#but it's so important to be able to recognize these irrational thoughts and call them out! it helps!!!

[fatemari]

I only get angry a few times a year and I hate it. This isn't me. But my job kinda pissed me off this morning but when I my brain said maybe we should just ...... ... ...... And I decided not to be mad anymore and just seek psychological help one day when I can afford it lol

Reminder that being able to recognize irrational thoughts and talking back to them is very important⭐

[clangenrising]

I want to take a second to talk to those of you who find it funny that Scorch has been calling the Clans a cult. I agree, it is kind of humorous, but I do want to be a wet blanket for a sec and point out that the Warrior Cats Clan structure IS actually very cultish. As far as I can tell, the Clans meet at least three out of four criteria laid out in Steven Hassan's BITE model of Authoritarian Control.

The BITE model lays out 4 kinds of control that Cults and groups like them use to keep their members in check:

Behavior Control Information Control Thought Control Emotional Control

And Warrior Clans exibit most of these traits (keep in mind I haven't read past Omen of the Stars). More below the cut

Behavior Control

Dictate where, how, and with whom the member lives and associates/isolates (Clans live in specific areas and only really socialize with their own clan)

Dictate where, how, and with whom the member has sex (half clan and outsider mates are extremely discouraged and even punished)

Major time spent with group indoctrination and rituals (Warrior Clans are full of ritual ceremonies that create group cohesion)

Rewards and Punishments used to modify behaviors (breaking the code results in punishments ranging from disliked duties to physical harm and cats can be rewarded with things like the best patrols or getting their warrior names early)

Impose rigid rules or regulations

Separation of Families (if a kittypet joins they are discouraged from ever talking to their family again.)

Information Control

Compartmentalize information into Outsider vs Insider doctrines (Clans discourage their members from listening to kittypets, loners, and rogues)

Extensive use of Cult Generated information and propaganda (I would argue the ubiquity of StarClan in Clan life would count. StarClan's word is seen as pure truth not to be questioned.)

Thought Control

Require members to internalize the group's doctrine as truth including organizing people into us vs them and adopting the group's reality as the only reality.

Change a person's name and identity (this is a big one! If you join a clan you are highly encouraged to take a Clan style name. You become a warrior and that is your new identiy)

Forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy allowed (The leader's word is law. StarClan is not to be questioned.)

Labeling alternitive belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful (A warrior rejects the soft life of a kittypet)

Emotional Control

Promote feelings of guilt or unworthiness such as Identity guilt, not living up to full potential, etc (Half Clan and kittypet bigotry within clans ticks this box when applicable)

Instill fear of enemies, thinking independently, the outside world, leaving or being shunned by the group, losing one's salvation, etc (Again, more present in Clans that are depicted as 'evil' by the books but things like fear of losing one's salvation is present in kit tales that warn cats about ending up in the dark forest)

Phobia indoctrination: instilling irrational fears about leaving the group or questioning the leader, saying things like there is no happiness outside the group, shunning those who leave so people fear losing their friends and family if they do, never allowing for legitimate reasons to leave aka anyone who does was weak or selfish or brainwashed. (This one is fairly self explanitory)

So yeah. The clans tick all the boxes that cults do.

Now, I want to be clear, im not saying you should start hating the clans or that you're bad for thinking they're cool. Part of that is that Cults inherently try to sound cool to draw in members and part of it is that its okay to enjoy fiction about things that are bad or immoral. The important part is being able to recognize and understand those things.

So my real intent here is to get you to examine the media you engage with more critically and, most importantly, as someone who was born into a cult and managed to escape:

Be careful not to let fun depictions of cults normalize cult behavior. You are not immune to propaganda and I would hate for any of you to get sucked into a group or religion that will control you in these ways. I recommend you take a look at the BITE model in its entirety and really think about how it may apply to groups you are in. Cults are really good at painting themselves as welcoming and fun and they are not. Look out for yourself.

I love you. Your regularly scheduled Warrior Cats content will resume shortly.

[rat-rambles]

Alastor isn't a narcissist.

I got in an argument on tik tok about this so now i’m walking us through the dsm 5 criteria for narcissistic personality disorder god dammit.

Before i start i'd like to say being like “oh he's a narcissist” just cuz he's evil and manipulates people is super lazy. also like we culturally have a problem with narcissists and just coinflating them with evil even though it's a real personality disorder with specific symptoms that have to be met and alastor just doesn't have a lot of them.

A lot of these points are going to compare al to Val because Val is actually a textbook abusive narcissist.

nine criteria are:

DSM 1: Grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievement and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements);

-So this is like how val keeps over selling his own importance especially when he was overstating the power of Angel's contract. Al never over sells himself except for when he fought Adam which he thought he had it in the bag that's just plain old ego

DSM 2: Fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love;

-I'll give this one, though I do think that the fantasies of controlling everything had more to do with no one being able to control him and less to do with him thinking he deserves more power.

Ding

DSM 3: Belief in being “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should be associated with, other special or high-status people (or institutions);

-Him being close to Mimzy who's just a normal soul in hell and is in no way his equal proves his willingness to be close to people “beneath” him. He seems to understand that he's the same as the other overlords, hence him trying to get more power. Val doesn't try to get more power because he already thinks he's the best hanging out with the best. Al apparently also told husk about his soul deal at some point; they definitely seem to have a real understanding between the 2 of them, maybe because husk used to also be an overlord so he understands but still.

DSM 4: Requires excessive admiration;

-No that lucifer and Adam “because I'm the best” and “i'm the original dick” al never asks people to like him because he cool he dosnt want people to think he's weak but lest we forget he's in hell with a over lord for a rival no shit he dosnt want to be seen as weak, but mostly he lets just antagonsy him that's the whole reason husk felt confortable calling him out becuse he's ok with being bullied on main

DSM 5: Sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations;

-Again he doesn't make husk, mimzy, Rosie, or nifty ever acknowledge him as a superior except for threatening husk, you know saying his deepest darkest secret in the very private place of the hotel halls and actively using that against him in an argument. Threatening him wasn't cool but it wasn't “irrational” either. The only reason he’s an agonist to lucifer is because he needs Charlie to need him and lucifer just giving her whatever she wants kinda fucks that up. He expects people to treat him like the rest of the overlords which is fair seeing as he IS an overlord.

DSM 6: Interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his/her own ends;

-Ok this one could easily be a ding but i'm gonna argue against this. See with narcissism being a personality disorder, being manipulative would have to be well part of his personality. I'm going to make the case that it's not and is a survival skill he's picked up only because his other powers have failed him. Agin to compare to val, val gets a kick out of manipulating; he is heavily implied to have tricked Angel into thinking he cared about him and judging by the text he was sending angel he's still a little invested in convincing angel he somehow cares for him even though he's under contract and technically doesn't need to. from what we know, al came into hell and started killing people for respect. The first manipulation we know of is him tricking husk into losing his soul via card game which doesn't involve emotions and then isn't invested in husk liking him again. He’s ok with husk out right loathing him most of the time. He is manipulating charlie but that could very well be because of his sole contract but also is because every other means of power isn't enough for him. To me manipulation seems like a last resort when Al is out of options. I'll give it a tentative ding.

DSM 7: Lacks empathy; is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others;

-i think the most damning evidence that he isn't a narcissist is he has a deep understanding of how complex emotions work when others in the show don't understand. with charlie he uses that but a narcissist literally can't do that. He also wants to help mimzy for no personal gain and seems to show genuine empathy to nifty for no personal gain. I can't stress this enough, in hell he will uses people but he also really likes people and is very social he has friends he's just. again, IN HELL where everyone is actually out to get you

DSM 8: Envious of others or believes that others are envious of him/her;

-He wants to be in control of everything but that seems more to do with no one being able to control him and less about being better than others. But you could give this point

a tentative ding

DSM 9: Arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.

-that's how Adam behaves, literally like that. It's literally one of alastor's core character traits that he's cool and Collected. he snaps at people twice vs val and adam who snap at someone in almost every scene they’re in. He was arrogant when he attacked Adam but he has good reason to think he's hot shit he's killed like an army of lone sharks his ego is through the roof but not uncalled for. Just seems like a normal man level

So that's 3 out of 9 with me being generous and he needed 5. I know I'm not the first to do something like this but I'm sure when people say he is they’re looking at the person he presents as and not what they show him as. Actually personality man's Got layers.

[angelsdean]

home always feels like an episode they should have waited a season or two to do to me, when the mythology and characters were a little more lived it. I don't know if this makes sense, but i think in any other season, or even this season in the backhalf, this set up would have lent itself to a classic Dean Studies episode, and it feels weird that once we're actually in the house, we're actually seeing Mary, we totally pull back on Dean. Honestly, outside of the phone call to John, he's very sidelined despite this being an easy set up to explore backstory for him as the only character there who has a memory of the fire. And even Sam as the POV character falls flat not because there isn't interesting tension there, it could have worked! but because it's so heavy unfolding the psychic plot point and it's clear that that's more important to the episode than the family mythology. It just feels like you could take the bones of the episode, drop into season 3, and get something that looks completely different. (You said this much more eloquently re: the narrative, but I'm on s2 of my own rewatch and i keep thinking about this, haha).

hii sorry i didn't answer this sooner, but yea that's def how i felt rewatching it like, it just feels like it comes too soon for it to really *do* anything. we haven't yet really felt the haunting absence of mary. their main plot focuses rn are 1.) finding john (and in conjunction w/ that, finding and killing azazel) and 2.) literally just starting in this ep, sam's psychic visions. the whole concept of going back home and being confronted w/ their mother's literal ghost who recognizes and can talk to them is a HUGE thing that deserved to be the main focus, not a footnote in an ep trying to introduce a major plot element, sam's visions.

literally like you said, there's IS tension from sam's POV but they just don't go anywhere with it, since the focus is more on his psychic visions. like the scene w/ sam and mary could've been so much more. and if this came later in the season, or even a few seasons later, mary's "i'm sorry" to sam would've held more weight and packed a punch bc she feels responsible for what's happened to sam !!! for the deal w/ azazel and causing sam to be infected w/ demon blood. but sitting in the 9th episode of s1 where we still barely know anything it just falls flat and feels like she's just apologizing for what? dying? of course we have the gift of knowing everything to come later, but i'm trying to put myself in the shoes of the 2005 audience. what would they have thought she was apologizing for? like up until s4 that audience doesn't even know about mary being a hunter or her deal. so like, for those early years, it would just seem like she was apologizing for i guess not getting to sam fast enough to stop azazel and for dying ??

but yea anyways i feel like dean should've been the central character for an episode like this and we already know mary's death was traumatic for him. he tells lucas in 1x03 how he stopped talking after mary died. he tells lucas he's scared all the time but tries his best to be brave bc he thinks it's what his mom would've wanted. mary is such a central figure in dean's life and memories and is thee anchor to the myth of the "perfect family" that never was that dean is constantly yearning for and why family is so important to him. also comments like dean saying he always wanted to be a firefighter when he was a kid reveal a lot abt how much the fire affected him and fueled his desire to save people. and then in 1x09 Home itself, we see dean go in to save the blonde mom while he tells sam to save the kids which is interesting bc in 1x03 dean immediately goes for the kid and lets sam save the mom. so, it feels like subconsciously there's something there with dean and his desire to save mary. and this would've been a great episode to explore that trauma and guilt he has for not being able to save her (and god it's so irrational and he must know it, he was literally 4 yrs old what could he have done !!!) but still.

anyways this is getting long but yea i think at the very least, home should've come later in the season and not have to share the plot w/ introducing sam's psychic powers. there's just SO much they could've done with the whole concept of going back home and seeing mary's ghost. i wanted them to feel haunted !!!! haunted by home and the myth of mary !!!!!

[swamp-spirit]

Some thoughts about dark fiction and mental illness and being a bit too good at Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

I've been in therapy on and off since age 11, and pretty much every therapist has told me I'm very good at reasoning through my emotions.

In third grade, I started keeping a tin of Altoids by my bed. I didn't really like the taste of the peppermint ones, but when I worried too much to sleep, I pretended they were magic medicine that made all my worries go away.

In fifth grade, I understood that sometimes, all the color just went out of life and I stopped feeling happy. I kept thinking about how meaningless my life was. I didn't know this was called depression, but I understood it would pass.

I have been able to explain to every therapist why my emotions are irrational, why my life is wonderful and I am so grateful to have it.

This has never stopped those emotions. It helps. Over my thirty years of being Mentally Ill, I have learned many signs. When I feel like I've forgotten some Important, Terrible Thing, I know this is a lie my anxiety tells and no longer sift through everything I hate about myself to try to find the True Horrible Reason I loath myself so deeply. When every song on my Spotify seems to pulse with life, I recognize I am falling into mania, get lots of sleep, and watch my spending carefully. When I begin to read article after article on an issue that upsets me because I must Face the Horrible Truth, I recognize this is my OCD, admit what I'm doing to my wife, and ask for distraction. I take my meds. I do deep breathing. I carry stim toys.

The thing is, you can stare an emotion dead in the eyes. You can recognize it, explain it, and still feel it.

It turns out, after decades of your mind screaming that you are sad and afraid and telling those emotions they are irrational and unfair and only make you cruel and paranoid and selfish, some part of your brain learns to treat what you feel as unimportant.

I lost anger first. It's a secret, even to me, but I am a very angry person. I'm easily overstimulated, my nervous system is a skittish horse, and my emotional regulation is shot. I always try to see the other side of things. I usually can. This is good. I do not want to change this about myself, but it often means I direct my anger the only safe direction I can. It took me years to understand why I would self harm after arguments, because I wasn't angry, was I? I was, I'm learning. I am. I am angry. I don't know how to be angry.

These days, my body often knows how I feel before my brain, and my wife knows what my body is saying before I do.

"I don't understand why my pain's been so bad this week." "Love, you got fired last week and we can't afford our apartment anymore. You're upset." "Oh. I think I am."

I like angry characters. I like watching their anger be destructive and terrible and ruin their lives. I do not want to learn how to lash out, how to blame others for my raging emotions, how to hate without guilt, but I want to learn to be angry. Characters can be angry for me, ruin little pretend worlds for pretend reasons. They can be so much worse than I ever am and still be loved and forgiven.

I like it when characters are afraid and that fear is rational. Where they can scream and cry and fight because there ARE monsters lurking in the shadows. I can feel with them, inhabit a world where all my irrational emotions are rational, where there is no need for me to undermine or dismiss myself.

Sometimes, I feel the people who understand this the least are people who never question their own emotions, who assume if they hurt, they have been attacked, and if they have been attacked, they can do all the harm they want.

I am learning am slowly trying to relearn to use my atrophied emotions and not treat them like monsters that will swallow me the second I unchain them. In the meantime, I walk them through stories, slowly. You can hurt here. You can hate here. You can feel here.

[a-blogster]

Why do people defend their opinions so much? (Journal #2)

People have thought ever since the beginning of time, not only have they thought they also believed. These beliefs separated into what we today call beliefs and opinions. As irrational as some beliefs may be they still have a basis while opinions are the personal takes we have on the connection between evidence. Considering the fact everyone lives, grows up and thrives differently from one another, opinions are bound to be different for each point of view. But why do many people defend their opinions so much?

What gives the defense such weight is the notion of identity. At times, opinions are intertwined with who a person is. Experiences, values, and communities of which we are part reflect and coincide with our opinions. As a result, the contesting of opinions can sometimes be viewed at a personal level as an attack not just on what one believes but on oneself. This connection creates a psychological impulse to defend one’s views even when there is contradictory evidence. As posited by the theory of cognitive dissonance, people tend to experience discomfort when information is conflicting; as a result, they are likely to hold even more strongly to existing beliefs to reduce the discomfort associated with the conflict. The reaction thus is typical of being human; it preserves the individual self-concept and stability based on convictions. 

Moreover, social dynamics are important to opinion defense. In many social contexts, it raises one's status and influence to have well-formed opinions. Thus, people feel the need to assert their authority or expertise and therefore find themselves obliged to defend their opinions in a particular area. This can be especially pronounced in group settings where conformity pressures may lead individuals to rally behind shared beliefs. The desire for social acceptance can encourage a rigid defense of one’s views, reinforcing a group identity that can sometimes become more important than the truth itself.

Moreover this has been multiplied by digital communication. The social media platforms provide a space to speak and counter opinions with unimaginable zeal. The anonymity and distance of the internet also give people the courage to be aggressive in a debate. In such a scenario, debates are, in many instances, thrown into opinions, only to find that defending one’s views is more about asserting superiority than truly engaging in a dialogue with great censure. Worse still, algorithms curate our online experience reinforcing us within echo chambers where dissenting opinions are not only unwelcome but also rubbished, hence one feels obliged to defend their views against apparent threats.

However, it is essential to recognize that not all opinion defense is inherently negative. Engaging passionately with our beliefs can foster resilience and a deeper understanding of our values. Healthy debates can lead to growth, empathy, and even the evolution of one’s viewpoints. The challenge lies in striking a balance—being open to dialogue while maintaining the integrity of our convictions. Cultivating curiosity and a willingness to listen can transform defensive posturing into constructive conversations that enrich our understanding of the world and each other.

In short, the comfort of being able to argue against people on the net, the value we give into those opinions makes us think of any opposing idea as an attack on our own being and our desire to be superior. And reminder everyone, always respect other people’s opinions while giving reasons why you may not agree with them, make it all in good faith and accept everything I say as irrefutable facts. 

[bugjizmsquawk]

I don't know, man. I cannot seem to ever get what I want at the exact moment I want it. Everything remains terribly elusive; it all remains frustratingly out of reach and some days the frustration takes over and becomes the whole of my personality. I cannot escape it; everything, every possible thing, tends to frustrate me on these days. I cannot get what I want and I want it right fucking now.

I now understand why serial killers do what they do. Not being able to have a truly remarkable sexual experience tends to drive one mad, tends to drive one into states of absolute depravity if there are no alternatives present. It's not enough to have a willing partner who wants you, who enjoys you, who will let you do whatever you want to her as long as you want it. No, you end up wanting what you shouldn't want which is anyone that does not want you and wishes to get away from you. It is all about pursuit and prey which do offer a most fascinating experience for the daring and the willing to face the fear of discovery. Being discovered is a thrill all its own because it means one will be recognized for their work which is of utmost importance. The absolute worst thing is to accumulate a fair number of corpses without your name forever attached to them. Anonymity is the most frustrating condition of all for every killer who just wants recognition.

Serial killers fascinate us because primarily they do what our imaginations would have us do if only we weren't terrified of the ramifications of such grotesqueries. We are scared of being caught and thrown into a dungeon forever but some are able to break free of these irrational fears and do whatever the hell they want to whom ever they want whenever they want it. They are the truly bold but they must remain outsiders in any society that wants to maintain a semblance of Law and order.

We all have terribly dark thoughts, don't we? A flash of a slitting the throat of a child, or pushing one into a train. We just want to bash somebody's skull in sometimes for no reason other than because it comes into our head and it seems like a good idea at the time. But we do not do any of these things because we are reasonable people and we honestly understand that we just do not have what it takes to be a criminal of any sort. We certainly cannot make a career out of homicide, particularly gruesome, depraved, beyond description. These type of stories sicken the average person who insist they are free of such thoughts; however, they are aware they are fooling themselves. We all have such thoughts but most of us are able to ignore them. We don't heed their call and certainly do not express our rage upon the flesh of another mere human.

So, we are satisfied to live vicariously through the actions of our beloved serial killing heroes now and again because we are under the impression that it's safe. But what if we could experience the kill at the moment the life is snuffed out? What if a virtual reality could create that experience for us in the sense that we could cut that little turdling throat and push that brat into way of the train? Would we want to? What if you could rape somebody and experience it as if it was happening exactly as it is presented to you? Or be raped?

