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kaybreezy3000 · 9 months ago

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The Devil Within

A Five Hargreeve / Reader insert

Five Hargreeves has not lived an easy life and no matter where he ends up, things never seem to get much better for him.

Stuck inside a body that's his but not, Five is having a hard time moving on, but sometimes all it takes to totally flip a person's view of things is one very special dark and mysterious night.

-note: female OC will remain unnamed and mostly non-descript to give this one a sort of reader insert-ish vibe.

Warnings and extra tags: sexually explicit content, mind games, a little bit of Klaus and Dolores in this one, dubious consent, violent behavior, rough sexual behavior, Dominance and Submission, dirty talking Five, daddy kink, biting, blood, mild body dysmorphia, public sex, Five has many lovey issues but he's still our sweet boy so hang tight-he's going to pull you through all sorts of emotions with this smutty story😏

(23,127 words 4 chapters total)

(Chapter 1 and 2 post)

Chapter One: Bad Boy; Good Man

It was October thirty-first. Just twenty-nine days after Five Hargreeves had the pleasure of turning what he’d estimated was the equivalent of the age of eighteen. He was stomping down a dark alleyway, hands jammed in his pockets, shoulders hunched, with his eyes staring blankly at the wet cement in front of him.

Like normal, Five wasn’t in a good mood, though there was no denying that he was doing much better than during the first October when he’d turned eighteen.

That time, he’d been thin as a rail and freezing his ass off in an early apocalyptic winter. Huddling in his improvised shelter, he had tried to get as much comfort as he could by way of cuddling up to Dolores, but her painted plastic skin was as cold and unyielding as the air around him.

All Five had wanted was to feel something good to help him through his pain, but he couldn’t even have that when faced with the grim reality around him, so he did the next best thing.

He let go and lost his mind, so he didn’t have to be alone.

Almost right away when he’d found he couldn’t get back to his family, Five had found Dolores and he’d made her his companion. He started having two-sided conversations with her to keep himself from going insane, but it wasn’t until that sad night of his eighteenth birthday that Five started to feel Dolores’s warmth for the first time, and he did after that for the next fifty-three years.

He did what he had to. He survived so he could get back.

He was sure that if he did, he could fix everything.

Turned out, he did make it home to his family but not until almost a lifetime later, and fixing things isn’t exactly what Five would call what he did. Fucking it up royal was a better way of summing up what he and his siblings did, both in their own original timeline, then again in the past when they were in Dallas, and then when they were trapped in a hell of their own making in the Sparrow’s timeline.

Now, in a new world made by Reginald, dumped with almost nothing and with no powers to help them, Five was feeling just about as desperate as he was when he was that lost little thirteen-year-old boy, alone in a burning world of death and ashes. Here he was stripped of all scars and even the tattoo he’d had since he was a child. Everything was normal; it was fixed.

But mentally he was far from fixed.

Having to move in with Klaus since he wasn’t old enough to rent on his own was Five’s best option considering he had no others, but it was a huge slap in the face for the fifty-eight-year-old, once infamous temporal assassin.

As much as Five was happy that they were alive and the world didn’t seem to be on the verge of falling apart, sometimes this new existence felt like just another punishment for all his many wrongs and this night was just another bad one that he'd rather not be having.

It was lightly misting out. As he walked along in the dark, Five’s chocolate-colored strands of hair were beading up with tiny drops of moisture.

It was damp and cold and well past ten on Halloween night, so of course that’s the night Five was forced out of his own apartment unless he wanted to continue to listen to his brother’s latest boy toy loudly moaning and groaning to the rhythm of Klaus’s headboard banging into the wall that divided their bedrooms.

As Five trudged along, dead set on finding the closest bar to drown his sorrows in, he unexpectedly heard what he thought was someone crying for help.

He looked down the alley to his right just in time to see a huge man dressed like a gorilla raising his hand at a cowering female that he’d backed up against the wall of the building.

Five watched as he dropped his furry black mask on the ground and pressed himself against the girl, crushing her with his body as he violently groped her. She closed her eyes, her mouth opening wide in a silent scream as she waited for the blow from the hand he'd raised, but luckily for her, the crack of knuckle to bone wasn’t attached to any sort of pain involving her.

