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4unnyr0se · 8 months ago

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PLS BOKUTO SMUT I WILL SELL YOU MY SOUL VIV 🙏🙏🙏

❥ nepenthe | kotaro bokuto

warnings: timeskip! bokuto, fem! reader, mutual pining, bokuto is emo in the beginning, dry humping/grinding, multiple orgasms, making out, incredibly lewd dialogue, fingering, missionary, two text messages, unprotected sex, tiny corruption kink, possessive! bokuto if u squint, extreme fluff at the end, bokuto is a semi-hard dom in bed, atsumu, hinata and sakusa mentioned, not proofread (unless u count grammarly)

MDNI | 18+ content

word count -> 5.3k (lol)

opal i would write anything for u i love u sm

got a request? asks are open!

Being on the MSBY Black Jackals was all the Bokuto could ever dream of. Playing on a team made up of his peers, the adoring cheers from the crowd filled his ears and boosted his ego. He especially loved how cute the girls in the stands were and how they wore merchandized versions of his jersey. People paid good money to watch him play, him. Was there nothing better than the universe could offer him? Indeed, Kotaro Bokuto’s life was perfectly perfect.

Except until recently. He had missed a significant spike in the latest game against the Alders, which nearly cost him the match. He was not okay. But that was just a first-time thing, right? Indeed, he would not miss a spike in tomorrow’s practice. He’s Bokuto; he doesn’t miss spikes. And then he missed nearly all of his spikes. He was not doing well when he returned to his penthouse apartment that evening. Was he in a slump?

His golden eyes flicked back and forth on his ceiling as he lay in his plush bed, hands crossed over his chest in thought. Why was he acting like this? He occasionally missed a spike, but that was a rare event. Was he missing them so frequently? What if he wasn’t as good of a volleyball player as he thought? Anxiety plagued his mind, making him toss and turn in his cotton comforter decorated with owls (stylish owls, of course). Bokuto’s black and white hair became incredibly messy, reflecting his inner thoughts. Luckily, he had a means of comforting himself. When the opposite hitter wasn’t doing so well at times like these, he could always turn to you, one of his beloved Black Jackal Managers.

You were the kindest of all the managers he had, that was for sure. While the other seven managers focused on scheduling or payroll, you were the personality hire. Your pretty face automatically boosted the morale of the entire team, like a beam of sunlight poking out from the clouds after a thunderstorm. Bokuto liked you; he really liked you. Every single practice, he would pray that you’d be there, sitting on your chair, diligently taking notes while wearing that MSBY windbreaker that covered the curves of your breasts in the most annoying manner possible. Fuck, you were so damn pretty.

Bokuto reached for his phone, which was charging on the bedside table, scrolling through his messages until he landed on your chat from a couple of weeks ago. The topic was simple: What kind of onigiri did he want from Onigiri Miya? It was just a question, but the notification made his heart race every time he read it. The pads of his thumbs hovered over the keypad for a moment, unsure of how to word his message. He wanted you to visit him. Why couldn’t he just type that? After minutes of contemplation, he had sent his message. Bokuto’s phone was thrown to the other side of the bed, nearly getting lost in the mess of thick duvet. The opposite hitter slammed his face into his fluffed pillow, groaning into the fabric.

Kotaro Bokuto: Wanna come over and talk? Been feeling really down recently. :(

It felt like hours since he sent the text, looking at where he tossed his phone every other minute to see if the home screen lit up. Finally, after agonizingly painful minutes passed, his screen lit up with your message, the cute little heart icon next to your name making him break out in a crooked smile.

Cute Manager: I’ll be over in 30 minutes. Bringing my famous sugar cookies! They always brighten someone’s day <3

Bokuto practically threw himself off his bed, looking around his messy apartment. Shit, had that smell always been there? Why (and how) was there a sock on the ceiling fan? Don’t even get him started on the empty packages that littered his living room floor; this was a disaster. He had to ensure it was perfect for you, his angelic manager. You thought so highly of him; he wasn’t about to lose that due to a messy apartment.

He cleaned like a man gone wild, sensual R&B music playing from a speaker in his kitchen. He had obtained three full trash bags and one spilling-over hamper, but he had made his apartment look presentable. The counters were no longer sticky, and the sock was down from the fan, thanks to him expertly flinging rubber bands at the blades. Bokuto was proud of himself, bearing a satisfied smirk while his hands rested on his hips in a hero pose.

The doorbell rang. Oh fuck, how were you here already? Did half an hour seriously pass by so quickly? He didn’t even have time to change out of his black tank top! Maybe that was a good thing? Perhaps you liked looking at his massive biceps. Whatever, he didn’t have time to think about all that. His cute manager was waiting behind that door with a plate of delicious sugar cookies!

Bokuto swung the door open a little too enthusiastically, his crooked smile fully displayed amongst his handsome features. His golden eyes instantly landed on your figure, drinking in your outfit. A low-cut black scoop neck top with oversized ripped jeans; fucking perfection. You offered him a kind smile and held out the wrapped-up plate of cookies, tilting your head to the side. “Hey, Bokuto! I’m here, like I promised. Oh, and I brought the cookies. Don’t ask for the recipe because I won’t tell!” you giggled, stepping inside his apartment. It was cleaner than you imagined, and it smelled like roses. Who knew that Bokuto could be so neat?

“Woah, it’s even bigger than I imagined! Sometimes I forget how much professional athletes make annually,” you joked, kicking off your ballet flats on the shoe stand. “You must have an amazing view at night, look at the city! It’s gorgeous.” you turned to Bokuto and smiled, placing your hands on his shoulders. “It’s been a while since we last hung out, hasn’t it?”

“Oh, yeah! I guess it has, eh? Time flies when you’re a Black Jackal!” Bokuto awkwardly stammered, growing increasingly flustered as the almond shape of your manicured nails made contact with his muscular shoulders. “Thanks for coming over so quickly; I thought you were at a club or something.”

You shook your head and leaned against the raised kitchen counter, raising an eyebrow. “Nah, I hate clubs. It’s always so stuffy in there, and there’s always a hand on your ass, whether you want it or not.” you brushed your hair to the side, exposing your neck. The perfume you had to carefully put on, a mixture of lilac and jasmine, filled Bokuto’s nostrils. He was only a few feet from your body, yet the aroma drove him secretly insane. “What about you, do you like clubs? You seem like the type.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bokuto asked, pretending to clutch his pearls.

“Well, you’re extroverted and love having a good time. That’s what the clubs are for, aren’t they?” you paused your speech, matching his gaze with your own. “But you haven’t been having a good time recently, have you?”

Bokuto shook his head and slumped onto the sofa, his bottom lip curling into a childish pout. “No, you’re right. I just can’t hit my stupid spikes! Atsumu’s been on my ass about it like it’s my fault that I can’t seem to hit them! I mean, I guess it’s my fault…whatever! I don’t know what I’m saying anymore!” he slammed his face in his hands, groaning in exasperation.

You smiled softly and sat next to him, patting his muscular back. “Hey, it’ll be alright. You’ve hit amazing spikes before, and you’ll hit amazing spikes again. I know you will.” your soft hands ran up and down the thin fabric of his tank top, massaging the tense muscles underneath. “We all have our slumps, you know. Nobody is perfect, not even Atsumu. Besides,” your lips were centimeters away from his ear. “Atsumu is my least favorite.”

Bokuto chuckled and wrapped his arm around your waist, pressing your cheek against his pectoral. “Yeah, but he’s really funny! Except when he texts the group chat with me, Shoyo, and Sakusa…then he gets really gross. Usually about the women he slept with or something.”

“Ew,” you blush softly as Bokuto's muscular bicep wraps around your waist, his large hand squeezing the fabric of your jeans. “So, are you feeling any better now? Do you wanna eat a cookie and watch a movie, maybe? What would make you feel better?” you could feel his heartbreak in his chest, the thumbing sensation of the organ being a somewhat calming presence. “Because when you’re sad, the Jackals can’t really get anything done. No offense.”

Bokuto chuckled and squeezed you closer, inhaling the scent of your shampoo. God, you smelled fucking amazing. Did you always smell so good? “I’m down for a movie if you’re down. What kind of movie were you thinking of?”

“Comedy, maybe? I don’t know, you can pick,” you replied.

“Comedy it is,” Bokuto leaned forward to grab the remote from the coffee table, turning on the massive television he owned. His hand remained firmly grasped on your waist, occasionally running his thumb up and down the denim of your high-waisted jeans. He flicked through a couple of films under the comedy section in his DVR until he selected a random one. He chose it solely on how fantastic the movie poster was, naturally.

The opening credits played from the surround sound speakers, and his hand was still snug on your waist, his golden eyes occasionally stealing a chaste look. You were smaller than him, so he really only got to see the top of your head, but you were so fucking adorable. Bokuto thought it was vital that you didn’t push him away after he wrapped his arm around you and that you welcomed his touch. You trusted him so much, making his heart beat a million miles a minute.

The movie's beginning was hilarious, as expected from an award-winning comedy. Bokuto’s laugh was deep in comparison to yours. Of course, your laugh was adorable; why wouldn’t it be? He felt as though his heart would explode from your presence, beating erratically in his chest.

“Are you feeling okay? Your heart is beating really fast,” you questioned, lifting your face from its comfortable resting spot on his chest. “Do you need anything at all?”

Bokuto bit down on his lower lip, unsure of what to say. Should he just confess how much he wants you, how much he craves to have your lips on his own? What if you rejected his advances and quit managing the team? “Uh, it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it, sweetheart.” Sweetheart, did he really just say that? Bokuto cringed at himself.

A small smile graced your delicate features at the endearing name, your tiny hand resting on his chest. “Bokuto, I’m always going to worry about my team. Especially you, you’re my favorite. Did you know that?”

His mind went blank for a second. He was your favorite. He was your favorite. Out of all the members of the Black Jackals, you liked him the most. “I-I didn’t know that at all, am I actually your favorite? You aren’t messing with me or anything?”

“Why would I lie about that?” you asked, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s just…you’re beautiful. And I’m your favorite…it makes me feel special. I know I’m already special, just like, more special. Y’know?”

“You think I’m beautiful?” your eyes bore into his once more, the chatter from the movie falling on deaf ears. “You really think I’m beautiful?”

Bokuto softly smiled at you, adoring how the light from the television illuminated your blushing face. “Yeah, I really think so. I’ve thought that for a while since you were hired.” his other hand cupped the right side of your face, his calloused thumb running across your cheekbone. “Do you…do you think I’m pretty, too?”

You giggled and rested your hand on Bokuto’s, smiling brightly. “Yeah, I think you’re beautiful, Bokuto. And handsome and adorable.” you leaned upwards, your noses touching. “You’re funny, kind, and sometimes a little too confident. You’re sensitive, and you care so much about your teammates. Anyone would be lucky to have you.”

“I want you to have me,” he whispered, his voice a low baritone. “Please, I’ve wanted this for so long. Tell me that I can have you, even if it’s just for tonight.” his lips hovered over yours, not daring to do anything without your permission. “Because if you say it’s okay, I don’t think I’ll be able to hold myself back, sweetness.”

His hot breath tickled the tiny hairs on your face, mouth slightly agape. You gulped and nodded, closing your eyes while his hands cupped your cheeks. “It’s okay, Kotaro.”

The sound of his given name falling from your lips was all he needed to press his mouth to yours in a searing kiss filled with unfulfilled desires. It was slow and sensual, yet it held so much molten passion. His lips molded with yours so perfectly, the taste of your chapstick making him savor you even more. His hands fled your face and grasped onto your hips, pulling you into his lap with no trouble at all. Bokuto pressed your chest against his own, groaning against your petal-like lips. A spark was set in his lower belly, his hands trailing down to your ass. He squeezed the denim fabric, eliciting an adorable squeak from your mouth.

You pulled away after a moment, both of your faces incredibly flushed. “Shit,” Bokuto breathed out, toying with the hem of your jeans. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that, sweetness.”

“Me too,” you whispered, kissing his neck gently. “I’ve been wanting to do this,” you placed another kiss, then another, and another. “For so fucking long.” you nibbled onto his collarbone playfully, earning yourself a beautiful moan from Bokuto’s bruised lips.

“Fuck, I never pegged you for a biter. Thought I would always be the one biting you,” he purred, slipping his hands underneath your jeans and panties. You gasped at the coldness of his hands on your warm skin, how his fingers kneaded the supple flesh of your ass. “But I guess I can let you nibble on me for a little longer since you’re so damn pretty.”

“When did you get so good at flirting, hm?” you began to suckle on his collarbone.

“The moment I got signed to the Black Jackals. They’re, fuck, they’re a bunch of womanizers.” he softly moaned at the sensation of your teeth suckling at his tough flesh. “Taught me a thing or two.”

You pulled away from his neck and smiled, kissing his forehead. “So I take it you picked up a thing or two?”

“Damn right, I have,” his hands squeezed your ass once more. “Can you do me a favor and take these off, sweetness? I’ll take mine off, too. That way, we’re even.”

You got off his lap and shimmied out of your jeans, tossing them aside along with your top. You wore a matching bra and panty set, the black fabric hugging your curves tenderly. “Now, you do yours. Don’t keep me waiting, Ko’.”

His nickname rang in his ears, your voice making it drip like honey. Bokutp practically ripped off his clothes, leaving him in only his MSBY boxers. “Shit, you’re gorgeous.” he leaned into the leather couch, spreading his legs. “C’mere gorgeous, sit on my lap.”

Bokuto’s hands once again cupped your ass as you straddled his lap, admiring how thick his thighs were. You had never noticed it before, but Bokuto was a big guy. “That’s it, good girl. Right on my thigh there, pretty.”

“Fuck,” you moaned as your clothed pussy made contact with his bare thigh, unconsciously rubbing against it. “You’re really fucking sexy.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Bokuto pulled you into another kiss, aggressively slamming his lips against yours while his hands remained glued to your ass. His tongue prodded against your lips impatiently, begging to be let inside your mouth. You happily obliged, a mewl falling from your lips as his tongue briefly danced with yours. Bokuto pulled away, breaking the strand of saliva that connected your lips. “Your voice is too damn pretty,” his hand cracked against your ass, causing you to grind further onto his thigh. Embarrassed, you hid your face in his bruised neck, earning a smug smirk from Bokuto. “Oh, did that feel good, baby? Don’t be shy now; you can tell me.” he smacked your ass once more, relishing in your pleasurable squeaks and squeals. “Does someone like it when I smack their ass?”

“Y-yeah!” you whimpered into his neck, wrapping your arms around his shoulders. Your hips bucked against his thigh, your core desperate for friction. “Please, lemme ride your thigh. You feel so fucking good, Ko’.”

Bokuto threw his head back at your begging, his cock growing painfully hard in his boxers. “Yeah, you wanna grind on my thigh, pretty girl?” he squeezed the plushness of your thigh. “I’m the only one who can make you feel this way, right? Because I’m the best. Say it, and you can do whatever you want.”

You let out a broken sigh and pulled your face out from his neck, your pearly whites nibbling at the shell of his ear. “You’re the only one who can make me feel this good, Kotaro.” Your breath was sweet and sensual, and you were full of wanting for your release. “Please, I wanna ride your thigh.”

“Good girl,” he praised, gripping onto your hips. He began to drag you up and down his thigh, embracing the cute little noises you made. “That’s it, baby, talk to me. Tell me how good I make you feel, yeah?”

“So good! So good, Ko’.” you whimpered, a warmth sensation bubbling up inside your belly as your clothed clit rubbed against his thigh. Your small hands rested on his abs, running up and down the prevalent muscle. “T-talk to me, helps me get off–fuck!” you tossed your head back, hair falling out of your face as Bokuto purposefully flexed his thigh muscle.

He groaned at the sight of you, head thrown back, tits bouncing in your bra as you used his thigh to get yourself off. His goddess of a manager was using him to cum, his thigh. It was so fucking perfect. “You’re so fucking sexy, you know that? You come to practice in those short shorts that show off your ass so well. Do you know what you do to me?”

“Tell me,” you moaned, feeling your climax approach quickly. You were basically rutting yourself against his thigh like a bitch in heat, and it felt fucking incredible.

“Every time you bent over, I thought about this ass,” he smacked the exposed flesh, definitely leaving a handprint later. “Thought about squeezing it, about smacking it, how it would look wearing slutty black panties.” Bokuto flexed his thigh muscles even more, giving you a sturdier surface to grind on.

“Thought about you clawing at my back while I fuck you in the locker room, so the rest of the team can back the fuck off. Keep you all to myself, my pretty manager.” he spat through his teeth, gripping your jaw tightly with his hand. “Look at me when you cum, pretty girl. Wanna see that cute little face.” his thumb ran across your bottom lip, pulling slightly.

Your mouth went slack-jawed as your orgasm washed over you, your eyes struggling to look at Bokuto while you continued to ride his thigh until you came down from nirvana. “F-fuck!” you sobbed, your hips ceasing their bucking once your high was finished. “Shit, I made a mess on your thigh. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t fucking apologize. That was the sexiest thing I’ve ever fucking seen.” Bokuto groaned, lifting you off of his thigh so quickly. “Fuck, you soaked your panties. I guess you gotta take them off now, yeah? Bra, too. Don’t be shy around me.” he set you down on the coffee table, your form blocking the movie, but he didn’t care about the movie anymore. There was only you.

