an appearance downstairs in his hoodie, and then they could quickly go upstairs and put it on the decoy to complete the look.

He'd miss that hoodie almost as much as he missed his own face. But it was a small price to pay for his life.

"I don't know," Mabel whispered, inspecting the dummy with the flashlight from near the edge of the loft. "It doesn't look super convincing. It's kind of lumpy all wrong." She knelt by it and tried to poke the fake thigh into a slightly more convincing shape.

"Don't worry about it," Bill whispered, waving the folded paper with the secret spell written inside. "The enchantment will hide all that. As long as the dummy looks mostly human at a glance, no one will notice anything."

Mabel gave it one last worried look, but nodded and turned off the flashlight.

####

Mabel crept out of the office and eased the door shut. "Got it," she whispered, holding up a faded black umbrella. "Are you sure you don't want a better umbrella, though? Some of the spikes are broken and I think it's supposed to rain today."

"The other humans will be less likely to notice a broken umbrella going missing," Bill said. "Anyway, this one saved my life once. I'll take it."

"Then that's the last supply we needed to pack," Mabel said, sighing in relief. "It's still a couple hours until morning. Should we get some sleep?"

Bill considered it, and shook his head. "No. Better not."

Sleep scared him. Sure, he endured it when he had to—he had no choice—and, under the circumstances, although it was a close call, he grudgingly preferred sleeping to dying of sleep deprivation; but he kept it at bay as long as he could, sleeping irregularly, infrequently, and briefly. Knowing it was necessary didn't make the fear go away.

It was the helplessness of the whole thing—knowing that, once his mind had shut off, anything could happen around him, anything could happen to his body—and not only was he ignorant and defenseless, but he was also powerless to wake himself up any sooner than his tyrannical circadian rhythm dictated. He lacked even the power to think about waking.

If Mabel hadn't woken him tonight, he might have slept through his own death. 

He continued, "What if we sleep in and don't have time for the fight? I'd be doomed." Bill didn't even have the luxury of an alarm clock.

"Oh—good point," Mabel said. "So we should probably do something to keep us awake."

"Right," Bill said, wracking his exhausted brain for an idea. "Overdose on caffeine?"

Mabel was quiet for a moment. "If this works, it might be a long time before we see each other again," she said. "You'll probably have to keep hiding until Grunkle Ford and Grunkle Stan leave town in the fall. And by then summer will be over, and I'll be back in California..."

She was right. If they pulled off this plan, he might never see Mabel again. It wouldn't exactly be safe to ring up the Mystery Shack. Sure, sooner or later he'd find a way to restart Weirdmageddon, and then he could invite her into his gang... And she'd join, wouldn't she? Of course she would. He just needed a chance to talk to her about it away from the closed-minded killjoys in her family that were holding her back. But until then...

She groped through the dark to grab at Bill's sleeve. "Dance party? While we still can?"

"Sure, star girl." Where had this lump in his throat come from? "Sounds fun. Dance party."

####

5:30 a.m.

It was the first time Bill had danced since his death.

All Mabel had to offer was Sev'ral Times, upbeat kid's show soundtracks, unlistenable synthesized junk, and whatever was playing before dawn on the radio stations that could reach Gravity Falls; the stained yellow shag carpet and homely plaid wallpaper made him miss the dark smoky rooms and strobing multicolor lights of a real club; he couldn't risk drinking this early in the morning if he wanted to have a head clear enough for escape; and he never forgot that, outside of the living room, the halls were empty and silent.

But he'd danced to music that made his eye bleed and his memories howl and he'd danced to no music at all; he'd danced in millions of crummy makeshift dance halls and night clubs and dive bars that had tumbled into or been cobbled together in the Nightmare Realm; he'd danced when he was so brutally sober that time in all its sharp cruel clarity seemed to have frozen to turn a spotlight on him; he'd danced with his worst enemies and he'd danced all alone; and there wasn't any force on this planet that would stop him from dancing now.

After spending four songs in a row making fun of Bill for attempting to figure out how to puppet a human body into some approximation of a dance, Mabel asked, "What were dances like on Flatworld?" It made Bill internally wince each time he heard it called that.