When she opened her eyes, it was to a young stranger in a dark suit, standing between her and the man, his head turned to one side, forced there by the creep’s large fist.

“Get out of here!” Five yelled at her, his face turned downwards as he held a hand to it.

Then like a scene from a movie, he slowly righted his head, his green eyes flashing with anger.

“Is that all you got? Used to hitting little girls?” he seethed.

The man looked totally pissed that Five had just gotten in his way. He puffed up and retaliated by tackling him. With a good seventy pounds on the teen, he hit him like a freight train. The girl scrambled out of the way as they barreled toward her.

Five grunted as his back slammed into the building.

The guy’s fist came flying at Five’s face at about one hundred miles per hour. At the last second, he ducked, and the dipshit’s fist crashed into the brick. “Fuck!” Spit erupted from his mouth just as blood erupted from his knuckles.

While he shook his hand out, Five spun from his grasp, grabbing the man’s free arm, hitching it high behind his back. The man launched his head backward, hitting Five on the top of the head but not as hard as he would have liked being Five was shorter than him.

Releasing the girl’s attacker, Five staggered back, his eyes unfocused but still managing to see a blunt object laying a few yards away.

Sprinting for it, Five picked up the pipe, swinging it upwards just as the guy was about to throttle him from behind.

The ring of metal to skull stopped the girl’s assailant dead in his tracks.

The big creep crumbled to the wet pavement.

With his blood boiling and his body filled with adrenaline fueled rage, Five turned and started to stalk away, moving right past her, still clutching the pipe in his shaking hand.

He didn’t say a word, and the girl just stood there as if in shock wth her glittery halo crooked in her hair and the white feathers of her angel costume fluttering in the slight breeze that was moving between the buildings.

She reached out and grabbed Five’s arm, but he kept going and because of that her hand slipped down the sleeve of his suit jacket until her fingers brushed across his palm.

Five was not at all expecting her to touch him, and he was not ready for it when she latched on to him, not letting go.

Wound up like he could explode, Five spun around, verbally lashing out on her. “I’d think you’d have run off by now." The girl said nothing, so he yelled at her. "Go. Home!”

Still, she said nothing.

Her eyes seared into him.

She had the strangest look on her face; one Five couldn’t interpret and didn’t get the chance to because suddenly he was filled with extreme disorientation.

All at once, it was as if he was looking back at himself in a mirror but doing so while standing just as he was in that dimly lit alleyway.

As if that wasn’t weird enough, the man looking back at him was the real him.

Five was old again.

His face was dull looking and tired, with soft wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and his hair was short and white, only peppered with dark shadows of what remained of his traumatic youth.

Five could even see his usual gray suit of choice and his favorite hat perched on top of his head, all paired perfectly with his neatly trimmed mustache bending with confusion as he tried to form the right words to express what he was feeling, but there was nothing that could explain it.

His mouth opened and closed a few times, looking like he was AJ Carmichael in his plastic baggie, gasping for air that was quickly running out.

"I... I-"

His stammering wasn't going to cut it, and he needed to get out of there, so Five yanked his hand back, the feel of his skin as cold as ice.

A few seconds later, stepping back onto the sidewalk on to the much brighter street, Five’s hand came up, rubbing his face, his trembling fingers lingering on his smooth upper lip.

He looked back the other way and saw the young girl dressed as an angel had disappeared. It was as if she took flight on her silly nylon coated wings, and poof, she was gone.

Weirder yet, the guy he’d just nailed on the head with the pipe was gone too.

A dizzying sensation ran through him. The damage caused by the gorilla man had left Five’s left eye starting to swell.

He needed ice and he needed to get out of there, but Five was stuck like he’d stepped in glue. He touched his fingers to the side of his face, grimacing when they brushed across the swollen socket.

Looking at the smudge of blood on his fingers that had gotten there from his split lip, Five’s mind spun. He couldn’t figure out what had just happened. Then, a rush of chilly air blowing out of the ominously dark alley swirled a tornado of leaves across the fresh spray of blood on his new dress shoes and the sight of that reminded him this wasn’t the best place to linger.

He’d just bashed a man’s skull in. That man was nowhere in sight, meaning Five hadn’t killed him, but still, he needed to go.