It seems imperative to contemplate the thought processes of those who do commit acts of atrocity just because they can and because it's satisfies some strange directive they are under. The measured man does not give in to the temptation without a certain amount of contemplation. Indeed, there is a lot of time between the initial thought and the final deed. Preparation, imagining every conceivable aspect the final performance, the sheer Joy of accomplishment after a lengthy prelude are all essential.

It remains true that very few persons want to admit publicly that serial murder must be fun for the killer. It must provide a certain type of satisfaction that nothing else can match; no job, no advancement, no kind word can ever approximate the simple yet exquisite series of feelings that accompany one of these actions. Unfortunately, it just does not last which means another must be arranged at some point in the near future. Strangely, it often takes years to accomplish this. It is as if the killer wants to retain every conceivable aspect of the kill for as long as possible before he must go out and complete the task anew.

It's very convenient to say that the typical serial killer is simply depraved which causes them into their very personal modes of existence. The fact remains many of them have families, they live double lives. The excitement is generated from this fact. They are sneaking about, being very dirty boys, getting away with something that nobody else knows about. It's terribly delicious, and it stimulates them more than anything they've ever known.

It is my contention that your average serial killer has developed a peculiar way of getting off from the get-go. Their erotic pleasures have never been normal and in fact have always been rather secret which enhances the thrill. Most likely, being caught in a compromising position is very exciting especially if there is a punishment. Having punishment attached to your masturbation habits is a guarantee that you will end up equating sex with violence which is a computation that defines most serial killers to the point that they cannot ejaculate without seeing either blood or suffering of some sort.

Personally I fully understand just how this intermingling must occur in the minds of young boys who are inherently violent and who are inherently stupid about sex. They don't know what they're doing with their cocks and they don't know how to treat a woman with respect and the dignity which she deserves. In fact this respect and dignity is often lost on themselves as well because society and parenting and their peers and instructors have no clue how to address their pain. A lot of us grow up angry with no discernible measure to assuage our anger. Unfortunately, some of this anger is directed towards women. Sometimes women become a target of the rage that boils inside of us to the point that we want to punish them.

[casspurrjoybell-32]

*Warning Adult Content*

FEELING NICE - Chapter 7

Mavis

Although the strange decline in rabbits this season was concerning, the coyotes didn't have to worry too much about it because Naylan kept his promise.

Over the next few weeks, the storage area that belonged to the wolves had become a makeshift meet up site for trading food.

We were able to get the meat we needed by increasing our gardening and fishing output.     

I felt a bit useless since hunting was my thing and things weren't going too well but I recognized that my ego wasn't more important than the well-being of my Mother, Grandfather and community at large.     

Because of the arrangement, I got to see Naylan a lot but he avoided me for the most part and seemed shocked whenever I would get the urge to call out to him.

He took my request about acknowledging but ignoring the bond seriously.

The thing was, I was having a hard time doing that myself. 

Seeing him around wolves that he was close to was enough to make me uneasy.

I knew it was irrational to think that he would start dating someone out of the blue and also if he did start dating someone it was none of my business but I couldn't ignore that it stung a bit when so saw someone linger too close or hold on to his shoulder or arm for longer than usual.   

Something else I had noticed about Naylan is that he maintained a more dominant demeanor around his pack mates that he immediately dropped when he was around me.

At first, it had annoyed me to think that he thought it was in my best interest to mitigate his Alpha status so that I could feel more comfortable.

I was older than him, taller and more experienced with weapons.

I was holding a gun to his face and he had gawked at me with a childish expression and a lowered head.   

I thought I was being made fun off but then as time went on I saw it was how everyone else looked at their mates... Elijah gave that look to his wife and I noticed my Grandfather's eyes did soften when he talked about my Grandmother even though she had passed away years ago.     

It was a look of affection... maybe even love.

The softness in the stance of canines was a symbol that they wanted you around and that you weren't in danger.

With time I saw less of Naylan since his pack mates had a good grasp of trading with the coyotes, so he didn't have to supervise them anymore and with his absence, I felt a space in my subconscious that felt hollow and needed to be filled.

My nose searched for his scent and my eyes would always scan the area for him.

I wanted to see him and I was getting frustrated with the fact that I couldn't.     

When my restlessness was at its worst, I would carry my hunting gear and take a walk in the woods.

There wasn't much to hunt or catch but I needed an excuse to spend time by myself and think through my conflicting thoughts without having to explain my dilemma to my Mother.   

"You seem lovesick. Is there something you're not telling us?" Elijah's wife had asked, whispering into my ear while placing a hand on my shoulder when I had visited their little bungalow for dinner.

I had been horrified that I was that easy to read, so on days like that... days like today... I excused myself with the guise of hunting to muse in peace.     

The walk was great for clearing my head.

My wolf settled down in my chest and the odd clash of emotions that made me everything from upset, to angry were subduing.   

"It's like puberty all over again," I chuckled to myself, smiling a little as I walked over the interlocking of moss, climbing weeds and raised tree roots that were commonplace. 

I cheered up enough to even start humming.

I wasn't a great singer but I could mumble along to the songs my mother loved to sing while she was gardening.

I decided to head towards the river when I realized that I had walked through most of the path I had made out for myself and as I approached it I stopped suddenly at the scent of something... no, someone... familiar. 

My head tilted back as I sniffed the air, closing my eyes.

'Naylan?' I wondered, opening my eyes again before looking around me.

After searching for a while, I noticed a figure in the distance heading towards the river too.

My stomach squeezed up in knots when I noticed his distinctive hair and stance.   

'What's he doing here?' I wondered, trying to figure out if I should approach him or not.

He was rarely alone the few times I had the chance to spot him and now that he was, I wondered why he was alone.

He looked skittish and the way he would pause and look around told me that he has something on his mind. 

'I'll just follow him.' I told myself, deciding to trail behind him.

It didn't matter if he sniffed me out.

I've been in these woods longer than Naylan has and so was quick on my feet when finding hiding places.

I wandered close enough to him to heat him muttering under his breath.

I couldn't pick up on everything but he mentioned 'Adyen' and something about needing to talk to whoever that was.   

I was so focused on listening to him mumble that I hadn't noticed when I had wandered too close until a sound or something snapping under my weight brought me out of my thoughts.

My eyes went wide when they saw the dried-out tree branch on the floor that I had stepped on.

I stopped, staring down at it before looking up to find that Naylan had his eyes on me.

I had been following him and now I was caught.     

"Hi," I mumbled, giving him an awkward smile as I raised my hand to wave at him.

"We haven't talked in a while."

My voice was drowned out by the sound of my heart beating in my own ears.

He was a few meters away and I could smell him... he had a faint beach smell to him, probably hinting to his pheromones adapting to his upbringing in Nova Scotia.     

"Yeah," Naylan blurted after a while of just staring at me.

It seemed like he had just realized that gawking at me as if he had seen a ghost wasn't going to cut it.     

"Well, it was nice seeing you I guess," he mumbled, looking over his shoulder.

"I'm just going to stand by the river. I wasn't planning on trespassing or anything."     

'Oh.' I thought, remembering that I had told him my territory started close to the river's end here.   

"It's not a problem. That's not why I approached you," I explained, tucking my gun in its sling bag.

"I just wanted to say hello."   

 "I see." Naylan's voice was unsure and how there was a small frown forming on his face.     

"I was heading to the river too," I added when Naylan didn't say anything else.

He didn't have much of a reaction to my declaration.

He just blinked at me. 

"You confuse the hell out of me, you know that?" he said.     

I licked my lips, running my fingers through my loose curls as I walked closer to him.

"How so?"

My heart was beating fast and my wolf was freaking out but I zoned them out to focus on Naylan.

I didn't want to make a fool of myself.

I had pushed him away and now I was regretting it, so I had to tread with caution if I planned to ease us into a more friendly relationship.

I still didn't want to make things serious with Naylan but my hormones were telling me that I at least wanted to see him and talk to him regularly.     

"First you tell me that we should keep our distance and now you're..." he paused when I walked up to him and stood right in front of him, blocking everything else from his eye view.     

"Now I'm what?" I asked in a low voice, urging him to continue.     

"Now you're wanting to say hi," Naylan finished closing his eyes before letting out a sigh.

"What's up with that."     

I shrugged.

"I don't know," I said, being honest.

It wasn't my fault that I wasn't drawn to him and wanted to see him even though I had told myself that I would try to avoid that.

Naylan should understand, right?

The mate bond thing messed with the both of us after all.

"I guess I want to be friends." 

"Friends," Naylan repeated, laughing a little.   

"Friends that maybe kiss sometimes..."

I hadn't thought my words through but seeing his eyes go wide and his lips part in shock was enough to make my chest contract in need.

He had great lips and I guess his boyish embarrassment wasn't a bad touch.   

'Goddess. I did want to kiss him. What the actual fuck?'     

"I don't think you should joke about things like that," he said, making me blink and come out of my thoughts.

I opened my mouth to say something to counter his words but he had already turned around and was now fast walking in the direction of the river.     

"Hey, slow down a little," I complained, adjusting the backpack containing my equipment as I adjusted the strap or the sling bag that held my gun.

Naylan didn't pay attention to me and only stopped when he was standing at the edge of the river.

The waves moved forward and touched his shoes, washing off the mud on their black soles.

When I caught up, I stood beside him...close but not close enough for our shoulders to touch.

I stared down at the water that was a light brown.

Some fish skittered over smooth stones on the shallow end and the sound of running water plugged the silence that would have been if Naylan and I were somewhere else.     

"Did you mean it?" Naylan asked, making me look at him from the side of my eyes.   

"Mean what?" I asked, watching him lick his lips before looking back at the water. 

"The friends that kiss part," he let out.

His voice shook a little and I could tell that he was nervous from the way he shifted the balance from one foot to the other as his hands squirmed in the pockets of his dark blue jeans.

"That was just a joke, right?"     

"I wasn't joking," I said, sucking on my inner cheeks.

"I meant it."     

He looked over at me, narrowing his brown eyes as he held my gaze.

"Why the change of opinion?"     

I could have told him that my wolf was being needy.

I could tell him that the more I looked at him, the less defensive I was about being by myself and without mate and I could tell him that him being around other people but not with me was starting to make me jealous but I didn't and instead just muttered...

"The hormones are getting to me."   

He stared at me for a bit, before he started cackling.

His smile was wide and his white teeth shone as he kept laughing. 

"Fuck," he said in-between wheezing.

"Well, that's honest."     

I smiled a little, watching him wipe his eyes as he calmed down.     

"Well, what do you think?" I asked, feeling my heart pound against my chest as I waited for his answer to my proposal.     

"Sure, whatever," he muttered, looking down at the waves again.

I smiled at that, noticing that he was radiating anxiousness even though he had tried to be nonchalant about it.   

I moved closer to him, letting our shoulders touch through our long-sleeved shirts.

He didn't look up but I could hear his heart beating fast and I assumed he could hear mine too.

'This feels nice,' I said to myself, closing my eyes as I felt the river breeze prickle my skin.

Hearing Naylan's breathing was calming and so was his smell.

I crushed the urge to reach out and hold his hand by burying mine in the pocket of cargo shorts.

Things were already weird as they were, there was no need for me to make things more confusing for him.   

'It's nice,' I repeated to myself, taking in a deep breath as I appreciated the company of my mate. 

[deluluass]

Attention

Since requests are open again, can i request a yan!bokuto developing a crush with one of the other teams' managers during their training camp? 👀             

for: @lady-tokugawa-of-mikawa​. hi bestie 😔 this is late (again), but i hope u like it 😍

Content warnings: rape/noncon; nsfw; underage drinking; (slight) sub!Bokuto👀; mild footplay

Three minutes. 

Three minutes and forty-five seconds, to be exact, before the truth came for you like a ball careening towards your blindside: 

  You’re not supposed to be here .

  Granted, the thought had already slinked its way into your brain ever since you’d overheard the coach crying on his phone, his wife on the other side of the line, that if he hadn't groveled and appealed to his college friend’s sense of honor, as he’d sniffled, they wouldn’t have even considered the team ( your team) to be worthy of receiving an invitation to this training camp. 

  Ignoring the worries that came after that was supposed to be easy. It shouldn’t have come at all . It’s irrational and it doesn’t help anyone. What was the point in fretting? Your boys are more than deserving— more than capable in fact —of going toe to toe with some of Tokyo’s best. 

  It’s also a given that those people don’t know anything about your team. You do live in a town half a day’s ride away from the capital. And how could you expect city folk to recognize a team that hails from a place where the cows outnumber the people three to one?

  They’re bound to not know.

  But the needless unease stayed and soon took a life of its own, the weight of it becoming heavier and heavier over the course of the weeks that you waited for that dreaded day, like a hungry beast that you diligently fed with your little what-if’s. 

  What if that place eats us alive?

  What if they make fun of us? 

  What if, despite trying our hardest, all we do is lose? 

  What if these people take a single look at us and think that we’re not good enough?

  What if they’re right?

  The deep chasm on the scoreboard tells you exactly that, plain and without a hint of artifice.

  Shinzen High has already scored five points. 

  Your team is still stuck at zero.

  And the clock continues to tick.

  “Chance ball!” 

  Your captain's voice was feeble against the noise of the ball being passed from one hand to another. 

  Odd, that. 

  Itsuki's not the type to pull his punches. Especially in the middle of a game; always one to use his entire chest when launching back at his enemies with a guttural roar.

  You looked at the players standing on your side of the court— really looked at them, in a way that you should have instead of wasting your time entertaining those doubts— and found nary a trace of your teammates among those too-stiff, too-quiet boys that bore an uncanny resemblance to a bunch of rabbits caught in the headlights.  

  A chuckle erupted from your chest, surprising even you.

  "Something funny?" the coach asked, his glance turning wary when you convulsed in a fit of shrill giggles. 

  "Yeah," you told him, shaking your head. “There is, Coach.”

  From the bored expressions on your opponents’ faces to Shigeru’s (failed) attempt to set for Koyama, all the way to an audience that wasn’t even looking, who were, frankly, much more interested in what's on their phones than what’s in front of them. 

  How can you not find this funny?

  You were worried about... this ? 

  You sighed, your head the clearest that it’s ever been in a long while, and stood from your seat on the bench. 

  The coach called out your name in a harsh whisper. You ignored him, not even bothering to explain yourself. After all, you’ve already spent too much of your energy on the wrong things. 

  And so, in the most polite way that you could, you shouted:

  “Hey! What the fuck is this!”

  Everyone might've gawked; the coach may have pulled you back to the bench with a strength that you didn’t know he possessed. There’s something much more important than being respectable, though. 

  “None of us ever cared about what these assholes think!” you pressed on, staring down at Takami, whose dad never fails to remind him that he’ll waste away his life fooling around with that useless club . “So, why,” you ask with a clear voice, “Why are we starting now?!”

  Of course, just like any of your spur of the moment ideas, that hadn’t ended the way you hoped it would.

  They still lost (they also did in the following game). All of the coaches (including yours and excluding the one from Nekoma High; that one just patted your back) had expressed their disapproval over what you did. You couldn’t regret it, however, no matter how humiliating their rebukes made you feel.

  Because you don’t think you’ve seen any of your teammates look the least bit happy since you set foot into this place. But, now— even with the fact that all they've achieved so far is keep the floors clean with their diving laps— now, they do.

  With that, it seems to you then that this place isn’t so bad, after all.

A day.

  A day and ten hours, approximately, had already passed when Bokuto felt your presence acutely like the stinging red imprint a hurtled ball leaves on his skin. And just like the circumstances that lead to that bloodied, angry marking, you made your existence known with just as much force as a player spiking for the kill. 

  Some of them guffawed, out of disbelief and sheer delight both, because in all the years that they’ve trained together in preparation for the interhigh, they don’t think anyone has ever called them a bunch of “assholes” before.

  They didn’t think much about that new team that arrived too late. So, yeah, Bokuto wanted to laugh, too, just like others. ‘ What a way to make an impression, huh?’ he wanted to say.

  That wasn’t what he said, though. 

  Bokuto wasn’t even able to say anything. 

  He was too busy staring at your mouth, the resoluteness in your lips as if you knew exactly what to say; the way you looked at your teammates, like there was nobody else more astounding, more unbeatable at this game than the boys before you (though, surely, even you can see that they’re far from being any of those things). 

  And yet, there you were, your eyes incandescent; they might as well have been on fire, blazing with so much awe and unshakable faith and it was so clear for everyone to witness and— and Bokuto did not know what to do with it. 

  It was so embarrassing, truth be told. Bokuto may not be the most secretive guy around, but when the others eventually pointed out that he looked scared at the thought of facing them ( you ), he just couldn’t help but sulk.

  “We’re not half the cheerleader she is, Bokuto-san,” Yukie teased him, patting his shoulder as she did, “but rest easy, we’ll try our best to boost morale.”

  He just groaned, immediately locking his legs at a stand still when the others hooted, ‘Look at him! He looks like he’s about to piss himself bouncing his legs like that . ’ Really, what was he supposed to say?

  Because, when he finally faced your team with that net in between and as he felt the ball against his palms when he aimed for a clean hit towards the floor, it’s not even fear that rushes through him. 

  Not even close.

  Beyond the defeated faces, of the exhaustion slathered all over your team’s barks after each point he snatched under their noses, Bokuto saw you looking at him. 

  Just a flicker; a passing peek before that determined gaze settled back on the others. But it was there all the same: the pause in your breath as the ball detonated against your teammate’s frail arms, clutching the edge of the bench with your fingers as if it took everything in you to keep yourself from running towards the court.

  To rush towards him. 

  To— to what ? Exactly? To scream at his face the same way you did earlier? That he's going too rough and hurting your precious friends?

  There’s a part of him that wishes to stop. A strange, alien feeling that he supposes comes from the discomfort at the sight of you so troubled and wound up.

  Oh, but you're just starting to understand! 

  That if there's someone who's truly astounding, unbeatable, and staggeringly brilliant at this game, it's him . And Bokuto wanted to drive that point home like he's never wanted anything else in his entire life. 

  His body stopped feeling like his own by the second set. 

  His legs were too light to be his, like there were coil springs underneath his feet that carried him higher and higher he swore he could brush the roof with his fingertips. 

  There’s a thrumming in his flesh that propelled Bokuto to move faster, to push that ache over the edge until there’s nothing left but the breathless exhilaration of seeing his opponents kiss the ground.

  The air is getting thinner, like he’s scaling towards a mountain top as he sprints towards the other side of the court, long strides eating up the floor, uncaring for the sweat pouring down his cheeks.

  Bokuto was willing to let this thing go on forever and ever and ever , for as long as he feels the searing heat of your eyes on him.

  Until he turned his head in your direction. 

  You were smiling at something a spectator said. 

  He couldn’t hear it, but whatever it was it had pushed you to make a teasing remark to your team.

  A banter ensued.

  The referee blew his whistle as a warning.

  You giggled.

  Why?

  “The ball, Bokuto!”

  Why aren’t you looking? 

  His hands were two weights keeping him down, made heavier by that sinking sensation in his chest.

  When did you stop looking? 

  It was too much, too unbearable that he could cry. The indifferent way you'd removed him from your line of sight was a sucker punch that's not as painful as the shame it leaves him with.

  Were you even looking at all? 

  And he wonders with a shuddering exhale as he finally gathered the strength to raise an arm, Bokuto wonders what would happen if, just this once, he shot the ball towards y— 

  “Bokuto-san.”

  Akaashi was calling out to him.

  “Bokuto-san, we already won."

