#but i feel like they are pronounced similarly enough that it still counts

[catflowerqueen]

Mirabel from Encanto and Mirabelle from In Stars and Time/Start Again: A Prologue doing the spiderman pointing meme at each other because both of their stories involve attempting to save a house.

Also both of them have at least one interaction with a guy who dispenses visions of the future and happens to be living in said house in need of saving.

[coffeelouis]

written for @corrodedcoffinfest

Prompt: Wrath | Word Count: 666 | Rating: M | POV: Jeff | Relationships: Steve/Eddie | CW: None | Tags: Corroded Coffin

set somewhat ambigulously in the tuesday's gone with the wind universe, mostly in stealing goodie's name and personality bc like,, that's goodie! thanks @thisapplepielife for him love you 🫶

i also made up the song name, that's not from tuesday's gone, by that point i hadn't gotten far enough to figure out i was writing steve as their tour manager and basically set it in the universe. also i had eddie as the lead singer in this, so maybe this is an au of tuesday's gone

🎸😈

“Gareth, I really think this is a bad idea, man,” Jeff warned, hovering in the doorway. Gareth and Goodie were both crouched next to the sound equipment, Goodie observing as Gareth tinkered.

“It’s precisely what they deserve.”

“Exactly, we’ve warned them multiple times,” Goodie added, ever the pot-stirrer.

“We haven’t, in any way, indicated we’d go this far. We’ve just ribbed Eddie.”

“Nagged,” Gareth corrected.

“Relentlessly. And, would you quit it with the hand-wringing, man? You’re in or you’re out of this,” Goodie said decisively.

“And it’s not as if it’s anything new!” Gareth argued, **It’s just.. a different approach.”

“It’s completely different circumstances, though! And it digs at Steve, not Eddie.”

“Digging at Steve is how to you get to Eddie.”

At the same time, Goodie countered, “Steve will be fine—he’s fine about everything.”

“He’s used to us,” Gareth agreed, reaching up to test his work.

As the sound rang out in the empty theatre, Gareth let out a crow of victory, and Jeff felt his stomach sour.

“I really don’t feel good about this.”

“You don’t have to take credit then,” Gareth smirked, dusting his knees off and walking off in triumph to get ready for the show.

Goodie followed behind him, looking similarly smug—despite having contributed absolutely nothing.

🎸😈

Eddie had fought to play “The Harvest” towards the end of the setlist. It was a hard-fought battle when they’d begun this leg of the tour, Gareth argued it should be the opener. But, it was third to last, so Eddie was dripping in sweat and probably a little delirious by the time Jeff went in with the opening chords. He could see the man swaying around his microphone, his long hair falling into his eyes.

He figured that’s why it took him until the end of the second chorus to look up in confusion. Jeff quickly began watching his chords—as if they weren’t muscle memory by this point.

Gareth’s smirk gave the game away—that the backing track was not the pre-recorded moans that accompanied the song on it’s studio version; instead, Steve’s high-pitched moans that had leaked through the hotel walls nights earlier filled the venue.

Fury erupted across Eddie’s face. He stomped across the stage towards Gareth—guitar still in hand, and somehow still playing.

Jeff glanced behind him for backup from the crew, the stagehands, anyone. Instead, he saw Steve, a bright laugh inaudible, but clearly dancing across his face. His eyes were glittering with the creative wrath of the band.

Jeff, who’d seen him sternly lecture stagehands for incorrectly setting up equipment or tell off venue staff for stupid production mistakes, was surprised, but relieved at the reaction. It was an interruption to their planned schedule, and more than that an airing of an intimate moment; but, he supposed when it came to Eddie—or really, any of the band—he really did hold a soft spot.

Eddie was now standing at Gareth’s side, uselessly telling him off. Gareth certainly couldn’t hear him over his drum set, let alone the music the rest of them (Eddie included) were still playing. But Eddie continued on at it, over singing the next verse.

Jeff kicked his leg out at him, hoping to get this show back on the road—literally. They were approaching the next chorus and the moans coming in again; without Eddie to sing over them, they would be even more pronounced.

Eddie finally noticed, and abandoned Gareth to kick back at him, fighting before realizing that he was in fact signaling him to look off-stage at Steve, now waving and smiling at him. Eddie lost all fight, smiling back.

Jeff felt like he was invading on a moment to be watching as Steve rolled his eyes and jerked his head to the mic, telling Eddie to keep going. Eddie laughed too, and ducked bashfully back towards the front of the stage, chastened. He blew a kiss, Steve caught it.

Yeah, his bandmates were silly and vengeful, but they put on a damn good show.

[still-a-morosexual-help]

Do you think baby satan ever had random moments of trying to baby/be a big brother towards Mammon and the rest of the younger brothers because of his memories from when he was in Lucifer.

Boy just straight up trying to wipe Beel’s face bc he’s a messy eater and his big brother instincts activated and pulling blankets over Belphie whenever he caught him napping in random places.

But also the hilarity of, because Lucifer only lets Mammon be the one to calm him down from his fits of rage, Baby Satan similarly only calms from his tantrums if Mammon is holding him.

Cue the brothers snarking Lucifer about his favoritism 😌😘

(Also Baby Satan glowering at Lucifer and deciding Mammon is his and so Luci should find someone else to be his favorite because TanTan does not share. Angry child who slaps away the hands of people who try to hold their mom. Luci got slapped daily lol.)

YESS YES YES YES! Listen in the game Satan straight up told Asmo that he was older because he was created before Asmo and that's just full of BS. The way the brothers (specially Mammon -> link) sometimes react to Satan, you just know he popped out as a kid and not as a fully grown adult who's older than Asmo & the rest. And the last I checked you count your age from the moment you physically enter this world? Not while you're still in your parent, no matter how aware you may or may not be.....

And so all I can imagine is this little toddler Satan stomping his little leg and insisting he's Asmo & the twins' older brother and they just go along with it because a.) they know the beginning of a temper tantrum when they see one b.) it was really adorable. And now it's too late to set things straight because if anyone tries to correct him, he doesn't believe them at all

And yeah tiny toddler Satan definitely tried to baby his grown ass adult brothers. Just full lectures about Asmo staying out too late or Beel eating too fast or Belphie sleeping too much except half the words aren't pronounced right and his brothers' cheeks are red from the effort of trying to hold in their laughter

Even toddler Satan would have had a competitive streak against Lucifer and Mammon definitely got caught in the crossfire

I also HC that current Satan is lowkey jealous of Mammon: specifically about his relationship with Lucifer (this is something the others actually briefly tease him about in S1 and he gets flustered about it).

Because no matter what he says, a big part of Satan's issues with Lucifer lie on getting acknowledged & accepted by Lucifer and being useful (possibly having to do with his place in the family and how he wasn't handpicked like the rest and instead they didn't have much of a choice about whether or not he joined so now he feels like he needs to prove himself to earn that position?) and this is all shown during various parts of the game but most notably in S3 when Satan met "Angel Lucifer" and in the Snowed in event. Satan also has problems with acknowledging (probably even to himself) that Lucifer is technically his dad

Mammon, on the other hand, was probably the first person picked by Lucifer, is Lucifer's favourite, for how much Lucifer punishes Mammon - Mammon's also the one who gets spoilt the most by Lucifer, Mammon doesn't put in even a quarter of the effort Satan does but he's still the one Lucifer depends on and look Satan doesn't want to be Lucifer's errand boy but at the same time a small part of him would probably want to just even be considered, if Mammon's Freudian slip is anything to go by then at least subconsciously Mammon has fully accepted Lucifer as his parental figure and that also means that they had a close enough relationship for that to happen

Look I love Satan a lot but he definitely thinks he's better than Mammon, that's not even a question. He also definitely has a competitive streak. So imagine how frustrating it must be to feel like you're losing against someone you know you're better than in a one-sided competition that you don't even want to be part of

Just,

Satan adores both Lucifer & Mammon (even if he doesn't want to admit it)

The two of them also probably played a huge part in raising Satan (even if he doesn't want to admit it)

But he's got so many issues with Lucifer that they're rubbing off on his relationship with Mammon as well and at least Lucifer knows Satan has issues with him, Mammon's completely in the dark

If you can't tell, I live for complicated relationships where ultimately, in spite of everything, everyone just loves each other so much

Okay so he's definitely the kind of kid to want all the attention on him and he's gonna shriek and make it everyone's problem if he's ignored but ummmmmmm also.......I don't think they had the internet back then.......not sure how hashtags could be trending😐

Speaking of Lucifer, Mammon & baby Satan here's a snippet of Chapter 2 of Friends in High Places (mammon × unnamed gn! mc reverse au! fic) that I haven't posted yet but feels relevant:

*it was entirely intentional

[kashimos-hajime]

the colour yellow | jjk

summary: “You once said love manifests the most twisted curses. I never thought of it that way before, but I’m starting to think you’re right.”

WARNINGS: ANGST!! hanahaki disease but not an au, HOSPITALS, DEATH, DESCRIPTIONS OF DISEASE, UNHEALTHY WEIGHT LOSS, pining, unrequited love, complicated feelings, its just sad. there are some light-hearted moments, and happier/softer aspects in the ending but it is generally sad in the ‘what could have been’ department pairing: gojo satoru x fem!reader, past geto suguru x fem!reader, mentions of satosugu word count: 29.9k lmao

a/n: i just needed to get the hanahaki out of my system. it did not work. i took liberties w the timeline because idc about actual jjk canon in this fic thanks. 

playlist for this fic

crossposted on ao3 x

Your Innate Technique always gave you a green thumb. Meaning, similarly enough to Yaga, you could plant cursed energy into objects.

Where it deviated, Satoru knows, is the type of object. Plants—trees, leaves, flowers. 

Ironic, he thinks numbly as he walks through the hospital. Shoko had told him that at this point it was palliative care until you died—nothing else would work. Cursed energy only fed your sickness, and even her technique could not heal the damage fast enough. Stupid. Idiotic. Cruel.

Cruel. That was the word.

He hadn’t seen it himself but from how his old friend had described it, it could only be cruel. 

His footsteps tap along the linoleum floors, urgent, but not too fast. A part of him dreads what he will see—his mind swirls with the possibilities, and of guilt.

Why didn’t he just come sooner? Why did he think it was okay to wait, to dismiss Itadori when he said you’d been checked in for your coughing fits?

“She’s strong. She’ll be fine,” he had said. Itadori’s small frown. “A little feather in her throat isn’t going to knock her down.”

Why? Why? Why? Why did he say that?

Because it had to be serious to put you in the hospital. For fuck’s sake, you were still that teenage girl who stood outside his dorm window in the middle of a thunderstorm to bring Fushiguro a birthday present before you left for a curse expedition a thousand years ago, and the woman who welcomed him into your home unprompted on December 24th, your cheeks dry, lips pressed in a brave smile.

You had held him tight enough he could not see the blood, scrubbed him in a bathtub, ran your fingers through his hair until the sweat and grime was gone. You took care of him because he knows the belief that no one should be left behind to suffer alone has been engrained in you since the day he’s met you.

He should’ve known. A girl abandoned for being cursed had turned into woman with a saviour complex who’d barely even think about telling him you were dying. 

Dying, of all things, from a disease no one knows how to cure. And you’re a sorcerer.

He could’ve laughed. The irony is enough to make him smile.

Your room’s in a tiny corner of the hospital, down the hall from a nurse’s station, and as he walks through, he can see the grey sunlight streaming through the window, glaring against his glasses. He lifts them to rub the heel of his hand into his eye.

He doesn’t want you to worry when you see him, and mostly, he needs to stall. His heart is in knots in his chest, and he spots a chair beside the door with your name in the plastic slate, so he sits down. His knees feel gummy and he leans forward, the visitor’s pass clipped to the front of his shirt hanging. 

Satoru tugs the glasses off his face, fits his palm over his brow and squeezes his eyes shut. It’s chilling in this dead end, and he swallows tightly. Everything tastes so dry as he looks up and shoves his hand underneath the sanitizer dispenser, rubbing it all over his hands just so he has something to do.

After a few minutes, he gets up and sets a hand on the knob. 

It can’t be as bad as he’s imagining. At most, you’re a bit sick, but you’ll still be spritely, warm in the lips and with arms outstretched and, “Satoru, finally!”

He opens the door. 

You’re sitting hunched over in bed. Silhouette outlined by the white-grey sunlight from outside your hospital room, you’re trembling as you hold onto a receptacle. An IV is hooked to your arm, a hospital gown is barely hiding anything, and it feels immoral to even look so Satoru doesn’t. Instead, he pauses by the doorframe and closes his eyes for a moment as your gaze flashes to him. 

He feels it, to be honest. The heat of your stare until it is wrenched away by a violent cough you instinctually muffle by your palm, blood splattering over your hand, soft, velveteen purple petals falling from your lips and into the receptacle in your lap. 

You’re supposed to have a green thumb.

Vines bend to your will if you command it, you can summon forth thorns to impale your opponents, send thick creeping ivy to barricade a doorway. It doesn’t matter if there is no greenery in your immediate area. At the sweep of your hand, the ground could rumble with the sound of trees twisting their gnarled roots into feet to march at your command.

Just as long as they’re within range and you’ve touched them in the past few hours, they’re yours.

So, why can’t you stop this?

Plants are supposed to listen to you, right? As he stares at your shaking body on the bed, curved over the plastic tub, thick globs of bloodied spit drip from your lips and soaked purple blossom petals entwine with your life essence. His heart plummets to his chest. You retch, spit, choke, and every sound stabs him in the chest as he takes a weak step forward, hand stretched out limply.

Your name flutters, barely leaves his lips before you’re looking at him again, a bit of a mortifying image but nonetheless.

Even so, you smile, despite the blood painting your face, the exhaustion morphing your body. You look like you haven’t slept in weeks, and your hands shake around the receptacle. You look battered, bruised along the arms where the needles keeping you filled with antibiotics, medicine you need, had punctured you.

And still, you’re beaming at him. He thinks he’s going to be sick.

“Hi, Satoru.”

His hand falls. Eyes wide, he cannot take another step. You wipe at your lips, tossing the tissue into the trash before pushing the plastic receptacle onto the table and swinging your legs off the bed.

“Don’t—“ he croaks but you don’t listen, sliding your feet into slippers and grabbing your IV stand to take a step towards him. Your knees nearly give in but you stick out a hand before he can rush to catch you. Then, you’re pushing yourself up and walking over to him. It’s more of a shuffle, but Gojo finds he can’t care as you land on his chest, hands pressing into his back.

You’re a bit cold in his arms, and he wraps himself around you, trying to rub the heat back into your skin as you shudder, but your heart is still racing as it always does around him, and you…

You’re the type of person who can shift how the air feels and looks to his Six Eyes with your smile or your tears or your frown, and in that moment, the air bleeds yellow with your joy. It’s so bright in his soul that it makes his heart skip as you shift on your feet against him, hands sliding down so your arms can circle his waist and haul him closer. 

“Gojo Satoru turning off his infinity for little ole me,” you murmur, voice raspy, as he closes his eyes, cradling your head. Without another word, he sinks into you. “Talk about the world ending.”

Why didn’t you just call him? Why did you let him stay away for so long? He doesn’t want to ask why it’s happening, or how. He already knows you’ll just lie. But he wants to know if you think so lowly of him that you thought you didn’t matter to him.

After Suguru…

How could you think that? He’s screaming inside his mind as he touches your back, feels the faint protruding ridges along your skin when he pushes down. It makes your spine a bit more pronounced along the knobs, your shoulder blades a bit bumpy, but otherwise, it’s almost normal. One wouldn’t even be able to tell without touching you and actively searching for it. How could you think I don’t care?

This isn’t the work of a cursed spirit, that much he knows. It seems much more seductive, sneaking yet unhurried in its nature. This is agony in effigy. There’s something rotten inside you, but he can’t tell what it is. The energy is everywhere.

You pull back to look up at him with a soft smile, then tap his nose and tell him to join you before turning around and climbing back into bed with energy that betrays your earlier fits. You grab your robe that you’ve left on your bed before getting up again and walking around, shrugging the fabric back onto your shoulders.

He sits down in a visitor’s chair that is still cold.

“It comes and goes,” you explain first with your new, croaky voice, stretching your arms above your head and rubbing your neck. It doesn’t look painful, but you clear your throat a lot to see if it helps. So far, nothing. “So, it’s just like a really bad coughing fit, to be honest.”

“How long has it been going on?” Your hip cracks and you let out a relieved sigh. Satoru arches an eyebrow as you animatedly stretch your face. “What are you doing, silly?”

“It got worse a few weeks ago, enough that Nanami insisted I check myself in around two weeks ago?” you say, after counting on your fingers. Satoru’s heart plummets. “But it’s levelled out since I’ve been moved here and off-campus. And I’m stretching. When I get back out there, I have to remember how to emote.” You flash him a bedazzling grin and a bit of the weight lifts off his shoulders as you swallow down another cough. This time, it’s successful and you only let out a short, raspy breath before shaking it out.

You aren’t even doing that bad. 

The blood, the flowers, that must’ve been just a bad bout, but otherwise, you seem quite normal.

That’s what he tells himself, and he believes it.

With relief, he stretches out his legs, leaning his head back on his hands. Your room’s pretty nice—much nicer than an average hospital room. Plants on the windowsills, some get-well-soon cards and a desk in the corner filled books that you look like you haven’t even begun to read, some paintings hanging off the walls. 

You wave a hand to grab his attention again.

“Don’t look,” you chastise, tying the robe around your waist. “Some of these are works in progress.”

“So Itadori and Shoko were just exaggerating,” he assumes. You look up at him, quirking an eyebrow. “If you’re attempting to paint, I know all that’s happened is that you’ve lost your mind.”

“Shut up.”

“Well, they made it out as if you were dying. If it’s just a lung issue, they could probably just fix it and we can get back to exorcising curses and making fun of Fushiguro’s teen angst,” he says, crossing his legs at the ankles. You step over them to go to the window and examine your plants, and he eyes you in his peripheral, watching you inspect one of the leaves before looking next at some blooming flowers. You don’t answer, and the grey light makes you look melancholy until you shrug.

“The doctors say I need to rest, save my strength and all that,” you finally say vaguely. “And don’t make fun of Fushiguro.”

“I’d never do that.”

You tilt your head and arch an eyebrow skeptically before flicking his forehead with a sharp donk. “I’m not above slapping the shit out of you.” He opens his mouth to argue and you hold up a finger, shutting him up. “And you can’t hit back as revenge. Ill hospital patient rights.”

“You can’t take the moral stand. Vengeance has no gender bias,” he exclaims, sitting up but you merely smirk, leaning over and shoving your face into his space before turning your head to present your cheek. His eyes widen as you poke your own face tauntingly.

“Do it, then.”

Gawking for a moment, Satoru stares but you only wink and he pushes you away lightly. You stumble a bit and he jumps to his feet to catch you but you manage to right yourself up, shooting him a foul glare. He glares back in response.

“Well, obviously, I wasn’t going to actually slap you,” he says, indignant.

“So you pushed me instead? Gojo, in your words, you are the strongest. You never know how to control the strength you push out.”

“Yes, I do!”

“One time, you patted Megumi on the back and you sent him into the pavement.”

“He was nine.”

“It still happened!” you cry, although an impish smile is already curling at your lips and it isn’t long before it spreads to Satoru, warm bright yellow and enough that it absolves any of the remaining pain in his body as you straighten up, holding onto your IV stand for support. The metal rattles a bit as the wheels roll. Your feet brush the ground. You lift your head up wretchedly.

It’s almost like that weakness sobers you.

The expression that overtakes you frightens Satoru to fucking death. 

His face feels like it numbs, staring at the darkness that seeps the light away. You stare at the metal pole your fingers are wrapped so tightly around, and then you look at the bag hanging there, clear and round and soft to your touch as you straighten up.

“Satoru,” you say softly.

“Yeah?” His voice is so quiet he’s not sure he even speaks. He can’t remember the last time you had looked so dispassionate at anything in his life. Even death had left its mark—black frowns, long streaks underneath your eyes.

Your apathy is dark purple, an endless void colour. 

“When I die, make sure Shoko’s the one who cuts me open to find out what’s wrong with me.”

Something prickles at his fingertips. He touches your shoulder and half-thinks his fingers will go right through you.

“You’re not going to die,” he insists firmly. “It’s just a bad cough.” You look up at him and blink. Then you touch your lips and shudder down another cough.

“We all die.”

“It’s not your time, yet.” His fingers dig into your shoulder. You don’t even wince even though you’re clenching his jaw but he can’t find it in himself to loosen his hold. It feels like the Jaws of Death. A crocodile’s bite.

So much for not being able to control his own power.

“It’s just a bad cough.” He ignores everything Shoko had said. Sometimes she’s wrong—sometimes, it’s not even that bad. He’d just seen it, hadn’t he? You were stretching, jumping onto your bed, acting like nothing was wrong.

Palliative care? As if you needed it—

You blink, then, and look at him. Stare at him as if you’d never said those words, and he had never reached out. 

You jerk your shoulder out of his grip. It stings more than it should.

“Right. But I’m just saying. You know how you always say I’ve got a few screws loose. It just makes sense someone will wanna crack me open to see what was going on up there and I want it to be her.” 

You smile, and the yellow cancels out the purple. 

Colour theory. 

But Satoru doesn’t smile back.

“What about the flowers?” he asks after a while. You’ve climbed back onto bed and he’s sat back down. You’re blowing into a spirometer, and every time, without fail, the ball shoots up to the top, clattering against the plastic. He watches, hoping that the next time, it’ll do the same thing again.

You stop and look at him. “What about them?”

“Is it some optical illusion? Why are they in your throat?”

“That’s a harder nut to crack,” you muse. “I don’t really know. It’s like when you’ve got food in your esophagus and you’re trying to cough it up so it doesn’t feel stuck anymore except it keeps building up. That only started a few days ago, though, so maybe, someone drugged me or something.” He doesn’t laugh and you frown. “Not funny?”

He shakes his head. “It’s freaky.”

.

He sits on the bench on campus. 

He’s cancelled classes because he didn’t come up with a standard lesson plan and his students are glad to have a Monday afternoon off, even if they’d never say it to his face. In truth, he’d spent the whole weekend at the hospital until he reeked of antiseptic and pollen. 

You coughed up five petals, and without fail, a nurse would come in hourly intervals to collect them. Shoko came once, to check up on you and to collect the samples. If she was surprised Satoru was sitting in the corner on his phone, she didn’t voice it.

“She’s not even doing that bad,” he says to the air, more accusatory than anything. The woman standing by him doesn’t answer and sits down beside him uninvited. Turning to look at her, his eyes narrow behind his blindfold. “You said she needed palliative care until she died. The doctor said she could leave tonight.”

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive concepts,” she informs, not looking at him. Shoko looks a bit out of place in the warm colours of the garden. Half a corpse herself. Waif-like. “The doctor’s letting her relax in the comfort of her own home before she dies. That’s all.”

“She’s not going to die.”

She snorts. “Denial isn’t a good colour on you.” The words could’ve been delivered colder. Satoru is grateful that they weren’t. 

Shoko rests her hands on her knees, tilts her head up, and sighs. Her long hair is like warm chocolate in the sunlight, spilling down her arched back from the knot she tied. “If you have any idea on how to fix this, I’m listening with both ears.”

“I don’t even know what it is,” he says. “Coughing and flowers? I’ve never heard of a sickness like that before.”

“Nanami pointed out that it could be a curse someone placed on her. I don’t know why, but it’d be an explanation.” Satoru spreads his legs, plants an elbow on his knee and leans forward to look at the ants travelling along the cobblestone before his shoe. “It manifested on some negative emotion lingering inside her and it’s growing every day, but she won’t budge.” Shoko sighs. Her purple eye bags look worse in the sunlight, but he would never tell her that. “Maybe you’d have a better chance digging into her. With Geto gone, there’s no one else to ask, is there?”

“What about you? What happened to girls and their little secrets?” he jokes, trying to ignore the ache that begins to bloom in his chest. Shoko eyes him wryly.

“I have suspicions, but there are some things girls don’t ask other girls,” she retorts. “It’s never been my business anyway. My job is to treat her, and I’ve given her options. It’s up to her to take them. Grief is a birthing ground for curses, and if she’s letting them feed on her freely, you know what fate is waiting for her.”

With that, she gets up and leaves as quickly as she arrived. Satoru swallows the smell of flowers and feels sick.

.

Monday night, Satoru pulls up his laptop and looks through, searching up words he can string together in a coherent sense to get the answers he wants. As rare as it probably is, some research wouldn’t hurt, would it? Some curses had a trademark affliction—maybe this one does, too.

So he searches up flower coughing to see if there has ever been a record of strange deaths that have made the news. If not, he’ll go to the jujutsu databases, but for now, maybe some publicity could put some answers to this question.

He is surprised when one of the first results is flower coughing disease. 

When he hits enter, the white screen blasts into blue irises with numerous results all repeating the same two words.

HANAHAKI DISEASE

And Satoru reads, and reads, and reads. He reads two weeks to three months, he reads unrequited love, and removal, and disappearance of romantic feelings and capacity for romantic love.

He reads fictional disease and wonders how much of it really is fictional. 

His phone pings with a text, and he grabs at it, tilts it just enough to get a glimpse of the screen. It’s from you, and he hasn’t read a text from you in so long he almost doesn’t recognize who it’s from except he does because… who else could it be?

[Greenbean] 11:02 PM

hey!!! guess whos finally fucking free oh my god

ugh out of the hospital and forgot how actual air smelled like lol bitch im so hungry i could eat a zoo

Letting his phone clatter, he sighs and rubs his face roughy, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment before snapping his laptop shut and getting up. His phone buzzes again and he reaches for it blindly, the screen lighting up as he goes to bed.

[Greenbean] 11:03 PM

we should get smth to eat!! i wanna go to that new ramen place in ikebukoro

[Satoru] 11:03 PM

fine but you good???? who picked you up from the hospital? still insulted you didnt let me tbh

also what did the doctor say???

[Greenbean] 11:04 PM

bc ur a menace who doesnt know how to drive 

he said itd get worse before itd get better so still gotta go for checkups but yeah dont worry and nanami came bc he didnt trust me not to try and walk home lol but he did buy me dinner

wasnt enough though!!!

…

[Greenbean] 11:06 PM

ok but fr does he think im insane

clearly id flash some skin and hitch a ride duh

…

[Greenbean] 11:10 PM

youre just gonna leave me on read? yikes

[Satoru] 11:12 PM

i was getting ready to sleep silly

and yeah ill come pick you up on saturday for lunch?

[Greenbean] 11:15 PM

sorry making instant noodles rn but yeah that sounds fine

wait youre sleeping so early lmfao

[Satoru] 11:16 PM

im old :/

  [Greenbean] 11:18 PM

u sure are

(image sent)

look!!! my babies are still alive!!! idk how but miracles do exist im tellin ya

[Satoru] 11:24 PM

inumaki, maki, and fushiguro broke into ur home to water them but dont tell them i told u

[Greenbean] 11:24 PM

wtf

[Satoru] 11:25 PM

yeah idk when but i think u teaching inumaki how to pick locks has opened up too many possibilities but also its really funny thanks

now go to sleep u need to rest

[Greenbean] 11:28 PM

whos gonna make me lol youre not my dad

[Satoru] 11:29 PM

lol 

remember how i can teleport 

lol so cool

[Greenbean] 11:30 PM

dude

wtf

fine 

goodnight hoe </3

[Satoru] 11:31 PM

goodnight knock off poison ivy <3

.

“You’ve looked better,” Shoko says. Satoru raises his head wearily as he pushes off the wall. Shoko’s holding a cup of coffee, her lab coat fresh on her shoulders and eye bags looking more printed on rather than natural swelling. Satoru can’t help but feel the same exhaustion. “Definitely looked worse. What do you want? It’s early.”

“Have you ever heard of Hanahaki disease?” he asks. She shakes her head, and he pulls up the page on his phone and hands it to her. She takes it from him and her eyes scan the screen as he continues, “It’s this fictional disease, something that stems from unrequited love, and I think it could be related to whatever she’s experiencing.”

“I thought you were set on willing her to survive,” she replies dryly, shooting him a quick look and adjusting the coffee in her hand. “But this is definitely one of your stranger theories.”

Satoru ignores that last part. “It’d make sense. With her Cursed Technique, maybe it manifested in a way that links to it.”

She pushes into the office, setting the coffee on her desk and sitting down. Satoru sits down on the exam table closest and leans forward eagerly as she continues to read the page, scrolling down occasionally before scrolling back up and sighing. “This is a stretch. The timeline doesn’t match up to what this is saying.”

“This is a curse. It doesn’t have to follow fiction.” His body feels sore, janky even, everywhere. He barely got a wink of sleep last night and he knows he’s paying for it, now. “Hell knows life rarely does, anyway. But the symptoms matches too well, doesn’t it? The flowers—you’ve done scans, haven’t you?”

She deliberates his words carefully as she looks to the file cabinet and pulls out a binder. Satoru catches a flash of your name on the spine before she moves her coffee and his phone out of the way to flip it open.

“The scans we’ve taken have only just begun to show small growths in her trachea,” she allows, “and we don’t fully understand how cursed energy affects our bodies, so I suppose it could be something like Hanahaki, if the negative energy stemming from December 24th was what brought this on or if these symptoms started when we were still students, but she’s been experiencing shortness of breath a few months before Christmas.” Satoru’s lungs squeeze the last of the air out of them at that, and a cold sweat drops down his spine as she hands his phone back to him. “It only started getting worse Suguru’s death, which meant there had to have been a trigger before that.”

In the back of his head, he hears your voice, light and yellow, saying a few weeks. It got worse a few weeks ago. 

“Worse?”

“The first petal fell some time after Christmas. It’s been a slow, but steady progression since then. Sometimes, it’s two or three. When it’s not a good day, there can be as many as seven to ten.” Shoko switches on the lamp on the corner of her desk and adjusting the direction of the white light before flipping the page. “But if we can find the original trigger and alleviate that pressure it’s putting on her, we could buy her more time.”

“So it’s been nearly six months since the first petal,” he says. Shoko nods. Satoru is grateful for the blindfold—she can’t see how blank everything looks on his face. “It said sometimes, the disease can last for eighteen months.”

“As you said, this isn’t a fairytale.” She half-spins on her chair to face him and leans back into it, crossing one leg over the other and jiggling her knee. “I saw that one of the solutions is excise the growths at the cost of the attachment. That was one of the options I gave her when the growths first appeared. She said she wanted more time before she could decide.”

He frowned. “Why?”

“Because she’s smart, and likes to push her damned limits. And if this is truly the basis of the curse”—she gestures to Satoru’s phone. Her expression flickers—“those flowers are feeding off cursed energy. Cutting them out would remove those negative emotions, but at a cost of something else. Maybe whatever feelings she has regarding the trigger.”

Satoru looks down at his phone. It feels heavier than a thousand cinderblocks in his clammy hands. His fingers are numb as his screen dims and finally locks itself. Pressing the button, it illuminates again to reveal a picture of a cactus you gave him for his birthday years ago, blooming with delicate purple petals. 

His heart rends. That cactus is long dead now.

“But, Suguru’s dead.” 

“That’s why I asked you to ask her,” Shoko mutters. 

Turning to her binder again, she picks up a pen and clicks it, lowering it to the paper before pausing, and Satoru looks up as she stares at whatever words are printed into the page distantly. A strange affliction is on her face, almost tormented, and Satoru is not-so-kindly reminded that before Suguru and Satoru, Shoko was your best friend first. 

“Tell her how idiotic she’s being,” she enforces quietly. “The longer it lives, the more permanent damage is inflicted. With the unpredictable nature of curses, that won’t take long and by then, it’ll be too late to consider removing it.”

.

Saturday comes too fast, yet not fast enough. By the end of the week, Satoru is all but finished with teaching, and is waiting outside your apartment, leaning against the car as he scrolls through his phone. He’s done a bit more research on this Hanahaki disease, but even the word makes him shiver with the implications. 

“Satoru!” Turning, he catches you loping easily towards him. You’re dressed in billowy, wide-legged dark mint green pants and a pretty white top that makes you look more nymph than human, with a canvas tote bag hanging off your shoulder. You flash him a smile as you fiddle with the fabric tie at the waistband of your pants nervously. “Hi.”

“Hey. Hope you don’t mind I brought Ijichi along for the ride since someone claims I can’t drive.”

“You don’t have your license, sir,” Ijichi says wearily as you bend over to wave through the window. "It would be illegal for you to be on the road in any capacity—oh, hello, ma’am. It’s nice to see you doing so well.”

“Thanks, Ijichi. I think I’m doing better after getting out of there,” you say as Satoru opens the car door for you and he smirks, eyes crinkling behind his sunglasses. You straighten up, looking at him before poking his chest and it’s almost just like the good ole days as you break out into a grin that crinkles your entire face. “What’s with you being a gentleman? It better not be because I was in the hospital.”

“Of course not,” he admonishes. “I wouldn’t dare dream of being polite to you of all people.” Still, he sidesteps and sweeps his arm, gesturing for you to climb in first which you do, exhaling a bit shakily as you settle in and slide over. By the time he’s settled in beside you, you have a fist over your lips and you’re clearing your throat testily.

A worm of unease wriggles into his stomach as he clips in his seatbelt, pulling the lapels of his unbuttoned green shirt free from the strap. Legs spreading, he lets his hands fold in his lap as Ijichi begins to drive them to their destination. You’ve lowered your hand by now, looking out the window, and it’s not bright enough that Satoru can read your expression on the glass.

It’s clear you don’t want to talk about it, but still, that nagging feeling bites at him as he rolls the divider up between the backseat and the front—a mock of privacy.

“The place we’re going to gives me the same vibe as that family-owned restaurant we went to when we were students. The one in Kagurazaka,” you say after a while, turning back to look at him. You’re wearing a bracelet that jangles when you move your hand to adjust the seatbelt across your chest. “I think you’ll like it.”

“Have you been?”

“One time, before I checked in,” you tell him, smiling still. “It was really good. The perfect last meal.” Satoru does well enough to hide his frown at your choice of words as you meet his eyes. “You know, you can ask. I’m not fragile.”

“I don’t have anything to ask,” he lies. “I’m just glad you’re out of the hospital.”

“Me, too. I’ve missed so much and it drove me insane. Yaga-sensei insists that I don’t work until I’m sure I’m feeling better,” you add. “But to be honest, there’s nothing much that can be done to make me feel better.”

“I see. So you’re still coughing up flowers?”

“Petals,” you correct, “and a bit. Don’t worry. It’ll get better soon.” You wave a hand and turn to look out the window and Satoru’s appetite all but vanishes. He doesn’t know why you’re so intent on lying to him about the severity of your condition, but as your knee jiggles relentlessly the whole car ride with unbridled excitement, he wonders if you’re even aware of how sick you could be. 

His Six Eyes scan your body for signs of a curse. Normally, those plagued have their little burdens hanging off their shoulders, prying their head open, biting into an arm or leg, but he finds yours lives inside your chest, just barely hidden by the yellow light brimming from your body as you reach forward to lower the divider and talk to Ijichi.

They reach Ikebukuro before they’re dropped off after Satoru insists on walking the rest of the way.

“Give us some privacy, Ijichi! We both know you’ll just eavesdrop for the juicy details,” he exclaims loudly, leading to the man to blush furiously, stuttering that he’d do no such thing, and earning Satoru a smack on the back of his head, knocking his sunglasses askew.

“Thanks for the ride, Ijichi,” you say warmly as if you hadn’t slapped a concussion into Satoru. The Assistant Director dips his head. “See you later!” With that, he drives off and the two sorcerers are left in the busy street. Satoru looks around curiously, but you tug him along up the main road of the district and immediately turn right into one of the smaller streets. A few cyclists race past, as well as cars, but the traffic seems relatively slow despite it being the weekend. There are people walking along the white lines separating the lanes, chatting merrily as you lead him to the restaurant.

“I forgot how actual sunlight felt,” you sigh, stretching your arms high above your head as if to touch the wind breezing through. Inhaling deeply, you close your eyes. Satoru waits for you to begin to cough, and you hold it in, throat tensing a bit. 

He looks away, and pretends he doesn’t hear your sharp exhale, the soft cough you try to muffle with your hand. Instead, he looks at their surroundings, traces the green roads, watches a man park his bicycle and take the plastic bags out of the basket before rushing into a store. The air smells faintly of smoke, and Satoru waves in front of his face to see if it’ll help dispel the scent, but it’s so engrained with the hint of meat, honey, sweets, and flowers, that he can’t.

“I saw Suguru here once,” you tell him suddenly. He blinks, head snapping to you, and you’re already regarding him with a faint smile, eyes a bit dimmer. The warm yellow energy has faded to a burnt orange as you look ahead. “A year or two after he left. It’s why I moved closer a few years ago. I guess I had this weird hope that I’d see him again, but I never really did.” A faint grin graces your lips again, as if you’re not even aware you’re smiling. Fondness overtakes you. “I think about him a lot these days.”

“Me, too.”

“Of course,” you chuckle a bit, rubbing at the back of your neck. “I’m being insensitive.” 

“No, you’re not. He meant a lot to you, too. I don’t own him, or his memory.”

“I know, but he was still your best friend.” Unbidden, a voice in Satoru’s voice finishes it for you. My one and only. 

“Did you guys talk about anything?”

“Not really anything important,” you say, shrugging, but by the way your eyes shift in the light, glimmer differently, he knows you’re lying. He knows it’s none of his business, but a part of him hungers for new parts of Suguru and it’s powerful enough to take control of his tongue.

“Nothing’s not important. He was a wanted criminal.”

“I think we both know somehow that part never mattered to us.” You look at him, and run a thumb under the strap of your bag. “To any of us. But…” You tilt your head to him and your smile grows tender. “…since you asked, we talked about us. He told me about what he wanted, the kind of world he was determined to create. He paid for my dinner, kissed me goodnight like it was normal, and then he was gone. Never saw him again until last December.”

It shouldn’t sting as much as it does. 

He remembers that day ten years ago in Shinjuku. The coldness in which Suguru had looked at him. He can’t imagine that same poison directed at you. He couldn’t even imagine Suguru looking at him like that in the first place until he did.

“Are you the strongest because you’re Gojo Satoru or are you Gojo Satoru because you’re the strongest?”

“I used to have nightmares about it,” you continue distantly. “Because I could’ve left with him, but I didn’t. And I could’ve killed him, but I didn’t do that either.”

“If you want to kill me, kill me. There’s meaning in that, too.”

Satoru’s chest tightens. His heart feels rotten to the core. “I didn’t, either, until I did.” You smile a bit more, at the irony. “Would you? Have gone with him, that is.”

“I didn’t, so what’s the point in debating it?” you ask before shrugging thoughtlessly and answering anyway. “I think tackling curses at the source is important. I just didn’t like the way he was doing it. If I thought I could somehow change his mind, just a bit, on his methods, maybe, but by then, he was too far gone.” 

Your eyes, chips of glinting sunstone, mellow as a cyclist trills at them with a bell to get out of the way. You step out of the way, away from Satoru for a moment, before returning to him, and when the back of his hand brushes yours, he’s startled at how cold your skin is. 

Satoru is quiet as he absorbs all of this. He doesn’t really know what to say, and you don’t prod him for a reaction as they turn the corner again. 

“It’s just over there,” you say, pointing to a small restaurant, people milling by the door. There’s a sign hanging over the door, off-white with black kanji painted on and your arm falls. “There’s a line. Huh.”

“We can wait,” Satoru says when they stop at the edge of the crowd. “I don’t mind.”

“Okay. I’ll go put our names in then come back.” You disappear into the crowd for a moment before resurfacing and joining his side again, something in your hand. “It should be, like, fifteen minutes. I said the bar was okay.”

“That’s fine.” Shoving his sunglasses up into his hair, he cracks his knuckles and migrates to the wall. You follow, and he slouches against the concrete pillar. You adjust the tote bag against your body and lean against the other side just around the corner. Their elbows brush, and you tilt your head to look at him, smiling. Your face has caught the sun perfectly, and Satoru can’t help but smile back.

He wonders how to bring up this Hanahaki disease theory. You look so perfect, so happy in this moment where their eyes meet, that he can’t bring it up. Maybe it’s selfish, but it feels like it’s been so long since the two of them even managed to see each other for more than an hour. With how overworked jujutsu sorcerers are, it’s hard to recall the last time they both had downtime at the same time that wasn’t spent catching up on sleep.

You look away, shoulders shaking, as if that’s enough to hide your coughing, and he thinks, Later. There’ll be time for that later.

“Here’s the menu,” you tell him once you’ve calmed down, extending your hand. He takes the paper, unfolding it as you cross your arms and tilt your head back on the concrete. Reading down the list, he keeps an eye on you out of the corner of his vision, and your fingers play at your lips as you swallow. Reaching into your bag, you twist the cap of a water bottle and chug half of it down.

“Do you have any medicine? For your coughing?” he asks casually. You hit your chest with a firm fist, clearing your throat and looking at him in surprise. The water bottle returns to your bag.

“Oh, uh, no. It doesn’t work. Just gotta keep hydrated and avoid any possible triggers,” you inform. You turn up the street as you speak, crossing your legs at the ankles and sinking against the concrete. 

“And what are those triggers?”