Still shaking from the shockwaves of your release, you slowly stripped yourself of your remaining clothes, placing them down on the glass of the table. Bokuto drank in your view, like an artist staring at a finished painting. You were gorgeous, ethereal, out of this world. Surely, it would be impossible for anyone else to match your beauty. “Fucking hell,” he groaned, pushing himself off of the couch to grab your wrist. “Bedroom. Now.”

He practically dragged you into his bedroom, throwing you down onto the plush owl-themed comforter. You giggled at the childish fabric as Bokuto hovered above you, his hands on either side of your head. “I take it you love owls?” you raised an eyebrow.

“I fucking love owls,” he smirked, leaning down to peck your nose. “Not as much as I love how you look right now, pretty girl.” his right hand squeezed your breast, thumb rolling over your nipple while his left hand managed to continue holding him up.

“You’re such a tease,” you moaned as he pinched your sensitive bud, his massive hand encasing your entire breast. “I thought you wanted to fuck me, Kotaro. Am I wrong?”

“You aren’t wrong, sweetness,” he purred, rolling his hips against yours. You could feel his cock pulsating through his boxers, begging to be inside you. “Just wanna make sure you’re prepped first. I’m a big guy, y’know?” he stuck his fingers inside of his mouth, coating them with saliva before prodding at your entrance with the digits, slowly sticking them inside your heat. “Holy fuck, you’re so fucking wet. Did my thigh make you cum that much, princess?”

You gasped as he curled his fingers deep inside of you, his ministrations slow and sensual. “Fuck! Y-yes, y’made me cum so much! Love your thighs, Ko’!” you squeaked, instinctively squeezing your thighs together.

Bokuto tutted and used his free hand to shove your legs apart, now kneeling above you. “Don’t try to hide it, sweetness. You know I don’t like that.” he was not knuckle-deep inside your weeping cunt, his fingers plunging inside so expertly. “Fuck, gotta make sure you’re nice and loose for me, yeah? Don’t wanna hurt you.”

“S-shit! You’re gonna make me cum again!” you whimpered, grasping onto your breasts for additional stimulation. “God, how do your fingers feel so fucking good?”

“Can’t answer that for you, sweetheart. You wanna cum again, pretty girl? Want me to rub your clit and make a mess all over my hand?” he teased, beginning to massage your sensitive clit with the pad of this thumb. His fingers were still scissoring you open, coating you with the mixture of his saliva and your release.

“Yes, fuck! Please, Ko’!” you whined, the familiar bubbling sensation in your belly threatening to spill over. Your legs were now dangling over his shoulder, quaking in ecstasy. “Wanna cum, fucking make me cum!”

“That’s what I like to hear,” he offered you a mischievous smirk, furiously rubbing his thumb over your clit as you tumbled into pure pleasure once more. Your mouth became agape; your head tossed into the plush pillow behind you. His fingers ceased their movement, sliding out of your cunt covered in your slick. “Shit,” Bokuto mumbled, bringing his fingers to his mouth. “Fucking delicious.”

He gave you another kiss, leaving some of your release on your lips. His boxers were peeled off and thrown onto the nightstand as he fumbled through one of the drawers, cursing at himself. “God dammnit, I know I have one. Where the fuck is it?”

“Looking for a condom?” you asked, the breath still being knocked out of your lungs.

“Yeah, it’s being a pain in the ass to find, though.”

“I’m on the pill.” you plainly state, smiling at him. “You don’t have to use a condom. It’ll be okay with me.”

Bokuto stopped rummaging through the drawer, turning over to look at you with a look that could only be a mixture of lust and absolute delight. “Are you sure? I-I mean, I’m happy to hit it raw; I just don’t wanna pressure you or anything.”

You nodded your head and pulled him close to you by his shoulder, pecking his nose sweetly. “I promise, Kotaro. You don’t have to use a condom when you’re with me.”

“God, that’s music to my fucking ears, baby,” his voice rumbled, his hands resting on the bottoms of your thighs. You were propped up by your elbows and Bokuto’s variety of pillows, his cock painfully hard against his abdomen. “Can’t wait to ruin this fucking pussy.”

You tilted your head to the side in confidence, winking. “Then what are you waiting for?” you spread your legs, exposing your glistening heat to him once more. “Ruin me, Kotaro.”

Bokuto bit down on his lower lip and growled, aligning his cock with your cunt. “You have no idea what you’re in for, pretty girl.” the mushroom head pushed past your folds, the newfound sensation causing the both of you to moan softly. “Shit, you’re still so tight. That’s okay,” he chuckled, snapping his hips against yours. His cock slammed inside of you, filling you up so quickly. “I’ll fucking make it fit.”

“Holy shit!” you sobbed, your fingers scrambling for purchase in the bedsheets. “Kotaro!”

“That’s it, baby, scream my name while I fuck this pussy stupid.” Bokuto hissed, pounding into you without giving you the chance to catch your breath. You looked so fucking pretty underneath him, especially the way your greedy pussy took him so well. The way your sobbing walls enveloped him entirely it was perfection. “Taking me so well, good fucking girl.”

Your pathetic mewls were like that of a morning songbird, the most beautiful melody. Bokuto hoisted your legs above his shoulders once again, his cock hitting you at a deeper angle. You screamed, the head prodding at your cervix. “Fuck, shit, oh my god! Kotaro, f-fuck!”

His thrusts were animalistic as if he were in heat. They were uncalculated and had no rhythm, only a mission to make you stupid on his cock. His hands gripped onto your ankles while he started at your lewd form, admiring how your small hands encased your breasts in an attempt to create more stimulation. How greedy you were. He thought it was adorable. Everything about you was simply adorable.

“Good fucking girl, that’s my girl,” he groaned as you squeezed around him, pulling him impossibly deep. “Oh, you like it when I call you that? Your pussy is sucking me in, pretty girl.” he teased, smacking the underside of your thigh.

You attempted to speak, but all that fell from your lips was incoherent babbling. Your mind was all fuzzy, full of nothing but thoughts of Bokuto fucking you senseless. You arched your back further into the mattress, your hair forming the messiest halo above you. The sound of his balls slapping against your ass filled the bedroom, the movie in the living room being a thing of the past.

“My pretty girl can’t speak now, but that’s okay,” Bokuto assured you, punctuating his sentences with a harsh slam inside of you. “I’ll just make you cum again, yeah? We’ll cum at the same time, okay, pretty girl? I know you got one more in you. Wanna give it to me? Don’t you think I deserve it? I wanna hear you say that. Say I deserve to make you cum again!”

“Fuck!” you sobbed, your orgasm dangerously close. You didn’t think you could handle one more, his cock bullying its way in and out of your weeping cunt. “Y’deserve to make me cum again, Kotaro! F-fuck, think I’m gonna cum soon!”

“Don’t fucking hold out on me, baby. You know I like it messy!” Bokuto bent forward, his thrusts becoming more erratic and needy as his cock twitched inside of you, begging for release. “Gonna fucking cum in this pussy, make it all fucking mine!”

“Shit!” you sobbed, tears welling up in the corners of your eyes. “Kotaro!” his name fell from your lips like a broken pair as you came for the third and final time that night, completely coating his cock in your glistening slick.

“Holy fuck, yeah, yeah! Fucking hell!” Bokuto roared, shooting ropes of cum deep inside your core, creating a new warm sensation in your belly. His thrusts grew slower and slower, almost as if he was attempting to fuck his cum inside of you. “Dont wanna…stop fucking you…but I’m tired.” he groaned, letting your legs fall back onto your chest. “Shit.”

Bokuto shamelessly collapsed onto you, purposely landing on your breast. He lifted his hips so his cock could slide out of you, almost with the thinnest streams of his release down your bruised thighs. “Mmm, that was so fucking good,” he mumbled against your breast, sucking on your pert nipple for a moment. “You got the best fucking pussy I’ve ever had.”

“You flatter me,” your hands ran through his damp black and white strands, acting as a comb. “You felt so fucking good, Kotaro. I’m glad I could help out. Do you think you’ll feel better at tomorrow's practice?”

Bokuto looked up from your breast and smiled brightly, cupping your flushed face with his hands. “I’m totally gonna kick everyone's ass! Atsumu won’t know what’ll hit him!”

“There’s the Bokuto we know and love!” you chuckle.

“I’m back, baby!” he weakly flexed his muscle, kissing your cheek playfully. “Guess all I needed was my sexy manager. Best damn cure on the planet!”

You rolled your eyes and kissed the top of his head. “You act completely different when you’re inside of me.”

“Is that a bad thing?” he titled his head.

“Absolutely not. I think it’s adorable. You’re adorable.” you kissed his cheek once more. “So, uh, is it possible for us to do this again sometime? I-it was nice.” your eyes landed on the floor, embarrassed for no reason.

Bokuto flashed you his signature crooked smile and laughed, kissing your neck. “What a stupid question. Of course, we can do this again! We basically confessed before I fucked you, remember?”

“Oh yeah, I guess I forgot.” you awkwardly chuckled, leaning into his enthusiastic kisses. “Maybe your dick knocked all the brains out of my skull.”

“But then you won’t have any more left when you watch us practice!” Bokuto whined, snuggling his face into your chest once more. “You gotta have some brain left, okay?”

“Okay, Kotaro,” you mumbled, your eyelids growing heavy. “Hey…it’s pretty late. Would it be okay if I slept here for the night? I understand if you don’t want me to.”

“Hell yeah, you can sleep here!” He cheered softly, running his hand up and down your arm. “That way, you can arrive with me to practice tomorrow. Then I can show off my new girlfriend to the team and make them all super jealous.”

You chuckled. “Oh, am I your girlfriend now?”

“Do…do you wanna be my girlfriend?” his voice was soft and unsure.

“Of course I do, cutie.” you pecked the top of his head, pulling up the owl-themed covers. “Now, get some sleep. You got a lot to do tomorrow, yeah?”

“Mm, okay, baby. I can’t wait to wake up in your arms tomorrow.” he innocently whispered, shutting his eyes as sleep overtook him.

“Goodnight, Kotaro,” you whispered, flicking off the lamp as the two of you fell asleep in a mutual embrace, eager for what tomorrow will bring.

reblogs appreciated ❤

#haikyuu smut #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu #bokuto koutarou #haikyuu bokuto #bokuto smut #bokuto x reader #kotaro bokuto

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starmapz · 3 months ago

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love & company - r. sukuna

❦ biker!ryomen sukuna x biker!f!reader [ongoing series of oneshots & etc]

❝ you're beginning to lose hope of ever fixing your bike as the moon rises over the horizon when a man built like a brick wall and covered in tattoos stops to help you out. he's standoffish and his words are cold - but as it turns out the version of him you see is soft. who knew this man could ever become your best friend, let alone something more? ❞

❦ cw ; mdni, 18+ only. all pieces will have separate warnings. contains explicit sexual themes and content.

❦ taglist ; OPEN. please comment here if you would like to be tagged. age MUST be easily visible on your blog.

❦ a/n ; hiiii loves! i've got so many little pieces revolving around l&c that i figured it made sense to put them all together into a masterlist. these are all pieces that revolve around this same iteration of sukuna but take place at separate moments. i also want to give an absolutely MASSIVE shoutout to @too-many-owls who drew the header above of a scene from the l&c oneshot for my bday this year, it's absolutely gorgeous and she deserves all the love for it <33 check out the full piece here!

main masterlist || ao3

❦ oneshots ; love & company - i recommend starting with this! (tongue) tied - smut oneshot man's best friend - fluff oneshot

❦ drabbles ;

❦ headcanons ; husband!sukuna more husband!sukuna

writing & format © starmapz. art © too-many-owls. dividers © adornedwithlight.

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wishicouldkeepconcentration · 4 months ago

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☆ 𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐅𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐌𝐎𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 – 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐌𝐘 𝐃𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐄𝐗𝐂𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐌𝐄

☆☆☆☆

☆ smelling amortentia for the first time

☆ using magic, making it an everyday habit

☆ the first quidditch practice

☆ getting ready + preparing for the yule ball

☆ trying butterbeer

☆ sitting by the fireplace in the common room

☆ wearing my house’s colours

☆ decorating my dorm

☆ being the sassiest version of myself, finding confidence

☆ taking the hogwarts express for the first time

☆ first dada class, literally gonna be my hyperfixation for days and my friends won't understand

☆ late-night deep talks with my dormmates

☆ seeing seamus blow his cauldron up literally every day

☆ seeing my friends for the first time

☆ enveloping mattheo in the biggest embrace as soon as i get there

☆ being involved in the preparations of the twins’ pranks

☆ no. technology.

☆ mixtapes, vinyl records, cameras and polaroids

☆ living in the same century as freddie mercury and marc bolan??? like hello, why wouldn’t i want that???

☆ seeing bowie live

☆ muggle london and diagon alley tours

☆ trying travelling by the knight bus

☆ visiting the library for the first time

☆ studying in the greenhouses with enzo

☆ sending letters via owls

☆ showing my friends and mattheo muggle music

☆ dragging mattheo along to concerts

☆ meeting my gay uncles <3

☆ mattheo leaving little notes in my pockets

☆ stealing mattheo’s slytherin hoodies and sweaters

☆ arithmancy, and silly prof trelawney in divination

☆ feeling the night breeze in the astronomy tower

☆ getting high with my little group of slytherin friends in the astronomy tower

☆ confusing everyone by how i knew this would happen

☆ victory parties

☆ playing wizard's chess with ron

☆ deep talks with and comforting mattheo

☆ movie nights with a projector and bedsheets hung on the wall

☆ the portraits. def gonna be staring at them the first few days like i’ve gone mad

☆ broom closet rendezvous

☆☆☆☆

#liz shifts #shifters #reality shifting #shifting community #shifting to hogwarts #shiftblr #shifting blog #reality shifting community #shifting #reality shifter #mattheo riddle #desired reality #shifting motivation #hp dr #harry potter dr

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another-goblin · 9 months ago

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A little analysis of Ratio's owl symbolism. He's absolutely covered (and surrounded) with stylized images of owls. Here are just some examples (feel free to study him to find more). He was even (apparently) supposed to wear an owl mask in an older version of his design. But why.

1. In western culture, owls are traditionally associated with knowledge and wisdom, which indicates his connection with Erudition, as a scientist. That's the most obvious explanation for his owl imagery, and probably the only one intended by the designers. But why stop here. Why not overanalyze it.

2. Owls are known as highly specialized and effective predators. So basically, an embodiment of the Hunt.

Dr. Ratio (about the phase flame): Do you know what to do with cornered prey? Hunt it to the death.

Btw, considering that paths are not just a gameplay convention but the actual in-universe things characters recognize in themselves and others, it's even more ironic that the character who dedicated his whole life to science and education belongs to the Hunt. Because gameplay-wise, the Hunt is the opposite of Erudition. The poor guy couldn't have been further away from Nous even if he tried.

3. Owls are good at being unnoticed. They hunt by hiding, observing, and waiting for the right time to strike. It reminds me of that mission at Herta Station, where we first met him. Most people on the station didn't even know that he was there, even though he personally saved these researchers.

Screwllum (about Ratio's involvement in that mission): …and pulling the strings from behind the curtain is akin to laying down the gauntlet to a genius.

There is a theory that more or less the same thing is happening on Penacony, with most characters probably not knowing that he's even there.

4. The special structure of an owl's wings and feathers makes their flight practically noiseless, so they can approach their prey unnoticed. In addition to point 3, with him moving through Herta station unnoticed, it also reminds me of how he silently disappeared a couple of times in the middle of his conversation with Aventurine.

5. They gave him vertical pupils, probably in an attempt to make his eyes more owl-like. The problem is, I wasn't able to find a single photo of an owl with vertical pupils. They are round. So, if anything, it makes him look more like a cat.

6. And the last point, it's most likely not true, it's my little conspiracy/crack-theory.

But he's sometimes referred to as a Professor; he's as much of an Owl as Aventurine is a peacock. Game, please don't tell me he has nothing to do with Penacony's Professor Owl the origami birds often mention, whoever it is.

In fact, if he wasn't too young for that, I wouldn't be surprised if he had something to do with the creation of Dreaworld. Because he mentioned before that taking a bath helps him with going to sleep, and on Penacony you take a bath to go to sleep (what are the chances), and then you enter a world filled with images of owls. It's probably actually nothing, but what a coincidence.

#honkai star rail #my stuff #dr ratio

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twstgarden · 2 years ago

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❀ ❝ 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁 ❞

━ general! lilia vanrouge x human! gn! reader ━ living as a human in a fae-dominated country during the war probably isn't your best idea, but you love the land of briar so much as you were born and raised in that nation. who knew that your little activity of picking berries in the forest would make you meet the famed fae general? will he think you're a spy and deem you as a threat or will he realize you're just an innocent human living in the forest? (f/n means first name)

requested by: anonymous request type: oneshot requester's message: Can I request a General Lilia and Human Reader one-shot? Something fluffy (wasn't sure if you were up to date with the game so didn't want to get too specific) florist's note: omg a general lilia request. don't worry, i'm up to date w the jp version of the game. thank you for the request, little one.

this work contains spoilers for chapter 7, diasomnia's arc.

do not steal or translate without my permission.

