#cringe is gonna follow me to the grave

[horrorsequel]

i'm supposed to be doing something but instead i'm thinking abt how rusty and malcolm are inextricably linked. like. both of them had their fucked up robot dads (who they thought were dead) die on the same night at the same time cos it was the same thing, it was the same incident. rusty and malcolm are the same guy but they're never going to be the same guy. they're brothers but they're not brothers. they're sons but they're NOT sons. not anymore. they both live in their father's shadows in some way, they both take up the mantle, they both kind of suck at it. idk. idk. idk.

[todayisafridaynight]

if i think bout ichi going to jiro kasuga's grave and arakawa accompanying him Maybe At Least Once i just might explode

[boiohboii]

The Twitter Marriage

(Oscar Piastri x fem!driver!reader)

Yn Ln has had a crush on fellow driver Oscar Piastri since their f2 days but she never and will never tell him.... at least not to his face

or

In which Aston Martin driver needed the alcohol to confess her feelings

N.B: rushed a bit cause of finals, but I hope you like it. Also, doesn't follow any timeline tbh. NOTHING IN THIS IS ADDS UP IN REGARDS OF DATES AND CHARACTERS AND STUFF, IT IS JUST FOR FUN.

WARNINGS: REALLY BAD PICK UP LINES, SOME SWEAR WORDS. Probably some spelling mistakes as well. Short fic.

faceclaim: sabrina carpenter

Masterlist

Liked by ynmyworld, f1memes, charliethesinglemom and 168,920 others

Keepingupw/f1: Aston Martin driver, Yn Ln, tweets as she celebrates her p3 in Monaco.... it seems like she has something to say to fellow driver, Oscar Piastri.

username: the entire grid is just having fun with that joke.

username: miss ma'am, STAND UP!!

username: what do you mean stand up? SHE FOLDED LIKE A CHAIR

username: understandably so tbf

username: no but her offering to make Spain Oscar's home race LIKE CARLOS ISN'T LOOKING FOR THAT MAN'S BLOOD.

username: so foul of her 💀

username: her tagging him is insane

username: pr is gonna have a headache tomorrow

username: the fact that she's tweeting this shit while in a club, WHERE OSCAR IS A FEW METERS AWAY FROM HER

username: you know she's out of it when she starts using twitter.

Liked by F1_updates_live, ynmyqueen, oscaroopastryy and 184,710 others

Keepingupw/f1: yn ln on her way back to the hotel last night after celebrating her Monaco podium.

username: she got wasted omg

username: now those tweets make sense

username: where did she even get the shoe box from

username: and where did her shoes go, papers fell out of that thing

username: so are you guys gonna post the video or?

username: what video?

username: there's a video going on twitter where these pics are taken from she was so drunk, she was actually dancing in the middle of Monaco (go queen, live your best life) and then the papers fell out of the box and she immediately went down to pick them up and put them back but then after she was halfway through she kept looking at the ground then at the box and then at her feet, you can see her pouting as she kept putting away the little papers in the box again

username: shut upp!!! I need that video! IT IS A LIFE SAVING MATTER ATP

username: yn ln is gonna be the death of me

yn ln has shared a story

text: when you wake up to a video of drunk you on the streets of Monaco and some tweets that should've gone with you to the grave

yn ln has shared a story

text: self pity and cringe time over, back to our regular schedule of slaying

Sebastian Vettel has shared a story

text: someone tell her that staying with me till the Spanish GP isn't going to make people forget that she exists

yn ln has replied to your story: your kids love me! AND SO DOES HANNA

yn ln has replied to your story: also, please take pity on me, I can't face him again, ever, I will just retire, I can't do this

yn ln has replied to your story: why are you ignoring meeeee!!! Not you too, Oscar is already doing thaaaat, I wanna turn into a worm, I'd die quicker if I was a worm, I wouldn't have to go through this much embarrassment if I was a worm

Sebastian Vettel replied to your message: are you drunk right now?

Liked by pierregasly, wtf1, oscaroopastryy and 268,715 others

Keepingupw/f1: we bring you part 2 of the osyn saga

username: i love this family

username: yn is such a pr nightmare

username: the ACTUAL child of fernando

username: wait, now that you reminded me, I need to update the family tree

username: post the updated family tree you coward

username: anyone who doesn't watch f1 will 100% believe that Charles and Nicole are Oscar's parents

username: hey, don't disrespect charles' heartfelt adoption like that

username: this sport is so fucking unserious

username: I refuse to believe that this is real

Sebastian Vettel has shared a story

Text: huh..... it's not so bad having her here

Liked by OscarPiastri, Charles_leclerc, Arthur_leclerc and 918,037 others

yn ln: let her cook now 🧡

username: yn.... yn..... YN.... WHAT ARE YOU COOKING YN

username: it has started, I can feel it in my bones

username: so she's with Oscar now, good to know (screaming into my pillow as I type)

username: oh so if I wear orange I'm dating Lando now, nice to know ig

username: fuck off away from my replies, I wanna have fun

username: yn pls don't, I can't lose you, you were the only wife left standing

username: PLS TELL ME THAT MY SHIP SAILED

username: if I see that australian's face anywhere on this account I will start biting ankles

username: ok Leo, geez, no need to terrorise your sister-in-law

username: I can't believe she was simping on main for a boy that goes 'wut'

Liked by Ynln, pierregasly, Arthur_leclerc and 890,627 others

Oscar Piastri: let him cook ����

username: nope, no, nuuh, I see nothing

username: other partner's team colors, matching captions, liking the posts..... yup, they're officially dating

username: we lost her to a mini kimi raikkonen

username: I see that as a win tbh

username: kimi was and is the IT girl of the grid

username: how dare you forget about our very own Britney Spears.... nico you will always be missed

username: you can't prove that they're dating from just that

username: oh boy, the delulu is strong with this one

Oscar Piastri and Yn Ln shared a post

Liked by Charles_leclerc, maxverstappen1, danielricciardo and 903,815 others

Yn ln & Oscar Piastri: I said let them cook 💚🧡

username: YES YES YES YES YES YES

username: MY PARENTS

username: This is why women shouldn't be in f1, wtf is wrong with Oscar? Why would he date yn? And what is this hand placement? Where can I get a yn? Or an oscar?

username: slowly deleting my paragraph

username: had us the first half, ngl

username: yn hide oscar really well during the Spain GP, we leave his safety in your hands

username: THE CURLS OMG

username: MR OSCAR JACK PIASTRI WHAT IS THIS BEHAVIOUR WHAT IS THIS HAND PLACEMENT

[otomiyaa]

nice.png

(literally how I named the image, couldn't think of something else)

Hi guys :') To my followers and tumblr friends, I'm really sorry if my sudden disappearance scared or upset you. It wasn't quite... planned. And today was a busy day and I needed some time to consider what I wanted to do.

Short version of the story:

My tumblr account got terminated for copyright infringement. A certain Mr. Green got me in unlucky trouble (ref 1, 2).

I won't get it back, or try to get it back. It's gone.

Needed a moment to consider 2 options: ask Mia to extend my dramatic farewell letter and stay gone, or make a new blog.

Not planning to post new writing here. I won't be using words like 'never' or 'forever' because I'm a known clown with things like this, but the intention is to no longer post fics. I will finish Tickletober on AO3 and then take a break from writing. So yes, I cancel the swiftscribbles event too, sorry!

When I opened my laptop, I could see my old blog in its final hour lmao (I found out about the loss on my phone). So that's what the snap is from on a fitting grave. It was fun while it lasted!

Long version of the story:

Losing my blog(s): My Tumblr account with main blog + sideblogs got terminated overnight, it was quite the surprise! I've either been reported or tracked by bots. The posts are a bunch of numbered URLs I can't open, but the message is clear: for including anime content, genshin impact or media from other sources (whether it's videos, screenshots, official art, gifs or even fanwork) you technically can get a strike. Upon googling the claimer I quickly found this first, and knew it was a lost cause. Although it feels shitty and unlucky, I am in no place to appeal. It's like when I used to make AMVs in the past, you never knew whether a song or even anime footage was going to give your YT account a copyright strike or even a ban, it was a gamble. I have lost YT accounts before, and now I lost the Tumblr one. With 7+ years of tickle trash content and a bunch of sideblogs. But oh well, moving on!

Starting a new blog: It was a serious consideration whether this was my ultimate chance to do what I've always said I wanted to do eventually - quit my blog. My first thought was to ask Mia to share my explanation and literal goodbye with you guys, and stick to my chaos of a Twitter account to indulge in fandom stuff. But then I thought of how happy Tumblr made me, even without the fic writing, but just.. reblogging things, getting random asks, shouting about life and of course, about tickles. I decided to make a new blog after all, but also decided the following:

The 7K+ milestone swiftscribbles event is cancelled, for which I apologize! The follower milestone, together with the motivation to write the fics, and even the asks with the requests I got, all died with my former blog.

I will see how long I can survive without posting a new fic or drabble. A loose headcanon or two might fly around sometime. And if necessary, a link to a new fic on AO3.

Tickletober? Hell yes I'll finish it, I would cringe in bed for 49 days at least if I would stop. I just won't post the fics here, but on AO3.

Reposting/reblogging my old works? Undecided at the moment but I'm tired and lazy. I don't feel too upset since most of my fics are still on AO3 at least and not completely gone.

Anyways, I'll see what happens and how long I can enjoy this nerfed version of blogging.

Surprisingly I'm not upset about losing my other blog, there were a lot of memories but it was also very cringe. I'm gonna be just as cringe here, but at least I feel cleansed.

For those who choose to follow me again, thank you, but please know that there won't be much original content coming from me, for now!:)

[matteosilly]

SL GEM + SCOTT POV SPOILERS

I can never be normal about the ends of these series. If you think this is cringe go away 😊 [NOT A SHIP]

"Scott? Where are you?" Gem calls out to her last ally left, dread and desperation seep into her voice. Impulse had just died, she'd been too late. She couldn't be late again. "Where is everyone..." She mutters, eyes scanning over the battle torn terrain. A speck of telltale light blue peaks through the savannah trees, the faint sound of shouting and arrows following him as he runs in her direction.

The relief fades immediately as the bloody image of one of her best friends inches closer. "Scott!?" She shouts, rushing towards him and past the secret keeper.

"Gem you need to kill me!" He says, rushing towards her. He repeats himself over and over as if it's the only logical choice left.

"No- Why do I need to kill you?!" She says, helping him walk over to the secret keeper. His blood stains her hands a dark red. He sits down on a patch of moss, still breathing heavily. The air feels still here, like the secret keeper is granting them one last moment together. She can't kill him, he's her last Scott, her last friend left alive.

"I'm on two and a half hearts, if they kill me and get the ten-" Panicked tears prick in his eyes. Several patches of his hair have been stained an ugly greyish blue with his own blood. There are arrows sticking out of angry red wounds. Gemini hates the color red right now. Hates how it's taken over every valuable thing in this life. "I don't think I can do it. I think- I think you're gonna need to do it." Scott heaves. His gaze settles on her seriously, he knows exactly how she'd feel in this situation. He's had to kill his own allies before. He hates it, but it's better than the alternative.

"Scott-" Gemini says, on the verge of tears. This was not how this was supposed to end.

"Wait, before you do— here, take these." He says, pulling things out of his bag. An end crystal, his entire stash of ender pearls, the rest of his food, zombie eggs, and his power four bow. All of this stuff that he should be using to fight lays at her feet. She wants to refuse it. She wants to force him to fight, but at this point, that'd be crueler than death.

"Go on, gem, go. You got this." He says, nudging the sword clutched in her right hand. Tears pour down her cheeks like the raging river surrounding their home, she wishes for a moment that this was all one horrible nightmare. One terrifying dream. She wants to wake up back in those pink walls of her base with her two closest friends.

She settles for a pathetic "Thank you, Scott." as she tucks the items into her bag, save for the bow, which she replaces her near broken one with.

Gemini lifts her sword, if she has to kill him, she wants to make it quick. Her blade slices through his skin and bone, snuffing out the last candles of hope. Lightning strikes down in front of her. She gains ten hearts, but hers breaks as her best friend's body lies, cooling rapidly and lifeless. She cuts a layer of moss off of the secret keeper and covers his body in it. It's an unmarked grave, sure, but it's the most she has time for. He deserves this much. Fire tipped arrows rain down around her. An unmarked grave is better than no grave, and that's quite a lot more than what most people have after the last few days. She hopes he's at peace, or at least cheering her on from the other side.

The world around her seems to gray out around the edges. Her will to fight has been snuffed out. Three players remain. "Hey secret keeper..." She mumbles as she scrambles to the top of it for leverage. She starts raining down arrow fire at her enemy with Scott's bow. Every arrow should be his. The damage she deals is in his stead. It should've been her. Her heart's not in it anymore. Gemini takes a deep breath, before

"You wanna fight? Let's fight." She says, under her breath to no one in particular. Maybe it's to her opponents, maybe it's to the secret keeper. This game of dodgeball isn't going anywhere, she slides off the back of the secret keeper, landing in a roll.

"I don't think I can fight Pearl..." She says to herself. Shes already killed one ally, or now, ex-ally. "I think pearl wins this." Because if anyone has to win, maybe the person she'd fought alongside at one point could win for the both of them. She'd never liked Scar much anyway.

"Gem... Don't make me do this, Gem." Pearl says from atop a foothill.

"I don't know!" Pearl shouts back, desperation clinging to her voice. An arrow strikes Gemini through the side. She doesn't cry out. She ender-pearls away from her ex-ally as more arrows wizz by. She takes in a breath right as she's dumped into ice cold water surrounding the disheveled heart foundation. Her blood mixes with the water, yet the feeling of blood on her skin never leaves.