“And you say Ijichi is the one digging for gossip,” you snort with short, choked huff. Satoru rolls his eyes, but keeps looking at the menu. “Don’t worry about it. I’m avoiding them.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“If I wanted your dry wit, I would’ve gone to the original.”

“I don’t copy off Shoko. I take bits of everyone’s personality and twist it to make it my own.”

You shake your head. “Whatever you say.”

Your name is called a few minutes later and the pair push off the concrete pillar, heading through the crowd and into the small restaurant. It’s not too dimly lit, a bunch of natural light from the street streaming in through the open windows, and the air is rich with the smells of the kitchen as they sit down at the bar.

It’s not long before they’ve ordered, and Satoru has gone through his first bowl and is well into pouring his second into what remains of his broth before he remembers to even check up on how you’re doing. You’d been right—he loves this place. The atmosphere isn’t overly loud, but the mumbling of nearby patrons is enough to make him feel like he isn’t quite alone. It’s sheltered away from the world, and although he’s used to girls staring, no one has gone up to him which is giving him time to his own thoughts and food. Everyone here seems to mind their business—everyone likes to stay in their own bubble. 

Here, he isn’t the strongest, or quite so special. It honestly feels kind of nice.

You’re sipping on your broth, tilting the spoon towards your mouth and your lips are pulled into the warmest smile he’s seen since they were kids. The light’s hitting you just perfect again, more cool than warm, but it’s got you on the cheekbone, illuminated your lips. Satoru wonders if you know how to manipulate light, or if that’s just your natural blessing as you tilt your head towards him, eyes squinting from your own joy.

For a moment, another image flashes in his head. Him along the end of their group of four—you and Shoko, Suguru and Satoru. It’s almost poetry how much of a glimpse he can see in your smile. You would always be laughing, and Suguru’s cheeks would always be red, and Shoko would charm the guy over the counter to hand over a bottle of shochu. Satoru would tease his stupid best friend, and pay for their meal because “I’m friends with a bunch of goddamn freeloaders.”

But that moment ends as quickly as it came, and it’s so fucking heartbreaking that Satoru never thought their last meal together would be their last meal together. He would’ve cherished it more—done anything to make them stay in that ramen shop in Kagurazaka.

“Do you like it here?” you ask. 

He blinks. You’re studying him behind that smile of yours. Watching. Always watching. “It reminds me of when we were kids,” he replies. When he realizes that didn’t answer the question, he adds, “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

You grin, delighted. “If I knew how stupid you’d look sucking up these noodles, I would’ve brought my camera like when we were students. I still have it, you know.”

“Next time, then.”

“Yeah, next time.”

Satoru pays. He insists despite your protests, and snatches the bill from you anyway, swiping his card as quickly as he can. 

After, they walk slowly around the district, looking at the other restaurants and stores for desserts or souvenirs to bring back, and it makes him so nostalgic, his heart wilts a bit in his chest. 

He is saying something about buying some soymilk for Megumi when you stop suddenly, deviating to the side of the road to cough. It grows so intense so quickly that your eyes widen as if you’re surprised, too, and you place a palm flat against your chest as he comes to your side. You wave him back, and he frowns, running a hand down your back as you finally manage to dislodge the petals in your throat and spit them into your palm.

Satoru sighs, staring at the cursed things. The energy emitted from the petals are raw, potent, and his nose wrinkles at the stench that comes from powerful curses as he softly asks, “Do you know what Hanahaki is?”

“Flower vomiting?” you whisper through your raw vocal cords. You shake your head, slamming your sternum with a tight fist and flinging the drenched petals to the ground with a wet slap. “Itadori… said something about it, once. Never really paid attention, I—”

Satoru squeezes the back of your neck gently. “Whatever this curse is, it could be something like that.“

“You don’t want to open that can of worms, Gojo, of what is causing this.” Straightening up, your eyes widen and your cheeks puff up as you choke down another bout. Wobbly, you spit out, “It’s under control. I swear.”

“Are you sure?” His fingers brush your chin to turn your face towards him so he can look at it more clearly, and the instant their eyes meet, you lurch over, slapping his hand away and succumbing to the wracking. Hands shooting out to grab your elbows, Satoru barely eases you to the ground as your legs give in.

You collapse to your knees, hard. A hand is slapped over your mouth but your whole body shakes with the seizing of your lungs. Eyes widening, your cheeks puff up as Satoru grabs your shoulders, falling to his knees beside you.

“Hey! Hey, breathe!” His fingers dig into your shoulders and your nostrils flare, trying to follow his instructions. Bloodshot eyes and blueing lips, your inhales are shaking and incomplete, gasps for air that do not take in any oxygen before you’re kneeling over, hand falling from your lips. Blood splattered over your palm, you let out a low noise of pain. Satoru’s hand glides down your spine, rubbing in soothing circles as red spit falls to the pavement in thick globs. 

People all around stop to stare, eyes masked with concern, but he can’t care less at that moment despite the burning scrutiny. He shoves a hand into his pocket, speed-dialling one of the top numbers of his list.

“Ijichi, I need you to take us to the hospital, now!” Letting his phone drop with a clatter, he scoops you close but you slam your bloody hand against his chest, pushing him away. You throw yourself away, hands twisted tight in the fabric of your white shirt and Satoru looks down at the red handprint on his tee before blinking. “What are you doing? We need to get—“

“I’m—I’m fine!” Your voice, broken, is drenched with ice as you continue to wheeze, grasping at your chest as if you could reach and tear out the growths with your own hand. “Gojo, I’m fine!”

“No, you’re not!” Grabbing his phone, he hears a loud car horn, and looks up to see Ijichi leaning out of the driver’s seat, waving his arm frantically. Without another thought, he scoops you up and runs out into the street, ignoring the tires screeching, the cars horns blaring at him and the angry shouts as he jumps into the car and slam the door shut. 

Ijichi sets off at a drive, no directions needed. Satoru is sure he’s breaking as many laws as he can as he pushes you back against the seat to buckle you in. Blood dribbles down your lips in bubbles as a thick, gurgling sound begins to grow in your throat and he wipes at your chin with his sleeve, clicking the buckle into place just as you pitch forward. He jerks back just in time as you retch, and, slowly, torturously, you gag out three petals, one after another. Your fingers claw at your own throat, panicking and desperate as you struggle to breathe.

The petals fall in wet pools between your feet, landing on the carpet, and he spares them not even a glance before forcing your head between your knees. You’re still hyperventilating and as Satoru sweeps a hand down your back and up to your neck, his fingers come into contact with something sticky. 

Sweat. It drenches through your shirt so suddenly that Satoru reels at the wet marks spreading through your shirt, making the fabric translucent. Your heart is racing, tripping over itself. When you finally stop coughing, you breathe in harsh pants as he keeps your head between your knees.

Your fingers lace at the back of your head and he grabs them firmly, reassuring that he’s still beside you. 

.

“She’s stable,” Shoko announces to the waiting Satoru and six students. The latter came when their teacher had told them of what happened, and Itadori still clings to Fushiguro’s arm by an iron hand, fingers clawlike into his friend’s bicep. Kugisaki chews on her thumbnail, a bit paler than usual and there are crescent indents along her forearm where she had dug her nails in. Maki’s hand rests on her shoulder. Inumaki’s on the phone with Panda, and he turns the screen around so he can see the Strongest Sorcerer who does not feel quite so strong.

Satoru’s assurances that you would be fine had done nothing but send them into a quiet that scared even him. 

“Is she okay? When can she get out?” the kids demand suddenly.

“We’re waiting for the updates on her scans from the doctors, but she’ll need to stay here under observation.”

Satoru runs a hand through his hair, smiling in a way that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Guess that means she gets a few more days off while the rest of us are working our asses off,” he teases. Maki shoots him a glare and his eyes close in a way he hopes arranges his expression in one of joy as he shrugs helplessly. “Well, that means I have another girl I have to spoil.”

“Aren’t you too busy with the four already blowing up your phone?” Kugisaki mutters sourly. Satoru pretends not to hear. His phone has been silent without your texts, and it’s cold and heavy in his pocket.

“Can we see her?” Fushiguro asks. Shoko nods, but holds up a hand and the kids skid to a stop.

“She’s resting. I’m unsure if you know, but certain topics of conversation or trains of thought can lead to more attacks, so stick to talking about your curriculum. Topics you think are safe.” The woman shifts on her feet, a wisp of brown hair swaying in front of her eye. “It’s unavoidable, but use your judgement.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The students walk off down to the dead-end hallway, and Satoru turns to Shoko who has her arms crossed over her chest. She steps up, scanning him like he’s got contraband, and he raises his eyebrows innocently.

“What?”

“It’s getting worse. I hope you managed to get answers,” she says. At once, Satoru’s facade drops, and a sober sensation overtakes his face.

“No, I didn’t. She’s heard of the disease, at least. We talked about Suguru, but it wasn’t like it was under lock and key.” The brunette shakes her head at his words, gesturing for him to sit down beside her. Doing so, he leans back into the uncomfortable chair as she crosses a leg over the other. “She said she thinks about him a lot.”

“She still loves him,” Shoko says bluntly. “She gets that far-off look when she talks about him. You two should trade secrets some time.” A shake of her head, and she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I healed what damage I could, but I can tell those growths inside are expanding. The attack only seems to have agitated and prompted them to take root.”

“How…” It’s hard to formulate the question. Luckily, Shoko knows him well enough.

“Without seeing the scans, I won’t know. Based on her last ones, I thought at least four months. Now?” Her lips press into a thin line. “She’ll be lucky if she gets two.” Shoko’s eyes flicker down Satoru’s front, and her lips press into a wry line. “And change you shirt. You look like a murder suspect.”

Glancing down, he looks at your dried bloody hand print, stark against white, and he gets up abruptly. Shoko doesn’t stop him.

He walks down to the dead-end hall. He can hear Itadori through your open door cracking jokes, Kugisaki relaying every detail of her shopping trips, and you’re wheezing your laughter despite Maki scolding you to save your strength. Satoru stops just outside your door, out of sight, and rests his head against the frame, content to just listen.

“Tuna mayo.”

“Is that right?” you ask Inumaki. “Lay it on me.” 

You sound exhausted, beaten to the bone, but still, when Fushiguro says something too quiet for him to make out, you still have the strength to tease him for worrying.

.

The night is warm, and he sets the last plant back into its place on your window sill before cracking the window a bit at your request. He’s busied himself making this place as homely as possible as quickly as possible, and in the process, had walked in on you staring at your own scans on the lightscreen mounted on your wall.

“Thanks, Satoru,” you say over your shoulder. He joins you by your side to stare at the scans. Granted, Satoru didn’t cheat his way through medschool like others have, so he doesn’t understand much, but he can tell what is and what isn’t supposed to be there. The floral-like growths situated right where the main bronchi meet the trachea, for one.

The roots spreading across your chest like cracks in concrete, for another.

“The doctors want to monitor this,” you explain, pointing at the roots, “to see whether or not it’ll grow around my lungs or continue outward, around the ribs and spine. If it’s the former, I’ll slowly suffocate and die. If it’s the latter, I’ll slowly suffocate, become paralyzed, and die.” You smile grimly. “Not quite a win-win.”

“Exactly the opposite.” He inspects the growths and through the blue-white-black imaging, he spots the tiny stems emerging from the main growth, sprouting into your lungs. He guesses, with time, those will grow into flowers of equal size before sprouting more shoots.

He wonders…

As if sensing his hesitance, you scratch your collarbone and look at the scans with a new glint.

“The doctors say if I avoid another attack like today, I’ll probably have two months, three if I’m blessed, but because of how big the growths have gotten already and its volatile nature, it’ll be impossible, so we’re looking at a month. Maybe a month-and-a-half?” You smile at him, throat bobbing. “Guess it’s good to have a number,” you add shakily, a short puff coming at the end of each breath as you struggle to fight the cough. “Being a sorcerer, too much uncertainty, I think.”

“You should tell Nanami that. Maybe this time, it’ll convince him to stay away,” he retorts, turning away from the scans. They’re burning his eyes and he doesn’t want to look at the real thing for much longer. You turn with him, walking back towards bed and climbing in. “Are you sure you don’t want the operation? Shoko could do it so fast you wouldn’t feel a thing.”

“No, not yet. There are some complications that’ll definitely occur and I don’t want that to happen.”

“But it would save your life,” he argues. “What risks are frightening enough that you’d even consider not having it?” Your gaze flickers as you take another wheezing breath. The strength seems sapped from your limbs—you’re a scarecrow hanging off its pole as you swallow tightly. Satoru leans against your window sill and crosses his arms over his chest so you can’t see the frustrated fists he wants to make. “If this is about Suguru…”

Resolutely: “It isn’t.”

“You’re going to die if you keep going down this road. I don’t understand why you’re hesitating.” In the back of his mind, klaxons begin to scream.

“Satoru, some things are just beyond logical reason.” He jerks his gaze away, pushing his glasses up his nose pointedly. You sigh. “I know it’s hard, but this is my choice. I just want you to be here so you know it’s okay.” 

Your hand stretches out. Blue eyes flash to your outstretched fingers and he takes it before he can stop himself. Your fingers curl over his palm, tugging him closer and he lets you, sneakers dragging over the tile until he’s sliding into the chair by your bed. It squeaks against the tile.

“Please don’t be angry with me.” That’s all. That’s all I ask.

A hard, heavy sigh, this time from his end. He tightens his hold on you as you sit there, smiling hopefully. His heart thunders in his chest. “I’m not angry.”

You perk up a bit, and his index finger unfurls to rub your wrist. It feels colder than normal. “Promise?”

He wishes he could lie half as well as you. Either way, he tries his hardest: “Promise.”

By the time it’s quarter past nine, you’re already getting ready to sleep. You have enough pillows to surround your entire body, and he fluffs them up, helps you arrange them until you’re sighing against the white sheets, burrowing in with a sedated smile on your face.

Satoru sits down again on his visitor’s chair and you watch him lazily through the dim orange light stemming from behind your bed.

“You don’t have to stay here and watch me, creep,” you mumble, turning your face away to stare at the ceiling. You cough dryly, but it subsides moments later. Your voice is nothing but a croak as you let out a tired groan, and Satoru smiles to himself, cheek to his fist. 

“I feel robbed of our afternoon together. Making up for it now.”

You look at him again incredulously. “We’re not even doing anything.”

“I don’t know when you were told that every second of us being together had to be us doing something,” he huffs. “I like being in here. Isn’t that enough?”

“It’s too much. You’re annoying me.” Even so, your voice turns fond as you roll onto your side, away from him to settle in to sleep and Satoru’s warm gaze lands on your shoulder gently rising and falling as you slowly drift off. 

He already knows you’re gone by the time he’s standing up and gathering his jacket. Walking around the bed, he glances at the bathroom to check the light’s off and catches a glimpse of his shirt. A coil wraps around his gut at the muddy red handprint pressed into the fabric and he turns away to look at you instead.

Your face is in perfect peace, half-buried into a pillow you’re hugging into your chest, and he only soaks in those features. His hand twitches, and his infinity wavers as he raises his hand as if to touch you. Your eyelids flutter and he freezes, fearing he might’ve woken you up, but you only mumble incoherently and turn into your pillow.

Satoru watches on silently just as a breeze sweeps into the room and he looks up where the window he had cracked open. The breeze takes hold of the plants, uplifts them until they sway like a tender dance. 

His chest begins to hurt. The smell of the antiseptic is starting to sting, so he moves his hand to the light switch instead. Flicking it off, he turns to leave.

.

Every time Satoru walks down to the end of the hallway, a different memory will play in his head until he’s playing a movie over and over every single day. Of the first time he met you, although that one is blurry. Your sixteenth birthday when the four of them had piled into your dorm room to drink themselves stupid.

One-and-a-half weeks go by before he realizes that he only replays the moments where you feature. Like his brain is preparing him, reminding him. For what, he doesn’t know. 

He can’t come every day—considering the low number of sorcerers has been taken down by one more, it means besides teaching, he still has to work for the Higher Ups as well as his own personal agenda—but when he does make it, he always makes sure that he soaks in every second. Even the horrible parts. Maybe, especially the horrible parts.

You have scans taken every other day to monitor your progress, so when he arrives at an empty room, he isn’t surprised. It’s when there’s movement in the bathroom that sends his nerves prickling until he catches a slab of golden hair and reading glasses flashing in the sunlight.

“Nanami,” he greets.

“Good afternoon.” His jacket’s off and his sleeves are rolled up. With a quick sweep of the room, Satoru notes that the windows are cracked open and the aforementioned jacket is folded over a chair sat in a square of sunlight.

“Do we need to be so formal?” he complains, bypassing the bathroom and searching for another chair. The one Nanami’s taken by the plants is still warm and Satoru isn’t keen on the idea of sweating so soon. During his search, he stops by the windowsill and his eyebrows rise curiously at the new plants and trash bin pressed up right underneath. “What’s happening here?”

“We were planting new seeds when she had to be taken for her scans. She insisted I finish potting the plants.” Noting the empty terracotta, Satoru bends over and prods at the moist dirt. “I have to go soon, though. I had hoped it wouldn’t take as long as it did and she would be back by now.”

“They started taking MRI scans when the branches continued to grow outward rather than inward,” Satoru informs. “It takes around forty-five minutes, on top of the CT scans they’re taking, too. That’s if she doesn’t start coughing in the middle of it.” 

“I’m guessing she does.” Nanami adjusts the glasses on his nose, wiping at his hands free of the last of whatever dirt might’ve been clinging to his hands.

“Yup.”

“I see.” Satoru looks at the plants again. The blond man across the room throws the towel into the dirty clothes basket.“Has she… spoken to you of what to do with her effects?”

Gaze hardening, he doesn’t move at the question. Of course, he’s thought about it, but those bouts of weakness have never been longer than a few minutes. There’s no use in wasting time on a reality that won’t come until it does.

Hopefully, it never does.

“I’m so sick of everyone talking like she’s signed a death sentence,” Satoru murmurs, turning around to look at the blond man at the door to the washroom. “She still has time. Not a lot. It’s not convenient, but it should be enough.”

“She’s already considered the benefits of taking the surgery, and yet she actively decides to postpone it. You know she’s stalling,” comes the steady reply.

“And what about you?” Satoru asks. His words are biting, icy, but Nanami seems unfazed as he begins to loop the tie around his neck. “Would you do it?” Blue eyes meet a stoic face, and the coldness seeps into Satoru’s body. Nanami sighs.

A part of Satoru wonders why he even bothered asking. He already knows the answer—

“No.” Eyebrows shoot up. His mouth drops open and a strangled noise escapes his throat. Nanami merely continues on, quiet as death. “Perhaps it’s because I’m willing to accept my death, but, to be honest, I don’t know how to let any part of Haibara go. I’ve accepted it, but he’s still in my heart and my head.” Lips parting, Satoru takes a step forward as Nanami slants his body away, continuing to fold the fabric into a tie. He looks statuesque, unmovable, and something tightens in Satoru’s throat at the stone-like mask taking over his face. “I’m unwilling to do anything to taint that memory.”

Wordlessly, the blond walks over to Satoru to take his jacket from the chair, rolling down his sleeves and slapping his watch back onto his wrist. Standing less than two feet apart, the two men finally meet eyes.

“Gojo,” Nanami murmurs. “I can’t say I understand your burden, but I am by your side. I do not always agree with your choices, but I still respect them. As your kouhai and as your colleague.” His lips pull in a facsimile of a wry smile and there’s an understanding Satoru doesn’t understand haunting his handsome face. “However, she is your friend before mine. I think your opinion matters much more than mine. Don’t abuse that power.”

Satoru’s eyes nearly reflect in the lenses of Nanami’s glasses. He wishes his friend would take the damn pair off. 

In truth, the reason he’s so irritated is because he knows. If he insists enough, begs enough, there will always be a chance that he can convince you. That you will give in, not because you are selfless, but maybe because you’re too selfish to let him stay mad at you.

An unstoppable force meets an immovable object, and sometimes, the force wins.

But he’d promised, hadn’t he? To not be angry with the choices you’ve made?

“Jeez, it’s somber in here. Who died?” you tease as Shoko pushes the wheelchair in after you. Both men look away from each other. You’re still walking steadily, but an IV is hooked into your chest now, and it’s so obvious you’ve lost unhealthy weight that looking at you is hard sometimes. Satoru does, anyway. 

Noting Nanami, you straighten up. Surprised, but pleased: “You’re still here.”

“I was just leaving,” he says. You frown, but don’t protest. A jujutsu sorcerer’s work is never finished until one stops breathing. “I finished planting the seeds you asked me to, and watered them.”

“Thank you.” He dips his head to you, then to Shoko, before departing, and you watch him go for a moment before your eyes land on Satoru and you smile. The air around you shifts immediately to a vibrant yellow. 

“You’re early, Satoru.” You head towards the bed as Shoko parks the wheelchair by the door. “It took way longer than I thought.”

“That’s because you threw up pistils today,” Shoko replies dryly. Satoru straightens up and looks at Shoko more carefully. Placid lookimg—usual for his mortician friend in the jujutsu world—but there’s a blanching in her knuckles that isn’t usual. “The CT wasn’t good. You know that.”

“Well, it’s still more time than I could’ve asked for, you know.” Shoko shakes her head, and meets his eyes before leaving the room, presumably to talk to your doctors. “Party pooper.”

“First day knowing Shoko?”

You laugh sarcastically, adjusting the hospital gown on your body before climbing into bed slowly, as if your joints ache. Satoru’s feet shift on the tile when he realizes his body moves to help and he freezes. You’re breathing audibly by the time you settle in and you meet his eyes, wondering if he’s noticed.

Of course he has, he wants to tell you. He notices everything about you.

Then, you sigh, and the yellow energy around you flickers into something darker, something grey, something that reminds him of summer thunderstorms.

“The roots have reached the edge of my rib cage and are encroaching on my stomach now,” you inform bluntly. “I probably won’t be able to keep food down in the next couple of days so they’re going to up the ante on this thing.” You gesture to the catheter by your clavicle. “So that’s not really fun. And, they want to start taking scans every single day because the growth is increasing exponentially. The doctors think something triggered the flowers to begin blooming in earnest. Like spring has come to my body, and I’m having the worst fucking time of my life.”

Despite your admission, your smile only falters in that it no longer reaches your eyes. Satoru shoves his hands in his pockets because he doesn’t know what else to do.

The word Hanahaki still burns, whispers coyly in his ear. It teases the tip of his tongue as he watches you look to your windowsill where your new plants are and get up, walking over to inspect your friend’s work.

He wonders if he can bring it up again. If he can insist that there’s a way to save you—

But Nanami’s words linger, too, and he bites his tongue until he tastes iron. 

“Oh, look.” He blinks at your voice, turning to look. Your fingers sink into one of the pots and before he can ask, blue energy flares up around your hand and into the soil and a shoot breaks through the dirt, unfurling as it grows higher and higher into the air.

“What is it?” Petals are beginning to form, the shade of a warm, gentle red that fades in shade as it reaches the stem. Satoru comes up next to you as the first flower blooms and his eyebrows rise. “Tulips. Huh.”

“I used to love them,” you tell him, picking it off and extending it to him. Eyebrows furrowing in surprise, he takes it as you sink your fingers deeper into the soil, sending more cursed energy into the seeds. More stems to replace the one you had picked continue to grow and you pull your hand out, wiping at your fingers with a towel.

Satoru tilts the flower towards his nose, taking a whiff.

“Used to?” he repeats, and you nod.

“Trees and flowers have their own language.” Your eyes do not meet his as you watch the plant continue to grow. Your muscles go slack, and your fingers touch the petals, mind not quite aware of how you’re moving. “Red tulips mean eternal love, and fame.”

Blinking, he looks down at his own bloom. 

Suguru. He hears you say his name, even in the silence, and remembers years ago, walking through Tokyo. A neighbourhood he doesn’t remember, his best friend looking at the florist’s shop and immediately perking up to head inside and buy a bouquet after something had caught his eye.

“For a girl,” he had admitted sheepishly. 

“Only one?” Satoru asked, horrified. “You can’t settle down! We’re meant for so many more women than just one!”

A sharp nudge to the ribs. Raucous laughter. “Shut up!”

Quietly, Satoru’s fingers tighten around the stalk as you tilt your head to the sun, inspecting something he won’t understand. He doesn’t have a green thumb, and although you say you aren’t the smartest, he’s seen you grow the college’s gardens in a way that has amplified the beauty already lingering on the grounds. You had dismissed it as a little side project, but seeing you water your plants dutifully, spread feed and root out weeds, makes him wonder if you know how to put half-efforts into anything.

When you garden, you never take the easy route. You labour for the satisfaction, and pour sweat and tears into the soil.

When you love, you love with all of yourself and more. 

It’s what makes whatever he wants impossible.

Because he is the same, and they will never change.

When Satoru goes home, he places the tulip in a vase and the cursed energy prickles at his fingertips.

.

You get worse and worse with every visit. 

Each day brings him another raw wound, salt on blood. You slowly grow more and more ragged, even though you stay in the hospital, confined to your room. 

There are days Satoru walks into your room to you hunched over the toilet, spitting blood and flowers into the bowl and vomiting all you ate the night or day or hour before and he already knows what he has to do. A cold, damp rag to your forehead, a crouching stance beside you as your grip on the toilet seat becomes rigid like steel.

Other days, you’re still asleep because the night before, you’d been hacking up half a lung and half a bouquet. Sometimes, you’re curled around a plastic receptacle already full of your half-attempts to dislodge the pressure building in your chest. 

Or, you’re crying into your hands, breath coming in rapid bursts as you try to force your head between your knees to stop the world from spinning and Satoru holds you when you beg him to, and stands in the corner of the room when you push him away.

Afterwards, you always grab onto his sleeves, his arms, and sink against him, shivering. For hours after, he’ll curl around you on your hospital bed, no matter how much his body cramps, until you insist you’re fine.

“It’s a little like touching death,” you told him once, voice raw and fatigued. “When it’s a pretty bad day, and I think I’m going to die alone, it happens, so all I have to do is not think about it.”

There’s a flawed logic there, but Satoru was too busy pressing his nose into your hair and feeling the warmth of your body to reply any more than, “I’ll be there. I promise.”

Two weeks pass (fourteen sets of scans, a different pair hanging from the lightscreen every day tell him that) and Satoru watches as the branches spread through your body, past the reaches of your ribs, and the flowers have spread to your lungs so quickly he’s sure the time for you to decide is running out. 

You’re near-passed out against him on the bathroom floor one evening, and although it’s not closet-sized, it doens’t make the arrangement any less awkward. He’s up against the bathtub, legs sprawled all around you as he holds you in his arms. On the edge of the tub, there is a bar of bodysoap and a bottle of lotion he recognizes as the same one Shoko used to buy when they still had time. Your sink counter is filled with your toothbrush and cup, handsoap and a microfibre towel hanging off the edge smeared with lipstick, foundation, and black streaks of who knows what.

Shoko must have spent the night while he was out hunting a curse in Sendai. Good. He doesn’t like the nights when you’re alone and he can’t be there.

His fingers brush over your shoulder blade, and he travels over something rigid cloaked by your skin. Your eyes are closed, and you’re nearly asleep as you curl deeper against him. Looking down at you, he presses curious fingers into your shoulder blade only for you to let out a soft groan.

“Did that hurt?”

“No. It just feels like you pressed down on a big sore muscle,” you mumble slowly. He trails his fingers over, feels the bumps of the roots curling around your bones before following it towards your spine. It disappears the closer it reaches the trail of knobs that go down your back, and he moves back to your shoulder again. “Doesn’t hurt, though.”

“Does anything?”

“Mostly my stomach,” you tell him. “I’m so hungry all the time, but I can’t eat.” He glances at the IV stand, the only other witness to the events in this bathroom. It leads down through your gown and past your clavicle. Monitored every day in case the growths dislodge it, it’s one of the only things keeping you alive. “And my throat. It feels like I’ve scratched it out until it’s bleeding.”

He tilts his head. His lips barely brush your sweaty scalp despite how cold you feel in his arms “No surgery?”

You shake your head, what remains of your strength slowly coming back. “They say the flowers and roots have taken up sixty-five percent of my chest cavity. It’s not only inhibiting my lungs, but my heart and stomach, too, so it’d be kind of hard to get rid of it all. Not impossible, but it’s really risky. That, on top of the already-present consequences—”

“So let’s say we start with the lungs,” he cuts off, trying to not sound too desperate but these past few weeks have worn him down to the bone. Although he thinks he’s managed to hide it from his students, Shoko has offered multiple times to prescribe him sleeping pills just so he can shut his mind down.

He said no every time.

Your legs draw up and he squeezes your shoulder carefully, looking down. “Are you ready to get up?”

You nod. “I think so.” He wipes at your lips with the rag he left on the counter and you roll your eyes as he makes sure no blood is left on your face before throwing it back up and carefully adjusting you against him.

“Do you want my help?”

“My answer does not matter to you,” you shoot back teasingly and he lets you pull away from him before reaching up with one hand to push yourself up. Your arm wobbles, your feet kicking back underneath you and slowly finding theirselves on the floor. Satoru withdraws, ducking underneath and back up so he can stand, hands floating around your body as you draw the IV stand towards yourself and grab on. When he’s sure your knees might give in, he grabs your elbow, but you shake your head. “I think I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay,” you breathe, raising your head to look at him. Your lips curl in a soft smile, and you clasp his shoulder. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t even do anything this time,” he says.

“Not everyone stays for the pathetic girl on the floor of the bathroom floor,” you quip. Turning around, you begin to head back to bed and he trails behind you carefully.

“If the girl’s you, then I think exceptions can be made.”

“Hospital bonus.”

“It adds that you’re in the hospital, too,” he agrees. “My morals are just.”

“Isn’t that a relief?” 

It is. It is a relief that you still have the strength to joke with him. 

You climb back into bed. Satoru returns to the bathroom to make sure the bathroom is flushed and it’s clean before returning and perching on the edge of your bed. Pulling out his phone, he shuffles his shoes off and tucks his legs to his chest, leaning against the foot of your bed and scrolling through his messages.

Not much to miss, to be honest. 

“There’s supposed to be a lunar eclipse on the morning of the 28th,” you say suddenly. Satoru looks up. You’re leaning back on the mountain of pillows, exhaling and inhaling measuredly in a way he now knows is your way of fighting off another bout. Squinting against the orange glow of the sunset, there’s a longing in your gaze. “I want to see it. Outside and everything.”

“You’re not supposed to leave the hospital.”

You don’t miss a beat. “Oh, we’re abiding by rules, now?”

“If it keeps you around, yes, we are.”

“When did my best friend turn into such a party pooper?” Looking at him, an impish glint lives in your eyes. He balks.

“Don’t you dare insinuate that I’m not fun.”

“Then… take me to see the eclipse.”

“No. There’s nothing to even see.”

“I want to see the moon disappear, Gojo,” you declare. “And if you won’t take me, I will definitely sneak out.” 

It paints a pretty pathetic picture, and he can’t help but arch his eyebrows at your determination. The air purifier drones on. The nurse turned it on after dinner, he guesses, and he has the strange urge to kick it as you fix him with a fierce stare. 

“You probably won’t be able to walk by then,” he says.

“That won’t stop me.” He knows it won’t. The corner of his lips pulls into a slight smile as you continue, “I just want to go outside one last time. Is that really too much to ask?” Your words are tinged with a fine dusting of humour, and he shakes his head.

“You’re incorrigible.”

“Big word for you, Satoru.”

“I still mean it.”

“And I learned that from you.”

He rolls his eyes and sighs. “Fine,” he caves. Your face lights up, and he sets down his phone, legs unfolding to brush the floor as he leans over to flick your forehead. Your eyes squeeze shut at the contact and you slap his arm away sluggishly before he soothes the smarting spot over with a smear of his thumb. “I’ll come by, and we’ll sneak out.”

You beam and he slips his feet back into his shoes and pockets his phone so he can focus his attention on you. 

When visiting hours end, the nurses offer to set up the cot for him like they always do. You pretend not to look at him out of the corner of his eye, awaiting his answer behind your laptop screen, and he spares you a quick glance before saying yes.

“She likes you,” you tell him after one particular nurse with dyed purple hair who always wears a fishtail bids them goodnight. Satoru fluffs up his pillow ceremoniously, having shed his jacket and taken off his jeans to hide underneath the blankets. The fabric is cold against his bare chest, and he pulls his glasses off, sets them on the stand right behind him.

The black frame holding up his mattress rattles a bit as he punches his pillow one last time and lies down. He turns on his side and looks at you. You’re turned on your side, too, and your brow is furrowed as you fight the sleepiness.

“Is that so?” he asks carefully. “What do you think about it?”

“I think if you wanted someone with a hectic schedule, you could pick someone else,” you say vaguely.

He raises an eyebrow. “Does she have a bad attitude or something?”

“I dunno.” There’s a subtle fire igniting in your words. You look a bit more awake, and your eyes are shifting the air into a smouldering red. He squints up. Your face is shadowed, but you’re still silhouetted by the orange light behind your bed as your shoulders rise and fall greatly in staggering, weighty breaths. “She wouldn’t understand. I guess.”

He hums. “So I should find someone who understands me but can’t be there for me? Sounds like the set up to every tragic love story ever.”

You laugh, and it’s the saddest sound in the world.

.

Friday, July 27th arrives in clouds.

Satoru scouted a spot before where they can watch the eclipse. He settles on one of the highest buildings on campus with a balcony where they can sit against the railing and watch the moon disappear. You can’t eat, but he still buys your favourite food from all over Japan, travelling to different prefectures in hopes that they still have your favourite dessert or drink that you mentioned once—he even gets you a new polaroid camera. He doesn’t know exactly how well the eclipse will show up on it, but, memories, right?

Maki makes a dry remark about how much he’s running around lately, probably to make amends to a girl he’s scorned. Satoru deflects and says he’s actually trying to impress one this time.

It’s been a five days since his promise to bring you. You lost your ability to walk steadily two days ago and to speak effortlessly only yesterday. The roots have extended through your body, pushing the muscle of your back and shoulders, and it’s made even moving painful, so he intends to carry you everywhere he can, holding your IV bags if he needs to. 

The doctors say eighty-five percent of your chest is now occupied with foreign growth. Satoru wishes they’d just tell it how it is—you’ll probably be dead by next week.

He arrives at the hospital and walks the path he’s walked so often over the past few weeks that he is sure he could do it with his eyes closed. The nurse’s station, and there’ll be the purple-haired one and the one with a double helix piercing on call at this time. Then, twenty-five steps to the end of the hall where the window often lets a lot of natural light in. Today, it’s grey and not much, but it’s enough to cast his shadow long and blurry.

He stops in front of your door to sanitize his hands when he hears voices within and hesitates.

Your door is closed, which means you don’t want people to interrupt, and he moves away from the rectangular window, back pressing against the tiny slab of wall between the frame and the corner of the hallway. Glasses slipping down his nose, he tries not to listen but he can’t help of himself.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” you say weakly. You sound awful. Satoru wonders if he’s missed one of your panic attacks and curses himself. “If I don’t sound sure, it’s because I’m dying… and sounding like a fragile piece of shit… comes with the territory.” Your words are coarse, and a harsh anger grates his ears as you cough violently, a terrible retching sound ending with a splat following right after. 

“I wasn’t doubting you,” Nanami replies calmly. “But this could be done in so many other ways.”

“Look, Nanami. I’m not… brave enough to say any of it. Now, sit down. Your standing… it’s making me nervous… Thank you.” Satoru’s legs feel numb as he sinks down to the floor, tilting his head just enough to listen clearer through the sliver underneath the door. Resting his elbows on his knees, he runs a hand through shaggy white hair. It feels dry and lifeless. 

He can’t remember the last time he took a shower that was longer than ten minutes and more than ice-cold bordering on just beginning to warm.

“Take care of him for me,” you croak and his fingers tighten against his scalp. Nanami doesn’t answer, and you let out a sound that can only be described as pure agony as another bout grasps you tightly. You’re wheezing by the end of it, gasping painfully for air, and the monitors start beeping rapidly, a dinging that echoes in his head as Nanami’s low voice soothes you, tells you gently to calm down. “I’m—I’m sorry.”

“Breathe with me,” Nanami orders, and everything falls silent. Satoru stares at his lap. His head is beginning to pulse with the monitors when the beeping finally starts to fade. “Good. No sense to waste your strength.” 

Wobbly, spitting: “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” A pause. “It’s not your fault.”

You laugh, as if Nanami’s cracked a funny joke, and it’s gut-wrenching. “Remember how… we can curse each other? Ourselves? True curses.”

Faintly amused, immeasurably strained: “I thought it was still a hypothesis regarding those who don’t have the correct bloodline and the ability to curse through their own will.”

“No…Not a hypothesis. Real, Nanami. Real. No one knows how cursed energy affects us. Not really. Since, in my opinion, it’s entirely based on how we process things… it’s so difficult to say but when you know someone…” You break off to clear your throat. “The curse of adulthood… some of us got that too early… but we can survive that and even if it’s not a curse by… definition, we still feel it, right?” 

Satoru clasps his hands together just so he doesn’t rip the door open at the hinges.

“Right.”

“And… knowledge… can be a curse. Even if we can’t see it.” A ragged breath. Then, another laugh too loud for the grey light outside, too bright, a spark before it fizzles into, again, pained choking. “Nanami, remember last year… the job out in Yama… Yamaguchi?”

“Yes.”

“And we came back… Okkotsu was beginning his first year at the college… what I—what I told you?”

“…Yes.” A beat passes. A chair shifts on the linoleum floor and Nanami clears his throat. “I see.”

“I don’t want him to be so alone. I know I was never the strongest or the smartest or the most talented but I liked to think he let me in because I was there. Not because I understood. Maybe… Maybe because I didn’t. Nanami, please… he always try to stay so far away from the people he thinks he can’t love. Tell him… tell him—“

You break off and Nanami assures you with a steadfastness Satoru has counted on so many times before: “I will.” 

“…thank you.”

Eyes shutting tight, Satoru rests his brow against the heel of his hand. His head is aching, and a hard fist grabs his chest, squeezes his heart until it feels like it’ll burst. So this is how you’re really feeling. When you’re not smiling, this is what you are. Angry at the world, and heartbroken.

So terribly heartbroken.

And you couldn’t trust him with it? Because you thought he couldn’t handle it? 

He can take it. It’ll be okay because he’s the strongest. He has to be. 

I’m the strongest. I should be okay. I’m the strongest.

I’m the Strongest.

The headache gets worse so he gets up from that corner in the dead-end hallway, all the while three words replay in his head like a goddamn gramophone.

Nanami doesn’t come out of the room for a while. When he does, Satoru walks down the hall with takeout and a smile plastered on his face as if he had heard nothing at all.

.

At just past one-thirty AM, Satoru sits up from his cot and rubs at his eyes. After dinner, the both of them had forced themselves to go to sleep in order to have enough energy for their little late night excursion. He glances at you, a slumbering shape on the bed, and gets up, slowly sliding on the lights. They burn a dim orange, glowing on your face, and your eyebrows furrow as he touches your cheek.

“What?” you mumble, vexed, and he smiles.

“Are you ready?” he asks. A backpack is situated at the end of his bedframe and he reaches for it, unzipping it carefully as you crack your eyes open. “We’re going to go see the eclipse, remember?” Pulling out clothes he robbed from your room in the staff facility from when you used to work full time, he grabs your shoulder and shakes you gently. The gnarled roots under your skin feel strange against his fingers as you groan weakly. “Do you want five more minutes, Sleeping Beauty?”

You don’t answer, burying your face into your pillow and he shakes his head to himself. It’s going to be all right, he thinks. I planned for this setback.

Slipping into a dark long-sleeve, he parts the black-out curtains to let light come in. He checks his reflection in the bathroom mirror before running a hand through his hair and washing his hands with a cold stream of water. By the time he leaves the bathroom, you’re sitting up already, heel of your hand rubbing against your brow as you groan. In your other hand in your lap, there’s a splash of blood and a lone petal, and he rushes to your side instantly.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t even hear—“

“It came out easy,” you assure as he grabs a tissue to pick it off your hand and throw it into the receptacle at the table just beyond the foot of your bed. Wiping at your mouth roughly, he hears your complaints and your hand shoves against his shoulder to tell him to quit it. “Ah, I can do it myself!”

“Shh! Do you want every nurse storming in here while we conduct our super secret getaway?” he whispers, and your eyes fix on his. Dark circles mark your face like bruises, but that light is still the same—glimmering, bright, like twin suns and just as warm. Making sure your hands are clean, he wipes the invisible streaks of blood just to be sure before grabbing your clothes and setting them at the end of the bed.

You glance around the place sluggishly, at the paintings you never got to finish, and the books you haven’t finished reading, before settling on him. “What are we going to do about the… about the machines? And my IV…” 

“Oh, trust me. I may have bribed a nurse or two,” he confesses and you send him a scandalized look. He shrugs. “What? You told me a woman liked me and I couldn’t help but turn on my natural charm.”

“You’re awful,” you say without meaning it and he smiles as he moves your bed into a sitting position. You cough lightly, but sit up straighter as he carefully unhooks the huge bag and pump from your stand and gently slides it into the pocket in the backpack, resisting the urge to squish the pouch a bit. Strapping the pump in, he makes sure it’s secure as you peer around him to catch what he’s doing. “Is this… safe for me, you—you know, medically-speaking?”