“what are you doing out here, human?”

you flinched in surprise as a voice startled you from behind. you stood up and turned around with your basket on your arm, looking at the person who disturbed your little time. you were about to respond until you noticed the semi-familiar mask and the long dark hair with red highlights peeking out of this person’s hood.

it was the famed fae general.

“i was… just picking berries, sir.”

you responded as soon as you regained your thoughts. you continued to hold your basket as your eyes trailed all over his figure, taking in the details of his clothing and the mask covering his face. the eye holes glowed red, giving you the impression that it could be his eye colour.

he was silent for a while as you responded, making you stay silent before looking down at your half-filled basket, tilting it a little to show him the contents.

“here… if you don’t believe me…”

the general looked at the basket for a quick second then looked back at you, speaking in a stern tone as he was still a little suspicious of you, “why pick berries all the way to this forest? you might be one of those pesky silver owl spies for all i know.”

silver owl? ah, that must be the human knights wearing iron armour and stealing the resources of the land of briar.

what a disappointment… your own kind seemed to have never learned not to steal other’s resources.

“ah… no… i’m not a spy nor am i a part of the silver owls… i’m just a human living in the forest and this spot is the closest area for berry picking to my cottage,” you tried to explain yourself to the general as the red glow in the mask’s eyeholes stared back at you with extreme intensity.

when he did not respond for a while, you bowed a little to show respect and asked, “am i free to go, general?”

he let out a short hum and held onto his weapon as he replied, “go. avoid the forest as much as possible, human. it’s not safe here. evacuate while you can.” you gave him a small smile and bowed your head again, “thank you, general, but i’ll be fine in this forest. have a great evening, sir.”

you held onto your basket and smiled for a quick second before turning around and walking away from the general, heading back to your lovely little cottage settled just a few meters away from the berry-picking spot.

so that was the fae general. you finally had the chance to meet him face-to-face. his aura made him quite intimidating, especially when he holds that magical lithic. still, you didn’t want that to scare you. you knew you did nothing wrong, so there was no reason to fear him coming after you.

that aside, the berries you picked were to your expectations, and you grabbed enough to bake your pie for dinner. with that in mind, you got to work, prepping the ingredients and baking your pie. the scent of the pie flooded your kitchen and the surrounding area of your cottage.

lucky for you, your little neighbourhood was safe and rarely do you ever find any threatening creatures, just a bunch of adorable woodland creatures. by the time your pie was finished baking, you had dinner by yourself on a picnic bench right outside your cottage, enjoying the greenery despite the darkness of the forest.

it was going well until you felt another presence with you sitting right in front of you on the picnic bench. you glanced at the person and saw a soldier wearing armour with the palace guards’ coat of arms and a mask covering their face looking at you ━ or rather, the pie. it seems they’ve smelt it from wherever they were staying and came over.

the soldier started screeching and you knew it was speaking to you in their language. unfortunately, being human meant it was hard for you to pick up and understand what they were saying, so you had to rely on the soldier’s body language.

noticing how they were eyeing the single slice of pie in your hand, you thought the soldier wanted to have some, making you extend your hand a little as you spoke, “you want a pie? wait here.”

you then entered your cottage to grab the remaining slices of pie on your table and went out, placing it on the picnic table right in front of the soldier, “here, have this! you can share it with the rest of the soldiers, there’s plenty left!”

the soldier stared at the pie for a while before looking up at you as if they were checking for any signs of hesitation or whatnot. you merely smiled to show no ill will, but another screech was heard from behind the soldier and your eyes immediately noticed the general standing right there.

the soldier turned around and saluted at the general before screeching back, making it evident to you that they are conversing in their own language. moments later, the soldier disappeared into the dark forest, leaving you with the general as you looked at him, “did you tell him to leave?”

“no, i told him not to take food from others even if they try to offer it.”

you sighed as you sat on the picnic bench, “are you still wary of me?”

“yes.”

oh, how straightforward. very admirable.

“i see… well, i’m not sure what i should say to make you think i’m just a regular forest resident and not a spy, but at least have a pie. there’s plenty left to share. it’s not poisoned if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“i am not interested in eating human food.”

those were the last things he said before disappearing into the night somewhere in the forest, presumably heading back to where his soldiers were camping out. you blinked your eyes for a moment before shrugging your shoulders and mumbling under your breath, “alright, general…”

days have passed and you’ve occasionally seen the general around the forest as you did your usual activities. he had warned you not to dilly-dally around the forest, while other times, he just ignored you and let you do your thing as well as informing his troops not to harm you.

soon, it escalated to some of the soldiers even paying you a visit just to check on you. you appreciated their gestures, but at the back of your mind, you wondered if the general grew to accept you as a regular citizen of their country. you even got to meet one of the soldiers called baul zigvolt as he paid your cottage a visit once to see if you were well or not. in return, you gave him one of your pastries or meals that he can share with the rest of his comrades. it certainly has become sort of a routine to you at this point.

one day, none of the soldiers paid you a little visit, which made you wonder if they were alright or if they’d moved their camp somewhere else further away from your cottage. you sat on the picnic bench right outside your cottage as you sipped on some beverage you made yourself, watching the surrounding areas for any signs of life, watching the moon and the stars up in the sky shining down on you, listening to the crickets in the distance, and feeling the cold breeze in the air as it made the trees sway a little.

you were about to head back inside until you heard a familiar voice a few steps behind you.

“waiting for something?”

you turned around and smiled as you saw the same old mask as the familiar figure stood there, “well… someone, rather.”

a chuckle was heard from the general before walking towards you and sitting on the picnic bench before you. your smile was still present on your face as you spoke, “i’m doing alright if you’re here to check on me. i appreciate all your efforts, general.”

it was silent for a bit, but you remained smiling at him. a few seconds later, his hands hovered over his mask before grabbing it, revealing his features as his red eyes looked right at you.

your eyes widened slightly. he was really good-looking. you couldn’t find the right words to say, but you remained smiling as he spoke to you, “...that’s a relief, then. you need to know how dangerous this place is. it isn’t safe for you to stay here, human.”

“f/n.”

“what?”

“my name’s f/n…”

the general smiled a little and continued to speak, “i see…” you smiled and proceeded to reply to his words earlier, “i’ll be alright here, general. this is my home… i was raised in this cottage by my parents. now that i’m alone, i still wish to stay here.” he nodded a little as you added, “...thank you, general, for looking out and considering me as the land of briar’s citizen…”

he didn’t say anything for a moment as you handed him a little flower from your garden and a few cookies with a sheepish smile, “i didn’t get to cook or bake much today, so… please accept this..”

the general grabbed the cookies and the flower from you as he placed the flower safely by the belt of his armour while grabbing a cookie and taking a bite. a few moments later, you conversed with the general until he had to head back to his camp.

you stood before him and spoke as you went to see him off, “thank you for visiting, general. be safe out there.” he nodded his head and placed a rose on your hair, already wearing a mask as he did so, “... there… you look beautiful… and you’re the one who needs to be safe out here, f/n. i’ll see you again tomorrow.” he then disappeared into the night, but his words were still in your mind.

beautiful.

beautiful…

the general thinks you look beautiful.

“oh dear me, my heart can’t take this…” you whispered as you hovered a hand above your chest, right where your heart was. you smiled to yourself as you entered your cottage and went to your room, laying on your bed as you hugged your pillow.

“i hope i’ll see him again tomorrow…”

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pupp0ccino · 6 months ago

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My Dust variant facts !

That no one asked for yay! ⟢

If I ever get to coloring these refs the current image will be replaced with the finished product.. also disclaimer, im aware these aren't canon , I just like having fun with characters and making my own versions of them

Dust

- he's a shapeshifter, having three forms. His normal form, Dustbunny, and Ghost. I hc him to have some form of identity/personality disorder (it's unspecified which one, that's up to y'all what you want him to have) so multiple forms with different personalities.

- his normal form, is simply just Dust. Hes the closest to looking like classic sans appearance wise compared to horror and killer.

- Dustbunny was mainly made as a kinsona, and for funzies, but Dust only morphs into this slightly smaller form as a defense mechanism, for he feels 'weak and pathetic' like prey. It's basically just him, but taking more on a bunny-like appearance and behavior. Like dust he's very closed off and quiet, but will rather flee than fight.

- Ghost is the complete opposite. Tall, sadistic and cruel with a sick smile plastered on his face. He comes in when Dust's getting a power trip, or needs to get big and protect himself. It kind of puts him in sort of a state of mania, where he has little sympathy for the people around him and how his actions affect others. He's a meanie, and loves to tease at people when ever he sees an opening

- Dust does not like to look in mirrors, or really have his hood off for long periods of time, nor being looked at. Makes him freak out

- he partakes in rabbit like behaviors, his nose twitches when his curious or irritated, he stomps his foot against the ground when he's upset, and he burrows. Accompanied by his tail being a rabbits tail !

- he's also a vampire, like nightmare, but instead of sucking the negativity out of souls, he just has cravings to bite and drink blood, has large sharp fangs, plus being a total night owl.

- he has really bad avoidant attachment when it comes to relationships, he's in fact fearful of gaining close bonds due to the fact he's lost people he's loved over and over and over and over again, before literally killing them off himself. So he purposely pushed himself away from people to not get too close.

- as in the picture above, he has markings speckled all across his face, it's also the same for his body down his arms and shoulders. He's kind of embarrassed about it, and hates it being pointed out

- he goes through psychosis, and psychotic episodes

- he's a stoner lolz (despite maryjane usage very much not being recommended to people who deal with psychosis...)

- his room is a depression room most of the time, he has a little mattress on the floor that looks like a nest

- he's a monster energy drinker because yes

- he's selectively mute, and has a very low social battery. He doesn't like crowded spaces and only has a select few people he talks to (killer, horror, fell)

- he has a hard time remembering to eat and will accidentally and sometimes purposely go days without eating. When he does eat, it's in very small portions, he doesn't like food like he used to.

- he doesn't like touch, don't touch him he will stab you

- Phantom, the papyrus voice in his head. What he says to dust is based on his state of mind. When he's in a normal state of mind, Phantom is a lot more like how papyrus usually acts , getting on Dust for little things like telling him to clean his room or that he has to take care of himself. The voice worsens as his state of mind worsens turning from silly banter to tormenting him about what he's done, and sometimes papyrus can also be like a Jiminy cricket to dust, a judge to his morals, and trying to set him on the right path. Dust hates this , and rarely ever listens.

- one of the things he does in his free time is play video games, he's your basic gamer boy. He likes to play cod mainly

- another hobby of his is that he likes to sew, and patch work his clothing and fabric items, along with making little plushies.

- bad sans poly bad sans poly toxic yaoi ..

That's it for now , I'll probably add more on later !!

Dust belongs to ask-dusttale

#sans undertale #undertale #undertale au #utau #utmv #dusttale sans #dust sans #dusttale #Spotify #✦ . Character Info

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bluboy404 · 3 months ago

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So when I was listening to Six Hundred Strike, all I could think about is just how overpowered Odysseus was in this so I thought of an idea that I personally like more.

I like to believe that Ares helped Odysseus. After seeing how much Athena cared about this little mortal, Ares decided to follow him around just to see why. He wants to see Odysseus make it back home to Ithaca for more bloodshed like Athena promised, but when he sees Poseidon beat Odysseus, he decides to use quick thought (or what Ares’ version is called, I genuinely can’t remember).

I feel like this explains why Odysseus ends up opening the wind bag, Ares wasn’t really thinking of the consequences and just knew Odysseus would need to to get out of the water.

I also find the wind bag jet pack to be odd, like I physically cringed watching the stream and couldn’t take it seriously, so instead I feel like wings made out of the clouds would be cool for Odysseus, specifically owl wings.

After Odysseus knocks Poseidon down, Ares leaves Odysseus mind. He thinks Odysseus will be fine to figure out how or convince Poseidon to call of the storm, what he doesn’t expect is as for Odysseus to torture Poseidon like that. He can’t tell if he should be proud or terrified because that was real rage.

Whether or not Ares continues to follow Odysseus around after is not yet decided but I feel like at one point he reveals himself to him and Odysseus is just confused on why so many Gods are watching him.

These are all my own headcanons because I absolutely love Six Hundred Strike and it’s probably my favourite song from the saga. Also I apologize if any of this is confusing, I’m really bad at explaining my thoughts and if you have questions please ask and I’ll try to answer.

#ramblings #epic the musical #ares #ares epic #six hundred strike #odysseus #epic the vengeance saga #headcanon

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himegureisu · 11 months ago

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Hiii! Just got home from a horrifying midterm exam. It went horrible, none of the questions were even in the lesson plan. Although it did give me an idea for this request :')

It's practically universal knowledge that Snape is a 'terror prof' (iykyk) at Hogwarts — his standards are high, he's very particular with essays and it's practically expected that every major exam, tears will be shed in and out the classroom with the amount of curveballs he throws at you.

(I'd feel like he'd be the type to have a True or False exam with choices like: True, Partially True, Partially False, False, and if none is applicable write the correct answer and all of it is situational)

He's married to the reader and they're both teachers, so they help each other on their loads. Much more efficient that way. One night after a particularly hard-hitting major exam in the semester, reader encounters tear stains and snot and a few drops of blood from a nosebleed on one of the exams (witnesses this once lol) and decided to confront him husband about it. Thank you! I hope this isn't too specific ;w;

Questions and Answers

Pairing: Severus Snape x Reader

A/N: I'm sorry you had a horrible exam day and thank you for preventing me from pulling my hair out of frustration because my Notion page was not cooperating when this request came through. I hope you enjoy this! 💖

——————————— 🪄———————————

“Severus, darling, why do your exam papers have at least two different types of fluids on them?” your fingers flip through the unfinished stack, your eyes scanning them.

This was the thirty-fifth test paper from his pile that you graded. His second-year tests were stained by a range of substances you curiously identified through a spell.

Did he truly not notice them?

“There’s a combination of either snot, sweat, tears, or,” you paused, taking one of the papers you already graded, to present to him. His dark eyes highlighted by the round reading glasses made for a rather attractive sight but focus, “On the rare occasion, blood,”

“Oh,” he simply said, looking up at you, “And?”

“Is that all you can say?” you frustratedly run a hand through your forehead as you sit on the edge of his desk causing him to stop, “What are these questions even? It’s a major exam for second years, not OWLs or NEWTs, Severus. My head hurts not only from the answers but also the questions,”

“If they can’t answer then they’re not competent enough to proceed to the…” his sentence undone by the beginning of your ramble, an attempt to explain why his methods were not feasible.

“Can you imagine the physical, mental, and emotional drain that major exams cause to students? You can reminisce on your time as one if it helps but it’s not good and then to be brought to this level of inquiry as if they were taking a mastery,” you explained, “There isn’t even a 50-50 chance to get the answer right only 25 because you decided that it would be better if there would be four very similar but distinct answers to the multiple choice questions and not a chance of redemption for those who don’t know the question if the said answer is one they needed to correct. I can better understand your students’ frustrations from this version of your exams,”

“To adjust the exam would mean that there would be a lower level of understanding…”

“That’s the point though since they’re just building the foundation of what they know for potions!” you exclaimed, “If it were a muggle game, Severus, it should be easy, medium, and then hard but your exams are hard, hard, and then hard on every level. Do you understand?”

“Yes, but…”

“Sev, imagine this,” you sit on his lap, cupping his cheeks for him to focus on you as you say, “Imagine a child, our child, a little boy or girl coming home to us in tears because of a similar test that they’d taken on that day,”

“It would be different. They would be ours,” he grumbled, pulling you in closer to bask in your warmth, “We wouldn’t teach them to be like that,”

“Sev, just imagine!” you sighed exasperatedly, his face buried beneath your chin, “Your little girl coming home in tears crying for us wanting a hug because of an awful exam day,”

His breathing was in sync with yours, trying to understand your reasoning. His imagination slowly conjures a little girl in your image. Her face was stained with big fat crocodile tears, a snot-filled nose, and books slung defeatedly on her arm. His heart tightened at the image of it, protectiveness surging from within.

No one was allowed to make either of you cry.

“Can you imagine?” you softly asked, running a hand through his hair, as he mumbled, “Yes,”

“Can you change the way your tests are written?” you silently prayed that he would, he breathed in and faced you to answer, “Fine, and you’ll help me,”

“I expect as much,” you smiled.

As you were about to get off his lap, his arms quickly pulled you back and in doing so, caused the chair to stumble a bit from the force. His nose on your hair, breaths warm, and hug unwilling to let go.

“Sev?” you glance back to see his darkened gaze, “What is it?