"I'm not making you do anything!" Gem shouts exasperatedly. "Pearl, what are you doing?!" She dodges under an arrow, sliding behind a tree.

She exits the water, just to see Scar rounding the pass. "Hi, Gem!" He says, all too sweetly. She slashes at him with her sword instead of returning the gesture. Pearl follows up close behind him, as she and scar exchange sword swipes.

"Two versus one? You guys are so gross!" Gemini snarks. She slashes and stabs at Scar, who dips away so Pearl can land another strike. Maybe she can wear Scar down at least. Secure the victory for someone else. Scar swings at her again and again as Pearl watches on, cheering her ally along.

"D'ya wanna sword this out with me Gem, or with Scar?" Pearl says, grazing Gemini across the face.

Gemini's blood splatters on the soft grass staining what was once green, red. She hates red.

A peaceful smile graces her face. She thinks she can hear Impulse and Scott somewhere, cheering her on.

Images of her old life flash before her eyes. Pink walls, easy laughter, the joy of existence, those first days of peace. She wants that again.

Lightning strikes.

[sseanettles]

nothing grows in corpses (in the earth of me)

dream x hob gadling | mature | Finally cross-posting my take on the fandom classic of the show progresses as the comics do, even to The Wake. Until Death resurrects Morpheus and forces the choice of "redemption" upon him instead of suicide. It goes...horribly. No good. Very bad. Instead of learning the lesson, Morpheus (in his infinite wisdom) opts instead for a highly effective existence strike until one day Hob Gadling stumbles upon his ghastly handiwork and immediately decides that this just won't do. Man Who Refuses To Die vs. Man Who Refuses To Live: fight.

Dead Dove, Do Not Eat for the following: graphic depictions of starvation, illness, suicidal ideation, self-harm, blood and gore, loss of autonomy, etc. etc. This is some classic old world whump, folks! But I promise it's also supremely healing in the end.

CH. 10: atlantic, pt. 1 | 10.2 k | AO3 link | prev part | next part

(or: the one where, in the light of day and the warmth of Hob's flat, it's time for a Centennial Meeting; never mind the hundred years bit.)

Hob woke to a dry mouth full of rug fuzz and dust bunnies and a truly haunting view of the entire length of his living room floor. Good lord, he needed to vacuum under the sofa. Under the dressers, too. Not to mention dusting the baseboards, and—for the love of what remained of his taxed sanity, he had to get up before he saw anymore, fuckin’ Christ. He rolled over with a groan that sharpened in pitch as his pulse throbbed in his nose and sinuses.

“What the fuck…” he winced and hissed as he prodded at his nose and was rewarded with a sharp sting of pain and flaking blood.

Broken. His nose was broken, or at least newly healed from being broken, and he cringed at the ceiling as he tried again to assess the wound.

How the hell had he….

Sleep, Dream had said, and dream well.

Hob looked to the sofa, still gingerly massaging his nose, and found himself staring right into Morpheus’ very open eyes. He had no idea how long his Stranger had been awake, but if the newfound clarity within his distrusting gaze was anything to go by, it had to have been for some time. Certainly longer than Hob had been. He indicated his nose, still sprawled on his back.

“This your doing?” he asked through his hands. “Or, I suppose, other you’s doing?”

Morpheus looked him over and after a moment gave a single, silent nod.

Hob sighed at the ceiling and gave his nose a vigorous rub, just to check that everything was fully knitted back together beneath the discomfort.

“Sleep and dream well,” he muttered, gave a mighty sniff, and released it in a quiet sigh of relief when he tasted no more blood. “Hoo. He wasn’t kidding when he said he was still learning, eh?”

Morpheus’ eyes slid away from his. His hands, freed from the mitts sometime in the night, curled further into the blankets.

He did not give an answer.

“Right. Well,” Hob sighed and ignored the twinge in his chest that accompanied the silence. “Morning to you, Stranger.”

Morpheus watched him rise like an old man, groaning and bracing himself on his sore knees and along the chair all the way. Eventually, he made his way to mostly upright, but it was clear from the way he dug his hand into his lower back as he did that the muscles were tweaked and knotted.

Hob looked at his hands, truly looked, for the first time since last night’s adventures, and he let out a hissing grimace that only grew louder as he tracked the blood, grime, and grit up his arms to his clothes. A small pool of dried blood stained the rug in a vague shape of his head, and he could only imagine how much of it still encrusted his face.

Stars above, he looked like he’d just crawled from a grave.

Or put someone in one.

“I’m…gonna go clean up. I’ll be back soon.” He paused mid-stumble for the hallway and considered the state of himself further. “Ish.”

His wince and hesitation deepened as he recalled the state of the bathroom.

“Hopefully soonish.”

He limped for the hall, his gait evening as he went, and Morpheus watched him go.

Gadling was covered in remains of him: in rusty maroon that streaked his skin and spattered his button-down shirt until little white remained amid the splotches of gore and the swaths of rotted pink that surrounded them where the bathwater had soaked the fabric through. His pants were soiled all down the fronts of his legs, the worst of it across his thighs and at his knees where the fabric was soot-black from kneeling in the alley.

And his body, despite its magic, still bore the visible marks of the harm Morpheus had dealt him.

He still bore the bruises in faint echoes of brown and pale yellow; still bore the scratches along his hands and head, faded though they now were to pale marks of mostly healed skin peppered with scabs. Morpheus wished he would scold him for the wounds. Yell. Hurt him back. Something. Watching Gadling walk away without so much as a comment on what he’d done was only heating the tar that bubbled within him, hastening its steady ooze up his insides like a corrosive, hateful thing.

There came a rumble and a static rush that Morpheus could not hear as water started through the plumbing, and he listened to only the yawning void of the mortal world as the shower’s pitch shortly changed, announcing Gadling’s entry into the tub. As the man took his much-needed shower, Morpheus allowed his tired eyes to scan what he could see of the flat.

A hearth, since extinguished, sat beyond the foot of his makeshift bed. A full pile of wood sat in an old copper basin to its side, along with a stand of various iron fire pokers, and the hilt of a small axe peaked from behind both. Atop the mantle sat garlands of evergreen peppered with candles and pinecones and carvings of birds and deer that Morpheus was sure the immortal had whittled himself. A few old, leather-bound books joined them, and if he’d had the energy or inclination, Morpheus would have smirked as he saw a particular playwright’s name along one of the older spines. To the right stood a large window with a small but comfortable bench beneath it, piled high with soft, thick blankets and throw pillows. The street beyond the frosted glass was crystalline and still, and the barely risen sun glowed across the snowy landscape as the town slumbered on. Every tree, every lamppost and street sign, dripped with ice.

To the left of the hearth, tilted in the corner of the room, stood a tiered stand that harkened to Yule altars of old, each layer laden with photos of loved ones and offerings to those who no longer lived. The scent of the garlands and candles and incense permeated the air like the ghost of a memory long past. At the center of the altar, on the middle shelf, sat an ornately engraved box about forty centimeters in length, a little over ten centimeters in width, and of decent depth. The bronze, inlaid lock along its length was sealed, and though he had never seen the box, nor its key, within the Waking, Morpheus knew precisely where the former was stored and could describe each of the latter’s contents to perfection without the key at all.

He had watched Gadling from the walls of his dreams enough times to have memorized every photo, every drawing, every ribbon and lock of hair inside. He knew every tarnish on the pendants, knew every chip and divot in the milk teeth tenderly preserved and the adult bones salvaged at the last second from fresh-turned graves.

But as he looked over the altar, he took notice of feathers that had been tucked throughout. Pigeon, duck, finch—

His heart stuttered.

His own eyes, sketched in charcoal, stared back at him from behind a particularly resplendent raven feather. It was an enigmatic form of old, the weighted sadness of 1689 with long hair that framed a solemn, exhausted face. It struck Morpheus’ chest like a hammer as he viewed it in opposition to the other half of the folded page which bore an equally quick sketch of himself from their New Inn meeting, smiling faintly even as the infinite sadness lurked still in his eyes.

…Had he truly looked like that? Even then?

I think you’re lonely, Gadling had said, two centuries down the line from that grim meeting, having known him only six meager nights.

…Had he been that transparent all this time?

Morpheus’ breath grew quicker, damper, more ragged than the sickness that ate his lungs, and he looked from the photos to the great wreath that hung above them, decorated with berries and holly and little tea light candles that flickered under the power of fading batteries. But the feathers continued there, too, and he shifted in his prison of a bed, trying to pull himself higher so he could look somewhere else, anywhere else.

The bookcase: the bookcase to the left of the altar was safe. He drank in the titles and the names, recognizing every single one in a glance, and he mapped the evolution of Gadling’s temperament across the shelves, tracked the mementos among the tomes back to times long past. Some of the little trinkets, he knew, were Guinevere’s, as were some of the books and magazines, but though they melded effortlessly into Gadling’s, this had clearly been his home first.

That meshing of worlds led him to the framed photographs on the walls: grinning, joyful snapshots of his hosts living their gloriously entangled lives. One of the larger frames was of a Renaissance Faire. Gadling looked utterly put out, clad in the most minimal-effort, asynchronous outfit beside his partner who glowed in her regalia. But there was a kind of peace in his eyes, as if some deep part of him had been laid to rest, and he held Gwen in his arms, her own embrace just as tight as she laughed riotously with her head tucked to his. And despite his show at misery, Morpheus knew the truth: in that moment, all was right in the world of Robert Gadling. That photograph hung among a series of smaller paintings and sketches, rough depictions of places and views and skies that would never be again.

Elsewhere. Morpheus needed to look elsewhere, but there was nowhere for him to look without struggling from his bed.

From just beyond his sight, the bedroom door creaked open just far enough to let Gwen peer from the dark. Their living room was as still and silent as the grave, the sofa especially so. She knew, intellectually, that she did not need to worry; she’d heard Robbie speaking in a low voice earlier, so clearly their guest was still alive. But that did not lessen the desire to do nothing more than slam the bedroom door shut once more or book it for the stairs and sprint through the snow in her pajamas to Marjorie’s where she would live for the foreseeable future.

But more than the instinct to flee, she wanted—no, she needed—to see Robbie’s stranger in the clarity of dawn. She had to see who and what they had welcomed into their home and down onto their heads.

She had to see what entity could change Robbie from the man she knew and loved into…whatever had come out of him last night and was currently taking a shower in the day as if nothing at all were wrong. 

She gathered her courage. Took a steeling breath. And just as she moved to cross the threshold, a pale, skeletal hand rose from the bed like a dead man from the grave. It gripped the back of the sofa like slowly clamping steel, pulled, and at first, nothing happened. Then, dark, ragged hair drew shakily into view, a battered but already healing scalp following, and to Gwen’s unblinking eyes, his head appeared to snap back to look at her—

Morpheus let out a faint, punching breath as the strength in his neck failed, and his head harshly struck the edge of the sofa back in a disturbing spasm. But in that vertigo-inducing moment, the world almost plunging to black, he caught a flash of movement as the bedroom door shut on a sharp gasp. His strength failed him entirely, and Morpheus collapsed back into the bed, utterly spent. His chest heaved with the breaths of a marathon runner at the finish line as the room continued to spin, and he shut his eyes against it.

He was so nauseous. And hungry. And thirsty….

Hob watched the last rinse vanish down the drain, finally running clear, and heaved a sigh of relief. It had been slow-going there for a moment, and he had yet to figure out how to call in a plumber to fix what frankly could only be taken for a murder scene. He gathered the bloody knives from the floor, bundling the encrusted silver away in already sullied towels, and packed up the first aid kit with equal efficiency. But as he tidied, moving with that same, detached clinical efficiency that had fueled him since last night, his spine began to crawl. His heart began to beat a little faster, a misting of sweat touching his forehead, and finally, no matter how fast he moved, he felt the tell-tale sensation of the walls closing in.

Make it go away. Hob’s hands began to shake. Make it all go away, make it. Go. Away.

He flung open the cabinet beneath the sink, hauling out an impressive basket of bleaches and brushes.

And then, he cleaned.

He moved fast, and the blood and dirt vanished in kind. A life as long and storied as his taught a man a great many skills; making evidence of trouble disappear was one of the first he had mastered. In short order, the bathroom looked as good as new, and the dull roar in his ears quieted and slowed until there was only the normal, metronomic tick of a steady heart. He deposited the last of the plastic bags by the door and double checked that he had all the contents properly sorted before tying them off: one for burning, one for salvage, and one for the trash.

His hands hesitated atop one bag in particular among the salvage. It had been first double and then triple and then quadruple bagged to try and contain the smell, and it sat beside the less-extremely layered bags that contained his soiled coat and scarf. Sealed within was Morpheus’ quilt. It had been nothing special: a black quilted down blanket that could be bought at any average department store with a home wares and goods section. It was sullied beyond belief, truly rancid and frankly a biohazard home to several very happy colonies of infection and mold. In the light of day, with far less adrenaline and shock flooding his veins, he had only dared to touch the thing with gloved hands and a clean towel tied over the bottom half of his face. But more importantly than the rot and the disease and the rank, Hob had found a tear in it, near one of the corners: a rift where an antitheft tag had been surreptitiously torn out. Clearly, his Stranger hadn’t fetched it for himself, and that was why Hob came to be in his present dilemma.

He could not present this to some poor dry cleaner. Absolutely not. They existed to perform a service, he knew that, but to put this upon some poor soul…he had almost written off his coat and scarf based on the state of them in the morning’s light, and they’d only been wrapped around his Stranger’s rotted form for all of thirty minutes if that. The blanket—that blanket had been on him so much longer.