A couple dressed as ghosts passed by, the woman looking at Five worriedly and that helped snap him out of his bizarre state of confusion. Chalking up his moment of insanity back there to his concussed brain, Five took off again, grumbling to himself. “God, I fucking hate Halloween.”

A few blocks away and several minutes later, Five walked into a bar. Fortunately for him, since he was already sporting a nasty bruise around his left eye, most of the areas inside of the establishment were darker than it was outside. It was so dark that if not for the flicker of medieval-looking lanterns hanging about and all the strobing lights pulsing to the beat of the music, it would be nearly impossible to navigate his way through the crowd.

The place was packed with people in costumes, all crammed on the dance floor and areas around it. A couple of girls with hardly anything on were grinding on each other in raised cages, looking like some kind of goth version of beach barbies. Five gave them a dismissive glance as he made his way to the back.

This was not his idea of a good time, and it was not his preferred method of getting drunk but going home meant he’d have to deal with Klaus, so this was the next best option.

Away from the more aggressive chaos, Five sat down on a barstool that had just been vacated. Here he could see the action but not necessarily be an active part in it, and better yet, this is where the drinks were.

Even before intervening to help the girl in the alley, Five needed something hard and strong to take the edge off, but since getting hit in the face by that girl's attacker, the urge to purge his woes had increased ten-fold.

“What the fuck was I thinking,” he said under his breath.

He asked it but the reality was, Five knew very well what he’d been thinking.

He had questionable ethics. Sure… But he also had a long history of being used and abused by others. When it came to defending people that were at a disadvantage and being taken down a bad road because of it, when Five saw that happening to that young girl, it reminded him of himself, and he had to step in to stop it.

It’s not like he hadn’t hurt people before, but not like that guy looked like he was going to hurt that girl. Five had killed plenty of women for no reason other than he was ordered to by his superiors at The Commission, but he had no choice. To Five, what it looked like that guy was trying to do once he knocked that girl out was truly sick.

Five knew he was one of the bad guys, but he was better than that. At least that’s what he always tried to tell himself when it came to his propensity to overlook his many transgressions.

Just as Five’s mind was wandering back to his weird outer body experience in the alley, another young girl who shouldn’t be out on a night like this, sauntered past him, dressed as a naughty nurse.

The idea of asking her to bandage him up had Five pulling a smirk but instead of calling her over and trying to hit on her, he pulled his eyes off the tight uniform that was hardly covering her ass, he heavily sighed, then he stuffed a hand in his pant pocket and turned back to the bar.

On Halloween night, all women, young and old, got to play their slutty card with zero judgment and the men that were out got to enjoy the free show. The problem with that for Five was, he hardly felt he could do more than take advantage of the look but don't touch policy.

Even though they’d been in Reginald’s new world for over a year and upon arrival Five had been so thoughtfully given a slightly older looking body, he still looked at best the age of sixteen, hence his fuzzy math on figuring his current physical age somewhere around eighteen. When it came to pursuing relationships of the sexual kind that weren’t with inanimate objects, he was mentally closer to sixty, so add all that together and that made him the youngest old dirty perv out there, and even for him, that was a hard pill to swallow.

It’s not like he hadn’t tried to hit on women before while looking younger than this, but that never resulted in anything, and Five knew it wouldn’t. He was only doing it because he enjoyed getting a rise out of them.

Hooking up was obviously one benefit of these kinds of places and nights like this when the tramps and vamps were abundant. If Five could get past his troublesome age hangups, he was physically legal now and he would definitely not be opposed to some meaningless sex that a one-night stand would provide him, but tonight, all he wanted to do was escape Klaus and escape life by way of good old-fashioned intoxication.

Eyes on the lit-up shelves of liquor behind the bar, Five called out his order to the man in front of him who had been giving him the side eye since he’d sat down. “Give me a shot of Jack and keep them coming.”

The bartender gave him a look. “Seriously?”

“I’m not joking," he curtly responded, then added, "You can really do me a favor and put it on ice if you really want to make it special. Then make the next one poured straight."

The tall man with black eyeliner and a mesh shirt that was draped in chains eyed Five up and down a few times, but despite his lack of ID and his beaten-up appearance, clearly the hundred-dollar bill he'd just laid down and his pricy looking tailored suit were enough to satisfy him that he was close enough to legal drinking age to be there.