“Nope.” He adjusts the tubing to avoid any kinks. “But, Purple gave me this backpack and she will come as soon as we come back to make sure you aren’t dying. And, if anything goes wrong, I promised her I’d come back as soon as possible.”

“Promised her?” you echo “I see. So that’s what Purple… was doing before my afternoon nap. I thought you guys traded suspicious looks.”

“Yeah. I’m pulling big strings. Now, c’mon, silly. Let’s get you dressed.”

You roll your eyes with a whistling breath. “Watch the tube… and c’mere, then, Gojo.”

He grabs the jacket first and does exactly as you order. Wrapping it around you, he helps you thread your arms through before zipping you up carefully as your shoulders begin to shake. Bending over, you reach blindly for the receptacle at the end of the bed and he hands it over to you.

A wad of saliva mixed with blood slips between your lips and you let out a low noise before forcing yourself to cough harshly again and again. Satoru watches. No matter how many times he sees you rip your throat up just to breathe with a bit less pressure in your chest, it doesn’t get any easier.

You manage to get up a whole magenta blossom. It blooms from your mouth like something out of a horror movie and lands in the receptacle before he’s wiping your mouth.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.”

They continue on.

Coat, next, zipped up, and a scarf, then he’s scooping up your legs to help you twist on the mattress until your feet are dangling off the edge. He weaves your legs through the sweat pants, careful not to let his gaze avert from his task even as the hospital gown trails up your legs. You shiver at the exposed skin and gooseflesh pimples your thighs as you lift up your hips to help with the effort. He pulls the hospital gown free from the waistband and lets it fall over the hem so you’re completely covered before falling back.

In a crouch, he pats your knees and makes the mistake of looking up only to find your eyes already on him, searching, nearly mystified. Satoru’s throat tightens. The faint light streaming from the window catches half of your face, as if half-divine. There’s a curiosity there, lingering, and the way you look at him makes him freeze in his spot.

Is this how Suguru saw you a thousand times before, a thousand lifetimes ago? Is this what he felt? 

Did he see the way your pupils dilate, the flare of your nostrils as you exhaled so quietly that it felt like a feather against his lips despite the distance between them? Did he see galaxies in your irises, home in the softness of your stare? Is that why he kissed you the last time he saw you? To memorialize their love for himself, to remember what it looked like when you loved him?  

Did he feel like he could fight dragons, crush demons, rip their world apart at the seams and rebuild it again with bloodied nails if it meant you would never cry again? Is that part of why he did it? So you would never be lonely again? 

Because if so, Satoru understands. 

Because if so, Satoru would do the same.

Because he always saw you as just pretty, because you had always been just his friend, and then his best friend’s girlfriend, and then his best friend, so there were always lines drawn in salt, scuffed and distorted over the years, but…

But in the light, tired and lost in his gaze, you’re nearly ethereal. The only reason he knows you’re not a goddess is because he’s still touching your knees, and your breath quivers, as if you’re just as disconnected from the world as he is in this moment.

Lips pressing together, he looks away, and the moment’s gone. 

He glances at the clock. 

How long has it been since he moved? It feels like hours.

Twenty-seven seconds.

Twenty-seven seconds of temptation, and then Satoru turned away. 

He slants to grab a pair of thick woolly socks to give himself something to do. You’re still watching him, head tilted down just so, and he carefully takes hold of your ankle.

He focuses on the little things: the iciness of your skin, the way you pick at the fabric of your sweatpants absently as you watch him work, the way you shiver a bit when he touches you.

He rubs heat back into the arch of your foot as you reach into your jacket slowly to carefully remove the nodes monitoring your vitals. You seem stiff to the bone, and your fingers are rigid with anticipated pain as you peel off the stickers. In the back of his mind, he remembers the days that feel like yesterday when you weren’t hooked up to so many machines to assure both you and him that you’re still alive.

Removing the cap for the oximeter from your finger, you shake yourself out a bit, clearing your throat. He slides one sock on, and then the other.

“How’re you feeling?” he finally utters.

It takes you a moment to answer. “Bottom half feels tingly. Usual these days. My body feels like a big giant bruise,” you inform quietly. Your voice is nothing more than a rasp. “Very warm and toasty, though… Thank you.”

“Just gotta get the shoes on and then we’ll teleport there.”

“Okay.” He helps you slip your feet in, something straight out of Cinderella, and then he stands up to take your hands. Your fingers slip into his palms, and he holds you so tightly as you slide off the bed. The instant your feet hit the floor, your grip intensifies and your head snaps down to the floor. You find your footing after a moment, and he lets go to crack open your window. Moving your plants aside, he climbs out to glance around. 

The air is crisp and cold, but not too bad for him. Even so, he’ll probably slip on a hoodie before they leave and he ducks back in to your room to do so, tugging it down his waist before grabbing the backpack.

“Arms through,” he instructs, slipping the backpack onto your shoulders. Guiding you closer, he helps you shuffle as close as possible towards him before turning around and bending over. “Alright, climb on. We’re going.” 

Your arms touch his shoulders, his hands shoot out behind him, and you fall.

Fingers hooking on your thighs, he boosts you up and your arms wrap around him, your own fingers wrapped so tightly around his collar that it nearly chokes him. Haphazardly stepping through the windows, his fingers sink into the fabric of your sweats. Your breath is warm against the shell of his ear, and he can feel your heart pulsing against his back as he turns to look at you. 

He smiles. “How’s it feel?”

“I’m still not sure if you’re going to let me die.” You press your face closer to his head and your arms tighten. “But the wind feels so good. So, so good.”

“That’d be too undignified,” he teases, and then he jumps. Time seems to slow as it always does when he’s about to teleport. He imagines the staff facility on the campus, quiet as a cemetery at this time of night, and his heart lurches forward. For a moment, his senses leave him all at once. He can’t taste or feel or see anything for a fraction of a second, then it comes to him in blinding speed. His hearing, as always, is first, then his eyes, smell and then touch and smell.

His foot lands on stone, as if he’s just finished a small skip, and he grins as he sweeps the courtyard. No one, as planned. The building’s to his immediate right, and he climbs the steps, using your knee to nudge the door open.

“That was fun,” you comment. “Convenient, too. Blink of an eye, and you’re somewhere else.”

“You can’t even begin to imagine how many lines I’ve skipped because of it,” he comments. The lights are all off, and he heads for the kitchen immediately to grab all the food he’s bought. Setting you down on the kitchen counter, he takes out another canvas bag and stuffs all of the food in.

Daifuku with of all kinds of fillings in the fridge, fresh dorayaki, canned coffee and aloe drinks, sweet soymilk and other wagashi they used to feast on when they were younger. Mostly because Satoru would buy enough to feed a kingdom so he always had something on hand for his overactive brain. You watch him with wide eyes as he moves around with such purpose one could think he was preparing to fight an army, but as soon as he finishes, he flashes you a smile.

“I think you’re going to like where we’re going a lot, silly.”

“Didn’t have to buy stuff,” you mutter, fingers playing with the tube leading into your backpack for a moment.

“You haven’t eaten in weeks. I thought maybe we could at least try. Maybe not now, but at the end of the night, before we go back. Just in case.”

“I can’t eat, though.”

“Don’t know until I stuff it down your throat,” he replies cheerily, and you smile at him so brightly it’s almost like you aren’t sick. Then, that smile turns into a cough, a fist in front of your lips, and your expression is frozen into one of exasperation before it flickers into strained. He sets down his bag, already knowing what comes next.

You make a hacking sound, deep in your throat, and he shifts you closer to the sink so you can lean over and throw up. Gagging, it comes in red and clear torrents, the cursed energy spilling out of your body nearly making it incinerating to even touch you as you clutch the edge of the sink basin. 

You fall to your elbows, and Satoru eases you off the counter so he can hold you up instead of the cramping body contortion you sink into. Cupping the juncture of your shoulder and neck, his thumb sweeps soothingly over your root-invested spine, tossing the ends of the scarf over your shoulder and out of the way.

Settling a hand on your hip, he presses you against the countertop so you don’t fall, and hopes your legs can hold you up long enough for him to reach for the hand towel. You spit just as he manages to grab it, snapping back into position and peering over your shoulder to inspect how much you’ve coughed up. You shudder and a tortured moan wrenches out of your throat as you sink, forehead against the cool metal.

You’re scorching to touch, but he tightens his hold on you anyway, setting the towel aside for just a moment. Carefully, he pulls you back up and you let out an drained whine, but he shushes you quietly, turning you around and guiding your head over his shoulder so you don’t stare at the rot any longer.

Satoru knows you would, even if you pretend like you aren’t plagued with morbid, self-destructive curiosity.

Looking into the sink, he counts a few petals and three whole flowers, and you’re quivering against him as he wraps his arm around you. 

“Alright, lean back for me,” he whispers into your ear, and you obey. His arm around you crooks so he supports your head, the other grabbing the towel again. Exhaustion seems to have sluiced through you, and your eyes are nearly unfocused as he dabs at your mouth carefully. His blue eyes focus on the gentle curve of your lips, and your cheeks puff up before you swallow tightly and let out a shaking breath.

“You’re really close,” you mumble in that exhale. He tilts your chin to the light to make sure he hasn’t missed a spot, and your eyelids flutter as the corners of his lips quirk up. His Six Eyes pick up a muted yellow emanating from you, and it’s so warm against his skin that he can’t help but relish in the feeling. “You smell nice.”

“Good. I took a shower before I came today. Well, yesterday,” he amends softly. “Alright, let’s go before you hack up your other lung.”

“Funny.” Nonetheless, he scoops you back up onto his back and he rinses down the sink as you rest your head against his. He feels you breathing steadily, much easier now than before. Red swirls down the drains, and he watches the magenta petals slowly reveal their true colours. There’s a flash of white in the center of each one, and he wonders silently what flower it is and what it means.

Maybe he’ll find out some day.

When the kitchen’s back to the state they entered, he grabs the bag of food and holds onto your legs tightly as your arms around his neck shift and pull him closer. 

This time, when he teleports, it’s not as jarring. Walking around the balcony, he makes sure no one’s in the area before checking that the door to the roof is locked and heading back out into the night air, towards where they can see the moon clearest.

“Hey, open your eyes,” he whispers over his ear, and your head shifts.

“Hm? Oh!” He feels you wriggle, but he doesn’t let you go as he walks closer to the spot he’s set up. Near the railing, a blanket surrounded by pillows is laid out surrounded by a few space heaters. The moon is hanging perfectly in front of them, and the light illuminates the forests in silver as a gentle wind whistles through. Tranquil, the only sound is his footsteps on wood as you manage to pull your legs free with a harsh twist of your torso. Your hand slaps against the railing and he whirls around to hold you up but you grit your teeth. “I can do it.”

Breathing in deeply, you pull yourself past him using mostly your arms. Your feet drag as if they’re not really attached to a living body but you still move steady onward, and he walks ahead to turn on the heaters and set the food down as far away as he can so it doesn’t spoil too quickly.

“Satoru,” you breathe as if for the first time,” it’s so fucking beautiful up here.” Looking up, his heartstrings twinge. Your face is bathed almost entirely in silver, and it drapes down your body like silk, illuminating the cord of your throat he can see above the scarf, the strength of your hands. A smile brighter than even the most blinding sun rays comes across your face and he finds that the moon pales in comparison as your knees begin to give.

Reaching forward, he helps you sink down slowly, and then sit down, legs hanging off the edge and then you’re leaning to rest your elbows on the middle bar of the wooden railing. You can’t stop staring at the moon, and Satoru can’t stop staring at you as he opens the box of daifuku and pops one into his mouth. 

“The eclipse should be starting in a few minutes,” he says, checking his watch. 2:10. Four minutes to go. You finally tear your eyes away from the moon to look at him.

“I forgot…” you muse. “I forgot how bright… the moon was.”  

He settles in beside you and offers a canned coffee, but you shake your head. He cracks it open for himself. 

“We’re about to watch the moon change,” he notes. “But I read that it’ll last six hours.”

“Really?” Excited, you look up at the moon again. The lunar rays outline your already-pronounced eye bags but it also makes you look more beatific. “That’s just proof… our time here on Earth is so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. It really makes you—makes you think how much we really matter. Which doesn’t seem like a lot, compared to things like a… fucking lunar eclipse.”

The moon’s opinion doesn’t matter more than mine, he thinks. “Well, while we’re waiting for your next epiphany to hit you,” he says instead, “you never answered my question.”

You smile, intrigued. “What’s that?”

“What if we removed the flowers bit by bit, rather than all at once?” he asks. Your gaze snaps to him, but he only regards you honestly. “That gives you a fighting chance.” Your eyes widen imperceptibly, and he grabs another mochi ball and takes a bite.

“The roots and flowers are too entangled in my chest to be removed safely. It’s either they remove my lungs completely, or not at all, and finding a… match for one lung is hard enough, much less two perfect lungs…” You trail off and shrug. “Well, that’d take forever… and I wouldn’t get much… longer, anyway. I’m a sorcerer. I always knew… I was going to die, so why not die on my own t-terms?”

He frowns. “Why not try?”

“Give me your phone.”

He does so, and watches you type in a query you must’ve typed before with how quick your lethargic fingers fly over the screen before you’re shoving it back towards him and leaning forward on the railing, chin to your forearms. You don’t even look at him, as if you don’t want to watch him crumble.

He reads: The first year after the transplant is the most critical period wrought with surgical complications, chances of rejection, and infection… Although there are some reports of some people living for 20 years post-transplant, many people do not make it past 10 years and only half make it past 5…

His stomach curdles. “Five years is better than nothing.”

“Five years worrying when my lungs are going to… kick it,” you correct. “Besides, my ribs are mangled by the roots. And my heart. My stomach. My spine. I’m undernourished, exhausted, and everything in here”—you gesture slowly around your abdomen—“is doing overtime. My body’s too weak to handle any kind of surgery that wouldn’t heal me… immediately.” 

Your eyes find his, and it’s as if lightning strikes through him like a spear—piercing cold and electrifying. You’re beginning to blue in the lips like you’re freezing to death, but he’s sweating under the blast of the heaters. 

Pulling off his hoodie, he drapes it around your shoulders. You don’t react anymore than: “Sucks, but that’s how it is.”

A few more minutes pass by in silence. Their knees knock into one another, and Satoru can’t stop looking at you as you breathe in the home you left months ago, head lifted to the inky universe.

“You know I can tell when you’re—when you’re angry with me,” you utter, not looking at him. “No matter how much you smile at me, you’re still too passive aggressive to cover it up.”

The words spill out of his mouth as you lower your gaze to him. “I’m sorry.” No sense in lying. 

“That’s okay.” You smile for a moment, like he hasn’t said something worth ruining a night over, but when you look up at the stars, it fades. Wistful, you cock your head at the moon that hasn’t gone away just yet and lower your chin to your arms again. “It’s not really something that was… fair of me to ask anyway.” 

.

Just as the moon turns yellow, he remembers something. Bending back to root through your backpack, he excuses himself. You frown. “What are you—“

“I got a camera for this occasion,” he announces, withdrawing the camera and a plastic bag, leaning back to snap a quick picture of you. You squint at the flash, mouth opened in an incredulous smile and face half-turned away, before the photo rolls out. “Like the one you used to carry around.”

“Some memories to hold on to, huh.” You reach for the camera and your fingers wrap around it, aiming it right at him. A flash and two peace signs later, another image joins the one of you Satoru slides into the plastic zip bag. “Hold on. I want to take another one.”

“We should do one of both of us.”

“Ugh, fine… I don’t look good at all, though.“

“Too late.” He snatches the camera from you and sticks out his hand, dragging an arm around your shoulders and you lean into him, temple against his cheek as he snaps another photo, and then another of him making a stupid face. Another of you mid-laugh. You’re wheezing for air as he keeps grabbing the polaroids as fast as he can with the arm that’s around your shoulder, leading to a bunch of jostling that has you in stitches at his frantic panic whenever the new photo chugs out of the slit.

When he’s had his fill of making you laugh, Satoru leaves you alone to look at the moon. He can’t stop grinning stupidly with every photo and while you watch the moon slowly descent into the earth’s shadow, he shuffles through the photos he just took of them together, trying to brand them to memory.

The way he looks at you in these photos makes him believe in something. In something that could’ve been there if they had more time, and he could convince you to open your heart up to a new possibility.

.

Another hour passes. The moon hangs a strange transition between black and blood red and a paler peach orange. A glimmering yellow dot sparkles below it, and he wonders if that’s Mars.

The forests seem almost hauntingly quiet, and no one has spoken in the darkness. You regard the moon, so enraptured, and more photos have joined the zip bag, but they’re mostly of you. He’s managed to sneak them in by turning off the flash and upping the brightness settings so it’d still be visible, and he hopes you never realize that he’s got them. 

Satoru has never been interested in astronomy, but the stars in your eyes are changing his mind.

He’s dug his hand into the bag of dorayaki already. He remembers it’s supposed to be for you, too, but his hands are too empty without the camera, his brain going a mile a minute and the air absolutely quiet with nothing. 

Twenty minutes ago, you asked him to help you take off your coat so you can pull on his hoodie, and haven’t moved since zipping yourself back up. The air smells only of canned coffee and the stinging wind carrying the scent of cedar. Feet swinging, he drapes his arms over the railing and looks up at the red moon.

It is pretty. Magnificent, and ominous, almost. The night is so much darker without the moon. Sheesh, colder, too. I wonder if you’re feeling okay. Maybe I should check, but you don’t seem to be shaking. Worst comes to worst, I could up the level on the space heaters…

“I don’t think I ever got to hear his last words,” you muse quietly, voice cracking, rousing him from his monologue. His head swings to you. Your eyes are barely open as you rest your cheek against your forearm, and you don’t look at Satoru despite your head turned towards him. Instead, he can watch the pieces of you fall apart without your scrutiny. “I used to think… that I didn’t care.”

“Do you want me to tell you?” he asks slowly as you continue to stare blankly over his ear. Your chest stutters in its inhale and the exhale is just as shaky as you smile a bit to yourself. He takes that as answer, and as he speaks, he sees Suguru’s smile—bright against the darkness of the alleyway, and a reminder of a simpler time. Satoru’s heart quickens from the memory “‘At least curse me a little at the very end.’”

You’re quiet for a moment, as if soaking that in. Then, you draw yourself up and sigh. “That sounds like him.”

You say it fighting off a laugh, even though it wracks your body with such intense pain you can barely breathe. You begin to wheeze not even a second in, and still, your face is cracked into an agonizing smile as you blink, tears slipping down your cheeks. Your eyes squeeze shut and your body goes stiff as you cough, hands flying over your lips. Your shoulders shake so uncontrollably it’s like an earthquake in your body, but Satoru cannot find it in him to calm you down as you hunch over yourself.

It comes in its own course, until you’re nothing but a gasping body, crying into bloodied palms cupping purple flowers, and the low sobs that spill and stutter out of your throat makes Satoru wish he never told you.

“‘At least curse me a little at the very end,’” you repeat to yourself, voice raw and iron-like, and your eyes finally rise to meet his. Nothing but hollow purple pierces through him once more. “Yeah… Yeah, that sounds like him.” 

An apology bubbles at his lips, but you continue before he can even begin. Your hands fall to to your laps, and you look at the decaying flowers, thumbs stroking the petals. “I could never make him truly happy… could I? Just like he said… nothing would’ve been good enough for him while we lived in this kind of world. No matter how many times I sat by him while he swallowed… swallowed those curses, held his hand, held him, I would have never been… enough to make him laugh from his heart.” Your tears cast dark shadows. “I held him, Satoru, with all my might… and I still felt him slip away between my fingers.”

That’s how Satoru learns you were there that day, December 24th, not a snowflake in sight. Just a few metres away, you stood for only a moment before you walked away from the man you loved so he could die without any regret, at the cost of your own guilt eating you alive.

No one speaks after that. Satoru cleans your hands slowly, carefully, giving attention to each finger, before swiping your lips, and then he wipes your tears away but you’re not crying anymore.

You just look up at the moon emptily and he scoots closer in hopes to keep your returning trembling at bay.

“Ten years is a very… long time to love someone.” You break the silence. He doesn’t know how long it’s been. Fifteen, thirty minutes? He looks at you, and your lips press into a thin smile. He lifts his arm so you can scoot up close next to him. Your eyes never leave his face, regarding him with new clarity. “I just… realized.”

“Ten years is a very long time for anything,” he replies quietly, their faces very close. Their noses brush, and a warmth spreads through his cheeks as he presses the tip of your nose against his. You don’t pull away. Instead, you almost lean closer. Your nose is cold against his hot face, and he rubs it slowly with his own, trying to send heat back into your skin.

“A very long time to… wait.” Your eyes flutter shut, and your breath is warm over his lips as you slowly tilt your head so their foreheads meet. His hand squeezes your waist. You smell like the hospital, but there’s still the fragrance of the fresh-cut grass and herbs clinging to your skin as he moves his head just to the side so his nose presses into your frozen cheek. Your arm moves as if dragging through honey until it’s wrapped around his neck, palm flat against his shoulder, just as their brows press against one another. 

Something ignites inside his chest, incinerating the rot that seems to grow inside his own chest—it’s his dread, he realizes a moment later. An ugly knot of dread for what’s to come, the guilt, the cold grief that’s just out of reach. 

It’ll unfurl soon, he knows, but for now, he welcomes the relief you bring him.

In this moment, you are his, and he is yours, and that is all that matters.

His eyes close. His cheeks are burning hotter than the heaters surrounding them, and he feels a smile pulling at his lips as your fingers curl against the back of his neck.

“When will people… stop waiting?” you ask him, hushed like a secret.

Eyes opening, he answers you in the same soft voice, “Probably when they die.”

Your eyes crack open once more and he catches a sliver between your heavy lids. You’re so close he sees every detail of your irises, the pores of your eye bags, the way memories flicker through your pupils like fish in a river.

Your exhausted smile grows more genuine—something inside you seems to rear its bright little head, but it’s sad, and he realizes, then, what you must’ve been thinking. Words fumble at his mouth, but he doesn’t let anything slip as you lift your face away to rest your head against his shoulder.

.

You’re dozing against him. Satoru is staring up at the moon in your stead. It’s nearly fully that famous shade of dark blood red, but not quite. He can’t hear anything except the buzz of the space heaters and your breathing. His arm is still wrapped tight around you, holding you flush against him. He’s wished he’d done it so many times before that now, he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself.

You’re dying. Even as you rest against him, he feels it. The weakness in your body, the way you’ve turned ghost-like. The strength of your Cursed Energy has become more prominent now that you don’t have the energy to channel it properly, and it’s centred so strongly in your chest that he can feel it poking curiously at him, leaving little marks, a souvenir for when you’re gone.

His fingers dig into your side. You let out a noise, head shifting, and he rips his gaze away away from the sky as your hand falls away from where it had rested around his neck into his lap.

“Satoru?” you whisper brokenly, and he nods, smiling. He pulls you closer, but their bodies are so pressed against each other that it only serves to make you huff a bit.

“Hey. You’re still with us, don’t worry,”

“Not worried,” you mumble, lifting your head with difficulty. “Just glad you’re here.” You tilt your face to the moon. “It’s still… red, huh…” You shake, your hand at the hem of his shirt twisting tightly. He reaches to squeeze your arm and hopes it’ll be enough now. “Pretty.” Throat dry, he does not answer. His white hair falls into his eyes as you look up at him, and he decays at the vulnerability in your gaze. “Aren’t you glad… that we saw the eclipse?”

Jaw clenching, he nods and tries his best to smile. Your hand lets go of his shirt and you shuffle up close enough that your other arm sneaks around his waist. Touching his chin with trembling fingers, your eyes glitter in the darkness of his shadow.

“I’m going to miss this. The moon, stars, how… fucking short… ’n’ beautiful life is,” you finally whisper, throat tight. “Makes shit worth living for. Maybe… won’t miss it… the most… but, top three.”

“Top three?” he echoes. “Top three sounds pretty good to me.”

“And, y’know what, Satoru?” you continue in the same low, husky tone, as if you’re about to change his world one more time.

He drops to the lowest, quietest voice he can manage and moves his head closer. Their noses nearly bump into each other again, and you smile as he quirks an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“You’re… going to miss me… more.” 

Your hand on his waist travels up his shoulder and he feels the last of your strength in your muscles as you pull him towards you. Letting you, his arms wrap around your waist as your other arm shoots around his neck, clinging on so hard that he’s sure his spine might break. 

Flattening his palms against your uneven back, he closes his eyes and slides a hand to cradle your head close.

“And promise… me something,” you breathe into his ear. Your lips brush the shell of his ear, and a shiver shoots down his spine.

“Anything.”

“When I kick it,” you whisper, “take my body, and bury me… yourself.”

Throat swelling shut, Satoru’s glad you can’t see the way the blood drains from his face as he nods and holds you tighter. “I will.”

.

“One more photo for the road?” he asks. You lift your head from his chest, and he looks as you reach to sweep his lips with cold, trembling fingers. He smiles, his hand on your thigh squeezing meaningfully even though you can barely feel it now. Your arms are bundled between your chest and his, and he hauls your legs on his thighs more securely up his lap, arm tightening around your torso.

“Satoru,” you murmur, tilting your head to him. His eyes never move from yours as he picks up the camera, and your hand falls from his lips. “I’m glad… that it was you.”

He snaps the shot and the only sound that fills the silence is the camera chugging out the polaroid. Your eyes are dark, murky and unfocused, and he feels your stammering inhale in his very lungs as he presses his forehead against yours.

“I’m happy it was you, too,” he whispers. You search his gaze for only a moment, and then turn your head to the moon once more. 

Lowering the camera to the floor, he sneaks his other arm around you and rests his chin atop of your head, eyes sliding shut.

.

Nanami, Yaga, and Ijichi approach, dress shoes tapping against linoleum floors. Satoru and Shoko say nothing to them as they join in watching through the glass doors.

Satoru doesn’t like the room they’ve moved you to. It’s too full of machines, too open to passersby who could just look in if the curtains aren’t drawn, and even then…

It smells too clinical here. Too full of artificial light. The ICU is a mechanical sort of silence than the quiet peace of the dead-end hallway. There is no warmth, no books, no paintings. Your plants have been removed, and Nanami has taken all of them into his apartment except the red tulips which rest on the dinner table in Satoru’s kitchen.

You stopped being able to breathe on your own only a day after the eclipse. That was two days ago, and the ventilator is doing nothing more than prolonging your agony. Soon, the growths will block your lungs entirely, suffocating you from the inside out. 

The doctors have stopped taking scans.

“It’s only a matter of time, now,” Shoko had said. “Her directive says we let her go as soon as she can’t come back.” Quieter: “Her pulse ox has been dropping. It won’t be long.”

Ijichi’s face is stony. Satoru doesn’t know why he focuses on him out of everyone. Leaning against the nurse’s station, he stares blankly at the Assistant Director’s. Maybe because he thought he’d be a wreck. Out of all of them, Ijichi’s the most emotional, but his lips are set firm from where he stands between Nanami and their principal.

Maybe Satoru’s just looking for permission to fall apart, but that’d be stupid. 

I’m the strongest. I’ll be fine.

“I’m going to go in,” he announces. No one protests. Nanami sits down and crosses one leg over the other, fingers steepled and eyes indecipherable. Shoko sits beside him. There’s the faint scent of smoke clinging to her lab coat. 

Ijichi dips his head, but doesn’t sit and Yaga excuses himself to talk to the nurse about your condition.

Satoru sanitizes his hands, approaches the door, and pulls it open before stepping in and sliding it shut behind him. 

Click. Hiss. 

The sound of the ventilator is the only thing that occupies the room. That and the monitors. It’s very dark, despite it being the middle of the day. Mostly because you can’t open your eyes wide enough to withstand the sun anymore, so Satoru had asked the nurses to bring the same blackout curtains from your room here. The lights are dimmed until it’s only an orange glow right behind your bed. 

Click. Hiss.

Sitting down, he doesn’t take hold of your hand just in case you’re sleeping. The intubation tube rests on a pile of towels on your chest, and it takes a long time before your eyes open and your head tilts just enough to look. Your hand twists on top of the covers until your palm is tilted open.

He slips fingers in, takes hold. The feel of your skin making everything worse. You’re colder than you should be—it’s sweltering in this room, enough that Satoru is already beginning to sweat even through his short-sleeve—and your fingers just barely twitch against the back of his hand, tracing strange shapes.

You blink, tapping his knuckle, and he frowns.

“What’s up?” Withdrawing, he feels your nail scrape against his flesh and he looks down. Curiously, he takes your hand and places it on top of his so your fingers can touch the lines of his palm. “Are you spelling something out?” he asks, amused, glancing up again.

Another blink, slower this time.

He leans forward on his elbow to touch your cheek before resting his cheek against his fist.

“Alright, give it your best shot.” 

Your eyelids flutter, lips trembling in a weak smile. Your index finger begins to trace shapes, kanji, into his palm. Your chest rises and fall slowly, pumped full of air by a machine hooked to your lungs, forcing breath into you as your writing grows sloppy by the passing second but you still persist.

ANGRY?

“Angry?” he repeats, and you blink slowly again, fingers insistent on grabbing his palm. Folding his fingers over yours, he arches his eyebrows. “If I was angry at a terminally ill patient, that’d make me the asshole here.” Your eyes squeeze shut, eyebrows rearranging in what he recognizes as your laugh in silence. More seriously, his hold on you tightens and he lifts his head to brush his fingers over your brow. You tilt your head more to him, gaze murky warm. “How’re you feeling?”

It takes a while, but he feels your hand shuffle back to trace your answer on his hand.

BETTER

“Better. Yeah?”

Another lethargic blink. Yes.

“It’s because of me, right? I knew it. I knew it. We should tell Shoko—I’m the newest medical innovation in town,” he proclaims, and his smile begs to slip off his face but he only forces it back on, shoves it into place. Your eyebrows move again, like you’re struggling to hold back your laugh. Your eyes slip shut and do not open again. 

Your face goes lax a moment later, and your fingers loosen a bit, but he doesn’t let go. He just wants to touch your face and trace the lines into his memory. 

Satoru stretches his thumb along the swell of your bottom lip while carefully avoiding the tube. He runs his knuckles down your cheek. His fingers brush your pulse point along your neck, and he feels the slow, weak beat.

Click. Hiss.

He thinks you’re asleep for a while, until your finger drags over the flesh of his palm and he looks down, hand lifting from your face. 

“Hey, I’m still here,” he whispers, and your face turns towards him slightly, the tube in your mouth shuffling. He reaches forward, cupping your face and holding you still. “Hey. Don’t move. Your lungs are weaker than the rest of you and I’m not about to watch you die.” Something grabs onto the front of his shirt near his stomach and he looks down to see your fingers hooking on the cotton of his tee, twisting it weakly. “Oh, sorry.”

He draws back and slips his palm back into yours. Your index finger taps against the heel of his hand before your nail drags deliberately. One stroke. Then another, and another. Gojo wishes your eyes were open, because then he would be able to determine what the rest of the sentence could spell out before you’re done, but he’s patient. 

HERE

“Here?” You tap on his hand. Yes. “What’s here?”

YOU AND ME

“You and me,” he repeats thoughtfully. “Yeah, I get that. At least… now you can see Suguru again, right?” Your hand goes still and he looks at your face, reaching to touch your cheek again. You’re placid—doll-like, eyes shut, living dead. “I’m a bit jealous of that, but you should rest easy. It’s been a hard few months, hasn’t it?”

Another weak twitch of your finger on his hand.

“No matter what happens, don’t think I’m angry at you, or the choices you’ve made,” he continues. “As long as you let me stay here, I won’t waste a single second of it, okay?” Tap. He squeezes your hand so tightly your eyebrows twitch, even as you slip away from him. “For all your saying that you’re weaker than me, I never thought that. Not really.” Satoru raises your hand to his lips and he closes his eyes. “Being the strongest is pretty lonely. Used to be so fucking cocky about it, huh. Thought no one could touch me or the people I cared about because everyone would be too scared.”

Your fingers curl against his palm and he lowers his head to press your knuckles against his brow.

“I was wrong. I’d give anything to have you both back, but I can’t, and I hate it. You’re supposed to be with me at the top. I don’t want to be alone again.” His eyes are burning from the strain of keeping them open, but he refuses to miss a second of you being alive when the time is trickling like sand in an hourglass. He feels it like a heavy stare on his back, wondering if this next breath will be the last one before your brain finally decides to shut down. Your organs have been shutting down for nearly weeks now. He knows it’s out of pure selfishness that they’re dragging precious moments into agonizing hours. 

He knows you’re exhausted. 

Resting his chin on your fingers, he swallows. “I don’t know how to let you go. I wished I’d come sooner. I was careless. I know that. We could’ve had more time…”

Your fingers squeeze his as tight as you can before letting go. Somehow, he hears your voice in his ear. Something about being grateful for the time they did have.

“You were right, silly.” He chuckles to himself, bitter, anguished, and lowers your hand back to the bed, not letting go yet. “Ten years is a long time to wait. I let you down, but I’ll make sure you go easy. I promise.”

Satoru lays his head down on his forearm and he swears he catches your lips pull into the faintest smile. He stays there for hours, watching your face, stretching up to touch your unmoving face. The only sound is his steady breaths, the beep of your monitors and the click-hiss of your ventilator. 

It’s 1:04 PM when he falls asleep to the sleepy circles you trace into his wrist

It’s 6:22 PM when only one of them wakes up.

.

At 11:00 AM the next morning, during one of the hourly tests, they declare you brain-dead. With the announcement of your directive being honoured by your chosen proxy, Satoru himself, classes are cancelled and they are scheduled to take you off life support at six.

Ijichi brings them lunch and dinner. Satoru doesn’t eat. Only sits by your side, leaned back into the chair and looking at you while he still can until the clock ticks and ticks and ticks towards doomsday. The kids come to say final goodbyes while he watches on. Inumaki, as always, brings Panda through his phone, and Satoru wishes there could’ve been some way to sneak Panda into a high-class hospital just so their last moments together aren’t cheapened by a screen.

Shoko enters five minutes before it’s time, hand finding his shoulder and he looks up just long enough to catch her blank stare resting on your face.

She doesn’t say anything, only moves to the other side of the bed and sits down in the other chair.

The doctor pumps you full of sedation drugs, so you won’t feel any of the pain, unhooks the machines, and extubates you, explaining all the while what he’s doing just to fill the silence. As he pulls the tube from your throat, something in Satoru turns icy when a purple petal is plastered to the side of the plastic, but the doctor does not acknowledge it any more than murmuring that he will give them privacy.

Your rattling breaths echo in his ears as he watches the numbers slowly drop, but even your inhales fade to nothing more than soft, slight wheezes. The tape has left a strange mark around your mouth, and you’re unmoving otherwise. Shoko gently reaches and touches the eye bags that are, for once, worse than hers before shaking her head and pulling back. Everyone else waits outside.

Hours pass by in torturous years. 

Satoru wears the same stony expression the whole while, finally surrendering into his desire to hold your hand. 

His heart hardens. He goes completely still. Shoko talks but he can’t really hear anything except the slow beeps of your monitor once you pass certain thresholds. 

There are nurses waiting outside. They’ve grown used to the company, he thinks. He thinks one or two are crying. Soon enough, they’ll come in to turn off the machines tracking your vitals so the sounds don’t drive them crazy, banging in home that you’re dead, dead, dead.

After a while, Satoru realizes you aren’t quite breathing, although your chest moves. Sometimes, there’s a gasping sound, like someone surprised the breath out of you and you’re inhaling sharply to replace it, and he imagines your fingers twitching against his hand one last time.

It’s very slow. Much slower than he imagined it to be. Maybe you’re still fighting. Maybe you don’t want to go.

Satoru can’t imagine why. Where you’re going, there’s no pain, or exhaustion, or blood. Where you’re going, Suguru waits.

He leans against his hand, elbow on the slight incline of your bed. Letting go of your hand, he touches your face, feels the soft puff of your breath, the curve of your jaw. You’ve lost so much weight from the sickness you barely look like yourself, but you’re still you. The cursed energy is still yours. His Six Eyes sees it. His soul feels it.

It tangles with his own where he touches you, and a wave of exhaustion washes over him. 

He wants to sleep, let time pass, and wake up to you dead.

It seems a much better alternative to watching you slip away, but he’s always been selfish when it came to personal affairs.

.

You die two hours later.

Shoko closes her eyes and leans back into her chair as the nurse comes in to turn off the droning monitor. Her face is dry and she takes long, measured breaths as if trying to temper something swirling inside her. Satoru’s hard heart cracks as he squeezes your hand to see if you’ll wake up. It doesn’t quite sink in, even though he can hear someone crying outside, and when your limp hand doesn’t react at all, he shakes his head and gets up, pulling his sunglasses off the collar of his shirt and sliding them back onto his face.

He shoves his hands into his pockets and rakes his face over your body, your face.

He’s seen a dozen dead bodies before, maybe more. You look just like he did on December 24th. At peace, younger. Like you’re glad the suffering is over, and Satoru turns his face away sharply and leaves the room. He doesn’t know what to say and he’s not sure if his voice is still here. 

Everything feels dry and dull and grey.

“Sensei,” Itadori whispers wetly, reaching out a hand, making him stop. The students are all sitting in a small area, but they stand upon seeing him leave the room, and he gives them a plastic smile that makes all of them flinch. Maki is scowling furiously at the ground as Inumaki takes hold of her bicep but she flings the hand off and stalks away, hiding her red face.

“It’s going to be okay,” he tells them as Kugisaki runs after Maki. He watches the two go before turning his attention back on the students. “The important thing is that she didn’t suffer. Arrangements will be made, but there won’t be any rush, alright?” The words feel lacking, but he still manages to smile. “It’s been a long day. Go home. Rest, shower, eat. Let’s remember that she doesn’t want us to be here, slumping around looking like idiots. She wants you to all to take care of yourselves.” He arches his eyebrows insistently at his students, but they don’t seem to hear him.

They’re only looking through the glass doors at your coolling corpse, at Shoko who stands, and speaks to the doctor when he comes back in.

Fushiguro is the only one really looking at him, and the teenager has a silent question in his stare. 

Satoru shakes his head, and Megumi nods.

“Classes are cancelled for the rest of the week,” Yaga adds. “Ijichi will drive you all back to the college in thirty minutes. Make sure you tell the girls.” He directs this to Inumaki, who nods.

“Salmon.”

Later, Megumi finds him smoking a cigarette leaning against Shoko’s car. Satoru’s never liked the taste of the stuff so he doesn’t really know why he’s smoking other than the fact he doesn’t know what to do. 

Up is down, left is right, and you’re dead. 

Nothing seems right, but Megumi gives him a good excuse to stop. Flinging the cig to the ground, he stomps out the ember and re-arranges his expression into that shielded smile of his, but it feels a bit weaker. Sharp, janky, wrong.

“Why haven’t you gone home yet? Ijichi should’ve taken you all back by now,” Satoru says wearily as Fushiguro stops before him, hands shoved in his pockets.

“I stayed behind to look for you,” informs Megumi. He looks a bit fractured, but the boy’s never been one to wear his heart on his sleeve. Satoru makes a mental note to dig into his psyche at a later date, and stretches an arm out to wrangle the boy into a hug against his side.

For all of his complaints and mumbles and scowls, Megumi’s body still relaxes a bit against his, and even though he doesn’t hug him back, when he tells him, “You should go home and get some sleep, too. These past few months haven’t been easy on you, either,” Satoru feels a part of his old self raise its bloody head. 

Glancing down at a head of spiky hair, he knocks his knuckles into his student’s skull. “Have you been keeping an eye on me?”

Megumi crosses his arms, glares over Satoru’s elbow, but even his voice is quieter. “You need to take care of yourself.”

Satoru smiles again. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “But you’re not worried about me, are you, Fushiguro?”

Megumi ducks his head and doesn’t answer any more than, “Someone has to pick up the slack, now.”

.

“Thanks, Ijichi,” Satoru says with a huff, digging the shovel into the ground and stepping on the metal edge. “Not every day you help me carry a dead body and dig a grave, huh.”

“No, sir,” Ijichi replies. He sounds a bit hoarse and tired as he wipes at his brow.

It’s been two days since you’ve died. The college grounds feels a lot less lively. He took a walk in the gardens yesterday, and saw Yaga planting new flowers. He had strode past and ignored the tears on his sensei’s face, and absently wonders now why he hasn’t cried yet as he grabs the shovel and yanks it out of the dirt, tossing it to Ijichi.

It feels kind of stupid, but despite how eviscerated everything inside him feels, he just can’t.

Either way, he’ll deal with it when it becomes a problem.

Satoru wipes at his brow, too, with a heavy sigh, and heads to where a cloth-covered shape is resting on the ground. Your corpse is light in his arms as he bridal carries you to the hole he’s just dug into the grass. It looks suspicious as hell, but it’d probably be even worse if he’d been walking around with a dead body over his shoulder, stitched back together after an autopsy by your best friend. 

Good thing they’re only in the forests outside the college campus. There won’t be any civilians for miles.

“You can go,” he says over his shoulder, setting you down by the hole they’ve dug. He takes in a deep breath to calm himself and Ijichi’s footsteps hesitate before beginning and fading away moments later. Falling to his knees, Satoru begins to carefully unfold the cloth just enough that he can see your face and chest. 

He squints behind his blindfold at the ripples of energy still seeping from the stitches along your chest. Sinking his hands into the lush, cold grass, he twists the blades with rigid fingers at the stench of rot coming from the curse before he draws back.