It was an utter loss. He knew this; in his bones, Hob Gadling knew this. And yet…. 

He thought of the 1600s. He thought about having lost everything, having nothing to call his own save the clothes upon his back that disintegrated to rags, thought of being utterly and thoroughly discarded by the world. He thought of how tightly he clung to what he had, to the meager scraps he could set his hands upon.

He should move the blanket to the trash heap. He would have burned it if he hadn’t been so worried about aerosolizing the disease and filth soaked into it.

He released the bag and let out a long, slow breath at the twisting weight that lifted from his heart at the decision.

He would not rob his Stranger of any further choices. This blanket would be cleaned. Somehow. It might require a miracle from God or a blessing of some lesser demon or the work of a particularly niche magician, but he would eradicate the stench of decay from that mass of fabric and down and present it back to the sad soul half-dead in his living room. Because while he did not know where the blanket had come from or who had blessed his Stranger with the mercy of its existence, he knew it had been his. All Hob got to do was give it back to him; his Stranger would make every choice after that.

It was the absolute very least that he could do.

He stepped back, dropped his hands on his hips, and for a moment did nothing but breathe, the smell of bleach searing his nose and throat. The mirror stared back at him. His hair had mostly dried, the sweat of his mad dash clean ensuring it hadn’t frizzed out as it normally did when he let it air dry. His t-shirt clung to him in a few places from the same exertion, but at least his sweatpants had managed to dodge the blood and grit. His bruises had healed. His scratches were now free of scabs, little more than pale lines of healed skin that would be gone by lunch.

Aside from the bags, he and the room looked as if nothing had ever happened at all. Hob’s exhausted, shadowed eyes said otherwise.

He chose this.

He turned out the lights.

Be kind, Gadling…for all the world, be kind.

In the living room, Morpheus stared at the ceiling, as if lost in a trance. In the absence of Gadling or his paramour, he had sunken once more into the world, lost in its comparative silence. There was nothing…nothing but him and this static like television snow that filled his ears and numbed his skin. He breathed and tried to hear his breaths, but even they seemed distant, so hard to grasp and hold to even though his chest rose and fell in time to them.

He was so lost within himself that he missed Hob’s return until a pair of hands reached for him from a sudden shadow in the corner of his eye.

“—fix your blan—”

Morpheus flinched away so hard that his molars clacked, and his every joint screamed.

Hob stopped as if slapped. And though he wrangled his wounded expression swiftly, shoved that slip back beneath his mask of concerned patience as he withdrew to rest on his heels, Morpheus had seen it.

He had seen the truth.

He swallowed his shame like bile and looked away.

“Sorry,” Hob said as his friend turned slowly from him. “I suppose I did just sort of snatch you out of that alley with no warning or explanation. But…oh, this is hard.”

Hob mulled over his next words, and Morpheus’ eyes flicked to him, unsure, as his pause dragged into a heavy silence.

“I want to say that I am so happy to see you, my friend,” he started after a time, his brow furrowed so deeply in thought that the earnest words seemed misplaced to his countenance. “So happy. My heart hurts with everything I feel right now, looking at you.” The shine in his Stranger’s eyes brightened, and Hob caught his treacherous tongue in his teeth as the hollows of the man’s skull seemed to deepen in the face of his joy. “But you are miserable.”

His Stranger stared at him like a tired draft horse, an exhausted mule at the end of its tenure at Amish hands.

“And I wish I could say I wasn’t so delighted to see you, even like this, but…” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. His scalp no longer ached. “Well. You know me.” When he smiled, it was a wan, self-deprecating, crooked thing that never once bared his teeth and hardly reached his eyes. “I’ve always been selfish.”

Morpheus’ wary stare maintained, but it darkened, sharpened—the cornered study of an attraction in a roadside zoo. The sting deepened, and Hob tried not to take it personally. He really did; he was not sure he was successful.

He shifted forward, hunching further onto his forearms, digging them into his knees, and cocked his head to the side in as harmless of a curious expression as he could manage. His face screwed up with the thought of it, an overwrought attempt to telegraph to his friend that a question was coming before springing it on him out of the blue.

“Can I call you Morpheus?”

Morpheus blinked and for once in this whole ordeal found himself genuinely speechless. 

“Dream? Or would you rather I stay with Friend and Stranger?” Hob shuffled a little closer, still keeping his hands to himself, and his guest watched him come, bewildered behind the stony, gaunt veil he projected. “You’d always been so careful with your name around me, and well,” Hob huffed a quiet laugh, “I suppose I understand that better now, having seen the attendance at your funeral.”

He eased himself down into a cross-legged seat and reclined against the armchair as he allowed himself to slip into tragic memory. Morpheus swallowed, the simple act still an agony, and watched Gadling’s hands as they fussed. He tracked them back to his shadowed, transparent face as the man remembered it all.

Hob’s head tipped back against the armrest, and he stared at the exposed beams of the ceiling with a soft hum. He fell quiet again for some time. His fingers began to grind at his knuckles.

“When I found out where I was, I started shoutin’ at people,” he said in time. “Makin’ all kinds of fuss that there had to be some sort of mistake, y’know?” He smirked to his friend, not quite raising his head from the chair, but no mirth glimmered in his eyes. “Tried to get into a brawl with a centaur, and that-that,” he pointed to Morpheus with a wagging finger and self-mocking laugh, “ended real fast. Think it might’ve been Chiron, actually.”

The pain in Morpheus’ eyes as he beheld Hob deepened as it had in 1689. Hob’s strained humor dried away. He picked at his hands, and his voice softened.

“I’d hoped that when I learned your name, it would be because you chose to give it to me. And that’s…well.” A wry smile, hollow and reflexive, twisted Hob’s lips like a grimace. “That’s not what happened. I learned it…” Gadling swallowed the shake in his voice; the tears in Morpheus’ eyes welled higher, “…in about the worst way you can learn someone’s name. So, I want to give you your choice back.” Hob’s elbows braced on his knees as he leaned in, and he reached to touch his fingertips to Morpheus’ elbow with all the care in the world…a bull passing through a China shop unscathed. For a moment, there was only silence: only whiskey eyes to drowned skies and that point of featherlight contact between them.

“What do you want me to call you?”

Morpheus wanted to grant that impetuous question with nothing but silence, to grind those gutting words into ash and blind those searching eyes with it. But he could still see Dream of the Endless standing above him: the glow of his emerald glistening in the black of his eyes, the firm empathy softening his painfully young face even as the weight of glorious purpose already pressed visibly upon his shoulders.

His lips parted…

What do you want me to call you?

Dream of the Endless was no longer his to claim. The King of Dreams and Nightmares, the King of Cats no longer titles that applied. The Shaper of Forms and the Oneiromancer were functions that were no longer his to perform. Oneiros was the name of a god who ruled no more, Morpheus the same. A year ago, if one the likes of Hob Gadling had tried to claim any of them, Morpheus’ pride would have boiled into wrathful ire, and the human would have been little more than a grease smudge on the expansive fabric of this plane.

What do you want me to call you?

…and Morpheus’ scabbed, parched mouth shut again with a quiet click as the full import of Gadling’s question crushed upon him. In a bizarre haunting that sent a shudder through him that lingered in his bones long after it had passed, like a dog whistle only he could hear, a voice from Hell gloated in his ears.

What is your name now, my clown?

The silence of a deadened world hissed in his ears, growing steadily louder as his breaths quickened, and his eyes began to go blind beneath a sea he could not seem to escape. In the same moment, blessed by chance, the bedroom door opened, and Hob looked to Gwen as she made her cautious exit. He withdrew his hand from Morpheus’ skin, and Morpheus watched it go with a sharp pang of longing.

Anything to pierce the bell jar.

“There’s no rush,” Hob whispered, oblivious to the man’s distress, and touched his arm again in quiet parting as he got to his feet. “We’ll talk later.”

Morpheus, the Nameless, squeezed his eyes shut and commanded the panic to recede. It laughed at him with voices three.

“You two alright?” he heard Gwen ask as if beyond glass. “Jesus, there’s blood on the floor—”

“Yeahh, passed right out on my feet last night,” Gadling lied. Gadling lied; the ease of it sent a thrill through the immortal reborn, and Morpheus pressed his head back into the pillows to dissociate beneath the rafters. “Smashed my nose in. ‘S nothin’.”

“Robbie.”

“Fine, fine. My back and face are not pleased.”

“And…your friend?”

Morpheus closed his eyes. Something moved beyond the numbness, approached him a bit at a time like those both less fortunate and more tenacious than he who had snatched Barnabas’ alley offerings for themselves. He stifled the urge to lash out and sank deeper into the ringing silence.

“He looks…better?”

“He can hear you, love.”

Their voices drew away, and whether it was a trick of his distanced mind or a true reflection of their movement within the room, he could not tell. The ambiguity was not as comforting as he’d thought it would be. He opened his eyes just far enough to reveal the blurry world beyond his lashes, and he watched the two shapes he knew to be his caretakers. Captors. It depended, he supposed, on perspective, and he was not yet sure which to take.

But whether he knew it or not, his body made its selection. Hob and Gwen’s hurried morning routine came into focus as Morpheus’ eyes opened further the longer that he watched them. He watched as they had a bit of a muffled back and forth, Gwen pushing to stay while Hob redirected her with gentle but firm insistence to the door. He watched as she hurriedly assembled a blind grab of snacks, shoved them into a canvas bag alongside some sketch books, and then turned so Hob could hoist a backpack heavy with art supplies and canvases and lesson plans onto her shoulders. She turned back to Hob, and Morpheus watched as she caught him by his bearded chin and turned his head this way and that to check his vanishing wounds.

He watched from behind his careful mask as she went to kiss her partner, hesitated with a flick of her eyes to his relentless vigil, and then kissed her boyfriend anyway.

“Keep safe,” she whispered as she drew back.

Hob caught the back of her neck with a gentle hand and pecked her forehead before letting her pull away. “Always, love.”

“Liar,” she said, and then, in a clomp of feet down the stairs and the shutting and locking of doors, the old strangers were alone.

Gadling scratched his ear.

“She’s got an art class,” he said in way of explanation. “Little thing on the side with a few of her more advanced students. Have to keep up appearances that everything’s normal, haven’t we?”

Morpheus just stared.

“Right. I’ll just, uh…”

Stars above, this was awkward. Had his Stranger always just watched like that? And if he had, how had Hob never been unnerved by it before now? It was unsettling.

It’s probably the living corpse part of it, you absolute fucking wanker.

He turned his back on his undying friend and busied himself with fetching some water and a bowl of long-cold soup from the kitchen. Another thing he had learned in his long life: the mealtime didn’t rightly matter; food was food, and you took what was easiest. He sagged into his armchair on his return and scooted the heavy seat until it more squarely faced his companion before offering the man a wan echo of a smile and tucking in.

Morpheus stared, and at first Hob braced himself for another agonizingly long and uncomfortable silence. But as he glanced at his Stranger, he noted the shifting of his eyes, the way he searched the photographs and mementos and finally flicked to the bedroom door and the flat’s exit.

He waited for Morpheus to settle once more on him, and he felt a smug flash of pride as he read the slight furrow of the other man’s brow, the puzzled tilt to his head and the question that glittered in the pits of his eyes and his ponderous frown.

She knows?

Hob nodded and finished chewing his mouthful of bread. 

“I had to tell her some things,” he explained and brushed the crumbs from his beard back into his soup. “Come clean on who I was and what I’ve done. Couldn’t sleep next to her without….” He chewed on the inside of his lip for a moment and shook his head, dunking his bread once more into the soup. “Wasn’t fair to her, to let her think that she loved someone without knowing all of who and what I was. Am. ‘Specially her.”

He took his next bite and nearly laughed in a startled spark of joy as he caught a flash of a dubious, ridiculing look of old on his friend’s face. He could practically hear his drawl, his prodding interrogation of that haughty, oh-most-noble intention Hob claimed to espouse.

And she accepted you?

Hob shrugged, swallowed, and took another bite.

“Helped that we had the first conversation while high,” he said around his food, covering his mouth with a hand as he did. “Y’know the ‘go on, stick me with the carving fork, promise I’ll be fine’ talk. Bit of blood. Bit of screaming. Quite a bit of laughing, if I’m honest.” He finally downed his bite and waved the remaining bread vaguely about between them. “Then, followed up on the rest sober.” Morpheus watched the almost flippant humor wilt and cave until all that was left behind the bravado was a quiet sort of pensiveness. “She needed some time away from me, but…well. I’ve been trying to be nothing but worthy of the chance she took on me since.”

If it weren’t for the obscene circumstance in which they found themselves, if it weren’t for the smell of rot and infection that permeated the fringes of Morpheus’ senses, the constant gnawing and burning pain, the gravel that grated his lungs on each breath—the fact that he was laid upon a makeshift bed in Gadling’s own home, paralyzed by his body’s own weakness—if it weren’t for all of that, the god-not-god-no-more would have sworn this was nothing more than another centennial meeting. The words tugged at Morpheus’ tongue, kindled in his muddled mind as his throat worked painfully at swallowing. His mouth tried to wet itself despite the petulance that shrieked and stamped its feet within him to keep quiet, to keep sullen and withdrawn. He was meant to be dead, and the dead do not talk, so shut up and stay shut up.

Hob held his breath as his Friend’s lips parted and conjured forth, “…happy?”

Two syllables: barely more than a whisper, strained, and capped with a wracking cough that would have left their speaker red-faced if he’d had any blood left in him to spare. But they were syllables, spoken of his own accord in civilized conversation, and Hob grinned to hear them.