  The ball within his grasp dropped. 

  Bokuto watched it bounce on the floor until it rolled over to somebody else's waiting palm.

  He took a deep breath— in and then out, repeated it until everything came into sharp focus —and raised his head to squint at the scoreboard.

  22-3

  So they did.

  The other side of the court was already empty, your team assembled to one corner; you were out of sight.

  Everyone started to gather around him.

  They took Bokuto along with their cheers and reprimands and accusations, like a strong current that carried him from the bench to the shower room, laughing as they handed him a towel, having noticed that he’d been too out of it to do anything else but stay half-naked in front of the sink. 

  “Are you alright, Bokuto-san?” he heard Akaashi ask over the teeming excitement surrounding them. 

  Blinking, Bokuto paused from wiping his bare torso as he replied, “Me?”

  Their setter only nodded.

  “Yeah!” Bokuto exclaimed, a tad louder than he ought to. “Yeah, dude! Of course! Never been better!”

  “You were a man possessed," Masaki, still fresh from the shower, suddenly drawled from behind him. 

  “You were... quiet,” Ubugawa’s captain continued, reaching for the toothpaste laid next to Akaashi. “It was unlike you.”

  Bokuto was about to say something, somewhere along the lines of “Really? I didn’t notice” when Daiki made his decision to wring the wet shirt in his hand, brandish it like a belt, and strike Bokuto’s back with it, the impact cutting across the room. 

  “You little..!” Bokuto turned with a snarl, poised and ready to throw the boy over his shoulder.

  “Let it go, let it go,” Daiki chortled, grabbing Bokuto by his damp hair. “That’s for not giving us a warning, alright? Crazy bastard.”

  Daiki shook his head as he walked away. “Never seen the idiot go hard like that,” he mumbled.

  “That’s our ace for ‘ya!” Haruki echoed from his cubicle, to which the others responded with wolfish howls and sharp whistles, completely transforming the shower room into a tiled rainforest. 

  And Bokuto wanted to join along, because although the game still felt like an abrupt, fever dream, he’s well aware that he did something that he’s going to be proud of in the days to come. But somehow— for some unknown, beguiling reason, all he could do was stand there and make himself vulnerable to Kuroo’s antics.

  The Nekoma captain looked at Bokuto through the mirror, clicking his tongue before lamenting about “ those poor country boys ” and their “ ill luck ”.

  “Go easy on us small fries sometimes,” he added. “You were pretty scary back there.”

  Kuroo gave his nape a quick pat before he went for the lockers, leaving Bokuto to stare at his reflection, features obscured by the fog.

  Scary , he said.

  Scary, huh.

  A man possessed.

  Bokuto wonders about its meaning, what coach had meant earlier when he’d jokingly called him a beast. He contemplated what about him had led them to think that way, tried his best to be perceptible of any changes.

  His eyes were the same, although the pupils in the middle were large pools of tar, widened and leaving only the slightest space for the honeyed rim. 

  His hair was the same platinum color and still streaked with the same black lines, although untamed and in a disarray this time, with the strands sticking to his forehead. 

  Although flushed, his face was the same, over all.

  Everything seems to be right where they’re supposed to be.

  Although he’s huffing and puffing, creating more mist to cloud the mirror with. And when he tried to reach for the glass, he realized that his fingers were still trembling. His blood still surging as if his body had never left the court. 

  Then, it struck him.

  Bokuto holds his breath in anticipation, the truth of it right in front of him.

  There’s no monster here. 

  No man possessed either.

  Only a guy who’s helplessly, foolishly in love.

Announcing to an entire room of strangers that one is of the opinion that they're assholes, as it happened, was an effective way of making new friends.

  Of course, there was that awkward day-long explanation that you had to do for Yuki and Kaori and the others. An affair that wasn’t too different from a one-woman press conference that involved you expressing your regrets, revealing that, sometimes, when backed against a wall, you can be an impulsive clown with a glaring lack of filter (like: "No, no..! I didn't think you guys were actually- you know- ass- it just spilled-" and "Ah, geez, this is embarrassing.The heat was getting to me. I didn't mean it, really!" )

  But the girls had been kind enough to let bygones be bygones, assuring you that all they ever felt was a joyous combination of relief and wonder. Ubugawa's manager, Eri, (who'd shook your hand while holding back tears) even told you that seeing another girl in a veritable sausage fest that is the training camp was a miracle in itself. 

  "It was fun, actually," Mako once said when the two of you were assigned to carrot chopping duty. "You gave us something to talk about for a while."

  And even when the novelty of being a bumpkin with the mouth of a sailor soon faded, the bond that quickly bloomed between you and the other managers hadn't.

  It was unexpected, although not unwelcome.

  You couldn't help but laugh at yourself. How silly you'd been: coming into the city expecting a den of wolves and hunters armed to the teeth.

  In the span of two days thoughts of survival were replaced by the confidence that your boys would pull through; by a sense of ease that you didn't need to win all the time and that this place is not a battlefield, but a fertile ground for growth and learning. You didn't need to constantly be on your guard— knuckles up and gearing for a fight, you realized.

  Well — 

  For the most part, at least.

  Serving spoon in one hand and potholder in another, you reluctantly paused from preparing your team’s meal to whisper under your breath. "He's doing it again," you hissed.

  Kaori only gave you a preoccupied “hm?” as she plucked the ladle to fill the plain white ceramic bowls before her. “Who is?” she continued. 

  “Your captain,” you replied, taking care not to let him know that you're on the verge of melting under his not so subtle scrutiny.

  The lovely Fukurodani manager didn’t even miss a beat; without lifting her eyes away from the food, she raised her voice, just loud enough, to address the creature (spying) standing idly by the door. 

  “Say, Bo-kun,” Kaori called out and you watched, amazed, as he coughed out the water that he’s been making a great show of drinking. “Your mama must not have taught you that it's bad to ogle.”

  Bokuto Kotaro, Fukurodani’s ace and captain— a volleyball player that sits atop everybody else in this training camp, whose name is almost always followed by “one of the very best in the country”— quailed as his manager, the Great Kaori Suzumeda, blessed him with a smile veering on beatific. 

  “Oh-who-me?” he prattled, hands pointing at everything and nothing as he choked on his own words. “Didn’t see you there! What’s up! I was just passing by!”

  “In the middle of practice?” Kaori snickered. “ You ?” 

  The boy released a laughter that resonated in the empty cafeteria. 

  She sighed, dropping the ladle, and told him to “Just go, Bokuto.” He obediently complied, thank the gods, but not without an overzealous goodbye to Kaori, as if he’d never see her again when lunch was just half an hour away.

  He didn’t say anything to you. He didn’t need to, anyway. The lingering gaze that he directed towards you was enough.

  “Thank you,” you exhaled once you made sure you’re no longer within his earshot, plopping your head against Kaori’s soft arm.

  Her chuckle fluttered towards you, causing you to smile as she asked, “Is it that bad?”

  You could only nod, both as an affirmation and an effort to shake those golden, hawk-eyes out of your system.

  “I’ll talk to him,” she said after a few seconds of comfortable silence, the firmness in her voice making you stand upright and level with her.

  Common decency tells you that you should say no, to stop her and tell her that she didn’t really have to; that you shouldn’t make a big deal out of this. But, you’d never really been one to listen to what that part of your brain dictates.

  Taking her hand in yours, you gave it a light squeeze, incapable of doing anything else to convey your gratitude with a sob lodged in your throat.

  “He’s not a bad guy, our Bokuto,” Kaori soothed. “And for what it’s worth, he’s never been like this with someone he likes.”

  A grin lit up her face as you snorted, remembering the time someone had finally caught on to Bokuto’s newfound fixation. The uproar that it’d cause in the field when everyone was out enjoying slices of ripe watermelon. The unnecessary and, frankly, embarrassing anger that it’d pulled out of your boys after it's been revealed to the whole world. The infamous blush on Bokuto Kotaro’s face as he desperately tried to deny the accusation. 

  And the cold, spent feeling it left you.

  “Normally, he’d be all over them,” she continued, mimicking his owl-like way of moving, bobbing her head to and fro as she circled around you.

  “Kaori!” you squealed, pushing her playfully by the shoulder. 

  “Bokuto would be like—” Kaori pumped her fists in the air, “ Hey, hey, hey! Talk to me! Talk to me! Compliment me! Love me! ”

  You simply hummed, folding your arms against your chest as you commended her spot-on performance. 

  She didn’t need to tell you all that, though. The guy had a personality so big it’s a miracle how this city contains him. And you’d known from the very beginning that Bokuto Kotaro doesn’t seem like the type to do the whole “pining from a distance” thing. 

  But, they even said that he’s half in love with you already, with the way he follows you with his eyes and flails and stutters and acts like he’s never had a mouth and a pair of hands before whenever he’s around you. And that, somehow, he plays even better than he already does when you’re in the audience ( especially when it’s against your team). 

  You don’t bother to correct them and say that no, this might not be a silly little crush.

  Because you don’t think that anyone but you would understand that there can never be any love nor infatuation in a stare that traps you with its expectations. Even if you did tell them that, you’re the only one who knows what Bokuto’s gaze really makes you feel like: A plaything that he’s been gifted to and was told would sing and dance for him just so he’d stop crying. 

  And you know what temperamental children do with toys that don’t work the way they want it to, don’t you?

  “Trust me.”

  Kaori’s gentle voice pulled you out of your thoughts.

  “He’s just an idiot,” she told you. “You’ve seen him— especially last week!” Kaori’s eyes bulged out, leaning closer to you, both of you gasping at the memory.

  Tears sprung out of your eyes as you laughed harder, your stomach aching when Kaori began to recount the events that had turned the entire training camp on its head, forever planting itself in its history as the worst ordeal it’s ever faced:

  A piece of the wall in the girls’ sleeping room broke off, revealing a large, Lovecraftian nest of cockroaches. 

  “If you’d only seen his face!” Kaori cackled, struggling to finish as she clutched onto you for support. “He burs- bursted into the room only for him to- to-”

  “Pass out when a roach flew to his nose! I know !” you screeched and slapped the table with her, ignoring that you’re almost knocking over the food and chortling until you were close to having a heart attack.

  “Oh- oh , I can’t breathe,” she groaned. Your laughter tapered off into heaving as you fixed her mussed bangs. 

  You smiled. 

  “See,” Kaori finally said, pinching your chin a little. “Bokuto’s a meathead. Just a meathead. Guy can’t get a clue. But he’ll come around once he realizes that he’s being weird.”

  “Yeah,” you murmured, giving her a weak nod. "I'm sure he will."

  You didn't know if you meant to say that with a hint of irony; if that scared farm girl is rearing her ugly head again and pointing a pitchfork at a monster of her own making.

  A monster that, you're convinced, would do something more than just look once you're within its reach.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

  Bokuto even had it all figured out in his head. C’mon, he's got the looks, doesn't he? And he's not lacking in charm. In fact, he's oozing with it! That's why Bokuto had expected that he had this one in the bag. His game plan was foolproof: 

  Talk to the girl. Get the girl.

  After that, you’d be together for the rest of your lives and your fiery, unrelenting support for that lousy team of yours would never go in vain ever again. Because it’d all be directed to him. All that “ Good job! ” and “ You were amazing back there! ” and “ Don’t be scared! I’ll be right here rooting for you! ” would finally be given to someone who actually deserves it.

  All you had to do was see what he had to offer and baby— oh baby , how you'd love him. No force on Earth could have prevented Bokuto from making you his.

  So it's all the more sobering now that Bokuto’s witnessed that the said force turned out to be him of all people. And what he could actually give you was a few stumbling lines and compliments that didn't even make any sense (“ Y-your face smells nice ” for example)— all (preferably) uttered a few feet away from you. 

  The others teased him for looking like a jilted witch casting a spell on an indifferent lover. “What are you? Speaking in tongues or something? Is the Great Horned Owl that desperate?” they poked at him. He didn’t mind them before, but now he’s not so sure.

  " Tone it down, okay? " Kaori had reminded him again earlier this afternoon. That stern talking-to from their manager was an ice-cold bucket of water that doused what’s left of his optimism. 

  But, tone what down? What , exactly, is left to tone down?

  He couldn’t even talk to you without losing his ability to string coherent words together, let alone get close to you. Eye contact, too, he’d deliberately restrained himself from doing (if only you knew how much this is hurting him!) and not just because he’d been deemed a complete and utter creep. 

  Bokuto couldn’t look you in the eye ever since that incident.

  “ She’s helping the other girls carry their stuff to the other room, I saw them just now ,” Yamamoto had discreetly passed on as soon as he woke up from a terrible concussion. “And if you want to redeem yourself, my friend, after that humiliating performance, you’d better go out there and lend a hand. ”

  Because Yamamoto, being the love expert that he proclaimed he was, told him, “ Look, I feel for you. But it’s simple. You just gotta show her what you’re made of. That you’re a man she can depend upon, ” Bokuto then persevered to follow through.

  Only for him to be met by an empty room with bits of crumbled plaster scattered across the floor. And your bag in the furthest corner just...lying there.

  Maybe you’d forgotten about it. Maybe you were too busy catering to your friends' needs that you'd forgotten about yourself.

  Either way, Bokuto promises that it wasn’t on purpose. 

  Bokuto had good intentions, really! He just wanted to take the bag with him so he could give it to you, is all! It wasn’t his fault that some of your stuff was peeking through the half-opened zipper. It’d already been in that state when he saw it. 

  And- and it’s not his fault that he adores you too much. 

  Bokuto reminds himself as much as he propped his forehead against the bathroom wall, water from the shower pouring against the taut muscles on his back as he wrapped your underwear around his cock. 

  The baby pink fabric, every inch of it soiled now over the days that he's used it, rubbed  against his balls when he began fondling them, his other hand caressing his nipples, rubbing and pinching at the peaks until they stiffened between his calloused fingers.

  His cock grew hard and heavy in his hand as he started pumping into his fist, fucking your soaked panties until precum dripped from slit.

  And with nobody else in the shower room, Bokuto allowed himself to grunt and curse and call out your name, digging his nails into his skin until it stung and made him want to cry.

  "Make me cum, princess," he whined, shutting his eyes to watch you on your knees, fingers between your legs as you looked up at him, never taking your eyes off of him even as you took his cock down your throat.

  "Please, please ," Bokuto groaned,"Please let me cum."

  Here, you don't turn away nor brush him off without even saying anything. Here, you call him your baby and you chuckle as you ask him, " Good boys deserve to cum, don't they? "

  He bit his lip, pressing his cheek against the freezing tile. "Mmhmm, I-I've been-" Bokuto moaned, feeling himself creep closer and closer, the pleasure at the pit of his stomach building, "I've been so fucking good for you."

  The contrast of your pretty little underwear around the thick veins of his cock made his head spin. And as he squeezed his shaft tighter, Bokuto knew that he did, in fact, deserve so much more.

  Because he's endured so much just for you. Now, it's time to get what he's due. 

Scouring high and low for a pair of cotton panties that have seen better days wasn’t how you wished you’d celebrate the last night with your newfound friends. 

  Yuki had advised that you abandon the ratty, old thing (though you did say it wasn't; ratty, that is) and leave it here as a parting gift— a mark of your impact on their lives, if you will— but you’d quickly laughed her off and set out to find it. She was drunk, anyway.

  Although, so were you. If not, then just a tiny, itsy, bitsy, bit tipsy.

  You hiccuped, giggling as the sound echoed through the poorly-lit hallway. The world was spinning beneath you and you prayed that it wasn’t worse for poor Yuki, having chugged half of that horrid concoction. 

  Kaori almost threw her out of the window after that stunt. Mako scoffed at her for being an arrogant ass. The girls who weren’t drinking sat back and chose to enjoy the unfolding chaos (while also being kind enough to be on the lookout).

  And you...well...right now you’re on the verge of breaking down as you make your way to the shower room. 

  Mostly because you’re just realizing that you might never see them again if your team doesn’t survive the Inter High. Partly because you’ve been dumb enough to not notice that you’ve been missing an underwear for a couple of days now. 

  God, it's so ridiculous. You're ridiculous. You're glad that you went on your own and rejected their offer to accompany you. Imagine if they saw you like this:

  Oscillating between sobs and strained laughter while swaying on your feeble legs; the very picture of a lunatic out in the streets in the middle of the night.

  You only hoped that you're not scaring the living daylights out of that guy who probably just went out of the boys' room to pee. Maybe you have already spooked him, with how still he's gotten.

  Cupping your palms around your mouth, you saw fit to save his sanity and cried, "Heyyyy! I'm not- hic - a ghost!" 

  "Oh!" you gasped, raising a pointing finger to shush yourself, "Oh, yeah, sorry, shhh-" 

  He didn't run the other way screaming and crying, which was good, instead he approached you hurriedly, making you squint to get a better look at him.

  "Koyama?" you whispered, struggling to recognize the tall boy with a sturdy build, his navy blue hoodie casting a shadow on his face. It didn't help that your eyes were doing something funny, as if they were busted camera lenses that went uncontrollably in and out of focus.

  "Good evening, my dear! I daresay you're looking quite bur- burl- blurry tonight."

  You cackled, immediately following your greeting with a slurred apology.

  "Why- Why are you still- um- up?" he asked. And before you could volley him with a question pointing to his weirdly different voice, he brought his head down to sniff at you. "Wait- have you b- are you drunk ?"

  "What! No! Of course not!" You pouted and airily slapped his cheek, drawing a lopsided grin out of you when his skin glowed pink, bright enough to light up the entire place. It was so remarkably adorable that it made you squeal and pinch both cheeks, rocking his face as you did.

  "Look at our big boy!" A sheepish, almost disbelieving chuckle shook his large chest as you resumed your baby talk, your grabby hands bringing his face towards you.  "Who would've thought that our stwong, wowdy ace could bwush wike so? And what's with this siwwy hoodie, huh? Where did you get this, bunnycakes? I've never seen you wear this before!"

  You wondered, also, why and how his jet black hair turned pallidly gray over the few hours you hadn't seen him. You even brushed the mildly damp locks out of his forehead, unsure if they're even real as you tried to right your smudged vision.

  And you wanted to blame it all on the alcohol.

  It's the reason for that dramatic change in his tone and manner of speaking and hair color and...those eyes .

  The very same pair that followed you everywhere, sometimes even in your sleep.

  "You love me, after all," he breathed, the statement a thin sheet of glass that could blow into smithereens at just the wrong response.

  That had been enough to drain the inebriation out of your body. Like being branded, you pulled away from Bokuto with a harsh curse.

  "I- I have to go," you said. "Sorry, I thought you were Ko- my teammate."

  But Bokuto had already laid hold of your arm with no intent of letting go.

  "Stay!" Bokuto called out, repeating it with please and listen despite your outcries, shouting for Kaori and Yuki and Mako and Shigeru and Takami and Coach and Koyoma and anyone, help me, anyone.

  Until he tugged you to his chest, wrapping himself around you and turning his entire body into a concrete prison as he fervently told you, "I love you. I love you so much ever since the first time I saw you and I know, I know you feel the same so if it's the distance that's keeping you from me I can come to you I'll follo-"

  "Nothing's keeping me from jackshit!" you gritted out. "I don't love you! I don't even care about you!"

  He didn't say anything to that. 

  Bokuto had gone quiet. It wasn't only until he nuzzled your neck, pressing his face snugly down the crook, that you decided to kick him with all your strength, breaking yourself free as your heart thundered out of your chest.

  You didn't look back.

  You dashed through the long, endless hallway with the air in your lungs dangerously running low and keeping you from screaming.