Hands on his lap, he stares at your face. You look frozen in time, eyes closed, skin clean, and there’s that unnatural stillness about you that only comes with the dead. It’s strange. He probably couldn’t have imagined someone so vivacious could be so motionless if he hadn’t seen it first with Suguru.

He had asked not to hear the results of your autopsy. Not now, maybe not ever. It’d be fresh lemon juice in a weeping wound. All he knows is that the curse clings to your corpse, and Shoko could only remove the growths that were no longer being fed for examination.

“Weird that this is where we’ve found ourselves,” he begins humourlessly. “With how we were living, Suguru always said I’d die first. Doing something stupid, being too cocky.” He slides a hand into his pocket and withdraws something he’d snipped this morning from the last plant you had grown with your Technique. A red tulip with a short stem that’s a bit crushed, and beginning to decay, but… everything can’t be perfect.

“I never thought I’d outlive you.”

Reaching forward, he places the tulip gently on your chest, takes your cold arms that are just beginning to loosen up again from rigor mortis, and folds your hands over the stem.

“Eternal love, and fame,” he repeats to himself. The energy nearly swallows up the tulip, but as it radiates from your chest, flickers in the slight breeze, Satoru sees flashes of red and green, much brighter than everything else around him, and knows that it won’t be consumed. Sitting down, he hugs his legs to his chest and stares at your dead body blankly, chin on his knees.

He had had a plan. He was going to just… put the flower there, exorcise the curse inside you, and bury you so you could finally rest. He wouldn’t hesitate because this is something you entrusted him to do.

But this is the first time in months he hasn’t had a cloud hanging over his head, and his body feels so much ligher without the burden of your disease hanging off his shoulders, that he can’t help but relish in it. Speak to you without worrying about saying the wrong thing, of people overhearing. He’s finally… free. 

It feels fucking awful.

“You were right, by the way.” His voice is dull, resonating deep in his chest. There is no August sun breaking through the trees above, only from behind him, and the golden beams touch your chin, down your throat and chest. It sets the red of the tulip on fire. “I miss you. And I wish I could’ve said so many things, but we ran out of time.” A faint smile. “No matter what you think, Suguru loved you. It’s why he came to see you one last time. I knew him better than I knew myself, and I know he was happiest knowing you were at his side.” Closing his eyes, the ache in his heart swells as he utters out, “So was I.”

Burying his his face in his forearms, a cup inside him seems to tip over and everything feels too hot for him to breathe in. Ripping his blindfold off and tossing it away from him blindly, his eyes snap open wide as he tries to breathe. His ribs constrict his lungs, and he presses his eyes into his arms, hands shaking as he sinks his nails into his biceps. 

Harsh pants puff against his face as he tries to reign in his shuddering, but he can’t. The knot in his heart twists until he thinks he might die, and distantly, he hears soft footsteps so faint he’s not sure if he imagines it. Gritting his teeth, he stifles the bruising feeling welling up in his throat.

Gentle hands brush down his shoulders soothingly, sending a wave of nausea through his body, and he jerks away.

“Damn it, Ijichi, leave me alone!” Wrenching his head up, his eyes widen at the figure crouched in front of him.

Arms falling lax to the grass and his knees widening, his jaw drops as a thumb teases his parted lips. You step between his legs and crouch down, limber and strong. You look healthy again, bright eyes and full cheeks, young like spring, and when you smile, it fills him utterly with light. In your hands is his blindfold, and you ruffle his hair, tilting your head curiously.

“I’m not Ijichi, but… do you really want me to go so soon?” you ask as he rakes his gaze up and down your body. There is still a purple shell encasing your legs, but as you shift your weight on your feet, it falls like fragile eggshells to the ground and sinks into the dirt, disappearing for good. Peering around you, his eyes widen when he sees shards of a purple shell in shatters all over your corpse.

He’d only seen this once before, eight months ago, with a certain student of his and the cursed spirit of the girl he loved and who loved him.

Face burning, his gaze snaps back to you as you poke his cheek and continue to grin. Leaning back on his hands, he tries to stop the intense shattering of his walls by clenching his jaw, but the shudders overtake his body, his chest, his throat until he’s letting out an ugly sound and blinking hard as if that’ll hide it away from you. Something devastatingly warm immediately shoots down his cheeks. Covering his mouth with the crook of his elbow, he turns his face away but your warm hands cradle him carefully, thumbs brushing underneath his eyes.

“Yuuta, you’re right. Rika isn’t cursing you.”

“No,” he whispers, arm falling. His fingers sink into his shoulder as if that would be enough to wake him from this nightmare. “No. I can’t—Did I—Did I kill you?” You squint studiously, not letting go of his face as he lifts the hand from his shoulder and reaches to touch you. It shakes, and he snaps it into a fist to stop it, looking at his fingers that have done so much harm—shed so much blood. “Did I do this to you?”

“You cursed Rika.”

You chuckle fondly, like he’s said something silly, and set a hand on his fist, pushing it down firmly. “You can’t control how other people react to your words, Satoru.” Your voice changes, and your eyebrows draw together in something bittersweet. “And you can’t change something you didn’t know. The chances of you cursing me and me cursing myself are irrelevant. It doesn’t change anything about where we are, now.”

Satoru watches you, lips parted, as you tie the blindfold around his neck. You feel so real, so close, and as you slide your hands down his shoulders, to his chest, he jerks his head down to stare at your shoes in the grass. 

So he did. 

“I see,” he murmurs.

That’s it, then.

“Satoru, please look at me,” you whisper, fingers stretching to his chin. With the gentlest of pressures, you prompt him up and he finds your face, your smile, where all colours begin and end. For a moment, the world seems to inhale all of its life back into its core—the leaves whistle, the sun is warm and golden, and he lifts his hand to touch you again, but you pull back before he can. 

“I can only thank you for being my friend. For staying with me until the very end.” You laugh quietly to yourself and lift your hand from his face. “I would make a joke about a curse, but I know it still hurts, so I’ll save it for when I see you on the other side, okay? When it heals a bit more.”

“It’s never going to hurt less,” he croaks. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know how much you mean to me.”

Your smile softens. Satoru tries to eternalize that expression forever. “I’m honoured, but, I hope it does heal. I don’t want you to learn how to carry so much pain around. I don’t want you to be numb.” You touch his cheek again, as if you’re trying to soak in as much of him as you can, too. 

“Do you have any last words?” he manages to ask raspily, and you chuckle, tilting your head and running your hand through his hair again. His eyes flutter shut at the scratch, the sensation of your nails against his scalp, and then there’s your hand at his jaw, holding him all together. He wants to hold you so badly he thinks his muscles might cramp into stone at the desire.

“What does it matter?” you ask curiously. “You already know how I feel. That will never change. And if you ever want to know what I think, or what I’d do, you can just ask Shoko and think about it yourself. You know me well enough to not need me nagging about it.”

“But, it won’t be enough.”

“It never will be,” you agree. “But isn’t it wonderful that we even got to know each other at all?” You lean forward, and his eyes flutter shut as you hold him to your chest. He can’t hear your heartbeat anymore, but your warmth is almost the same. The echo of your voice rumbles in his head as you speak, and maybe that is enough. “If you want my last words, you already have them.”

You draw him back, and give him one last smile. The air shifts golden yellow to his Six Eyes, for the last time. 

“Until we meet again, my Satoru.” 

You fade without giving him a chance to answer, taking all the colour with you. 

Staring at the empty air where you had been just a moment before with wide, burning blues, he whispers your name brokenly before burying his hands in the dirt, squeezing his eyes shut, and letting boiling tears scald his face red.

.

“If you want my last words, you already have them.”

Spinning the key ring on his finger, Satoru looks dully at the door knob he had just unlocked. There’s no one in the hall, and he debates whether or not he should turn around, but Shoko had insisted. There’d been something left for him in your old apartment, and according to her, it would be spoiled soon if he didn’t go.

“Oh, what the hell,” he mutters, catching the key in his palm and shoving it into his long coat. Tugging it tighter around himself, he twists the knob and pushes it open. He can’t remember the last time he was in here. Maybe five or six months ago, when they both had a day off that didn’t need to be spent at the college.

There aren’t any plants anymore. He supposes Nanami, Ijichi, maybe even Yaga have taken them. He swears he’s seen a few in the gardens lately, but who is he to say? Toeing off his shoes, he makes his way down the hall. 

 Everything is just as you left it, with clean counters and empty tables. The curtains are spread, letting in so much September sunlight. It hits random display pedestals of different sizes, all the surfaces big enough to fit a pot on. Your watering can sits by the sink. There are photos hanging on the walls, propped up on the desk, on your shelves, polaroids taped to the walls. 

Reminders that someone did live here. That there is a whole life unknown to strangers but evidence enough that whoever used to be here, they had people who would miss them.

Walking up to the counter, he drags his fingers along the surface, feeling the dust collect up to a square of pale light. A clean circle is all that’s left as a clue that there used to be something there, and his heart twists.

Who knew he could miss fucking plants of all things?

Sweeping his gaze around, he brushes off the dust on his jacket and hooks a thumb on his blindfold, sweeping the area with an eccentric eye. The TV is off, your bookshelves are in their usual untidy state, but even the reaching vines of the bean plant is gone from the highest shelf.

 “They really scooped this place dry,” he muses dryly to no one. He can still hear the music you’d play for late nights, the smell of dumpling soup. He walks down the hall and still remembers how many steps it takes to reach the bathroom that guests would use. 

He had hunched over that bath on December 25th, and let water soak through his hair as strong fingers worked the sweat from his scalp and skin.

Four more steps to the guest best room on the right, and another three to the end of the hall where a door leads to your room. It’s already open, and he steps in easily, tugging his blindfold all the way down off his face. Hair falling over his eyes, he sweeps it aside and surveys the room. The walls are still that pretty shade of cream, and your bed is made carefully, dark olive blankets resting atop your white sheets. He smiles to himself, despite the twang in his chest.

Walking deeper, he approaches the cabinet by your bathroom, and picks up the photo you have by your jewelry stand.

A smile curls his mouth. He remembers this one. First year, their first September. All four of them had gone together to Sapporo for the autumn festival. 

He sets the photo back down and looks into the bathroom. Your toiletries are all lined up, waiting for their next use, and he swallows as he raises his gaze up to the mirror. His blue eyes look a big too big on his face from the past month alone, and there are red-purple half moons printed onto his face that have only just started to fade. He swears it only looks worse because of how much pale light is streaming in from the windows, and he tugs at his collar uncomfortably, clearing his throat.

Turning around, he looks at the offenders for making him look so awful, and finds a medium-sized pot sitting on the window seat. It’s the only thing sitting on the flat, wooden surface, in partial shade and almost unfurling before his very eyes.

Satoru frowns, walking around your bed to inspect the plant. 

The flowers are a warm magenta colour, and his eyes widen at the flash of white he can see leading to the center of each bloom. Brushing a thumb over the petals, his jaw sets as he tilts his head to get a better look at the plant. So this is what was growing inside of you. Huh.

There’s another slip of white near the dirt, and his eyebrows furrow, fingers seeking the thing. It crinkles when he touches it, and his frown deepens as he manages to grasp it, pulling it free underneath the leaves and stems of the plants. Sitting down beside the pot, he dusts off the dirt clinging to the paper, and reads his name along the front in your print before flipping the envelope around. There’s something sticking out of it, a sloping shape that’s hard but not too big.

Curiosity peaked, he tears the envelope open carefully and peers inside. A binder clip is inside, holding something together, and he flips it upside down, letting everything fall. The letter slides out first, followed by whatever the binder clip is holding together and he squeezes his thighs together so it doesn’t fall to the floor.

Setting the letter aside, he picks the bundle up. 

Polaroids.

They’re polaroids of different sizes that have him smiling despite the heavy sorrow twisting his entire chest.

Various pictures of Satoru, Suguru, Shoko, and you together, and he finds most of them are of him and you. Pictures of him hiding behind plants of various sizes, a picture of him drinking soju, because Suguru liked it the most and insisted he try, while leaning against Shoko who was knocking back a shot of tequila. There is a shot of Suguru, wet with mud and smiling like sunshine, while a drenched Satoru was in the background, flipping the camera off in the middle of a storm. 

More and more pictures, enough to spill out of his lap, and he picks up each one, desperate to remember when or where you took them.

And, sometimes, he can’t. Sometimes, they are just moments that he’s lost because he never thought they’d be important, and now moments he’d give anything to remember.

There are pictures of a fern he had named their first year, little annotations on the bottom of some others. Dates, but with no context otherwise. Names scribbled in black ink. 

You’re in a lot of them, your smile timeless, your joy infectious even through film.

Arms slung around Suguru, face smushed against his, artfully blurry perhaps on accident, and annotated with scrawl that read: I call this masterpiece “Dumb Sweethearts” by Gojo Satoru :)

A picture of him and Shoko and Suguru, of them in one of Tokyo’s night markets, you behind the camera, the lights flashing and warm and pink, making them all look like they’ve transported to some other kind of cyberpunk world. 

You and Shoko lounging in the gardens, having a tiny picnic at your insistence, and in Suguru’s handwriting in black: JUST GIRLS BEING PALS

Satoru stares at Suguru’s writing the longest, not even at his words, just the strokes of his pen. This is a new part of him Satoru thought had been destroyed, and he starves for it. It’s like his one and only lives and breathes in the ink, in those snapshots of him caught in eternal youth. When they’d been happy and unaware and not innocent, but cocky enough to think they could rule the world. 

It’s hungry, the way he goes through each photo, searching for another glimpse of you, of him, of them together, until Satoru is all out of moments to feed on, and still, he feels empty, flicking through the last few photos.

You in a pool, arms wrapped around Shoko and beaming like the sun.

A shot of Satoru and Suguru climbing trees shot from below, your eyes and skeptically raised eyebrows in frame, captioned big dumb monkeys

And the last one…

He holds it to the sunlight and his gaze softens.

A selfie of you kissing Suguru on the cheek. It’s mostly dark, but they were definitely in the bathroom, and the flash made Suguru’s outstretched arm look pale as a ghost, but even so, there’s no mistaking the happiness captured there. He was sticking out his tongue, winking, and red as a beet so he was either drunk or you had said something or both. Your arms were wrapped around his neck, nose squished against his cheek, eyes squeezed tight as he took the shot.

Turning it over, Satoru’s heart plummets into his chest. In Suguru’s clean, blocky writing:

THE GIRL IM GOING TO MARRY ONE DAY <3

And crossed out is your reply followed by a little note:

dummy doesnt have the nerve to propose SHHH!!!! ONE DAY C:

One day.

It sounds so much emptier now.

He lowers the photo back to his lap, and glances around him, at all these scattered moments captured forever. Gathering them up again, he relives them all over again, looking at each photo for longer to see if he’s missed anything, but mostly his stare lingers on your face, and on Suguru’s, and his own, too, because he can’t remember what it felt like back then, but he is sure it feels so much better than now.

The polaroids come together a neat stack and he is careful not to scratch any of them when he clips them together. The top photo is of you with your arms wrangled around Suguru and Satoru, your face split in a maniacal laugh, their mouths open in shock, eyes bulging in how you must’ve scared them witless. 

Shoko’s messy writing at the bottom, for it must’ve been her who had taken the photo: BREAKING NEWS: Japan’s Strongest Conquered by a Woman.

A smile cracks his weary face and he runs a thumb over their faces before sliding the photos back into the envelope for safe-keeping. 

Then, he grabs the letter. His name is written again on the first flap, and he reads it three times over before unfolding the paper, not quite ready but also not sure if he ever will be.

Immediately, a faint, herbal-like scent slashed with antiseptic flows from the page and his stomach curdles as your script pours down the page. 

Swallowing, Satoru shifts and leans against the wall, hiking a foot up onto the seat and holding your inked characters to the light. There’s a date inscribed at the top.

Thursday. 

The first Thursday after you had been released from the hospital. Your last Thursday before you were back in for good.

“Shit.”

He folds the letter again and tilts his head back against the wall, staring at the ceiling.

Does he want to read this? Does he really want to fucking read this? 

Taking a deep breath, he clears his throat and lowers his gaze to stare determinedly ahead of him. The purple flowers greet him warmly and he shakes the shiver out of his body before tightening his grip on your letter and unfolding it again, forcing his eyes on the page.

My Satoru,

I sent all the pictures I had of Shoko to her, and she has some of Suguru, too. Now that I’m gone, there’s no use if I keep them. Maybe you two could share some time, laugh it up over these old memories. I know she says she can’t stand you, but to be honest, who else is there that will remember us now? Who else is there to remember Suguru for more than his bloody hands and me as more than that girl too sick to do anything but die? 

Some legacy we said we’d leave, huh.

I don’t think I told you this, but with this disease catching up to me, it’s hard not to form hypotheses on why it’s happening or how. I have quite a few theories, and, unfortunately, none of them are pleasant or unriddled with angst. By now, you’ve probably figured out it’s a curse, and if you’re smart enough to ignore how much I’ll probably deny it, that it’s some love bullshit. If you didn’t know, now you do.

I know it’s weird. Suguru is dead. It shouldn’t be happening, right?

That’s what I thought, too

You once said love manifests the most twisted curses. I never thought of it that way before, but I’m starting to think you’re right. I don’t want to curse you by dying, but I can’t help but wonder if we can control who we curse. If I hadn’t heard you say that, would I still be here? Healthy? Okay? 

I don’t know. I can’t predict alternate timelines, because I got to live one life, and that’s more than most people get. But, because I know you, you want me to entertain you. I’m sighing as I write this.

Look, I know the pain would still be there. I know I still wouldn’t be able to forgive myself for what I did, even if it was what had to be done. I know I would still miss him. I know that I would still long for the day I didn’t feel guilty for loving someone else.

If you didn’t curse me, I cursed myself. It drives me crazy that this is how the die was cast, even now, even after months where I could’ve accepted this, but at least this physical manifestation almost makes me… calm. Like seeing what this life has done to me makes me brave enough to fight it. If anything at all, the curse brought me a greater understanding of how powerful our world is in comparison to people who… are normal. The people we have to protect.

I’m sorry. Reading this back, it sounds like I’m the one cursing you now; telling you all this knowledge that can only bring you more anguish. I promise, this isn’t what it is. I just want you to understand. You couldn’t have saved me, Satoru. I couldn’t have given you the absolution you wanted, and if that’s how it is, then I just hope that one day you can look back on this and it won’t hurt anymore.

It’s always been so complicated between us, after what happened to Suguru, and after what he did, even ten years ago. What we couldn’t stop and what we had to do that day. There was always a line that I thought I couldn’t cross, or a line you didn’t want to cross, and it was shaped a lot like him. I don’t know if it was just in my head, but there was something holding us back, and I was fine dancing around it because I saw how you felt about him and I understood. Your eyes always changed when you looked at him. When you spoke of him. Even after.

Always after.

Don’t think I’m angry. I’m not blind. I know how much you two meant to each other, and I could never be angry that Suguru is so cherished. Missed. It makes everything so much harder, so much more painful.

Look, in the end, I loved him, and you did, too. And if we both still do, that’s okay. He deserved love. 

I guess it just feels like a stab in the back that it wasn’t enough. 

But life isn’t a fairytale. None of it really matters. To be honest, I wouldn’t trade any of it for a second, and I hope you wouldn’t either. 

Maybe life isn’t supposed to be lived happily, but lived contently. And I did. I am satisfied with what I’ve done, even if I wanted to do so much more. 

I’m so grateful to have known you, to have had you by my side. I hope you can say the same. 

Don’t regret my death. Remember how much fun we had when we were stupid kids, and smile. Because I don’t want you to think your best years are behind you. I want you to be happy, even if I can’t be there to see it. I want you to be excited for your future, even if I can’t be in it.

I’ll always be watching over you, so smile for me every once in a while. Even if it seems like you’ll never feel anything again. One day, I promise you will, and it won’t feel so bad.

Yours forever and ever and ever,

(Name)

.

Throat crushed, he reads one line over and over the most. He’s memorized your letter heart, but he still carries it around with him, anyway.

“I know that I would still long for the day I didn’t feel guilty for loving someone else.”

Sometimes, he just wants to imagine your hand whispering over the page, the pen tapping against your chin, your face as you wrote, the sigh that you said you heaved. Because he’ll never hear you laugh again, see your smile. Your voice will never tease his ear, your fingers will never touch his face. There is no more laugh-wrinkles set in a face always perfectly hit by sunlight, and this is all he has left. His memory, and what you’ve left behind.

It makes him laugh how almost lovestruck stupid he’s being, but… he doubts anyone blames him. As long as he’s still doing his job, as long as he’s still the Strongest, what does it matter if he carries a dead woman’s letter in his pocket everywhere?

“Warm weather, even in the evenings. That’s a bit unusual,” Nanami observes, startling Satoru and he looks up at the blond who stops by him in the gardens. The man is wearing his grey suit, as always, and his watch glimmers in the fading gold light. “How are you?”

Satoru’s fingers tighten around the letter in his hands. As usual, the urge to crumple it up, throw it into the garbage to never see it again, has reared its head after his latest re-read, but he’ll stave it off. He always manages to.

“Fine,” he replies, glancing at the startling blood red and burnt orange leaves casually. Colours seem a bit brighter, and Satoru still squints a bit against them, despite the soft light of the sunset. He doesn’t know when his Six Eyes got so sensitive to that kind of stuff, but it almost feels good to be distracted by something so trivial as sensitive eyesight. “It is a bit warm for October.” 

Nanami hums. “How are your plants doing?”

“Mine are doing good,” he says, smiling. “The tulips have gone dormant, so nothing to worry about there. The one with purple flowers, though. It’s a tough one. It took me a while to figure out what it liked, but it didn’t go dormant or anything as long as I gave it enough water and paid attention to it.”

“That’s good.” Nanami adjusts his green lenses and sighs like he’s bracing himself for something difficult. “Gojo,” he begins, but Satoru merely folds your letter up and slides it into his breast pocket, holding up a hand.

“Whatever you’re going to say, Nanami, I don’t need to hear it.”

“Are you sure?” he asks skeptically, gaze following as Satoru stands, patting his jacket. Adjusting the lapel, he turns to his friend and when he grins, it feels like it reaches his eyes behind his sunglasses for the first time in two months.

“I’ve done this before, Nanami. I’ll be fine.” He waves it away. Nanami frowns. “I’m gonna get some dinner, though. Care to join? There’s a real good ramen place in Ikebukuro that you have to try.” The blond man observes him for a moment, before shaking his head, saying he had dinner already. “Suit yourself. Next time, I’m treating you, though.” 

Lips puckered in a whistle, Satoru turns around and begins to walk away. 

A breeze sweeps through the gardens, rustling the leaves in a discordant harmony, and sneaking into his jacket, sending a slight shiver up his spine as Nanami’s voice follows after him.

“The flower she left you is the sakurasou.” Satoru stops, hands in his pockets, but he doesn’t turn around as Nanami continues, “I wasn’t certain if if you knew.”

“Nope, I didn’t. Thanks for the info.” Lifting a hand, he barely looks over his shoulder before saluting with two fingers and smiling cheekily. It’s not as forced as it used to be. In fact, it comes quite easy as he reaches into his pocket for his phone. He knows what he has to find out now. “See ya later, Nanami.”

“Good evening,” he replies, and in a blink of an eye, Satoru is gone.

On the windowsill of his empty apartment, the sakurasou soaks in the last remnants of the day before wilting against two photos.

One of four students, arms entangled, and faces framed in eternal youth.

And another immortalizing what could’ve been longer than a few shaky months if someone had been just a bit braver.

a/n: satoru’s google search result: the meaning of sakurasou - desire and long-lasting love. 

and yes, there was an actual lunar eclipse on july 27th, 2018 (28th in japan time). it was very pretty. i researched a bit about both the lunar eclipse and the medical stuff, but excuse any inaccuracies! tis but a work of fiction <3 also, fun fact: the polaroid camera is supposed to be the instax mini 90 but ive never used it so excuse those inaccuracies as well SKNDALSDKN

ngl i did wanna write an alternative ending, but i can’t see this ending any other way. this is it. this is the canon, and we got a bit of happy feelies at the end as a treat. thank you for reading!

[meichenxi]

<j q x> and <zh ch sh>: an in-depth pronunciation guide

Help! I can’t pronounce <j q x>! AM I FOREVER CURSED??

No! You shall rise from the void of bad pronunciation! The gleaming ladder of linguistics beckons and shall guide you to success!

Alright, let’s go! 

This, below, is your mouth! (simplified, in paint, please use your imagination) The pointy bits are your teeth - the dangly bit at the back is your velum. The bits that are relevant for us today are the alveolar ridge, post-alveolar space and the palate. 

<j q x> are all technically 'alveolo-palatal' sounds. Your alveolar ridge in your mouth is the bit behind your teeth that is very hard, before it goes upwards and gets softer. Your palate is divided into your hard palate and soft palate - the hard palate is the bit that burns when you eat pizza! 

Alveolar sounds in English are /t d s z n l/ etc - feel how your tongue is tapping off that hard ridge in the first two. We just have one palatal sound in English, made when your tongue approaches the hard palate - <y>, which is usually written /j/ in linguistics. (<this> means spelling, and /this/ means phonemic pronunciation). 

Post-alveolar sounds are sounds which are made when you retract your tongue a bit from the hard alveolar ridge. We have quite a few - /ʃ/ as in 'shot' <sh>, /ʒ/ as in 'vision' <s>, /tʃ/ as in 'church', and /dʒ/ as in <j>, 'jam'. Congratulations, because these all exist in Chinese! If you're a proficient English speaker or your language has them, pinyin <zh> , <ch> and <sh> should be straightforward (though <sh> especially is a little bit more retroflex, i.e. your tongue curled back, than the English). T

Alveolo-palatal sounds are made with your lips spread wide, with the back of your tongue raised to your palate (like in <yes> as in ‘yes’) and the tip of your tongue resting along the back of the teeth. 

Compare the two pictures. The first is the pronunciation of the post-alveolar sounds, so pinyin <zh ch sh>, and the second is the pronunciation of <j q x>. Notice how in the second picture the body of the tongue is much higher, and the tip of the tongue isn’t curled back, but resting behind the teeth. 

In the picture for the English sounds above, please note that this isn’t totally accurate - Chinese <zh ch sh> as well as <r> are more retroflex - they are pronounced with the tongue curled further back in the mouth - but while your accent may sound ‘off’ if you pronounce them in the English way, it’s close enough that it’s unlikely to be mistaken for anything else, so we’ll leave it there for now. The picture below shows the difference. 

In pinyin, <j> <q> and <x> are written with separate letters to <zh> <ch> <sh>. This is really helpful for us, because they are different sounds, but technically speaking we could write them all the same. What?? Because they are actually linguistically speaking in complementary distribution with each other. 

Think about it. 

Do you ever say ch+iang or q+ang? Or q+an or ch+ian? Or pronounce ch+u with the German umlaut vowel ü, or q+u with the normal <u>? You never do!

The consonants <jqx> and <zh ch sh> are always followed by different vowels to each other. Knowing these vowels will help you tell them apart in listening, and aid you, eventually, in production.  

Look at this diagram below of standard Chinese monophthongs (single vowels). The pointy bit is the front of our mouth, and the lines represent height and ‘backness’. The dots are where the highest point of your tongue in your mouth is when you pronounce the vowel. We only need to worry about <u> and <y> for now. 

The /u/ is the <u> we get after <zh ch sh> - e.g. chū. This is familiar to most people with knowledge of Romance languages - it’s a long, clear sound without any change of the vowel (careful native English speakers; we’re not very good at this one). The /y/ is the German <ü> or French <u>. 

The /I/ here is the high ‘ee’ sound that we get in qi, ji, xi etc. This sound doesn’t exist after <zh ch sh>, but also <s r>. Instead, we have what’s often analysed as a ‘syllabic consonant’ - if you think about it, there really isn’t much ‘vowel’ in 是 shì or 日 rì. The first is just a long <shhh> sound - but this is a complex topic best left for another day. 

Why do we get the high sounds (if you make the sounds in your mouth, you can feel that ‘eeee’ and ‘üüü’ move your tongue higher up than the other two) after the alveolo-palatal consonants and not the others? If you remember, <y> or /j/ as in ‘yes’ is a palatal consonant. This sound is actually incredibly similar to that high ‘eee’ - try saying ‘eee’ and then ‘ehhh’ (as in ‘yes’) and notice that when you switch vowel, you automatically say a <y> sound without even trying. If you are making a palatal sound like <y>, or like <j q x>, your tongue is already in the position to make <ü> and high ‘ee’ very easily. And humans are lazy - it’s much easier to follow a consonant with a vowel that’s in the same place, than to change the place completely. Technically speaking this is called ‘ease of articulation’. So when we want to say <qu>, the <u> gains some of the characteristics and is pronounced more similarly to the <q>. 

And if you think about the rest of the pinyin table - this pattern of <q j x> being associated with ‘high’ vowels doesn’t stop with <u> and <i>. You get <chang>, but you don’t get <*qang> (* means ‘wrong’), but <qiang> with an extra palatal <y> /j/ sound in there. You get <zhang>, but not <*jang>, but <jiang>. You get <shang> but <xiang> etc etc. There are essentially no overlapping areas where only the consonants and different, but the vowels are the same. This is hugely helpful for learning to recognise the difference between the two sets of consonants, and also for people understanding you, the terrible, unforgivable second language learner - since there are no contexts in which the two sets can be confused with each other, as long as you pronounce the vowel afterwards correctly, what you want to say should be clear. 

With that in mind, let’s get onto the actual pronunciation!

This is where you want to pronounce <x>. It’s similar to, but not quite the same as, the German palatal fricative written <ch> as in ‘ich’ (NOT as in ‘ach’), so if you have this sound in your inventory, you’re already winning! When you pronounce <sh>, the body of the tongue (the middle bit) is sunk down quite low; when you pronounce <x>, you need to raise the tongue towards your palate (the ‘palatal’ bit of the sound) and bring the front of your tongue under the back of your teeth, almost like you’re going to whistle. It’s helpful for all of these to put your tongue behind your lower front teeth, though you can also make the sound with it behind your upper front teeth as in the diagram below. 

When you say <x>, without any vowels following it, it should sound higher pitched, and your lips should be spread wide. When you say <sh>, it sounds lower pitched and your lips are not stretched - in fact, they’re bunched. Watch videos of native speakers pronouncing them in isolation, and try to copy their mouth shapes. 

<j> vs <q>

Most people can get away with some approximation of <x> because of the difference in vowel sounds, and while it may be wrong, if the rest of your pronunciation is ok, it won’t make a huge difference to people’s understanding of you. Many people, however, struggle hugely with <q> and <j> - and there’s no handy vowels to tell these apart. 

First: Chinese doesn’t make the distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants like many languages like Spanish or Russian, but instead between non-aspirated and aspirated consonants, a little like English. This means that English natives often actually sound more natural when they are pronouncing te de or bo po than other foreigners. For speakers of languages without this aspiration difference (the difference between a consonant with a puff of air and without), this is difficult to get used to, but doesn’t usually cause difficulties with comprehension. What it does mean, though, is that the biggest difference between <q> and <j> is aspiration - <q> is aspirated, while <j> is not. Hold out your hand and try to feel the difference. You should feel a thin stream of air hit your hand in consonants like <t p q>. 

Youtube for practicing:

Grace Mandarin - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05BMKdxHjp8 Mandarin Blueprint - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxIL11PcNXE Yoyo Chinese - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K1RTPxWiI0

BUT - BUT IT’S STILL SO HARD!!! HOW CAN I MAKE IT EASIER??

Firstly, this vowel difference afterwards is incredibly important. Your pronunciation won’t be CORRECT if you only make this vowel difference, but it will go a LONG way towards helping you a) distinguish the correct pronunciation of other speakers, and b) copying them more accurately. What we’re all doing now, as second language learners or learners who have grown up without as much input as we’d like, is retraining our brain to the contrasts that are important. English doesn’t have a contrast between <q> and <ch>, or <sh> and <x>, so naturally if you’re a monolingual native English speaker it’s going to take some time. Be patient with yourselves. When we’re very young babies, we can make a difference between all phonemic distinctions in the world. And then at about 10 months we just lose that ability essentially instantly, because we’ve already established which contrasts are important and which aren’t. That’s not to say kids can’t learn it - because they clearly do - or adults can’t, but that you are LITERALLY RETRAINING YOUR BRAIN.

 It’s not just about where to put your tongue, how to shape your mouth. Our brains are effective - they only store which information is necessary for the language, nothing extraneous. Technically speaking the /k/ in <kit> and <car> are two very different sounds, and in some languages they count as different phonemes and are written with different letters - but you probably never even noticed they were different at all! Because in English, all the extra information that says ‘this sound is pronounced more palatal’ and ‘this sound is pronounced more velar’ just doesn’t matter. So when you’re trying to learn these contrasts that don’t exist in your native language, it doesn’t matter if you can make the sound correctly once. What you actually need to do is convince your brain that every single time you hear or pronounce <j q x zh ch sh> you need to pay attention to contrast it previously filed under ‘not important’.

Lastly: be kind to yourself!!!

This takes babies about 10 months to get down - 10 months of solid, constant input with caregivers that are very focused on them. And you’re fighting how your brain has wired itself to disregard that contrast. How can you fix this? Input. INPUT IS KING. You need to present your brain with enough Chinese, enough different voices and speakers, to make it realise that there’s a crucial, important difference between all <qiang> and <chang> and so on. This will take time, but as long as you have enough input you’ll get there. But be kind to yourself. YOU ARE RESHAPING YOUR BRAIN. 

加油！

- 梅晨曦

[poptod]

The Breeding Kings, pt. 8, (Ahkmenrah x Reader)

Description: Search and creation. In a desperate bid to protect his identity, he convinces you you're not safe in the cities of Egypt, thus assuring you further that your place in life is far away from Egypt––where he was trying to keep you in the first place.

Notes: okay i try to stay as true as i can when it comes to the egyptian language and how hieroglyphs are pronounced but theres so little information on the indus valley. we still dont know how to decode their language but we know the closest language is a form of a modern indian dialect so thats what ive been using hope thats alright WC: 6k

+

Pounding like a hammer on his cranium brought him back to the land of the living in a dizzy, sickeningly fast whirl. He returned to his body and at once felt the aching of his joints, his throat bereft of water, and the headache reaching from his temple to the base of his spine.

As he blearily opened his eyes, the dryness of them making it rather hard, the pounding of warhammers on his ears continued in clearer and clearer beats. It was then, his hand already covering his eyes from the sun, that he recognized the inside of a bell swinging above him, the massive metal gong sending vibrations throughout his whole body.

"Oh dear Gods," he moaned, the awful sound thrumming everywhere he could feel.

Hazy memories of the night before returned slowly to him, injured only by the continued swaying of the bell above him. After finally filling your stomachs, you drowned yourselves in beer, going from storeroom to storeroom to take whatever they would be willing to give.

"Yogi?" He said in a rough voice.

You let out a long, low whine.

"No talking," you mumbled.

"Oh, you can't stand my talking but you're fine with the bell?"

"Aganu, I can not stand anything right now," you said in the most helpless, exasperated voice that Ahk couldn't help but laugh, even with his head hanging off the edge of the belltower.

His laugh faded away the longer blood was allowed to rush to his head, till he had enough of the pressure and turned onto his stomach. In the very least the bell was not rocking as much as it previously was, swaying instead of swinging back and forth. Below, however, the people had gathered at the foot of white limestone steps that gleamed in the morning sun, their eyes directed to a speaker standing upon those stairs.

Ahkmen squinted, attempting to make out the person's identity.

"-and the decree of the Pharaoh is thusly," they said, their voice faded from the height Ahk sat at.

The moment the words were spoken, Ahk's eyes bulged, his expression dropping from casual humor to dead horror.

"My soldiers have seen my son leave me," they said as they read from the papyrus in their hands.

A hand on his shoulder made him jump, but he relaxed when he saw you, if only for a moment before he was once more petrified by the fear of you discovering him.

"He has gone towards the mouth of Hapi. See my son––the Prince Ahkmen––is not with you. See my son, if he is with you, to me."

"Ahkmen?" You said with a small frown. "Who is Ahkmen?"

"Just some stuck-up Prince," Ahk said quickly.

"Ah, so like you," you said, grinning as you nudged him with your elbow.

"That is... so rude," he said as he only half paid attention, his eyes focused on the crowd below. In a straight voice he continued his teasing with, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to abandon you now."

"You will not make that, you are too full of old beer. You need my potion," you said.

"Maybe so," he grumbled, all too aware of his headache. He looked down, attempting to gauge the tower for an escape. "How.. the hell did we get up here? We must be fifty spans in the air."

"Have you rope?"

"No, I –"

You raise your hand, revealing the rope in it.

"It is on the side, where you forgot it," you chuckled, handing him the long rope. He glared playfully as he took it.

The descent down the perfectly polished walls was, needless to say, interesting, and made less difficult by the removal of your sandals. Ahkmen went first, followed by you, and he immediately took off the moment you landed on the ground. He looked over his shoulder as he turned the corner, spotting one last flash of the scribe calling the name of the missing Prince.

Murmurs of conversations that surrounded him spoke of the same thing––a lost prince, oh how strange!––behind the veils of widows and children who heard the words of the Pharaoh. The ache in his neck worsened as he turned rapidly back and forth, constantly scanning his environment for any surprised faces. Your own, shorter legs barely kept up with his pace, sometimes barely landing back on the ground before you were pulled continuously by Ahk's grasp on your hand.

The edge of the city must've been 5 iteru away––longer than either of them could run in their state. Realizing this, Ahkmen pulled off into alleyways as he had the day before, and hid within the tall, vacant walls.

He panted heavily as the two of you slowed, skidding on the sandy ground before you both fell down in exhaustion. Your chest heaved like his, eyes concentrated on a purely blue sky, as his remained centered on the single exit from the dead end; the only direction you could be approached from.

"Who do we run from?" You finally asked, irritation lacing the knot in your brow.

"Soldiers," he answered instinctively. You had a fear of them––it might subdue your curiosity. "And the town officials. We're a little young to be on our own and I don't want them to falsely accuse us of anything, or put us in any situation where we have to talk to them."

"Uh..." you scanned his composure thoroughly, "okay. I see your fear, but we must think, not run."

"You're right," he said, just barely rising to his feet enough to stumble over to you, kneeling at your side. "You're right. We need to get out of here, but not like this."

"I have one – one potion, of all my potions, in my bag," you said as you looked around, trying to find the packs you'd entered the city with. "The one for the, the – the getting drunk sick, thing in the morning."

"Hangover," he said.

"Etuvaka. Where is my bag?"

"Your what––oh, shit," he went quiet with his last words, grimacing as the blistered memories of last night returned to him in one-scene flashes.

"What?" You whipped round to look at him, a dead panic in your eyes. When he didn't answer, you scooted closer and cried, "what??!"

"We found a loose brick in the street," he said, closing his eyes and leaning back with deep regret in the breath he drew, "and to hide our stuff while we went drinking... we put our bags underneath it."

"Oh shit."

"Verily," he breathed out with a nod.

Several minutes of astonished silence passed before he croaked out, "I had most of our wares in there."

"And my potions," you said, similarly collapsed as he was. "Do you know any else?"

"No, I'm surprised I can remember that we hid our bags at all," he said, running a hand through his unkempt hair.

"And my cat!" You cried.

"Your cat came with us?"

"Yes!! All from Memphis!"

"No, I mean, she came into the city? When did she leave? Or do you even remember?" He said, assaulting you with an onslaught of questions.

"Young, by the wall for the city," you said in almost a whine, leaning against the alley wall.

"Maybe she can help us," Ahk suggested, shifting to sit up straighter with the idea in his head.

"She can not speak Egyptian, dumb head!" You scolded.

"But she doesn't have any eyes," Ahk said, and you opened your mouth to explain that isn't exactly pertinent when he continued with, "so her nose might be much stronger. I hear that when you lose one of your senses, the others grow stronger."

You seemed, at best, dubious of his claims, but spoke after a moment of contemplative silence.

"Okay. But we must to find her, then the bags," you said slowly.

"Absolutely, of course," he said with a nod. "Does she answer to her name?"

You looked to him with a flat expression.

"Does any cat?" You asked.

"Fair point."

"We must have a - a.. a pot, and I will make her food. I need.. fish," you began to count the ingredients on your fingers, "fish head, oil, skin of the goose, and milk."

"That sounds disgusting," Ahk admitted honestly.

"It is. And it is good we will not eaten it."

The most difficult part of your plan ended up being the very first step––finding a place in which to mix all these horrid smelling ingredients. Neither of you owned anything in the city, and staying out of the public eye led Ahk to sacrifice several different ideas, landing you with a final resort.

It was already midday by the time you stood outside one of the city's temple's baking kitchens, the heat of the sun blocked by tarps of orange and yellow swinging from rooftop to rooftop. Already the scent of searing meat and baking pastries filled the air, wandering through little chains of markets all throughout the city, and leading you to one of the biggest kitchens you'd seen. They would not remark upon the absence of one pot, would they?

"There's a way in, back there," Ahk whispered to you, the both of you peering over empty crates. "It's just a tent so we can flip it and get inside."

"And who will we get?"

"Whichever one is closest, I presume," he said, offering no more advice before he ducked out of the hiding spot, heading discreetly across the street.