“Don’t bleed all over my bar or puke on my floor, little man,” he warned before pouring Five his drink and his next shot, then setting them down in front of him.

Just as Five had drained his ice filled cup and placed the cool glass against his aching eye socket, he felt something skate across the top of his head and then a pair of hands travel up his back.

Reactively jerking his shoulders as his hand moved up to inspect his hair, Five turned to see a very pretty blonde smiling at him as she stood next to Klaus.

Five’s grumpy looking pout turned downright sour.

“Great,” he groaned. “And here I thought you were staying home tonight.”

Holding what looked like their kitchen broom topped with tin foil to make it look like a shepherd’s hook, Klaus’s glittery blue painted lips spread from ear to ear. “Yeah, well… I changed my mind. It's Halloween and staying home on Halloween is for losers.”

Klaus’s smile faltered the longer he looked at his younger-looking brother.

“Did you get in a fight?”

Five’s fingers continued to feel around on his head, finally poking at the pointed horns Klaus had slipped into his ruffled mane. “Yes, I got in a fight and to answer your next question, I won. And to end this lovely conversation, you can take these back,” he said, starting to pull the devil headband off.

Klaus sprung forward, pushing the shimmering black horns back into place. “I can’t let you be the only one here who is not in costume,” he argued.

Swatting Klaus’s hand away, Five knocked back his next shot then dryly retorted, “I am in costume. I am a retired homicidal maniac.”

“I know you are, Fivey, and that is why you make the perfect little devil boy.”

That comment about his age and small stature only made Five feel even less friendly. Putting on an overly sweet smile, making himself look even more the part of the fiend who was dressed to kill in his fancy new psycho suit, he sniggered then said. “I left tonight to get away from you and your boyfriend, so do me a favor and please leave me alone. I am trying to get shit faced in this fine establishment just like the responsible adult I am, and I don’t give two shits about Halloween, and I never have.”

Klaus frowned. “Hey, man. Jake is not my boyfriend, he’s my fuck friend and he had to go to work, so I got bored,” he corrected.

“Whatever.”

“Not whatever…” Klaus defended. “Maybe I wouldn’t need to have people over all the time if you hung out with me more. It gets lonely there with you hiding out in your room, reading your nerdy stuff or playing hanky-panky, hide your wanky with Dolores.”

Five lowered his chin, glowering at his brother. “I only moved in with you because I had too. Since I am legally an adult now, I think our cohabitation arrangement has ceased to serve any valid purpose other than giving you someone to annoy.”

Five perked up, his eyes widening as his head dropped to the side.

“Oh, and what I do in my bedroom is my business,” he hissed, “-and furthermore, by the sounds I heard coming from your bedroom, you are hardly lonely, so don’t give me that let’s go find the next big ball of string shit.”

After chewing Klaus out, Five finally took in the full glory of what his brother was wearing. Totally blown away by the sight of it, his head cocked to the side even more, and he scrunched his face at him.

“Klaus, what the hell are you supposed to be?”

Loving that Five seemed to forget that he was still wearing the devil’s horns he’d adorned him with, Klaus further distracted him by playfully bonking his shoulder with his shepherd’s hook.

Again, Five swatted him off, which was entirely Klaus’s intention to begin with, then totally disregarding Five’s increasing state of twitchy itchiness, he proudly twirled around in his frilly blue dress and even added little curtsy to top it off.

“I am Little Bo Peep. Isn’t it obvious?” he explained, his tone clear that his pretty ensemble should require no explanation.

Five’s bewildered expression melted back into his customary dry smirk. “Uh-huh…” he muttered just before he threw back his next round of Jack.

Even though Five had hardly bat an eye at Klaus’s friend, as he tried to turn back around to dismiss them, she proceeded to snake up to him, sliding a finger through one of his belt loops.

Five took one look down at her hand at his hip, then he narrowed his eyes at her. “Excuse me, Miss? Not sure you are aware, but you are invading my personal space.”

Not seeing the problem, the woman, dressed in a skintight catsuit, erupted in a bubble of laughter as she gave Five’s dress pants a little tug.