But he welcomed the opportunity for a break; he leaned back to half sit against the living room table, breathing heavily, arms trembling. "Dif—difficult question." He had to pause to catch his breath. His lungs and muscles couldn't keep up with him; this body was too hard to keep moving, so inefficient, 90% of the fuel that went into it was wasted uselessly. It was already beginning to atrophy in the few short weeks he'd had it, muscles withering from days stuck indoors with nothing to do but sit and stare out the window. He'd been made of pure energy for so long that maintaining all the little systems to keep a flesh body energized—food, water, sleep, exercise, not too much exercise, oxygen—felt like a Sisyphean torture. "S'like asking—'what're human dances like'? There's a—lot of variety."

"You know what I mean!" Mabel was still half dancing, bouncing from foot to foot. Bill wanted that kind of energy. "How do you dance?"

Bill shut his eyes, seeing colors flash behind his eyes—gyroscopic, kaleidoscopic, shapes spinning and whirling in spirals. "I'd show you, but there's not enough room in here for me to do a cartwheel."

"Seriously, Bill."

"I'm being serious! Plus I can't float. It wouldn't look right in a human body." It would look better if he cut his silhouette out of a piece of paper, taped it over a flashlight, and projected the shape onto the wall. "Tell you what—as soon as I'm back in my real body, I'll show you how I dance, all right?"

"Come on, Bill! You're just trying to wiggle out of—"

"Mabel," Bill said, "I can't do those dances in this body."

Mabel's teasing smile faded. "Really?"

"Unless you know a way to dislocate my shoulder so I can slide my entire arm from one hip over my head and down to the other."

"Ew." Mabel grimaced.

"It looks cooler on a triangle." Bill smiled wanly. "But hey, I spent all day yesterday teaching you everything I know—you can teach me something. I haven't used a human body in thirty years! What dances are popular these days, I haven't learned anything new since the moonwalk."

Mabel's eyes widened. "You know how to moonwalk?"

"Sure! It's easy. I figured it out in Stanford's body."

"I don't believe you. Prove it."

Bill pushed off the table. "Oh, yeah? Are you ready to look stupid?" He effortlessly glided backwards across the floorboards. He pointed at Mabel's gaping face as he passed. "What do you think of that?"

"Show me how to do that and I'll teach you every dance I know."

Bill grinned. He loved deals that were unfairly biased in his favor, and he loved it more when he didn't even have to propose them himself. "You've got yourself a deal, Shooting Star." It would keep them occupied for the next hour.

####

6:32 a.m.

About fifteen minutes ago, Bill had warned Mabel that he'd just glimpsed the beforeimage of Ford crossing the living room in the future; and then they'd kept partying, wanting to get in every last second of joy they could before he arrived in the present.

But once Ford was no longer approaching but actually there, seeing his face was like a bullet to the head. Bill had been having so much fun, for a few minutes he'd almost forgotten that today was execution day. 

And it wouldn't be execution day if he had anything to say about it.

Bill demanded, "What's with the sour face?" (Ford's eyes were so dull, his expression so heavy; Bill had never seen him wear that look, not even any of the previous times he'd tried to murder Bill.) "Hey, am I not allowed to dance now?" He squeezed Mabel's hands tighter.

Ford just gave a tiny shake to his head and hurried past them, not even deigning to look at Bill, as though he were telling himself he'd only imagined he'd heard the voice of a ghost.

I know what you're up to, Bill thought at top volume silently in his head. But you won't do it. You won't do it.

He met Mabel's gaze. She gave him a tiny nod. Party was over. Time to get to work.

####

6:36 a.m.

Over the course of the night, Dipper had been woken twice by bursts of quickly-hushed laughter; three times by random bumps and thuds; once by Bill falling off the loft and Mabel's squeal of alarm; and several times by Mabel waking Dipper to ask if it was okay if she gave Bill Dipper's old shoes (so Bill could finally walk in the woods properly), his sleeping bag (so Bill didn't have to sleep on hard rocks under a single sad Pony Heist bedsheet), his "Edible Plants of Oregon's Blue Mountains" booklet (self-explanatory), and several other things he also said "yes" to without hearing properly. It had better be one heck of a prophecy that Bill was involved in, because Dipper was this close to just murdering Bill himself.

When Dipper went downstairs, he couldn't even look at Mabel and Bill—terrified something in his gaze would give the whole conspiracy away. He didn't even know what they were planning. Was dancing in the living room part of it? Was it some distraction? He'd hoped Bill would already be gone by now.

He couldn't meet Ford's eyes either, for the guilt of betraying his trust. He didn't deserve these scrambled eggs.

He couldn't meet anyone's gaze.