You followed in a stumble, taken surprise by his sudden movements. When you caught up with him, you knelt to hide behind the same abandoned cart, once more checking the positions of cooks and cleaners occupying the bakery. Most people were sitting at the side of a tall fountain, enjoying the midday break for food.

He left, this time signalling for you to follow him. Without pause you did, crouching down to sneak beneath the tent flaps and into the kitchen, where you were faced with a cauldron half your height. Before either of you could exchange words, you were both grasping the handles, hauling it off the small fire and out towards the space behind the tent. Another makeshift alleyway.

"Do we have to heat it?" Ahk asked, peering into the heavy bowl.

"No, it is not a good for the nose. Borrow the fish, in there." You pointed to the tent. "I will get milk."

The wretched scent stewing below you bathed your face in its' fumes, but remained nothing more than a hint of your actions to anyone further from the pot. Ahkmen had been holding his nose manually the entire time, his voice nasally, which didn't help when you laughed and drew in breaths that tasted of fish milk.

"We're going to have to pour this in the street, aren't we," Ahk said, one hand pinching his nose and the other on his hip.

"Yes, and we can not... soldiers, can not see us," you said, glancing between him and the pot.

"Right. Drop and dip."

"... okay."

Oil was eventually hard enough to find that you forwent the ingredient, leaving you with milk, goose skin, and fish head mixed up till it all softened. The look of it alone made Ahk queasy, and if he ever attempted to breathe too deeply, he lurched with sickness, clutching his stomach. You just laughed.

"Not good, is it?" You said with a toothy grin.

"How many times have you made this shit?" He asked, his face pale as he leaned against the nearest solid wall.

"I make it... not much, and it is smaller many times, so... I am.. dear God, this smells," you grumbled.

"Just get this over with."

The two of you lugged the heavy cauldron out of the alley, shuffling past the temple to dump the product of your work. Your head pounded as you strained, dry and hungry, till you managed to toss the pot out into the crowded streets.

The reaction was instant. Questions and groans rippled through the people who split as the white mixture flooded down the road. More shouts and exclamations followed when the scent truly set in, wafting from the milk already baking in the hot sun. Ahk turned to you to find you laughing, stumbling back as you hid your grinning mouth.

"What's so funny?" He asked, but he was already chuckling with you.

"You rich people," you said as you pointed to a couple fleeing hand in hand, their silken white robes lined with rotten milk. "It is funny to see you run, and scream."

"Alright, you've gotten your kicks. Where's your cat?"

"Quiet. She comes soon."

From the many different streets coalescing into the center outside the temple, cats came, some hairless like yours and others furry and large. They gathered at the spill, sniffing curiously at the strange mixture before ultimately licking away at it.

"You know, I didn't actually expect them to like it," Ahk said above you, both of you peering out from behind the kitchen tent.

"You do not trust me?"

"It's not that," he said with a frown that disappeared at your chuckling. "I just.. it's astounding anything can stand that close to it."

"We did."

"Shut up, Yogi."

It took a little while, but by the time soldiers discovered the debacle, you and Ahk were chasing Sephys down another, smaller street. Her missing eyes were of no consequence as she darted between boxes and legs, jumping over a small mouse who cowered near the wall. Ahkmen's heart was already racing from the proximity to royal guards, doubled by his chasing feet, following after you following a blind cat.

Sephys' luck ended as she ran into a man's legs, bonking her head and fluttering back with an unsteady tail. You knelt, swooping her up to coo and pet her head, cradling her like a baby in your arms.

"Uh, sorry," Ahk apologized quickly to the man Sephys had run into. He glared but said nothing, continuing to lug crates of vegetables out of a nearby doorway.

Ahkmen jogged back over to you, looking over your shoulder at the cat.

"Do you think she'll be able to find it?" He asked.

"What?" You looked up at him, flinching away when you found how close he was to you.

"Our bags."

"Oh! Yes, yes. Sephys," you held her at eye level, her gangly limbs stuck straight down, "we must to find my potions. My bag."

She looked blankly to the side of your face. Her nose twitched.

"Good," you said before dropping her.

She trotted off with hunched shoulders, her thin body jumbling her steps. You ran after her, motioning Ahk along when he didn't immediately follow you. He sighed but obeyed, winding back through the streets to the spill, where Ahk attempted his best at hiding his face as he ran by. Fortunately you were only there for a split second before you running off down another street, following the light-footed Sephys.

When she stopped, she pawed at the ground, sniffing the dust that had blown over. You slowed to a halt, kneeling down beside her.

"Atu inke irukirata, Sephys?" You asked as you caught your breath.

"Did we find it?"

"I think, yes," you said, gently pushing Sephys aside and digging your short nails into the loose brick of the street. Ahk knelt at your side and aided you in moving the rock.

Soon, the brick was raised enough for you to pull it out the rest of the way, revealing a pocket within the earth containing leather and fabrics reminiscent of both yours and Ahk's packs. Both of you exclaimed, looking to one another with big grins that devolved into laughter.

"We did it!" He said, pulling the bags out of the tiny hole. He handed you yours.

"We are smart, we know," you said with a sly wink, tapping your temple. "And cat knows."

"Right," he chuckled as he moved to his feet. "Shall we?"

"What we?"

"Uh... never-mind. We should go soon. The guards are nearby."

"I know."

Sephys was the first to jump into the stranded boat, followed by you and then your collective bags. Ahkmen stayed on solid ground to push the canoe back into the water, jumping in as it floated away, and grabbing the oar to resume your travels.

Without the canals of streets that trapped sunlight in alleys and beneath tarps, the cool wind could distract you from the burning sun. Your fingertips returned to grace the water in shallow strokes, breathing slower, and basking in the stillness that could not exist within cities. While you relaxed in the boat's bottom, Ahk remained on his feet and rowed you onwards.

"We have bread, magic, and good friends," you said, a long sigh leaving you as your head tilted back. "We are cakes."

"We're what?"

"You know. He is the... the head, of Egypt," you said.

"Ohh, you mean Kings."

"Etuvaka." Your head fell back down onto the floor of the canoe.

You set off in the afternoon, leaving you little time to travel before the nighttime would set you away. Much deserved sleep was collapsed into, your blankets splayed across the nearest flat, dry surface. The boat was just barely pulled onto the shore, but the thought never crossed his mind as his eyes fluttered open to see you facing him. Already you were dozing, anywhere from a second to a minute from deep sleep.

"Yogasundari?" He asked softly.

"Mm," you breathed out.

"I don't think we should stop at any more Egyptian cities," he said, his voice cracking.

You shifted slowly to your side before you spoke, just barely opening your eyes.

"Why?"

"It was a close call with those soldiers," he said, scanning you for any hint of emotion beyond tired. "I don't want to lose you so soon."

"We have made okay with more.. scary people, and.. more danger. Soldiers are little to me," you mumbled, eyes fluttering shut as you finished.

No, you're little to soldiers, he thought, but said nothing, and relaxed back into the blankets.

"I hope you're right," he said.

Breakfast consisted of bread and what little you could find along this stretch of the Nile. Ahk managed to spear a fish with a sharp stick, but neither of you could manage to eat much after yesterday's snafu. The fish ended up being eaten mostly by Sephys, who purred happily at your discomfort, playing with the bones of her prey. You and Ahk watched in mild disdain.

By midday you were back to burning in the sun, lamenting the lack of shade present in the middle of a kilometer wide river. Despite your discomfort, you continued to wear your longer robes, insisting they helped in keeping the sun off. Ahkmen took a different approach and removed most of his clothes, to your humored surprise.

"Any time you can take off it, you do," you said, laughing as you threw your head back behind loose shoulders. "Bad little boy."

He had to slap a hand over his mouth to stop himself from yelling––well, that or laughing. He couldn't quite tell what was bubbling in his stomach but it seared your name onto his heart. You could make him curl up and die in a single sentence, something Ahk was used to being, not receiving.

The signs of civilization appeared much earlier than they had when arriving in Heliopolis, beginning with trading and passenger ships passing the two of you by. Ahk always looked away. His uneven breathing gave way to anticipation, waiting for the appearance of the city, where his attention would constantly be heightened to perceive every person around him.

It was a cold return to royalty––the state of constant awareness, keeping your posture straight, your gaze steely, your brow firm but not stern. After days spent with you, it was already an alien stature to his body.

He squinted through the bright sun to the distant walls, remarking upon little else besides the pure white of the stone. Tanis was an unremarkable place known only for being a city at the mouth of the Nile river. That made it a trading port, but few people actually lived in Tanis, and much of the population was made up of travellers and traders who never stayed more than a week, or three months at most.

"There it is," he said, raising his hand to shield his eyes from the sun's glare.

"The next city?" You asked as you moved to your feet.

Wind pushed you about as you moved, nearly rocking you over on the gentle boat. Ahkmen was forced to grasp the oar with both hands, steering you through the choppy, foaming waves.

"Tanis," he said. Technically a safer city to be than Heliopolis, but still ruled prominently by the generals of Egypt. "It's a, um.. a military town. Lots of soldiers and such."

He bit his tongue as though it served as a punishment for his little lies. It was for your benefit, right?

"Oh," you said, drawing your knees to your chest. "Are they mad to me?"

"Not... particularly," he said, hesitating after noting your shrunken posture. "Foreigners aren't treated too badly here, since there's a lot of merchants. It's just... you were taken by the Pharaoh's men. What if they're looking for you? I mean, I don't know that they are, but I'm just worried. Do you understand that?"

"You are so scared of me being hurt –"

"For the night," he interrupted you. "Stay outside the city for tonight. Tomorrow we'll need to get camels... start off into the east. You can come then."

You frowned but curled back into yourself.

"Okay," you said.

Early evening settled itself in the skies around you when you reached the city, stopping off on the opposite side of the shore to ensure your 'safety'. Ahkmen's muscles strained, already aching from the multiple efforts to pull the canoe safely onto shore. This time he only pulled it halfway up, leaving it to help you set up a tent for the evening, hidden in a grove of date trees and vines.

"I won't be gone for long. I promise. I'll bring back some actually good food, um... beer, of course," you grinned at that, and he couldn't stop his own smile, "maybe a tarp."

"A tarp?"

"For shade, when we stop for breaks. I think it'll be good if we're going to be travelling by land, we'll be wanting to stop quite often, I think."

"Okay," you said with a nod. "I will see to find maybe things for my potions."

"Perfect. Do you have a sword? Or, a dagger?"

"Yes," you chuckled.

"Alright. I'll see you soon."

Time passed achingly slow without Ahk, sharing the company of no one but your cat. That had been your life for a time, but things were different now, and you had gotten accustomed to his company.

Sephys followed you as you roamed about the trees and bushes, looking for any plant of specific necessity. The ingredients of your potions ranged anywhere from common fruit to materials so rare many didn't believe in their existence.

What Ahk had yet to find out were the uses of your potions––not so much practical as they were fantastical. The hangover cure was the most useful, but given the right ingredients and the right amount of time, you could also fashion mixtures that allowed you to hear the Gods' and Goddesses' words, or to see the stars and know your direction even in daylight. Considering the sun was still a thing, the latter wasn't one you made often.

Flowers played an integral part in a few of your brews, though the role was usually outshone by other, more exotic ingredients. Roses could be used to enhance your lusting potion, as well as the Commander spell and the To Shadows mix. Blue lotus lillies that grew within the Nile had a magic all their own.

You settled down on the riverbank, pausing in a space between overgrown bushes that led straight to the shore. Mud and sand crawled up from the softly rippling waves, carrying rocks and tiny fish that Sephys batted at, blindly attempting to use her dull claws.

"Stop that," you said, hitting her gently on the head after she splashed you.

Lily pads, their roots and stems towering off the river's floor, slowed the already feeble current passing by your side of the shore. There were few flowers among them, and the moss that surrounded them were a more vibrant green than the pads, but you still traced your fingers over the tops as though you would walk across them. Someday, perhaps; out of all the incredulous things you had encountered in your time, giant lily pads didn't seemed quite a normal thing in comparison.

Reaching for one of the purple flowers, you began to pull, attempting to uproot the vine that grounded it. In the end you twisted the stem till it thinned and broke, allowing you to free the lotus. You spun it round on your fingers, entranced in the symmetry of the petals, till you tucked it aside and reached for another flower.

Altogether you spotted four blue lotus flowers, each boasting vibrant purple and pollen as yellow as the sun. The true properties of the blue lotus were subject to your active imagination, as they appeared to boost one's connection to the divine, as well as intensifying both romantic and lust-filled thoughts that hid in the corners of the drinker's mind. Commonly it was brewed into tea used for Egyptian ceremonies––you made syrup out of it, or boiled it into potions that altogether cancelled out the sugarpea-like taste of blue lotus.

You decided to leave two of the flowers as they were, and left with two of your own. Sephys followed you as you stood from the shore, returning inland into the groves of trees, to where Ahk had originally left you and your bags. There you knelt in the dirt again, setting one flower aside and crushing up the other with a mortar and pestle. Occasionally you dripped a few strands of honey from your glass bottle into the mixture, allowing the petals and the pollen to mix easier, into yellow-ish paste that would last as long as you boiled it and kept it bottled up. With that, you set up the fire, allowing it to bubble before you slowly poured the mixture into an empty bottle, and corking it up once you were satisfied.

"Wonderful. Now I'll never use it," you said to yourself, cheerfully, and in your own native language.

Sephys sniffed the mortar in which you had ground up the flower, licking when she realized there were traces of honey inside. You didn't bother to stop her––if she wanted to get sick, she could, and if she wanted to get high, she could do that as well.

The other flower you set out to dry in the spotted sun shining through palm leaves, and left it alone to return to the river. It was there you remained until evening, watching ships stop and leave on the opposite shore, stopping by the city Ahk found himself lost in. Worry did occur to you, though you had little time to dwell on it before a small canoe was making its' way back across the river.

By then the sun had lowered to a point in the crystal-clear sky that rays of gold and red reflected off the water's surface, bouncing back in shimmering waves. The rowing of an oar within water marked Ahk's return, and you waited patiently at the edge of the river, watching as he made his way back with a grin that lit up the moment he saw you.

He splashed as he jumped out of the boat, hauling it onto shore before wrapping you up in a tight––and very wet––hug.

"Look at you!" He said as he pulled away, his hands on your shoulders and his eyes on yours. "You're still alive!"

"You are mean, Aganu," you said, grinning as you stared up at him with that same starstruck look.

"You're right up there with my mother on that belief. I've gotten what we need, but I also brought something for you," he said, motioning you over to the beached canoe.

You followed him, looking over his shoulder as he rifled through the bags and protective fabrics tossed into the raft's bottom. First he pulled out a clay jug, which he set down gently beside him, before returning to pull out a large, orange tarp.

"Garish, but... only color they had," he said, handing it to you. You took it with mild confusion.

After several cases of food, he drew a lute, handing it to you with great care to notice your reaction. Your mouth fell open part way, eyes widening as you twirled it around in your hands.

"This is... money," you said slowly, your brow furrowing as you traced the thin strings.

"It did cost a little, but I'm sure we'll get plenty of use out of it," he assured you.

"You can.." you motioned strumming it, but were reluctant to touch the strings, "do the, uh... music?"

"No," he said, his face falling into a slight grimace. "No, not really. I mean, I can make it make sound, but whether or not those sounds are good are, well, um.. up to the listener. I was thinking you could play it. It seems like something..." he sucked in a breath, "... you'd like."

"You will do the words," you said, suddenly energized as you took his hand, dragging you over to the little fire you'd made hours ago. "I do the music."

"You want me to sing?" He asked with a soft chuckle.

"Yes!" You nodded ardently.

You pulled him with you as you sat down, your legs stretched out across the blanket you'd set out earlier. He followed, crossing his own legs as he watched you fiddle with the position of the instrument, accustoming your arms to the feel of its' weight.

When you at last plucked a string, a single, high note hummed throughout the grove of trees, silencing the bugs and birds that inhabited the riverside. You looked up, glancing around at the sudden quiet. Your eyes fell to Ahk, who nodded with a smile, gently encouraging you.

A finger on the fret board and the tone changed, growing higher in a pentatonic that appeared to clash without the other notes making up the hymnal. So you slid up further, creating a minor tune that still thrummed in the lute's echo chamber. You breathed in shakily, hoping to calm yourself before you continued.

Ahkmen, sensing your nervousness, decided to stand and gather fallen twigs and branches for the fire to lessen the stress of an audience. His absence allowed your shoulders to release from their tightened state. With that, you stroked all three strings in a swoop of your thumb, discordant but not unpleasant in its' reverb. Different positions on the wooden board brought about different notes, sliding up and down in crescendos that sounded not unlike the instruments of elders played by the side of the road. A single string worked better for you--at least for now--than attempting to use all three, especially at the same time.

A string twanged when you accidentally pulled the string to the side, and you flinched, looking up to Ahk with a worried look. He didn't seem to mind, so you continued.

He began to hum as he returned to your side, tossing in the smaller twigs to restart the embers of the fire. You tried to ignore him until you realized he was singing in harmony, no words in the tune, but twisting around your lute like vines overgrown with roses.

A burst of fire sprouted from the stone circle, reaching up higher than you stood on your feet. Ahkmen jumped back with a yelp, covering his face automatically with his hands, though he landed back with no more injury than a bruise on his bottom. Your mouth fell open and you dropped the lute, rushing over to his side.

"You are good?" You asked in a frantic voice, your shaking hands hovering above him.

He clasped his head, groaning as he sat up.

"I'm alright," he assured you, patting your knelt thigh. He started to chuckle, "I'm just sort of stupid."

"No, no," you said, but could offer little comfort besides that.

That alone made him snort, his head falling back down to the ground as he laughed. You giggled with him, your shoulders shaking as you covered your mouth, hiding your smile from view.

As you both calmed, he asked something that had been on his mind for a good while.

"Why do you cover your smile whenever you laugh?" He asked in a soft voice, one that demanded no answer.

You paused, your lips parting as your posture straightened.

"I... I do not know," you said, looking away. "It is.. something to... I do not want soldiers to see me smile. They think I am.. 'up to something'."

"Why would they think that?" He asked with a frown.

"I think it is my home, my clothes," you said.

"Where you're from," he mumbled, sighing as he shut his eyes. "I've never liked those damn soldiers. The only people who want to be my father's soldiers are the ones who will abuse the power, and those who abuse power are not good people."

"What do you say?" You asked, furrowing your brow.

"You've probably already realized this, but there's quite a lot of nationalism in Egypt. A lot of my people don't like foreigners," he explained. "It's a crude and primitive frame of thought. I'm sorry."

"It is not for you, to say sorry for," you said, meeting his eye as he turned to you, still lying flat on his back.

"I know," he grunted as he sat up. 

But I am the Prince. Can I claim that? 

"Here, though, there is nothing but us," he said.

He scooted closer to you, resting his palms on your knees.

"You don't need to do that anymore," he said. "I want to see you smile."

"I do not -"

His fingers crawled like spiders up your shirt, teasing your sensitive stomach with light brushes that brought you far too easily into cackling. You fell back, your hands subconsciously coming up to cover your mouth, much to his disappointment and amusement. He reached up, pinning your hands above you with one arm while the other continued to tickle up from your waist and onto your chest as you laughed helplessly.

You continued to writhe in his grasp, your smile wide and blushing as he sat on your hips, pinning you further to the ground. Your legs kicked against the floor, sometimes budging against Ahk's back. Ahk continued to grin at your laughing stupor.

"Stop! Stop!" You cried through the laughter, attempting to wriggle out of the hands pinning you down.

Tears blurred into the edges of your eyes and he finally ceased, leaning back with cheeks aching from his smile.

"And I'll do it again if you don't stop covering yourself up like that," he said, ever so slightly leaning in closer, till he hung over you like the sky.

Nothing but silence from you––the words couldn't form in your head or on your tongue, so you simply nodded, eyes flickering across his features. He fell into a similar silence, scanning your near vacant expression. Close enough to feel your breath.

Your gaze drifted upwards. A halo of stars glowing around him. Above you, pinning you down, as he had weeks or months ago––sneaking you across a river turned into sneaking you down a river, painted stars became the heavens, speaking of your laughter rather than the Gods and their stories. But your eyes remained the same, staring into one another, puzzled by your hesitance to part.

"We must sleep," you said softly, making no move to get up.

"Yeah," he said, and he appeared to be just as reluctant to move.

The fire crackled beside you, now burning through larger branches and leaves that emitted smoke high into the starlit sky. Dancing flames illuminated the dips and rises of his face, the long eyelashes surrounding cold, grey irises, and the curls of his growing hair nearly overtaking his eyes.

You dared not breathe.

[chryzure-archive]

I would like to know more about your ChrysiJacks Moulin Rouge AU 030 I've never seen it but I'm vvvv interested

OKAY, SO FIRST OF ALL—I SHOULD START OUT BY SAYING, IF YOU GET THE CHANCE TO WATCH IT, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE WATCH MOULIN ROUGE. Ewan McGregor is the perfect Christian and he has such good puppy dog eyes, and Nicole Kidman has the prettiest outfits. AND OF COURSE BAZ LUHRMAN IS A FANTASTIC DIRECTOR. I ADORE his directing style (though it is really strange, so keep that in mind!!! If you’ve seen The Great Gatsby with Leonardo DiCaprio, think of that style of directing. It’s the same director.) AND THE MUSIC!!!! Sooo good—in fact, I actually prefer the versions of those songs than the actual pop songs! (since it’s a jukebox musical—with the original song Come What May, which should honestly just be this blog’s theme song.)

ANYWAYYYYY. OKAY. So, I’m currently working on this on the backburner, so I expect to post it here EVENTUALLY, but it starts out with Jacks coming to Paris to visit his good friend, Mistress Luck, the proprietress of the Moulin Rouge. He’s visiting for no reason! None at all! Certainly nothing to do with his break up with Tella (dude…).

Well, Mistress Luck sends him a letter, telling him to very kindly please not visit at all, because he always brings trouble with him (he tends to choose a courtesan at random, kiss her, then slow her inevitable death long enough for him to have fun for a week. It’s awful. He’s awful. I love him.) Unfortunately for her, he can’t read <//3 he’s staying in a ratty hotel that’s basically across the street from the Moulin Rouge.

Interestingly enough, an acting troupe trying to pitch their new play to Mistress Luck (through her top courtesan Chrysi Solstice) is staying in the suite above Jacks’s. He’s mostly irritated with the noise that comes from overhead at all times, but he’s dealing with it as best he can.

Until one day—what do you know!—a certain man from Rangus6 (if… that’s even remotely how you spell Pleck’s home planet, but for the purposes of this, his hometown) comes crashing from his ceiling. The room is obliterated.

Then Jacks is mobbed by the acting crew of the Bargearian Jade, led by Bargie (… oh god, I just realized I get the privilege to write this scene. I never considered the horror of Bargie meeting Jacks. Everyone else, I know how they’d interact with him, but oh no…), and followed very closely byyyyy you! The writer of the play at hand!

One thing leads to another, and Jacks suddenly finds himself roped into a scheme where he’ll pitch the show to the lead courtesan for them (since they’ve been thrown out on multiple occasions at this point, and Pleck really wants his wife’s play to succeed in any way possible).

(I should probably clarify some things: the Moulin Rouge is essentially a high-end prostitution place, where people will put on a show and then take their clients to their rooms later for… yeah. Yeah… but it’s more of an escort place in my AU, just for some class, if that makes sense. There’s still some Yikes™ (pronounced similarly to the goddess Nike) stuff, but more class.)

Well, in the meantime, the Count Elias Bloom (feel free to boo and throw tomatoes. In fact, I encourage it.) comes to the Moulin Rouge to seek the hand of the famed beauty of Chrysi Solstice. Mistress Luck has had a huge hand in making Chrysi very famous, even though Chrysi has expressed that she wants to leave this business to become an artist herself :’) Alas, that is not the case.

((Another clarification: YES, magic exists in this universe. The Fate rules still apply. Chrysi can see ghosts. She has faetelle. It’s a fun mishmash of random magic systems in a story originally written without magic, and I like every second of it :)))

Chrysi is to have a meeting with Elias Bloom (as per Mistress Luck’s request) so they can get the funding for the Moulin Rouge (as they want to become more legitimate in terms of being a theatre establishment.)

UNFORTUNATELY, there is a mixup with Chrysi’s understanding as to who is the Count. Mistress Luck points out the Count being the person that is being bothered by Pleck (long story, but he gets threatened with a gun and it’s not good :))—which transitions from being Elias Bloom to Jacks to Elias Bloom again. During that brief window of Pleck asking Jacks for help, Chrysi looks over. And so begins the trouble of the first act.

Chrysi ends up taking Jacks back to her room. Which is great for the crew of the Bargerian Jade!!! They’re so happy that this little plot of their’s is working out! (C’s a little skeptical, but even he can’t resist Pleck’s wholehearted excitement).

Now comes the most awkward and terrible scene in the story—Chrysi thinks. Jacks is there. To have sex with her. For money.

Jacks thinks. Chrysi wants him there. To pitch the plot. Of the Bargerian Jade’s play.

Horrible, awful, terrible, BUT in my AU, it’s not at all as awkward and cringable the movie scene is. Chrysi merely flirts with Jacks, and he’s happy about it because, okay, she’s pretty and he’s always open to having a fun fling with a girl that’s going to die within the week anyway (since his kiss would’ve killed her).

Things get a little dangerous (meaning only that Jacks almost kisses her and ruins the whole charade) and then he lets it drop that he’s there to pitch the new play of Filly’s.

Chrysi stops.

“You’re not the Count.”

“No, clearly not.”

“The Count’s going to kill you. And if he doesn’t, I will.”

Meanwhile! Elias is knocking on the door, asking her to let him in!!!! Like!!!! Bad!!!!! Bad, bad, bad, evil, horrible, bad!!!!!!!!!!!

Chrysi’s freaking out, she hides Jacks, she lets Elias Bloom in, it’s a mess. She doesn’t want to sell herself to him while another man’s in the room, so she’s like, “Great! I’m feeling a little faint, but if you want to go out for lunch tomorrow, that’ll be awesome.” And she kisses him and pushes him out of the room. Elias Bloom is a little put out, but he’s essentially been promised to Chrysi for the time being by Mistress Luck, so he’s not too upset.

Jacks is mildly offended Chrysi would’ve rather kissed Elias Bloom than him, but before he can be too pissy, Chrysi actually gets a little faint. Her face goes white and she almost passes out in Jacks’s arms. 

Now, Jacks is concerned. He is not one for comforting people in the first place, but nursing them back to health? He is not good at that at all. 

He manages to get her to lay down on the bed, which is right as Elias Bloom walks in again saying that he accidentally left his coat. A horrible time for him to walk in, I know. 

Chrysi, her head spinning (because her faetelle is bothering her significantly rn), comes up with a lie saying that something Elias Bloom said made her think of the play that Jacks is writing, so she simply had to get a meeting with him immediately to write it. 

At this point, Elias Bloom thinks this is all bullshit (rightfully so…. which is not something I thought I’d ever say about him), but the entire crew of the Bargerian Jade pours in (they were listening in to see how well Jacks was doing btw) to add to the convincing nature of the lie. Mistress Luck sees this mess and bursts in, frantic.  

Chrysi is doing damage control as best as she fucking can right now. Her head is killing her, she was about to pass out literally two minutes ago, and she has to drag all of them out of this mess they’ve found themselves in.

Long story short, she confuses Elias Bloom into verbally agreeing to invest in the show that Filly wrote, but actually everyone thinks that Jacks wrote it, and now she’s basically in a contract marriage with Elias. It’s great. She’s dying, both physically and emotionally.

She kicks Jacks out along with everyone else. It’s been a long night for her. 

Well, Jacks sneaks back in later and Chrysi’s act has all dropped. She essentially says that she’ll never be flirty like that again, unless he wants to pay for it in the future, and that she won’t speak to him in the same way. In fact, she doesn’t want to see him unless it’s in the practices and meetings for the new play (since now they all have to act like Jacks is the writer. Hell situation. Awful.) Jacks is like, “Understood, thanks, I’ll leave you alone” (hint: he will not.)

Mistress Luck and he then catch up, which really just means that Mistress Luck is pissed at him for showing up when she told him not to, but she might have a room better suited for him than before. 

So now he’s rooming with Simeon St. Claire. Both of them hate this set-up. Simeon was just fine living alone as the tailor for the girls of the Moulin Rouge (he and Luna Rune are saving up money to run away and get married), but now he has this bastard to account for. 

But Simeon’s petty, so he locks Jacks out of the apartment on a particularly rainy evening. Jacks, unsure of where to go, wanders around until he finds Chrysi’s place (actually a really nice place, just off the street of the Moulin Rouge). She first closes the door in his face, but when she doesn’t hear him leave, she opens it to find him sitting like a drowned rat on her porch, and she lets him in. 

Here they have a wonderful conversation where Chrysi’s talking about the men she has to be the escort for and she’s mean about it. She states that “in the business of loving people, you learn to like them a lot less” and Jacks is immediately smitten. He just doesn’t know it yet. 

Then comes all the rehearsals and rewrites (so much interaction with the Bargerian Jade’s crew and I’m loving all the snippets I’ve written thus far), where, regretfully, Chrysi and Jacks fall in love. Actually, initially Jacks was just some guy Chrysi went to when she was getting sick of Elias Bloom. Now she has feelings for Jacks and she hates it. 

Now they use the excuse that Jacks is the writer so they can meet up in secret. Chrysi’s the happiest she’s been in years. 

But one of the girls is jealous of Chrysi and she lets it slip to Elias Bloom that it’s strange that the writer and the lead actress spend so much time together without the rest of the crew. Elias immediately says he wants to change the ending of the play (written to emulate Chrysi and Jacks’s budding relationship, complete with a secret song for the lovers) and that he wants Chrysi to join him for dinner that evening.

Jacks is getting insanely jealous at this point. He begs Chrysi not to sleep with him, begs her to find any excuse not to go—but unfortunately, Mistress Luck has spoken with Chrysi and informed her that her “secret fling” with Jacks isn’t quite as secret as she might imagine and that she needs to make Elias happy if she wants the Moulin Rouge to succeed. 

Chrysi pleads with Jacks to understand (”You promised me you wouldn’t get jealous.” “How can I not be?” Both are crying :’’’)) and sets out to join Elias Bloom for dinner. 

Unfortunately!! Chrysi starts having a flare up and she faints before she can manage to get there. Mistress Luck gets a doctor to nurse Chrysi back to health and informs her that she must make it up to Elias Bloom in any way possible. 

Meanwhile, Jacks is being tormented by jealousy and he will not stop pacing around like a caged tiger. Pleck is trying his best to calm him down. Nermut’s making things worse by doing the same. C’s not saying anything, and Dar’s actually rather insightful, if also not getting through to Jacks, and Filly’s the only one that actually manages. 

Jacks calms, if only slightly, and waits for Chrysi to join him in the morning. 

When she does, she’s pale and sickly, but she plays it off as best she can. She informs Jacks that no, she did not spend the evening with Elias Bloom—but she’s going to have to, because she has to make it up to him.  

Jacks is heartbroken, but he allows her to. This feeling thing that mortals have to go through is awful and he doesn’t like it at all. 

But as Chrysi’s up there, Jacks is being needled by that same jealous girl and he blows up. He almost kills her by stopping her heart, and then he’s dragged off by Simeon, who tells him that he should’ve never fallen in love with a woman that sells herself. “The jealousy will drive you mad,” he says, and Jacks wanders off in an agitated state. 

He finds Chrysi standing on a balcony with Elias Bloom and they make eye contact and both of them can feel their hearts cracking in their chests. Chrysi immediately pulls away from Elias Bloom, but he sees Jacks and immediately realizes that Chrysi’s been running around with Jacks every time she makes excuses to leave. 

He basically assaults her at this point, and Chrysi’s a sobbing mess. Fortunately, Simeon was in the area after dragging Jacks outside, and he knocks out Elias Bloom. Both Chrysi and Simeon are stunned by what he did, but he then grabs her and returns her to Jacks’s flat (which is also Simeon’s, but whatever. Semantics.)

There, Jacks comforts a crying Chrysi. He comes up with the brilliant plan to run away with her and that she just needs to pack up her things and they’re gone. 

Chrysi does as he requests, but Mistress Luck is there. She tells Chrysi that it’s cruel for her to run off with Jacks when Chrysi knows she’s dying. Chrysi replies by saying she doesn’t care if they’ll only have a year, a month, or a week—so long as she can be with Jacks. Mistress Luck then tells Chrysi that Elias Bloom is obsessed with her—and that he will hunt Jacks down to kill him. There’s some extra guilt thrown in here, because Jacks can only be killed due to the fact that he loves Chrysi. She’s his greatest weakness. 

Chrysi’s stunned and realizes… she probably should save Jacks. So she returns to him and informs him that, regretfully, her greatest wish was to become an actress (a lie) and that she’s going to stay at the Moulin Rouge. Jacks is shocked and confused and hurt, but he’s manhandled out by Elias Bloom’s bodyguard and thrown into a puddle of icy rain water (my poor little drowned rat :(….) I think the stress gets to him, because he just passes out. 

When he wakes up, he feels like he has a fever, but Pleck and Filly are standing there, basically saying it doesn’t make sense that Chrysi would leave him like this—there has to be something more happening. Chrysi loves Jacks a lot. She wouldn’t just leave him.

Jacks tells them to leave him, but their words bother him—and so he returns to the Moulin Rouge on the opening night of the play with a lot of money. He finds Chrysi’s dressing room and insists she take the payment. After all, why should he get her services for free when everyone else has to pay? She’s done such a good job that he almost thought his heart was beating again. 

Meanwhile, Chrysi’s panicking.  She knows that if Elias Bloom sees Jacks, he’ll kill him. She’s trying to push Jacks out of the room, and she’s not accepting the money, and come on, she’s a gifted courtesan, she might as well accept! 

Her heart’s breaking. Her faetelle is acting up. Jacks knows that something’s wrong, because she looks so pale and fragile, but he can’t comfort her like he used to. 

She essentially runs from him to the stage, where the curtain opens on both of them. 

Elias Bloom is in the front row. 

This is bad!!!!!!!

But Jacks throws the money at Chrysi (who’s on the floor, crying and trying not to) and says he’s paid his whore. Then he walks down the aisle to leave. 

But that forgotten song between the lovers? The one Elias Bloom forced them to get rid of? Come What May? Chrysi starts singing it for Jacks and he stops where he is. 

Then he turns around and rushes up to her and hugs her and kisses her for all the world to see. Elias Bloom’s bodyguard is knocked out by Dar. All is well! The show ends and everyone loves it!

But Elias Bloom has a gun of his own. He aims it at Jacks and when he shoots, Chrysi steps in front of it and takes the bullet straight to the heart. 

Elias Bloom starts screaming and wailing, panicked that he’s just killed the woman he was obsessed with. Jacks, on the other hand, looking pale and drawn, just cradles Chrysi close to him as she dies. He’s crying silently and begging her to stay, please stay, and she’s just smiling and stroking his face. 

She dies in his arms like that. 

Yep. That’s that. That’s sorta just… It. That’s the end. Jacks leaves flowers at her grave and curls up by her gravestone and it hurts. I care them and my heart hurty :((((

[mooniefics]

just one night

pairing : reiner braun / reader

word count : 2.9k

tags : fluff, angst, heartache, acknowledgement of reiner’s suffering </3

summary : being a field nurse had it's ups and downs, but everything about taking care of reiner braun was the best and worst thing about your job.

— originally posted 12 / 16 / 20 on ao3 —

"oh, you're finally awake." you set the tray of medical supplies in your hands down on the small desk beside the bed, shutting the privacy curtain before you returned to his side, "i was worried about you, you know?"

though most of his body had regenerated over the seven hours he'd been unconscious, he was still missing a majority of his right hand up to the wrist, the steaming, incomplete appendage he was now examining with a tired look on his face.

"what time did they bring me in?" his voice was husky with sleep, eyes low as they flitted over to look at you.

"around eighteen hundred hours yesterday," you said, placing the back of your hand on his forehead to check his temperature, "i administered some pain meds a few hours ago, but let me know if you need any more."

being a field nurse for the marleyan army wasn't the easiest job in the world, mostly consisting of lots of running around in the trenches with your heavy kit and avoiding as much gunfire and blood splatter as you possibly could while still helping the wounded. you had volunteered to work soon after the conflict with the mid-east allied forces had begun, seeing as it was either that or see your father be drafted out into the eldian unit to become cannon fodder like so many of the soldiers you'd seen barely able to crawl their way back over the sandbags just to bleed out and die before you could even begin to assess their injuries. you stopped keeping count of how many people you couldn't save after your first few days of active combat, becoming more focused on not going insane from how little you slept due to the rumbling of the ground from enemy artillery that shook the walls of the underground quarters and reading the letters your family sent from back home to maintain a shred of morale for the future.

though, the job did have some perks. it was always honorable for eldian families to have someone enlisted, and it also meant you could support your parents with your minuscule paycheck from the government. and, of course, meeting reiner braun was the biggest plus of them all, though you probably wouldn't admit it if anybody asked. you were a hard worker, and evidently had enough natural skill to quickly be promoted to the position that you were at now, assigned as one of the few nurses who monitored the wellness of the warriors and their prospective candidates.

"my regeneration has been slowing down lately, i should have more of my hand back by now." reiner murmured, more to himself than you.

"of course it has, you haven't been eating as well as you should be. i don't know much about titan biology, but i do know that a soldier like you, a warrior no less, shouldn't live off of sandwiches and beer, you've been losing too much weight."

he chuckled, a quick smile flitting across his face before he returned to his previous sulk. "you sound like my mother, chiding me about how i need to take care of myself. isn't there other patients that need your attention?"

"you wish. me and another nurse have already taken care of this entire hall, and you, mr. celebrity, get a room all to yourself." you grabbed a pen and his chart, scribbling down a few notes about his current status while you spoke, "plus, i'm supposed to be checking up on you every hour until you're all put back together, magath's orders."

he paused, thinking to himself before speaking. "so does that mean galliard is ok?" you nodded.

"and pieck?" you nodded again.

"and zeke?" you sighed, but reaffirmed once more.

"you've been checking up on me all night by the looks of it. aren't you tired?"

"gosh reiner, would it kill you to focus on yourself for a minute?" you rolled your eyes at his confusion, pulling up the chair at the desk to his bedside and seating yourself down, "this is my job, i'm used to doing my job. in fact, this is one of the easiest nights i've had in weeks. i don't know about you, but it shocks me that the guy they blew to pieces yesterday afternoon is asking me if i'm the one that needs to get some rest."

his brow furrowed, mouth drawing into a small frown. "sorry. i know that the war has been hard for all of us. i just don't want to make it any harder for you than it's already been."

you couldn't help but smile at his genuine concern, planting your elbows on your thighs and resting your chin in your hands. "you don't have to worry about bothering me, reiner." you replied softly, playfully adding, "you know you're my favorite patient anyways" just to see his cheeks flush red.

"is that so?" he murmured in reply, now smiling with you as he met your gaze.

"maybe." you teased, leaving him hanging for a few moments before you continued, "galliard's always awkward when i'm in the room, jaeger never has much, if anything, to say, and pieck, she's nice to be around, but she always looks so tired i feel a bit bad when i chat for too long with her. so, if it's anyone i'm stuck on the night shift with, i'm glad it's you."

you laughed softly at his expression, feeling a bit sheepish under his gaze. he'd changed quite a bit over the two years you'd known him, the shadows under his eyes deepening with a clear exhaustion, cheekbones becoming more pronounced and face growing gaunter as the stress of the war withered away at his physical and mental wellbeing. before you personally met, you'd always seen reiner as the physical embodiment of marley's armor, with his sturdy, unyielding frame, towering over nearly everyone he met from his stature, and the iron will that never seemed to falter no matter how many times he returned broken to the barrack's infirmary.

but now, you could see how everything had been taking a toll on him, how he was growing thinner and weaker each time he returned from a successful military assignment. you had come to learn that despite his regenerative properties, he felt every bit of pain that came with the injuries he sustained, experiencing the absolute agony of having his limbs shredded and bones shattered by cannon fire in his titan form and still having to push forward on the battlefield. you had an immense respect for him and his unyielding nature, but you always worried. even though you knew he would always manage to get himself back together again, you always worried for him. you remembered how you felt as you peeked over the sandbags, watching with a mixture of awe and dread as reiner threw himself in front of jaeger at the last moment to shield him from the unexpected volley of naval artillery, the way your heart thundered so loudly in your ears at the sight of his titan crumpling.

the relief you felt upon being ordered to his hospital room and finding him still alive was indescribable, and the relief you felt now being able to talk to him, to stare into his tired eyes and take in his handsome features you'd become so familiar with, flushed softly from your playfully exchanged words— you didn't want to see him go again.