  But the remnants of the alcohol were lead that weighed your feet to the ground, betraying you further by morphing your surroundings into a hazy, dizzying scape. You teetered and wobbled, desperate to reach that staircase that will lead you out of this floor, but each step that you took was not fast enough, not nimble enough, as if you’re wading through knee-deep water. 

  And before you know it the monster has caught up and is ready to pounce from right behind you.

  “Get your hands off me!” you wailed as Bokuto heaved you by the waist and carried you over his shoulder. 

  The sudden upending of your world was so nauseating, you didn’t even notice that he’d already taken you to an almost pitch black classroom, its heavy curtains drawn together and the empty chairs and tables pushed to the side. 

  His large, sprawling hand was gripping your ass, your stomach lurching when you felt him caress it. Yet that didn’t deter you from hitting whichever part of him that your knuckles and feet could touch, ignoring the trail of your own spit that dripped on your face as you howled and thrashed and fought to keep yourself together because no one was hearing you.

  What’s left for you, now? Your captor was so strong, much stronger than you, that even when he tripped on his toes, Bokuto was able to catch himself and drop you on the nearest table in just a single breath. 

  “Stop fighting me..!” he panted, holding you down as he knelt before you. “I’m not gonna hurt you! I- ow! Don’t-”

  Bokuto’s grip on your wrists was unbudgeable. So, you didn’t miss the chance to bite him when he covered your mouth with his palm. Teeth chattering, you broke the tough flesh, sunk them sharply until the taste of salt and iron flooded your tongue.

  You expected that it would push him away. Give you the leverage to escape.

  That turned out to be a mistake.

  His honey-gold eyes glinted as he stared deep into yours. Every hair on your body stood on end when the corners of his lips slowly lifted, eyes still fixed on you as he released a bubbly, childlike laughter.

  “I've always wanted to do this to you," he sighed giddily. 

  The helplessness chipped at your insides bit by torturous bit when all you could do was rock the table with your flailing, while Bokuto had already crouched lower— low enough to pull the hem of your thin shorts with his teeth.   

  He watched you weep with a sickening display of dejection, like he's some dog that's been shoved around by his master.

  "Please don't cry," Bokuto whined, peppering soft kisses all over the insides of your thighs then licking off the beads of sweat that covered the goosebumps. 

  You’re not giving up. 

  You couldn’t give up.

  You pushed and gnawed and tore skin that you’re sure every inch of his palm is littered with fresh bruises, but this only seemed to encourage Bokuto, drawing out his drugged out moans as he spat on your clothed cunt, drool leaking down to your folds before he lapped at the wet spot. The moistened fabric scratched and rubbed against your clit to the point of quivering and writhing in his clutch. 

  “Oh, I know , baby,” Bokuto murmured, using the tip of his tongue to flick at the swollen nub. “I’ll make you feel real good soon.”

  Shaking your head, the unwiped tears gathering around your eyelids dropped to his long, calloused fingers. And you wanted to screech, to tell him to go to hell as he swirled his tongue all over your embarrassingly slick hole.

  No, you wanted more than that. 

  You wanted to drive your bare hands into his chest.

  But that’s not what you did, is it?

  When Bokuto finally removed his hand from your mouth, what slipped past your lips wasn’t the sound of a woman ready to kill. Instead, you sounded like a little girl begging to be carried home. And that hadn’t been the part that scared you, really.

  It was the fact that no matter how much you tried to scream, nothing was coming out.

  “L-let me go,” you wheezed, your voice cracking. “Or- or else.”

  “Or else?” Bokuto replied, eliciting a gasp from you as he sniffed your throbbing, wet cunt. “Look at me, princess.”

  “ Look at me ,” he repeated pleadingly, frustration giving his tone a rough edge, as he brought the hand that once suppressed your attempts to call for help to skim past your thigh and stroke the sole of your feet. “Just this once. See me.”

  You kept your eyes closed, even as he kissed your toes and brought it down to his crotch, forcing you to dig your heel into the bulge jutting out. He rocked his hips, gyrating slowly, his cock hardening under your feet, as he whimpered into your leg.

  “Please, please fuck me, please ,” Bokuto mewled. “I’ll do any- anything for you.”

  Profanities rushed out of you, but no one could hear them. Not even you. Perhaps that's why he didn’t flinch when he lugged you down to straddle on his lap.

  “Use me, baby,” he whispered, grinning wide as he snaked his other hand to your back and dug his nails around your nape, laying on his back and taking you with him as he did, your tits crushed to his chest. 

  With your arms dying in his grip, Bokuto easily stripped his pants along with his boxers. Violent trembles wracked your body as he dragged your pussy along his thick shaft, back and forth, your damp panties riding up every time he thrusted upwards.

  His hot breath against your ear sent shivers down your spine as he giggled lowly, “Wanna cum inside you so fucking bad . Will you let me, hm? Please let me.”

  Of course you didn’t want to. It’s not like you’d stop struggling, either. It’s just that Bokuto would never listen to you. Even when he whimpered and babbled, “You don’t want to- fuck, your pussy’s all nice and wet - oh, you don’t want to? That's okay, that’s okay, baby,” Bokuto still slipped his cock inside your underwear.

  It slid past your lips up to your clit. And you’d never hated yourself more in your entire life when all you could do was stay limp and cry as the fat tip finally nudged your twitching hole.

  “No, no, don’t worry, sweetheart,” he whispered, scattering kisses on your neck, “It’s just the head- just the head.”

  As Bokuto groaned and rutted against you, all you wished for, in that moment, was for dawn to peek through the curtains and signal the end of this torment. But, still it went on with Bokuto stretching you open.

  And as he split you in half, you detachedly realized that you were right.

  This place did eat you alive.

[shorkbrian]

Infuriated

Prelude - ok.

Y’all are so horny for Levi Sir and I get it he’s hot lol. I am trying to get to everyone’s asks I promise!!! Also it’s up to you why Levi is mad lol

Prompts - 

Pairing - Levi Ackerman X Reader

Warnings - NSFW, dubcon, noncon, choking, mentions of snuff, emotionally compromised Levi, overstim.

Music - https://open.spotify.com/track/2f2hbFjim051DVx0o8o4rU?si=5waL376sSRSqjN2j8G0Y8w

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He comes home in a bad mood.

He shuts the door quietly, and it’s clear he’s beyond pissed. Past the point of yelling, of slamming the door and causing you to flinch with the indicator of his foul mood. It’s not you he’s mad at, but it might as well be. He finds himself wanting to break something, but not dishes or glass, just you. 

Wrap his hands around your throat and squeeze till your breath rattles in your chest.

Levi finds you in the living room, standing by the hallway with wide eyes, shrinking against the wall. You thought you could avoid getting his anger taken out on you if he didn’t catch you while you were lounging on the bed. Hoping the man wouldn’t strip you bare and crush your soul like he had so many times before.

He’s so enraged that he can’t even think of the event that provoked him to such a state in the first place.

“Come here.” He stops in his tracks when he sees you, hands flicking to his tie so he can unknot it, loosen it from his neck. It’s not often he gets this angry, warm and burning, filled with emotions that he doesn’t know how to process, doesn’t even really want to.

“Come here.” Levi repeats himself, eyes burning when you still don’t move, as you begin to shake. You’re afraid of him again, good.

You had gotten past that, at least to the point where you could hide your fear of the man. Tamp it down beneath submission and pleasure, because doing what he says meant getting fair treatment.

But you aren’t doing what he says. You’re cowering against the wall, and Levi’s furious. You’re meant to follow his every order, know what he wants you to do before he even has to say, and yet you’re ignoring him as if you had the luxury of making that decision.

His shoes click across the tile as he strides towards you, already unbuckling his pants with sharp movements. When he reaches you, your frightened eyes pleading, the rise and fall of your chest quickening. Levi bets if he checked, your pulse would be fluttering, fast, like a scared little bird.

Your head snaps to the side when his hand connects with it, the sharp sound echoing throughout his home. 

“Take off your pants.” Clothes are a luxury he’s been allowing, but this blatant disobedience when he’s already fuming will result in punishment. 

Trembling hands fly to your pants, and Levi almost wants to laugh at the expression in your face as you turn it back, cheek reddening immediately. You should’ve came when he called you.

He doesn’t bother to take his slacks off all the way, barely pushing them down to his thighs before taking his cock in hand. He’s not even hard, but he needs to fuck something, focus on a different emotion than the fury settled deep in his bones. The satisfaction of how easily you break under his hands, the pleasure of filling you, stretching you past your limit, the way you draw him in like that’s where he belongs, even though it’s obvious you want to be anywhere but with him.

The hand on his cock is too dry, too rough, but that doesn’t matter. Levi’s able to pump himself to hardness as you fumble with your pants, almost falling as you slip them off.

With a quick movement, he’s slamming you hard against the wall, breath punching out of you, head hitting the wall and dazing you.

Levi spits in his hand, takes it between your legs and rubs his saliva where it’s needed. There’s no way you’re wet, no way you’re ready to take him. But if there’s a little blood, there’ll be a little blood. Levi can clean it off your thighs later.

It hurts when he starts pushing inside, the head of his cock breaching your hole far too fast. The crushing realization that he isn’t going to actually prep you is evident across your face, obvious by the panicked little whine that falls from your lips.

“Shut up.” He can’t stop himself from snapping at you, irritated at the noise. 

He’s focused on filling you, the too-tight squeeze around his length and the overwhelming heat of your body where he’s pressed against you. At least you know better than to try and fight him, hands only clutching his shoulders, not trying to push him away, just trying to hold on.

What he would do if you struggled now, Levi doesn’t know. It’s possible he might break something important, push too hard, forget his own strength as he throttles the life out of you.

That reminds him.

The hand not guiding his cock into you rises to your throat, grasps the smooth column tightly, tight enough to feel the ridges of your esophagus, spongey and delicate. If he squeezes a bit harder, Levi wonders if it would collapse, crumbling beneath his fingers like tissue paper.

But your loss would make him inconsolable, so he reigns in his wrathful curiosity, his impulsive side that only sees the sun when he’s furious.

He's fully seated now, pressing deep into your sensitive walls. You’re shaking, trying to hold in your tears, your pitiful noises, your desire to beg him for mercy. There’s no slick feel, other than the slight ease from his saliva, so Levi knows you haven’t torn. 

That eases his mind a bit as he slowly retreats from your hole, intent on making this quicker than it should be. He needs to fuck, hard and fast and maybe just a bit painful. There’s no explainable reason as to why, and Levi isn’t interested in trying to analyze himself at the moment.

So he draws out, pushes back in immediately, doesn’t mind your choked, hiccuped gasp. You’ll adjust soon enough; even as he pushes back in, you’ve started to get wet, and there’s no stink of iron in the air, so it’s your body trying to make this easier for you.

Levi figures it’s good that at least one of you was actually concerned about that.

As the slide becomes easier and easier, his pace picks up accordingly, until he’s swinging his hips in a punishing rhythm. He can’t stop himself from giving a rough press onto your throat, relishing the way your body jerks, already breathless and panicked, now denied air and already missing it.

He’s getting close, which is surprising. Levi thought it might be difficult to reach release, reasoned that he was too focused on the rage filling his veins and weighing him down to lose himself in your body.

But he should’ve know, you always have an effect on him.

Your cunt starts clenching around him, and Levi’s head shoots up from where he’d been watching the steady hammering of his cock into you, glares at your face now.

“Don’t you dare, don’t you fucking dare.” His tone is clipped, and he’s mad all over again. He doesn’t even know why.

It’s not fair that you’re enjoying this while he’s still simmering, struggling to calm himself. It’s not like he doesn’t want you to find pleasure, but the least you could fucking do is have some decency for once and not cum before he does.

You clench your teeth, grimacing as you try to listen, do your best to obey. He’s trained you well.

But not well enough.

With a pitiful cry, you squeeze tight enough to make Levi groan as he refuses to stop moving his hips. Velvety walls spasm around his length with a vengeance, your nails digging into his shoulders as you lose yourself to the sensation.

Levi’s infuriated.

“You’re not allowed to cum.” He hisses, and your eyes are filled with sorrow, with regret and remorse, with emotions Levi has never bothered to learn the names of.

He slows down, slams into you hard enough that his tip kisses your cervix, makes you lurch in pain that lances through the afterthroes of your orgasm. 

Your throat is abandoned for now, his hand joining his other in painfully clutching your hips, fingers dimpling up your flesh, sinking into the pillowy skin so he can pull you down onto his cock the same moment he thrusts up.

It’s hurting now, your face contorting on each deep thrust. Levi doesn’t care, you were selfish enough to take your pleasure before him, when he so obviously was trying to soothe himself.

He’s starting to get a cramp from how hard and slow he’s driving up into you, but he’s crawling closer and closer, so he ignores the twinge for now.

And then he’s there, bursting from the inside out, uncaring of trying to avoid filling your womb with his seed.

It feels good, good enough to talk him down from the edge of hurting you, of destroying, of raging and bruising and damaging.

Levi’s left panting as he finishes, as his abs clench and unclench while he shoots his sticky finish into your tight hole. You’re still grabbing at his shoulders, eyes squeezed shut at the foreign sensation; Levi usually dons a condom, or at least pulls out. Rarely does he lose himself to do what he just did.

He’s calmer now, feels less like a pacing tiger that's been provoked and prodded until it attacks.

But he finds himself irritated at you, at your audacity.

The man knows he’s being irrational, and that he’s emotional right now, prone to lashing out and striking at anything that dares to defy him. You hadn’t done anything particularly wrong except exist in the same space as a thoroughly pissed-off Levi, and he recognizes that.

But he still wants to see you punished.

So you find yourself on the bed, stripped of your clothes. The only thing you’re wearing is a leather collar, attached to cuffs on your wrists by a thick metal ring. The contraption keeps your hands up by your face, unable to do anything but clench into little fists. It’s almost cute.

Theres a spreader bar cuffed to your ankles, and a vibrator in Levi’s hand. He had cleaned himself as soon as he pulled free of your warmth, not bothering to stop the cum that escaped from the unconscious clench of your hole.

Levi had taken a moment to change out of his work clothes, calm himself further and evaluate everything with a clearer mind. Now dressed in nothing but loose sweats, he felt more at ease, cooler both physically and mentally.

The vibe was flicked on, pressed to your mound at the same time Levi wiggled a finger inside of you, feeling his cum still warmed by your body. It was a weird sensation, but you were wet, and he was focused on the task at hand.

Making eye contact with you, Levi leveled you with a stern look.

“You aren’t allowed to cum.”

Four minutes later, when you crested the edge despite an obvious struggle against it, Levi clenched his jaw, removing the vibe and his finger from rubbing at your walls.

When your eyes opened, Levi met them with a glare.

“You aren’t allowed to cum.”

The vibe was flicked back on, a setting higher this time. Levi shoved two fingers inside of you, and you whimpered in distress. You’d beg if you knew it would sway him, but Levi had forced you enough times for you to know that he followed his own desires.

You were just supposed to lay there and take it.

[love-takes-work]

When someone toxic needs a friend

I just wanna add a little personal reflection to the discussion of Spinel’s treatment in Steven Universe: The Movie.

A few signposts so you know where I’m starting with this:

A criticism I’ve seen: 

Steven was not particularly warm to Spinel. He did not hug her. He did not offer to be her friend. He spoke carelessly and triggered her toward becoming murderous again. He only cared about what she could do for him.

A perspective I’ve seen: 

LOTS of people with borderline personality disorder or strong feelings about abandonment personally relate to Spinel and are critical of Steven from this perspective.

Rebecca Sugar’s commentary on Spinel:

The thing about Spinel is that she’s a really toxic person. 

She’s so toxic that she’s literally trying to poison people. 

In my interactions with friends who have had a history difficult enough to make it hard for them to trust other people and sometimes even actively want to hurt others, it’s just a very difficult situation to navigate. In the case of Spinel and all of these characters, that’s extremely exaggerated because cartoons have the ability to be extreme exaggerations. I wanted to explore what it’s like when you’re trying to help someone who really doesn’t want to help themselves, who wants to embody the negative feelings that they have about themselves. I think that’s something really real. I hadn’t seen that in a cartoon before. 

Spinel, unlike many other characters, actually has the goal of hurting people, which is new territory for the show. She really wants to hurt Steven, and there’s a reason that she does—because she’s in so much pain. I just wanted to explore all the dimensions of that.

I also think Steven has his way of trying to handle and dissolve conflict. It’s not necessarily a good way for him to handle this situation. It really leaves him in a difficult state, and I think what I wanted to show in the way that they interact is that at a certain point, when you can’t help someone, you have to be able to protect yourself. 

Ultimately, he can’t really convince her to change. It’s something she’ll have to want for herself. But what he can do is protect himself from her, making it impossible for her to hurt him. 

It’s sort of up to you if you would like to love her. If you watch this movie and she, you know, frustrates you, that is totally fair. I want that to be a big part of who she is.

[From the AV Club interview]

So here are a few things I want to shed light on.

It’s very interesting that Rebecca intended Spinel to be read as “a toxic person” because so many fans fell in love with her, said they’d be her friend, hated intensely on Pink Diamond because of what she did to abandon the poor Gem, and sympathized with her directly. But Rebecca was looking at Spinel from Steven’s perspective. And that’s also what I did.

I’ve been Steven. I have VERY much been Steven.

When you meet someone who was done dirty, when you recognize the horror they’ve been through, when you see how much pain they are in and agree they have the right to be angry, it’s natural for empathetic people to offer themselves as comfort.

But when you’re Steven, you also know it isn’t YOUR fault either. Before you have the ability and experience to set boundaries, you can get sucked into other people’s stormy waters and think you’re helping if you drown in solidarity with them. What’s really important to preserving yourself is learning that you can stand on the boat and toss a life preserver. That it doesn’t ACTUALLY HELP to jump in the water and sink with them.

Some folks are angry that Steven didn’t jump right into sacrifice himself on the altar of friendship in the service of an intense, literally murderous stranger who tried to poison him and his planet and lash out at his friends, robbing them of their rich pasts and their relationships because all of it hurt HER so much. It is SO easy to understand WHY SPINEL WAS ANGRY. But nothing she was doing to Steven, his friends, or the Earth was going to fix her problems, and furthermore, she FULLY UNDERSTOOD that it was NOT THE FAULT of any of the people she took her anger out on. It was irrational, yes, and that is part of her dysfunction. But also, in these situations, what helps explain it still does not excuse it.

Some have railed at Steven saying he somehow forgave genocidal tyrants like the Diamonds but couldn’t be friends with a damaged Gem like Spinel who just wanted friendship. The big difference there is that Steven got involved with the Diamonds when both parties believed he was a different person. The Diamonds believed he was the lost Pink Diamond, and Steven has also spent much of his superhero life believing he WAS his mother and was therefore obligated to accept punishment for her crimes or to clean up the messes she made. Now that he knows he is not her and that she did some pretty horrible stuff, he also wants the right to stop feeling responsible for every person Pink hurt in the entire region of space.

Steven gave Spinel basically compassionate treatment. He did not abuse her. He did not insult her. He occasionally coddled her when it seemed important (and though some said he was too businesslike while he pursued his mission, he was literally looking at the world ending within two days if he didn’t solve the problem). And most importantly . . . .

He let her leave the garden.

Spinel stayed in the garden all those millennia because Pink Diamond told her they were playing a game. All that time, she had visions of Pink returning so she could see her smile, hear her laughter. We see a sequence where she tried to follow Pink out of the garden and Pink manipulated her into staying willingly. We watch those feet leaving and one pair of feet staying behind. We see Pink disappear.

When Steven goes to leave the garden, Spinel follows in the same manner. Some have criticized him for letting go of her hands.

But he invited her out of the garden. He didn’t say stay. He said come with me.