He really, really hoped Mabel and Bill had a plan. He hoped it was a good plan. Because whatever the heck they were up to—Dipper was afraid it was on him to prevent Ford and Stan from intervening too soon and finding out.

####

6:49 a.m.

After they'd escaped the kitchen, Bill glanced over his shoulder toward the stairs before Mabel got the attic door closed. "Do you think Ford noticed something?"

Mabel was already running across the room, retrieving her phone charger and phone to stuff in her backpack and pocket, making sure she'd packed everything she needed for her trip—everything except for Bill. "I wasn't looking. Did he?"

"I don't know." Bill flashed one last worried look at the door; but he couldn't afford to slow down, he had a dummy to finish. He hurried up the ladder, took off his hoodie, pulled on a tank top, tried to fish his pre-written enchantment out of his pocket in the same movement, and fumbled and dropped the paper over the edge of the loft.

Mabel had been checking her bag for the concert tickets when a paper fluttered down on her hair. She instinctively grabbed it and unfolded it before she registered the four sigils written on the outside and realized this was the enchantment Bill had said would stop working if anyone read it. She'd reflexively read the first few lines before she could stop herself. She froze. Her gaze jerked up to Bill, eyes wide.

Bill dropped down the ladder, snatched the paper out of her hand so quickly it almost tore, and immediately climbed back up. "I told you not to look." He carefully refolded it.

"Is that...?"

"It'll work," Bill hissed, with an insistence that said he wasn't sure it would work at all.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes!" He held up the dummy's pillow torso and yanked the hoodie on top of it.

When Mabel didn't say anything, Bill sighed. "Even if it doesn't—this only needs to work until we're on the road. They can't stop us then."

"Bill—"

He shakily inhaled, and then he raised his voice loud enough he'd be heard downstairs. "What do you need to spend all that time around those two brats for, anyway?! What, am I not good enough company for you?!"

They didn't have time to adjust the plan. They were in the middle of it, right now, and the guys expected to hear an argument. Mabel swallowed hard and raised her voice as well. "Not when you're acting like this, you aren't! You're a bigger brat than—than both of—and my friends aren't brats!"

Bill bit his lip, brows drawn in pain, eye squeezed shut, trying not to laugh.

Mabel chucked a sock at him, don't you dare. "You can't say I can't hang out with my friends, that's stupid!"

"I never said you can't!" Bill held the folded paper a foot above the completed dummy, the square of symbols face up, and tapped it twice so it hovered in place when he let go. "Hang out with your stupid friends, I don't care! But two whole days is ridiculous—!"

####

7:02 a.m.

"I THOUGHT you were my FRIEND!"

All three eavesdroppers cringed—Dipper hardest of all. His heart was hammering out of his chest and his t-shirt was at least 50% sweat by volume. Was this part of the plan? It sounded like an insane plan. This couldn't be the plan. It had to be the plan. He'd already prevented Ford from intervening, what if they were really fighting? But what if this really was the plan? 

"WELL! If you're gonna act like this just because I wondered what you're up to, maybe NOT! What kind of fun are you good for, you wouldn't even be into burning a house down!"

Dipper messed up. He'd actually ruined their friendship right before Bill was about to die and Mabel would be miserableand it was all his fault. This fight was real. They were furious. They hated each other—

####

7:03 a.m.

"OH YEAH, WELL—" Mabel faltered as she struggled to think of a fitting retort. "YOU WOULDN'T EVEN BE INTO—into—n-NOT BURNING A HOUSE DOWN!" She cringed at herself, struggling not to laugh.

Bill had been fighting the urge to laugh so hard that his face was turning red. "OHHH WOW, GREAT COMEBACK."

Mabel's voice went shrill with suppressed hysterics. "SHUT UP!" Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes as she socked Bill's arm. If he made her lose it when everyone was outside listening—

The door opened. "Hey—!"

They both rounded on Stan. "STAY OUT OF IT!" Mabel snatched up a discarded sweater. Stan shut the door just before the sweater hit it.

Mabel quietly wheezed, "Do you think he saw anything?"

"No, n—" Bill had to clap both hands over his mouth and nose to keep silent. Mabel wrapped her arms around him and smushed her face against his chest to muffle herself. They stood there, shaking, until the hysterics passed.

The stress was getting to them.

####

7:06 a.m.

"Fine!!" Mabel lifted the height-altering flashlight. "Then you can just stay here all weekend!"

Bill had on his backpack (Dipper had "agreed" Bill could take his) and was clutching his umbrella. He gave her a thumbs up; ready. "FINE!"