"l-let me go get you a blanket," you said, snapping yourself out of your unnecessary thoughts, "i packed it away since i didn't want the steam to overheat you, but now that its just your hand and ankle i think it'll be ok to let you have it back now."

you quickly got up from your seat and slipped past the privacy curtain, opening up the supply cupboard with sheets and extra clipboards and things of the sort to pull out the blanket you'd originally taken off of him and put away.

you had to control yourself, to stop letting yourself be distracted by these thoughts and concerns about him. you knew as well as anyone else in marley that he didn't have long left to live. you hated that everyone referred to it as his 'term', as if after two years passed he could return home to live a peaceful life away from the war and bloodshed, to enjoy the luxuries of a normal existence that had been snatched away from him from the very start of his life. he only had two years left before he had to be eaten by one of those children, children that had similarly had their innocence and adolescence stolen from them by the marleyan government. you had told yourself over and over to not let yourself get so close to him, to not trick yourself into believing that maybe something could work between the two of you after marley's greed for natural resources had been sated and all the nations were finally at peace.

but you knew better than anyone that these feelings had been growing out of control, and each day you spent tending to him, watching him out on the battlefield, finding more and more about who he truly was besides a soldier only fed the fire you'd been fighting between fueling and snuffing out for months now. taking in a deep breath, you forced a smile onto your face, not wanting to concern him with an upset expression and risk dumping all your pathetic emotions out under his scrutiny.

"here we are." you hummed, flapping out the blanket a few times before you stretched it over his lap.

for a moment your face was close to his, close enough to see the small brown spots freckling his golden irises and realize just how intently he was gazing at you. you quickly retreated back to your seat at his bedside, still feeling his stare lingering on you, stopping yourself from asking him what was interesting enough to make him look at you for so long.

for another moment, there was silence, and you debated on making up some excuse to leave the room, but you knew you would have to come back in an hour, and he most likely wouldn't be asleep by then, but he spoke before you could think up any other escape plans.

"you know, i was happy to wake up and see you." you felt your heart skip, blinking at him, trying to make sure you weren't hearing things.

"really?" you mustered, feeling your cheeks grow warm at the sight of his smile.

"yes, really." he affirmed, the brightness on his face dampening a bit as he continued, "most of the time when i sleep, i get a lot of... memories, from my time in paradis, and they're not the most pleasant things to see while i'm asleep. and i was having another one of those dreams just now before i woke up, so it was nice to not be alone, you know? it's always reassuring to see you."

you felt a light flutter in your chest, nodding in response, torn between feeling sympathy for his nightmares or happiness from honest words. no, you had to stop being selfish. you had to stop letting yourself play along in this fantastical idea of a happy future.

"y-yeah, i understand," you replied, fixing your gaze down in your lap as you tried to avoid his intention, "i could put in a request for sleeping aids, if restlessness is becoming an issue."

"you know that's not what i'm trying to say." his hand reached out to rest over yours, giving it a gentle squeeze, imploring you to stop ignoring the obvious.

"reiner." you said firmly, lips pressing into a firm line, "we can't. i can't."

you could feeling that light, airy joy twisting down into something irksome, settling like lead deep in your stomach as he replied. "what's stopping you?"

"everything!" you snapped, stopping yourself to take a deep breath and regain control of your volume before you began again, "everything.. this war, this never-ending conflict, and.. y-your term, your life-"

"you think i don't know that?" he said softly, too softly, somber gaze flitting between the hand in his grasp and your face. he seemed so small just now, seated up against wall behind the hospital bed that was too little for him, barely covered by the thin, old blanket that was fraying at the seams, not at all like the stoic, unwavering warrior he made himself out to be in the public eye. "don't you think i'm tired of pretending? tired of having people toss the topic of my death back and forth like they're discussing vacation plans? i love marley, and i love what i can do for the people who look up to me, for the people who rely on me to be the hero. you never ask me about paradis, you never ask me about how i feel about all of this, you never expect me to be the hero, and you're still always here to listen, always here when i need you to be. but i just want to feel like i don't have to worry about all that, even if it's just for one night... i know it sounds counterintuitive, but i want to pretend like things will be alright.. for you, for me, for everyone. can't we just have this one night?"

your hand trembled, fingers lacing easily with his like you'd risked doing a few times before, tears pricking your eyes, feeling like there was something cinching around your heart and lungs and squeezing tight. the heat of his hand in yours was pleasant, calloused palm fitting perfectly against the contour of your own, thumb stroking softly over the side of your own hand.

you swallowed your apprehension, steadying your breath and blinking away the mistiness threatening to spill down onto your face as you moved from the chair to take a seat on the side of his bed. "ok. one night."

the relief that bloomed across his expression warmed your heart, the stress that had been creasing his face softening back into the relaxed, sleepy looking smile that you always poked fun at when you brought him his breakfast in the morning.

"you have to be up at seven, so lay down right, i don't want you to complain to me about your back hurting tomorrow." he complied, shifting back down in the bed to rest his head back on the pillow, allowing you to let go of his hand momentarily to tuck the blanket around him. "do you want me to go get you something to help you sleep?"

"no." he murmured, gazing up at you, "just stay here with me, please. i'll sleep just fine as long as you're here."

there was something so childlike about his words, not in the way of immaturity or naivety, but something that just made you want to take care of him, to protect him from the corruption of the world outside of the obsolete confinements of his hospital room.

"i will." you said, letting your other hand find the side of his face, "i promise."

and so you stayed, you stayed as long as he needed you to, alternating between stroking his cheek and slowly running your fingers through his hair. there were no words exchanged, but the silence was comforting, the quietest night you'd both had in weeks, only occupied by the intermittent footsteps of the other nurses making their rounds around the hall and the soft evening breeze blowing through the half-open window above the desk. you didn't care for how long you had to sit there, replying back to the small movements of his hands with your own reassuring squeeze as he slowly but surely fell back asleep. but even after his breathing had steadied out, and his grasp on your hand had loosened, you still stayed seated at his bedside, just gazing down at his sleeping face as your thought to yourself.

the war against the mid-east allied forces had come to a rocky close, most likely guaranteeing marley at least a few months of tension-filled peace before another nation made their strike on their borders once again. but you knew that marley wouldn't wait for that, you knew that they wouldn't stop until they had the world in their hands, paradis included. you'd heard the private murmurs of jaeger before you entered his room, seen the open pages of his journal when he fell asleep at his desk, you knew what he had been planning. and you knew that reiner would have to go running back to the island once again, and even if jaeger's grand scheme didn't drag him there by his collar, he would probably go searching out his own resolution him.

you checked your watch. 2:10. it was your turn to check the patients in critical condition down the hall. you sighed quietly, pulling your hand away from his and leaning down to gently press a kiss on his forehead, something you risked doing a few times before when you had these especially long conversations that made your heart ache for him.

but at least, you thought to yourself as you flicked off the lights, reluctantly leaving the room and shutting the door behind you as quietly as you possibly could, at least you could give him just one night of repose.

[arrestjellyfish]

Rainbow Blossoms

Chapter 1: Saturday

[Sanders Sides, romantic prinxiety / Virgil/Roman]

Summary:

Tattoo artist Roman Prince goes to the local florist to visit his elderly friend, Céleste Tempȇte, and pick some flowers to use as inspiration for a new design.

But instead of finding a soft old woman amongst the iridescent display of flora, he meets her anxious emo grandson. Virgil Tempȇte is everything you would not expect to find in a flower shop.

Cue intrigued simp noises.

Other chapters: 1 | 2 | 3

Chapter warnings: swearing, suggestive language, mention of mild illness, brief mention of artwork depicting mild blood

Chapter word count: 6,900

Read on AO3 or below!

[Also available as a podfic!]

oOo

It was unusually warm for a midsummer day in England. Crowds of people had flocked to the streets in excitement, hoping to soak up the best of the sunshine before the clouds were bound to return with a vengeance later that week.

Roman waltzed across the cobblestone road, inhaling rich scents of earthy vegetables and fresh, salty fish. Market vendors hailed from every direction, boasting low prices on sugar snap peas (freshly-picked that morning) and 2 kilos for the price of one on the juiciest peaches. Pedestrians of every age bustled around, energised by the atmosphere.

A burly man cut across Roman’s path, lugging a crate of dirt-caked carrots across the road. Roman had to sidestep to avoid crashing into him. He bumped into a metal pole on one of the many market stands in his haste, bruising his arm.

‘Are you quite all right, young man?’ the woman behind the stall asked in a kind voice.

A wide grin broke onto his face as he rubbed his aching arm. ‘I’m wonderful, thank you, madam!’

He adored market day.

His phone chimed in his pocket, and he knew it would be Remy demanding he get his arse back to work. Really, Roman knew he should have been hurrying back to the studio, but how could he possibly be expected to forego a gentle stroll through the town centre on such a wondrous day as this? 

Besides, he had a perfectly valid excuse to be out of the stuffy tattoo parlour on this bright afternoon. The client he had had a consultation with earlier had requested quite an intricate design for their future tattoo, consisting of various flowers. Roman felt a duty to purchase a bouquet for reference, wanting even his initial sketches to live up to his reputation as an artist. He hadn’t been nominated tattooist of the month three months in a row for nothing, after all.

To aid in the completion of his quest, he knew the perfect, quaint little flower shop hidden away behind the sandstone buildings of the high street. There was an abundance of flower stalls dotted along the market, of course, though Roman was well-versed in selecting the finest of flora (having had plenty of opportunities to woo handsome young men in his 25 years) and knew a wider selection would be available at Beau Blossoms.

There was also a sense of loyalty that made him skip past the flower stalls and duck into the familiar crooked backstreet. He had become well acquainted with his favourite florist’s elderly owner, Céleste Tempȇte, who Roman had grown to see as one of his dearest friends, even if their 50-year age gap was unconventional.

He quickened his pace as he neared the modest shopfront, it’s pale blue paint chipping from years of wear. The windows were adorned with an iridescent display of the most gorgeous flower arrangements, as usual.

‘Good afternoon, mon fleur d’amour!’ Roman sang heartily as he pushed the glass door open, ducking his head with practised ease to avoid hitting it on the bell that jingled above him.

He breathed deeply at the onslaught of pungent floral scents. The intensity of the pollen had overwhelmed him at first all those months ago, though he had grown accustomed to it and now welcomed the attack on his senses as if greeting an old friend.

Crooked, aged floorboards creaked beneath him as he stepped around the corner of the entranceway. ‘How is the fairest woman in town fairing on this fair day?’

Roman looked up at the wooden desk where Céleste would always be slumped, doing a sudoku puzzle and smiling widely at Roman’s antics.

Then he froze.

Sitting in Céleste’s rickety stool was a complete stranger. They looked around Roman’s age, perhaps a tad younger, and were a decidedly different sight from what Roman had expected.

Céleste was a stout woman with silver hair who would often wear pastel floral dresses, with a mint-green shawl perpetually draped across her rounded shoulders. This new person looked similarly below-average in height, though otherwise was a polar opposite. They appeared scrawny and the pale skin on their hands and neck was practically swallowed by an oversized black and purple tartan jacket. Their ripped black skinny jeans (complete with chains and studded belt) were a far cry from Céleste’s nude pantyhose and where Céleste’s grey eyes would crinkle with delight at Roman’s entrance, this person’s dark eyes were wide with surprise and framed by the blackest eyeliner and smokey purple eyeshadow.

‘You’re not my Céleste,’ Roman said, feeling robbed.

The stranger’s eyes grew wider still and their eyebrows pulled down in anger. ‘Dude, what the fuck? You flirt with my grandma?’

Roman held his hands up in surrender, hoping to placate the sudden hostile atmosphere. ‘Relax, Count Drag-ula. I’m gay.’

‘Oh…’ the stranger breathed, seeming humbled and embarrassed by their outburst.

They slumped in their seat, having been sitting ramrod straight since Roman had entered. Then their arms folded around their torso and their shoulders hunched up as if protecting their neck. Bright purple hair fell over their eyes as they looked to the floor. The intimidating air that had been so pronounced in them seconds previously faded and was replaced by what Roman recognised as debilitating shyness.

It clicked pretty quickly after that.

‘You must be Virgil Tempȇte, right?’

Céleste had mentioned her grandson on many occasions during their friendly chats. Mostly she only mentioned him in passing, offhandedly saying that he had moved back home after a year in London, or boasting about what Virgil had gotten her for her 75th birthday (a vintage encyclopedia of 18th-century fashion trends which Roman had had the good fortune of borrowing). Though a few months previously, in an act of desperation, she had spoken much more candidly about her grandson. She had sought Roman’s advice on how she could help her beloved petite chauve-souris to become more confident in himself and overcome his severe anxiety.

Roman’s heart had warmed in hearing the old woman care so intensely about her grandson’s wellbeing. When Roman himself had been struggling with his confidence back in school, his parents had not exactly been forthcoming with support. It was refreshing to witness such unconditional love between family members.

His advice had mainly been that there was not much that Céleste could do to enforce a stronger sense of self-worth in Virgil, but that she should simply let him know that she loved and supported him and would be there for him as he grew.

Now, Roman presumed Virgil had come out of his shell, at least a little, given his rather eccentric makeup and clothing choices. Though he was still curled into himself protectively as he gave Roman a wary look through a wisp of his fringe.

‘How do you know my name?’

‘Céleste talks about you a lot,’ Roman said easily, offering one of his winning smiles.

It was, unfortunately, not met with the same enamoured responses he was accustomed to receiving. In fact, rather than dazzled by Roman’s charm, Virgil looked mortified.

Hearing that someone had been talking about you behind your back to a complete stranger was likely a little distressing to someone with an anxiety disorder, Roman realised. He moved the conversation on quickly.

‘I’m Roman Prince.’ He stepped forward to hold out his hand, which Virgil took tentatively. His fingertips were smooth. ‘I imagine your grandmother has mentioned me before.’

‘Um,’ Virgil stalled, pulling his hand back to himself and shaking his jacket sleeve so that it fell back over his fingers. ‘I’m not sure.’

Indignance overwhelmed Roman’s being.

‘Oh, come now.’ He leaned sideways against the desk, sticking out his chin just enough to profess confidence, not enough to intimidate. He had refined his poses down to a tee. ‘Your grandmother must have told you tales of the handsome young prince who brightens her days with a soft serenade,’ he finished the sentence in a lilting melody.

Virgil’s eyebrows shot up and his lips parted (they were a beautiful splash of rose against his fair skin, Roman thought). Pride swelled in Roman at the look of recognition on Virgil’s face. Céleste must have regaled her family with plenty of enthralling stories of Roman’s magnetism and penchant for chivalry.

‘Oh my God.’

‘Everything you’ve heard is true,’ Roman drawled with a confident smirk.

‘You’re the guy that grabbed the cactus like a microphone, aren’t you?’

Roman’s smile dropped instantly at the way Virgil’s lips tugged up in amusement.

‘Yes, well.’ He bridled a little, standing upright again. ‘T’was not my finest moment.’

‘Yeah, maybe not,’ Virgil mumbled. He bit his lip in what Roman assumed was an effort to contain laughter.

Heat flooded Roman’s cheeks and he promptly spun away from the table.

‘So she would tell you that story and nothing of my usual elegance,’ Roman grumbled, starting to delicately run his fingers over the blossoms displayed on the shelves. He had not taken Céleste for one to actively humiliate him.

‘No, she - I -’ Virgil stammered. ‘I’m sorry. Grandma - she has said plenty of nice things about you too, I just…’

Roman turned back to him, noting the stiffness in his posture and the pained look that pinched his features.

‘That’s just the one that sticks in the mind, y’know?’ Virgil’s long arm stretched upwards as he scratched at the back of his neck. Roman thought it might have been a way to dispel the awkwardness as Virgil’s elbow bent at such an odd angle that it partially hid his flushed cheek.

Not one to hold a grudge unnecessarily - especially not against such endearing young men - Roman smiled softly and nodded in acknowledgement.

Virgil fidgeted on his stool, seeming hesitant, then slid off of it to stand up. Though he didn’t seem much more at ease on his feet, shuffling nervously and shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. ‘You, um, you're the guy that brings her fruit tea in the mornings and texts her cute animal videos, right?’

‘C’est moi!’ Roman said with a bright grin, hoping his cheery disposition would comfort Virgil somewhat. He felt an inexplicable need to ensure the other man felt calm.

‘Well… thanks,’ Virgil mumbled, pulling his hands out of his pockets, picking at the frayed sleeves around his fingers, then burying them in his pockets again. ‘Dad and I kinda worry about her being here on her own every day, since we live a bit further out of town. It’s… nice to hear her talk about you.’

Not for the first time, and what he was sure certainly wouldn’t be the last, Roman’s chest filled with joy at hearing about the sheer love shared between the Tempȇtes.

‘But of course,’ he said, happy to see Virgil’s shoulders soften from their previous rigidity. ‘I make sure she does not go a day without seeing a friendly face, though I’m sure as wonderful as she is Céleste must have made plenty of friends in her years here.’

‘Yeah, but none like you,’ Virgil replied without pause. There was a small smile curling his lips and it was the first genuine show of happiness Roman had witnessed in him. It was quite captivating.

Then Virgil’s shoulders were suddenly raised to his neck again and he rocked backwards on his feet, putting some distance between them (at least as much as was possible in a 20-square-metre shop packed full with buckets and bundles of flowers). Roman tried to ignore the swell of disappointment in his chest.

He did not think himself skilled at much beyond his talent for tattooing and the great art of courtship, though he was confident in his ability to read the atmosphere of a room and knew to change the subject before the anxious man became any more uncomfortable.

‘So,’ Roman started, turning back to the various bunches of flowers that sat in the water troughs around the edges of the shop. He cradled the bright bloom of a sunflower in his palms and lifted it slightly from its water to better admire its beauty. ‘Where is the celestial woman? She must be on quite a grand adventure to have left behind her beloved blossoms!’

‘She’s sick.’

Roman’s stomach lurched and he felt the colour drain from his face in an instant. The sunflower dropped back into the bucket with a light splash and clang as the stem hit the metal base.

He snapped his gaze onto Virgil, who had opted to take his hands out of his pockets again and was twiddling a stem of white hyacinths between his fingers. He seemed completely undisturbed by the words that had just left his mouth.

‘My gosh, will she be all right?’ Roman asked, his voice shaking. ‘Is she in the hospital? When did this happen?’

‘Oh, shit.’ Virgil’s eyes blew wide and the white petals stopped their twirling in his hold. ‘I didn’t mean - she’s just got the flu.’

Roman was unconvinced of how reassuring that should have been, given Céleste’s ripe age.

Apparently his uncertainty was palpable as Virgil hurriedly continued, ‘My dad’s looking after her. It’s really mild, don’t worry.’

A massive sigh of relief escaped Roman and he felt the tension that he didn’t realise had seized his body begin to ebb away. Céleste had proudly proclaimed her son to be the most attentive medical nurse in the world, and given her compassionate nature Roman had not doubted for a second that that would be true of her own offspring. She was in safe hands.

‘Dear Zeus, don’t scare me like that!’ Roman cried with a steadying hand on his chest, though it was not a sincere reprimand and was followed by a breathy laugh.

‘Sorry,’ Virgil said, smiling apologetically.

Despite Roman’s brief upset, the misunderstanding seemed to have broken the last of the tension between them and Virgil did not flinch away when Roman took a step closer. He did it under the pretence of wiping his fingers dry on the tatty, damp hand towel that perpetually hung on a hook in the wall. They pulled away wetter than they had been before. ‘It’s no issue, Virgil.’

‘If it helps,’ Virgil offered, ‘I reacted just the same when Dad first told me.’

‘Oh?’ Roman prompted, feeling like he wasn’t ready for Virgil to stop talking yet.

The slighter man tended to squirm a little as he spoke, though not in an uncomfortable way; it seemed to be habitual more than anything. Habit or not, his lithe body twisted in such a subtle way that it was almost reminiscent of a pulse or a rhythmic dance. Roman found himself entranced by Virgil’s mannerisms as well as his character. And, undoubtedly, his beauty. ‘How so?’

Roman leaned his hip against the desk, locking his arms in a way that gently pushed his chest forward and stretched his t-shirt lightly. He knew it would be subtle enough to avoid arousing suspicion. Though, he thoroughly hoped that would be the only form of arousal he was avoiding.

Right on cue, Virgil’s eyes danced down to Roman’s chest, then flitted sideways to the window, back to Roman’s chest (where they lingered for a couple of seconds), and then down to the floor where they stayed. Roman smirked.

‘Yeah, I -’ Virgil cleared his throat ‘- I freaked out a bit. I actually told her I was gay the day before she caught it and I thought I’d, like, shocked her body or something.’

A surprised delight washed over Roman and his teeth bared in a disbelieving smile. Wasn’t this just perfect?

Virgil’s dark eyes - which on closer inspection Roman could now see were mismatched, one being a rich brown and the other green - rose to meet his gaze. Roman watched as he crumbled into himself with the realisation of what he had just said.

‘Oh my God, why did I tell you that?’ Virgil lamented under his breath, squinting his eyes shut and bringing his thumbnail up to his mouth.

‘I wonder,’ Roman murmured through a wide smile. It never failed to invigorate him when his charms effectively ensnared a cute boy. His cheekiness ran high on the excitement. ‘Now as much as I would truly love to stand here with you for as long as the hours in the day would allow, I do have a request of you.’

‘Uh… sure,’ Virgil mumbled around his thumbnail. He had recovered quickly from Roman’s flirting, though the colour was still high on his cheekbones, and Roman knew better than to think it was just from the warm weather. ‘What is it?’

‘I need your assistance in gathering the gayest selection of flowers possible.’

A sharp exhale blew from Virgil’s mouth, slightly muffled around the hand which still sat flush against his chin. It sounded partway between a sigh and a nervous laugh. ‘Care to elaborate?’

‘Anything for you, darling,’ Roman said in his smoothest baritone. His heart skipped at how Virgil’s fingers clenched tightly around the hem of his sleeve. ‘I’m a tattoo artist at Rainbow Skins Parlour - have you heard of it?’

Virgil’s eyes lit up beautifully and his hand dropped back to his side giving Roman a perfect view of those rose petal lips that enamoured him so. ‘Oh man, that’s so cool. My friend got her tat done with you. She said you guys were super accommodating of her dysphoria and stuff.’

‘That’s the aim,’ Roman beamed. He was immensely proud of the atmosphere he and his coworkers had created at the studio. Their mission was to create a safe space for those in the LGBT+ community who wanted to get inked and it seemed from all of the positive feedback they received that they had achieved that vision. ‘One of my clients wants a design full of flowers that symbolise gay love, so I came seeking a florist’s expertise.’

‘I dunno if Grandma is too hung up on the symbolism of the flowers, to be honest,’ Virgil said hesitantly, picking at his fingernails then folding his hands behind his back. ‘She’s more about the biology and aesthetics of it all.’

‘Well then lucky for me that Aphrodite blessed me with your glorious presence today.’ Roman settled to sit on the edge of the desk. It being quite low rise, his figure sunk slightly so that he was now directly eye-level with Virgil. The other man’s eyes did not leave Roman’s face. ‘You look like the poetic type.’

Green and brown eyes squinted suspiciously. ‘I bet my Grandma told you I studied creative writing.’

‘Even so,’ Roman shrugged and inched his foot along the wooden floor, letting the toes of his Vans bump against the heel of Virgil’s Doc Marten boot. Virgil did not move. ‘Am I correct in assuming you’ve done your fair bit of research into queer imagery?’

There was a pause wherein Virgil pouted and remained stubbornly silent. Then, after a few seconds: ‘You can’t go wrong with a green carnation.’

The tip of Roman’s tongue stuck out with a smile and he bit it lightly in amusement. Virgil’s cheeks went an endearing shade of dusty pink and he spun around, quite inelegantly bumping into the workbench that stood in the middle of the room. He grabbed a pair of faintly rusted shears with trembling fingers.

‘Uh, so we’ve got a few of those back here,’ Virgil blurted, rushing to the opposite corner of the shop floor.

Roman sauntered after him quietly. He peered over the other man’s shoulder as he pulled a large bushel from a bucket. The plant displayed a large, beautifully frilly bloom of lime green blossom.

A sharp, metallic snap from the shears resounded around the small room and the large bunch was lowered back to the water to leave a single flower held gently between Virgil’s slender fingers.

When Virgil turned back around, a quiet gasp escaped him as he bounced back, only just preventing himself from crashing right into Roman.

‘What, you couldn’t wait over there?’ If Virgil was trying to sound anything other than flustered and breathless, he had failed miserably.

Roman held his hand out wordlessly with a gentle smile.

The flower was pressed into his palm, and Roman made sure to capture it quickly enough to delicately brush his fingertips against Virgil’s.

In the dappled beam of sunlight that penetrated the packed floral displays in the window, the carnation was much the same shade as Virgil’s left eye. Roman hummed quietly as he inspected the flower, then looked up, delighted that Virgil was watching him.

‘Beautiful,’ Roman purred, unfaltering as he looked into Virgil’s eyes.

A loud snort of laughter cut the tension between them and Roman felt his brow furrow.

‘Okay, Romeo,’ Virgil huffed, shaking his head with a faint smirk. He avoided Roman’s eyes. ‘This is a fleuriste, not a fromagerie.’

Roman felt a thrill rush through him (which was only in part accredited to Virgil’s sudden fluent French accent). Apparently such simple flirting tactics would not suffice with this suitor. The promise of a slight challenge was electrifying to him. He did love to play this game.

He lifted the carnation and tucked it behind his ear like a pencil, smiling when Virgil giggled under his breath at what must have been a silly image. ‘What else may you suggest we add to our beau, gay bouquet?’

A few minutes passed by with Virgil selecting and snipping flowers, explaining the historical queer culture behind them as he went. Roman nodded along and dutifully made noises of interest, though did not dare to butt into Virgil’simpassioned monologue.

It was enchanting to hear Virgil ramble freely on a subject that so obviously enthralled him. He spoke in such a way that made even the most mundane facts feel visceral with descriptive language and Roman couldn’t bear to interrupt such eloquent poetic prose.

He only realised how little he himself had contributed to the conversation when Virgil trailed off with an apology.

A pile of evenly cut lavender, violets, gladioli, calla lilies and, of course, green carnations lay in front of Virgil on the workbench and his fingers fidgeted with some of the lilac petals gently.

‘Please, don’t apologise,’ Roman insisted. He stood opposite Virgil on the other side of the islanded workbench and leaned his elbows on the shabby surface, carefully staying clear of the gardening tools that were scattered around it. ‘You’re incredibly knowledgeable of this subject.’

‘Yeah, employing really subtle methods of representation kind of became my solace in university, you know?’ Virgil said faintly, his eyes fixed on where he weaved a long, detached flower stem between his fingers. ‘Being a paranoid, closeted creative writing student will do that to you.’

A cloud of dejection smothered the sunny atmosphere in the room.

‘Classic fairy tales were my own escape as a closeted teen,’ Roman offered, suspecting Virgil would not want such a heavy topic resting on his shoulders alone.

‘Oh, yeah?’ Virgil finally looked up with an eager intrigue dancing in his eyes.

Roman stretched his arm across the table so that Virgil could better see the tattoo that decorated his right arm upwards of his elbow. He rolled the short sleeve of his t-shirt up to his shoulder to reveal the whole of it. (If he flexed his arm slightly to better highlight his muscles, Virgil did not say anything about it.) He was immensely proud of the artwork on his arm, displaying a busy conglomeration of various fairy tale motifs all interwoven including a bitten red apple, a shattered glass slipper, and a frog wearing a crown. Though the focus of the design was a bird carrying a golden chain and a pair of red shoes, with a millstone around its neck.

‘Fuck yeah, The Juniper Tree,’ Virgil breathed.

‘You know it?’ Roman asked, surprised that Virgil had recognised the more nuanced imagery.

‘I love the Brothers Grimm.’ With a slight creak of the wood beneath him, Virgil sat sideways on the workbench and leaned to get a closer look at Roman’s arm. ‘I wouldn’t have taken you for a fan of more macabre stories.’

‘Well, I must admit in terms of imagery I appreciate the darker motifs,’ Roman indicated the depiction of a bloodied dagger hidden amongst a tangle of thorns on his bicep, ‘but when it comes to the stories I do prefer a good old-fashioned happy ending.’

Virgil sucked his teeth and leant his chin on his hand with a sigh, putting on an exaggerated air of disappointment. ‘Of course you do.’

‘Please, how could I not appreciate a handsome prince bursting into song and falling for a mysterious, beautiful stranger then doing everything in his power to woo them?’ Roman angled his body closer to Virgil. The edge of the workbench was pressed quite awkwardly into his thigh, but it was worth the slight numbness in his leg to watch Virgil’s eyelashes flutter and his chest rise and fall more quickly in response to how close they were. Roman purposefully allowed his eyes to linger over Virgil’s lips. ‘Doesn’t that remind you of someone?’

The lips pulled into a smirk and Roman’s gaze climbed up to see mirth sparkling in Virgil’s eyes.

‘What?’ Roman asked, only mildly offended.

It was proving to be something of a quest trying to ascertain which methods of flirting were working on Virgil. One minute the man was a blushing, stuttering mess, then the next he was openly laughing at Roman’s attempts to court him. Still, as the knights in his favourite stories never gave up in the face of extreme danger, he would not be deterred by Virgil’s stubbornness. It was obvious the man was interested in him but was perhaps a bit bratty. If anything that only made Roman all the more eager to win him over.

‘Nothing at all,’ Virgil shrugged. His tone was remarkably insincere. ‘So are you just thirsty for medieval knights or do you have some delusion of grandeur that I should steer clear of?’

It was cocky, and the man’s posture proclaimed it. He held his head high, baring his neck (and what a lovely, slender, pale, begging-to-be-decorated-with-splotches-of-purple neck it was). Though Roman saw through the bravado instantly.

He leaned in further, the edge of the bench completely cutting off the blood flow to his leg now, though he hardly cared. Virgil’s eyes darted between Roman’s gaze and the edges of the room hastily, as if the urge to look away and the urge to hold his ground were battling each other in his mind. His confident stance faltered slightly as Roman drew closer, their faces now mere inches apart.

Roman murmured lowly, ‘Why, Virgil? Are you struggling to find a reason to stay away from me?’

The once-pearly cheeks in front of him were now practically glowing pink.

The adrenaline that so often accompanied a successful courtship was running rampant in Roman’s veins and his heartbeat pounded in his ears. Matched with the fact that he was practically drunk off of the lidded quality to Virgil’s gorgeous eyes, Roman almost missed the melodic jingling of a bell.

It wasn’t until a loud, cheery voice called out that Roman realised they were not alone anymore.

‘Kiddo, you forgot your packed lunch!’

Virgil scrambled off of the workbench, and Roman followed his lead by standing back upright, albeit a lot more calmly.

‘Dad, I’m with a customer,’ Virgil grumbled, crossing his arms tightly across his chest.

Roman indulged in watching Virgil’s face go even pinker before turning to the entrance of the shop.

A stout man stepped out from the entranceway with a wide grin and a tupperware box cradled in his hands. His freckles were unmatched by either his mother or his son, though Roman could spy the slight similarities between their features. This was Patton Tempȇte. His face lit up with joy when his gaze fell on Roman.

‘And who’s this?’ Mr Tempȇte asked excitedly, his eyes sparkling at his son as he bounced on his toes.

‘Grandma’s friend, Roman Prince,’ Virgil mumbled. ‘The one who brings her tea and stuff.’

Mr Tempȇte made a delighted noise of surprise.

‘A pleasure to meet you, Mr Tempȇte.’ Roman smiled widely, offering his open hand. He winced slightly as he stepped forward and pins and needles exploded in his thigh. ‘I truly adore your mother, and your son is quickly beginning to grow on me too.’ He shot a quick wink to Virgil.

The look of utter betrayal on Virgil’s face made it difficult to contain a chuckle.

‘It’s wonderful to meet you too, Roman!’ Mr Tempȇte beamed, shuffling the tupperware into the crook of his elbow to shake Roman’s hand energetically. ‘And don’t bother calling me “Mr” or “Sir” or any of that silliness, Patton’s my name so feel free to wear it out! I would give you a big old hug, but I don’t wanna pass on Maman’s flu.’

‘How is she?’ Roman immediately asked, truly concerned for his friend.

‘She’s just fine,’ Patton nodded, seeming to approve of Roman’s concern. ‘She’s pretty much through it all now, I’m just forcing her to stay home for a couple more days as a precaution.’

‘I can’t imagine she’s too thrilled about being housebound,’ Roman sniggered knowingly.

Patton rolled his eyes dramatically with a smile. ‘Not at all. I tell you, she’s untameable, always raring to get out with her friends and go experiencing the world. Honestly, I always say she’s more of a 22-year-old than Virgil is! Isn’t that true, kiddo?’

A faint swell of dread built inside Roman’s stomach at the way Mr Tempȇte had phrased those words. He had probably meant no harm, but it didn’t sound like that kind of critical comparison would do much to heighten Virgil’s confidence.

Sure enough, when Roman’s gaze flickered over to him it was clear those words seemed to have struck the wrong chord. The younger man tugged his sleeves further over his fingers and shrugged, though the movement was so stiff and frantic that it was more resemblant of a reflexive jolt.

‘Whatever, Dad,’ Virgil muttered under his breath, scowling at his feet.

It was disheartening to witness Virgil’s fiery wit be snuffed out so swiftly. Roman felt out of place in the exchange and feigned interest in a sprig of leaves in the flower pile. He subtly massaged his thigh under the table to ease the remnants of tingling from his pins and needles.

‘Oh…’ The energy was drained from Patton’s voice, and Roman looked up to see hurt briefly flash in his eyes before he plastered on a bright smile once more. ‘Well, I’ll be out of you guys’ hair. I just wanted to bring you your food.’

‘I don’t need a packed lunch, I can pick something up on the way back.’

‘Either way, it’s here if you get peckish before closing time.’ Patton placed the tupperware beside the register and apparently couldn’t resist drumming the lid in a gentle rhythm. Virgil groaned and Patton giggled. ‘Listen, be thankful I’m your delivery man. I caught your grandma lacing up her running shoes wanting to bring this to you.’

Roman chuckled lightly to himself. That certainly sounded like Céleste.

For the first time since Patton had entered the shop, Virgil looked up from the floor and his eyes locked onto Roman. It was as if his laughter had reminded Virgil of his presence.

Virgil quickly shot his father a pointed look. ‘Okay thanks, dad. Bye.’ The words merged into each other in his haste.

To his credit, Patton didn’t seem to be upset by his son’s eagerness to get rid of him.

‘It was lovely meeting you, Roman!’ Patton waved with a wide smile, already making his way out of the shop. ‘See you later, ma petite chauve-souris!’

Virgil’s huff of annoyance was drowned out by the bell jingling again.

The awkward tension was thick.

‘So, can you make flower arrangements?’ Roman asked casually, choosing to entirely ignore the stunted exchange with Virgil’s father. It seemed like Virgil would not have wanted to acknowledge it, given his obvious embarrassment.

‘Um, not really,’ Virgil mumbled, still hugging himself tightly. He peered out from his fringe hesitantly and Roman did not miss how his body relaxed when their eyes met. ‘I mean - okay, yeah. Kind of,’ he corrected. ‘Grandma taught me a little bit when I was younger. Mainly I just do it for fun, though. I’ve never made one for a customer.’

It would have been responsible for Roman to simply take his flowers as they were, pay for them, and get back to work, leaving Virgil to do his job. He could even have left his number and hoped Virgil would have the confidence to text him later on. Though, looking at the slump of Virgil’s posture and the way his sleeves were clawed and pulled taut by his painted fingernails, Roman felt a desire, nay, a duty to ensure Virgil was smiling again before he left.

‘Fancy trying your hand at it?’ Roman suggested gently, not wanting to pressure the man who was clearly on edge.

Virgil’s gaze flitted between Roman’s face and the workbench. His fingertips danced on his sleeves as he considered the flowers and Roman realised he was itching to reach out and touch them. ‘I can try, I guess.’

Hesitant hands pulled away from purple sleeves and within seconds Virgil was rustling through the stems with intent. Roman leaned over the surface slightly, though with no sly objective in mind to fluster Virgil this time. He simply wished to watch him craft.

‘I’m not very good,’ Virgil said quite stunted, even as he started rearranging the flowers into colour-coordinated piles with a clear artistic goal in mind. ‘So, you know, don’t expect much.’

Roman knew the self-deprecating tactic well; how one hoped that by lowering everyone’s expectations, they could avoid harsh critique of their work. He had employed it plenty of times himself before he had grown more confident in his artistic abilities.

‘It doesn’t have to be perfect,’ Roman decided on saying. It would hopefully relieve the pressure Virgil had put on himself.

A small smile tugged at Virgil’s lips and he raised his eyes briefly from the flowers to send what seemed to be a look of thanks to Roman.

‘Besides, I trust that you have an artistic streak in you.’ Roman felt more comfortable in reigniting their previous flirtatiousness after having coaxed a smile out of Virgil. ‘I mean, with such a steady hand and aesthetic eye for that makeup, I’ll be lucky if the bouquet is half as beautiful.’

Virgil swiftly knelt down on the floor to reach under the bench - where Céleste kept the floral foam, Roman remembered - though Roman caught a glimpse of a wide smile and pink-dusted cheekbones before his face was hidden.

‘Basket or pot?’ Virgil called up from the floor.

Roman dropped to his knees and sent Virgil a bright smile underneath the table. ‘Whatever you want. I’m giving you full creative control.’

‘Risky move.’ Virgil raised his eyebrows with a cheeky smirk. ‘Our most expensive arrangements can rake up to one-hundred-and-fifty quid.’

‘All right, full creative control as long as it’s under forty pounds.’

Time went by fluidly from then on as they chatted over Virgil’s work. His flower placements were tentative at first, and his eyes kept darting up to check Roman’s face for a reaction, but Roman only ever smiled lightly and continued the conversation. (A couple of times his text tone rang out loudly, though their talking remained unfettered by the mild interruptions.)

Eventually, Virgil became more certain of his decisions and was tapping into skills Roman was wholly unprepared for. His slender hand pulled a leaf stripper swiftly down long stems with practised ease, he shuffled the flowers around between his fingers fluidly and his features smoothed as he lowered the blooms into their rightful places in the arrangement.

Roman had no idea how long he had been in the florist by the time Virgil finally deemed the display finished, but he could hardly bring himself to care. The bunch of flowers which were already such a beautiful collection before were now a piece of art, the lilac and emerald blossoms broken up by leafy ferns and surrounded by spindly branches of waxflower. The bouquet was truly stunning.

And as for the glow of pride on Virgil’s face? Absolutely breathtaking.

‘I think I’m happy with it,’ Virgil said nonchalantly, though the excitement hidden behind his tone rang loudly in Roman’s ears.

‘This is amazing, Virgil,’ he gushed, entirely sincere. ‘You’re a natural!’

Virgil bit his lip, stifling what Roman knew would have been a bright grin. He notably did not refuse the compliment.

‘Um, do you mind if I…’ Virgil brought his phone out from his pocket and opened the camera app, showing the screen to Roman with an eyebrow raised in question. ‘Kinda wanna show Grandma later,’ he admitted with a shy smile.

‘Of course,’ Roman held his hands out to the arrangement in invitation and stepped back so that he would not interrupt the photoshoot.

He watched from the sidelines as Virgil tiptoed around the workbench to find good angles, taking a few pictures of his work. Once the phone was placed back in his pocket, he turned back to Roman with a lopsided smile. ‘Thank you.’

Roman was fully and wholeheartedly smitten.

‘Don’t thank me before I’ve paid.’ Roman took his wallet out and waved it with a mock-frown of disapproval. For all of his years of acting classes, though, he could not wipe the smile off of his face. ‘That’s not a very sound business practice.’

Virgil shook his head lightly but moved back to the front desk carrying the arrangement with him. He rang up the numbers on the mechanical till quickly and Roman paid with a soft smile.

‘So,’ Roman said after Virgil had given him his hand-written receipt. He leaned toward Virgil slightly and delighted in the way Virgil mirrored him, bringing them even closer. ‘I don’t suppose a mysterious, beautiful stranger such as yourself would want to -’

Primadonna by MARINA suddenly blared from Roman’s pocket.

He sighed and closed his eyes, feeling a blush stain his cheeks. Though his smile still did not falter.

‘Very fitting ringtone,’ Virgil teased, his voice strained with concealed laughter.

Roman opened his eyes and sent a weak glare to Virgil even as his cheeks ached from smiling so much. He took his phone from his pocket to silence it, seeing that it was Remy’s contact flashing up on the screen - then his expression finally dropped as he saw the time.

‘Oh, fuck!’ His next client was due in five minutes.

‘You okay?’ Virgil asked shakily, clearly anxious by the sudden shift in mood.

‘Everything’s okay,’ Roman quickly assured, ‘but I really have to go, I’m running late.’ He shoved his phone, wallet and receipt into his pockets and pulled the flower arrangement to his chest protectively.

Virgil had stiffened. Evidently his defences were rising again due to the sudden change.

‘I really do have to go, I’m sorry. Seriously,’ Roman paused with a sigh as he gazed over Virgil’s beautiful face once more, ‘you have no idea how sorry.’

‘Yeah, of course,’ Virgil nodded in agreement, but his voice was as quiet as it had been when Roman first came in however long ago. His disappointment was painfully obvious.

‘I’ll be back later this week,’ Roman promised as he reluctantly made his way to the door. There was absolutely no reality where Roman would not come looking for this enigmatic emo again. ‘I look forward to seeing you soon, my chemical romance!’ The doorbell jingled overhead as he rushed out of the door and called behind him, ‘Give my best to Céleste!’

Roman darted through the streets with a sharp stab of regret piercing his chest, though he really could not have afforded to indulge his infatuation much longer. He was a professional artist, he had to be back in time for his client.