As he sang about her deserving someone better, he was sincere. But he did not say the person to make her feel found should be him. He did not want to take on another person with thousands of years of baggage who would require a specific brand of attention and so much tenderness to avoid snapping. He did not allow her to be held by the hand and led out. He recognized that she needed encouragement to leave this place because of what was done to her, but he wanted her to take the steps.

Compassionate people are crushed all the time under the weight of needy people who make it hurt to love. People like Steven can acknowledge that Spinel deserves love and deserves to be happy without accepting that it’s heartless to stop short of personally doing it. Especially when you literally have to take physical, mental, and emotional damage as a general consequence of offering support and counseling. It is sometimes just beyond what you can do.

I made the mistake several times of getting very close to someone who treated me poorly while taking comfort in my presence. I cared that they were hurt and I didn’t know how to say “You deserve love” without stepping in and loving them. In EVERY case I was involved with, the person went from initially grateful to “why don’t you help me more?” shockingly quickly, and two of them deliberately tried to create situations where I would be trapped with them and isolated from others. 

I could get very personal here but I don’t think I need to. Those of us who relate all too well to Steven wanting to help others will have been in this situation. Your heart hurts for people who live with pain that has never touched you, but when they’ve made it clear with one of their first actions that they feel satisfied at the idea of ruining your life, trusting them could mean the end of you. Especially if they demand that you risk life and limb to fix and save them before you’d dare to call it love, and especially if they want to be fixed without feeling responsible for initiating any of it. Some people mistake suffering for working hard toward a goal. Both can hurt but only one is constructive. If I’m expected to spend extensive resources on someone, I need some partnership in the goal, and I can’t accomplish that with someone whose wish for companionship manifests as “I want you to feel as bad as I do, and will take steps to hurt you so I have someone to cry with.”

Steven risked his actual life while he didn’t have powers so he could go talk to Spinel, and he wouldn’t fight her when she wanted to fight. He protected himself while she spent her anger. He STILL put himself in the line of fire far more than a less compassionate person would. He took time and tenderness to listen to her story and sympathize with her, tell her she deserved better, bear witness to what she’d become after being treated like a discarded plaything, and bring her hope with promises of a new future and a way to feel found.

Sadly, Spinel flipped back to being murderous at the first sign that Steven might be about to prioritize someone other than her, reframing his reasonable needs as if he was planning to abandon her, isolate her, discard her. This was a trauma reaction, yes, and she isn’t entirely to blame for being upset because she was worried she was just being used and none of her actions were logically thought through. 

But does someone ever “deserve” the friendship of a specific person who can’t feel warm toward them because of their OWN bad experiences? 

No! 

Steven has a big heart but he has his very own huge storehouse of trauma, and being physically attacked with his family and planet put in danger over the actions of his mother is at the top of the list. Instead of assuming that the person who has trauma the loudest is the most hurt, can’t we just acknowledge that Spinel’s and Steven’s respective traumas make them NOT the best match for friendship?

The ending of the movie, with Spinel going off with the Diamonds, might seem a little disturbing with all the codepencency floating around there, but if you want to talk about compassion, I think this is a good place for Spinel to start. 

She just wanted to make Pink Diamond laugh and enjoy her life. She longed to do that for so long and then it all ended when she found out she would NEVER GET TO DO IT. I think bonding with the other Diamonds and having a familiar, safe place to experience the kind of love she’s used to will be a good FOUNDATION for building herself into a person beyond that. For now, she needs comfort. I hope they treat her well.

[cloudy-minded-idiot]

secrets

pairing: Shuri x reader

warnings: none that I could think of

word count: ~2,200 words

a/n: requested by @junajackson. sorry that it took me so long to write this! between uni and having to evacuate my appartment for a while, I really didn’t have a lot of freetime to write. I hope you like it :)

summary: shuri comes to visit the avengers compound, and your teammates dicover that you’ve been secretly dating the Wakandan princess for a while now. 

The sun was already starting to rise by the time you returned to the compound, bathing the sky in a light pink hue. It was a pretty sight for your sore eyes. You felt drained, the way you often did after a mission. You had been gone for almost a week without being able to contact anyone, getting very little sleep as you had to fight your way out of one mess after the other. Ultimately, the mission was a success but exhausted as you were, you didn’t have it in you to celebrate.  

You were welcomed back by an agent who briefly reminded you when your mission report would be due. You muttered out a confirmation and made a beeline for your room, stripping yourself from your dirty clothes and jumping under the shower. Cleaning up made you feel a lot better, and the warm water did wonders for your aching muscles. Dressed in something comfortable, you walked to your bedroom, ready to call it a day and catch some sleep. You had barely covered yourself with a blanket when a disembodied voice interrupted the tranquility of your room.  

“Mr. Stark has requested your presence in the common room.”  

Burying your head in your pillow, you let out a groan.  

“Do I have to?”  

Even to your own ears, your voice sounded whiney. The AI refrained from commenting on that, though.  

“Mr. Stark is giving you five minutes to get to the common room and advises you to make yourself look presentable.”  

Grumbling out some incoherent swear words, you stumbled out of bed and slowly got changed and pulled on some shoes. After assuring your hair looked alright, you made the small track to the common room. Tony looked up when you entered but, seeing your glare, refrained from making whatever stupid comment he had on the tip of his tongue.  

Silently he passed you a cup of coffee which you received with a grateful nod. Taking a sip of the dark fluid, you let its warmth and the caffeine wash over you.  

“How was your mission?” Tony asked tentatively, almost as if scared you would snap at him. 

“Long and exhausting. I had to ditch my phone and comms the first day and barely had time to sleep or eat,” you took another long sip of your drink before throwing him a side glance, “I really hope for the sake of you that this is important.”  

Tony was quick to assure you that it was, perhaps fearing that you would lose your cool otherwise. And yes, you were tired, but you were not irrational. The worst you would do is hit him in the arm and cuss him out, maybe prank him, later on, to get even.  

“Important visitors are arriving from Wakanda today. We’re doing a bit of collaborative work on a new suit, improve some of my technology, etcetera. I need someone to show them around while I’m at a meeting with Fury. Think you’re up for that?”  

You visibly perked up once you heard about Wakanda. You were more than familiar with their technology. After all, you were dating the head of their science and information department, although Tony didn’t know that. No one on the team did. After all, it hadn’t been until very recently that Wakanda decided to open up to the world and share its knowledge and technology. So, naturally, secrecy had to be part of the deal at the beginning of your relationship. And since then, you had just never found the time or the opportunity to broach the subject.  

“I think I'll manage.”  

Tony patted your shoulder with a grateful nod.  

“Good. I know you’re tired, but I'll owe you one after this,” he said, distractedly checking his watch as he spoke, “I gotta run. Can’t keep Fury waiting any longer. Tell the Wakandans I'll be back by lunchtime. Keep them entertained until then, alright?”  

At your affirmation, Tony thanked you and left you alone in the common room. You made yourself a second cup of coffee, already feeling better than before. That might also have something to do with the excitement of knowing your girlfriend might be coming to visit. After all, she was the head of the technology and information exchange program, so it would only make sense for her to be the one arriving today.  

When FRIDAY alerted you that the Wakandan jet was preparing to land, you were out of your seat and down at the landing lane in no time. Some agents threw you weird looks, but you couldn’t care less. The plane had just shut off its engine when you arrived, waiting a couple of feet away to leave enough space for the small boarding ramp.  

First to step off the jet, were two Dora Milaje carrying their standard sonic spear and serious expressions. The two warriors remained at either side of the door, eyeing the terrain with watchful eyes. Your own were fixed on the door while practically bouncing on the back of your feet in anticipation. As soon as you recognized the silhouette of your girlfriend in the doorway, you couldn’t help the big goofy smile that came to your face.  

Her eyes trailed over the small airport before finally landing on you. Face lighting up, she matched your grin with one of her own. It had been so long since you had last seen Shuri in person, your heart stammered a bit just at the sight of her. The Wakandan princess quickly descended the ramp, immediately engulfing you in a hug that you returned just as fiercely.  

“I was not sure you would be here when I arrived,” she admitted, releasing you just enough so that she could really look at your face, “I haven’t heard from you since you left for your mission a week ago.”  

She gave you a playfully reproachful look, causing you to grimaced sheepishly.  

“I just came back an hour ago. I would have called, but sadly my phone was one of the few casualties of my mission. Anyways,” stepping back a little, you cleared your throat and jokingly bowed slightly before your girlfriend, continuing in a mockingly formal tone.  

“Princess Shuri, I have the honor to officially welcome you and the Dora Milaje to the Avengers Compound. Sadly, Mr. Stark will not be available for the next hours. Until then, I can offer you a tour of the parameters, if you like?”  

You held out your hand in silent offer.  

She bowed her head in thanks, lightly putting her hand on yours.  

“Why thank you, we would appreciate that very much.”  

Unable to keep up the show any longer, you both started to giggle before you motioned for her to come along.cHolding hands, you walked her through the most important parts of the compound, ending the tour in the main lab that Tony liked to use. Shuri looked around with an appraising gaze, silently evaluating the different pieces of equipment and machinery as you leaned against the table in the center of the room.

“Not as good as what I have at home, but it will do,” was her verdict, and you laughed slightly.  

“Don’t tell Tony that, or he might be tempted to renovate again. He likes to pride himself on having the best of everything.”  

“Oh, but he has already admitted that I have the better tech, has he not? Or I wouldn’t be here.”  

“True,” you conceded, “So what do you guys have planned? You’re not going to make him a vibranium suit, are you?”  

She shook her head, joining you on your side of the table, “We were more thinking along the line of nanotechnology. Something like my brother's Black Panther suit. Easy to carry around, quick to put on. Much more practical.”  

You rubbed the back of your neck, trying to sound nonchalant as you asked your next question.  

“So, how long do you suppose this would take?”

She hummed, taking a couple of steps closer to you.  

“Two, three days at most,” she said, wrapping her arms around your waist and pulling your closer, “But for you, I might stretch it out a little. Give us more time together.”  

You smiled adoringly at her, leaning in to press a long kiss to her lips. She returned it eagerly, letting out a content sigh. You really had missed her, more than you could ever put into words. And obviously, that sentiment was shared. After a few moments, you pulled apart to catch your breath, resting your foreheads together, breath mingling in the space between you. You stayed like that for a while, just content to hold each other and be close again.  

“Almost forgot, I have something for you,” she whispered after a minute, releasing you to reach into her pocket.  

“Oh, uh, I didn’t get you any gifts,” you muttered out, a bit embarrassed. She dismissed your worry with a shake of her head. Taking your hand in hers, she slid something onto your wrist. Shuri watched you with anticipation as you slowly realized what it was.  

“You made me a Kimoyo bracelet?”  

Your eyes were probably wide as saucers, a finger tentatively trailing over the engravings on the vibranium beads. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw her nod.  

“It’s easier for me to contact you with this than on one of your old school grandpa phones, and I thought it might be useful to you on your missions. It’s no big deal, really.”  

She shrugged at the end, trying to play this gesture off. You looked up at her in wonder, quite aware that despite her words, this was, in fact, quite a big deal. For one, vibranium was really expensive. For another, Wakandans weren’t known for just handing out Kimoyo beads to anyone. This not only demonstrated how much she trusted you but also that she believed that the two of you were in this for the long run. Your adoration must have shown on your face because Shuri immediately groaned.  

“Oh no, I know that look. Don’t you start getting sentimental on me,” she warned you without any malice. You smiled at her softly, unable to do anything about your expression.  

“I won’t, I promise.”  

She rolled her eyes playfully, overdramatically throwing her hands up in the air.  

“You’re already doing it. Alright, I’m outta here.”  

The Wakandan princess turned to go, but you gently took her hand and pulled her back into an embrace.  

“I love you, Shuri,” you told her, your voice conveying all the emotions you felt. Her expression softened at your admission, and she leaned in to give you a small kiss.  

“I love you, too, you big sap.”  

“What's going on here?”  

Both of you blinked in confusion, slowly turning to look at the door without letting go of each other. In the entrance of the lab, staring at you with faces ranging from shock to confusion and surprise, stood Tony, Steve, and Natasha.  

You cleared your throat, feeling your face heat up, and slowly let go of Shuri, still keeping one of her hands in yours.  

“Hey, what are you guys doing here?”  

Steve was the one that spoke up, vaguely gesturing towards your girlfriend.  

“We came to formally welcome the Princess.”  

“Looks like Y/n has done enough welcoming for us all,” Natasha muttered, only snickering when Steve sent her a reproachful look for her comment. Tony was still regarding you flabbergasted.  

“You,” Tony took off his ever-present sunglasses motioning between you and Shuri, “And her? Since when?”

“Shuri and I have been dating for almost a year now.”  

“A year?” Tony repeated incredulously

“Back when Wakanda ‘s borders were still closed to the world,” Shuri sonfirmed, “With all the secrecy surrounding our technology, Y/n and I thought it would be best to keep our relationship secret too.”  

“And after that, I just didn’t know how to tell you guys,”  you added sincerely.

Tony looked as though he was about to ask more questions, but luckily Cap intervened, flashing you a smile.  

“Well, I’m happy for you two. You look like you're happy together.”  

Shuri squeezed your hand encouragingly, knowing how nervous you had been, not knowing how the team would react. Having the Captain’s blessing, even if you didn’t really need it, was appreciated.  

“Thanks, Steve.”  

“At least this explains why you’ve been having so many late-night phone calls. Good for you,” Natasha teased you, her words having the desired effect of making you groan in embarrassment.  

“I guess I’m happy for you, too,” Tony admitted reluctantly after being prompted byone of Steve's stern looks, “But I'll be much happier after your girlfriend helps me with my suit. So shoo, out of the lab. Play time's over, let's get working.”  

The billionaire made a motion for you all to leave, Natasha and Steve complying readily, saying their goodbyes to Shuri. Rolling your eyes, you followed his demand as well, but not without leaning in to kiss Shuri’s cheek.  

“I'm beat anyways. I haven’t slept in a minute.”  

She released your hand with one last small squeeze.  

“Get some rest. I'll see you later.”  

You were barely out of the lab when, much to Tony’s dismay, you heard Shuri brag about her own lab's much better equipment. You still had a fond smile on your face by the time you finally laid down in your bed.  

___________________________________________

taglist: @fireflyglass @madamevirgo @xxxtwilightaxelxxx​ @penparkz​

[neon--nightmare]

thinjks about. fresh

​THINKIN ABT…. his whole survival at whatever cost to other people, yourself before everything and everyone else mindset and how he assumes everyone else thinks that way too because he can’t comprehend anyone thinking different… but how he ALSO understands on a logical level that people with emotions will do irrational things for the ones they care about, and that he can use that, but it still baffles and even frustrates him…

thinks abt how he calls them stupid to justify it to himself and give himself a reason that makes sense, otherwise he’d just be mentally endlessly going around in circles on something he can’t comprehend, so he tells himself they’re just stupid and emotional and don’t make sense so HE doesn’t have to give it more thought

THINKS ABT….. in recovery, how hard he’d have to work past that mindset that everyone around him could be an active threat to him at any time, that if they call him over somewhere private, that they aren’t waiting to ambush and kill him, because that’s a mindset he’s been FORCED to learn, that he’s learned since he was created because otherwise he wouldn’t have even survived the three years he’s been alive, he HAD to live like this and internalize it and he’s never known any different

that he met the only person who loved him as he was, unconditionally (his first experience with any familial bond, he’d never had anything close to a family, he’d always been on his own and he LIKED it that way because other people are too unpredictable, and irrational, and even temporary allies were just tools to be used too that he would turn on in a heartbeat to get the upper hand instead of them doing it to him)

but in every single way that he thought about it, pacifrisk couldn’t be getting close to try and hurt or kill him unless they were planning with the others in a galaxy-brained plan just to get him to let his guard down before they struck, but he’d be prepared for that, or if they were somehow predicting all of his reactions, even the completely irrational ones where he got angry and lashed out that surprised himself just to attack him at his most vulnerable, but they put themselves in so much danger that wouldn’t make sense either, they believed in him so genuinely and unconditionally, and then he lost them right before his eyes,

and that reinforced every single negative belief he had, that trusting and loving people would only hurt them AND himself, blaming himself for letting them get too close, blaming himself for letting HIMSELF get attached because he knew this would happen, that it’d only end badly and it did, that all of his paranoia was proven right and that was the first time he ever felt grief

thinks abt how fresh physically, mentally couldn’t feel happiness, or comfort, living a life where the only emotions he could ever access were anger, fear, and sadness, and he couldn’t cope with those three because he never learned how, that he lived in a multiverse where everybody he met could experience positive emotions but they were always out of his reach, and he was jealous, deep down, while telling himself it was just because he was BETTER than them, and made to be better, perfectly designed

and if he kept pushing the flaws down it was like they weren’t there at all and he could keep telling himself he would never sink to their level and be like the irrational, childish, emotional other people he manipulated every single day, not because he’d feel pity for them, but because it would mean he was like them, that he was weak, that he wasn’t above them at all, that he wasn’t perfect and not being perfect and in top 100% form all the time he would be erased and replaced with another just like him, but without his flaws

THINKS ABT…. How part of his recovery is accepting that being at the level of other people doesn’t make him inferior, or pathetic, it just means they live their own lives too and have value, and that if he got attached to someone he probably wouldn’t recognize that they were like the hosts he possesses and tortures unless the person specifically points it out and explains it to him because he’s always just seen them as toys, pieces in a chess game, served an important purpose and provided entertainment, or got in the way, and then he’d move on to the next one because it was just what he did and needed to do to survive

and hurting others was made to be the only way he could feel anything slightly positive, even then it was just a shell of what ordinary people with emotions felt daily but at least it was something, he was made for a purpose and designed in every way to fulfill it

thinks abt… how hard fresh would have to unlearn those mindsets in recovery, that he’d have to be in a safe place where he wasn’t able to be killed for showing weaknesses, how he’d have to tackle everything he’d repressed so heavily throughout his literal entire life, learn to accept that he isn’t perfect and that’s okay, that some people are nice just because they can be, and it doesn’t mean that they’re trying to manipulate him, or are waiting to hurt or kill him, that sometimes kindness is unconditional and real, that he can be loved just the way he is

and it wouldn’t be easy, it’d be so so hard, but i think that’s important too, and how even though all of his life experiences would always leave a permanent mark on him, and always be a part of who he is, if he wanted to (which is the most important thing, more important than you’d think, it would mean letting his entire world crumble down around him with only a chance it would be built back up, of which he would have to take the word of other, emotional, people, which he’s built the biggest bias against throughout his entire life and everything he knows, and and and)

but if he wanted to, and had people who cared about him, which could definitely be dangerous for them at times if he lashed out, and it’d be a long process, and he’d never be able to make up for all he’s done, all of this is so much harder than i make it sound, but…

he could heal, and be happy. accept other people as his equals. not live in only fear, anger, and grief. live a life where he could trust people, and be trusted back. and i think that’d be just amazing

[shihalyfie]

Neverland, the role of “nostalgia” in Kiuzna’s narrative, and the 02 quartet’s unusual immunity to it

In general, the 02 quartet (my shorthand for the four human characters introduced in 02 who weren’t in Adventure, namely Daisuke, Ken, Miyako, and Iori) have a position in Kizuna that you can call “shockingly favorable” in that they’re kept safely out of the most dangerous parts of the plot in ways the others aren’t. This especially sticks out when we get to the Eosmon incident reaching its climax, when Takeru and Hikari are placed in the same situation as their Adventure seniors, despite the movie and its surrounding media generally portraying them closer in line with the others in the 02 group than the Adventure group.