"FINE!" Mabel turned on the flashlight. When Bill was around four inches tall, she turned it off, knelt down, and offered her hand for him to climb on. She stuffed the flashlight in her backpack, carefully set Bill in a sweater nest (how had Gideon flung her and Dipper in a jar so cavalierly? she was terrified of snapping Bill's bones like toothpicks), zipped the backpack and gingerly put it on; and then Mabel was storming out of the room.

"Leave him in there," Mabel snapped, pointing at the door. She was shaking with fear. "He's in TIME OUT."

Dipper glanced nervously at the door, "Um..." He looked so worried. She hadn't had a chance to explain the plan to him.

Mabel glared into his eyes. She summoned up all her mostly placebic Twin Empathy Powers to beam her thoughts into Dipper's brain. Don't. Please don't. If you say anything you'll ruin it.

He raised his hands. "Okay, fine."

Mabel rushed past him to the stairs, trying to escape as fast as possible without jostling her backpack.

####

7:08 a.m.

Buckled into Mrs. Grendinator's car, voice shaking, Mabel said, "Can we just go? Please?" Now, before someone ran out of the shack and waved them down to demand Mabel explain where Bill had gone. Her hands were trembling in fear, clutched protectively around her backpack with its secret cargo. One of her best friends was in there. She couldn't let anything happen to him.

Mrs. Grendinator nodded. "Of course."

As they pulled around the Mystery Shack and toward the road, Mabel glanced toward the attic bedroom window, afraid the adults might have already gone in and discovered their trick; but no one looked back.

Now all she could do was hope the paper Bill had left floating over the dummy would do its job.

####

(Shoutout to the one person who theorized the size changing flashlight could be involved, I'd @ you but I don't want you to see this before you read the chapter. You may claim credit in the notes. Based on the messages I received, one person guessed Mabel got involved halfway through the fight, no one guessed she was in it from the start, and NOBODY guessed Dipper got involved.

For a fun time, go back and read last chapter and this one in chronological order via the timestamps!

But first I wanna hear all your thoughts.)

[dyns33]

Obvious

Most of the time I see him as the cool silly big bro, but I love Deadpool, so here's a long Deadpool x female reader.

Normally nothing destined Y/N to meet Wade Wilson.

A normal life, without enemies, without superpowers, without contracts on her head. She didn't fight, respected the law (at least for the most serious and important things) and she considered herself to be a good person.

The first time she had passed Saint Agnes Orphanage, she hadn't really paid it much attention. The second time, she found it a little strange that an orphanage was in this part of the city, which was not really made for children.

Then one evening, when she had had a bad day, she realized that it was a bar and she decided to go in for a drink.

Since she thought an orphanage was strange in that place, she might have thought it was odd for a bar to have such a name. She could also have been scared when she saw the other customers, who all turned towards her, indicating that she might not be welcome.

But Y/N was tired, and she just wanted a drink before going home, so she smiled politely as she sat down at the counter.

The waiter frowned, but he agreed to serve her with a shrug, muttering that as long as she was an adult, it wasn't his problem.

A tall, bald, tattooed guy then approached her, putting a hand on her arm without worrying about her private space, asking her if she wanted to follow him home.

"… No thanks."

“Come on, don’t be a slut.”

"Please."

“Come with me, you stupid bitch.”

"Now, that's really not very nice. The lady said no, a gentleman should know it's time to leave. But no Hector, not only are you insisting, but you're being rude."

"Fuck you, Wade, don't get involved in this !"

The waiter continued to mumble about cleaning, while this Wade guy smashed Hector's head against the counter. A tooth even flew close to Y/N’s face.

That might have been enough to scare her completely. In addition to the surge of violence that was happening right next to her, there was the red suit, the katanas and other guns, which could make you want to flee as quickly as possible.

But when he finished kicking Hector's ass, Wade turned to her, and despite the mask, it was obvious that he was smiling, extending a hand towards her.

"Miss, my apologies for that boor. He knows nothing of good manners."

"… Thank you."

"You're very welcome, lovely angel ! Wade Wilson, Deadpool, Merc with a mouth, at your service ! Oh, he spilled your drink… Bad Hector ! Or was it me ? Maybe it was me. Weasel, the same for the little lady, on my note !”

“You already owe me a fortune.”

“I will kill whoever you want for free !”

“I thought you didn’t kill anymore.”