Being incredibly protective over his cherished flower arrangement, Roman made it back to the studio in record time. It was not the first instance in which his high stamina had saved him face.

Panting for breath, Roman peered into the front window of the parlour and winced at the look of rage on the receptionist’s face as he sent a choice hand gesture to Roman from the other side of the glass.

‘Get your arse in here, Prince!’ Remy’s muffled yell met his ears.

Accepting that he would have to make a Starbucks run later to make up for his tardiness, Roman shuffled over to the glass door. He cradled Virgil’s arrangement in one arm as he reached for the door handle, then paused.

In his reflection, he noticed the green carnation from earlier still sat behind his ear. It looked utterly ridiculous. He had apparently been running around town with a massive green flower protruding from the side of his head.

In any other circumstance, he would have felt embarrassed. But the memory of Virgil’s huffy giggles played in his head, and all Roman could feel was giddy.

He pushed into the parlour with a wide grin that quite probably made him look like even more of a fool.

He didn’t care.

oOo

Inspired by a prompt from @writersmonth

Reblogs and likes are greatly appreciated! ♡

AO3 link | Next chapter

[i-need-air]

Bakugou Katsuki x F!Reader – Man on a mission.

Summary: Reader is an exchange student at UA, althought she could only stay one year. This is the journey and separation. What would Bakugou do once he realizes the girl he loves leaves? Could be angsty, but I promise a happy ending. 

Word count: ~3k.

When they first met neither of them cared about each other. The girl, too focused in eating the world and showing everyone her worth, barely gave him a glance the first day of school. Having transferred from the most prestigious American School for the year, working so, so hard to get there through a scholarship, [Y/N] was ready to kick ass, take names, get mediocre grades in Japanese History and get the attention of the top heroes of the world for her next internship. So, they just didn't care about each other.

But over time, as she got close to people in the 2-A class, even 2-B, her attitude and determination caught his attention. At first the girl pissed him off, being just an extra that will disappear in a year and will never see again, yet why was he staring so much? How come his eyes followed her figure as she walked away with Round-Face? How come he focused his attention on her too adorable giggle as dumbass Kaminari tried and failed miserably to flirt with her. And how come his friend pissed him off when he did that anyway? Oh, and let's not talk about how he never ever looked at her train, obviously not admiring her moves, her quirk, that look in her eyes. How he tried so fucking hard to not smile when she messed up a Japanese word and asked anyone around her how to pronounce it, giving no shits and only caring about getting better. He definitely didn't care about how she complimented his food that one time and Bakugou, the snake that he is, somehow manipulated Mina into convincing [Y/N] to cook with them, neither girls noticing him puppeteering the whole situation. So the [h/c] girl ended being part of the Bakusquad in record time, cooking and studying started to be a norm to do together. He didn't care that he got a whole zoo on crack in his stomach as she taught him how to cook food from her home-country or how good she smelled when she leaned closer to his frame, both sitting in his room, books spread around them as she questioned something about grammar. He definitely didn't lose his breath when she casually asked him if she could call him Katsuki, earning a grunt and a Do what you want. from the boy, ears flushed.

But Bakugou was hesitant. Of course he was, she was going to leave at the end of the year yet after the first internships started he realized that he's gonna miss that giggle. Her everything actually. And maybe they'll never see each other again. The boy had his own goals, he wanted to reach number one, he wanted to be the best. Was she a distraction? Because he never considered her one, daring to say he's more driven now... Was it a stretch to consider her made for him? Because that's what he thought all the time and these feelings were eating him alive. In a cool manner, he still had to maintain his reputation, excuse you.

[Y/N] [L/N] had a crush. A big crush on a rather abrasive young man. The moment she realized an overwhelming feeling engulfed her, taking away the very needed sleep as the following day she'd intern with the Hawks. Yet getting zero sleep that night, reality slapped her so hard she didn't even feel fatigue for 36 hours afterwards.

Bakugou Katsuki stole her heart and it was doomed for heartbreak. So separation and moving on was the plan.

Although it seemed like something went over her head. She fell in love with a stubborn motherfucker, yet neither of them knew at the time the lengths he'd go just to be together.

After some time of avoiding each other everything felt wrong. Studying wasn't the same, food didn't taste as good as before when she wasn't half moaning half praising his efforts, her cute way of pronouncing things actually turned into a good accent and even if a time came for the girl to ask for correction, [Y/N] decided to ask anyone else but him. Both were getting stronger separately, finding other training partners and things started to slowly go back to what it was at the beginning of the year, leaving a sour taste in Bakugou's mouth. How come she stole his heart? And how come now she was breaking it without noticing?

And here they were, together sitting outside their living quarters, just staring at the darkening skies, both lost in thought. Once strangers turned into friends and now back at the beginning. Yet the air was calm as it always was between them, like old friends meeting after years of not seeing each other even when they met every day.

"I'm gonna miss this place..." she muttered, gulping down the uneasiness rising in her throat. One more month and she'd leave. One more month and whatever they had would be erased forever. "I'm gonna miss you..." she whispered, deciding it was the time to take this burden off her chest once and for all. For herself, her well being, to explain her shitty attitude although his wasn't better. "I'm... I'm gonna miss your stupid face..." came out in another whisper, lips trembling as she avoided his eyes but when she heard a broken chuckle, strained and forced, her eyes snapped towards him.

His palm was covering his eyes, heart in his throat, not believing that everything lead to this moment.

"You spent too much time with me, dumbass." she blinked stupidity, precious orbs watching him carefully not even trying to hide the shine of tears appearing. "You sound like me now." she chucked too, bitter and quiet.

"I didn't spent enough time..."

And everything just turned back to what they had. As when they were alone in one of their rooms, sharing stories, watching movies, listening to music, each doing their own thing in harmony. So they talked, curfew approaching rapidly but there were many things unsaid. There was no clear confession but her little moment of truth opened a door that has been closed for both of them for a long time now. Actually... Not only the door, all the windows and doors were now wide opened, barricades and walls demolished down and everything flowed naturally. Who would've thought? Katsuki told himself while walking her to her door. He was soft, he has forgiven her in an instant for all the zig-zagging around him, feeling relieved since he felt guilt for doing the same. The stupid dancing around somehow ended when they reached her room, silence filling the air.

"You're a dumbass..." he said yet didn't know if it was thrown to [Y/N] or to himself. The rich laugh earned from her made him smirk. God, how much he missed it.

"You're the one to talk?" she pushed his shoulder gently, yet for the love of god, none knew what the fuck this conversation was really about. Before she could retreat the hand thought, he grabbed it, palms sweaty, fingers surprisingly gentle.

"[Y/N]." he responded, that zoo on crack in his stomach seemed to take life again. They didn't have much time anymore.

No verbal confession was made that night, both scared, terrified of voicing out anything that would instantly throw them back towards their concerns. Yet the sweet, slow kiss they shared got imprinted in their memories forever.

Her third year passed rather quickly, yet this time she was more glued to the phone. Many of her old friends noticed, inquiring who was the boy that she was talking to so much, all in teasing manner, none noticing how her lips would flatten and her expression fell for one second before answering back in a similarly teasing way too. Training, studying, going out with friends but never looking at another guy the way she looked at Bakugou Katsuki. Time flew while they both found a way to stay in touch, as limited as it was through the time zones and goals they individually had to reach.

Memories of their last month reconnecting and stepping up into a new world together, almost together but not official, sneaky kisses stolen from time to time, teasing each other but always with a hint of uncertainty, hugs that lasted a little bit too much yet none caring, cuddles and whispers when alone. But nothing else. Oh, how she regretted it. Not kissing him harder, not hugging him longer. Not telling him clearly that she loved him. Not crying when they parted ways because she sure as hell felt like doing so. They only promised to stay in touch when finally getting a time alone on that last fateful day. Being surrounded by her new friends crying around her, saying their goodbyes and promises of meeting somehow someday. That's when he snatched her for their final time alone. That's when she told him to not forget about them, yet again, never addressing their feelings. And he grunted at her, stoic, constipated looking, a face she'd normally make fun of if it weren't for the gravity of the situation.

But they messaged at odd times, they'd create inside jokes and they'd talk on the phone, his voice always doing things to her.

"I've seen the fight, you were amazing!" she said while carefully picking his face in the voice call, re-learning his expressions, remembering caressing the same cheekbones that now were bruised after a big fight in his internship with Endeavor that could all be seen online.

"Course I was, woman." he said, small yet boyish grin on his face. [Y/N] wanted to laugh, tease and be normal around him in this limited time together but Jirou's words stopped her.

"It's insane. The Bakugou Katsuki has a fan-base now! Like... Girls confess to him every week, he gets love letters! Kirishima makes fun of him but we all know he's jealous–"

Keeping in contact with the people from UA was a blessing and a curse, the latter because of those words. He changed so much, people were starting to see him for what he really was and a selfish voice inside of her was screaming that only her could know this side of him. And at the same time feeling she'd never deserve him.

Without being able to bite her tongue, she inquired.

"So I heard you have fangirls now." bright smile way too shiny, her discomfort was so obvious even through the screen.

"Hah?" was his only answer, leaning closer to his Webcam with a frown.

"A little birdie told me." she shrugged, playing it cool, perfectly knowing she'd never be able to play anything cool to save her life.

"And who gives a shit 'bout that?" I do... almost was her reply. But no, she had to squeeze her own heart and milk the pain out of it.

"I mean, haven't you thought about it?"

"Think about what?" he rasped rather angrily.

"You know, having a girlfriend and so on...?"

"What...?" his disbelief clear on his face, suddenly morphing into anger, now clear and raw. "What the fuck are you even saying, [Y/N]!?" he shouted, breathing heavily. "Are you trying to tell me somethin'? Cuz if you are, you better say it clearly!"

"I–" I'm jealous, you deserve someone by your side, I love you. Please, don't look at someone else. Please, don't kiss someone else... Please, be mine.

"Yano what, I'm done for today, fuck off, will ya?" and with a growl, he finished the call.

The promise she made herself about not crying was slowly breaking, her reflection in the now dark computer screen showing her idiotic self about to burst in tears but she clearly didn't reach that point when an incoming call interrupted her self pity.

"Like fucking shit I'd let go of what we have, dumb woman." is all she needed to hear that day and she did.

"So it seems I need to work a year in America before I could have a contract with any other Hero Agency. Hawks made it clear that he wants me back as his side-kick with Tokoyami but..." It hurt, stupid laws and contracts and scholarships and feelings. Stupid life and stupid everything.

"Only a year, huh?" he said on the other side of the line.

Looking for a roommate was tough. Wanting to put an ease on her rent and to save money for a future she was starting to see more clearly, the woman had some interviews with some potential roomies but none were convincing. Maybe she was picky, but she got this apartment first, picked the best room and her landlady gave her full permission to pick anyone for her. Which was a blessing, really.

So the cat girl with 4 cats was an option. The guy that eyed her a little bit too much was out of the equation. There was another guy scheduled to come see the apartment that afternoon and, the best part, she was getting a package from Katsuki. He offered, actually. Said something about new house gift, brushing it off casually with his trademark snide remark about how he'd send her some cleaning shit. What an asshole, but hell, even if he did send her cleaning products, she'd cry out of happiness.

The guy talked to her through messages, asking basic questions and nothing more. Time to give another tour and talk about rent was coming yet she silently decided to give this guy a nice brief chat, throw him out and look for a girl roommate, even if Bakugou said it didn't matter and should interview both. "You know, to get it over with." little voice still screaming she'd mind if he had a woman as a roomie, but then again, they were nothing...

As 3 P.M. approached, she got a message.

From [Random dude #2 David]:

"I'll be late, hope you don't mind."

Of fucking course he was going to be late. The first impression? Annoying. What if she had things to do? Like wait for a package and then call Katsuki to open it with him there. Random David was pissing her off already.

Half an hour later the doorbell interrupted her thoughts as she stared blankly at her phone. The last messages she sent her... friend didn't actually reach him. And it's been 10 hours? Maybe he was called on a mission. But already? Endeavor surely didn't waste time, huh?

With a sigh she opened the door, ready to greet Random David when her eyes landed on a suitcase in front of her door. Her ears perked at the sound of another suitcase rolling towards her door, basically making her freak out because Random David was definitely not going to live with her now. And slowly, a guy came in her field of vision and the world stopped functioning.

Bakugou Katsuki, with a box over one of his shoulders and as she guessed, another suitcase in hand, reached her door, elevator ding snapping her out of her... uh... dream? Fantasy? Back shirt, dark jeans, messy hair and The Look™ he always had for her.

"Well, I'm here to look at the apartment." he grinned, about to burst into an ugly laughter at her dumb face. Everything until this point was worth it because that face? That face was all he needed. Yeah, the dumb mouth opening and closing, eyes big as plates, frozen in place.

"If you..." she muttered. "If you fucking tell me you're David, I will end you..."

"Ya better not call me that, woman." he said, taking a step towards her, putting the baggages down.

"Are you really here...?"

"What does it look like, huh? Now let me in, I need to sit down, I fucking hate long flights."

Rushing him in, hands trembling, words stuttering, [Y/N] [L/N] was in awe at the man in front of her. She knew, she definitely knew he was absolutely amused by her reaction but there was no helping it.

"You're here..." pulling him inside by his hand, it was so warm, just as always. "Holy shit, you're here."

"Aha, but don't get used to it, woman." he said, leaving the suitcases behind him, arms just wrapping loosely around her waist.

"Huh?" he touched her face, the scent of nitroglycerin invading her nostrils. Same scent she missed so much in the past year.

"Only for a year, then I'm taking you back home with me, understood?"

Although she didn't reply, she couldn't, as she only pulled the collar of his shirt towards her, ready to make up for all the time they threw away. So their lips met and their new life started.

Endeavor worked closely with various hero agencies in America and Bakugou Katsuki asked to be sent there for a year, or more so demanded, leaving the older man speechless. Yet with a single word from Shouto, everything was set running and Bakugou knew he'd have yo return the favor to Icy-Hot someday, but for now she was all that mattered. So when he helped her apartment hunt (even long distance), when he told her to look into this or that Hero agencies (knowing they'd work close to his), when he'd tell her to not mind male roommates (even if he minded, he minded very much), it was all towards the surprise for her.

Bakugou Katsuki was a man on a mission and he realized that in his third year at UA. He was going to be number one. He was going to be the best hero ever. And he was going to have [Y/N] by his side. Always.

Notes: I'm leaving this here since idk man, I had too much coffee and wrote this without blinking. Correlation with the notes? Don't question it. Anyway!! Pretty please, tell me what you thought of it and if anyone here knows how to add the Read More mark on phone, I'd greatly appreciate it if you'd explained me how. I'm way too old for this, I swear, lmfao. Thank you for reading, seriously. Hope you enjoyed and have a great day! ♥

[baeklooming-day]

Birds And Foxes | 01

♤ Sehun series ⇒ 01 ⇒ ?

Link to masterlist

♤ Summary: You are a powerful demon, roaming the streets of human world and causing damage and mischief for your own amusement. When one night your evil illusions start a series of unfortunate deaths of those who were not supposed to die, an unamused death bird makes sure to step on at least one of your eleven tails to stop you.

♤ Genre: Folktale!AU, Mythology!AU, Kitsune!AU, Death Bird!AU

♤ Word Count: 3.3k

♤ A/N: Sehun is inspired by Paddy from Ghost Theater on Webtoon. ♡ The first one or two chapters might be more narrating but I promise that the story will get more interesting with time!

A beautiful, luxurious apartment.

Marble floors and walls, giant windows which made the rooms even more luminous than they already appeared to the eye, deep scarlet carpets laying on the cold floors everywhere adding even more luxury to the view as a whole, leaving the guest flabbergasted and amazed at the sight welcoming them.

Who wouldn’t want to visit a heavenly looking place like that, would you ask? Or, who wouldn’t want to live in a place like that, who wouldn’t want to own all the pleasures and joys which a similarly wealthy home would offer them?

Could you imagine meeting someone who would casually tell you that they knew a place exactly like that, a place with all the luxuries and nice things you could ever think of, a place which they could just give to you?

That someone would have probably the sweetest voice you have ever heard in your entire life, their aura mesmerizing like nothing else before, whilst their beauty making you want to look at them, only at them, agreeing to follow them anywhere they planned to take you.

You would be thinking that you knew the destination, you would never even suspect that something just slipped past your awareness, leading you always deeper and deeper into the well planned trap.

That was exactly what never stopped to amuse you.

You entered the luminous room, pulling a young boy behind you, your long fingers gently yet firmly clasped around his wrist.

You failed to hold back a mischievous smile.

Men, particularly young boys who were thirsty for new experiences were the easiest target to lure in.

Not that you have ever encountered someone who wasn’t an easy target for whatever kind of scheme you were in the mood for.

Humans and their weak minds weren’t a challenge for you, never were.

You slowly let go of the boy’s wrist, giving him a charming look.

He looked at you too, his pretty lips curling up into a smile.

He was handsome.

That’s why you chose him, even though in reality it didn’t have any meaning.

You observed how his smug smile grew always wider as his brown eyes traveled from your face to your body, the red dress fitting perfectly in all the right places.

He was too absorbed in looking at you, too hypnotized to notice the evil spark in your inhuman eye which quickly flickered only to disappear again.

You smiled delightfully.

Soon he wouldn’t be smiling like that anymore.

You took one step closer to him, without any warning running your long fingers through his soft brown hair in a seductive manner, only for him to instantaneously lose the consciousness, the last thing he saw being a pair of big and fluffy brown ears appearing on your head.

When he woke up, he wasn’t inside the beautiful and luxurious apartment you lead him to anymore.

The thing was, he never even actually was in that apartment.

He couldn’t be in a place which didn’t exist.

Instead, he found himself laying in what felt like the deepest part of the woods, the earth being wet from the rain and only old fallen leaves around him.

It was all an illusion.

He wasn’t sure how he ended up there or where exactly he was in that moment, but suddenly he heard a melodic, feminine laugh in the distance.

He looked over to the direction where the laugh came from, only to see a big brown fox disappearing between the trees.

You walked through the green woods, your only company being the soft bird singing in the distance and a comforting sound of gold coins bumping into each other in the little sack, every time as you happily threw it up just to catch it in your hand again.

Not that the so called money which humans valued often more than their own life was of a particular use to you.

Sure, you could use it whilst blending into a crowd in the downtown, pretending an innocent girl who came by just to buy some rice for dinner.

Sometimes, when you were feeling particularly generous and in a good mood, usually when you were really bored, you appeared in a little girl’s form and lived a day amongst the humans just as if you were one.

But most of the time, if you were in a mood for a whole bowl of steaming rice, you just stole it.

Sometimes it went unnoticed, sometimes someone completely unrelated to the situation was accused of stealing, in that case everyone making a scene in the middle of the market.

Sometimes though, to create even more mess, you „lent” someone’s body to make some damage in their name and, what followed, getting the nothing guilty human into serious trouble.

„Lent”, what in your own language meant as much as possessing.

You found it amusing.

It amused you, watching as the temporary disease of a fox possession messed with people, making it even more entertaining to see in your opinion given that different people were met with different effects of such.

The usual and most seen result would be just an inappropriate or noticeably odd behavior on the part of the possessed human, expressing oneself in a bad language, being violent, spitting or throwing money around as if one was a millionaire with no care in the world.

Sometimes they started to make some noises, as if an attempt to imitate a bark that of a fox.

The more extreme outcomes would be pain, hysteria, madness, taking off one’s clothes to run through the streets naked only to collapse in a random spot, feeling lost and dazed after the fox finally left.

That was some part of the schemes you liked to perform on the human folks, for you this world was merely a playground whilst the people served as toys.

But toys who knew how to cook, you thought as soon as you felt a knot forming in your stomach, followed by a loud grumble.

You looked at the little sack filled with some gold coins in your right hand, raising your left one to gently stroke the soft fur on your left pointy ear, thinking.

To pay, or to steal, that was the question of the day.

Before you entered the town you made sure to conceal your ears, as well as your tail, making yourself appear just as if you were a normal human girl.

You walked through the central market street of the town which you came to know so well, looking for a good place where you could find the particular tasty food your tummy was calling for always louder.

You didn’t have to walk for too long, a smell of delicious fried tofu reaching your nostrils almost right away after walking around the next corner, soon revealing an entrance to a small restaurant.

You opened the door with a thud, a quiet, but not too quiet thud, enough to make the people sitting inside aware of your presence.

You walked over to the bar, resting both of your elbows on the wooden surface, waiting for someone from the staff to take your order.

While you were waiting, you looked around the restaurant.

You couldn’t really recall visiting this place in a human form before, but you were almost sure you might have stolen a plate of freshly made fried tofu pockets stuffed with sushi rice, commonly known as inari zushi, from exactly that place one day in the near past.

The type of food foxes liked the most.

You impatiently tapped your long pointy fingernails on the wood, feeling the knot in your grumbling tummy becoming always tighter, as if calling out to you for a very much needed delivery of nutrients and energy.

In other words, food.

“Welcome, miss.” Said a man in a black apron, from the looks of it probably the head chef, after finally acknowledging your presence. “I apologize for the wait. What would you like to eat?”

Without a word, you just slid the sleek menu card in his direction, slowly tapping your fingernail on the name of the dish you wanted to get.

Tap, tap, tap, gently tapping concentrated the chef’s attention on the words in the menu.

Kitsune udon.

The soft noodles swimming in a steaming soup with a fried tofu topping was exactly what you needed right in that moment.

“Excuse me miss, I don’t really see what’s written here in this weak light. Could you read it loud?” The chef asked.

You stopped your tapping on the smooth paper, instead giving him a quick look with an unreadable expression.

You turned the menu card around without any hurry, so that you could have a more proper look at the neatly listed names of the dishes again.

“Kitsu... on...” You said.

Or more like, you attempted to say.

Illusions were one thing, but the skill of convincingly speaking in the human language was the noticeable weakness point of all foxes.

It was no difficulty being able to understand what they were saying, but for some reason their language seemed to be some weird kind of a tongue twister, leaving a fox merely with the ability to pronounce part only words, but never a whole word, not even mentioning the ability to pronounce a whole build sentence.

Being practical masters of illusions and excellent shapeshifters, even foxes could be exposed if one was familiar enough with their real nature.

You didn’t fail to notice the suspiciously alarmed look in the chef’s eyes, watching still as he slowly put the white towel which was laying loosely on his shoulder down on the wooden counter.

“Um, I apologize miss, it’s really loud in here, I couldn’t hear you well.” He said, his voice trying to stay steady. “Let me pull the curtains open to let some sunlight in.”

He quickly walked over to the nearest window, practically snatching the red curtains open without any hesitation.

Given the position you were in, and the position of the window through which the warm sunlight was now illuminating the room, you found yourself standing pretty much right in front of it.

The sudden brightness managed to disorient you for a brief moment, but not to that extent where you failed to acknowledge the equally sudden silence which fell upon the restaurant.

The light illuminated your entire figure, making you look absolutely divine.

There wouldn’t be any particular problem with it, if not the fact that the shadow your body was casting on the wall behind you didn’t look very human anymore.

You made sure to properly conceal your ears and tails before making an appearance in the town, but the natural light wasn’t lying.

Your shadow was showing a pair of big pointy ears on the top of your head, and eleven fluffy fox tails, looking as if they were softly floating in the air behind you.

You heard some well audible gasp in the background, followed by a muffled voice of the chef.

“It’s a fox.”

Another this time louder gasp, followed by some seats shifting and more voices.

“Oh my god.”

“I could tell that it was a dirty fox, look at my little dog! He’s been so uneasy ever since it entered the room!”

A dirty fox? It?

Instead of reacting, you were left there a little surprised at how careless the human folks became.

Since when were they speaking so disrespectfully to the superior beings?

In your eyes, they just willingly put a death sentence on themselves.

You would stay there frozen for a while longer, if not the voice of the chef which snapped you out of your trance and back to the reality around you.

“Bring the guard dogs.”

Dogs.

Dogs were probably the only thing of which foxes were actually scared.

Dogs could be fast enough to catch up on a running fox, trapping it behind the next corner to bite its head off.

No, no, no, you thought.

Was a bowl of noodles worth risking your own head for it?

Definitely not.

Before anyone could make any more move, the earth started trembling, the walls started shaking always more, dust falling down on everyone’s heads.

Earthquake.

Naturally, not a real one.

Another one of the fox’s illusions.

You figured that the chef could probably tell that the unexpected earthquake wasn’t real, but given the fact that there were also other people who never had the pleasure of meeting a fox demon, now panicking and crying, it was more than enough to let you escape without being harmed.

Once you were out of their sight, you let the illusion last for a little while longer, even if you were already far and safe from the incident scene.

You could let slide a whole bunch of things, except for disturbing you during your afternoon nap, and calling you a dirty fox.

It seemed like people forgot who you were, and you decided to remind them of it.

Starting from tonight.

It may be that lately your usual pranks weren’t that entertaining anymore, lost their previous power, or maybe you had simply been too nice these days.

Well, then it surely was one solid reason enough to make a visible change.

You waited patiently until the night falls, in the meantime roaming freely around the streets.

This time you made sure that you stayed invisible, not letting any human spot you.

Only from time to time, when you knew that someone sensed your presence, you gave the one a small warning in form of a high pitched bark, so sharp that it seemed to be piercing through the ears if you happened to be within its reach, or a brief sighting of your fluffy tail slowly disappearing behind a building.

It wasn’t much, but enough to give the chills and fill the air with an eerie aura, what didn’t go unnoticed by the folks, letting them know that something was happening, but not revealing what.

With the last light of the day, as the sun disappeared behind the mountains, you found yourself standing in the middle of a dark alley, your only company being one single dim light coming from an old lantern nearby.

The night was warm and peaceful, the sky tinted in one of the most beautiful dark shades of deep blue, no sight of any clouds, just the pale countenance of the moon and flickering stars gracing the firmament, as if little fireflies in the dark woods.

You extended your arm, catching a few droplets of rain on your bare milky skin.

A silence before the storm.

You straightened your ears, making them appear even longer and pointier than usual, as soon as you heard the first steps and clacking of shoes on the ground.

The first prey of the night.

You stepped back into the darkness of the alleyway, starting to imitate a little child’s cry to lure the unaware humans into the dark.

And of course as you anticipated, it worked just perfectly.

It were two girls, letting themselves immerse always deeper and deeper into the alleyway, trying to navigate where the child’s cry was coming from.

Unfortunately for them, little did they know that they were two chickens within the eyesight of a hungry fox.

As soon as they stepped forward and reached the old lantern, you dashed out of the shadows and mercilessly pinned them both to the cold and slippery wall by their throats.

You heard a quiet and mortified muffled scream of one of the girls, the word „fox” being the only thing that she managed to say.

You were right before them in your divine form of a big brown fox, all of your eleven tails floating behind your back, your whole being illuminating like some majestic light and filling their hearts with fear.

Your long nails started to dig into the skin of their necks, your inhuman eyes glowing in an evil way as your mouth formed a mischievous and creepy smile, the sharp fox teeth glistening like pearls.

It didn’t even take one minute when after you released them from your strong grip they started to run for their life ignoring everything else around them.

Your illusion made them see a fire, the town being consumed in angry flames which threatened to burn them alive if they didn’t run.

Meanwhile you created other illusions putting the entire town in a state of complete madness.

The two girls who thought they are escaping the fire, fell off a cliff and drowned in the ocean thinking they are running into a firefighter base.

Another pair of people, a man and a woman, thought that they were on their way home whilst in reality, your illusion led them to the middle of the dark woods where they suddenly became possessed by madness and led to one another’s death by hanging themselves on tree branches.

Other illusions made people think that they were spilling water to cancel the non existent fire, whilst in reality they were the ones soaking the room in an inflammable liquid only to die in the flames minutes later, taking a few other lives along with them.

The dark and mysterious night transformed into nothing other than one big illusion, unfortunate series of deadly accidents not seeming to find an end.

The town was a complete unimaginable mess, all kinds of freaky and disturbing sceneries being displayed under the pale, cold light of the moon and stars, them being the only witnesses of the widespread madness caused by a fox.

Meanwhile, when everyone else was running around and screaming, some buildings in flames, some folks just sitting outside on the ground letting the light warm rain soak them and sobbing uncontrollably, you were strolling through the messy streets, not bothered even a little.

You put your hands behind your back, interlocking your long fingers and closing your eyes, gently swinging to the left and to the right to the rhythm of the soft melody which you were humming.

The rain didn’t stop, the crystal clear droplets of water shining in the white moonlight once fallen on your exposed ears and tails, making the soft fur look as if it wasn’t real, but painted with delicate brush strokes on a flawless canvas.

You thought about disappearing into the woods to have a rest, away from this half destroyed town, when out of nowhere you heard a loud sound of some massive wings batting against the air.

Your furry ears instinctively went up, straightening, listening carefully and trying to figure out what made a similar sound.

You didn’t need to wait for too long, when you found yourself in a shadow of a big bird, black feathers falling all around you.

You stood there still, watching as the black bird landed on the street in the weak yellow light still illuminating the scenery from the few lanterns which survived tonight’s performance.

As soon as the bird landed, with a loud WHOOSH it transformed into a tall and slender man wearing a dark blue suit. His light hair seemed to be a resemblance of a pastel sunset above the mountains, whilst his cold eyes were now scanning the surroundings.

He reached his hands to his knees, dusting off whatever dirt which could be on the smooth material of his pants before, now supporting himself by placing both of his hands on his knees standing in a half bent position, finally meeting your gaze with a hint of visible disapproval.

“You know what-” He said. “I think that Inari should keep his pup on a tighter leash.”

“Well, if so” You answered. “Then maybe Hades should keep his bird in a safer cage.” You couldn’t stop yourself from smiling creepily. “You know. Foxes catch birds.”

The man took a step closer to you, enough for you to see his luminous face clearly, as well as the lopsided smile forming on his pale lips despite the still present disapproval in his eyes.

The wide, creepy fox smile seemed to be glued to your face now as you took in the appearance of the man before you.

“Hello, Sehun.”

A/N: This story is my baby, please leave your thoughts if you don’t want to be deceived by a fox 😰 remember to reblog if you liked this part!!

[deathandrenegades]

More Than You Bargained For (Succubus!Bucky x Reader) NSFW - One Shot

Summary: You walk into a dangerous place to complete a job, biting off more than you can chew as you meet the most gorgeous demon of your life. Will you survive the encounter?

Word Count: 4222

A/N: Smut, nearly without plot.  Tags are open, requests are open! This is my inspiration from @after-avenging-hours​ Incubus series. I’m also holding a writing challenge if anyone wants to join! I would love feedback on this, I’m trying to get into writing different AU’s and such.

Masterlist | Writing Challenge | Make a Request | The L Word 

You stepped into the casino, the immediate presence of danger creeping up your neck, making the hairs stand on end in their wake. You were pleased slightly, taking in the surroundings and noticing the all black attire, glad you trusted your gut with a black dress and pumps to match. Your heels clicked on the aluminum floor and you took a seat at the bar, in perfect view of the table you needed to watch. Even from 20 feet away you felt his charm that invited you, pulling you towards him like some insane gravitational force. You had to remind yourself continuously of the mission you were on, trying not to let your thoughts be persuaded by his growing allure on you. 

You set your black clutch on the counter, readying your ID and credit cards.

“What’ll it be?” The bartender flashed a warm smile as he leaned his elbows on the bar, his dark complexion stark against his white teeth. His face appeared soft like silk, his voice even more velvety smooth. It captivated you and made it impossible to look away from his captivating features.

“Um, whiskey neat. Please.” You added curtly, your voice far too unsteady in a place like this. You looked around, easily picking out the other humans from the rest. They were clumsier, uglier, louder. Not nearly as pleasing as even the simple bartender in front of you. You sighed, turning your gaze back to the man in front of you and he set the glass down, you threw back the liquid amber with ease. Your eyes flicked back to the poker table again, keeping your eyes on the task at hand. 

“I know you don’t know this, but he can feel his gaze on you, even from over here.” The bartender's voice was low as he leaned forward across the bar, his sweet, cherry breath wafting over your cheeks. You nodded briskly, holding your breath in an attempt to not be phased by his charm and looked to the man at the poker table again, but he was gone. The bartender drew back with a smirk and turned to wash his glasses. Briefly your gaze settled on your reflection in the mirror on the back paneling of the bar, and you saw his figure standing behind you. You whipped around to face him, your stomach lurching as you did so. You should feel fear, panic, anything, but the smile on his face sent a wave of calm that washed over you like the most relaxing bubble bath. 

He came closer to you, aware of the effect he had on you and took a seat beside you. He wasn’t touching you, but he might as well have been with his body heat radiating off of him beside you. His scent rolled off him in waves and filled your nostrils, you inhaled deeply without thinking, instantly regretting it as you looked at him, completely enraptured by him. You could feel your mouth watering as his scent rippled through you, sending heat to your core. You crossed your legs in response, a move that didn’t go unnoticed by him. His gaze was intense, his icy blue eyes settling over you like you were the most interesting thing he’d seen all day. You couldn’t help but to feel almost naked under his gaze, like he was looking through you. Your eyes traveled down his features, admiring the gorgeous demon in front of you. Beauty didn’t cover it, it felt like he was made for you, like if you latched yourself onto him, it’d be a perfect fit.

“Is there a reason why you’ve been watching me?” His question should’ve made you nervous, uneasy even but it didn’t. He kept his tone light, there was almost a kindness in his eyes. The red and black theme of the casino made him seem like he was almost a part of it in his black suit, another seemingly obvious characteristic that nearly all demons appeared to share so it seemed.

“Well-“ you stammered. He chuckled at your state and your eyes shot down to your dress, away from his prying eyes. 

“Wanted to see what it would be like with a succubus?” His voice was sultry and you looked up into his eyes as he spoke, a glint of mischief in them. His question made you relax slightly, glad to know he wasn’t completely onto you. Yet anyway. 

“Maybe.” Your voice was thick. Was this the right move? You sure as hell knew it wasn’t safe, but a bigger part of you didn’t care, and you didn’t know if that was your or his doing. 

“Come on then.” His voice dropped an octave lower and you squeezed your thighs in response, his voice alone having an effect on you like nothing you’d ever felt before. 

He offered you his hand and you took it, warmth spreading through you immediately as his skin was a few degrees hotter than humans, and grabbed your clutch, hopping off the stool. Slowly he led you out of the casino, and you looked around at the demonic faces as you passed by. You should’ve felt ashamed or intimated under their ravenous, primal gaze, appearing as if they would devour your very soul if given the chance. But you didn't, you nearly felt proud, fully knowing they knew what you were about to do. Or so they thought. 

You expected to leave the casino, maybe get into a fancy, luxurious car and head somewhere else but you didn’t. You turned a corner into the connecting hotel, down a hall, your hand still in his as you followed his graceful steps and stopped in front of one of the many black doors that said “private” on it. You gulped, unaware you’d be meeting your demise so soon. You hardly had any time to prepare. Fuck, what were you about to do again?

“Are you ready?” He asked, keeping his voice light but his eyes held a playfulness to him. You had no idea how to answer him. You felt a panic bubble into your throat that seemed to immediately be overpowered by his influence on you yet again, reassuring you not to panic or worry. Still, words escaped you. Were you ready? You nodded, regardless of how you felt.

The door pushed open to a large room, similarly looking to the casino you were in. Black leather couches and chairs, black marble flooring and countertops, red trim on the walls and doorways. At first glance maybe you would’ve fit right in since you were wearing the proper attire, but you knew you didn’t. You weren’t as graceful and not nearly as beautiful as they were. You stepped in without thinking, the smell of the room charming you, and he followed you, the sound of the door closing behind you was the only thing to tug you out of your trance. He grabbed your clutch out of your grasp, setting it down on the table beside you and you barely registered his movements. Slowly you turned to face him, who’s eyes never left you, watching you curiously as he leaned his shoulder against the wall. 

“My name is James.” His voice warm, like you had met before and maybe you forgot, and you stumbled to come up with a response. Surely, he had already introduced himself, right? You tried to think back under his gaze, only to realize he was waiting a touch too long for you to introduce yourself.

“(Y/n).” Your voice was an octave higher than normal and you cleared your throat in an attempt to collect yourself. 

“(Y/n)..” He said slow, pronouncing every letter with purpose like he had never heard such a name before. Your name leaving his lips caught you off guard, and what startled you more was the ache it left in your belly. He stepped forward, slowly, like he was stalking his prey. Well, that’s what you were, after all, weren't you?

You should run, but you couldn’t, your feet were weighed down, and what’s more is that you didn’t want to run or be anywhere else, other than under his devouring gaze. 

He stood in front of you, his nose mere inches from yours and you inhaled sharply as his scent filled your nose and mouth again, you knew his scent would be appealing to you but you just didn’t imagine it would be like this. You felt your mouth water again and instinctively you leaned forward, only to stop when you saw a smirk on his lips. You blinked, looking up at him. If there was one thing you hated it was how much he knew of the effect he had on you.

“Tell me,” his voice huskier than before and it sent a shiver down your spine, “why did you come here?”

“I had to see you.” You found yourself saying aloud. Your own voice startled you in contrast to his rich, smooth voice. It didn’t belong in the same conversation.

“To use this on me?” He pulled out a syringe out of his pocket, and you gaped at him. How did he get that?

“N-no, I-” You stammered but it was useless. You expected him to be enraged, attack you then and there and render you dead, but he was smiling, his blue eyes staring through you again. Now you felt shame wash over you fully, like you were disappointed in yourself for thinking of ever hurting him.

“Why would you want to use this on me, my dear?” He scolded you like he would scold a child. You didn’t have an answer for him. “To kill me?” That was the intent at first, when you told yourself you were strong enough to go into a horde, alone, and take out the alpha. Boy were you way off. Now? That seemed so distant, like another life, a dream even. How could you possibly want to kill someone so angelic as him?

“Maybe, then, bu-” your voice was feeble as you attempted to dismiss your earlier objective. 

“But not now.” He finished for you. The smile twisted into something hellish, his eyes casting over into a dark, murky grey and you instinctively took a step back at the sudden change in his once serene features. He took a step forward, stalking you again and this time it wasn’t seductive, it was downright dangerous. You knew your life was in his hands and it thrilled you when you knew you should be screaming, but found your back legs bumping into a chair behind you as you continued to walk backwards away from him, somehow managing to not stumble in your heels. You looked around wildly, truly there was nowhere for you to go. He was blocking your path to the door and to a hallway that led off probably to a bedroom. 

“You’re going to kill me aren’t you?” Your voice was weak and you hated it. He didn’t flinch at your words, in fact his smile grew wider at your question.

“Maybe, but I do need to eat first.” He came forward again at lightning speed, cupping your face in his hands delicately and crashing his lips down onto yours. His lips left a sear on your mouth, and you gasped at the feeling in both shock and excitement, thoughts escaping you at the feeling of him on you. The scorch of his lips left a burn low in your belly and you felt your clit throb as his lips started to travel down your neck, nibbling at a sensitive spot on your collar bone and you moaned involuntarily. His hands roamed over your body and you clung onto his broad shoulders for support as he backed you up against a wall, and continued kissing down your body. You had nowhere to go, as if you wanted to escape. You heard the deafening sound of material shredding and opened your eyes to look down, not even realising you closed them to see the hem of your dress being cut from the bottom up with his nails, inch by inch, just high enough to reveal the elastic of your black thong. You sucked in a breath, his pupils were blown out being so close to your heat. He looked gorgeous kneeling down in front of you, you gently raked your fingers through his hair without thinking, moving it out of his angelic face. 

“Come back up here.” You said softly, needing his mouth on yours again, and he flashed a playful grin at you, nearly knocking you off your feet as he crashed his lips onto yours again, catching you by surprise and a small gasp left your mouth. He seized the opportunity and slid his tongue in between your lips, exploring your mouth and leaving you salivating as you tasted him. He was sweet, like the best flavor you’ve ever encountered, and you knew why you were warned about his kind. It was easy to become addicted to his effect on your body, and the overwhelming pleasure you could get from just being in contact with him. Your hands knotted into his hair as you deepened the kiss, your tongue and lips moving in tandem with his and you felt like you were engorging yourself on his plush lips. You couldn’t get enough of him. He broke away from you and you gulped down air, not even realizing how dizzy you had become. You tried to gather yourself but you were slowly becoming undone in his hands, and he knew it. 

“My god, I can smell you.” He whispered, his breath tickling your neck and his hands traveled down further, hiking your dress up to your waist. The cold air hit your heat and you hissed at the sudden contrast, he knelt down again and pressed his mouth to your panties over your sensitive nub, inhaling your scent deeply and looking up at you. You could’ve came then in all honesty, looking down at him between your legs to admire his eyes consumed with lust. He pressed his mouth and his chin into you forcefully and you cried out, your hands falling into his hair and you fought to hold yourself up.

“I didn’t think you would be this wet, darling.” His voice was rough and you felt your clit throb again at his words. You could feel the slick between your folds, leaving you yearning for more. He brought his fingers up to your clothed heat and rubbed tentatively and you sucked in a breath at the much needed friction, closing your eyes for a split second as you felt your walls flutter. You needed something inside you, that was for certain. “Soaked.” He affirmed as he felt how wet your damp lace black panties were. With an audible tear they fell away from you and you whimpered at being exposed in front of him. His eyes marveled over your now exposed in front of him, taking one of your thighs and throwing it over his shoulder to get a better view. He palmed himself through his black dress pants, leaning in and pressing his tongue to your clit. You cried out in ecstasy, back arching off the wall at the attention your needy nub finally got. It was like nothing you’ve ever felt before, but it was surely the best thing, you couldn’t imagine ever feeling like this again. You rocked your hips onto his tongue and he groaned at your movements. 