“Do you want children?” he asked, it wasn’t something both of you discussed in depth before, “I realized that after four years of marriage, we didn’t elaborate on our expectations on that particular topic,”

“If we’re blessed with children, then I’m happy,” you informed, tracing the contours of his face. No matter how many times you’ve seen him it’s like there’s another new thing to catalog in your mind, “If not, then I’ll be happy having you all to myself,”

“I don’t know if I want children,” he admitted, and you kissed his cheek, “We’ll get there when we get there, Sev, for now, don’t think about it,”

#severus snape #severus snape x reader #hp #harry potter #severus snape fanfiction #snape #professor snape #hogwarts #fanfiction #snape x you #severus snape x you #harry potter fanfiction

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bamboozledbird · 5 months ago

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IGNITE: A Teen Wolf S1 AU (Reader's Version) // Prev. / Chapter 4 / Next

Characters: Stiles Stilinski, fem!reader, Scott McCall, Lydia Martin, OMC Pairing: Eventual Stiles x Reader, but man are we talking slow burn Word Count: 4.5k Warnings: Canon typical gore/violence, parental death (rip to your fake mom), depictions of depression (apathy, dissociation, 'numb little bug' vibes), alcohol as a coping mechanism, season 1 Lydia behavior (her comments on addiction are wrong and insensitive and she's knows it) Tags: Canon has been lovingly scrapped for parts, author is a chaotic bi and it shows, prolific overuse of the em dash, the slowest of burns i fear

Summary: You can always smell ash long after the fire is gone. Perhaps, that’s why you still can’t breathe without choking on the past. It’s been four years since your mom died. Four years since she burned alive. Four years since you didn’t. You survived, but they must have buried your heart with her because most days you feel like a shadow, some horrifically sad creature caught halfway between a ghost and a lamb for slaughter.

You can’t scrub the bitter smell of hospital from your memories, not even with denial. Maybe, that’s why death and disease follows Stiles wherever he goes now. It’s been eight years since his mom died. Eight years since he didn’t. Eight years since he decided that he wouldn’t let anyone he loved die ever again. He survived, but Beacon Hills’ bloody underbelly is making it pretty damn hard for him to keep his promise.

Time never stops turning. The grief never dissipates. Children soldier on—but in a town where all the monsters under the bed are real, and old family secrets rattle in every closet, how long can two fragile, breakable humans survive?

Maybe, the real question is: How long will they want to?

Chapter Summary: Your life somehow becomes further entangled with Stiles and Scott's strange secret world, and Lydia is concerned in her own aggressive way.

A/N: this is in fact a scott mccall stan account. i love that boy like he's my own. you can also check me out on ao3 (dork_knight) for the full lore version!

The drive home was ultimately uneventful. No need for tasers, silver bullets, or wolfsbane goop. You would need to get gas before you left for school in the morning, but you supposed that was a relatively minor inconvenience when the other end of the scale was being torn apart by a fanged monster.

Your jaw cracked with an aggressive yawn as you slowly stumbled through the garage door, fumbling for the light switch on the wall. You flicked on the light and paused, shivering a little as the cold air from the vent above your head skimmed over your bare arms. After a moment of hesitation, when that little persistent wriggling in your ear wouldn’t go away, you ducked back down the concrete steps to poke around the garbage can. Underneath a few Styrofoam take-out boxes, there were four empty beer bottles. The glass bottles clinked against each other as you nudged them out of the way, unearthing the real object of your paranoia. A drained bottle of 100-proof rye whiskey was cradled between two sacks of trash from the night before. You just stared at the bottles, heart and lungs wound tight, and then you dropped the lid back on top of the can.

When you reentered the house, you were careful to keep the noise to a minimum. It wasn’t that late, only a little past nine, but you didn’t want to disrupt your dad’s slumber. Usually, he was a night owl—which, of course, was really just a pretty way of saying chronic insomniac, another thing you’d inherited from him—but it’d been a hard liquor night. Your dad always went to bed early on hard liquor nights. You didn’t know if he actually slept or if he stared at the ceiling, watching memories play on spackle until dawn streamed through the cracks in the blinds. Probably the first. You hadn’t ever heard him cry through the thin walls, not even once. You, however, couldn’t ever stop crying, not on the nights you trembled for something potent enough to mask the scent of the coconut oil your mom used to remove her makeup. The echoes of your mother had seeped into the walls, saturated the insulation with the faint sounds of the 70s pop rock vinyls she put on when she was in a good mood. They faded sometimes, but they always came back. You desperately hoped, and you hopelessly feared, that they always would.

You rubbed at your eyes with the back of your hands aggressively and slipped under the covers, still in your plaid skirt and black t-shirt. Mascara smeared against your silk pillowcase, blurred your vision as it melted into your waterline. You stared at the wall until the silver swirls in the teal wallpaper started to sway. The teal was so dark it almost looked velvet with the lights off, and you had a heavy-eyed impulse to stroke it, but your hand was too leadened to lift.

Your lids slipped shut, and in the haze between consciousness and slumber you felt the vague sensation of something solid against the back of your head. You murmured something incomprehensible and pulled your arms closer to your chest, taking in a breath of sharp whisky and a familiar woody cologne. You kept your eyes closed, and the warm weight cupped your skull for a moment. There was a brief kiss pressed against the top of your head and then the warmth was gone. Something large caught in your throat, and you squeezed your eyelids until your forehead wrinkled, forcing yourself to fall into a restless sleep filled with dreams of pancakes swimming in bourbon and howling beasts.

Stiles was waiting for you by your locker when you arrived at school the next day. His friend—Scott, you reminded herself—was leaning against the locker next to him. Scott’s eyelids were heavy, and there was a coolness underneath them that stained his tan skin with a swathe of puce. Puce: From the French term ‘couleur puce,’ meaning ‘flea color.’ You dug your incisor into your tongue once you recognized that the intrusive internal narration was in Stiles’s voice. You didn’t even know if he spoke French, but it seemed like the kind of weird detail he’d know. You ran your tongue over your teeth and shoved your fists into your jacket pockets, thumb poking through the hole in the lining from previous twiddling—when the hell did you start thinking about the kinds of things Stiles would and wouldn’t know?

You pivoted sharply, and your traitorous leather boots ruined your attempted exit when they squeaked against the freshly waxed floor. Stiles’s head popped up from his hushed conversation with Scott, and he waved vigorously when he made eye contact with you, “Hey! C’mere!”

You tipped your gaze towards the tiled ceiling and sighed. It was inevitable, really; you had to get your English binder before homeroom—homeroom, yet another reason to hate Wednesdays. It was one of your few classes with Lydia, and there wasn’t ever any actual teaching to distract you from the disgusting goo-goo eyes she gave her boyfriend. Studying was your only respite.

“Patience,” you nudged Stiles out of the way and spun your combination into the padlock, “work on it. It’s an essential skill.”

Stiles scoffed and leaned his shoulder against the locker next to yours, arms folded over his chest, “Essential. There’s nothing essential about wasting time. It’s actually unvirtuous if you think about it.”

You swung her locker door open, blocking out Stiles’s frown, and rested your backpack on your knee so that you could unzip it. “Was there a point in there somewhere, or are you stalking me again?”

Stiles ducked around the locker door and placed his hands on Scott’s shoulders, shoving him a little closer to you, “Scott had a question for you.”

Scott’s eyes didn’t look so tired when he reared his head back to stare at Stiles. They had an intense conversation for a moment. There weren’t any words exchanged, but you got the gist: Scott was pissed, and Stiles was relentless. In the end, Scott lost the battle and swallowed thickly, “So, uh, you know a lot about supernatural stuff. That’s cool.” Stiles rolled his eyes and smacked the back of Scott’s head. Scott glared at him before mumbling, “Do you have any more of that wolfsbane…potion?” towards his muddy Converse.

You directed your annoyance over Scott’s shoulder, more than confident that the real culprit of this request was the idiot avoiding your eye-line. “What? You already burned through your goo sample? Are the streets finally free from the demon beast of Beacon Hills?”

Stiles held up his hands and shook his head, “This is all Scott. See, me, I’m a fan of not being a greedy little bastard, but Scott—” This time Scott smacked Stiles with a resounding thwack. Stiles rubbed his shoulder, mouth agawk with indignation.

“He…dropped it.” Scott glowered at the side of Stiles’s face, “‘Doing something stupid.”

You smirked, “Sounds about right.” You shoved your binder into your backpack and brushed your hairs out of your eyes, “I’d give it all away for free, but it’s not up to me. Sorry.” Zipping your backpack shut, you slung one of the straps over your shoulder and shrugged, “You could always buy some more, but I’d strongly advise against such a dumb financial investment.”

Scott rubbed the back of his neck and gave you a smile. It was small but riddled with warmth—like he just couldn’t help it, like sunshine leaked through every one of his pores, and you were filled with the sudden urge to buy the stupid wolfsbane gunk for him. “That’s what I figured,” Scott looked at Stiles pointedly. His voice dropped a few octaves and a growl slipped into the end of his sentence, “But someone thought we should ask anyway.”

The bell rang, and Scott flinched, smashing one of his ears into his shoulder. He turned around, a little dazed, and Stiles trailed after him after giving her a distracted wave. As you watched them leave, a parasitic impulse wrangled through your throat, prying the hinge of your jaw open as you shouted, “Hey!” The hallway was abuzz with various conversations and clomping feet, but your voice was still a bit too loud for the short distance between you and definitely too urgent for 7:45 in the morning.

Stiles turned around first, almost tripping over his sneakers, and then he yanked on the scarlet hood of Scott’s jacket until he stopped too. You shifted your weight from one foot to the other and licked your bottom lip, suddenly realizing how dry it was. “I, uh,” you sighed and took a few steps forward so that you didn’t have to raise your voice, “I could talk to Maggie. I bet she’d cut you a deal if I asked.” You let out a little laugh and raked your fingers through your hair, accidentally dislodging the satin bow tying your hair out of your face. “I know, actually. I know she’d give you some for free. She’s a terrible business woman.”

Scott’s smile put the moon to shame, and Stiles looked like he’d been waiting for you to change your mind since the moment you told them no—when the hell did he start thinking about what you would and wouldn’t do?

“That would be awesome,” Scott ducked down to grab your black ribbon and held it out to you with an open palm, “thank you. I’d owe you big time.”

Stiles looped his arm around Scott’s shoulders and smirked, “We’d. We’d owe you. I’ll stop by the store and bless you with my scintillating conversation sometime.”

“Don’t worry about it,” you smiled softly at Scott, taking your ribbon from his hand. You attempted to tie your hair back in a neat bow, but it was difficult without a mirror. You assumed it was halfway decent because Stiles didn’t take the opportunity to tease you—you, on the other hand, had no such qualms about mocking him. You smiled at Stiles, far too sweetly to be considered congenial, and sneered, “Seriously. Don’t worry about it.”

Stiles’s eyes narrowed, face curved around a smirk that screamed trouble, and Scott slapped his hand over Stiles’s mouth before he could say something to make you reconsider, “Thanks again. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to pay you back. Name it, and we’re there.” Stiles winked at you with a glint in his eye that was as vexing as it was bright, and Scott rolled his eyes as he hauled him away by the nylon material of his backpack, “C’mon, dude. My mom’s gonna kill me if I’m late again.”

You watched Stiles’s buzzed head bob amidst the congested crowd of students, all shoving each other in their rush to get to class on time, until you couldn’t hear his surly complaints anymore. You rubbed your hand over your chapped lips, swallowing hollowly, like you could erase every impulsive word that’d spilt from your stupid mouth.

You were still thinking about what you’d gotten yourself into when you walked into Mrs. Farias’s classroom—and that must be why you forgot your copy of Metamorphosis in your locker. You groaned internally and dropped your forehead against your desk, bumping it against the cool laminate finish a few times, before ducking out the door with a hall pass.

The halls were empty—silent too. You could hear your own footsteps and the tick of the large clock above the main office as you walked around the corner, and then, just as you approached the hallway your locker was in, you heard something else. Voices. Angry voices. One familiar—your face scrunched as the recognition wriggled through your ears to your brain—and one not. You cautiously glanced around the corner and frowned. Jackson, Lydia’s arrogant prick of a boyfriend, was talking to a hulking, leather-clad stranger—or rather infuriating him based on the murderous look in the man’s dark eyes.

The stranger looked a good five years too old to be in a high school hallway, but the grown-out stubble and over-defined muscles weren’t of immediate concern. You were more focused on the color of his face. His skin was pale, clammy, and quite honestly a little corpse-like thanks to the purply-blue tinge carving out the hollows of his face. You assumed that he was too strung-out to care if anyone noticed their altercation because you could hear him from halfway across the hall.

“Where’s Scott McCall?” His voice was deep and gravelly, as expected, but there was a desperate undertone you hadn’t anticipated.

You could only see the back of Jackson’s head, but you knew exactly what his face was doing when he puffed out his chest and folded his arms—no one else could make a smirk look quite so punchable. It was a gift, truly. “And why should I tell you?” “Because I asked you politely,” the man leaned forward, bared his canines, and you couldn’t believe that Jackson didn’t even flinch, “and I only do that once.”

“Okay, tough guy,” Jackson sneered, meeting the man’s challenge with another step forward and a shrug that reeked of false-superiority, “how ‘bout I help you find him if you tell me what you’re selling him. What is it? Dianabol? HGH?”

“Steroids,” the man’s voice was dry, and if he didn’t look like he was about to double over and puke all over the floor, you’d say the menacing glimmer in his eyes was a little amused.

“No, Girl Scout cookies. What the hell do you think I’m talking about?” Jackson tutted, maddeningly haughty, and shook his head, “By the way, whatever it is you’re selling, I’d stop sampling the merchandise.” He let out a low patronizing whistle, and you kind of hoped that the stranger would suckerpunch him in the throat for it. “You look wrecked.”

The man didn’t punch him. Instead, he pushed himself off of the locker he was slumped against and started staggering stiffly down the hall, “I’ll find him myself.”

Jackson grabbed onto his broad shoulder and yanked. The veins in his bicep bulged with the strength of grasp, “We’re not done here.”

Your limbs suddenly remembered how to function. You ducked back behind the brick wall and closed your eyes, waiting for the inevitable sounds of bone colliding into flesh. Your right eye cracked open a sliver when the noise never came. Instead, there was a loud thud and the echo of clanging metal. You peeked around the corner again and froze, eyes wide and throat dry. Jackson was pinned against a locker by his neck. You’d already noticed that the stranger was tall, but you didn’t truly realize just how large he was until now. Jackson was a lot of things, but he wasn’t small. He was captain of the lacrosse team—everyone within a ten-mile radius knew that thanks to his constant reminders—and if anyone on campus was taking steroids, he would’ve been your first guess. But next to this sickly beast of a man, Jackson looked meek and mousey, and you didn’t even get to savor it. After a brief moment, no more than a second, Jackson’s assailant sniffed the air and slowly turned his head in your direction. It wasn’t an accident; he wasn’t surveying his surroundings. His eyes landed on yours, and he didn’t look the least bit surprised.

The man’s irises were dark, nearly black, and they didn’t stray from your face. You forgot how to breathe, feeling distinctly like a rabbit trapped in a fox den as your heartbeat hammered against your ribs. He spared you after a few seconds of paralyzing eye-contact and turned his petrifying gaze back to Jackson’s neck. You recoiled, slipping back to your spot around the wall, and pressed your back against the bricks until the sound of your heartbeat wasn’t so loud in your ears.

When you found the courage to look down the hall again, the man was gone, and Jackson was bleeding from the back of his neck. There were four distinct punctures along his cervical spine, trickling crimson droplets onto the stark white collar of his polo. The gouges were small, almost like…nail marks. Baffling. This town was fuckin’ baffling.

You poured over the incident all day, barely conscious enough to take down notes and roll your eyes at Stiles’s badgering and bad jokes. You’d never been more ready for the final bell to ring, not even during sex education with the extraordinarily sweaty Mr. Peterson.

You twisted your pendant around its onyx chain as you walked out of your last period, winding and unwinding the charm over and over again as you mulled over your thoughts. Scott didn’t seem like he was on drugs. You didn’t exactly know him, but he was the least aggressive person you’d ever met, and he had to be eternally patient if Stiles was his best friend. You spun the medallion again and shouldered your way through the cramped halls to the parking lot, scolding yourself. What Scott McCall did or did not inject into his bloodstream wasn’t any of your business…even if his alleged dealer looked like he was on death’s door and had a habit of throwing teenage boys around when he got mad.

You’d just convinced yourself that you didn’t care what happened to Stiles’s best friend when a discord of honking stopped you in your tracks. You flitted your gaze around the parking lot, searching for the cause of obnoxiously loud cacophony; your shoulders wilted along with your resolve when you spotted the guilty party. The man from the hallway was sprawled on the asphalt, and Scott and Stiles were scrambling to help him off of the ground.

Your feet reluctantly trudged towards the peculiar trio, arms tightly folded over your cropped sweater. You would’ve laughed at how wide Stiles’s eye stretched when he finally noticed your presence, but you were a little preoccupied with the fact that he was currently trying to stuff a ghoulish grown man into his front seat. You watched him struggle to hold up approximately 200 pounds of solid muscle with his spindly arms, absentmindedly lamenting that you couldn’t truly appreciate the humor of the situation. “Hey,” you slanted your head and searched Stiles’s face for any sign of an SOS signal, “you good?”

“Ayup,” Stiles nodded emphatically, and Scott shot you a weak thumbs-up from his squat next to his tipped-over bike.

You looked between the two of them, waiting for the truth to crack through the awkward pretense, and narrowed your eyes, “You sure?”

“We’re good,” the man barked from inside the jeep, teeth bared. It was a little less intimidating now that he was slumped over and at the mercy of a sixteen-year-old with a dork complex, but you still flinched. You couldn’t help it. It was a small twitch, but Scott still managed to track the minute movement from his low perch. He glared at the man, shockingly firm for such a sweet-faced boy, until the stranger stopped scowling at you. Mr. Sour Face turned his head towards the window and stared intensely at the hazy tree line over the hill. Your fingers relaxed. You hadn’t even realized that you’d dug your nails in your palms until the stinging stopped.