“Yeah,” he said and reached to gently tap his knuckles to Morpheus’ arm. “Yeah, ‘m happy.”

But Dream of the Endless had known Robert Gadling more truthfully than the human knew even himself, and so Morpheus now still held that knowledge within him. Though Hob’s smile was true, the joy in his eyes honest, he knew what had summoned that response. And it wasn’t the question that he had asked.

Liar.

“Almost as happy as I am to see you,” he continued, only proving Morpheus’ point. He set his half-finished breakfast aside to scoot to the edge of his seat, and a new intensity settled in his eyes as he leaned to rest his elbows upon his knees. “Though, I wish you weren’t so bad off. You gave me a right scare last night, my friend.”

Morpheus let his gaze fall; the link between souls broke.

“How are you feeling?”

Morpheus’ huffing exhale of a laugh–utterly silent and spent, yet heavy as a stone–rocked him within the bed. He leveled Hob with a dour, scathing glare that was rather impressive given the state of him and the fatigue that even now, so soon after waking, was already tugging his eyelids shut toward sleep.

“Bad,” he croaked.

Hob chuckled and gripped his stranger’s shoulder with as much strength as he dared, squeezing in a fleeting pulse of comfort and letting his weight sit there for perhaps a little longer than was proper. But he could get away with it right now, when he hadn’t been able to for six hundred years, and by God if he wasn’t going to take advantage of that.

“Yeah, I bet,” he agreed and brushed his thumb back and forth across the sinewy joint and sunken clavicle. Morpheus’ head briefly sagged into the pillows before his neck recovered its strength. “Can I bring you anything?”

Those pale eyes, already losing their clarity, lingered on Hob’s hand at his shoulder. His breath was cold against his fingers which was an improvement, Hob supposed, from the furnace that had been the fever. But he knew, intimately, that it would cycle again and soon. Now was the window: the time when Morpheus would have the energy for food, drink, medicine, talking…the narrow span when he would be a person before his body set to cannibalizing itself once again, pulling Morpheus along for the hellish ride like a man dragged behind a galloping horse.

As if to mock Hob for his prescience, Morpheus’ attention began to wander, slipping inward as the numbness of prolonged suffering began to reassert itself. Hob gripped his shoulder a bit tighter and gave him the barest shake.

“Please, my friend.” Morpheus startled slightly, blinking as he returned to himself. He peered into Hob’s face as the man pulled his chair a bit closer. “Anything at all.”

His eyes…his eyes were so dry compared to when he’d woken. He blinked against the familiar, mounting sensation of sandpaper behind his lids and glanced at the cup of water, yet untouched, that Hob had brought for himself and set aside on the coffee table. As he realized the gaze past his elbow wasn’t another stare into space but intentional, Hob followed his eyes.

A light dawned on him.

“Water?” he asked, twisting back to his friend, and just caught the way the muscles in his hollow cheeks twitched as his gaze slid away. “Hey. Hey, Stranger, look at me.” His touch moved to Morpheus’ head where he mussed the sweat-stiffened, mangled locks as he had centuries past to a child buried too young. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting water, okay? Nothing wrong with asking for it, either.”

The muscles at the man’s temples tightened further, and the glittering dark within Morpheus’ eyes expanded as he forced himself to meet Hob’s earnest, waiting gaze. “We need it to live,” he reassured him. “Or at least to live well, you and me.” He withdrew and stood to fetch the man his own glass. “Hot, cold, or room temperature?”

He was met with a stare; he wasn’t sure why he had expected anything more.

“Too many options, eh?” he asked, playing off the silence as nothing at all. “Well, here, let’s check this first.” He vanished to the bathroom, and when he returned, he was shaking out a thermometer. “Think technically I’m supposed to have thrown this out by now, but personally I think the mercury’s still the better method. Not like it’s going to poison me, right?” he smiled and slipped the sliver of glass and metal beneath Morpheus’ arm, pressing the toothpick of a limb tightly to his ribs. After a while, he checked the results and clicked his tongue. “Still a bit of a fever. How’s room temperature sound?”

Morpheus wanted the ice. He wanted to go numb again, to feel the burn of the freezing void start in his core and spread to the very ends of him from the inside out.

He had a sneaking suspicion that Gadling wouldn’t allow such behavior.

He managed a jerky, small nod that his caretaker wasn’t even watching for, and he winced as he tried to shift himself further up in the bed and came up short.

“Here, let me help you with that,” Hob muttered, setting the plastic cup aside. In ginger, piecemeal movements, he helped Morpheus shift himself forward, and he piled pillows behind him until it was enough to allow him to drink, though he’d have to sit up higher for food. He guided those skeletal claws to the cup, and Hob felt a quick twist of nausea as he saw the blue plastic was nearly visible through the starved skin. “You guide, okay? I’ll just help with the weight of it.”

At least Gadling was not insisting on feeding him like an infant. As ashamed as he had felt of the mauling he dealt the man in the tub, he would do it again in a heartbeat if Hob ever dared stoop to such insulting treatment.

“We’ll pause there for now. Drink too much and you’ll just bring it all right back up,” Hob cautioned as he pulled the half-drunk glass away. “However, you and I aren’t built quite like normal people, so you can handle a bit more than the average starved sod. So that means you need to eat at least some soup, okay?”

Morpheus scowled as the man brought his breakfast forward, and his chilled hands curled into fists amid the blankets.

Hob noticed and raised a finger at him.

“At the least that,” he scolded. “I’m not asking. It’s easy on the gut and the best way to start rebuilding your insides. And the best part?” He picked up a piece of bread to demonstrate and ignored the absolute fury burning low in his friend’s eyes. “No spoons to navigate. It’s all hands.”

Morpheus watched the purée soak into the chunk of French bread, dripping down the sides even as it softened the crust to match its core, and felt the distinct twist in his gut that promised the organ would not comply. Gadling’s face above the bowl told him he had no choice. Morpheus closed his eyes with a faint, growling breath that burned low in his throat and then blinked to stare at the rafters.

I will not comply.

“Right, let’s get you sat up all the way for food, then.”

And for once, the universe seemed to be on Morpheus’ sadistic side. Gadling’s hands slipped behind him to settle at his shoulder blades, his gentle but firm embrace supporting his haggard torso. Morpheus moved on nervous instinct to grab at Hob’s shirt sleeves, to grip and twist and hold onto him as much as possible, and as he did, a burning, bone-deep pain seared up his spine from his tailbone. He spasmed with the startled grunt of one caught off-guard, his hip shrieking in the same pain, which in turn made his leg jerk, and then his knee ignited—

“Shh,” Hob soothed as Morpheus clung to his shoulders and head, whimpering low in his throat like a wounded animal. His entire body had gone rigid, and an agonized sweat broke over his skin as the fever in turn began to mount at the tip in his precarious condition. “I know it hurts, mate, just—I’m gonna move you one last time…”

Hob heaved, and the whimper turned to a guttural howl that Morpheus swallowed as soon as it sounded with a tightly furrowed brow and a mouth gritted into tortured silence. His hand fisted viciously in Hob’s hair at the back of his head and then released as if burned as soon as he realized what he’d done. His fingers quivered as if they yearned to grab hold again and only kept from ripping Hob’s hair out at the roots by the sheer will of his rapidly fraying self-awareness. His spine, it still seared.

“…And down again.”

Morpheus shook with pain as he sagged into a near-upright seat against the sofa back. His eyes and nose burned; his throat squeezed nearly completely shut, and his limbs lit on fire as his body throbbed like one giant wound.

“Breathe, my friend…just breathe…in, two, three, out, two, three,” Hob counted.

He was so close Morpheus could smell the combination of spiced soup and coffee on his breath, so autumnal and warm. He did not pull away, even as Morpheus coughed into his face in another wracking rale of pain and struggled to follow his instruction. He was beginning to wonder what kind of self-punishment Gadling was into when the ache in his hands made him realized why the man had not yet pulled back.

Morpheus released the back of Hob’s shirt, the knit of the Henley stretched and distorted at his shoulders, and he gritted his teeth against another pained moan as his fingers and wrists protested at the relief. But before his arms could collapse to the mattress and send another stab of pain rocketing through his utterly spent body, Gadling caught his elbows.

“ ‘S okay,” he murmured and guided him to the bed. “I’ve got you.”

He let out another humming whine that was something closer to gratitude and winced as Hob examined his mottled wrist, prodding at the fractured bone until he was satisfied it was on its way to healing. 

“Alright, before we eat, we’re gonna get that pain under control, okay? I’ve got some stuff that should do the trick.”

Please, the sane voice in Morpheus’ mind begged. Please, anything, I will accept anything—

You are ruining all our hard work, the other voice seethed. Ruining it, ruining—

In the bathroom, Hob rummaged through the first aid kit until he found the bottle wrapped in a handkerchief at the very bottom and pulled it free. It was a full prescription from near a decade ago, never touched, from the first and last time he had ever allowed himself to get caught in a motor vehicle accident. In his defense, it had been the furthest thing from his fault. He hadn’t even been driving. He’d been taking the bus, like any ecologically responsible adult, and a semi-truck with an overworked driver asleep at the wheel blew a red light and sped headlong into them like naval cannons in a broadside volley.

The bus had buckled and flipped in short order, sunk as quickly as a ship on the seas.

Gadling had limped away amid sirens and screams, spitting blood all the while. His partner at the time, Ben, and so many others had not, and he had watched Ben’s funeral from a safe distance with bones knitted back together and scars fading fast from his forehead and nose while a family who had reviled the man he loved honored and buried a ghost. He had only barely managed to talk his way out of imaging or a hospital admission himself—fine, flirted, he flirted his way out with disarming charm even as he scanned the faces of the wounded around him in invisible panic for one that he would ultimately find in a morgue. They had sent him out with stitches, a knee brace and sling he’d discarded within two days, and a pain prescription that he’d filled and kept tucked away for a rainy day.

Today, it was pouring.

Coaxing Morpheus to take the narcotics required far less effort than Hob had anticipated, and he wasn’t sure whether to find comfort in that small mercy or not. He would take it, make no mistake; but he did so with a persistent rumbling of disquiet that he hoped didn’t show in his face as he helped the man first swallow the pills and then confronted him with the dreaded soup. That went far more as he had expected, and the simple task dragged into an almost hour-long endeavor to finish just one piece of drowned bread and the other half of his water. It was like pulling teeth, like herding cats, and Hob had never been more relieved to put aside the empty glass and barely touched food.

“Thank you, my friend. Truly. I know it feels horrible now, but in time your mind and body will thank you.” Morpheus just glared at the wall, the faintest touch of mortified color in his knife-sharp cheeks. “Once the food’s had a chance to settle and the medicine kicks in, I’ll check your wounds. But for now, rest. That was a big morning.”

Morpheus bit his tongue as Gadling moved into the kitchen to finish his own meal and left him to his staring match with the wreath. Coming from anyone else, his words would have been condescending in the extreme: a dueling glove cast by the likes of Desire, a mockery of Morpheus’ self-incurred weakness. But from the immortal, it was somehow saccharinely sincere.

It was worse.

And it was hardly something he could snap at the man for. He had meant no harm by it and had been exceedingly patient in the face of Morpheus’, well, everything, and….

…and Morpheus was feeling very strange. His glare zoned out into a wide-eyed stare into the empty air between him at the wreath, and the thoughts in his head continued to loosen and expand from his normally throttling grip. The room seemed far from him, the textures against his skin and the different weights on his body distant in a different way than they had been before. Before, the mortal world had slipped away from him because it was easy to slip from his attention; his senses were accustomed to a world much louder, much more filled. It was easy for this excuse of an existence to fade away.

Now…now the world slipped away because, try as he might, he couldn’t hold onto it. And in its stead, his thoughts continued to grow and slip about, his tongue loosening in kind until he worried that he was going to start speaking without control. He hated this. Hated. He had never used that word before with such a dissociated weight—did he actually hate this? Yes. Yes, of course he did, he could feel nothing else about it. So then, why did he not feel the hatred? There was only a distant panic, and oh, this was not good. It had to stop. It had to end, this instant. Where was Gadling, he had to give him back his control, had to—

Summoned like the very Morningstar, Gadling appeared above him, looming into his lightly swaying vision with an empathizing wince. The room seemed to throb in time with his heartbeat, and Morpheus squeezed his eyes shut tight as his stomach turned.

“First time high then, is it?” The bed dipped beneath the man’s weight like a ship at sea, and his voice nestled in Morpheus’ ears in a drawing of black-out curtains. “Talk to me, what are you feeling?”

The nausea eased in the abyss, and Morpheus gingerly opened his eyes once more as he summoned his raspy whisper of a reply.

“…far…away….”

“Ahh,” Hob said as if he had said something far more eloquent and poetic. “Well, that one’s easy enough to fix. Come on, take my hand.” Morpheus went stiff and still and eyed the outstretched palm Gadling rested upon his thigh as if it were a viper. The man regarded him with a crooking smile and small chuckle. “It doesn’t bite,” he chided and tapped his leg. “Take it.”

Moving far more slowly than he believed himself to be, Morpheus took Gadling’s hand in his, holding it with all the awkwardness of a teenage boy who had only just rediscovered the concept of touching another human being. He stared with those unnerving, too-wide eyes, awaiting his next instruction, and Hob tried not to laugh in utter endearment.

“Okay, now describe it to me.” Morpheus frowned. “Describe what my hand feels like,” Hob pushed and hefted their hands between them, “three things about it.”