“Oh my god,” your voice was breathy, you could feel sweat beading at the nape of your neck already but you didn’t care. You were an unraveled mess in his arms, and he was going to exploit every piece of it to your pleasure, devouring you along the way. Your head was swimming already as your orgasm built inside you steadily, his tongue working slow circles over your clit, speeding up and inserting a digit into your wet cunt. Your moan was sharp and shrill as he inserted another, filling you up and crooking his fingers inside you to place pressure just where you needed it. You swallowed air in heaps but it was no use, you were a panting, gasping mess, and he set you on the edge of your orgasm. 

“Would you like to cum like this?” he pulled his lips away from your throbbing cunt briefly. 

“Yes.” You replied breathlessly, without hesitation. He smiled devilishly at your answer, taking in your wrecked state and knowing you were so close. He knew just what to do to give you the most intense release you would ever feel, only to be followed by one from his cock in mere minutes. He returned his tongue back to your swollen bundle of nerves, lapping and sucking forcefully as his fingers still worked inside you. Your moans continued to grow louder as he chased your high with you, using your moans as a driving force behind his movements. He crooked his fingers again, rubbing your G-spot and you felt the coil inside you snap with a shriek as your legs shook. He wrapped his arms around your waist to keep you steady, one of your hands leaving his hair to grab onto his shoulder as your orgasm ripped through you. Your chest heaved as the aftershocks rippled through you, leaving you gasping for hair, and his fingers left your cunt allowing his tongue to trace lazy circles around your cunt, bringing you down from your high slowly. Finally, he rested his cheek against your thigh and couldn’t help but to chuckle at your state and you looked down at him, face flushed. 

“You taste even better than you look.” His gaze was sincere as he stared up at you and you blushed even more, though you thought that would be near impossible by now. He stood up and you felt your legs buckle as his hold left you, to which he swiftly picked you up and carried you, moving towards the hallway. As much as you felt like you should protest out of politeness, you were grateful for the assist, your heels falling away with a clatter on the floor. Your legs already felt like jello from having to hold yourself up while you came, and cumming that hard wasn’t something you were ever going to get used to.

He pushed open the door to a bedroom, a black four poster bed centered in the middle. There was a black dresser and closet along the wall, a door ajar to the bathroom, but other than that the room was nearly empty. 

“You don’t live here, do you?” You frowned as you looked around, your head seeming clear momentarily. He chuckled, his chest rumbling against you. 

“Afraid not, dear.”

“Where do you live?” You asked curiously. Where did succubi stay? Briefly the image of a cave filled with thousands of gorgeous, human-like creatures flashed in your mind and you caught yourself smiling. 

“I think that’s enough questions for now.”

He flung you onto the bed and a gasp left your throat as you landed on the plush mattress. He gazed at you for a minute, lips parted, eyes traveling down your body to your heat again and instinctively you pulled your frayed dress down. “Don’t.” he said softly and you stopped your attempt to cover yourself. He worked his tie off, then undid his buttons agonizingly slow as he stared you down. His shirt came off and your eyes marveled over the ripple of muscles underneath his smooth flesh, he appeared to be carved from stone by gods. Your eyes traveled down further to the bulge in his pants, eager to see it unsheathed. He smirked as he watched you eye him like he was to you, unzipping his pants and you felt your cunt throb at the sound. The look on his face told you he didn’t miss it and you mentally cursed at yourself for being so affected by him. You sucked in an audible breath as he took off his dress pants and his briefs in one fluid motion, far too gracefully to be human. His erection sprang free, precum leaking from the tip and you swallowed at the sight. You could only imagine the eager look on your face. Slowly he pumped himself in his fist and you squeezed your thighs together at the sight of him pleasuring himself, you felt your slick cunt spread onto your inner thighs and he didn’t miss that as the scent of your leaking juices wafted over him. His mouth watered and he stepped forward without thinking, climbing over top of you. You sucked in a breath when he came so close to you again, your hands traveling over his chest and back, tracing the contours of his muscles as his lips came down on you once more and you moaned into his mouth softly. You felt his hands push your dress up, followed by another sound of torn fabric and you broke away from the kiss, your dress falling off around you onto the bed. He hooked a thumb under your bra in the front, your heartbeat thumping underneath his hand and instinctively you grabbed his wrist. 

“Don’t rip that.” To your surprise he laughed. He lifted your bra with his thumb and your body lifted with it, your eyebrows shot up in surprise at his brute strength.

“I wasn’t planning on it.” His other traveled around your back and he pinched the clasp and unhooked your bra. He took it off of you gingerly, tossing it to the side, your breasts and hard nipples exposed to him which he stared at hungrily. His member brushed against your core and you arched your back in response, your perfect tits coming so close to his face and he couldn't resist, taking a hardened peak into his mouth and you mewled at the sensation, your skin burning in his wake. He bit your nipple teasingly, pulling on the flesh and you gasped at the sharp spike of pain, his tongue circling your hardened peak to soothe it. 

Your nails raked across his back and he groaned at the feeling, lining himself up with your entrance, your legs wrapping around his waist and you lifted your hips up to meet him. He slowly pushed inside of you, you both released a sigh at the delicious stretch of him pushing into you. You adjusted to his girth slowly as he rocked inside you, inhaling sharply with every thrust, your breaths turning into sharp moans as his pace continued to build, hitting all the way deep in you. You gasped and he moaned in your ear feeling himself bottom out, sending a chill through you. Your body felt like it was on fire, needing him impossibly closer, like you couldn't get enough of him, and your hands moved up to his hair to yank on it, forcing him to look at you, his gaze hungrily on you as he read what you want immediately and brought his lips down on yours. You moaned into his mouth, swiveling your hips up to meet his and he fucked you faster, the pressure inside you growingly wildly. His tongue invaded your mouth, flicking around desperately and you felt his pace growing sloppy. 

“Fucking christ,” he muttered, breaking away from the kiss to rest his forehead against yours and you shrieked as he snapped his hips against you harder, angling them in the perfect way to hit your gspot.

“Oh my god, right there.” You cried and he grunted in response, his pace building erratically and you couldn’t hold on any longer, your walls clenching around his cock harshly as his name left your lips with a cry, riding out your high. His release was right behind yours, triggering it at the feeling of your walls so tight around him, he couldn’t help himself but to spill into you with a series of curses and grunts. Finally his pace slowed to a stop and you both stayed there for a moment, relishing the waves of your orgasm washing over you, exhaustion soon following. Carefully he pulled out of you, leaving briefly and coming back with a wet washcloth. He pressed it between your legs carefully, knowing you’d be sensitive and cleaning you up as best as he could. 

Your breaths were ragged as you fought to keep your eyes open, feeling like you just ran a marathon. 

“You should rest.” He picked up his clothes off the floor, putting them on and resting one knee on the bed to get a better look at your exhausted state. He knew he just drained the life out of you, practically demolishing your life force. You could’ve been on the brink of death, but all you felt was exhaustion. You nodded briefly before you passed out, not being able to muster the energy for much else. The succubus watched your sleeping figure, lingering for a moment to admire your even breaths as you slept. Finally, he gave a small nod to himself when he was sure you were deeply asleep before he slipped out of the room noiselessly, grabbing the covered syringe out of his pocket, now having a new agenda: finding whoever sent you to do this.

TAGS: @thunderous-flower @badassbaker @also-known-as-me @buckyisloved @sebatianstanisbae @bexboo616 @ladymelissastark @fayebay @factorfreshness @thetrainwreckjournals @nataliehasgrace @annieluc @starkxpotts @after-avenging-hours @jurassicbarnes @bovaria @badassbaker @katykyll @jarnesbrnes

[sicklyscribe]

hey so if you wanna hit me with that sweet sweet elijah’s characterization meta anytime please feel free. or direct me to any previous posts because my dumb ass is using this time to re-obsess over vampire melodrama.....

It appears that most of my non-tag and non-petty-casual commentary is still in drafts... so instead of finishing the ‘What the hell is wrong with season 4: an itemized list’ meta and finishing answering the ‘What would you change if you could rewrite any of the show?’ ask from a while ago, I’ll just pick out the Elijah bits and add on to them for garnish. (Those posts might exist at some point. But honestly not soon enough for me to worry about people getting annoyed with copy/paste so PREVIEW TIME: ELIJAH FLAVOR)

This is way sloppier and un-cited than I usually meta, by the way, but what the hell, The Fandom is Dead and I Only Have Friends to Entertain Now, so if anyone gets angry and tries to step into my asks then it’ll just be nostalgic rather than annoying.  Here’s the starter, which is from the F*CK YOU SEASON 4 meta and quite a few of these points will be repeated later because you asked for it technically so.

The cracks in the narrative began to show as early as season two, and believe me when I say I’m not saying this because I love him - it began with Elijah. I can make a lot of arguments to this effect, but the only one that I am certain is not propelled by my very strong bias concerns the presentation of the Red Door.

Initially, I was ecstatic at the opportunity to explore Elijah’s past, his perspective, his darkest moments. I was a bit wary in that it seemed as though the narrative wanted to Explain Everything about Elijah through this device, but he was finally getting some attention so I tried to hold back judgement.The result was pretty promising. One of the most gorgeous moments on the show occurs when Klaus enters Elijah’s mind and tells him how much he needs him. It showcases the main pillar of the show - the structural trifecta of Hope, Klaus, and Elijah. And afterwards, as usual, Elijah pushes the experience away.Until it’s convenient. 

Elijah begins to be erratically vicious. At first, I felt as though it wasn’t handled poorly, I could explain away my worries easily, and that was all I needed. But it happens over, and over, and over again, with the same excuse - protecting the family, protecting Hope. Elijah’s triggers, once so crucial, begin to break down, but we don’t see why or how that process occurs. He begins to be the character that is level-headed when it is convenient, and a violent one-track-mind when it’s convenient. Eventually, in order to maintain balanced tension with a softening Klaus, Elijah became violent without nuance in every situation. His continued development is no longer possible, since his character no longer displays depth.

Which is annoying, as a fan. But as a person who loves to analyze narrative, it’s a huge red flag. Elijah is necessary for this story. His love for Klaus, and Klaus’ relationship with him, is one of the things that holds the narrative together as it goes forward. The two of them need each other in order to experience growth, but cannot grow from each other any longer - and that friction is what provides energy and substance that can help drive a multi-year melodrama. This is why I mentioned above that Elijah’s violence was likely intended to balance with Klaus’ changing heart - but there is no balance in the level of development the two brothers experience. It has been shoddy in many places, but attention has been given to Klaus’ journey towards peace and kindness, while Elijah has been given a single metaphor, a single psychosis, and is expected to carry half of the narrative weight. The story has no choice but to make a plot device out of him - he simply does not have the required depth to be anything else, which is made obvious by the attempt to do so in the ritual to bring Inadu to the material plane, which I will discuss later.

When his development is ignored, when he is used as a tool to get from point A to point B time and time again - that’s when the pillar starts to crumble.

Zooming back in on s1, this was actually my only major structural gripe with season 1, so it comprises the entirety of the ‘what would you change’ for that season:

The poison that rotted the whole dang show started very small — casting Elijah too strongly as a white hat, to offset the darkness of the rest of the main family. This was the right move, of course, but it was pushed a twinge too far and it was the tiny weight that set everything wobbling. As an offshoot of that, this was also done with Hayley to a degree. I would have had them bond very similarly to the way they do in the show, but I would have had them connect at least once over the skeletons in their closets. (Only once or twice, again, since their ship relied in this season on the fallacy of each other being saviors). In fact, this was one I felt so strongly about that I actually did rewrite their scene in 1x07 ‘Bloodletting’.

Then season two when it gets more pronounced: 

The rift in the show widened with the swing-and-miss that was The Red Door arc. Elijah became a Problem when it was convenient for the plot and A Fixer/Sounding Board when it was not. They used probably the most INTERESTING and INTEGRAL part of his characterization -- which had been a mystery for YEARS counting The Vampire Diaries appearances -- and Elijah discovering that either from trauma or his mother’s magic, he has repressed the moments which forged him. This lack of knowledge, this lack of control, should have been something much more cataclysmic and its effects should be clear when comparing ‘Elijah Before’ to ‘Elijah After’. Instead, it kind of served to take off Elijah’s ‘White Hat’ that he’d been illy-fitted with in S1, and allow him to accessorize with it or whatever version of Elijah fits the episode at hand.

This tension, and this chaos should have been much stronger and much more messy than simply putting the Suit back on and being Pretty Much Okay (barring one plot-insignificant diner massacre) only a few episodes later. It would make the therapy scene later with Camille even more gorgeous than it already is and it would then place Elijah’s moment of catharsis, and the beginning of his attempts to move on, with Klaus’ monumental forgiveness in 2x11. I think this is what was intended, but it was not at all achieved, because Elijah is such a tricky character to write, and it is so very easy to use him for whatever the scene requires. Because of this, Elijah’s struggles got dropped just long enough for Klaus’ forgiveness to hit powerfully in viewers for Klaus, but not for Elijah. The writing began to lean on Elijah as a Drama Everyman more and more throughout the show, and it’s just tragic to me that The Red Door wasn’t utilized to its potential. (And that we didn’t have a Klaus/Tatia conversation, but hey, I have an unfinished fixit for that whole saga on Ao3, you’re welcome and I’m sorry).

In season three, we got a few good glimpses of the kind of complexity that Elijah should live in -- the way he kills Arianne, for example, I’ve linked what I called a ‘headcanon’ but in retrospect it was pretty explicitly canon -- and we see the youth and terror and involuntary power in him in the flashback where he discovers that Klaus killed their mother. But the relationship between Tristan and Elijah? The man that he made, and that made him? That was far too pedestrian to have produced either of them. If Elijah learned ‘nobility’ from Tristan, learned what ‘superiority’ looked like, and this was the time that he began to change... we should have had words between them, or a scene highlighting just them, at least once in the flashbacks. 

If this season was supposed to be about the creation of the Trinity, the First Children (because Finn didn’t tell no one that Sage is actually the oldest ‘cuz he’s an ashamed little bitch) why did we see only TWO of the THREE transformations? Klaus turned Lucien accidentally, trying to heal him. Rebekah’s sympathy and love were used as Aurora’s tool to turn herself. When and how did Elijah turn Tristan? It is explained that Elijah turned him in order to create a third vampire for his plot to trick Mikael into chasing them instead -- it is explained that Tristan, Aurora, and Lucien were compelled to believe that they were in fact Elijah, Rebekah, and Klaus in order to make their decoy impeccable. But when this compulsion was shattered -- when Lucien learned that he had been used and made monstrous as a tool for a monster who wasn’t even noble -- did he confront Elijah? Did they ever speak, or was their next meeting the day Elijah learned that Tristan had taken over Elijah’s coven? I would argue that Elijah needed equal weight in the France flashbacks even though he didn’t have a flashy romance (though if early press release rumors were true, he and Tristan could have had one and that would have been perfect) 

Season four is really where you can pick an episode and Elijah will put on the stage makeup and play any part. It’s also -- BIG COINCIDENCE -- where the plot deteriorates completely. Here’s just one example from my Excuse You What the Hell? Season Four meta: 

On to the next moment that showed major neglect (I know this has been Elijah-heavy so far, but again, this is where the problem started so I want to carry this thread through for a while before addressing other issues) - the ritual to bring Inadu to the mortal realm. The purpose of this ritual was to scare viewers with the risk of Hope’s safety and hype the Hollow’s “bad”ness, but also to make the first move in the ‘Letting Go’ thread between Hayley and Elijah. Elijah was supposed to be forced to choose between children's lives and letting the Hollow loose upon the world, and decide to kill the children. That was the dramatic point of placing this ritual in the narrative, but it isn’t mechanically sound.

It is stated outright that the ritual has to end with the death of the children linked to the spell. The children were linked via their totems found in 4x03 - placing Hope definitively in this group.

But we only ever see four of the five in one place. Maybe it was worth it to the Hollow to reach as far out as Hope was to bind her via her hairbrush, maybe it was worth it to the Hollow to drain her from afar, I’d buy that easily. But they made no attempt to kidnap her and place her with the other four children during the ritual. The ritual that required the deaths of five children. Unless it required Hope to be there only on standby, which is absolutely ridiculous. They had the kids on an alter, even if it was just for show. But why not all of them? If the real goal of the ritual was to lure Klaus and/or Marcel, wouldn’t kidnapping Klaus’ child be a more surefire way to accomplish that rather than just hoping the Mikaelsons would come to the right mystical diagnosis in time?

The reason why Hope wasn’t there was because the ritual was never thought through. The reason she wasn’t there is because it didn’t make sense for Elijah to want to kill Hope to stop the Hollow, which is what this ritual actually demanded if it actually worked the way Vincent claimed. In actuality, all that was desired was for Elijah to display a willingness to kill innocents in front of Hayley, and in doing so it demanded that Hope’s life both be at stake and not at stake at all. This failure to coherently execute a single-episode arc is plainly poor storytelling. It displays not only disrespect to the narrative structure, but a blatant flippancy towards one of their main characters and arguably the most complex one on the series. The sloppily contrived tension here between Hayley and Elijah does eventually contribute to the supposed theme, yes, but at what cost?

Elijah was neglected because he was hard to write, and even harder to write well as a ‘light’ foil to Klaus. Marcel should have fully owned that role, and not been similarly jerked around as a plot-serving every-man once the mystery of season 1 and the reasons behind Marcel’s ‘senseless’ cruelty were revealed. 

Elijah was always the cornerstone of the family’s narrative, because he was complex enough to carry it. Camille provided an additional column of support to Klaus’ individual journey as a person/father, but she was bulldozed for Allmighty Plot as well. By the end of season three, both she and Elijah had effectively been thrown in the garbage one way or another, and the show tried to go on without them. It couldn’t. 

I will say that Elijah’s conversation with Hope in that ludicrous backdoor pilot did make me feel things. I did also see the clip where Elijah and Klaus have a heart-to-heart in some sort of european flashback, which was touching, but felt incongruous for their relationship/dev at the time. Hope asking Elijah how old he was when he made his promises to Klaus, though? Elijah offering carte blanche to Hope for how to punish her friend’s bullies? TWO OF THE THREE SCENES INVOLVING ICE CREAM? 

SOME of season 5 is valid but ONLY because it stole scripts from my headcanons.

[natsubeatsrock]

The Rewrite of Fairy Tail: Bonus (What If? #9)

What if Erza was born during the Mildian Academy era?

I think the fact that I've had wacky ideas in the past has been greatly understated. I mean, sure, I've had a few ideas in this series. I wouldn't possibly think of something crazy involving important characters. Right?

Weirdly enough, one of my craziest ideas involved Erza. I don't know that this is my craziest idea so far and I'm not willing to say I won't think of something crazier (I say as if I don't know some of the ones to come). However, this is one of the more wacky things I've thought of.

One of the stupider issues I had with the Erza situation was how her age ought to be counted. See, Natsu and the other Dragon Slayers were considered to be close to 400 years old because they were born around that time. However, they are technically the much younger biological ages we generally expect them to be.

But how does this play with Erza? As we know, she was conceived during the Mildian Academy Era but was born close to the time of the events of the series. So she's considered to be 18, which is why she passes through the barrier during Fantasia but Natsu and Gajeel can't.

But what if she was born during that time?

My original revised origin for Erza starts with Irene around the time that she gets the Dragon Seed. In this version, she's further on in the pregnancy than she was in canon and doesn't have the time or ability to inhibit Erza's growth. Due to the events that lead to Irene being taken over by the Dragon Seed, Erza doesn't survive to a full term. After a certain point, Erza ends up being stillborn.

Now, that's not where the story ends as Erza has to be around for the series to function properly. But here's where it gets interesting. In the original Zeref is responsible for Irene's transformation to a more human form. Similarly, after realizing her inability to taste and stuff, this Irene immediately shifts her focus towards finding Erza's remains to use her body as a replacement for her own. And once she finds them, she seeks out Zeref to recreate the experiment he used to form E.N.D.

That's right. This version of Erza is etherious. At the very least, she's about as much demon as Natsu was before Demon or Dragon.

There are some cool benefits to this origin. For starters, this was going to be my original explanation for Irene not being able to enchant herself on Erza. It's not a matter of loving Erza too much. It's a physiological incongruence between half-dragon and half-demon. This is why Wendy makes more sense as her ultimate choice.

Even beyond Irene, this helps to explain Erza's strength. It's joked about in and out of canon that Erza's strength breaks human logic. Natsu and Gray even question if Erza is human before we meet her in the anime. With this, we have one of the best possible explanations for how Erza can pull off superhuman feats - she's more than human. Her strength breaks the bounds of human logic specifically because she's not operating on them.

And remember, this is work based on Natsu becoming E.N.D. Not only am I working with a pre-established experiment set within the series. I'm also giving Erza a similar background to Natsu, a character I was bound to connect with her. If you think my post on how he stays in the guild because of her was good, consider I almost had these two connected by origin. I even had the idea to set this up with a snide remark about how no one gets him as she does. (It's at this point that my Natza shipping bias is showing.)

Why did I decide against this? (Oh boys...)

Frankly, the conceit of this scenario feels a bit much on a few levels. First off, Irene can find Erza's remain exactly where she buried them, hundreds of years after the fact. And that's assuming she cared enough about the daughter she was planning to replace bodies with to bury her remains in the first place. 

But let's assume that she's able to find the body over the long amount of time she'd need. Hopefully, there's nothing built on top of them and she's able to escape Acnologia in the process. (Something that barely works in the canon, to begin with.) You would still have to believe that this is a plan Zeref would be willing to go through. Even if he remembers the process (not that I think he'd forget), I feel like he'd be apprehensive of the idea. This was a process he used to bring back his brother from the dead with the intention of Natsu killing him. Either the sanctity of the process' original use or the existence of another etherious may dissuade him from the repetition of this experiment.

And let's say that we grant all of that. Irene finds what she needs to and Zeref is willing to go through with the plan. This still is a fundamental change to Erza that would seriously need to be accounted for. I'd have to write circles around some of the bigger conflicts this causes. I'd have to come up with an explanation for how Erza either can pass through the barrier or isn't behind the barrier with the other girls. I'd have to address Kyouka potentially realizing she's dealing with another etherious in torturing her and why she doesn't get a similar treatment to Mirajane. I'd have to skate around any times this potentially could have been revealed up to the moment we learn of Erza's true origin. And, for what it's worth, Grayza isn't a ship I've left off the table for the rewrite proper. (Enough said.)

For all the trouble this could cause me, it's not like its influence is lost on me. Consider that Natsu and Erza's relationship is going to be a bit more pronounced than it was in the original. Irene doesn't enchant herself onto Erza as their bodies are incompatible. Part of Erza's strength comes from what Irene had done to her own body before she was born. So, even as I put this aside as a possibility for the official rewrite, it does affect it in some interesting and important ways.

Based on Part 23

What If? #1 | What If? #2 | What If? #3 | What If? #4 | What If? #5 | What If? #6 | What If? #7 | What If? #8

[kyogre-blue]

Nanowrimo, day 14 (wc 2365)

Vittel was exceptionally efficient. Within a day, he had a list of the most prominent restaurants in Napolia, as well as information about their recent history, specialities, clientele, and owners. It was unclear whether he had slept at all, but his condition seemed fine when Sinbad squinted at him slightly, so he let it go. 

Before he could begin to deliver his report in detail, Sinbad held up a hand. “Let’s go visit them,” he said. “I’d like to take a look myself.” 

He had always had a special way of judging people and situations. He had a feeling that seeing the restaurants himself would reveal something that Vittel couldn’t have found out. 

The most high class establishment in Napolia was actually outside the city itself, at a private estate on the outskirts. It wasn’t possible to even get close without invitation, and it was necessary to book the location well ahead of time. Although only the most elite citizens and visitors could ever dine there, “Hesperides Garden” had an almost mythical status in Napolia. Going there once was something to brag about for a year. 

“Forget it,” Sinbad said immediately. “Their reputation is already too strong, we won’t have enough leverage.” And besides, he didn’t want Sindria to become a company for only the elite. 

Vittel nodded. “The most prominent ones after Hesperides Garden are these three: Bacchanalia, Octavium, and The East Dock Restaurant. Their rankings tend to vary depending on the source, but they are all mentioned most often…” 

Bacchanalia was especially famous for their wide selection of wines, including from the desert cities and even the far east. Octavium was the newest, built within the last two decades by its owner, Madam Octavia. The East Dock Restaurant was the opposite, built more than a century ago, before Napolia became a major port and when it only had two docks. 

Their owners were, respectively, a merchant family, a famous socialite, and an old master who bought it after retiring from service in the Reim Senate. 

Sinbad’s fingers tapped against his folded arm as he thought. 

“Let’s leave aside the wine place,” he decided, not even trying to pronounce the Reiman name. “The Imuchakk don’t drink wine, and we can’t say how to pair our dishes with their specialty. For the other two… Well, we’re at South Fifth Dock, so let’s go to the other place first.” 

Also, he was somewhat interested in this Madam Octavia. She had to be a rather impressive lady. 

Realizing he was grinning rather ridiculously and almost snickering to himself, Sinbad quickly smoothed out his expression. Fortunately, Vittel hadn’t noticed — or maybe just pretended not to notice, for the sake of being able to continue respecting his boss. 

The architecture in Reim favored triangular roofs and rows of straight columns, somewhat like Valefor’s dungeon on the outside, along with perfectly curved domes and arches. This style matched well with the floaty, elegantly draping robes the citizens most often wore, while also carrying a solid, unshakable strength suited to the oldest, greatest empire of the world. 

However, there were also many buildings with clearly foreign inspirations as well, especially in the commercial districts where the foreigners lived and worked. They did not always match the current owners, having changed hands many times, and sometimes were a combination of different styles altogether. 

This was also the case for the building Sinbad had picked for Sindria Company’s first office — several domes that were quite Reiman, blocky foundations inspired by Aktia, and thin towers from the desert cities. 

Sindria Trading Company was going to connect the world, after all. It was only natural for even their first office to look the part. 

Their future storefront, they would naturally decorate in the Imuchakk style. There were many establishments doing the same — showing off brilliant fabrics, richly woven rugs, large pots of every shape, unusual plants, and even animal skins — and Sinbad studied them with interest as he and Vittel made their way down the streets. 

The Octavium restaurant was situated well, facing a large plaza on the intersection of the commercial district and a fairly upscale residential quarter. Large throngs of people were constantly passing through, along with fancy carriages of the well-to-do. The reason it could afford such a prime location was likely its small ground floor — the restaurant was a tower of at least eight stories. Sinbad couldn’t count further, even craning his neck to look up at it, from down on the ground. 

“The higher floors are reserved for favored customers and special events,” Vittel explained as they found a corner of the plaza to observe from. “Supposedly, the view from the top floors is exceptional, particularly at night.” 

Sinbad nodded in acknowledgement. “What about the menu? And the customers?” 

“The base cuisine is Reiman. But a lot of the dishes change depending on recent trends in the city and in Remano. Octavium is known for always staying on top of what’s popular at the moment,” Vittel said. This was also a matter he had looked into. “The customers are varied. For the bottom floors, especially during the day, even ordinary people can go there on occasion. It’s most popular with independent merchants and younger nobility. It seems like the most well-off and the old aristocracy find it too… trendy.” 

“Thought so,” Sinbad agreed, smiling. 

But that was fine. They didn’t want the highest possible elites anyway. 

“Hm…” he drew out, stroking his chin and eyeing the building with interest. “How long are those wide bolts of navy cloth we brought? They’d look good as banners, right?” 

For some reason, Vittel gave him a slightly strange look. 

“Oh, are you thinking I shouldn’t act like we’ve already succeeded when we haven’t even gotten started?” Sinbad guessed, grinning. ...In fact, it was more that he sounded like he was already planning to buy out the entire place, but Sinbad was not actually a mindreader. “Don’t worry, I have a good feeling about this place! Let’s head back and send a letter to the owner. We’ll have the negotiation tomorrow.” 

“You don’t want to see the East Dock Restaurant first?” Vittel wondered. “Or at least get a look at the owner?” 

“No, this is good,” Sinbad said, completely certain. “We’ll succeed.” He paused. “I do want one more thing. What are the two restaurants closest to breaking through to this same level?” 

~.~ 

The letter Sinbad had delivered to Octavium’s owner, the Madam Octavia herself, was actually two missives together. 

One was a request to reserve the top floor of the restaurant the next night. The other was an invitation — for that same night. Naturally, Sindria Company would provide the food. After all, what better strategy than to let their product speak for itself? Both were written by Rurumu, since Sinbad’s skill with a pen was still quite shaky, along with a stylized drawing by Hinahoho on the letterhead to add an Imuchakk flavor. 

To keep from crowding, it was decided that only Sinbad, Ja’far, Rurumu and Hinahoho would attend, along with Alibaba to observe… and also keep the cooked dishes warm. 

“Amon must be so mad at me right now,” Alibaba muttered, as he carried the food boxes through the discreet rear entrance and the servant staircase up to the room they had booked. 

Ja’far, who had been tasked with helping him, rolled his eyes. “Doubt Valefor’s any happier,” he pointed out, since Sinbad had been similarly employing his second djinn’s great cosmic power for the purposes of keeping the perishable goods frozen. 

Alibaba laughed awkwardly. There was, he felt, a world of difference between how a djinn would look at a king like Sinbad and how Amon had looked at Alibaba. The fire djinn had been deeply unimpressed with him from the start, and that impression could not have possibly improved since then. 

Could a djinn change their mind and un-select a king vessel? Alibaba wondered it he’d be the first to find out. 

Whatever the Madam Octavia thought of Sinbad’s invitation, she had accepted their deposit and reserved the famous top level of her restaurant for them. Alibaba and Ja’far moved quickly to lay out Rurumu’s dishes — and also to change the decorations to Imuchakk’s deep blue cloth and polished white bone. 

They had practiced and discussed ahead of time. There may have been some infiltration involved to check the layout and furniture of the room they’d reserved. All so that they would be ready. 

And they were. When Ja’far signaled that someone was coming up the main stairs, he and Alibaba had just finished. Quickly, they moved into the background, like the proper servant types they were pretending to be. 

They didn’t have the time or materials to completely change the room, but the effect was already good. There was certainly no other dining experience like in all of Napolia. 

The door to the main stairwell opened, and Sinbad stepped inside first, followed by Hinahoho and Rurumu, who flanked him like royal guards. It made for an impressive sight, but even more impressive was that Sinbad didn’t lose his sense of presence despite being dwarfed by them on either side. 

“We are truly grateful to have your company tonight, Madam Octavia,” Sinbad said, turning back and sketching a bow as he gestured further inside. “Please, this way. Everything has been prepared.” 

The one who walked past him was an older woman with the pale gold hair characteristic of Reim’s citizens, styled into a complex crown of thin braids, pearls and silver jewelry. More pearls dangled from her ears, and silver decorated her pale robes. In the warm lamplight, she glowed pale and ethereal. It was the kind of effect achieved only by those very conscious of their appearance and style. 

Like most of the powerful elite, she didn’t even spare Ja’far a glance as he pulled out a chair for her at the table. Playing his part, Alibaba did the same for Sinbad. 

“I must admit, this is the first time I’ve been invited to my own restaurant,” Octavia said. She didn’t look at Sinbad either, even as she spoke to him. Instead, her gaze slid over the decorations, giving away nothing of her thoughts. Her tone was cool and disinterested. 

Sinbad smiled, folding his hands and keeping his eyes on her without wavering. Alibaba knew that the sense of pressure he could exude just with that was not small. As expected of the future conqueror-king. 

“Surely the restaurant created and headed by Madam herself is the most suited to Madam’s tastes,” Sinbad said. “And of course, the view is unmatched in Napolia.” He gestured to the open windows showing a grand view of the city and its lights, all the way to the harbor and the lighthouse at the port entrance. “Our headquarters are simply no match when it comes to entertaining an honored guest.” 

Finally, the madam’s pale blue eyes shifted to Sinbad, but she didn’t say anything. 

She didn’t need to. They, outsiders with no backing or standing in Napolia, were the ones who had something to sell to her. 

“Shall we?” Sinbad offered, unbothered. 

At his queue, Ja’far and Alibaba moved silently to serve the first course, artfully arranged on a special set of plates ahead of time. 

“Our Sindria Trading Company’s starting business is based on our exclusive trading agreement with Imuchakk in the extreme north,” Sinbad explained as the dishes were placed in front of them and the drinks were poured. “Imuchakk is a land of white and snow, isolated from outsiders. Their goods have never appeared on the market before, so we would like to offer you a small sample...” 

It was already the beginning of summer, and although the heat had not yet fully set in, it was already too warm for heavy meals. Rurumu had carefully considered this when putting together the menu. 

The first dish they served was a light soup with a warm color and slightly sweet flavor, boiled form bones. 

Taking a small sip, Madam Octavia finally allowed the smallest opening. “I have heard of Imuchakk,” she said. “But the stories were ghastly -- bloody minded raiders, ships looted and burned. Not the most appealing image.” 

Rather an opening, it was an attack. 

In other words, ‘how do you plan to sell something like that?’ 

“There was something like that, wasn’t there?” Sinbad asked, turning to Rurumu. 

“Indeed. In the past, our nation was still too underdeveloped,” Rurumu said, her expression gentle, her hands folded demurely. Despite her stature, her aura was unthreatening and open. “It was a terrible time. Fortunately, our ancestors were able to find a better, more civilized way of life. They established our federation and the council of chiefs who settle disputes within our tribes. Without internal and external strife, we were finally able to advance as a people.” 

“Thanks to this, the national chief Rametoto signed the trading agreement with us,” Sinbad added, “so that the Imuchakk can begin to connect with the outside world in a peaceful way.” 

Madam Octavia didn’t reply. When she set aside the bowl of soup, it was slightly less than half full. Quietly, Ja’far cleared it away and set out the next course -- a clear piece of ice fish, finely prepared to melt in your mouth. 

“We have been entrusted with a wide variety of goods,” Sinbad went on. “Fabrics, carvings, ceremonial works, corals... fish and game are among them. We would like to spread them across Napolia, Reim and the world.” 

Tapping lightly at her mouth with a napkin, Madam Octavia looked at him coolly. “And since you do not have a trading license, you can only do this through an intermediary,” she ruthlessly pointed out their predicament. “Or else your goods will be nothing but rot by the time you obtain it.” 

Unexpectedly, she smiled. It was small and tight, and looked like an expression befitting a lion, despite the lack of teeth. 

“But I know what it’s like to be a newcomer to the business. There is something to be said about an entirely new spread like this,” she said. “Very well. I’ll help you out, young man.” 

[plus-size-reader]

Crazy pt 2

Sam Winchester x Plus size!reader

Word Count: 1540 words

Warnings:none

Summary: The truth comes out about how Dean feels for the reader, and she can’t help but tell Sam. 

———————————————————————————————————

Bless his heart, Sam was so happy to see you that he didn't ask any questions about why his brother was pale white and you looked as if you were going to burst into flames. There was no good way to tell him what had just come out, so both you and Dean kept quiet regarding what he'd just told you.

It wasn't that you weren't going to tell Sam at some point, because you would, but right now, your head was spinning and you had no idea how to process what was happening. Dean was feeling similarly, in fact, it was possible that this was harder for him that it was even for you.

He felt like he was betraying his brother's trust, and he hated himself for it but he couldn't change how he felt. For the most part, he just felt stupid for waiting so long to tell you. Maybe if he'd come clean sooner, you would be having his baby instead.

"You two look like you've seen a ghost, what's up?" Sam asked, setting all the take out bags on the table, as well as a salad for himself because he hadn't eaten a hamburger since the whole Biggerson's thing with Dick Roman.

It was becoming abundantly clear that no matter how hard he tried, Dean couldn't make himself speak to you or Sam so you hurried to break the uncomfortable silence. "Long day, we're okay baby" You assured, letting your eyes wander momentarily to Dean before snapping back to Sam's waiting face, a smile falling on your lips no matter how hard you tried to keep it from happening.

"Nothing much, the town is dead out there...no pun intended" Sam smiled, grinning at his own little joke though all your could muster up was a slight smile which instantly fell back down. You had so much on your mind that right now it seemed impossible to even fake a grin.

Now, Sam knew that something wasn't right. Of course he did, you two were his world but if you told him nothing was up, he was going to believe you. He understood that you and his older brother had a unique relationship considering the fact that you two had been friends all your lives. You were also closer in age to Dean, and ever though you were only three years older than Sam, he knew that was something that would always separate you, at least a little bit.

"Sounds good baby brother, I think I'm gonna go out after all" Dean suggested, standing from the bed hurriedly. Before you could tell him not to go, all you could hear was the back burner of Baby's engine firing as Dean sped from the parking lot.

This wasn't going to go over well.

"I wonder what he's got going on?" Sam questions, shrugging lightly as if it was no big deal. Little did he know that Dean was probably never going to talk to you again. Whatever he had wanted you to say, you certainly hadn't said and that wasn't going to work out for anyone.

You didn't know how to address the entire situation with your fiance even though you weren't entirely sure how he would react. You didn't want him to be upset with his brother, and there was no way for him to be completely sure how he would take it. This was the kind of thing that broke families up and you weren't prepared for that.

"Um, Sam? I think we need to talk about something?" you hummed, still vibrating with nerves as you tried your hardest to ignore the terrible feeling in your stomach. Sam being the absolutely amazing man that he was, only smiled as he sat beside you on the motel bed, his long legs taking up most of the room because he was seven feet tall in his resting state.

You weren't ready to tell him what had happened but you knew the chances of Sam Winchester being upset with you were very, very slim so that helped to calm you the least bit...though you would happily take it over the alternative.

"Okay, um, Dean and I had a conversation when you were gone, and apparently he's in love with me" You allowed, feeling every cell in your body set ablaze as you tried your hardest to keep calm though it was basically impossible at this point.

It was all out in the open and neither of you knew what to do about it.

You knew that Sam wasn't mad at you. In fact, you weren't even sure if he was mad at all. Mostly, he just looked confused beyond belief.

He was probably wondering some of the same stuff you had been when Dean first told you how he felt. How long had he felt that way? Why didn't he tell anyone? What was he thinking? All of which were valid questions that you would have loved to have the answers for.

"That's why he's been so distant?" Sam asked, thinking through the last few months since you found out you were pregnant. That was around the time Dean started being impossible to be around, and this has to be the reason why.

You could only nod, one hand resting lightly on your baby bump and the other stretched out toward where Sam was sitting, his large hand holding your own. "What are we going to do about this Sam?" You question, already knowing what he's going to say.

There is nothing that you two can do. You can have your baby, and get married like you planned. Dean was just going to have to accept that and move on with his life because you loved Sam. It had always been Sam, no matter how much you cared for Dean too.

The Winchester boys are your family, and you care about them, no matter what. However, you were dealing with a lot right now considering what in the world Dean had just thrown in front of you.

"I'll talk to him, I'm sure everything will be fine" he didn't sound all that sure, but the very declaration from him was enough to calm you. It didn't worry you that something could happen between the brothers, because they'd been through stuff much worse than this in the past, but this certainly wasn't going to be a cake walk by any means.

All you could do is nod, snuggling into the space Sam had made for you beneath his arm, so you were just close enough to him to hear his heartbeat lightly hammering against the inside of chest.

Before you knew it, you were passed out asleep, Sam's large hand resting atop your belly bump gingerly. Fortunately for you, your nap timed up perfectly with Dean's return to the motel so you no longer had to worry incessantly over the future of your family.

Now it was Sam's turn

~

You woke up to both Winchester brothers voices, muffled through the wall of the motel though you could tell they were arguing. How could they not be after everything?

It was impossible to know what they were arguing over, but it was abundantly clear that something had went down when you were out.

Slowly, you moved from the bed over to window, your bare feet padding lightly against the carpet with each step. As you neared, the sounds of both men's voices got a little more pronounced but above all, you heard Dean.

He was apologizing, and trying his hardest to explain why he was feeling the way he was, and as it would turn out, Sam wasn't angry...he was trying to help his brother deal with something that was difficult on them both.

You listened that way for a while until the talking stopped, making it clear to you that both men would be entering the motel room again. As quickly as you could, you rushed over to the bed and pretended to be sleeping, hoping to avoid detection.

You just got your eyes closed when the door opened, both Sam and Dean keeping their steps quiet to avoid waking you, little did they know.

"She's gonna be a great mom" Dean hummed, you didn't even have to look at him to know that he was smiling. It almost brought a smile to your own face, and would have if you hadn't been under cover right now.

Sam agreed, letting out his own hum of contentment as he stared down at you. Your body had swollen to accommodate the greedy child growing inside you. He smiled slightly at the memory, you'd been so angry when you first started gaining weight, but he thought you looked beautiful.

"She really is, and the baby's gonna be a handful...we're gonna need Uncle Dean to pull it off" he grinned, bumping his brother lightly in the shoulder, shifting his center of balance slightly with the movement.

Being an uncle may not have been Dean's original plan, but if that was what you two needed from him, he would be happy to do it and that baby was going to be the most spoiled infant on the planet.

He would make sure of it.