Scott jumped to his feet and pulled his bike up by the handles, rushing through his weak explanation, “Stiles is just…doing me a favor. Derek needs a ride, and all I’ve got is my bike.”

Letting out a flimsy snort, your brow pinched, “So…he walked here?”

“Uh,” Scott squinted, and Stiles nodded behind him, “yeah?”

You pursed your lips, ignoring all the students who’d started shouting over the beeping horns, and watched Derek grit his teeth and clench his fists through the dashboard window. You looked back at Stiles and chewed on your lip. Stiles was taller than you, but he was on the scrawnier side of lean and wouldn’t stand a chance against a man of Derek’s size—even if he was barely clinging to the rapidly fraying threads of consciousness. “I could use a ride to work,” you pulled the backseat door open before you could talk yourself out of it.

Stiles lurched towards you and slammed the door shut, narrowly avoiding your fingers, “Normally, I would seize any opportunity to have you further indebted to me, but—that’s Lydia Martin.” His eyes bulged out of his head, and he leaned against his jeep, slipping down the blue frame as his legs went boneless, “Walking towards me. Cool. Cool, cool, cool.”

The prospect of riding in the same car with Mr. Resting Bitchface was being more appealing by the second. Lydia didn’t even look in Stiles’s direction. Her cutting green eyes were fixed on you and you alone. “Are you an idiot?” Lydia snatched your wrist, mauve manicure digging into the delicate skin on the inside of your wrist, and yanked you back to the sidewalk.

“What?” you went brainless for a moment, taking in all the glory of an enraged Lydia Martin.

Lydia’s cheeks were flushed pink from anger and adrenaline, “Or just suicidal?”

The shock had worn off. Now, you were thoroughly pissed, “What?”

Lydia’s eyebrows, perfectly tapered and freshly threaded, knitted together until she was in danger of developing a unibrow, “Do you have any idea who you were about to get in a car with?”

Your eyes flicked to the side, and it took gargantuan strength not to roll them too. “Stiles?”

“What the hell is a Stiles?” Lydia’s riptide of fury gave way to confusion, but her soft features sharpened abruptly when she returned her attention to your scowl, “I meant Derek Hale. Obviously.”

Your hip cocked to the side as you crossed your arms, “And?”

“And he’s a murder suspect,” Lydia’s lips curled into a vehement sneer. It was so strange to finally see it first-hand. Lydia had such a sweet face, cherub cheeks and doe eyes—a clever smile. She hadn’t quite mastered disdain when you were friends; the ice queen routine wasn’t performance ready until you’d drifted apart. It was an awful face, you decided; it completely erased the last few pieces of the Lydia you knew.

“In an animal attack,” you muttered under your breath.

Evidently, it had been a long time since someone dared to disagree with the Lydia Martin because she was struck speechless. It didn’t last for long, but it was still satisfying. “He’s dangerous,” Lydia hissed. “He went completely off the deep end after his family died. Seriously, his life is like a textbook precursor to violent behavior; he’s a profiler’s wet dream.”

“Because his family died,” you repeated. The numbness eroded some of the snark in your voice.

Lydia either didn’t notice or didn’t care about the glaze creeping over your eyes. She continued, barbarous and unashamed, “Because he watched them turn into charcoal, and his sister was just ripped in half. At best, he’s unstable—but his little hobby of trolling for minors is a bit of a red flag, don’t you think?”

“Charcoal,” you spoke—more of an echo really with its resonating hollowness. Your eyes were on Lydia’s face, but your mind was somewhere far away. A lifetime ago, with the ashes of everything you once knew.

Lydia’s eyes went wide, and her mouth gaped into a perfect little ‘o.’ Her dainty fingers twitched by her sides, and then she smoothed out the non-existent wrinkles in her flouncy mini-skirt. “Most of his family died in a fire,” her voice was much softer this time, a bit of tenderness accidentally rooting through the cracks in her veneer. Lydia looked away and gripped the thin strap of her handbag, “Accidental house fire. It was all over the news like five years ago.”

You stared at Lydia, and for the first time in the last four years, you didn’t miss her. For the first time in such a mind-numbingly long time, your anger strangled your heartache with a wrought-iron grip that felt a whole lot like hate. It was always going to be like this, you realized. You would just have to walk around with all these what-ifs, if-onlys, and what-really-happeneds needling your heart with every thud—always. You had to learn to live with this: knowing that Lydia was never going to apologize and that there would be no closure. Ever.

“Right.” You laughed, shark-like, with your canines on display. You hoped it would make all your constants sharper. “So he’s gotta be a lunatic now.”

“Y/N…” It was surreal to hear your name out of Lydia’s mouth after so long. You didn’t know if you liked it, and, currently, you didn’t even know if you cared. Lydia chewed off what was left of her nude lipstick and then squared her shoulders, “So we’re just going to pretend that he wasn’t completely strung-out and totally embracing the heroin-chic aesthetic?”

You slanted your head a bit and then let out another serrated laugh. There wasn’t any point in having it out, you decided, because Lydia didn’t care. She got to move on and erase your entire existence—live her perfect, popular girl life without all this suffocating quicksand binding her to the past. Must be nice, you thought venomously, souring your tongue, stinging your eyes. Showers were probably just showers for Lydia. She didn’t singe her skin until the water went cold, imagining what she’d do, what she’d say—how she’d hurt her back. Must be so fucking nice.

“Lydia, I really don’t think you really want to get into all the things we’re pretending,” your voice was tight, strangled at the ends. You would not cry. You could not cry. Lydia sensed weakness like blood in the water, and you refused to give her the satisfaction.

“Fine,” Lydia’s curls spilled down her back like strawberry wine as she pivoted in her designer heels, “ride off into the sunset with a 'roid-raging creep. Don’t act surprised when you turn up dead in a crack den.”

Truthfully, Lydia had a point, but at this moment being contrary seemed far more important than being right. “It’s kind of difficult to act like anything when you’re dead,” you called, eyes zeroed-in on the back of her head as she slid into Jackson’s Porsche with a sensual grace you would never possess. Lydia was too far away to hear your retort, but you felt a little less like punching something after you said it.

You didn’t notice that Stiles and Scott were gone until the threat of bitter tears stopped burning your sinuses. The last thing you needed was to cry like this upset you, even if the only nearby witness left on the vacant sidewalk was yourself. You scoured the parking lot for even a flash of powder blue, but the jeep was nowhere to be seen. Probably long gone by now—your spat with Lydia must have taken longer than you thought. It was certainly louder than you meant it to be. Little clusters of ambling students were looking at you a little too long to be casual, and the indiscreet whispering once they turned back to their friends forced your legs forward.

You didn’t know where you were going when you started your car, but far, far away sounded pretty damn good.

#here's the update i promised pls forgive the lateness i am Ashamed and So Sorry #stiles stilinksi x reader #stiles stilinksi fanfiction #stiles stilinksi imagine #stiles stilinski x you #dylan o'brien imagine #stiles stilinski #teen wolf fanfiction #stiles stilinski x reader

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defectivevillain · 13 days ago

Text

attempts at amnesty

pairing: Harry & Reader (platonic)

the reader is gender-neutral. their race is ambiguous and no physical descriptors are used.

“You should get some sleep, Harry,” you suggest, changing the subject. “We have a long day ahead of us.” Harry’s face is pinched and he stares at you for a moment, before shaking his head. He won’t let his guard down, and you can’t really blame him. You take a deep breath, before trying to think of a way to assure Harry that he can trust you. “Here.” Harry stands at the object you hand him with thinly-veiled confusion and apprehension. “It’s my wand,” you explain, “A wand is a wizard’s most powerful accessory, weapon, and aid. I’m giving my wand to you to show that I mean you no harm.” “You trust me with your wand?” Harry whispers. “Yes,” you respond instinctually. You decide that more people need to show their trust and faith in the boy.

Canonically, Harry’s first introduction to the Wizarding World was wonderful and magnificent, but it was also jaded. He was left to make his own assumptions about magic from the behaviors of those around him. But what if Harry Potter had a trustworthy adult to teach him about the Wizarding World—one who always had faith in him, stood up for him, and protected him?

word count: 4k | chapters: 1/? | ao3 version

warnings: canonical child abuse

author's notes: I’ve been battling with myself to even post this fic in the first place, so please know that I am trying my best and taking the utmost care to assure that I am not upholding JKR's prejudices. And if you don’t want to engage with this at all, I completely understand.

This is a reader-insert piece primarily focused on the platonic relationship between the reader and Harry. The reader in this piece is gender-neutral—relatedly, the word “wizard” is used as an ambiguous, gender-neutral term that encompasses all gender identities. The reader will also be written as racially ambiguous & no physical descriptors will be used. In future chapters, they may be referred to with they/them pronouns.

This piece is going to tread the line between canon divergence and canon noncompliance, so there will likely be many canon inconsistencies. You may have to suspend your disbelief a *little* to enjoy this story. But it will still be largely centered around the events that take place in the seven books.

I have most of the general premise written for this already, but very few of the details and necessary transitions are written. I think this first chapter is a bit choppy, for example, but I don't want this fic to die in my drafts... so I'm letting it run free.

October 31, 1981

You’re having a strange day: a few of your top students completely forgot about the Ancient Runes essay you assigned; at breakfast, Headmaster Dumbledore announced that the next Hogsmeade trip would be postponed; you nearly got mauled by an unfamiliar owl... Things are just odd today. You don’t put much stock in Divination, but even Professor Trelawney’s ravings are starting to sound less mad than usual. Something is in the air.

As you’re walking about, you hear the whispered conversation of two Gryffindors in the hall. You’re not above eavesdropping, so you lean against the closest wall and listen. Besides, you could easily punish them for being out of bed after-hours; if anything, you’re doing them a favor by letting them continue to walk the halls unimpeded.

“Did you hear? James Potter and his wife were killed by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.” A third-year Gryffindor, Evelark, says.

“Really?” Their companion says, clearly suspicious. “Lily Evans, too? I heard they were both rather talented wizards.”

“Yes.” The student confirms. "But there’s good news—great, even. Their child, Harry, survived the Dark Lord’s Killing Curse. Not only did he survive, but the curse rebounded and killed the Dark Lord."

“Seriously?!” The other student remarks.

“Crazy, right?” Evelark exclaims. The elder Gryffindor looks skeptical. The younger student sighs and continues to speak. “They say Harry has a scar on his forehead to show for it.”

“I don’t quite believe you, Evelark.” They huff.

“That’s bloody fine,” the younger Gryffindor scoffs, clearly bothered by their companion’s suspicion. “You’ll see it in the Prophet tomorrow."

“If you say so.” With that last remark, the two Gryffindors make their way back to their common room.

You watch them retreat for a moment, before eventually letting them fall out of your sight. For a few moments, it feels as if you’re stuck to the wall. Eventually, you manage to peel yourself off of it and walk away. Your heart pounds traitorously in your chest and a buzzing noise reverberates through your ears and into your skull. Surely the Dark Lord can’t be dead. Surely it couldn’t be that easy.

You begin to walk down the hallway, suddenly burdened with the pressure of coming to terms with the supposed end of the war on your own. You mechanically make your way back to your office and, before long, you’re sitting at your desk. Admittedly, you can’t quite bring yourself to believe what the students were saying. Even if it were true, one unshakeable fact remains: Voldemort would not die so easily.

Little do you know, at that very moment, in Little Whinging, Surrey, young Harry Potter is placed on the Dursleys’ front porch. In a few hours, the very ordinary Dursleys will wake up to a very unordinary sight: a baby on their doorstep. For now, James and Lily’s son sleeps peacefully—with no knowledge of the horrible, gruesome events that took his parents from him.

Meanwhile, you’re left to the solitude of your office, an uncomfortable tension lingering in the air. An inexplicable shiver rolls down your spine; and it takes you a long time to fall asleep that night.

Eleven Years Later

You know very little about Harry Potter—or, “The Boy Who Lived,” as the Wizarding World has dubbed him. Admittedly, you are pretty uncomfortable with how easily the wizarding population seems to idolize the boy. He’s just a boy, after all. The story behind his parents’ death and Voldemort’s defeat is painted out to be a heroic feat for young Harry, but you can’t see past the tragic nature of it all. You seem to be in the minority in that regard.

These days, Harry Potter is somewhat difficult to track down. At least, that’s what you glean from your brief conversation with Albus Dumbledore regarding the boy’s Hogwarts letter. Apparently, several letters have been sent to the home of his Muggle relatives—but they have gone so far as to relocate to a shack on a deserted island to prevent Harry from receiving his letter. The thought is troublesome. Albus requests that you deliver the boy’s Hogwarts letter in person and take him to Diagon Alley—where you’re also supposed to check on a vault at Gringotts. You grit your teeth and sigh. You’re not usually the one who has to visit families on account of Hogwarts, but McGonagall doesn’t have the time to meet with Harry. You’re the second choice, apparently.

Your conversation with Albus then prompts you to find yourself standing outside the aforementioned seaside shack in the pouring rain. After a moment, you cast a Tempus charm, finding that it is now midnight on July 31st—reportedly, Harry’s birthday. You glance through the front window, only to find a thin, bruised boy sleeping on a shoddy hardwood floor. That must be Harry. His relatives are nowhere in sight—they must be occupying the other rooms. Somehow, you doubt that they are sleeping on the floor. The thought of Harry’s relatives treating him so callously fills you with irritation.

After a moment’s contemplation, you unlock the door with an Alohomora charm and find yourself on the business end of a rifle—courtesy of Harry’s uncle, Vernon Dursley. You huff a laugh at the Muggle’s pseudo-bravery; it fades quickly when you cast a spell that makes his rifle melt into a puddle on the floor. You immediately elect to ignore Potter’s relatives and instead address the boy directly. You tell him that he’s a wizard. Predictably, he doesn’t believe you.

“I’d be happy to explain further, Harry, but not in this company,” you say, with a glance at his relatives. His aunt and uncle are hovering awkwardly over their son, who is panting heavily after you momentarily cast an Ebublio Jinx to stop him from speaking. You hadn’t actually intended to drown him, of course, but his parents don’t seem to care about your intentions. You sigh and turn back to Harry. “I’ll stay here for the night. We’ll depart in the morning and I’ll show you to Diagon Alley, where you’ll get your school things.” Any further argument falls on determined ears as you cast an impromptu ward that prevents the Dursleys from stepping any closer to Harry and you.

You don’t sleep well that night—and Harry doesn’t either. It seems he doesn’t quite trust you yet—and, from what you can glean from his upbringing, you can’t entirely blame him. Instead of waiting until the morning, you decide to explain the circumstances of his birth and Voldemort’s return. It’s certainly a difficult conversation—you believe you’re far from the best person to be explaining all of that to him. You soon find yourself troubled by the fact that Harry didn’t know how his parents died; the Dursleys’ “car crash” story was beyond disrespectful.

“So Voldemort-” Harry starts, after you’ve explained the circumstances of his birth; Hogwarts and your role as the Ancient Runes professor; and anything else you thought pertinent to mention.

“It’s generally frowned upon to utter his name,” you interject instinctively. Harry blinks at you.

“Then why do you say it?” Indeed, Harry noticed that you hadn’t refrained from saying Voldemort’s name. You take a deep breath, still struggling to come to terms with the fact that you’re the one tasked with introducing the boy to the Wizarding World. Something about that doesn’t feel quite fair. You didn’t know James and Lily well—while you were in the same year at Hogwarts, you hadn’t been friends with them. Harry is still staring at you expectantly and you have to take a moment to refocus your thoughts.

“There is power in knowing someone’s name—recognizing their power—and choosing to acknowledge it,” you begin. “Avoiding the Dark Lord’s name only transfers accountability, and furthers the false notion that he is too powerful to be opposed by anyone.”

Harry is staring at you blankly and his eyes are almost saying “I have no idea what you just said.” You smile and reach out to ruffle his hair, before remembering that he likely wouldn’t appreciate the gesture. Your hand falls to your side again and Harry just blinks confusedly.

“You should get some sleep, Harry,” you suggest, changing the subject. “We have a long day ahead of us. I’ve cast a spell that prohibits any of your family members from entering this space, so you will be safe here.” Harry’s face is pinched and he stares at you for a moment, before shaking his head. You take a deep breath. He really should get some sleep—the two of you are going to have a lot to do, what with the travel to Diagon Alley and the shopping for school materials. He’s only eleven years old, so he needs the rest. You try to think of a way to assure Harry that he can trust you. Suddenly, you get an idea. “Here.” Harry stands at the object in his hand with thinly-veiled confusion and apprehension.

“It’s my wand,” you explain, “A wand is a wizard’s most powerful accessory, weapon, and aid. A wand is the extension of a wizard’s power; without it, they can cast very little magic.” You decide to negate the existence of wandless magic for now. That’s something you can explain later. “I’m giving my wand to you to show that I mean you no harm.”

“I advise you not to try using my wand, both because it will likely not work and because underage wizards aren’t allowed to cast magic. When we go to Diagon Alley tomorrow—or, I suppose, later today—we’ll get you your own wand.” You hate to overwhelm the boy with all that information, but you fear that he’ll be overwhelmed regardless. He was being raised as a Muggle, after all. Harry isn’t familiar with anything from the Wizarding World. You notice the wary expression on his face and wait for him to question you about the purpose of a wand, the spells a person can cast with one.