To be a bit blunt about it, the obvious main reason the story is set up this way is meta -- a lot of the climax’s effectiveness depends on the audience getting sensory impact via recognizing things from the original series (including 02 as well; how convenient it is that all of the international Chosen are in the positions 02 fans would recognize!), and so it’s obvious that said climax would evoke imagery related to the series that was Digimon Adventure, while the 02 quartet would be treated extra-kindly by the narrative due to the need to give them compensatory action screentime given certain real-life events. But just because the originating reason is meta doesn’t mean there isn’t also a story reason for it, especially considering the relevance of 02′s themes in Kizuna’s narrative, and the surrounding circumstances regarding both series.

Before we get into anything else, the first thing that needs to be established is that Menoa and Eosmon’s lure is pretty obviously depicted as working on a subconscious level. This is why everyone else in the narrative agrees that what they did is “kidnapping”, despite her insistence that she’s just doing what they wanted. While they can’t not admit to having moments of weakness, nevertheless, it’s likely that most if not all of the people Menoa kidnapped consciously knew better and had learned better lessons than this a long time ago; if Menoa had consciously offered Neverland to her victims, most of them would have probably said no! But as Daisuke said back in 02 episode 49 -- when he witnessed his own friends being subjected to something similar at the hands of BelialVamdemon -- there’s no sin in having feelings of worries or troubles (and, by extension, irrational feelings in general), and Eosmon’s abilities and Neverland happen to be able to directly target them. In fact, we ourselves got to witness this internal conflict when Menoa made her direct offer to Taichi and Yamato to join Neverland; they briefly considered it because of the circumstances, but were snapped out of it quickly with Agumon and Gabumon’s intervention, and were really, really mad at themselves for considering it shortly after.

We saw the process of how Ayaka became one of the kidnapping victims at the beginning of the movie -- it happened right after she complained that she wasn’t fond of the idea of becoming an adult at this point. So it does lend some truth to the idea that Menoa’s working off something with these cases, and that Eosmon did specifically target people who had those wishes to some degree. Moreover, note carefully how this kidnapping (and some others in the movie) is portrayed; Eosmon doesn’t actually emerge from the device in question (it’s obvious that nobody notices the giant butterfly monster), and the victim’s consciousness and partner are whisked away thanks to being caught by the device camera. In Ayaka’s case, because her phone was sitting on the table, pointed at her. The fact that this is not how the kidnappings are portrayed all the way to the end of the movie is a very significant point.

So let’s talk about Neverland and its construction. The whole thing is based on Menoa’s own very, very warped view of what “happiness” is. This means that Neverland is only an “ideal world” or “utopia” in a way that makes sense to her -- and once you learn the full extent of her backstory, it becomes apparent how she came to the mentality she did, and, more pertinently, how she ended up projecting that on everyone else. Hence, how she came to decide that she knew better and should decide for everyone, because she thinks she gets the right to decide on everyone’s happiness based on her own experiences. (She doesn’t.)

The way Neverland is constructed is that everyone has “their own places” -- their own individual islands that recreate “memories” of everyone being able to be together with their partner, forever. So in other words, it’s not just that everyone’s being turned into children; it’s that they’re being kept in an eternal loop of their best memory and unable to “move forward”.

Here are three very significant parts about this, which will be important to keep in mind as we go deeper into this analysis:

Menoa’s view of this utopia requires people to be separated -- for all she claims this is a utopia where people can play together, she discourages fraternizing and encourages everyone to stay only with their own partners. This is, presumably, to lessen complications with said memories, because what might be one person’s best memory might not be for another, and also because she thinks one person being alone with their partner is happiness enough in itself. As we’ll be seeing later, this is very much not the case for everyone.

A lot of these memories in Neverland -- and Menoa’s own mentality, as we eventually find out -- are heavily dependent on the concept of rose-colored nostalgia, or, that is to say, conveniently omitting or forgetting about all of the bad things about one’s past in order to portray it as such a wonderful thing that nobody should ever move on from. And in the end, that probably applies to real-life childhood in general, too; as much as it’s so often put on a pedestal for being a time when “everything was simpler”, you can also easily argue that it wasn’t actually all sunshine and roses, it’s just that the process of forgetting things or the grass-is-greener phenomenon makes you conveniently forget all of the bad things and frustration that came with it too.

Because the concept of needing to stay in the past forever is based on the idea that it’s preferable to growing up, these memories thus have a strong premise of “things you cannot do anymore” -- something that, bar going back to the past and never moving from it, you will never get back or be able to sufficiently recreate. It’s unlikely the islands themselves are one-to-one recreating their specific memories in the way they happened, but rather seemingly presenting them the opportunity to “constantly do over” things they want to recreate or do again, as long as those things are associated with a happy thing that isn’t as easily accessible anymore.

In the case of the five Adventure group members who were brought into Neverland, these “memories” that they’re seen trapped in are, of course, from Digimon Adventure.

It is of course foolhardy to pretend that the main reason for this wasn’t meta, since, of course, there’s a huge point to be made here about the relationship between Adventure and nostalgia, plus the simple fact that this is what we’re most likely to recognize and be nostalgic for, but it also makes sense within the context of the narrative; Menoa has an extreme bias towards the happiness of her childhood revolving almost entirely around her partner, and, of course, Adventure was when these kids first had their most formative meetings with said partners. (This is also probably the in-story explanation for why the other international Chosen from 02 appear at or close to their 02 selves; beyond the meta reason of it being a way to make them recognizable when we only knew them for such a short time, it also approximates when they met their own partners.)

On top of that, Adventure was not all sunshine and roses for its cast! After all, there was a ton of drama and emotional trauma and stress from running away from enemies trying to kill them, or trying to save the universe, and glossing over that is also foolhardy -- but this is also where our concept of “rose-colored” comes in. Menoa’s not offering the kids the entire adventure; she’s offering them a small slice of the moments when they were able to be happy, the moments that made them want to stay in the Digital World for a whole 110 years’ worth of time at the end of Adventure -- she’s basically offering them that very thing they wanted and had ripped away from them at the end of Adventure when the time dilation phenomenon stopped. Take out all of the bad stuff, and suddenly, the events of Adventure seem outright romantic -- it’s the whole school of thought that fueled Adventure’s inspirations of Two Years’ Vacation and Stand By Me, in which a lot of stressful stuff happened and yet you still can’t help but think there was something magical and romantic about it. (I cannot emphasize enough how much of a cultural impact Stand By Me in particular had in Japan, to the point where it’s considered the epitome example of a “coming of age story” and “summer adventure”.)

Let���s take a closer look at what’s on each of the Adventure kids’ personal islands:

Hikari is probably the one in the most unusual position among this group, since she didn’t join until over the halfway point, and the first arc she got involved in revolved around everyone wanting her and Tailmon dead. Thus, the memory we get to see her involved in is the Numemon factory in Adventure episode 49. Although this was in the middle of the Dark Masters arc (and, uniquely, very close to the end of the series where a lot of stress was involved), due to the limited amount of time she got to be in the Digital World, this was the one time she got to do something really cool and awesome and impressive for herself that had nothing to do with the others (again: see how the requirements for these islands require not fraternizing with friends and being isolated).

One thing that the Adventure kids got to do that wasn’t in play in 02 was that there were a lot of “romantic experiences”, involving strange adventures and things like phone boxes on the beach, and, very significantly, “Digimon friends” -- ones that the kids made a huge note of bonding with over the course of the series. This contributes to a certain sense of whimsy that was involved in this adventure that the 02 quartet ultimately never ended up getting to foster, because the lack of the time dilation phenomenon meant that they spent much less time in the Digital World overall (more on this in a bit), and once the time dilation stopped, it meant that these kinds of “whimsical” experiences were ones the Adventure group was permanently torn away from once that adventure ended. That dropping of the time dilation phenomenon not only cut that initial adventure short, it also prevented any future ones like it from ever happening again.

And, of course, this is an extremely rose-colored memory, because shortly afterwards, the Numemon ended up all sacrificing themselves for Hikari. But hey, when you’re in a space that can eternally loop good memories forever, everything’s fine as long as we conveniently never get to that part, right?

From this point on, you’ll notice that all of the memories that show up on these islands are from before the halfway point of the series, because after that, things started getting increasingly pear-shaped and much more difficult to disentangle the stress, mental breakdowns, and witnessing of deaths from. (Hikari’s probably wouldn’t have come from such a late incident if she hadn’t joined the party so late.) Although there still were looming threats around the horizon in the beginning of Adventure, they weren’t always immediately apparent to the kids at every turn, and in fact, the beginning of the series involved more of a “well, we’re in this situation and probably need to get home somehow” aura than it did a “the world is in danger and all of us might die” aura. (It’s also in direct contrast to the 02 group, who were given the details of the crisis and what they needed to do roughly from the get-go.) So in other words, if you want to have some rose-colored nostalgia about the romanticism of this adventure, these are some of the best episodes to pull from.

Takeru’s is obviously from the Village of Beginnings, corresponding to Adventure episode 12, when he and Patamon got to have a fun romp through the village, play together, meet Elecmon, and learn about how Digimon are born. It’s also very much something he did without the others, only with Patamon, and had a lot of “fun and happiness” associated with (later solo episodes with Takeru had a lot more upsetting events more intrinsically tied with it), and, again, it’s extremely rose-colored -- it wasn’t even a day later when Angemon died in front of Takeru’s eyes. But hey, that’s even more reason to pick a moment from before then to stay in forever! Can’t have trauma if that trauma never happens, right?

Also, note that Takeru is one of the few here who’s confirmed to be aware of the partnership dissolution issue at this point, and, unlike Koushirou, isn’t confirmed to have accepted a forward-thinking mentality about it yet -- this is a very, very prime time for his fears of being separated from Patamon again to have a nasty relapse.

Mimi’s is the closest to the midpoint of the series, from the affair with the Geckomon and Otamamon castle (from Adventure episode 25; the metal railings here resemble the stage railings from that episode). It’s from the period of time that was a “lull” -- when nobody actually knew about the encroaching threat of Vamdemon quite yet, and for all it was worth, there was no longer any danger. So Mimi got to live happily in the comfort of the castle and play around with the Geckomon and Otamamon...which, of course, also conveniently excludes the affair where she went on a power trip, made everyone miserable due to her selfishness, and immediately felt guilt over it.

Mimi’s associations with this incident are not entirely negative; she was clearly still having fun singing for them in the end (note how her clothing during that scene involved her regular outfit, which she has on here), and she still had a positive impression of her relationship with the Geckomon and Otamamon as per Adventure episode 47 and 02 episode 6 (and as per 02 episode 15, even though everyone’s initial encounter with TonosamaGeckomon ended badly, nobody actually has any lingering grudge against him). So if you filter out that whole affair with the power trip and the resulting embarrassment, it was a meeting with a bunch of fun Digimon friends, a romantic little castle, and a fun stage session where Mimi got to sing.

Jou’s refers to the Infinity Mountain incident in Adventure episode 7, and even from the get-go you can already see the level of rose-coloredness in Jou’s gesture -- in the actual incident depicted, Jou went to the mountain out of a sense of obligation and stress, and the initial climbing involved him having a bit of a bickering moment with Gomamon. But once they did get up there, it was actually their first time the two of them got to really “bond” -- and not only that, their encounter with Unimon had Jou even look on it with fascination, before the Dark Gear had ever come into play.

So in the end, Jou really would have found the incident enjoyable and worthwhile if not for that, and from there you can understand why it would be appealing for him to revisit that setting and finally get to have a bit of calm fun with Gomamon there -- especially since, again, the Neverland islands have a very strong preference for isolating the kids from others, and this was one of the few times Jou got to have a major moment of calm like this alone with Gomamon, with a slight reprieve from the constant feeling of stress and duty.

Koushirou’s most prominently resembles the “sealed room” in the factory in Adventure episode 5, and while Koushirou certainly continued to make a large number of exciting discoveries after that, this was the situation where Koushirou, with no one else but Tentomon to worry about in the immediate vicinity, got to have the largest sensation of “novelty” -- where he first came upon the fascinating discovery of data manipulating reality around him, and he actually got to see the world change around him by wiping things off a wall.

And, of course, there were other things going on like Tentomon confronting him with his first existential crisis, and how things quickly went south with Andromon...but we don’t have to remember that part for now, right?

An interesting thing about Koushirou: the circumstances of how he was “kidnapped” in the first place are actually somewhat obscured compared to the other four in this scene, since Menoa presumably needed him conscious in order to get his list out of him, resulting in his kidnapping scene also involving an emerging Eosmon and not having him be instantly taken the way we see Takeru and Hikari (more on this in the section below). It’s thus unclear whether he’d be in their boat had his position in Menoa’s plan not been unusual -- said memories in Neverland involved “gathering information and learning more”, something he still actively involved himself with even after the events of Adventure, and he’s also the first one to reach a forward-thinking mentality about the partnership dissolution phenomenon. Either way, once he was already dragged into Neverland, it’s natural that the place could find a good memory for him in the same way it did for the other kids who were “manually” dragged in, but the actual method of entry and whether Koushirou's post-Adventure life put him in a mindset similar to that of the 02 quartet (again, see below) is a bit ambiguous.

So here’s an interesting part about how the 02 quartet gets involved in this story: their own encounters with Eosmon happen during a part where the method of kidnapping has abruptly changed. As many have pointed out, this is also when the degree of the targets Menoa wanted had also suddenly escalated, because while her previous claims had involved the idea of kidnapping like-minded adults (who, indeed, were entertaining thoughts of nostalgia to even some degree), she was now kidnapping actual children, ones who weren’t even nearly at the point of the supposed drudgery of adulthood that Menoa claimed they would eventually have, and with her arrogantly deciding she knew better for all of them. The part that becomes particularly intriguing about this is that the exact same thing happens with Miyako -- she is explicitly stated to have connected her laptop to the Internet, resulting in an Eosmon physically emerging and chasing her instead of instantaneously snatching away her consciousness through a camera like her own fellow 02 group members Takeru and Hikari.

So in other words, the 02 quartet’s favorable position in this incident doesn’t just have to do with being lucky enough to have gotten Koushirou’s warning about the Eosmon early; they (or at least Miyako) also seem to have a certain degree of outright immunity to it, much like the young children who aren’t old enough to have nostalgia yet. (Also, keep in mind that Takeru was caught thanks to a security camera; “excess caution with electronic devices” alone wouldn’t necessarily have guaranteed their safety.)

Recalling that, for the most part, Takeru and Hikari are usually treated more like 02 group members in the context of this narrative yet are, in this one case, treated as being potentially nostalgia-prone, it stands to reason that the main difference between the two of them and their fellow members in the 02 group is the fact that Takeru and Hikari went on the adventure in 1999, and the quartet did not. So in other words, the reason the 02 quartet isn’t as prone to this is not so much that they’re fundamentally different-minded people, as much as they have a distinct lack of an experience they can be attached to the way the Adventure group is to their own 1999 adventure. (Remember that Menoa’s kidnappings work heavily on subconscious feelings; you can’t blame anyone for having these kinds of feelings no matter how much they’ve consciously learned.)

As I said earlier, it’s foolhardy to pretend that Adventure was all sunshine and roses, and, likewise, it’s also foolhardy to pretend that 02 was nothing but suffering for everyone involved. Both series involved a lot of balancing of funny, silly moments to be treasured as much as they involved stress (which is why people are so attached to both, after all). So the question is not so much how happy they were in their childhoods as much as the nature of what that happiness came from, and what relation it has to their current lives. And when you look at what experiences the 02 quartet had back in 02, you might notice a thread of the fact that it is significantly harder to romanticize the events of 02 than it is Adventure.

Let’s put it this way: Let’s say that the 02 quartet was kidnapped into Neverland and placed onto islands that fit Menoa’s view of happiness. What, exactly, would you pick from 02 itself that would work? What kind of “happiness” did they have back then that’s so romantic, so impossible to replicate now, that they’d want to go back to because it’s better than their lives now once you disentangle all of the bad stuff?

...Not much. Not much at all, actually. Hanging out in the computer room together? Doesn’t seem like they cared that much about the computer room part as much as the fact the others were there bantering with them (which would put a huge nail in Menoa’s islands mandating isolationism). Going out on a picnic together? No reason they can’t just go on another picnic again (and if the BD box is to be believed, that’s exactly what they did, and they even added Ken to it while they were at it). Hanging out with their Digimon in real life and doing silly hijinks? They’re...probably still doing that now, actually. Getting to find true happiness at a Christmas party? That’s a party from the real world (again, something they most certainly continued to do thereafter), one where the happiness came not from the romanticism of anything that happened to do with some adventure, but just the happiness of being surrounded by true friends, which, again, Ken is still clearly getting to do by the time of Kizuna.

Once you look at the circumstances of what the “adventure” of 02 was to the 02 group, you may realize that it doesn’t really resemble the traditional romantic image of an “adventure” much at all. Sure, they were blessed with being able to regularly go back and forth between the Digital World from the get-go, but it meant that -- especially without the time dilation in play -- the Digital World became much less of a picturesque area associated with a one-time memorable adventure as much as something they had to squeeze in their after-hours while juggling it with their school. The circumstances they encountered their Digimon and the Digital World in were at a point where it had a certain level of “mundane” to them, compared to their seniors; it wasn’t a “fantasy adventure in the Digital World” when so much of the story also revolved around real-world events as well, and you can’t really find many “mysterious fantasy” events in 02 that resemble much of those in Adventure. The closest might be...Daisuke seeing Numemon pile out of a vending machine in 02 episode 1? (Not very romantic.) Daisuke getting chased around by a Tortomon in 02 episode 22? (Really not very romantic.) Iori getting to tour the ocean with Submarimon? (Implied to more about relief from how much he was holding himself back than the uniqueness of the experience in itself.) Ken’s long-time-ago flashback from 02 episode 23 about meeting Wormmon for the first time? (Defeating a Gazimon is hardly that impressive; the important part was him bonding with Wormmon, which he’s...uh...still doing now?)

There weren’t any lasting relationships with Digimon friends like the ones in Adventure, maybe encountering some civilians once and not seeing them much again after that, especially since the lack of time dilation meant not getting to spend as much time visiting them much at all (think about all of the really fun experiences that the Adventure group probably had that weren’t shown in the actual Adventure TV series, just because it probably didn’t have enough drama that would make a good TV episode plot). This means that there’s very little, if at all, of 02 that represents something this group would want so badly to recreate that they can’t already do now; everything from back then was either something comparatively mundane, or something they actually would not want back. Unlike with Adventure, where a lot of the kids had irreplaceable moments that only happened to be spoiled a bit later, a lot of the “really awesome accomplishments” from the first half of 02 were explicitly against Ken, someone whom they’d probably rather not dwell on fighting again because of how much they love him now; many of those good memories are “retroactively poisoned” because of that, and it’s much, much more difficult to make a rose-colored version of those memories disentangled from the bad, because of how fundamentally intrinsic that retroactive poisoning becomes.

And, when you think about it, the mandate of “you have to be alone on your own island” would pretty much break these four in particular, especially since the 02 group is portrayed as the type to need mutual support more than anything else, and so many of the events that represent “happiness” specifically involved the happiness of each other being present. It’s not to say that the 02 quartet had no moments of happiness when alone with their partners, but, rather, being with each other provided so much more fulfillment to them that Menoa’s offer of a memory of their past that requires them to be alone probably pales in comparison to anything they could do now in each other’s presence. Maybe, like with the other kids depicted in these scenes, they could be buttered up with something nice if you successfully got them into Neverland, but it’s not like they have any real wistfulness about anything from back then to the point that they’d be subconsciously drawn towards it instead of having to be dragged in kicking and screaming -- and especially in the case of Miyako, the same one who managed to evade an Eosmon here, who was offered a similar “chance to be alone” back in 02 episode 49 and didn’t take very long to decide she hated it because of how much of her happiness comes from getting to be with others.