"Ah yes… I'll suck you for free !"

“Here you go, two drinks, just shup up Wade.”

In the end, Wade was a bit special, but not evil. He stayed with her, partly because he loved having someone to talk to, but also to make sure no one else was going to bother her again.

And he talked a lot. Everything he said didn't always make sense, he even seemed to be talking to himself sometimes, but he was funny. It seemed to please him that Y/N laughed at his jokes. Behind the counter, Weasel was still muttering that she was doing something silly.

Among the long tirade he delivered that evening, she understood that Wade had not had an easy life. That he had done some things that could make him a criminal, but he had been trying to improve for some time.

"Colossus already wanted me to become an X-men but it wasn't for me. Wait, there are X-men in this universe ? I do not know anymore. Anyway, there's Spidey and Devy. No, he's right, this nickname isn't great, Devil. Like Daredevil. They want us to be Team Red, but only if I stop unliving people. It's not fair because they're friends with Frank, and Frank keeps unliving people, but he lost his wife and his kids, so I guess he has more sympathy points than me."

"I don't understand everything, but I guess Spidey is Spiderman ?"

"Yes ! He's super cool ! And his ass ! People confuse us sometimes, it annoys me, but it's a bit of a compliment. He's my role model."

Like a true superhero, Deadpool insisted on taking her home. He was terribly honest, saying that he could leave her a few blocks away, but that was useless, because as a former mercenary, he was very good at stalking people and he could find her address without difficulty, even if he only had her name.

"Which I wouldn't do ! Normally. I might want to see you again, and ask Weasel to find your number, but I know myself, I'll put it in my phone, and I'll hesitate for weeks, then I'll send a lousy message, you'll be scared, you'll block me, I'll be ashamed and I'll shoot myself in the head because I'm a moron."

“I can give you my number.”

"And I… Huh ? Huh ?! For real ?!" exclaimed Wade, jumping like a child on Christmas Day.

Wade called her right away, specifying that it was not to verify that she was giving him a false number but a little. Despite the mask, his face showed surprise when he saw that she hadn't lied.

"I should put a bullet in my head to make sure I'm not dreaming."

“You wouldn’t wake up.”

“Baby girl, we only just met, there are a lot of things you don’t know about me.”

When Deadpool talked about shooting himself, he meant it literally. It often happened that he died, either because of an enemy, an accident, or by his own hand. But he always came back. A gift like a curse.

They became friends. It was obvious, and quite sad, that Wade didn't have many friends.

Most people around him couldn't stand him or were afraid of him. It was true that he could be quite unpredictable, especially when he got lost in his discussions with the boxes, or an imaginary audience. But he was never mean.

Weasel was more of a collaborator, Al was forced to accommodate him, and the other heroes, unable to get rid of him, tried to make him a nice guy.

And he was really nice. Crazy but adorable, funny and wanting to do well.

Very quickly, Y/N started to have a crush, and even more. Even after seeing him without a mask. He never took it off completely to eat, repeating that he didn't want her to lose her appetite or feel like throwing up.

But after landing in a trash can after a fight, and forgetting that he had invited her to watch Princess Bride, Y/N had seen him. Yes, his scars were a bit impressive, but they weren't that bad.

With an embarrassed smile, he waved his hand while remaining frozen near the entrance.

"… I can move if you want to run away. I won't follow you. I may look like Frankenstein's monster, but I only pursue young girls who ask me to. Or who deserve it. Because criminals have no gender, I don't discriminate."

“I brought popcorn.” was her only reaction.

"... Oh. Sweet ? Salty ? Caramel ? Al must have beer somewhere, hidden with the cocaine."

After that, he was a little less afraid to show his face, even though it was obvious he wasn't comfortable. It wasn't easy to reassure him, repeating that she didn't care about his appearance.

Y/N didn’t remember how they ended up having this conversation. The only thing she knew was that she was pressed against him, laughing, when she had innocently said it would be fun if they went out together.

This made Wade laugh, but a very serious laugh, leaving no chance and hitting where it hurt.

"You and me ? Ah ! No chance."

"Why ?"

"It's obvious."

A simple little sentence could sometimes do a lot of damage. Too busy making fun of the characters on the screen, Wade didn't see Y/N's look of sadness, just as he didn't feel her body stiffen.

Still, she should have expected this response. Of course it was obvious that they had nothing to do together. Deadpool was a super hero (in training), he was tall, muscular, funny, rich.