“You trust me with your wand?” Harry whispers quietly. His voice is unsure and, upon noticing this, your heart breaks a little.

“Yes,” you respond instinctively. You decide that more people need to show their trust and faith in the boy. Harry likely didn’t hear that often—if at all—during his childhood. The Dursleys treat him like he doesn’t exist. The thought makes your blood boil, but you resign yourself to thinking about that later. “Anyway, I’m going to try to sleep a bit. Feel free to do the same.” You conjure up two futons before reclining on the first one and closing your eyes.

Before you can drift off, you remember what you’ve forgotten. “Harry?” You ask. He hums. “Happy birthday.” You whisper before closing your eyes. Sleep comes quickly, preventing you from comprehending his response.

Hours later, your wristwatch goes off and jolts you from slumber. You blink and slowly push yourself up to a sitting position before chancing a glance at Harry. Harry is sleeping, thankfully. Your wand is in his hand. You’re not quite sure how to wake him. You settle for saying his name quietly and he wakes within a few seconds. The thought that he has to remain vigilant, even when he’s sleeping, is deeply troubling. In the short time you’ve spent in this clumsily built shack, you’ve learned a lot more about Harry Potter than you would’ve liked to know.

You didn’t originally foresee having to spend the night in the shack, so you didn’t bring food. You tell Harry that you’ll stop for food before shopping. Harry watches as you pack up your things. You almost urge him to do the same, before realizing that he has next to nothing, save for the clothes on his back. You grit your teeth. Did Albus know about the nature of Harry’s upbringing? The mere possibility sickens you. You push the thought aside. For now, getting the boy’s school supplies is the priority. [That, and the vault key the headmaster trusted you with. Then again, you’re not too happy with Albus at the moment, so you’re keen to let that slip to the back of your mind.]

“Dumbledore made us a Portkey; it’ll send us over to downtown London,” you explain, gathering the remainder of your things before beckoning for Harry to follow you. “A Portkey is an item that transports you to a predetermined location when you touch it.” You explain.

“Hold on, Harry,” you tell him once the two of you are situated outside of the shack. Harry stares at you for a moment, before you reach out and hold the worn old boot sitting on the ground. Harry looks extremely skeptical, but he grabs onto it and the world begins to swirl around you.

Moments later, you’re falling down to a wooded area on a side street. You take a deep breath and turn around to look for Harry, only to find him sprawled on the ground. You bite down a laugh and walk over to him, offering a hand. He takes your hand and you pull him to his feet. “Is it always that unpleasant?” Harry asks.

“No, you’ll get used to it,” you say reassuringly. You take a quick look at your surroundings, happy that you recognize where you are. You will only have to walk a few minutes to get to the cafe for breakfast. “Now, let’s grab something to eat.” You motion for Harry to follow you and he does so, albeit while still being shocked at his surroundings.

By the time the two of you make it to the cafe, the novelty seems to have worn off for Harry. You’re sure he must be starving. You settle into a small table in the corner of the space, pleased that it isn’t very busy. A waitress stops by your table and asks for drinks, but the two of you end up just having water. When she returns and asks about food, you encourage Harry to choose whatever he’d like. He eventually decides on a chocolate croissant and, when the food arrives, the two of you eat in silence.

After your pleasant breakfast, you pay the bill and head out with Harry. It doesn’t take you long to notice the stress that seems to string his shoulders together. The boy’s brows are furrowed. “You alright there, Harry?” You question. He flinches for a moment, as if torn out of his thoughts.

“You said we were going shopping, but-” Harry breaks off, looking embarrassed, “I don’t have any money.” Your heart sinks at the shame on his face. He shouldn’t be ashamed of anything. Even if he were to truly have no money, Hogwarts has a funding program. However, Harry does have the money his parents left him—and you’re quick to tell him that.

“Sure you do,” you remark. “You have access to everything your parents left you. It’s all in a vault in Gringotts.” At Harry’s questioning look, you explain. “Gringotts is a bank in Diagon Alley. It’s one of the biggest wizarding banks in the world. Your parents have an account there—Dumbledore instructed me to show it to you.” You were given explicit instruction not to give Harry the key, but you’re apprehensive about that. The Potter vault is rightfully Harry’s and no one else’s; even the headmaster can’t control that.

Before long, the two of you are standing a short distance from the Leaky Cauldron. You earn Harry’s permission to disillusion him—once you mention that he’s famous, he’s quick to take you up on the offer—and the two of you manage to make it to the courtyard within a few minutes. The disillusionment spell wears off and Harry murmurs his gratitude, before staring at the brick wall in front of you with thinly-veiled trepidation. You smile at him, before tapping the correct brick. The wall slowly falls away to reveal the twisting streets of Diagon Alley. Shops line the pavement and pedestrians walk about. There’s an energetic buzz in the air; evidently, you’re not the only one going shopping for school supplies.

You chance a sidelong glance at Harry, delighted to see an awestruck expression on his face. After giving him a few moments to look at it all, you reach down and extend an arm for him to hold. Diagon Alley is chaotic, even to someone familiar with it; you don’t want to lose Harry in the crowd. Harry takes your arm and the two of you walk along the cobbled path.

“We’d better go to Gringotts first,” you remark, breaking Harry out of his reverie. Harry nods, although his attention is quickly captured by all the shops and stores lining the street. You promise him that you’ll visit many of the different shops once you visit the bank first, which seems to appease him for the moment.

Harry’s jaw falls open once you both enter the entrance hall of Gringotts. Indeed, the building is rather luxurious—with long, elegant pillars and well-carved desks scattered around the space. The sound of quills against parchment fills the air. You allow Harry to follow behind you as you approach the service desk and ask for a goblin’s assistance. Within moments, a goblin by the name of Griphook is leading you towards a mine cart and closer to the vaults. You don’t realize that you’ve neglected to explain goblins and other magical beings to Harry until he’s asking you about them in a hushed voice.

You try your best to explain goblins, vampires, centaurs, werewolves, and more to Harry to the best of your ability. Funnily enough, Griphook occasionally chimes in with his own remarks. By the time Harry and you are finally at the vault, you’re certain that his head is likely spinning from all the information. You smile and motion for Harry to open the vault with the key you gave him. The look on his face as the vault door opens to reveal the Potter inheritance is priceless. You linger outside the door, but try to advise him to only take as much as needed. Harry eventually decides on taking a small amount. You assure him that it’ll be enough to last him the school year.

“We have one more stop to make, unfortunately,” you say to Harry once he’s done in the Potter vault. The boy looks at you in confusion. Griphook nods and, with a wave of his hand, the mine cart is shooting down the rails once more. You can tell Harry is resisting the urge to ask about the vault you’re going to. You decide to tell him that Dumbledore sent you to retrieve something. You don’t want him to think that you’re keeping secrets from him; unfortunately, you know you can’t tell him any more than that.

Upon arrival at the vault, you realize there’s nothing in it, save for a rather flimsy bag. You take the bag in hand and step out of the vault. Griphook sneers and mutters something under his breath, but you don’t hear it. You notice Harry warily glancing at the parcel in your hand as the cart makes its way back up to the lobby.

“Thank you for your help, Griphook,” you remark, once you are back in the entrance hall. You watch Harry nod and send him a small smile, to which Griphook rolls his eyes and walks away. You resist the urge to laugh at the visible fascination on Harry’s face. You don’t blame him, of course. He didn’t grow up in the Wizarding World, so everyone and everything he’s seeing today is entirely new to him.

After Gringotts, you decide to take Harry to the bookstore to pick up his textbooks. Harry gets all his required textbooks and a few other necessities. After that, the two of you head to The Apothecary for his Potions ingredients.

Next, the two of you walk into Ollivanders. Harry gets his wand, albeit after thirty minutes. Ollivander seems to be on the verge of having an aneurysm, but the confused frustration on his face quickly fades to wary fascination as Harry finally finds his wand. Ollivander explains that the wand had a brother—one other wand with the same core, a phoenix feather. The other wand belongs to He Who Must Not Be Named. Ollivander is about to continue speaking, but you cut him off and catch Harry’s eye, looking to the door. He understands and follows after you. The two of you leave Ollivanders and you take a deep breath. That was unexpected. Harry is regarding the wand in his hand with a mix of excitement and fear.

“Harry?” You blurt out before you can stop yourself. Harry looks up to you in surprise, before nodding hesitantly. You bite your lip and try to find the right words. “You’re not worried about the wand being a brother to Lord Voldemort’s, are you?”

Harry is silent. That is enough of an answer.

“It’s okay,” you remark. “You share the same core and nothing more. Voldemort’s wand is likely made with different wood and is a different length. Besides, you’re not anything like him, Harry.”

“Are you sure?” Harry murmurs, so quietly that you nearly miss it. It takes you a few seconds to recover from the emotional whiplash of that remark.

“Positive,” you remark, your eyes suddenly burning for some reason. This boy… He deserves far better.

And speaking of deserving better, it’s still Harry’s birthday. You get the feeling the Dursleys didn’t give him birthday presents. Harry has been rather pleasant company, and you feel that you should get something for him.“You probably didn’t have many pleasant birthdays with the Dursleys,” you start. Harry diplomatically keeps silent. “And, well, I’d like to get you something.” Harry blinks at you in disbelief. “I’m thinking I should buy you an owl; they’re really useful. How does that sound?”

“Brilliant.” Harry grins. You smile and lead him towards Eeylops Owl Emporium. Twenty minutes later, the two of you are exiting with a cage in hand. Inside, there’s a snowy white owl that chirps at Harry happily. The boy decides to name her Hedwig.

“I hate to leave you, Harry,” you remark some time later, once you’ve left Diagon Alley and are outside the Leaky Cauldron. “But, unfortunately, I have to return to the castle and give this parcel to Dumbledore.” Harry nods as if he’d expected something along these lines. You frown. Despite your short time with the boy, you feel rather uneasy with the thought of leaving him to his neglectful relatives for the duration of the summer. You suppose you don’t exactly have a choice, though. If only there were something you could do for him…

“I’m willing to bet those relatives of yours don’t know anything about magic,” you start. “So, they won’t know that underage magic is prohibited. I’m not encouraging you to perform any underage magic, but a gentle reminder of the fact that you can cast spells will probably be enough to prevent them from… bothering you.” You nearly slip up and say “harm” at the end there, but you manage to save yourself.

“Also, now that you have an owl…” You continue, “You’ll be able to send people letters. If you’d like, you can send me a few.”

“I’d like that,” Harry smiles.

“Great,” You summon a piece of parchment and quill, before quickly scrawling out your address. “Just send Hedwig here. I have an owl too, so you can expect a timely response.” Harry nods and pockets the piece of parchment. “Now, let’s get you back to your relatives.” You hold out an arm and Harry takes it.

Moments later, the two of you are standing on the sidewalk leading up to Number Four Privet Drive. Harry wobbles on his feet for a second before righting himself. You watch as Harry stands on the sidewalk, evidently not thrilled to be returning to his relatives. You can’t say you’re thrilled for him, either.

“Well, here we are,” you announce. You take a deep breath, wondering why you feel guilty for leaving the boy with his relatives. “I’ll see you soon, Harry. Enjoy the rest of your summer!”

“Thank you,” Harry responds with a small smile. You hold your wand up and wink at him. His hand moves to his pocket and the smile on his face widens. You decide to wait on the sidewalk as Harry paces up to the front door and rings the doorbell. For a long moment, you’re convinced that his relatives won’t let him into the house. Eventually, his aunt steps forward and quickly ushers him into the house, glancing to the side as if making sure no neighbors are watching. Her eyes meet yours and she bristles, quickly shutting the door behind her. You grit your teeth and stare at the house for a moment, before shaking your head and Apparating to the Hogwarts grounds.

endnotes: I can't believe I'm finally posting this!! My 71 page google docs draft is very thankful.

Despite that ^ I am not going to have any kind of update schedule. I'll post whenever I feel I've completed a chapter. No promises on when or how that will manifest.

I initially wanted to write Harry to be Sorted into Slytherin, but then I realized that would deviate too much and just end up making a whole murky mess of the timeline I already created. So... yeah.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed! I'm really looking forward to digging into this story. Mwhahahahahha.... AHHAAH... Whew, sorry. Had to get that out.

thanks for reading! <3

check out my other works, sorted by fandom.

general taglist: @its-ares @excusemeasibangmyheadonawall @kingkoku @the-ultimate-librarian @gayaristocrat @always-lying-to-you @moss4ev3r

friendly reminder that i don't give permission for my writing to be shared to other sites, stolen, copied, translated, or used in any way. thanks!

#defectivevillain #reader insert #hp x reader #hp reader #gn reader #Harry Potter and reader #Harry Potter x reader #tagging this as slash but it's absolutely not slash #I just need to get some visibility ndsjkfhdjkafsd #at least I'm honest about it #harry potter fanfiction #hp fanfic #fanfic #etc #transmasc reader #nb reader

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citrineandrosmarin · 1 month ago

Text

🦉Athena Masterpost🦉

This masterpost will cover very basic information with links to further posts or resources (otherwise it’s super long) and may be updated in future with extra sections. Basic bibliography at the end. I welcome you to share your UPG and resources in the comments - I won’t differentiate between mine and others’ UPG.

UPG = Unverified Personal Gnosis, SPG = Shared Personal Gnosis, H = Historically Inspired association

Last updated: 5 Feb 2025, added my ko-fi

Love this post? Consider thanking me with a small donation to my ko-fi!

Overview

Athena is the Hellenic goddess associated most commonly with wisdom, war, weaving, and in modern times, education and knowledge. She was a goddess who occupied both masculine and feminine roles in a highly patriarchal society, standing outside the societal binary. She is a fascinatingly variable and nuanced deity who has adapted and persisted in the mind of western society until this day. This masterpost is in dedication to her.

“Through our investigation of [Athena’s] role within the pantheon, she has emerged as a power of technology and creativity who promotes creativity and order, but with another side to her power, that of the storm bringer and warmonger.” -Susan Deacy

Athena, Goddess of…

Metis (Cunning)

Skill

Crafts

Invention

War

Civilization

Hero Mentorship

Education and Knowledge [SPG]

🐍Find out More!🐍

Symbols, Colors & Tarot Cards

Traditional: Owls (Specifically the Little Owl, Athene noctua), Snakes, Horses, Gulls, Crows (In Messenia and Boeotia, though elsewhere she was not fond of them), Olive trees, the Aegis, the Gorgoneion, Spindle, Spear, Helmet (Particularly with gryphons and/or sphinxes on it).

Other symbols: Spiders [Roman & SPG], Books and Scrolls [SPG], Pens or Quills [UPG]

Colors: Saffron/Yellow/Orange/Gold [H], Murex Purple [H], Hyacinth Blue [H], Red [H?], Bronze [H], Green [UPG]

🐍Find out More!🐍

Tarot Cards (All UPG/SPG of course): The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Chariot, Strength, Justice, The World, Knight of Pentacles, Queen & King of Swords, Queen & King of Wands

Name & Epithets:

Athena has some variations in name. The Attic form was “Athenaia”, which was contracted to “Athena,” the Ionian form was “Athenaie,” the Doric form “Athana,” in Aeolic, “Athanaa,” and in epic she was “Athenaie,” shortened to “Athene.”

A few common epithets:

Areia - Warlike

Ergane - The Worker

Glaukôpis - Bright/owl-eyed.

Pallas - Refers either to the myth of Athena’s childhood friend Pallas, or of the giant named Pallas whom she slayed.

Parthenos - Maiden

Polias - Of the City

Polymetis - Cunning in many ways

🐍Find out More!🐍

Offerings and Devotional Acts

This section was super long! Only including a few here but check out the link!

Gemstones & Metals - Gold, Lapis Lazuli, Onyx, Iolite

Plants - Olive, Ivy, Thyme, Rosemary, Cypress, Peppermint, Orange

Incense and Fragrances - Frankincense, Thyme, Bay Laurel, Amber, Myrrh, Dragon’s Blood, Orange, Citrus, Cedarwood, Cinnamon, Cypress, Bergamot & Sage

Food & Drink - Olives and Olive Oil, Honey, Milk, Cheese, Cereal Grains, Diluted Wine, Bread, Baked Goods, Fish, Meat, Fruit/Fruit Juice, Water

🐍Find out More!🐍

Athenian Festivals

Athena’s main festivals were the Panathenaia, Khalkeia, Kallynteria and Plynteria. It is up to individuals to decide if and how to include these celebrations in their practice.

Panathenaia: The biggest festival for Athena taking place annually, but with a bigger version every fourth year. Mainly a festival with athletic, poetry and musical competitions.

Kallynteria and Plynteria: Sacred days centered around cleaning.

Arrephoria: A mysterious festival that took place at night and is theorized to have been a fertility rite.

Khalkeia: The festival of artisans, which celebrated Athena and Hephaestus.

🐍Find out More!🐍

Family & Connections

Parents: Athena’s father was Zeus (Except in Libya, where she was known as Poseidon’s daughter) and her mother was the personification of wisdom, Metis. In some sources she was raised by Triton alongside his daughter, Pallas.

Children: Athena had no children as a virgin goddess but she did adopt and raise Erichthonius, who later became king of Athens.