By the time of the end of Adventure, the Adventure kids’ ideal situation was to have a romantic and fun 110-year adventure with the sights and fun of the Digital World, with all of the weird fantasy surrealism and less of the world-saving, and that’s something they never got to have (and that Menoa was inherently offering them). By the time of the end of 02, the 02 quartet’s ideal situation was...to find a way to get back to normal life and hope their friend feels a little better, and that “ideal situation” is still persisting even into the time of Kizuna, so it’s hard to imagine they really want more than that.

And, again, when you extrapolate this into what Kizuna’s trying to say about real life, adulthood, and nostalgia: it is true that Menoa’s projecting a belief that absolutely does not apply to everyone. While it’s true that many people feel that childhood had a certain kind of magic that you can’t get back in adulthood, there are possibly just as many people who aren’t really all that nostalgic to begin with, either due to trauma or something about their childhoods being miserable, or, even in the lack of such miserable events, simply enjoying the added freedom and expanded range of ability that comes with adulthood to the point they consider it to be more than worth the tradeoff. The 02 group basically represents this crowd -- Ken’s life right now beats out his past in pretty much nearly every respect, and while there are certain concerns about not being able to meet up as often, they’re finding the same ways to do the same kinds of over-the-top hijinks they did back in 02, with arguably even more range now that they get to exploit Digital Gates to do world travel and act without worrying about their parents. They’re basically like the adults who see Menoa’s creed of “childhood is better because adulthood sucks” and go “sorry, can’t relate.”

That said, remember: this isn’t because the 02 quartet is somehow mentally stronger or anything, but rather just a byproduct of what experiences they've had and haven’t had. Takeru and Hikari’s position is unique here -- for all intents and purposes their mentalities are portrayed as closer to the 02 group’s, but they did still have the experience their seniors had and are thus still capable of being close to their position in this one regard. In the end, everyone is different, it’s no sin to have feelings based on those differences, and “being able to relate” to one’s position is also an important key here; because the 02 group’s position is so alien to Menoa’s, it’s unlikely they could have tackled her problems nearly as intimately as their seniors could.

What we learn about Menoa’s backstory establishes that she forced her vision of nostalgic happiness on everyone based on her own perception of her past in such a warped, rose-colored manner. She conveniently omitted or forgot about details such as the fact that her life as a “child” involved feeling ostracized from everyone and that she herself was guilty of neglecting Morphomon. Not only that, she herself claims that she’s the only one who knows what this feels like -- that nobody relates to her -- and thus, you can see that she came to her conclusion that her experiences are universal by the power of sheer extrapolation, hence why she thinks everyone inevitably loses their partner upon reaching adulthood despite pretty significant amounts of evidence to the contrary. (For all it’s worth, the fact that she still considers herself as having “become an adult” at 14 just because she got into university at that time is pretty conceited.)

Menoa’s existence as being so starkly in contrast to the 02 quartet’s is very likely because her entire character was built up from the ground that way -- her entire backstory of skipping grades into university is heavily based on 02′s initial development premise and Ken’s own backstory, meaning she explicitly represents the path that Ken and the other 02 kids chose not to take, and the timing of certain events in her backstory seems almost deliberately engineered to prevent her from witnessing some of 02′s important answers to Kizuna’s conflict, most notably her inability to witness the final battle and the important lessons everyone present learned about following one’s dreams without restraint, and how that relates to one’s partner. Menoa’s mindset is basically that level of incompatible with 02′s themes of “moving on from the past” and “not caving to arbitrary societal expectations”, to the point her character could only get to this point by going out of the way to exclude her from 02′s story and events, because she’s fundamentally built as a character who started off on a very similar path as them (getting to integrate her Digimon partner into normal life, having a similar backstory to Ken) before veering off on a very different one.

Moreover, about that backstory, and the reason why 02 was conceived as such a criticism of the concept of “skipping grades into university”: the concern that someone in this position will be kept from making any friends their age. Menoa puts the moment of “being with one’s partner” on such a pedestal and considers herself to be “the only one who knows what this feels like” partially because she has a fundamentally warped view of friendship itself. Even the Adventure group, which may not have had quite the absurdly tight level of bonding the 02 group had, still broke out of the illusion via Taichi and Yamato reaching out to them, and Taichi and Yamato giving each other mutual support helped them make the decisions they did in the movie. The movie is titled “bonds”, and “bonds” doesn’t just refer to those between human and Digimon partner, but also bonds between each other; Taichi, Yamato, and Sora slowly drifting away from the others at the start of the movie has very strong relevance to their respective existential crises, and the role that Taichi and Yamato play in supporting each other, and Mimi’s in supporting Sora in To Sora and even beyond that, say a lot as to how they’re already expected to be much better off than Menoa was.

It’s not that adulthood is inherent drudgery; it’s that Menoa’s own circumstances really are that warped to the point where she sees her very unusual experiences as fundamentally synonymous with how life is supposed to work in general. She was so obsessed with “being independent”, “being useful to the world”, and “being on her own” that she had no mentality of making friends or connecting to others besides her own partner, and once her partner disappeared, she seemed to make no attempt to rectify that. So of course her life in university following that ended up being not nearly as fulfilling as she’d hoped, since she was getting no real emotional support from anywhere, and, as 02 itself also drove home, apparent “approval from society” only ever makes you as “happy” as a Dark Seed-implanted child if you’re not also being supported by your loved ones in the process. Her adulthood sucked, and she decided that everything about her rose-colored childhood meant that childhood is fundamentally superior in every way, and thus decided that keeping everyone else in it would be “saving” them from the terror it involves -- even though (even if they’re not aware of the specifics of everything) the 02 quartet is not the kind to be able to relate to this at all, and, eventually, Taichi and Yamato, who do understand her position a bit better due to their own experiences, are able to get her to reconsider a little.

[nitewrighter]

Now i cant wait to see Genji confense to Zenyatta about overwatch and Angela !

Gooooddd this has been languishing in my drafts since... god I don’t want to think about it. Forever. But tonight I get it out!!

-----

Steam puffed up over the food stand, the warmth in the air intermingling with the crackling sound of fryers. Genji watched as the Omnic vendor skillfully scooped several chicken momos up from the fryers and set them in a paper-lined cardboard tray, holding it out to him. Even well into the night, Kolkata was thrumming, vibrant, noisy and alive--Delivery drones buzzed overhead, hover-mopeds weaved between packed buses, hovercars honked their horns, and omnics in Shambali garb were attempting to start up conversations with irritated Vishkar representatives on the sidewalks. Zenyatta watched all the bustle with his usual patience-with-underlying-shrewdness. They had been traveling together for nearly a month now, but Zenyatta had been called back to the Shambali monastery in Nepal earlier than he would have liked and, as he explained it, Kolkata was the easiest place for them to drag their feet without Zenyatta’s brother sending more reminders their way. Zenyatta didn’t seem particularly resentful of Mondatta, but there was a definite hesitance in his return to Nepal that spoke to some complexities in his and Mondatta’s relationship.

They were able to find an isolated enough alley for Genji to keep his hood up and head down as he quickly stuffed down his dinner before clicking his faceplate back on and heading back out to the main street. Genji watched as a bright blue hovertram streamed by, so packed there were a handful of humans and omnics virtually hanging off it as they rejoined the crowd on the street. The press of human and omnic bodies here was different than Numbani--with Numbani there seemed to be a careful cultivation of the ‘City of Harmony’ image, with clean-scrubbed streets and gleaming buildings, and carefully outlined street and foot traffic for optimum efficiency, but here felt closer to reality--the clamor of voices and the natural messiness of shared spaces, the streaming of bodies moving in different directions, pooling and spiraling around each other like water. He didn’t feel like he stood out here--the crowd was so mixed between humans and omnics that the eye glazed right past him. He and Zenyatta fell behind a group of pilgrims, a mix of about two thirds omnic and one third humans. Genji studied the organics. He recognized the look of some of them--those searching for truth and identity, like he had been, like he still was. They were dressed in bright colors and their conversations were peppered with aphorisms from all the Shambali’s best-selling books and Mondatta’s holovid speeches. At least one of them had dabbed on a bit too much patchouli oil. Genji gave a glance back at Zenyatta.

“So what is your hesitance in returning, Master?” asked Genji, looking back at the group ahead of them. He had only been calling Zenyatta ‘Master’ for a little over two weeks now, but it felt easy. Felt natural.

“The journey is just as important as the destination, my student,” said Zenyatta as they walked.

Genji gave him a slight, ‘Come on’ head tilt, and Zenyatta tented his fingers, composing his thoughts.

“As machines, the Shambali have been able to adapt our--their message, to human agendas. And this is well and good--there is no reason why the Shambali’s message of peace should be incompatible with already present human social constructs.”

“I see...” said Genji, a little wary that Zenyatta was going to launch into another pondering monologue where the words ‘Pedagogy’ and ‘commercialization’ swam in and out and Zenyatta would ultimately end with a hand wave and ‘But I suppose it depends on the individual,’ or something like that.

“Omnics do not need to sleep, so the Shambali can travel as much as they need--But I do have concerns about treating our ideals as a machinated export when ultimately we strive for unity between the organic and the--” Zenyatta cut himself off and perked up at the odd ripple that seemed to be going through the crowd.

“Master?” said Genji. He looked around the crowd, trying to see what Zenyatta was seeing. People were stopping mid-step and pulling out their phones, some bumping into each other but barely glancing up. Couples and groups that were walking together stopped and exchanged concerned murmurs in Bengali and Hindu and english. Genji suddenly felt a seed of anxiety growing and spreading from the pit of his stomach, phantom limb pain prickling throughout all of his prosthetics. Something was wrong. Something felt wrong. The group of pilgrims had all but dropped to a standstill, several of them crowding around a human’s phone. She had her hand over her mouth. Two or three of the pilgrims were speaking English.

“The Headquarters?”

“It couldn’t be an aerial attack could it?”

“Do they know who did it?”

“God I hope it wasn’t Null Sector... If Omnics get blamed for this--”

“What about Talon?”

“They beat Talon--”

“They beat Doomfist. Doomfist isn’t all of Talon.”

That prickling anxiety that manifested as phantom limb pain now was rushing hot along the skin of his neck and cybernetic jaw as he looked around. His armor felt claustrophobic around him but his head was jerking around this way and that, looking desperately now. Headquarters? Talon? Newsfeed. He had to find a newsfeed.

“Genji...” Zenyatta said his name as if trying to pull him back to the present, but this fear was the present, it was pressing in on him like the crowd. His head swiveled to see people accumulating around a pawn shop window where multiple holoscreen projectors of various ages were displayed. He rushed through, ninja training guiding his feet and the angle of his shoulders, sliding through the crowd like a knife until he reached the front of it. The holoscreens of the shop window were displaying the news in numerous channels and Genji’s eyes fixed on the familiar face of the news reporter Olympia Shaw. The television was muted, of course, but there was captioning. Before his brain could make out the words, his eyes fell on a helicopter or drone shot hovering over a massive building semi-obscured by multiple columns of smoke.  The complex cluster of plaftorms at the building’s western side were blackened. There was a recognizable patch of green at the building’s heart--a courtyard, that soon was obscured by smoke as the wind shifted.

Zurich. Zurich Headquarters.

The explosions took place only minutes apart. Both Strike Commander Morrison and Reyes were in the building when the explosions occurred--- Olympia Shaw’s mouth moved along soundlessly to the captioning on the screen. Something chilled in Genji’s stomach. Zurich headquarters itself had been many things over the years with Overwatch, during his long stints in physical therapy and during Blackwatch’s suspension, it had felt like a prison-like box, but there were a few nights...

Eyewitnesses have told Atlas News that Doctor Angela Ziegler, formerly known as the Overwatch agent ‘Mercy,’ who was reportedly resigning from Overwatch, is apparently inside the headquarters attempting to rescue personnel. There has been no--

Genji suddenly had the physical sensation of dropping rapidly through a dark, cold space. 

He wasn’t there. She was in trouble and he wasn’t there.

Genji...

The tone of her voice was distant. His entire body tensed as the memory of late nights in the lab arose. He remembered her snorting laugh in the small hours of the morning, her shoes kicked off and her legs tucked close to herself in her swivel chair. 

Genji--!

He remembered their elbows interlocked in Havana, the burn of rum flushing across her nose and cheekbones and shining in her eyes. 

Genji?!

He remembered her stooping over him, wet lab coat hanging off of her, her glasses fogged with the steam of the therapy pool. 

“GENJI!” Zenyatta was gripping both his shoulders and he found himself standing in that crowded street in Kolkata, the televisions still glowing behind him. 

“I’m okay,” Genji said, “This is fine--it’s not fine--I’m going to fix it--I just need to go--”

“Go--?” Zenyatta started.

“I need to go,” Genji was breaking away from Zenyatta, already walking. He would have broken into a sprint if it weren’t so crowded. “I need to go--She can’t--I left her but I can---” Breath didn’t seem to be coming to form the words. Maybe if he just kept walking...

“Genji, you’re having a panic attack,” said Zenyatta.

“I don’t get panic attacks!” Genji snapped.

But he did get panic attacks--he just thought he left them behind in Zurich. Burning Zurich. Burning Zurich where Angela was and she was in trouble and he wasn’t there and he hadn’t even said goodbye when he left like the fucking heartless self-absorbed piece of shit he always knew he was. He was still talking. He wasn’t sure if he was talking because it kept the shortness of breath away as he moved but Zenyatta was floating after him as closely as he could in the crowd.

Zenyatta suddenly seized Genji’s shoulders again. “Genji!” he spoke clearly and a small orb of harmony suddenly alighted next to him.

“You have to let me--” Genji felt his own hands gripping Zenyatta’s wrists. He had fought Null sector Omnics before. He wondered how much physical force he needed to get Zenyatta off of him but Zenyatta’s fingers tightened into his shoulders with a furious grip.

“YOU. CAN’T. CONTROL THIS.” Zenyatta’s voice was deeper than usual, startlingly commanding. Enough to shock Genji into a space of neutral confusion.

“Wh--but...” Genji’s breath was still short.

“...you can’t control this,” Zenyatta’s grip on his shoulders loosened, “It is not your fault you can’t control this. It does not make you a bad person that you can’t control this. It is an event happening 7,430 kilometers away, and you can’t control it. It doesn’t mean that it is irrational that it is affecting you deeply. It doesn’t mean that it is nonsensical that it is hurting you deeply. But the only thing you can control, right now, is your own reaction. Can you even breathe right now, Genji?” 

“I--I--”

“Start with that. Start with breathing.”

The respirators of Genji’s cybernetics were audible as he drew in a breath.

“Again,” said Zenyatta.

Genji drew in another breath, held it for the same amount of time as it took to draw it in, exhaled with that same slowness. Drew in another, held it, exhaled. 

“You are here. You are in Kolkata. There is cement beneath your feet. There are green and growing things springing up from the cracks in the cement--” Zenyatta’s voice was short, but not unkind.

“But Zurich--” Genji started.

“You are not there. You are here. And you are breathing.”

Genji consciously drew in another breath. “But I have to--”

“We are still learning what is happening over there,” said Zenyatta, “How long do you think it will take you to get there?”

“I--I don’t know...”

Zenyatta paused, calculations running through that Omnic mind. “The fastest flying vehicle available would get you there in four hours, but you do not have the resources for that. Commercially... it would take at least 8 hours. What do you think the situation will look like in 8 hours? 6, even?”

Genji wasn’t really sure what to say to that. The consciousness of his own breath seemed to slow things down though.

“You don’t know that either,” said Zenyatta, answering the question for him, “...we’re going to get away from the crowds and find somewhere to sit down.”

“I can’t do nothing...” Genji said quietly, as Zenyatta was already leading him away.

“I know. It is a very admirable trait,” said Zenyatta, “But you are doing this.”

“Which is nothing!”

“It’s not nothing. Right now, there are only two people you can help--”

“Two--?”

“You can help yourself, or you can help me,” said Zenyatta.

“Help you??”

“Help me help you.”

Genji was quiet for a few seconds but it was more of an incredulous processing of Zenyatta’s words than anything.

“I think we should walk,” said Zenyatta, “Will you walk with me?”

Genji just dumbly nodded and let Zenyatta lead him away. They walked several city blocks in relative slience, Genji trying to return to his breath. 

“This world... it can be full of... unbearable cruelties. All we know can be wrenched out from underneath us in only a few moments,” Zenyatta spoke as they walked, “I cannot pretend to know how to fix it. I suppose... that is why I left the Shambali. I cannot stand to be around those who will happily claim they can fix your problems when they don’t actually know that it will. I... am utterly petrified of disappointing people... all the time. So I disappointed the people who meant more to me than anything, and now I am here with you. Hope is one of the most painful and terrifying things you can let into your life. It is all I can do to try and instill hope in other people as a resilient and living thing. You call me master when I am constantly questioning whether I am worthy of such an address.”

“Are... are you all right?” Genji’s voice was quiet.

“No,” said Zenyatta, plainly, “And neither are you.”

A long silence passed between them as they kept walking. The world seemed too upended to call the motion comforting, yet at the same time, staying still would have made things feel like they were curling and collapsing all around them. Movement as grounding seemed like an oxymoron, and yet that was the space Genji and Zenyatta found themselves in. They were in a more residential area now, cigarette, weed, and hashish smoke sinking down on them from the balconies above.

“When you were watching that newscast, you kept saying things like, ‘I left her.’ Back when we were in the Banu Tufayl tribe’s encampment, you said there was someone who made you believe in your work... someone who you clung to like a ship’s mast in a storm,” Zenyatta said after a while, “Is she in Zurich?”

“Yes,” the word came out of Genji more choked than he intended, his words felt tight, “I can’t leave her--she saved me, so I have to--I have to...” Genji pressed his fingers to his forehead plate.

Zenyatta tented his fingers thoughtfully. “It has been said, one of our greatest means of dealing with grief, is confronting the reality that we may lose the ones we love. Confronting the eventuality of that loss.”

“I can’t do it now--” Genji said , his voice tight, “I can’t-- I didn’t even say goodbye to her... I wasn’t sure if I could say goodbye---”

“...still reeling from the Zurich attacks---” a crackly voice sounded overhead and Genji stopped in his tracks, his head jutting upward. 

“Genji?” said Zenyatta.

“You there! With the radio!” Genji shouted at one of the apartment balconies overhead. A portly middle-aged man with a receding hairline leaned out over the balcony.

“Can you turn it up?” Genji called.

The man shrugged and disappeared back behind the balcony.

“Genji,” Zenyatta spoke gently, “I’m not sure if harassing random people can really--”

The crackle of the radio audibly got louder.

“--Angela Ziegler is unconscious but stable at Zurich hospital--” the radio sounded. 

A shuddering breath of relief fell out of Genji. “She’s... she’s alive,” he said, looking at Zenyatta. 

Zenyatta gave a nod and a noise that was midway between laugh and sob fell out of Genji.

“As I said,” said Zenyatta, “There is much we can’t control but--” 

Zenyatta was cut off as Genji suddenly caught him in a tight hug, his cybernetically armored shoulders shuddering with those not-laugh, not-sob sounds. “She’s alive... she’s alive,” he kept saying.

Zenyatta patted his shoulder with some unsureness, “And so are you.”