Morpheus blinked in a truly owlish fashion and then looked to the hand in his as if just remembering that the thing existed. Hob kept very still as the man took hold of him with both hands, and his touch alternated between feather-light and probingly deep as he examined and studied and considered.

“Warm,” he eventually croaked, his weak voice surer and all the more painfully rough for his decreased inhibition. His withered fingertips passed over Hob’s calluses, catching and scraping. “Rough.” He turned the hand back and forth, feeling the heft in the meat of his palm, the dull-ended firmness of his remarkably nimble fingers and the large river-maps of veins beneath his tanned skin.

“Strong,” he finished in a sandpapery whisper.

If Hob flushed under Morpheus’ ministrations, that was no one’s business but his own.

“Alright, good.” He squeezed his friend’s hand and tapped their joined fingers to the sofa bed beneath them. “Three things about your bed—different than my hand.”

Morpheus’ fingers unwound from his to push into the upholstery, brushing the fabric.

“Soft,” he breathed, followed very promptly by, “uncomfortable.”

Hob gaped in playful affront.

“Oh, alright then, my liege,” he returned and bowed in his seat alongside him in an exaggerated dip with mockingly spread arms. “Forgive me for not having a royal mattress ready for your unexpected arrival.”

When he lifted his head, he expected to see dour displeasure on his Stranger’s face. In his current disinhibited state, there was even a chance for a weakly delivered rude gesture, which, personally, Hob was really hoping to see. What he did not expect was a sudden look of nausea on his friend’s face, the kind of mortified fear that hit someone when they wanted nothing more than for the earth to open and swallow them whole. His hands had drawn up his lap to dig into the blankets about his hips, and his eyes seemed stuck on Hob, though they wanted nothing more than to look literally anywhere else if their shine was anything to go by.

Shit. Shit, fuck, shit.

“Hey,” Hob said as if calming a spooked horse and reached for the man’s less-wounded knee with as much obvious concern as was possible. “Hey, now, I’m just kidding. Sorry,” he smiled, crooked and apologetic, and swept his thumb in soothing passes along the side of his friend’s knobby joint. “Don’t suppose you’re used to folks doing that with you in good spirit, are you?”

Morpheus breathed through his discomfort, finally wrenching his eyes from that damned earnest face in front of him to his lap. This was horrible. This was torture, and he wanted Gadling’s damned medicine purged from this equally horrid form.

…Wait.

The pain….

“You okay?” Gadling asked somewhere beyond him.

For the first time in months, the pain was leaving. Morpheus felt himself nod like some child’s puppet and briefly closed his eyes against the ensuing spin.

“Okay.” Again, the squeeze at his knee. “Tell me three things you can hear, besides me.”

Another shaft of panic stabbed through him, and Hob frowned as he felt his friend jerk ever so slightly beneath his hand at the simple request. His eyes darted across the room, as if questing for anything at all that could be making noise and coming up short.

“I….”

“Take your time.”

And take his time he did. Morpheus sat there, sagged against the couch, for so long in tense silence, that Hob was about to call out to him in worry when he finally uttered his haunted reply.

“…Nothing.”

Hob blinked. “How d’you mean?”

Morpheus swallowed, his throat visibly bobbing and a shadow of pain passing his face as it did. After a while, he summoned forth another one-worded answer that slipped from his lips in a soft whisper.

“…Silent.”

Hob glanced around them, visibly perplexed, and back to Morpheus. His head tilted; his frown deepened. He pointed to the room at large.

“You really can’t hear any of that?”

Morpheus shook his head, and his anxiety prowled more quickly within his chest as he watched the thoughts in Gadling’s head race. The gears turned; the threads pulled apart beneath his quick, tracking hands. 

“Wh-what did you used to hear?” he asked after a time. “When you were…well, what you were before?”

Tears welled. Morpheus’ answer filled his mind like the dark filled the night, and it spilled from his lips like fresh blood from an old wound that would not heal.

“Everything,” he whispered.

And as Hob beheld those teary, so-very-human eyes, he felt his own begin to smart and blur.

“God,” he whispered back. “You really did, didn’t you?”

Morpheus’ expression for a moment remained unmoved: bruised eye sockets with points of pale blue deep within their recesses, sunken cheeks stretched between a frame of razor-sharp bone that nearly tore through the thin skin pulled taut over them, lips that were scabbed and split and raw. Utterly listless, despairing to a soul-deep pain that had become its default existence.

“…The world must seem so empty to you now.”

The glittering shine in those haunting eyes faltered—like the last wink of a distant, dying star finally catching up to the planet that had watched its ghost for millions of years. And Hob watched as a pair of silvery tears slipped down Morpheus’ cheeks.

Fix this, Hob’s heart stuttered. He reached for Morpheus’ hands with a teary sniff, refusing to let his own grief show beyond the sharp breath. Fix it, you absolute rambling moron.

“Give me your hands and close your eyes,” he instructed and sighed as Morpheus instead tried to withdraw further into his bed. “Come, my friend. Have I ever given you reason to distrust me?”

Morpheus relinquished his hands slowly and closed his eyes as Gadling’s touch took hold of him, as if to tether him to reality with his strength alone.

Rough. Warm.

“Can you hear me?” Gadling asked. Morpheus nodded, and even blind, he felt the world tilt and spin. “There’s a faint electronic whine in the room. It’s a low sound, constant, unchanging. It’s coming from the refrigerator behind you to the right. Listen carefully.” The bed shifted beneath him as Hob came closer. “Can you hear it?”

He tried. Oh, did he try, and after a long, long, long silence, Morpheus was about to give up in tears when, from the ringing quiet, it emerged. It was faint, a certain hallucination at first born from his desperation to hear something, but as Morpheus continued to strain and listen and wait, the surer he became.

Yes.

He nodded.

Yes, he could hear it.

“Good,” Hob’s grip tightened. “That’s perfect, Stranger. Now, there’s some footsteps downstairs. Neighbor’s awake and pacing. She’s deaf as a post, but I think we still made her a bit nervous last night. I texted her a quick sorry this morning, that we were watching a horror movie and it got away from us. So, I think we’re good. Can you hear her?” He paused, awaiting the verdict, and as the silence dragged on added, “it’s a dull, padding sound.”

And he heard it.

“There’s a snowplow outside,” Gadling was saying next, and Morpheus tilted his head toward the window, his eyes still screwed shut. “It—”

“Engine,” he croaked.

“Yes,” Hob grinned and gripped his hands even tighter. “And the—”

“Wind?”

Hob’s grin shifted to a silent, affectionate laugh, and he tugged slightly on Morpheus’ hands for his quick, if inaccurate, reply.

“That’s the heater, mate,” he corrected, still smiling, and a brief flush dusted Morpheus’ cheeks, no darker than his friend’s typical paleness had been in life. “Ah, don’t you worry yourself about getting that one wrong. There is wind outside, and I’m sure to your ears the heater’s just as faint.”

And now that Gadling had cued him, he was hearing it all. His breaths, his own breaths, his heartbeat, the shift of the bedding and their clothes, the hum of other electronics in the house, the true wind faintly whistling in the hearth, and…and something else.

…there came a tapping…as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door….

Morpheus opened his eyes and looked to Gadling with all the severity of their dodged capture in 1789.

“…Door.”

“Hm?”

As the medicine spread ever more swiftly through him, Morpheus’ pain numbed further, but so did his impulse control. There were only two things in his mind at present: the thoughts as they came to him and acting instantly upon them. And in that dazing wake of relief, Morpheus tried to turn, to heft himself up and point over the back of the couch to the front door with his increasingly rubbery limbs.

“Whoa, Stranger—”

Gadling’s hand pressed to his stomach, bracing his wound even as he tried to corral him back down, and oh, there was the pain.

“Something,” he panted as he crumpled back to the bed, Hob trying to guide his fall while protecting the worst of his wounds, “door…”

Hob looked to the door. It was a heavy thing he had fashioned and hung himself: solid wood of an oak nearly half his age, same as their bedroom door. It would not easily burn, would not be easily cut down, and could take a battering ram, especially with the iron bands he’d affixed across its width like castle doors of old. It was a simple thing, and yet one that turned their modest flat into a fortress all on its own. Nothing armed with means of the mortal world was getting through without alerting him in the process.

Which is why the hair at the back of his neck stood on end and the adrenaline hit his system like donning a familiar suit of armor as he heard what Morpheus had: the faint creak of steps under a weight that was trying to be invisible and almost managing it, and the tinkering scrape of fine-pointed metal on bronze. Something was outside his door. Something that had managed to get nearly into his flat without detection.

The scrape stopped, and in a fluid, silent-footed shift, Hob was on his feet and heading for the fireplace.

“Gadling,” Morpheus whispered, glancing between the door and his companion with frank anxiety. Trapped; he was trapped in this bed, unable to move, unable to assist or defend himself, and his hand crept to his sternum as he felt his heart quicken.

Shush it! Hob gestured back and drew the hatchet from behind the log basket.

He could not help.

“Gadling,” Morpheus tried again, reaching to grab the man as he passed and coming up far too short and far too slow as instead Gadling flipped the blankets up over his head and tipped a few of the pillows on top of him, trying in a Hail Mary as Gwen would’ve said to hide him from view.

Morpheus seized. Suffocating. He was suffocating—

“Quiet, stranger.” Gadling’s hand reappeared fleetingly, opening a small gap between the blankets and the bed before his mouth. The pillows shifted, keeping most of his chest weight-free, and his panic ebbed but did not end. “Keep low.”

Hob was beginning to personally understand that one scene in E.T. where Elliot was trying to get the wrinkly little creature to shut up and hide his resurrection. He prayed his friend had enough presence of mind left to obey and made a note to never double the narcotic dose again as he assumed his position along the doorjamb with all the silence of a wraith. His breath held. He listened closely, and he took hold of the bronze knob as the mouse-like scrapes and picks resumed, this time with an air of ozone.

The hatchet raised into position. In the bed, Morpheus watched his small patch of dawn-lit floorboards and rug from within the blankets and hardly dared to breathe.

Click.

The door unlocked, and Hob jerked it open.

[jasntodds]

I'm new to your blog hiii 😊 This is cuz of your music fic post, this is not me requesting I just simply must gush about this because I love music and there are some musicians imo that just hit so right with Jason (*cough* Matt Maeson)

Anyways here's some songs that I think have serious tremors of Jason Todd running through them 🎵 ❤

🎵Halestorm: Back from the Dead (this one is self explanatory lol)

🎵The Pretty Reckless: Got so High/ Standing at the Wall (side note~their latest album Death By Rock N Roll is so good and so sad)

🎵Eminem: Drug Ballad/ Never Love Again (don't worry these are milder Em lyrics cuz we all know some of his word choices are vomit inducing but these are basically simultaneously love songs to the drugs but also a cautionary tale against them)

🎵Avril Lavigne: Fall to Pieces/ Nobody's Home (I just think they fit for Jason esp nobody's home)

🎵 Matt Maeson: Dancing After Death/ The Hearse/ Tread on Me/ Go Easy/ Cringe/ Me and My Friends Are Lonely/ Mr. Rattlebone/ Grave Digger

(I motherfucking love this man's music 😢💘 lyrically mostly everything describes Jason. I LOVE the line in Me and My Friends Are Lonely "The city breathes when I do not" > that is so Gotham and Jason and Gotham and Robin and Gotham and Redhood. In Mr. Rattlebone the lyrics "I am the driver. I am the shadow. I am the hearse" welp 😢🙃 The opening of Grave Digger oh my days "I can't run to you Father, I need love". Anyway I'm gonna shush now because I am getting carried away lol but hope you don't me spaming you with all this

Hey!! Uh, I love this???? lmao I love hearing songs that relate to my favorite characters!! I definitely made a playlist here with all of these songs and I'm gonna add to it for songs that just scream Jason dkfhgdf I will be 100% listening to all of these and I actually really enjoy Matt Maeson's voice so that's so perfect??????

I'm so sorry but this is me reading "The city breathes when I do not."

Look, ANYTHING relating to daddy issues screams Jason to me and I nearly lose my fucking mind every single time. It reminds me of that one quote that's like "Growing up and seeing your parents' flaws is like losing your religion. I don't believe in God. I don't believe in my father either." This will be the first song I listen to omg

You can always come and ramble to me about music and/or Jason I love all types of music and I love Jason so I am always here lmao

And since you gave me some awesome recs, I'm gonna give you a few fkghfd:

Left Behind by The Plot In You. Look, it is one of my FAVORITE songs (is it my most played of the year?? Probably lmao it's in my top most played of all time and it came out in Feb lmao and I know I clocked over 60k minutes of music this year). But, when I listen to it, I relate it to Jason and Bruce's dynamic with lines like "Just know, all the sacrifice had robbed me of my time" and "I left behind, everything you killed inside" Landon screaming the lyrics makes me wanna CRY you can hear the pain in his voice and that's just very Jason Todd to me lmao

Deep End by I Prevail. It's such a good song?????? (I used in a fanedit and they liked it on TikTok) but my mom knows every word because she has to deal with me and brother playing it lmao but the WHOLE chorus is super Jason coded "So I made friends with all my demons. Let 'em sink their teeth in. Got used to the feeling of letting it go. So give me something to believe in or throw me in the deep end. It all feels the same with your eyes closed. So you can throw me in the deep end."

And Hollow - Lo's Version by Lo Spirit. I found him on TikTok (I swear I am not on that often??) and he's an INCREDIBLE vocalist. But this song is his best imo (followed by Good Enough and Wild Things (my beloved)) but this song is perfect for Jason. I mean, in Titans, he literally says there's a poison in him. It's perfect!! "Maybe somethings wrong with me. Maybe I was meant to sit and wait." and "Why do I, why do I feel so hollow? Hollow, hollow. Try to hide from my mind, but it follows."