Retinue: Athena was often associated closely with Nike (Victory), an example being the famed statue Athena Parthenos, which held Nike in its hand. The aegis which Athena wore also contained the personifications Phobos (Fear), Eris (Strife), Alke (Strength) and Ikoe (Panic) as noted in the Iliad.

Companions: Pallas is perhaps the most famous of Athene’s companions, as the two girls grew up together until Athena accidentally killed Pallas and afterwards took on her name as an epithet. However, in the Homeric Hymn 2 to Demeter it is shown that Athena, Artemis and Persephone spent time together and were playing and collecting flowers before Persephone was abducted. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus claims they were also raised together.

Heroes: Athena was a mentor of Heroes and had a hand in assisting heroes such as Herakles, Odysseus and Diomedes, but also Achilles, Bellerophon, Perseus, Theseus, Kadmos and Tydeus.

🐍More of my Info Posts!🐍

Athena and Childbirth

Athena Hippia / Khalinitis

On The Nature of Metis - Excerpts from “Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society”

On the comparison of Athena and Ares

Athena and Herakles: Excerpt from Susan Deacy’s book

Myth of Athena's Birth

🐍Extra Links🐍

Prayers, Hymns and Poems

Homeric Hymn to Athena 11 [Tumblr - Mine]

Homeric Hymn to Athena 28 [Tumblr - Mine]

Poem for Athena [Tumblr - Mine]

Adaptation of the Orphic Hymn [Tumblr - wisdomweaver]

Ode to Athena: A Birth of Wisdom [Tumblr - panjackdaw]

Prayer to Athena [Tumblr - rue-with-the-tarot]

Hymn to Athena [Tumblr - entricacies]

Praise to Athena [Tumblr - piristephes]

Prayer for Clarity and Sound Intuition [Tumblr - crimsonsongbird]

Prayer for Athena [Tumblr - hisfleur]

Prayer for Athena [Tumblr - evilios]

Prayer to Athena [Tumblr - ranger5000]

Chin Up - A Message From Athena [Tumblr - crimsonsongbird]

Assortment of Prayers [Website - greekpagan.com]

Battle Armor Poem [Tumblr - crimsonsongbird]

A Prayer to the Wise Short Poem [Tumblr - crimsonsongbird]

Learning Short Poem [Tumblr - Mine]

Additional Links

Theoi.com [Website]

Iliad - Athena dons the Aegis [Tumblr - Mine]

Reconstruction of Athena Parthenos statue’s colors [Youtube - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]

Bathing of Athena in Argos [Tumblr - verdantlyviolet]

Subtle Athena Worship [Tumblr - khaire-traveler]

A response to the “Athena is a victim blamer and hates women” crowd [Tumblr - rightwheretheyleftme]

khaire-traveler on their snow leopard UPG [Tumblr]

Parthenon 3D Reconstruction [Youtube - Ancient Athens 3D]

Parthenon in AC: Odyssey [Youtube - Invicta]

Bibliography

Barber, E.J.W. - The peplos of Athena

Burkert, Walter - Greek Religion

Deacy, Susan - Athena

Deacy, Susan & Villing, Alexandra - Athena in the Classical World

Deacy, Susan & Villing, Alexandra - What was the colour of Athena's Aegis?

Detienne, Marcel & Vernant, Jean-Pierre - Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society

Drees, Ludwig - Olympia

Larson, Jennifer - Ancient Greek Cults

Mansfield, John Magruder - The Robe Of Athena And The Panathenaic "Peplos"

Maurizio, Lisa - Classical Mythology in Context

Mikalson, Jon D. - Ancient Greek Religion

Ogden, Daniel - A Companion to Greek Religion

Theoi.com

#Athena Masterpost #Athena #Athena Deity #Athena Goddess #Athena Worship #Helpol #hellenic polytheism #hellenic polytheist #hellenic paganism #paganblr #hellenic pagan #paganism #athena devotion

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visionsofcarnality · 7 months ago

Note

Ahhh thankyou for accepting the nightwing request, I'm so excited!! 💙💙

Dude the angst in this one spoke to me Im so excited.

It Will Come Back. D. Grayson.

“Honey, don’t feed me. I will come back.”

Synopsis: In a fight with a Court of Owls’ Talon, Nightwing is exposed to the weaponized Alice Tetch Virus (Hugo Strange weaponized strain.) This preys on his fears of being unable to protect his partner… Who comes face to face with a darker version of her lover’s alter-ego…

Warnings: Hallucinations (Auditory, tactile, and visual.), kidnapping, restraints, blood contagions, needles, injuries. Mention of mild gore and violence. Toxic mindset, personality alteration. Established relationship, female partner/reader. No use of Y/N.

(mdni below the cut, i am beyond dead serious)

Dick made it as far as three blocks from the Talon’s dead body before he started to hear things.

“You need to seriously consider what being in a committed relationship means for people like us.” Bruce slammed his hand down on the table tiredly, running the other through his inky hair, the strands showing a few hairs of grey amidst the darkness. “Every second you spend with her amplifies the danger she’s in.”

“You think I don’t know that…” He whispered, replaying the past week’s conversation as he leaned against an alley wall, clutching his head.

“She’s not safe. She never will be as long as she’s in your life.” The sound of the door slamming as he remembered he’d left the room after that particular remark.

He opened his eyes and tried to stand, blood rushing through his body at unnatural speeds. He looked down at his hands and ripped one glove off, breath stuttering as he noticed red veins climbing his skin.

“No…” He whispered. “No, no, no-“ He pulled his glove back on hastily, whipping around when he caught a glimpse of gold and green.

“Get the fuck away from me!” He hissed, glaring after the invisible attacker.

“Dick…” A soft, feminine voice. “That’s not what you really want.” A tall woman in a red, gold and green outfit appeared from the shadows, blood dripping down the side of her head just like the last time he’d seen her.

“Mom-“ He reached out a hand briefly before pulling it back. “What are- You’re dead.”

“Whose fault is that, Dick…” She laughed softly. “You think changing your uniform and your name makes you any less of my little flightless Robin.” Her soothing tone was so at odds with her words.

“Stop.” He begged, covering his ears, screaming aloud when blood suddenly spurted from her skull near her ear and a large, domed piece of bone fell from her head, pulling her scalp and some of her hair with it, leaving one side of her head cracked open like an acorn.

“Do you know what it feels like to fall, Dick?” She murmured dangerously, lifting her bloodied hand and touching his cheek, the contact hot, wet, and sticky. “To hit the ground with only your body to take the fall?”

“Stop it!” He shoved her back, her spin colliding with the opposite wall of the alley, her body splaying and cracking exactly how it had looked in the crime scene photos. How it had looked in his memories. The blood pooled on the wall as though she was lying flat, her body and the liquid defying gravity. Chunks of gray matter littered the wall.

Panting, eyes flitting about wildly, sprinting away from the alley and leaping to one of the lower rooftops, hauling himself above the streets.

“You think you can protect her, but you’re wrong!” That was Bruce now, standing in his path as he sprinted across the gravel rooftop. He skidded to a halt to avoid the collision, coming nose to nose with the taller man. “Everything you touch dies!” He hissed, and when Dick looked down he was clutching a familiar bloodied Robin uniform in his white knuckles.

“Your mother!” Bruce shouted, “Your father! Jason!” He lifted the blood stained uniform, dangling it in front of his face.

“It’s not my fault!” Dick cried desperately, closing his eyes only to open them and see that there was nobody there.

He had to get home. He had to get home. He had to make sure you were safe. His thoughts ran wild, preparing for any twisted and violent scene he’d come across when he entered your apartment.

You screamed when a body tumbled through your bedroom window, scrambling from your bed and backing against the wall.

“Baby-“ The man called but you didn’t wait, spinning to sprint for the door before two wide hands caught you by the arm and the torso, tugging you back against a hard body before a hand covered your mouth and nose.

“Don’t worry. I’m gonna keep you safe.” The rough voice spoke hotly against your ear, your arms and legs thrashing violently as he cut off your oxygen. “You’re gonna be safe. Nothing will hurt you. Ever.” Your fight started to give and your eyes fluttered closed, your chest aching from the lack of oxygen… Then you were gone to sleep.

You woke next with your head on something hard, groaning at the headache. You were cold. And damp… Where the hell were you? Opening your eyes wider you looked around, spotting the steep, water-slick walls. The ceiling arching high above your head. A subway station. Abandoned by the looks of it.

“Don’t worry.” A dark voice called from the shadows, causing you to scramble to your feet and back away, tears pricking in your eyes. “You’re safe now.”

“You can’t keep me here.” You spoke shakily, hands rubbing your arms against the cold and dampness. “People will come looking for me.” Your voice shook with uncertainty, watching the stranger’s head tilt in the low light, the movement slow and unsettling. “They’ll arrest you.” You swallowed, hard. “My boyfriend is a detective he finds missing people every week.” You tried to force more bravado into your voice than you felt, especially as the stranger slowly unfolded to his feet, moving in a strange, unnatural way like some demon.

He stepped out of the shadows and as the light spilled across his face you cried out weakly, putting one hand to your face in shock.

“Nobody’s gonna come looking for you, baby.” He spoke, his voice stranger and darker than you’d ever heard it. “You’re safe here.”

“Dick-“ You broke off, noting the prominent red veins on the whites of his eyes and tracking up his neck to his cheek, splaying across his face like a bloodied cobweb. “What are you-“

“I’ve got to keep you safe.” He hissed, getting closer even as you tried to back away, fear poignant in your body language. “No one will be able to find you here.”

Tears fell down your cheeks as he backed you against the wall, turning your head as he dipped his to get into your space, his hot breath, once welcome and comforting, now feeling like a threat.

“I’m doing this for you.” He insisted, gripping your cheek to turn your face harshly, his hold on your jaw bruising. “Can’t you see that? Everything I do, it’s always for you!” He was shouting now, triggering a low cry of shock and fear, your knees buckling as you slid down the wall, sinking to the floor and clutching your legs fearfully.

“Don’t!” He screamed, gripping his hair with one hand and stepping back, reeling. “You don’t get it-“ He sighed heavily, shaking his head back and forth and lifting a hand erratically before he turned out of nowhere to scream at the wall.

“Shut the fuck up!” He screeched, pointing at the empty space. “All of you! I need to fucking think!” He gripped his head in both hands.”

You watched his outburst through your tears, your whole body trembling in fear, scared of what he was capable of… You’d never seen him like this. You thought you’d known him but… maybe he was this all along. Maybe it was all a front. You didn’t want to think like that, but the man in front of you was not the one you’d come to love.

There was something seriously wrong with him.

“Dick, just-“ You swallowed hard, trying to put on a gentle tone. “Let’s take a walk, let’s go up to the street, we can go talk about this.” You tried to think of a way to convince him. “It’s cold down here, Dick, I’ll get sick.”

“No!” He roared, whipping back to you and throwing a knife in your direction. You screamed in terror, arms coming up to protect your head. Bit the knife landed next to you, not hurting you, but discouraging you from moving. “It’s not fucking safe up there? Don’t you get it? Nowhere is safe! You’re not safe unless you’re here!” He ranted, arms flailing in large gestures as he spoke. “With me! I’m the only one you can trust!” He insisted, desperation lacing his dangerous tone. “Me! I’m the one who keeps you safe!”

“Nightwing.” Another voice joined the cacophony. Both your heads turning in the direction of the deep timbre of the newcomer. Like an oil spill out of the shadow a dark cowl appeared, a long, shadowy cape following. The flash of a black symbol on dark gray armor.

The Batman…

“Stop this.” He said flatly, casually strolling between you two, slowly, trying not to trigger any sudden movements. “You’re not yourself.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Dick- Nightwing; shouted. “I told you to go away already!” He surged forward, some kind of long baton appearing in his hand, crackling with electricity as he lifted his arm in a deadly swing. The Batman dodged him, ducking behind the lithe man and locking his arms below his armpits, effectively putting him in a full nelson with one, thick arm.

“I’m not a hallucination, Dick.” The Batman spoke lowly. “You have to stop this. This is the virus, not you.” He jerked Dick’s head towards your cowering form, still sobbing quietly, terrified to move. “Look at her. You’re scaring her.” The Batman took the moment of hesitation from Dick as he stared at you to shove a thick syringe into his exposed neck.

Dick howled in rage, twisting and fighting in the Batman’s hold before falling limp, head dropping forward. The Batman restrained him at his hands and ankles on the ground before approaching you. “He’s unconscious. Unharmed.” He soothed, crouching to lift you to your feet. “I’m sorry this happened to you.” He apologized, unhooking his cape from his armor and draping it over your shoulders against the cold. “He isn’t himself. He was infected with a virus that caused him to act like this.” When your gaze wandered past him to Dick’s slumped form. He tipped your head away from the sight, far gentler than Dick had been. You’d no doubt be sporting a bruise by the morning. “That wasn’t him.” He spoke softly.

“Will he be…” You swallowed hard. “Will he be… him again?” You asked, wiping hasty tears across your cheeks even as more joined them.

“Yes.” The Batman said solemnly, turning to look at Dick. “For him… This will all have been a cruel dream.” He turned towards you again, “For you… It will be harder to go back. I can keep him away for a few days. Give you some space.” You nodded fervently, whimpering softly as your tears began anew.

“Red Robin, an associate of mine, is coming to make sure you get home safe.”

“I need to get to a hotel…” You spoke absently. “I can’t… I can’t go back home tonight.”

The Batman nodded. “He’ll leave you at a Hyatt. The room will be paid for for a week. Your clothes and any belongings you need will be dropped at the address.” He turned away, strolling back to you Dick. “Tell my associate what you need. We will make sure you have it.”

You stood there, wrapped in the most notorious vigilante in Gotham’s cape, watching him haul your unconscious boyfriend over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. You didn’t remember telling Red Robin what you needed, or him finding a way to get you set up in a hotel for the week.

You only remembered collapsing on the hotel mattress, still wrapped in the borrowed cape.

And crying yourself to sleep.

#dick grayson #💙 anon #💙ANON I HOPE I DID YOU JUSTICE #repost if you love dick #dick grayson x y/n #dick grayson x female!reader #dick grayson x you #dick grayson my beloved #dick grayson x oc #dick grayson x reader #nightwing #Tetch Virus bullshit #Rare Bruce W.#Small Tim Drake cameo

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that-ari-blogger · 17 days ago

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Father, Help (Thanks To Them)

Context is everything. In the case of Thanks To Them and more broadly the third season of The Owl House as a whole, this is the production history.

Put simply, there was a third season, then there wasn’t, then there was again but under the proviso that there was less of it. As a result, thanks to them is fourty four minutes long and contains enough material for about four hours of story. This is a dense episode of television. A mini picture in its own right.

Which adds a bit of complexity to my blog. I take things one episode at a time and have strategically chosen series with short episodes because my feeble ADHD mind is equivalent to a Tuna with a ball of string in everything but name. So, this post is going to be in three sections, because there is a lot to talk about.

Let me explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD: (The Owl House, Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, Critical Role: Campaign 2, The Odyssey)

Part 1: "Within every man and woman a secret is hidden, and as a photographer, it is my task to reveal it if I can."

Thanks To Them was released more than two years ago, and in that time, one element has stuck with me more than any other. Not something substantial or moralistic or showstopping. A single element that confused me. Willow’s Camera.

You would think that this is an insignificant little detail, but this episode doesn’t have those. Luz schoolbook is the Odyssey, the Giraffes are exiles, Cosmic frontier is used as a metaphor so blatant the characters within pick up on it. Everything in this episode has at least symbolic relevance to the story at hand or is a callback to previous moments. Everything, except the camera.

If you squint, the camera might be a reference to Understanding Willow, but as I discussed in my post about that episode, that isn’t about Willow, it’s about Amity and her guilt. The photographic memories don’t come up again in relation to these two, and this version of that metaphor doesn’t directly interact with Amity at all.

Nonetheless, it’s a good place to start.

That episode establishes a clear metaphor for the photograph. Memory. As such, the imagery can be examined here through the same framework.

I think it is crucial to start at the beginning, the first photograph that Willow takes.

Joy and love in the face of hopelessness. Absurdity, comradery, companionship.

It’s a tender moment. The abrasively upbeat intro music dials back for a second to show the rain. Simple to us, but in the boiling isles, rain is terrifying. The rules are different here, and our characters are showing joy in the moment. Not everything here is trying to kill them, not everything here is antagonistic, and if you don’t celebrate the little moments of good, you will only remember the bad. Hope keeps you going, light do not faulter.

This isn’t the first time photographs have been shown in this episode, it’s just the first time that Willow has taken them. If we look back a few moments, we see Luz’ coming out presentation, and we see this:

Again, joy and friendship and love. The photographs ground our characters and keep them moored in reality.

That’s why the intro cinematic is so janky. It doesn’t fit with the tone because life goes on anyway. You aren’t going to get anywhere sitting on your laurels. You have to look on the bright side. Sometimes that is the simple joys of companionship and laughter, sometimes that is the spark that will get you home. Both have their place.

Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous is a series that I love and the next on the chopping block when I finish The Owl House. It is a series that thrives on dissonance, and part of that is its tone. JWCC operates on a sliding scale of humour and drama, and other than the first episode, never misses out on either. It is a series about balance, hope, and human horror.