She had seen photos of his deceased ex, Vanessa. She had observed him flirting with beautiful women and men before. It was already fortunate that she was only friends with him.

So Y/N swallowed her pride, accepting the obvious, and not talking about the subject again.

But it was hard, because the more time passed, the stronger the feelings became.

It was even harder when Wade entered his depressive phases. He kept putting himself down, insulting himself and accepting insults from the boxes in his head. It took a lot of patience and perseverance to get him to put down his gun.

"Anyway, I'll come back later. Bad luck for the world. People would be happier if I wasn't here anymore. Maybe they'll miss me a little, for a few minutes."

“I would miss you, Wade.”

"Yeah… You say that because you're adorable, baby girl. But you'd be better off without me too. I'm a real drag."

“You saved me the first time we met.”

"And since then you think you owe me a debt. You know, every time we're in the street, the others look at me and they're afraid. If I wasn't there, you could be with them. You could have lots of friends.”

"I don't want lots of friends, Wade." Y/N sighed, taking him into her arms. “I’m glad we’re friends.”

“Oh, sweetie pie, me too !”

It was rarer for them to find themselves in the opposite situation. Not because Deadpool wasn't capable of empathy, but because she didn't like talking about her problems, preferring to keep everything to herself and cry out of sight.

Unfortunately, she had made the decision to become friends with a former mercenary who loved to jump from roof to roof, only to come visit without warning by tapping on the window.

Y/N had no time to hide her tears, holding back a sob as her eyes met those of Wade, who had stopped mid-movement, fist raised against his window.

He didn't hesitate before entering, terribly serious.

"Who ? Who did this ?"

“Wade…”

"Who made my baby girl cry ? I want a name. Spidey and Dev will understand. Yellow wants decapitation, White wants emasculation. Tell me who."

"It's really not necessary. It's not important."

“It’s important if you cry.” Deadpool growled as he looked around the apartment for clues.

Once he had an idea in his head, it was almost impossible to divert his attention. If it wasn't so important, it was possible with food or talking about Spiderman's butt. But this time he considered it very important.

Tired, Y/N thought that all she had to do was say that it was just a ridiculous heartbreak for him to calm down. He had no reason to kill someone just because they didn't love her back.

This actually seemed to calm him down a bit, as he patted his cheeks with his hands in a dramatic gesture.

"What ?! Someone doesn't love you ?! Someone doesn't like my sweet little angel ? Are they crazy or stupid. You deserve the best !"

"Actually… He's the one who's too good for me."

"Bullshit ! The important thing is love ! If a woman can marry a space duck, then everyone can be together, as long as it's legal and consensual !"

"… What ? No, wait, it doesn't matter. Wade, please forget it."

"A name. Let me prove to you that this fool doesn't deserve you, and not the other way around !"

"No."

"A name !"

"You ! It's you !"

For the first time since they met, Wade was silent for more than a minute, staring at her like he wasn't sure she was real. He often had hallucinations, so this happened to him.

Then he muttered incomprehensible things, probably speaking with his boxes to check that he had heard what she had just said.

"… Me ? As in, me ?"

“I know what you’re going to say.” Y/N sighed, wanting to disappear. "You've already said it, it's obvious that we're not meant to be together. You're charismatic, and strong, and funny, with powers. You save people, you have an extraordinary life, while I… I am me."

"… Baby girl. Do you have a fever ? Did you lose a bet ? Because… You saw me without a mask. You know I'm crazy and dangerous. There are several bounties on my head, I've unlived more people than the population of New York, and my favorite movie is Zoolander 2. When I said it was obvious… I meant that you were too good for me."

There had been a misunderstanding, each being convinced that the other could never want the other, because they were too different. But even though he was special, with skin problems and an inability to concentrate for more than ten minutes, Wade was much better than a space duck.

However, while she was sure of what she wanted, he hadn't clearly said what he expected next.

"I mean, if you just want to be friends, I'll understand."

"You can't tease me like that and then break my heart. Don't play with me, woman !"

“Wade…” Y/N sneered, as he gesticulated like a degenerate, declaiming his great love for her and her smile, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

Taking advantage of his inattention, she approached him, until he froze when he felt her hands on his mask.

With a look, she asked him if she could take it off, and as he didn't move to stop her, she took it off first up to his nose, before hesitating.

Y/N didn’t want to make him uncomfortable, but she also didn’t want him to think that she didn’t want to see him if she didn’t go further. So she took out the whole mask, she observed Wade, smiling before kissing him.