[doesanyonehaveasparelightsaber]

Rikki - Pt. 2

(Y/N) = Your name

(E/C) = Eye color

“So, why is everyone mad at you?” You ask the next day, scooping a spoonful of ice cream into your mouth. Rikki had introduced you to one of the best ice cream places you have ever been to in your life. The ice cream was just so good.

You then add half-joking/half-serious, “Or, are we not at the level where I can know yet?” You kick a rock down the sidewalk and stare into your ice cream, not sure what Rikki’s response would be. You don’t like making people feel uncomfortable. Which is understandable, especially considering the question that you chose would make most people uncomfortable.

Rikki throws her head back, letting out a laugh. “I’m not a video game, (Y/N).” She takes a lick of her ice cream cone and shrugs, stuffing her other hand in her cargo shorts’ pocket. “We just had a fight but I was not in the wrong this time.”

“Hmm, you miss them though,” you whisper thoughtfully to yourself, but Rikki still catches it.

“Well, yeah, of course, but I’m not coming back till one in particular says sorry.” She shakes her head. “The other one hates fighting and is probably spending time with her boyfriend while Emma and I are ‘at each others throats’.” She makes air quotations around the last part, her ice cream dripping on the sidewalk. She takes a deep sigh and licks her ice cream. “Cleo hates when we fight, it makes me feel bad sometimes.”

You nod sympathetically, your ice cream spoon in your lips. You’re surprised that Rikki would reveal so much about this, she didn’t seem like the type who would but, perhaps you had just misread her.

Unbeknownst to you, Rikki never really did reveal so much about herself to people she just met–barely even to people she had known for a long time–but, if she were being honest, you seem like the listening type and that’s really what she needs right now. You are a kind face with soulful (E/C) eyes and an easy-going smile. She has a feeling that whatever she says to you, will stay with you till the grave. And, besides, who were you gonna blab it to anyway? Not like you know Emma, Cleo, or even Lewis for that matter.

Rikki glances at you as she contemplates all that she’s said and nearly snorts into her ice cream cone.

“What?” You say, mouth full of spoon.

“You look like a kid that’s robbed an ice cream shop; take one of your stupid napkins.” She laughs, handing you one of the napkins that you had grabbed. She stated that she has never once needed a napkin in her life which you highly doubted.

You stick out your tongue and put your spoon back in your paper dish, wiping your mouth. Rikki laughs to herself and shakes her head.

“C’mon, I want to show you the beach.”

You make a face and Rikki rolls her eyes. “You and your whole sand thing, is weird. We’re going to the beach.”

“Meh meh meh, beach beach beach,” you mock, albeit playfully so as to not offend your new friend of convenience. Your heart twinges slightly at how your mind addresses her but you push it away.

Rikki scoffs just as jokingly and swats you on the shoulder. “Hey, it could have been Nate trying to show off how he looks shirtless. Be thankful.”

You cringe and follow behind a smirking Rikki to the beach.

- -

“See. It’s not that bad,” Rikki assures you, gesturing to the sand, her shoes dangling from her fingertips. She’s walking a small bit ahead of you, as if testing the ground for you like someone would with an icy lake that you needed to walk across. “It’s just a bunch of little rocks.”

“Scratchy, annoying, little rocks,” you mutter, clenching your tennis shoes in your hand as you awkwardly walk through the sand.

“Heard that, (Y/N).” She looks back at you with a little grin. She waits for you as you trudge to her at a snail’s pace. “You’re an awful whisperer.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that one before,” you say, dodging a small child that barrels past you. You move faster, feeling that staying by Rikki’s side might prove to be a repellent to little humans that might knock you into the sand. You’ve seen her glare at a few already.

When you arrive by her side, she looks at you with an expression you can’t quite read and then out at the water. You didn’t realize how close to the ocean she was leading you. You glance around and realize that, in spite of getting nearly toppled over by a kid or two, there aren't that many people out here today. Even the life guards seemed to not be present; you aren’t seeing one on the giant chair watch thingy.

You watch Rikki’s expression as she gazes out at the water. Her deep blue eyes that are nearly the same shade as the giant body of water before the both of you, held a sense of longing for it. It seems as if she wants to dive in head first and never come back to the land.

You nudge her gently, feeling almost like you are experiencing a moment of extreme vulnerability with this girl. “We can go swimming, if you want.” You look down at your clothes and chuckle. “I know I’m not exactly dressed for it but I’m okay with that.”

Her eyes dart back to you with a new fire. You nearly shrivel under her glare. Perhaps you have touched a nerve you didn’t know existed? Her expression softens just as quickly as it had burned holes into your head.

“No, I’m good, just…a memory,” her voice is quiet, almost blending in with the wind beginning to blow. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” you answer back just as softly. You are a forgiving person by nature. And, you don’t dare press for the obvious explanation for Rikki’s behavior: that the memory was about her friends.

They must have swam together a lot. The corners of your mouth turn up at the thought. I wish I could be able to say that I’ve done things like that. You are more accustomed to swimming alone. You never made friends quick enough in the last places you lived to invite them on swim dates.

While deep in your thoughts, you eventually spot something in the water. It seems to be moving a lot, almost…struggling? Your eyes widen as you realize that it’s not a thing but a person. The shouts that seemed like distant children playing, actually seem to be originating from the struggle in the water.

“Rikki, oh my goodness, Rikki.” Your voice is thick with alarm and panic. She turns her head to you, confused. You point out to the water, where a lot of splashing is taking place. “I think there’s a kid out there!”

“What do you mean? There’s always kids out there.” She seems annoyed that she isn’t getting your meaning but you don’t have time for this.

“I think they’re drowning, we’ve got to go get them.” You drop your shoes and socks in the sand. You take out everything from your pockets, looking around as you do. No one is looking at the kid, there are barely any adults on the beach anyway. When you glance at Rikki, she looks like a mix between confusion and frozen fear.

“I can’t swim.” You hear her say, though it’s almost distant to you as you start running towards the water, throwing caution to the wind as the panic at this kid somehow losing their life fueling your every move. Rikki yells your name as your feet pound the sand.

You dive head first into the water, forgetting your conscious self that’s weary and tired with jet lag and pain from walking and swimming as hard as you can out to the drowning form. You seem faster than you ever have, adrenaline filling every terror filled moment. The last thing you want is for this kid to die, even if you don’t even know them.

Your feet aren’t even close to touching any sand at the bottom of the water when you arrive to the kid, her head almost underwater. She seems to have passed out from fear but her training surfboard has kept her afloat, the very edge of her head resting against the board, keeping her nose above water.

“Come on, Sweetheart,” you murmur, pushing her onto her board. It takes you a few tries due to the girl being limp but she’s eventually on there. You use as much leg strength as you have left and propel the both of you to shore.

Four young men dressed in red and yellow meet you halfway to the shore and take the girl from you. One wraps their arms around you and helps you swim the rest of the way to shore. He helps you walk onto the beach and gratefulness warms every inch of your heart. Though you probably would have been able to reach the shore while pushing the little girl, you wouldn’t have had any strength left to find her medical help.

The young man speaks to you calmly, asking if you’re okay. You nod dumbly and he slowly lets his arm off you and you feel a warm towel wrap around you in his place.

You look to your right and find Rikki tentatively situating the towel over your shoulders. You smile in thanks at the towel and the sudden realization that comes to your mind.

“You called them,” you state, no doubt in your tone. There had been a thought in the back of your mind as you had been running to the kid that it was stupid that Rikki wasn’t coming with you to at least try and help. You now remember what she had said to you as you ran off: “I can’t swim.”

You silently chastise yourself at being so forgetful. Which, as you realize later, was stupid. You were literally in a crisis.

Rikki smiles. “Not really calling when I found them distracted further down the beach.” She throws a disgusted look over her shoulder as they tend to the girl, her eyes slowly fluttering open. Your heart expands as she sits up, coughing up what little water she had in her lungs. She was going to be okay.

A young man looks up to you from his crouching position, brown hair slicked back with water. “You got to her just in time.” You smile through clenched teeth and then practically have to beg yourself to not go off on every single one of those stupid, young life guards for not doing their jobs. A kid could have died today because of them.

Though, it’s hard to go off on them anyway when their shoulders are slumped forward and they look ashamed of themselves. They are vigorously asking the slightly jarred little girl questions as if it would make up for their negligence.

“I wonder where her parents are,” you ask out loud, bringing your towel closer.

Rikki shrugs. “Not sure. Some parents just let their kids do whatever, whenever.” You glance at her out of the side of your eye, noting the particularly sad tone.

You choose to ignore it for the time being and look down at your sopping, wet clothes. “I’d better get home and change.”

She looks you up and down and jokingly says, “Yeah, you do look a bit wet.”

“Do I?”

- -

Rikki had come home with you to Auntie Marty’s. Your mom is in shock, both from your story and the fact that you have a friend with a pulse standing in front of her.

Auntie Marty just seems happy to have more people in her home. You’re slightly offended at her lack of care for your well being but then hear the tea kettle in the kitchen and know she’s making something to get the chill off you.

You had changed into something dry and are now standing in front of your mother as she inspects you for scraps and bruises. Rikki wanders around the living room, looking incredulously at all of the knick-knacks.

“There’s just…so much,” she says, and you hope Auntie Marty doesn’t find it obnoxious.

“Why, of course, dear,” your aunt says, walking back into the living room with a tea tray. She sets herself down on the couch and places the tea tray on the coffee table in front of her. “I am a collector by nature, sometimes I believe that I was a raven in my past life.”

“Ah.” You can tell Rikki is keeping back a snide comment or two. You smile at her forced politeness, finding it amusing.

As your mom looks you over one last time, she turns her head to Rikki as the girl keeps walking around the room, picking up a few things.

“Are you okay, Rikki?”

“Hmm?” She puts one of the knick knacks back–a particularly odd one of a Santa Claus holding a fishing pole in one hand and a crying child by the collar in the other. She looks at your mom and then fully realizes what she’s said. “Oh, um, yeah, I’m good.”

Your mom breathes a sigh of relief. “I would have hated if (Y/N)’s brand new friend got hurt, simply hated it.” She gives Rikki a brilliant smile and Rikki awkwardly smiles back in response. The clinking of tea cups is the only sound as Auntie Marty pours and stirs the tea.

“Would anyone like some tea?” Auntie Marty hands Rikki a cup despite her shaking her head no, and then hands you and your mother one. Rikki looks like she would rather drink sewage than the tea but politely keeps it in her hands. You step away from your mother and stand by Rikki in hopes of helping her feel less out of place.

You note that each tea cup has a theme. Rikki’s, funny enough, has a fire theme, mirroring her personality; Auntie Marty’s has a bunch of different things, almost like a search and find; your mother’s has an entire map with the words “Wanderlust” written beautifully across the side; and yours, well, yours has frogs. A lot of frogs.

What is with Auntie Marty and associating me with frogs?

“First my room, now my cup?” You whisper to yourself, thinking no one can hear you over Auntie Marty’s and your mother’s chattering. Rikki did though. God must have spent a lot of time on this girl’s hearing.

“What do you mean your room?” She questions, leaning closer to hear you better. There is a spark of mischief in her eyes, as if she senses a good start of a joke.

You hesitate and then relent to her probing gaze. “My room is frog themed.”

She leans back on her heels and grins almost wolfishly. “Is it now?”

“Oh no,” you whine. “You wanna see it, don’t you?”

“Lead the way, frog girl.”

[bitchfitch]

The night shift at Uncle Jim-Jim's Arcade and Fun Complex had gotten a lot less spooky since Silas learned the true nature of the monster which haunted the place. He double checked his work like he did every night, a final round of inspection through the massive and dimly lit building before returning to the arcade.

It was rare the 'monster' stayed quiet the whole night, usually prefering to follow Silas around the building while dicking around on his phone until it was time to go wherever they felt like going that night.

"Bats!" Silas called from the entrance, "I'm done. Do you want to go bother ducks in the park or something?"

There was no response from the dark room beyond.

"Chase? You're here right? I'm not talking to nothing?" Silas asked before whipping around, expecting the bastard to have snuck up behind him, but there was only the empty lobby. No waif of a vampire looking like a victorian orphan boy lost in time emerging from the shadows.

"Chase? Seriously, Bats, I'm starting to worry," Silas walked into the room, grabbing the step stool from behind the prize counter as he passed.

He approached the crane games, and set his stool down, climbing up to get a better look at the coffin that rested on top of them. Still fully closed, no gap between the lid and the box that Chase liked to keep while he slept.

Silas knocked on its side anyways, "Babe? You in there?"

he got a loud, drawn off groan in return.

"Everything ok in there?"

"Nooooo," Chase whined from within.

"Gonna tell me what's up?"

"No."

"Do you want me to leave you alone?"

"... No."

"Ok, then you're going to have to come out, I'm not going to stay perched on this all night, my darling."

the lid cracked open a hair, "It's rude to try and make people come out you know? Very problematic."

"Funny, how making an old man climb a crane game to talk to you is also, what did you call it, 'problematic'?"

"Cringe," Chase huffed.

"Yeah, well at least I'm trying to stay hip. Come on, we can go back to my place and watch a movie or something."

"No. Its- I love you, but please just leave."

"I love you too, and I'll go if you really want me to, but will you at least give me a hint on what's happening? Did I do something to upset you?"

"If I tell you you're going to be stupid about it."

"Let's be honest, I was going to be stupid about it no matter what." he grinned when that silly joke got a giggle out of Chase.