[league-of-thots]

Cloudy Days and Summer Smiles - A BNHArem collab

Pairing: Aizawa x reader

Warnings: none (sfw), hurt and comfort, brief talking about abduction

Word Count: 4.6k

AN: I haven’t been able to do a collab in a while, but I was super excited to grab Aizawa for this one. If you want to see the other amazing works for the collab, click HERE. also a special thanks to @ikinabi​ for helping my dumbass with a banner, i love it so much red thank you <3. i hope you all enjoy this one

          Date nights weren’t really a part of Shouta’s and your relationship. With him constantly working his ass off, and you also having to work, there wasn’t a lot of time that the two of you could spend going out together. Not that you minded of course, snuggling up to your boyfriend and simply talking with him whenever the two of you had free time was probably your favourite thing in the world.

       You’d noticed though, that despite there being a summer break in school, that the pressure on Shouta to perform more in hero work had kept his stress levels and exertion really high. It hurt you to see your boyfriend constantly exhausted, yet he wouldn’t drop any of the extra hero shifts he’d been given recently.

       You knew why of course. You knew that he always wrapped up his self worth in his hero work and in passing on knowledge to students. Of course, that also made it more painful to see him work himself so hard, you know just how amazing he is, and yet he works himself to the bone trying to be better. So, you do your best to try to make things easier for him, going over to his apartment to tidy up sometimes, or making dinner there and leaving it on the stove for him to eat when he got home.

       You swear that one day you’re going to find where he hid his stupid stash of fruit pouches, that he swears are nutritional enough to be a meal. No matter how much you wheedle him, or show him facts, or just be plainly worried for him, he has an irrational attachment to them. He needed good food, and he needed a lot of it, because he worked a hell of a lot. Now if only you could get that through his head.

       So, it’s become another habit of yours to always bring over some healthy snacks, high in protein and salts to help him recover from tough work days and power through the next ones. You keep notice of things he likes or doesn’t like, and be sure to try and put some stashes of them in his cupboard so that he can see them before he goes to work. It’s made it a little better.

       He’s started doing a similar set of things for you, bringing you coffees if he was in the area where you worked. Another favourite were the fruit smoothies he’d make when you were feeling a bit down. Although he wants to be there for you more, you understand that he’s always stretched thin across two jobs, and you always make sure that he knows how much you love him despite that.

       You know that Shouta feels particularly upset when he has to cancel some of the few date nights the two of you have planned due to work. Of course, you don’t blame him, it’s a part of the man you fell in love with. You know you feel disappointed when it happens, but you always try to reassure him that it’s not because of him, its just the fact that you don’t get to see him. You hope it relieves some of the guilt he feels, because really, you’re proud of all his hard work, and love how steadfast he is all the time.

       Though you wish he really would take better care of himself.

       It was going to be a good weekend though, you were excited to spend it all with Shouta, who’d taken a weekend off for once. As soon as he’d gotten it confirmed, you’d started planning some little things the two of you could do together after not having seen each other for a few weeks. It had been tough, yes, but you’d made sure to call him every day or every other day two, and you’d made sure that you’d also dropped off some treats, putting them on his table so he’d actually notice them.

       He’d always send you the cutest cat videos to you, making sure to send a cute little message, his own way of telling you thanks. It makes you feel warm inside, the little gestures bringing you happiness that would brighten your day a bit.

       Anyways, to what you’d been planning. You knew that even on date nights that actually happened, Shouta always preferred lowkey events, something where the two of you could spend quality time with one another and just talk. You’d decided that you’d do your best to make a sweet little lunch for the two of you, and maybe even a dessert too. You’d looked up the weather and it was supposed to be sunny and partially cloudy, the perfect day for a picnic in the public gardens.

       You put on some nice clothes you always had for the hot summer air, and start packing up a basket you’d bought a while ago and never actually had the chance to use. You were practically giddy with excitement. The last six times you’d tried to see him, he’d had to cancel, and no matter how much you tried to push down the feeling of being unimportant, it stuck around.

       It wasn’t about you after all, it was about Shouta and the people he was helping. You can’t be so selfish about his time; you knew what his schedule was like before the two of you even started dating.

       Yet you couldn’t quiet that little voice in your head that said you were never going to be the most important thing in his life. That he’d give you up for the chance to do more to help as many people as he could.

       It burned shamefully within you, how could you distrust him, the one who showed his love for you in al his little gestures and acts of affection? But also, the times he’d snap, brush you off, act like it were a chore to actually be together… those things would keep you tossing and turning for long nights. You know that Shouta would reassure you and help you get over these feelings if you talked to him; you just couldn’t erase the fear that telling him would push him away.

       Which is why you were so excited to see him again, you know that seeing him and talking with him will wipe away those fears, like waves crashing onto a sandy beach. You know you can get over this yourself, there’s no need to drag your boyfriend into stupid insecurities. Especially over ones founded just off of coincidences.

       He has enough to worry about on his own, after all.

       You pack up the salmon sushi and the other little bites of food with the meal, put the pastries in a little tin and add it into your basket. Grabbing a soft blanket, you fold it, place it on top of the blanket and grab the sunhat Shouta had gotten you after you’d pointed it out on a walk you’d been on. Smiling at yourself in the mirror, you grab the basket and head out to go meet him.

        The gardens aren’t too far away from your house, and you enjoy a lazy walk, the sun warming you up. Near the gardens is a family park, and you hear children giggling and screaming in joy as they play with their parents. It softens your heart, and you feel you shoulders relax, not noticing them being tensed in the first place. Part of you imagines being one of those families with Shouta one day…

       You find a small hill within the gardens, the grass rather long and waving in the breeze, hundreds of flowers with multiple types surrounding you. Setting out the blanket, and the food, you take a picture of the area. You send it to your boyfriend, and you know that he’ll recognize the place you are from your many walks together. So, you lie out, relaxing your arms behind your head and gazing up at the sky, where clouds are slowly covering the baby blue with grey.

       Time passes, and you’re getting a little bit antsy. You’ve checked your phone, and you have no messages from Shouta, and it’s already been half an hour since the two of you were supposed to meet up. It wasn’t like him to not mention if he couldn’t make it. He always gave you a heads up in case something else had popped up. You sent him a quick text asking if he was alright, and if his plans were still the same.

       You got no response, and as you neared an hour of waiting you gave into the hunger in your stomach and ate the lunch you’d packed. You still saved the dessert though, the thought of eating any sweets poisoned by the sickening feeling that was settling within your stomach.

       You were worried, and called Shouta just to check in on him, but were greeted with a dial tone message. “Hey, Sho.” You start off a little quiet and you clear your throat. “I just wanted to check in on you, I haven’t heard from you all day, love. Just… let me know if you’re alright please. Love you.” You quickly hang up so he doesn’t hear your heavy sigh.

       What if he just didn’t want to deal with you anymore? You know it’s illogical and yet… its too coincidental a timing for your brain to let it go. Plus, he’d never skipped out on a meet up between the two of you without saying anything, and it was throwing your world off balance. You feel a wetness on your face, and you look up to see that clouds had completely covered the sky, and rain had started falling down from them.

       You laughed a little at the sight. Truly, this date was not supposed to happen, even the weather was showing you that. You leave one of the little plates of sushi out on the rock, not being able to bear taking it home on your own. You gather the now soaked blanket and the basket still full of treats you’d spent hours making.

       The cold rain patters down your back and you shiver as you begin your movements back in the direction of your home.

        You figure you’ll hear from Shouta soon. He might have completely neglected you on that day, but it was the first time anything like this had ever happened between the two of you. Maybe he’d just had a bad day, made a mistake. Maybe he’d forgotten to charge his phone, which had happened before. A few times you had answered your phone expecting to hear the loud voice of Hizashi, but receiving the soothing voice of your boyfriend.

       So you’re not very worried when the rest of the afternoon goes by and Shouta hasn’t made any contact with you. You text Hizashi to see if maybe Shouta had been with him, but no luck on that front. Hizashi had the week off from hero work, and hadn’t heard from Shouta today either.

       As more time went along, the more worried you got. All your insecurities started to bubble up, and all the mistakes you’d made in your relationship – even the small ones like forgetting he was lactose intolerant – started building up in your head. You’d probably driven him away with your constant affection, or maybe it had been the overbearing way you tried to help him. Maybe you weren’t pretty enough or good enough in bed for him, or maybe he just grew tired of you.

       By the time you usually went to bed, you were an anxious mess. There were so many possibilities, and your anxiety was telling you that none of them were good. Surely somewhere you’d fucked up.

       Knowing you have work tomorrow, you pop one of your sleeping aids and try desperately to get some semblance of rest. You know it’s going to be a rough night, but hopefully you can get enough rest that tomorrow will be bearable to you.

        Three days later, and Shouta still hadn’t reached out to you. You felt heartbroken that he hadn’t yet, and felt unfairly abandoned. Neither of his friends had heard from him either, and you doubt that they were covering up from him either, because you’d heard the worried undertones of their voice. It terrified you to think that the closest people in his life had no idea where he was or what he was doing.

       Unbidden images of your boyfriend bloody and broken in torn down places were constantly popping up into your brain. At this point, you just wanted to know if he was alive, because you’d gone to his apartment and there had been no sign of anyone having been there for a few days at least.

       You tried to keep your mind away from that dark place, and yet it would keep circling back, as if to say that the worst-case scenario was happening right at that very moment.

       It was driving you mad with worry, and you called the agency that Shouta was working for at the moment just in case they could tell you. Most of the time, you wouldn’t be allowed to know anything confidential. Even though you were the emergency contact for Shouta, you were still a civilian, and that meant that you were often left in the dark about certain conditions and events that your lover was a part of.

       “Hello, this is Sleep-stroke Agency, how may I direct your call.” The woman’s voice on the other side of the line was smooth and had a soft tone. It soothed your nerves enough to allow you to pull yourself together to find the words you needed.

       “Hi, um- this is Ms. Y/L/N. I’m the emergency contact for Aizawa Shouta, Eraserhead. He works for this agency at the moment.” You take another slow breath and let it out. “I’m calling because its been a few days since me, or his close hero friends had heard from him, and I was wondering if something had happened to him…” you taper off and you wait for the reply.

       You hear some quick typing in the background, a little mumbling that you can’t make out until she stops and clears her voice with a rather pointed cough. “Ah, I’m really sorry, but I cannot tell you, dear. That’s classified information.”

       “Can you at least tell me if he’s alive?” you plead with her, desperate. You should’ve known right away that something really major must’ve happened, how could you have ever doubted your Shouta?

       “The rules are clear, Ms. There was an unexpected circumstance that arose and needed Eraserhead’s presence. I cannot tell you any more detail than that.” Her voice drops the professional tone for a few seconds. “I know how hard this can be, hun. Please try to hold yourself together until you get some concrete news.”

       “Yes, of course. Thank you for your time.” You hang up and feel the energy drain from your body as you slump onto the couch.

       Guilt and worry and fear were all mixing into this toxic combination as you sat with all your thoughts, and you soaked in them, unable to gather the strength to pull yourself out. If something had happened to him, something serious, when you were worried about how good the desserts would taste, or if he were going to break up with you… Well, you wouldn’t be able to forgive yourself for a long time.

       In a daze you blindly call one of your friends, blearily noticing it’s the middle of the afternoon and she should be able to take your call. You needed some words of comfort right now, no matter who they’re from. You barely hear the hello she greets you with before you start sobbing into the phone uncontrollably.

        It’s been two weeks now, although you can’t tell from feeling it. It seems like no time has passed since you’d made that phone call to Shouta’s agency, your life had become a daze. Somehow you managed to go to work and make three meals a day for yourself, but you couldn’t really recall what you’d been doing. If someone were to ask you what you’d been doing, all you’d be able to reply with is nothing, because all you could do at home was blearily look at the walls, ceiling, window… Without any clear news, you were shrouded in this cloud of uncertainty, completely helpless on deciding what you should actually do in response to this nightmare.

       It was approaching your third anniversary, and you weren’t even sure if he was alive to celebrate it. That thought sobered you up, and you shakily made yourself some tea, to warm your hands which felt frozen at in your terror. You need something to ground you, something that will make everything feel real again, so you begin your breathing techniques. You listen to asmr, something that would often calm you.

       Eventually, with you working at it, you manage to calm yourself, despite the odds stacked against you. Needing a distraction, you turn on the TV as you curl up in a blanket near the fireplace on the side of your living room. Sleep had become your enemy during the few weeks, although you wanted nothing but the sweet embrace of numbness it would give you.

        You couldn’t sleep yet again, so you’d migrated to the couch to read a little bit and look over some of the news. Apparently, rompers were making a comeback, though you weren’t too surprised about that.

       It was all in the name of distraction anyways. The TV had gotten stale, and you felt yourself dripping into that scattered and anxious headspace, so you had to change it up, keep everything else at bay until you had an idea of what to do.

It’s one in the morning when you hear the weak knock at the door, and instantly, you’re on high alert, your nerves tingling. You quickly make your way up to it and use the peephole to catch a glimpse of whoever would be knocking on your door this late. You nearly burst into tears right then and there upon seeing your boyfriend’s face, bruised and scratched, but whole.

       You fumble with the locks in your haste to open it up, the desire to hold him, to make sure he was really there making your movements feel alien. “Shouta!” you cry as you finally fling it open, and you can see his eyes soften as he looks down at you.

       “Hi there, kitten. Can I come in?” his voice is hoarse and a little bit shaky, but his words are clear as a summer sky. You immediately throw your arms around him, squeezing him tight against you, and his head comes down onto your shoulder as he wraps his own around you as well.

       “Of course,” you say thickly, through new tears that threaten to spill from your eyes. “There’s always room in here for you, Sho.” You lead him into your living area, making him lie down on the couch while you sit on the floor by his head. You run your fingers through his hair, gently combing out the larger knots as you lay your head down onto his chest. His heart is thumping in a steady rhythm, and you start to relax as you realize that, no, this isn’t a dream. This is real, your boyfriend is alive and ok, though a little bit worse for wear.

       The two of you sit in silence for a little bit, his eyes closing and his breathing relaxing as he leans into the hand tangled in his hair. It brings a soft smile to your face, and you file away the memory to be able to look back on.

       “Shouta, I’m going to get you some tea if you’d like it.” You say softly, almost afraid to disturb the little bit of peace the two of you have made on your couch at 1 in the morning. His eyes open lazily and he nods his assent, and you go to get his favourite blend you have sitting in the top shelf with your other types.

       Once the kettles done its work, you bring two cups over to coffee table. Shouta has already sat up and accepts the tea with a small smile as you move to sit beside him. The two of you drink in silence for a little while, not afraid to disturb anything, but simply to preserve the moment before talks need to happen.

       As the two of you finish, he clears his throat. “I’m sorry for missing our picnic, love.” He says, rather gruffly, as if to hide the thick emotion knotting his words. “I- well I wasn’t expecting to have to go to another city.”

       “Why did you, they said it was some classified mission, even Hizashi and Nemuri had no idea. They were scared, and honestly… that was terrifying.” You tell him the truth, because that’s how the two of you are, valuing clarity in your relationship.

       He fiddles a little with the scarf that’s always present around his shoulders. “The whole thing was a setup. I got on the train early that morning and was knocked unconscious.” He starts in a monotone voice, factually, as if he were still processing it himself. “I didn’t even know how much time had passed until I’d woken up in the hospital two days ago. I was unconscious for most of my stay there, and they didn’t give me access to anything or anyone until they were sure I was clear.”

       “Oh my god…” Your eyes had widened as you looked at him with horror, it sounded so much worse than he was saying. You pulled him close to you. He was trembling just barely beneath your grasp, a sign of just how intense the past couple of weeks had been for him. You try your best to be a rock for him, comforting him and listening to him talk about what he could. He didn’t go into graphic detail, but just the bare bones had you fighting back anger and sadness. He shouldn’t have had to go through that.

       You help him get ready for sleep, bringing him some extra clothes and taking out the spare toothbrush you had for him. He thanks you with a swift kiss to your forehead, and you giggle before going back to the other room to clean up the dishes. You made the decision there, that you wouldn’t bring up your insecurities to him until he was back into the groove of daily life, and had time to recover.

       After cleaning yourself up, you drag Shouta to bed, and the two of you fall asleep wrapped in each others arms.

        About a month had passed since that night where Shouta had come to your doorstep early in the morning and wrecked. Since then things had begun their return to normalcy, something which both relieved you and at the same time made you a little nervous. You weren’t sure how to ever broach the topic you wanted to with him.

       Which was illogical, as he would say. You know he takes you seriously, and that he’d want to put your fears at rest. But, part of you feels so guilty for even thinking of doubting him, and you don’t want to hurt him like that. You trust him more than anyone, you just had a lack of faith in yourself that was hard to ignore sometimes.

       The opportunity came when he suggested the two of you tried to do the picnic once again, much to your delight. He’d asked softly if you would make the same meal again, he said it had looked delicious and he wanted to try it. You could only smile and agree, knowing how much he hated cooking himself, but loved yours heartily.

       You’d done much the same thing as last time, though now, with a little trepidation just due to the fact that last time you’d tried this, Shouta had gotten kidnapped. But there was nothing else to do other than to shake yourself out of it and move forwards. So that’s what you did.

       You made your way to the same area, heart pattering as you found the spot empty. He wasn’t there yet, that much was clear, but that was normal, he wasn’t a tardy man, but he also didn’t see the use of going to things earlier than he had planned.

       Ten, fifteen, thirty minutes go buy, and with each passing minute, you feel your heart grow heavier. Why did such shitty things happen to you on what were supposed to be events filled with happiness? There are still no clouds in the sky though, and you look up and stare into the never ending blue. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be, and you’d just have to live with that.

       You don’t remember closing your eyes, but you do remember the soft laugh of your boyfriend waking you up. You open your eyes blearily to the beautiful sight of your boyfriend smiling happily and it brings a sleepy smile to your face.

       “Shouta! You came.” You exclaim happily. He looks a bit confused at that.

       “Of course I did, Y/N, why wouldn’t I?” Curse your still half-asleep brain. You didn’t want to bring it up like this.

       “It’s nothing,” you try to brush it off, knowing it likely won’t work.

       “Obviously not. Tell me what’s wrong.”

       “It’s really stupid looking back on it…”

       “I don’t care about that kitten, just be honest with me.”

       “It’s not a slight on you at all though, okay? Keep that in mind please, Shouta.”

       He looks confused for a second. “Of course.”

       You take a deep breath. “It’s just that, it was really hard to see you for a few weeks before you had your unplanned trip.” He nods his agreement. “I knew it wasn’t the case, but I got worried that maybe I wasn’t interesting enough, or I was holding you back from things. Then you didn’t show for our date and I panicked a bit, thought you might’ve found a way to just move on from me. I know you’re the most amazing thing that’s happened to me in my life, and I’m just terrified of losing that.” You can’t look in his eyes the shame pulling your gaze down.

       “Hey,” he says softly, pulling your head up gently, until you’re forced to look into his eyes. “I’m not going to fault you for having insecurities. Everyone has them.”

       “I know, Sho, but you’ve been nothing short of amazing to me, and here I am doubting you.”

       “Well, I don’t blame you. Sometimes it’s easy to get lost in thoughts and start to spiral into overthinking. But here’s the truth. I am in love with you. You make my days better, and give me something to look forwards to on long days and nights.” You smile up at him, eyes a little misty.

       “Good thing I feel the same way then, huh?” you giggle, trying to pull a laugh out of him. You get a small smirk instead, which satisfies you.

       He leans into you and presses a soft kiss on your lips, light and fully of love. When you chase after him, he pulls away a bit laughing, so you tackle him to the ground and start to pepper his face with kisses.

       The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and its there you realize just how much you love him as he stares up at you like you’re the sun in the sky.