"… Don't take what comes next as a bad thing." he whispered as their lips parted.

"What ?"

"I'm going to have a heart attack…"

As always, Y/N thought he was joking at first, until he collapsed in front of her, looking delighted even though his heart had stopped beating. Fortunately she was used to seeing him die, even if it was still a little traumatic.

It took almost an hour for him to wake up. Y/N had time to take a shower and make herself some tea, sitting on the couch to wait.

"Shit !" he shouted as he opened his eyes, looking around the apartment before looking at her. “Did we kiss ?”

“Yes and you died.”

"It's weird. Normally you go to heaven after you die, not before. But I probably don't have enough superhero points for heaven yet, so the other option is that I became totally crazy."

“Wade…”

"I know, White and Yellow would have told me. They're already saying that all the time, but they would have insisted, especially for me to escape from the asylum. It's no fun fighting with fake people and hippos. Was I dead long ?"

“No, a little over half an hour.”

"And you stayed with me, it's so cute. Nurse Y/N. No, Doctor Y/N, and I'll be Nurse Wilson. Oh, Doctor Y/N, I made a mistake in the dosage of a patient, I'm a bad nurse, punish me."

"… Let's see Nurse Wilson, we're in the middle of an intervention, calm down."

"Uh oh ! You're playing along !" Wade exclaimed, pouting from the ground. "I didn't expect that ! Wait, I need a blonde wig, and a white dress. You'll see, I look super sexy in a dress. Wait, we do this now or it's quick and we should have a date first ?'

“I wouldn’t say no to a date.”

"I see the genre, like in novellas. Doctor Y/N takes me to the restaurant to talk about my future promotion, but in fact, you are going to admit to me that I am pregnant with you, before I even enter your bed !"

“As long as you’re in my bed before the hundredth episode.”

“UH !”

The small, high-pitched cry of pleasure preceded a second cardiac arrest, Deadpool's mind imagining Y/N and him in a bed, with a stetoscope.

When she asked him if he was going to have a heart attack every time, he told her that he would probably die for good the day he saw her naked, or that they made love for the first time.

But Wade was a gentleman, he ate lots of vegetables, exercised, and begged Daredevil to teach him meditation techniques.

So he had the courtesy of having the next heart attack only after they were finished, and in the toilet. And every time after that they were together, Wade would go out of his way to just get a nosebleed.

Especially on Weasel's counter, telling him everything they had done or almost everything, which annoyed the poor waiter a lot, even if he knew that it would happened from the start, the moment he saw Deadpool with Y/N.

[curawrites]

Healing

Hiccup x fem!reader

Warnings: angst, no happy ending

Note: rewatched Race to the Edge and got obsessed and wanted to write angst 💚

Ever since the beginning you and Hiccup had been friends, best friends.

You had done everything together, you were the weird kids, the ones that never fit in, the ones that worked the forge during the nightly dragon attacks.

Being so close together had the adults in your life asking when the wedding would be. It had always made Hiccup chuckle uncomfortably while you stood beside him bashfully with pink ears.

You had really hoped that would be your future. It was childish to think but you were only a teen who thought things would never change.

Inevitably things did change. It happened so fast, one night you and Hiccup were handling the forge together as usual and then suddenly he was training to fight dragons.

You watched him get consumed with his training and whatever he was doing in the woods. You were completely unaware of the injured nightfury your best friend was training.

You were shocked when it was revealed that Hiccup had tamed such a dragon and that he knew where the dragon nest was.

Watching him get disowned hurt, you knew how much he wanted to prove himself to his father. You wanted to go after him, to comfort him like you had always done but you couldn’t and you knew you shouldn’t when Astrid was by his side. You knew how much the boy liked her, and even though it hurt you, you let them have their moment.

You watched as Hiccup had more moments with the other teens, helping them train the dragons, bonding with them. You were glad that he was finally fitting in.

His happiness brought you joy and at that age that’s all that mattered to you even if it meant being left behind.

You hadn’t been there to watch him become a hero but when the tribe came back you felt it. All of Berk was talking about his and Toothless’s sacrifice. In that moment you felt even more admiration for the boy.

You tried to be by Hiccup’s side when he was out, but it was difficult trying to squeeze in some time when five others also wanted to see him.

You felt a shift as soon as he woke up. When he was surrounded by the residents of Berk. When Astrid gave him a kiss and his gang rejoiced over his recovery.