"... Promise to go straight home? Lock your doors and salt lines around every entrance. Extra garlic by the windows."

"Chase, are you in danger-"

"Promise."

"I promise, I promise, swear it on my parents' graves."

"Thank you," the lid opens fully, Chase sitting up, his hair a mess and his pale face streaked red with dried tears, "My sire is back from his trip, and I just want to keep a low profile until he leaves again. He ..." Chase grimaces, "He and I arn't a thing. Haven't been for years, but he doesn't agree with that. I- I really don't want him knowing about you, ok?"

"Chase..." Silas has to pick apart the layers of what Chase just said to him, "I- Let's start with this, What do you mean he's your Sire? Like, he's your father?"

"No, He's the guy who turned me into a vamp. He... No, not dealing with that tonight, putting that memory back into it's box. He turned me, he thinks we're still a thing and is the worst person ever, and would absolutely kill you if he found out I was quote un-quote cheating on him with you. That's All you need to know," chase rambles off. "Leave, I'll text you when he's gone again,"

Silas nods, he and Chase would talk about this more later, "Do you want me to vamp proof the entrances? I've got salt hoses in the trunk and everything already."

"No. He'll know someone is helping me and be... Listen Silas, I- He's not going to be happy with me no matter what and he's never been reasonable. It's going to be a lot safer and easier to just let him have what he wants until he fucks off again."

"Bats is he-"

"Don't say it. Yeah he is. I- I don't want him to but he is and there's no stopping it. If you aren't comfy with that... I dunno, break up with me or something." he pulls his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them, "Or just break up with me anyways because dating a vampire was a stupid idea and dating me specifically was an even stupider idea."

"I'm not breaking up with you for what's being done against your will," Silas's brow furrowed.

"I know, you're too nice and good and -"

"I'm not to good for you either, keep out of that doom spiral too."

"Meanie."

"Yeah. Cruelest fucker in this city at your service. But I'm serious, do I need to call Mindy? I don't like that she kills people but this is a guy who sounds like he needs to be dead."

"Chances are he'll just kill her. He's not like every other vamp she's hunted or any of the other monsters kicking around. He was the first and he's not nearly as easy to kill as the rest of us."

"But he can be killed?"

"You Promised you wouldn't be stupid about this."

"I'm not being stupid."

"Yes, you are."

"I'm not being stupid Yet, then."

"Silas. Please, Please Please Pretty Pleas I am actually Begging you. Go home. Come back for your next shift, pretend you don't know me while you're here. Leave as soon as it hits closing even. I'll handle cleaning up for the night and everything."

"You suck at cleaning," Silas sighed, "I'll go. I'll be real clever and smart. But, when it's all done, Promise me you'll come to my place and let me baby you for a bit? Take you on a nice date, and then maybe actually talk about what's happening here?"

"I won't want to."

"I know, but I don't want you to have to be alone in this. You can tell me anything and just get it out of your system. Ok? Then you can beat me at one of the videogames you keep 'forgetting' at my place or whatever. Deal?"

Chase looks at him, his face half hidden behind his knees, but his expression is still so obviously soft. The pain and nerves keeping him tense, but the love is all there, "Deal."

[pixelatedbugs]

well im horrible at phrasing things so time for a massive toh ramble. here we go

no organization. no proper grammar. mega spoilers under the cut, of course

phillip really commited to the bit though ‘thank you for freeing me from that terrible curse 🥺’ fuck off but that was hilarious. he was a manipulative asshole and he stuck to that shit. props. he deserved to get stomped into the ground thank god. luz is going to be the goth awakening for a lot of kids. also holy shit titan power luz looked so cool i need to see art of her Now . the glyphs are back but different which makes so much sense because king’s the new titan and its not the same but similar. i already miss kings genderqueer dad and i only knew them for like 10 seconds the final thing he wanted to say to king was a bread pun i sobbed. the collector not knowing what death was for mortals followed by their reaction to luz’s temporary death fuck. that hurt. I love the collector so much . gus and skara finally got some new hair styles i love them. oh yeah everyones timeskip styles??? i adore them edas hook hand and gus’ dreads and willow’s short hair and amity’s undercut and hunter is a palisman carver thats so fitting did we all see his new blue jay palisman? we saw it right? FLAPJACKS GRAVE MADE ME CRY…and they all got flapjack tattoos…heck. aladarius is canon ig i never really cared much for it but im happy yall got a win. same for huntlow shippers. im just happy eda and raine are back together and THEY SWAPPED EARRINGS and that was so cute … i hope raine got a new violin though … also speaking of raine they kicked ass this episode i love them to death theyre my favorite character ever. OH YEAH LILITH GOT AN OWL BEAST FORM THAT WAS COOL AS FUCK! AND THE GOOD WITCH AZURA QUOTE I KNEW IT WAS GONNA BE AT THE END. I need to rewatch that part because i want to appreciate how good the animation was . and they really ended it on the ‘Byyyeeee!’ that was cringe jn the best possible way. I love this show and will forever love this show and it did so much for representation too.okay i think im done. owl house finale kicked ass. im going to rewatch it now

[princevontwix]

what i wanted to put was too long for tags so I'm just gonna vent here

i really feel this. my parents have been encouraging me to get my masters, when I'm almost done with my bachelors. and the major i have isn't offered anymore so idk what would happen. I've also chickened out on going to the career center to get started on literally anything. i haven't taken any internships at all, done any mock interviews, and have no concrete idea on the career i want with my major.

im gravely worried that once i graduate i wont be able to do the job well, esp since I've repeatedly dumped out whatever I've learned from previous classes, which i HATE. as such, I'm nervous that when something I'm expected to have known about comes up during a crucial moment(s) at my job, ill be left smooth-brained, feel utterly incompetent, or worse.

if i do try and get a masters degree, i feel like id be delaying the inevitable. I'm also just not completely confident in being able to manage my own life by myself. it doesn't help that i haven't truly made friends in uni, just people I'm familiar with for one semester and that's it. Middle and high school were easier to get friends bc i was in the same "class of" as everyone else. but in uni, you're sharing classes with people of different years so you don't really get a chance to be familiar with them. i feel like that's also my fault though; I've been forgetful of people's names unless i see them on a regular basis outside of just classes (only two professors i can say arent the case). and those classmates who give me their numbers for future contact, i just never do. i feel overwhelmed by work and by then, id have fast forgotten anything about them to make conversation of.

im scared that ill be incompetent in my future career, that i might only have a few select irl friends at best or only my online friends (which there's no guarantee that ill ever meet any of them in person and strengthen that bond. AND that this last year in uni will be my last retreat to my shell before it completely shatters and I'm thrusted into the real world. there's also this internal pressure on me for being the first in my family to graduate uni (my older siblings have graduated high school).

My older siblings have been living at home for years, which, nothing wrong with that. but i don't want to end up living that same lifestyle. I want to prove to my family that their efforts weren't for naught. but at the same time, i feel like i don't know what to do when the future comes and ill have no insurance for whatever happens. I'm already dreading the days when my parents pass away and what might happen with my siblings when it does. the absolute last thing i want is to end up homeless and with nothing to show for myself.

Earth, our home, is dying to corporate greed and we're massacring each other, hate in our veins. And if i cant make a dent in any of that, then what was the point? what were my efforts for?

And yet...i want to be selfish and create for myself (no matter how cringe it is) and spend time with my online friends. I want to stay in my comfort zone of being in my dorm for the week and home at the weekends. i want to have those long summers where i don't have to worry to much about what to do and just enjoy myself.

How can I ever possibly balance my practical life with my personal life? My work and social lives?

Perhaps i've never truly grown up, and the unforgiving march of time is a reminder that i need to do something with my life and grow the fuck up. Perhaps it doesn't matter what i do as link rot will snuff out my creations and my second death will follow my first death fairly quickly.

Or maybe i really am just overthinking everything. Maybe 10 years or more from the future, I'll come back to this post and laugh at my naivety and how much i was overthinking. If such a possibility exists, maybe it's narcissistic for me to want this, but i would greatly welcome my future self hugging me, telling me that everything turned out well. that I'm living a life my family and friends would be proud of.

that despite the mountainous amount of work my job requires, i managed to make time to tend to my own projects completely unrelated to my profession. maybe in that possible future, my fanstory Rejuvenation has finally been completed, and i have the improved skills to bring my vision out for my art and fanfics (cringe, i know). perhaps in that future, i don't feel any of the loneliness i feel right now.

i just want some assurance that everything will turn out well. right now, my last year in uni is my temporary shelter against all these worries. but once i graduate? it's the point of no return.

I'm deathly afraid of the future and what might not be. i may bide my time and play games, draw, or just chat with friends. but the clock will keep ticking and if i don't play catch-up, I'm as good as dead. i just hope that I'm still eligible to reach Heaven by then.

but for now, i have some schoolwork shit i need to do. procrastination is a poison, one that might cost me everything.

“I don’t know what my goals are, no. Thanks for asking.”

[ritualcaster]

Ok so its 2 am and ive been thinking (recipe for disaster, i know) should I message the friend that kicked me from the group chat and blocked me?

('Read more' seperator in case you don't want to read about sappy stuff or give advice)

(Im going to spout a lot, classified as a vent post but i really want advice)

I'm thinking through it to figure it out and its not working so im gonna lay out the facts

(With complimentary + or - for decision)

We've been best friends for 2 years, friends for 5, and known each other for 7, and known of each other for 14.

Around 9/17 she began texing drier and responding less, the change is slow.

On 9/19 I said "Im ngl its 4 am and im scrolling throigh our messages trying to figure out if its just anxiety or we're getting more distant" she responded with "NOOOOOO!! DONT REREAD PAST MESSAGES PAST 8 PM!! YOUR LIFE IS IN GRAVE DANGEERR!!" Which is actually a direct copy paste of a message i sent to her about a similar situation.

On 9/20 we had 3 seperate long winded text conversations, and a 30 minute call, we have not called each other since.

On 9/21 she responded "with probably not today, sorry" after i asked if she wanted to get on and do anything, she then proceeded to message me about a million times over the following 4 hours, these conversations included a message i sent asking "Why dont you respond to my tiktoks. Do you hate me." (As a joke (i can see how it did NOT come off that way), however she had actually stopped responding to the videos i sent her about 3 days before. I sent many with no responses within those 3 days)

On 9/23 I messaged one with a photo asking to do a trio pfp (i did a few trio pfps with her and her boyfriend, then i started editing myself into two of their duo pfps as a running gag. Definitely stepped a line there it seems.) She didn't respond, so I stopped messaging her and sending tiktoks to give her a bit of space.

On 9/24 I sent a few messages, "I sent you so many videos in a row" she responded "ill watch them eventually" I responded "Just block me so my sufferijg can be ended" (as a joke, i felt our friendship was much more unshakeable than it was. I passed off most of these signs as anxiety.) I sent a few messages about games we both played recently, and the last message i sent was at 6:25.

An hour after this, She blocked me on everthing, and kicked me from the gc.

Ok so thats bassically everything that happened over the 5 days up until she blocked me, its a little crazy that im searching through it like this but for a 4 year long friendship it feels warranted

In general the day up until she blocked me i tried to probe about what was wrong in a comedic way, with deadpan affirming responses, or no response at all.

Even after running through it all, it still seems super mixed.

Only reason im debating messaging her at all is because

1. We were talking just an hour before, dryly, but definitely

2. I said "Just block me so my sufferijg can be ended" 2 hours before.

Both of those make this seem a little if not very impulsive, also, this feels like a boundaries issue, which can definitely be solved with proper communication and an open mind.

I also feel like i want to at least get to 'awkward..' terms with her, that way i can rejoin the gc with minimal violence/hard feelings

I can still message her on steam, which she didn't unfriend or block me on, even after I messaged her there. I've also been playing on steam over the 8 days since the blockening, so shes seen me get on (it gives a notif to all your active friends when you play a game) and still hasn't blocked me.

The message on steam was "I can take a hint, ill stop messaging you, but I'm still here, I'm still just a call away"

VERY cringe, but i was emotional. bite me.

So it might be weird to message her now and go back on that, especially if its on the same platform.... ugh....

[sophialikesthings]

Death Of Me Chapter 3.2

Song- Can We Pretend That We're Good by Daniel Seavey

Kie and I sat on the bed as Rafe slept peacefully on the floor

"Hey! Hey." She tapped on the glass

"Kie I don't think that is gonna work" I whispered

"I need to talk to mr. Singh"

"What are you doing!?" Rafe woke up panicked

"Like I owe you an explanation." She stood up to Rafe

"Hello?" she started tapping on the door.

"Kie, what are you doing?" he asked again.

"Don't talk to me!"

"You're lying about the diary thing." He got closer

"No I don't"

"That's fine I wouldn't tell me either." He kept following her.

"But listen Kie. I'm the only friend you got here"

"No, Demi is."

Suddenly the  door opened.

"I need to talk to Mr.Singh, It's urgent."

"Yes, Right this way." A tall guard led her out of the room.

"Wait, I want her to go with me." She pointed to me

" She's impossible!" Rafe threw his hands in the air.

—

"What are you doing?" I whispered so the guard couldn't hear.

"Just follow my lead."

"We lied, we know about the diary." She started

"We don't have the original, but we can get you a copy." I chimed in, now understanding what she meant.

"I'm relieved to hear you two say that you know. May I offer you guys something to eat." He leaned forward, popping a grape into his mouth.

"No"

"Relax. Nothing's gonna happen to you two now, you're cooperating and I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable, you know?"