The reason I bring it up, is because during the last episode of season three, the characters reminisce about times gone by, and one of them does this:

“Now smile, you two!”

This is Sammy, a character who exists to tacitly disprove every single statement any bad guy makes. She doesn’t mess with philosophy personally, but she is undoubtedly the heart of the group. Both emotional and moral.

Sammy has also had possibly the worst time of the main cast. The argument could be made for Yaz, but Sammy got blackmailed, shot at, bitten and stung more than anyone else in the series, and was mortally wounded four episodes prior to this scene. But when she is taking photographs, she remains upbeat.

“Do you really want my mental picture of this place to have you with your eyes closed?”

Treasure the good times, especially when they are dwindling.

Light, do not faulter.

I started this section with a quote from Yousuf Karsh, who, as implied by said quote, was a photographer. Born 1908 in what would become Turkey, he immigrated to Syria and then Canada. I guarantee you that you have seen at least one of his works before.

This is Yousuf Karsh. Or more accurately, a photograph taken by Yousuf Karsh of Albert Einstein, and I want you to take note of the defining characteristic of this piece.

Light.

Yousuf Karsh’s understanding of light was incredible. He used it to guide the eye and reveal, but he also used it for detail. In monochrome, the only contrast is between different shades. Everything is affected by the light, it controls how you see the image.

But the darkness, that was key. Darkness exists as contrast. For the light to be special, it must have something to be shined upon.

“Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.”

But there is something else. Photographs are a history. They say that we are here, they provide evidence.

In the context of The Owl House, which was cancelled for (in my opinion) suspicious reasons, this is evidence of queer folk. We have always been here and are here, even when people try to pretend we are a fad or a social experiment. We are history, and history is still happening.

Yousef Karsh died in 2002.

Shrek and Monsters, Inc. both came out in 2001. Yousef Karsh and Mike Wazowski existed at the same time.

This man photographed Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemmingway, Martin Luther King Jr, Marian Anderson, and George Bernard Shaw, amongst many others. All of whom shaped modern life but are icons of history gone by. The eyes that shone a light on them were still seeing that light in 2002.

Willow’s photography exists to show that life kept moving, and continued to do so. But it shows what she chose to remember. Small moments of joy and light.

Light, do not faulter.

Part 2: “It is a unique and exquisite complication, family.”

Thanks to Them doesn’t start with Thanks To Them. It starts with the end of King’s Tide.

Those opening shots are mostly a replica of the final moments of the previous season. We miss the zoom out to the rain and Luz opening and reopening the door, but other than that, these are those shots.

The first piece of new story that we get in season three of The Owl House is this:

I would like to use this to frame a conversation about family as it is presented in this series.

Not every story has a moral, and that isn’t a bad thing, but The Owl House does have a thing or two to say about what makes a good family unit. In this context, good family is defined by acceptance, bad is control. Empathy is paramount.

For example, Camilla’s first response upon her daughter’s return isn’t victorious or reprimanding, there aren’t any thoughts about what will happen next, it is immediate “my child is in pain, I must do something about that.” There’s that empathy.

Acceptance is letting people be who they are, control is the opposite of that. But this isn’t a binary, and Camilla spends this episode and the series at large moving along the spectrum.

Camilla’s first response to the kids is to seek understanding, and it’s clear that she is always far from her comfort zone in this episode. Her response to Bellos is bafflement, she reacts to the summary of the previous season with the exact same energy as anyone having a show explained to them, and she has a clearly overstuffed book explaining how to keep track of the kids.

I will get back to that book.

But she was introduced in season one as a controlling figure. She was the antagonistic parent who inadvertently kickstarted the series. Summer camp.

Not counting Grom, because that was Luz’ fear, Camilla’s next appearance was in season two, when she evolved significantly as a character.

I wrote a post on that episode, and in it I mentioned the dichotomy of this character. She was someone who was fundamentally kind and accepting, but who was antagonistic to Luz because of the perceived lack of that kindness.

Camilla also inspired in Luz’ guilt character development in the previous season. She begged Luz to stay back because she blamed herself for sending Luz away. Although, looking closely, Luz’ memory of that is faulty.

Nevertheless, Camilla controls Luz, intentionally or not, and that control has a negative impact on her.

Then we get the dream, which establishes Camilla’s angle, and it’s the same as her emotion now. Uncertainty.

Camilla was out of her depth, so she made decisions based off advice she was given by people who refused to understand. She has seen the consequences of that, so she changed. She learned.

Knowledge and ignorance are another key theme in the series. Camilla plays into that here.

Interestingly, this is where she contrasts with Eda. Both are maternal figures for kids from a different world. But Eda’s journey was a downward spiral brought about by the stress of the end of the world. Her strategy for finding food for Luz was sticking with what she knew, Camilla has evidently been experimenting and learning, as shown by the number of notes in the book.

Eda wilfully stayed with what she thought she knew out of a desire for safety. Camilla sought to understand fully.

Pictured here, a man who believes he can do no wrong because he is human. Look at the eyes though. He has so many eyes, but he can't see what is directly in front of him. He cannot see that he is wrong.

Contrast Camilla with the two main negative parental figures in the series, Odalia and Bellos.

Odalia isn’t in this episode, so I won’t dwell on her too much. But her main motif in the show is a desire to control and command her children and husband. She wants to be in charge and is used to power, so she limits Amity’s choices down to those she may spend time with.

Symbolically, this is expressed through Amity’s choice of hair colour and the fact that Odalia has such a large say in this.

In addition, Alador’s path to redemption starts not just when he stops being complicit in Odalia’s behaviour, but when he starts making an effort to understand and empathise with his daughter.

Bellos on the other hand, possesses his child.

For all intents and purposes, Bellos is Hunter’s parental figure. They have a familial relationship that is nominally uncle and nephew but gets more complicated when you factor in Grimwalkers and generations thereof. So, for the sake of argument, Bellos is Hunter’s parent.

I don’t believe it is controversial, however, to say that Bellos is a pretty awful parental figure. He is blatantly cruel and manipulative. He’s also just bad at it in relation to competence.

The control thing is obvious. He literally possesses his child, taking their body and using it as a tool. He literally overrides Hunter’s freedom over his own actions and changes the boys’ appearance to do so.

“You know what I'd like, Belos? I'd like to leave the Emperor's Coven and never step foot in that throne room again. I'd like to study wild magic, and learn how to carve palismen. I'd like to attend Hexside as a regular student and play flyer derby with my friends. But most of all, I'd like to make sure you never hurt anyone again!”

There are three things to note here.

First, Hunter expresses his rebellion against Bellos by asserting his will. He is expressing that he is, in fact, a person.

Bellos exists on dehumanisation; his power is a claim that free-will doesn’t exist. Hunter’s way of breaking free from this is simply pointing out that free will does exist. Absolute statements crumble with a single outlier.

Which is another theme of the series, the dichotomy of nuance and simplicity. Bellos represents simplicity, Luz is the personification of nuance. I will come back to this.

Second, this is a weirdly soldierlike way of dealing with the problem. Even weirder, it evokes fairytale and mythological imagery.

“I miss knowing who I’m supposed to be.”

Hunter is a character who is almost always scared out of his wits, but he is an impeccable tool in Bellos’ arsenal because of his ability to focus. Repeatedly, when Hunter is given a single objective, he blocks out any fear and gets that objective done. He is efficient, and competent, when he knows what he is doing.

Eclipse Lake and Hollow Mind show Hunter at his frailest because he doesn’t know what he is supposed to be doing. He has relied upon others telling him what to do for so long, that an unclear objective leaves him floundering.

But in both cases, he shows his own resourcefulness and strategy for adapting. He finds a small-scale objective. He is struggling to win the favour of the Emperor, so he finds a thing that the Emperor needs and objectively clears every obstacle through guile or brute force to claim that. He goes on the run from the Emperor and is shown to have turned that focus to surviving and finding food in Labyrinth Runners.

In Thanks To Them, Hunter reutilises that strategy. He decides upon a goal and shuts out everything else. He finds his coping mechanism and weaponises it. He wants to stop Bellos from hurting people, so he removes Bellos’ goal from the equation. It is that drive that frees him.

But, who gave Hunter the skillset to accomplish this feat? Who trained the child as a soldier? Who taught him to shut out the fear?

Bellos. The Emperor created his own weakness.

In world Mythology, this is a common trope. King (or parent of some kind) hears prophecy of doom surrounding his close relative and, in his attempts to avoid said prophecy, accidentally gives the relative the exact skillset and motivation to defeat him.

Here, that descendant is Hunter, who is a clone. Every clone before Hunter has rebelled against Bellos, but he keeps going because… maybe this one will be different? Like I said, Bellos ain’t good at this.

Bellos created someone he knew would one day rebel, then gave that person the exact skillset necessary to subvert his magic. Then he abused the kid and forced him to try and escape.

Although, there is a cruel twist to the formula. Bellos, when he realises that Hunter is winning, decides to take the both out together. He won’t let Hunter escape, even when he does. It is cruelty, and it’s needless.

Bellos has shown that he is cunning. He could have tricked Hunter into opening the portal or he could have WAITED FIVE MINUTES FOR LUZ AND CO TO DO IT FOR HIM.

But no. Once again, Bellos chose to be cruel, and it nearly got him killed.

Nearly.

The third element of this sequence is how quickly Camilla reacts, and how similar that reaction is to Hunter's. She has been out of her depth, but she sees something she can do, and she dives in. Camilla doesn’t understand magic, but she understands drowning and how to save a kid from that.

Bellos tries to kill Hunter, and Camilla stops that. The good parent prevails.

But family isn’t just about parents and children. Hunter has a found family in Flapjack, who also sacrifices himself for the boy, as well as in Luz and co.

“Gonna make sure you're safe too, Hunter. You're family now.”

I want to point out that, as I have stated, Hunter’s confidence doesn’t come from the mask, it comes from having a clear task ahead of him.

More importantly, however, is the fact that this scene breaks him. Family looks after each other, and Hunter is receiving that love and compassion and understanding from those in the Hex Squad.

He has a kindred soul with Gus, he has a sibling dynamic with Luz, and he has the romantic connection to Willow. He has people who show him empathy, and behind an expressionless mask, we see him cry.

The title of this section comes from the second campaign of Critical Role. Specifically, the episode entitled The Threads Converge.

The episode builds up to a meeting between one of the protagonists, Jester, and her mysterious father figure, known as the Gentleman.

To be clear, the two have met prior, but have been unaware of their connection. Then the information was made available to both of them, and tension ensues.

Jester runs the situation through with her friends repeatedly, scenario after scenario, unsatisfied with all of them, while the Gentleman avoids the subject entirely.

Until who should step up to the plate but Caduceus Clay, humble cleric and wise man.

“My family had to... I don't know where they are, and I don't know if they're okay, and it's been a long time, and there is a part of me that is very lonely.”

You won’t always have your family. So, treasure them while you have them.

The conversation revolves around a rare tea only found in one place. It’s delightful and a thing to share with people, and the only place it can be found is the Blooming Grove.

On the one hand, the Blooming Grove is a graveyard, and the tea comes from flowers on those graves, perhaps hinting at hindsight as a blessing and a curse.

On the other hand, the rarest of tea comes from a place Caduceus calls home. It comes from the symbol of his family, and they have run out, maybe soon, so too will the tea.

Again, treasure your family.

In The Owl House, family is explicitly not a guarantee. The Hex Squad is trying to get home, but they don’t know if they will. But also, they don’t know if there will be a way to keep getting through. Either Luz will have to say goodbye to them, or to Camilla.

Part 3: “My Name Is Nobody”

The book that Luz is reading in school is The Odyssey, and it is important to me that she misses the point entirely. Yes, yes, it’s technically called The Plight of the Mariner. But come on. It’s The Odyssey.

The Odyssey is the journey of an eejit who is the smartest man in Ancient Greece by process of elimination. I say the smartest “man” because there are women in the story who I would argue are more intelligent than him, and there aren’t any non-binary friends in the book to my knowledge.

Nevertheless, Odysseus is a trickster trying to get home after he made the brilliant decision to directly annoy the god of the sea while firmly in that gods domain, dooming him to arrive ten years late.

The point I am making is that Odysseus is a betrayer who makes mistakes constantly and yet is still able to come home. He is a doofus, but he learns, and he evolves, and he finds a way to succeed.

Luz’s reading of the story is a little different.

“Who cares about the ripple effects? He was just a pawn in someone else’s game. And he was never smart enough to realise it. If his friends and family knew about his mission, they’d know that their lives would have never been in danger if it weren’t for him. They should hate his guts, and it would have been better if he literally never existed!”

Clearly, The Plight of the Mariner is slightly different to the Odyssey. The Odyssey doesn’t have a clear mission given by an external force. But it does have a few other things.

I find it very funny that the chalkboard has the themes of the story written on it. “Fate vs free will. The _ of the hero”. I know authors who use subtext, and they are all cowards.

Interestingly, the blank left by the teacher’s head. It’s a pretty key part of the sentence. The something of a hero. The peril? The destiny? The choice? The path? All different meanings of the book.

Which leads to the open ended nature of Luz’ story here in her mind. There is a dichotomy of free will and fate, and she has been conned, but the meaning is clear. The teacher has written up the thesis for everyone to see.

Luz is just obscured by where she is sitting. Her view of the theme is changed by her perspective.

This part of The Owl House is the most traditional when it comes to storytelling. It is the darkest hour, so it leans really hard into the depressive feeling.

A large part of The Owl House is that sense of freedom and expression. It deals with archetypal storytelling through subversion. Wizarding school? Witch school. Rival? Love interest. Protagonist? Bisexual.

I have stated before that every character has an analogue in the Harold Potts books. Willow is the troubled student and friend who specialises in plant magic, Eda is the mentour inflicted with therianthropy, etc. The only character who doesn’t have an analogue is Luz.

Luz is fundamentally her own person, that is her greatest strength. She is someone who cannot easily be defined.

So, in her darkest hour, Luz becomes like everybody else. She even wears a costume that literally dresses her up as another person. She leans into the depression, she gets all sullen and declares that she knows what must be done before the scene cuts away. These are stereotypical darkest hour beats, and they are being played straight. It’s jarring. We have seen this story before.

Luz feels like she is a traitor. She helped Bellos, she was conned, she got manipulated. It is her fault for being weak. Bellos does his best to reenforce this when he confronts her at the end of the episode.

“See, this is why you're so useful, Luz. You're so desperate to help people, you even helped me meet the Collector.”

I want to stress something. Being kind is not a flaw. Luz got conned, the emphasis is on the got. Someone conned her. Someone manipulated her. Someone very specific.

Bellos is deflecting the blame here, and we have seen him do this before with significant success in Eda.

Eda blamed herself for getting cursed and getting captured and exiled, instead of the people who cursed her and captured her and exiled her. It is a shifting of the blame from the abuser to the victim. How dare you stand where I was swinging my fist.

Camilla kept the snakeskin, specifically storying it in the form of an ouroboros. Symbolically, this is rebirth and renewal, which corresponds with Luz' take on the conversation.

“Mom, why aren’t you mad at me?” “Oh baby. Come here. I’ve been terrified, sure. But believe it or not, I do understand what it’s like to want to run away.” “I’m so sorry.” “But the point is, you came home, and everything is okay now.” “But it’s not. It’s my fault that everyone’s trapped here. And I don’t even know if King and Eda are okay. I wanted you to meet them so bad. But I keep messing up.” “Hey, everyone makes mistakes. What matters is that you learn from them.”

Luz misinterprets this conversation as well, taking the “learn from mistakes” to mean “stop trying”, which is not at all what Camilla was saying.

But also… you don’t think there was anyone else more responsible than you for what happened? Not one person who’s direct fault it might be for everyone getting trapped in the human realm?

Bellos is right there, girl, you can just point at him.

There’s a distinct sense of powerlessness on display here. Bellos has convinced everyone that they are responsible for their own hardship and that nothing they can do will escape that. But he is wrong, and not to be trusted.

Odysseus gets home.

Luz can find a way to get back to the Boiling Isles, and her friends are finding that as we speak. Willow has been taking photographs of all the happy moments, but Luz is too worried about what they might say when they find out she got tricked.

“I couldn't hate you, Luz. The fact that you still stand up for us means enough to me.”

Amity doesn’t care. Love prevails. She brings a different perspective to Luz’ mental block and helps find a way round.

But it is Hunter who returns the favour. Luz saved him, so he points out what I have been saying this entire time.

“You were tricked. That's what Belos does. He tricks people. But if it weren't you, it would have been someone else, and then there'd be no one left to fight back. So let's do that. Let's fight back. Please? For Flapjack?”

There is hope. It is feint, but it is there and will always be so. It is in the very fact that time keeps moving on. Luz is still here, look on the bright side. Think positive thoughts. Grit your teeth and keep going.

Light, do not faulter.

Final Thoughts

To pull back the screen here, I usually take two days to write a post. I set out time a week in advance so I have a buffer surrounding my work and ADHD, but overall, two days is enough.

I started writing this post a week before it went up, and as I write this, it will go live in just under eleven hours. I am yet to put in pictures.

I have so many thoughts about the final season of The Owl House, and especially Thanks To Them, but I think my next posts are going to be even longer than this one.

Specifically, because my next post, that of For the Future isn’t going to be analysis per say. Stick around if that interests you.

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