You knew then that he would never be the same, he was no longer you Hiccup.

As the years passed you sunk into the shadows, watching Hiccup live his best life with his friends, riding dragons, going on adventures and exploring.

You yearned to be apart of them, for Hiccup to talk to you again, and help you train a dragon and bring you into the gang. But it never happened, he was to consumed with his new life to notice who he left behind.

When he left for the edge at 18 that’s when you realized your prior friendship was never going to be rekindled. The reality hit you hard, it was jarring. It made you truly process the grief of losing your best friend.

It made your spiral into a dark place, a void of black tar that wouldn’t let you go no matter how hard you tried to claw your way out. Eventually you let the tar consume you, let yourself believe in all of the horrible things you thought about yourself.

Months were spent rotting in your hut, crying, refusing to look at yourself in a mirror, and sleeping all day.

Once the sadness faded away all you felt was rage. How could he just forget you? You had been by his side for 15 years for Thor’s sake! How dare he abandon you to be with the “cool” kids!

Your rage fuelled you to better yourself out of spite. So you began training, releasing all of the anger and hurt with every strike of your sword against your opponent’s.

You learned a lot about yourself during that period of time. You couldn’t handle an axe or a bow but you were sure damn good with a spear and swords, you learned to be resilient and strong, you gained more intellect and strategy. It rebuilt a lot of your confidence and your self esteem.

After a while you began getting bored, you had fought pretty much everyone you could on Berk and you felt caged, you didn’t like being confined to the small island anymore.

So you left. By boat. In the opposite direction Hiccup had left for the edge, and began exploring.

You knew that at some point you would need your own dragon if you wanted to continue exploring, travelling by boat was becoming very inconvenient.

An opportunity came up a couple of months into your exploration journey. A particular village had kept being pestered and ransacked by a rowdy monstrous nightmare.

So you agreed to help the village get rid of it by trying to train it. How hard could it be right? Just throw some fish at it and put your hand out and bam! Tamed dragon!

Oh how wrong you were. The process was rough to say the least, the monstrous nightmare had refused the fish and smacked you out of its sight. So you tried to gradually invade it personal space, and it worked for a few days. Until you pushed your luck and tried to rush the process, earning you a deep long gash, starting at your mid thigh up to a four inches under your arm.

The wound was gushing blood, and you were losing your consciousness fast. You thought this was the end, it was honestly humiliating. You inhaled what you thought was your last breath and closed your eyes.

Eventually you woke up to a blinding light. Was this Valhalla? As your vision cleared you recognized the inside of the village’s huts and sighed. You were glad you were alive, as you sat up you hissed in pain. You shut your eyes tightly and clutched your bandaged side as you inhaled and exhaled deeply.

Suddenly you were nudged to lay back down. You opened your eyes, expecting to see one of the villagers but you were met with the guilty face of the monstrous nightmare.

It was a very inconvenient way to train a dragon but hey you managed. Now you had a very rowdy, loving and protective, royal blue monstrous nightmare by your side.

You named her Azule and as a repayment for your stay with the village healer you have the village your boat. Not like you really needed it anymore.

With that you resumed exploring and helping villages out with dragon problems. Thankfully these went much more successfully than the first.

While you weren’t fighting dragon hunters like some people, you still made some friends and acquaintances, and more importantly you had fun.

You felt alive again. Soaring the sky’s and camping out with your new companion brought you a new kind of happiness and fulfillment.

As fun as it was eventually it was time to return to Berk. You had spent a wonderful year where you had grown and gained new experiences and knowledge. You learned to overcome hard times, how to build relationships, how to work with others, and most importantly you learned how to be content with yourself.

You had left Berk as a hurt, reckless, immature girl but you returned as a healed and mature woman.

After being gone for so long, you knew your hut needed some much needed fixing. You didn’t want your home to remind you of your dark times, you wanted a fresh slate.

You got rid of practically everything and got new furniture.You made room for Azule, giving her, her own bed and little space in your hut. You repaired what needed to be fixed after a year of neglect and added some add ons as well. Outside you added a clothes line, a hammock, a sitting area, and a feeding station for Azule.

You decorated your home with tapestries, crystals and other knickknacks you got on your adventures. You transformed your space into the ultimate comfort.

You were finally content. Even a little happy. You had moved on, and felt like you were finally on the right path.

Hiccup and his friends eventually came back from the edge.

You had lived your separate lives and you continued to, your paths never crossing again.