"I just want to get you what you want and then I want to leave." Kiara crossed her arms."Look, I know where it is, But Demi and I have to go by ourselves, Alone."

"But how would I know you two would come back? You know, I need some collateral."

"I'll stay here with Rafe, Kie wouldn't leave me here." I made a counter offer.

"So I'm supposed to believe you are going to stay here with your... Husband?" He looked at my finger, making Kie and I both cringe at the word.

"Yes sir."

"Rafe." He chuckled, "How did someone so young get into so much trouble?"

"Look, she knows where the diary is, and if you let her go, We promise you she can get it to you." I pleaded

"I built this fortune myself you know, from nothing, from absolutely nothing. Do you two ladies know how that happened? I can assure you, it was not by being a fool. Don't waste my time. The diary holds the key to the ultimate conquest, and that my young friends, Ms.Carrera, Mrs.Cameron"

"Ms.Thornton, please" I asked.

"Ms.Thornton, is my destiny. So you need to tell me where it is, Or I'm gonna—" he got interrupted by a text. "Amazing, a text from our friend Jimmy Portis, from beyond the grave apparently. It seems Mr.Portis has captured your friends." He showed us a picture of Sarah and John B.

—

"Get in." A guard threw us into the room. Rafe grabbed me enfolding me into his arms

"What happened?" Rafe asked. "You know you're gonna have to talk to me at some point Kie."

"Do I have to remind you of everything you've done? You killed Peterkin, Not to mention your abuse towards Demi and your Sister" She rolled her eyes at him.

"Peterkin, I was protecting my Father. Not to mention Demi. Okay? I did what I had to."

"I was as much a victim as she is." He went on

"Rafe stop." I put my hand on his arm.

"Think about it, What did I get from shooting Peterkin? Huh?" He asked her.

"First off you got an in with Demi's dad that got him promoted"

"Both of you stop. Please." I interrupted

"I will admit... what I did to Sarah, a-and the shit I put Demi through... I admit that was wrong and they don't deserve that." He sat back down next to me holding my hand in his. "She has made me better and will continue to make me better."

"What I'm trying to say is, I-I'm not the bad guy you think I am, But even if I was just, like, bad Rafe Cameron or something... you got no choice, you may not want to trust me, but I'm your best bet."  he sniffles "Look, I got a boat that can take us off the Island, but first we gotta get out of here, and it is better if we work together." He crouched down in front of her.

"Shit, Kie they are leaving" I looked out the window.

"Why? Can you tell me now please."

"They are going to find John B, and your sister." I walked over to the door.

"Sucks for them, good for us though this might be the only shot we have at getting out of here."

"Kie, I'm scared... I don't want them to hurt him." I whispered.

She quickly took me into her embrace, reassuring me JJ will be ok.

—

"Demi I'm sorry in advance I love you." Rafe shook out his nerves.

"Get away from me, Don't fucking touch me Rafe." I yelled.

"I swear to god I'm gonna kill you Demi." He threw a vase at the floor.

"Help, he's hurting her help!" Kie screamed at the door.

The door opens.

Rafe slams him to the floor. Kie grabs the gun

"Stay down." My foot on his back pushing him down more.

Rafe grabs the phone, Kie hands me curtains to tie him up.

We all leave down the two flights of stairs careful not to step too hard because they are old

"Hand me the phone." I ask Rafe. "please."

"Shit" He opens the door to see security.

I run into the front room and snap a picture.

"What are you doing?" Rafe asked me. "Don't worry about it"

Through the Garden running through the yard to catch up to a truck, Rafe gives me a boost up and follows behind.

Two men jump up surprised and Rafe tackled them to the ground.

"Stop!" I yelled.

He continued to throw one of the men off the truck

—

"Demi and I are headed to the boat, I can give you a ride out wherever, somewhere safe, One thing though. I know your friends are on the island and my sister. I'm not helping them. All right? I can't trust them, Okay? I'll give you a ride out, but not them."

"I just want to get off the island."

"That's smart." Rafe chuckled. "You know I never thought of you as a pogue."

"What did you think of me as?" She looked confused.

"I mean I always liked you Kie, you'll always be at least half kook."

"Knock it off." I slapped his chest, knowing he's saying this to rile her up.

The truck stopped at the pier. Rafe started to get up so Kie and I followed.

"My boat should be this way." He walked. "Remember to take your shoes off."

"How much gas?" I asked, helping him untie the rope.

"Enough for Saint Lucia"

"Demi, Either get off the boat, or stay with me." Kie whispered

"I can't leave, I wish I could but I can't risk putting you guys in more danger than I already have, and I am wrapped up in so much legal shit, I love you, I'll text you." I gave her a huge hug before getting off.

"Rafe I can't get it undone." She called him down.

"What do you mean?" he bent over just giving her the opportunity to push him off.

"Dumbass."

"I'll find you and I'll kill you Kie!"

—

THIRD POV

"How did you even get this thing?" JJ asked, undocking the boat.

"Demi-" Kiara started to answer.

"Wait, Demi, you saw Demi, I-is she okay? Is she safe?" JJ interrupted her.

"Do you want to call he-"

"Yes." He snatched the phone she was holding immediately, dialing  her number that he memorized by heart.

-

DEMI POV

Rafe and I sat on the hotel bed confused as to what just happened.

"I'm gonna go shower if you care to join me." Rafe started taking off his wet clothes.

My phone started buzzing.

"I'll be there in a second." I answered. "Hello?"

"Hey princess." He spoke, I started crying not knowing how much I truly missed him until now.

"Hey pogue boy." I laughed

[izay0is]

Paparazzi [Fallenstarshipping]

All Saiga wants to do is have a private date with Hecate, but it seems like no one will let him. Just one of the pitfalls of dating a celebrity.

Relationship(s): Fallenstarshipping; Saiga/Blister x Hecate Enjo/Pace

Misc: Cringe is dead and I'm dancing on its grave, slowly getting back into writing for YGO again after so many years

Click!

Saiga grumbled as he held his fork. Suddenly the strawberry shortcake in his mouth tasted bitter. So much for a peaceful day.

Hecate reached out and offered him a comforting touch of her hand. "Just ignore them," she said. "Acknowleding them will only make it worse, hun."

But it was hard not to. Would it kill these people to let them enjoy their date in peace?

Click!

Following Hecate's advice, Saiga went back to eating. The cafe he picked out was a quaint one tucked into the shopping district of Neo Domino. When he first saw it, he thought it looked like something out of a fairytale.

"So, how's moving going?" Saiga took a bite of the cake. "I don't think it's fair you'll have to be so far from me."

Hecate picked up her teacup. With the change in her talent agency unfortunately came the requirement to move closer to the entertainment district. "Yeah, but it's what I gotta do now that everything's changed. Ami's been trying to say that it's her who works for them, not me."

Click!

Saiga gripped the fork. He swore that if they took one more picture of him, he'd throw it right them then run off with Hecate. Saiga was not a fan of being photographed, especially after him and Yuji's falling out.

"So far there's been almost nothing she can do." Hecate sipped her tea. She rested her hand on top of Saiga's seeing his irritation at the paparazzi taking pictures of them together. Sometimes, she wished she wasn't famous so their intimate moments could be just to themselves. "But believe me, she's been trying."

"That's good to know, at least." Saiga licked his lips of cream. "So, about these books you like to read."

Hecate flushed with embarrassment. "Um..."

Saiga smirked playfully. His girlfriend's fondness of harlequin novels hadn't gone as unnoticed as she thought. In fact, he'd been reading them whenever she was busy or sleeping everytime he came to her place. "'The Bandit's Seduction', 'For the Love of an Outlaw'. And what a coincidence that all the couples on the covers look like us." He then picked up her hand and kissed it, making her more flustered.

"Don't be shy now, princess."

Hecate pouted. "So what if I am? Are you gonna rub it in my face?"

Saiga chuckled then cupped her face with one hand. "Oh no. I was thinking of something better. How about a little rendezvous back at my place?"

"Hun!" Hecate quietly gasps. She flushed with embarrassment more before quietly replying, "...alright."

Click! Click!

The two finished their meals and went inside to pay before leaving. Good thing, too, Saiga was getting tired of being eyed like a cage animal by the paparazzi.

[dylan-westwick]

She found herself scrunching her nose a bit in a cringe when James repeated the nickname almost like it was a made up language. And then when he said that Dylan was busy she felt like he didn't realize what that could mean. Her eyes widened as she looked back at James as if to say Don't look at me, you're the one digging yourself in a grave. Before looking back at her mom who probably noticed the silent exchange but she smiled back to her mom. "Sorry, James came back durin' my third trimester so I had pregnancy brain." She shared having not intentionally hid the information from her mom.

"I'm makin' all of Dylan's favorites. My chicken noodle soup, corn puddin', macaroni and cheese, buttermilk biscuits, my special mashed sweet potatoes, roasted chicken." Dylan knew that there was more but she cut off her mom with a small laugh. "I think it's safe to say we'll be fully stocked for quite a bit. I think I've made the macaroni and cheese for you before." She shared as she was pretty sure her memory of it was that it had been around the time that the man had spent a night at the police station. "I guess I haven't seen ya since the holidays and new year, but yeah. The twins were born December 18th. Leda Delphine and Lysander Samwise Westwick-Bailey." Dylan wasn't sure if he would be following her on social media where she'd post the birth announcement, figuring it was likely he did not. "They are the cutest babies this world has ever seen. I think they're gonna have Dyl Pickle's gorgeous eyes." She let out a small nervous laugh, her cheeks tinting. "Mom is very much bein' a proud Mama, we won't know their eye colors for awhile."

@jjbennett

Dylan's mom was being sweet but both he and Dylan knew there was absolutely no reason why Dylan wold have told her he was back in town. Why would she? She was had the pregnancy to think about—which he realized she wasn't anymore now James' eyes had readjusted and he had recovered from the jolt back to reality.

"Well, your, uh, pickle is busy," James managed to stammer out as he gave a nervous smile. He shot a look at Dylan that screamed HELP before he smiled back at her mom.

"Oh, well that's sweet. What are you making?" He was going to try, with all his might, to steer this conversation away from any awkward territory. Ida was making that difficult though. "But of course," James said with a chuckle. "They deserve it. And nothing beats a homecooked meal by grandma."

[literallykenmaandshoyo]

Blood of the Country in Veins

Familial c!Tommy x gender neutral reader

Requested by: N/A

Proofread: No

Music: [Horrortale Remix] SharaX-Ravenous

Warnings: c!Tommy's exile, reader wears a suit, reader kind of babying Tommy (but in a protective way)

Summary: You're forced to choose between your brother and the country you bled for. The choice you make will forever ruin the relationship you tarnished.

Author's note: One of my friends gave me this idea. I really like protective older sibling reader. Also, I haven't seen exile in forever so I'm sorry if things aren't accurate and people are OOC. (Rather short tbh I can totally make this a series if people want. I left it pretty open-ended.)

-Mod Kenma

The silence was deafening. There you stood, apart of Tubbo's cabinet, watching your little brother get sentenced to exile. You couldn't believe it. During all of the meetings, this sentence was never mentioned. Did they decide this behind your back? By the look on Quackity and Fundy's faces, they seemed to be just as surprised as you are. "T-Tubbo what are you doing?" You pulled on the collar of the button-up nervously. Fidgeting when nervous was something both you and Tommy did; a force of habit.

The look Tommy gave you broke your heart. Pure betrayal with tears that threatened to spill mushed together in his baby blue eyes. "Tubbo you can't exile my brother, your best friend." You tried to convince Tubbo that what he was doing was a grave mistake. Time felt like it was slowing. This couldn't be real. "Tubs...." You grabbed one of his hands. "..please. I'll beg if I have to. Not Tommy."

Tubbo stood his ground. He was going to exile Tommy. "If you exile him, you're gonna have one less cabinet member." You took a step towards Tommy, itching to pull him close. Both boys looked at you surprised. Your little brother looked like he was about to burst into tears. Before Tubbo could say anything, you took off your L'Manburg pin. You walked open to your brother with open arms. Tommy raced to you, enveloping you like his life depended on it.

You looked back on the cabinet and L'Manburg with tired eyes. The place you fought for, lost a life for, was no longer the same. Tommy had lost more than you for L'Manburg and seeing him lose the nation in its entirety made your heart ache. You thought that maybe Tubbo would have been able to see past all of the politics and stand by you two. You grabbed Tommy's hand tightly as Dream escorted you two out. You held your head high, not looking back. Exile was going to be the new normal and you were prepared for that.

Dream, Tommy, and yourself squeezed into a boat. Tommy was on your lap, giving Dream enough space to row the boat. The only thing filling the silence was the soft pitter-patter of the rain beginning to hit the water. You shrugged off your blazer and held it over yourself and Tommy, giving him most of it. The man in green stopped the boat on a sandy beach. You cringed at the thought of getting out of the boat with your shoes on. You were the first to get out, dunking your clothed feet into the cold water. A small hiss came out of your lips as you turned to Tommy. He was about to follow your lead but you stopped him.

You picked him up silently, making sure his legs were tightly wrapped around your hips. He held onto your blazer tightly as you walked to shore. Dream followed you and built you two a tent. It was honestly terrible but you were frightened of pushing the masked man's buttons, afraid of what he would do to the two of you. "Thank you Dream." You said, trying your best to be polite. Once he left, you got to work. Tommy was too shocked about being exiled to help so you left him in the tent. You rolled up your sleeves and gathered wood.

You were able to build a better shack to live in and was able to gather more supplies. "Don't worry Toms. We'll get through this. With enough work, we'll be able to flourish here." Little did you know Dream would make your and Tommy's life a living hell.