“You are right, he is cute,” she said to Klaus before leaning closer to Five with the sting of alcohol on her breath hitting him so strongly it made his eyes burn enough that he had to blink the fumes away.

Despite how drunk she was and how aggravated he was getting, Five couldn’t help that his eyes flicked down to the mounds of her huge breasts spilling out of her velvety top. Momentarily unable to think of anything other than burying his face in her dirty pillows, his tongue slowly ran over his teeth and his mind went all sorts of naughty places.

With the hand he still had in his pocket nudging his dick into a position that would be less embarrassing for him if he inadvertently let his eyes linger any longer, Five looked back up again, his disinterest still evident in the hard line of his mouth as he posed the question, “Am I supposed to be happy that you think I am cute?”

Only after hearing that did Klaus’s friend look a little hurt, but that didn’t mean she removed her fingers from his pants or that she moved her body away from Five’s backside.

“Klaus told me you might like a little company…” she dangled.

“Did he?” Five mumbled, flagging the bartender for another.

As he set down Five's next shot, Five turned and requested a bottle of water as well.

About this time, seeing as Klaus was misinterpreting his slick plan to get Five laid as a done deal, the older looking Hargreeves started back peddling himself out into the crowd, easily disappearing in the lights and bodies moving to the electronic music thrumming through the bar.

Cat lady wiggled her butt, swishing her tail behind her provocatively. “What do you say, want to have some fun? I am really good company…”

“I am going to have to say no. I am all good on company, thank you,” Five returned, then picked up his next shot, flipping it back down the hatch as he shifted his weight forward on the bar stool to try to dislodge her hand from his waist.

Undeterred and obviously too drunk to read her own name let alone pick up on what Five was laying down, she squeezed in next to him, her thighs rubbing up on the side of his leg as her other hand fell in his lap, tickling down between his legs.

“I want you,” she purred.

“I am flattered but I am not interested, but lucky you, that guy over there probably is,” Five noted, tipping the shot glass dangling from his finger at the guy behind her that her cat tail endowed butt was ramming into.

“Awwww, but Klaus said you don’t get out much.” She tried to bat her eyes, but it came off more like she was having a stroke rather than sexy. “He told me this kind of thing is exactly what you need to work through all your demons.”

She rolled her body against Five.

Five straightened his back as he cleared his throat. “Darling, no amount of sex is going to exercise my demons and as much as I’d like to fuck you so hard that you won't be able to see straight for weeks, I have a meeting in the morning,” he effortlessly lied, trying to give her a gentler brush off.

To that, her face lit up excitedly. “It doesn’t have to take long. Klaus told me you are a virgin, so I am sure it won’t. If you want, I can suck you off in the ladies’ room, and later back at your place I can help relieve you of that other little virgin problem,” she dangled, her fingers getting even more frisky.

“As tempting as that sounds…” Five gently peeled her fingers from his pants. “Here,” he said, putting the bottle of water in her hands. “Drink this and go dance. I’ll catch up with you another night.”

“Are you sure?”

As warm and buzzed as Five was starting to feel thanks to the whiskey burning him from the inside out, his old voice of reason wouldn’t be deterred.

This girl did not know who he really was or what he was capable of, and even considering her offer the tiny amount he was, was making him think it was time to go about ten minutes ago.

She was pretty. Young. Probably twenty-five or maybe a little older, she was lost perhaps, and insecure and very drunk. Five might be a fucked-up prick, but he wasn’t such an asshole that he going to shit on the kid’s feelings because he wasn’t into this. After all, maybe if it wasn’t Halloween, and maybe if she wasn’t doing this because of Klaus putting her up to it, and if she was someone older but not too old that it made it even weirder, Five would have said yes. Looking so young and lacking when it came to social graces, Five knew that he should be grateful for someone willing to look past all that. But…

“I am sure,” he calmly repeated, again ordering her to drink the water as he authoritatively pointed a finger towards the dance floor.

The girl looked smitten by his bossy behavior, but finally getting that Five meant business and not the business she was hoping for, she said, “Thank you. And...just so you know, I still think you are cute.”

Then the kitty danced away on unsteady legs that Five was having a twinge of regret not having wrapped around him as he tried his best to fuck her pussy through the metal wall of one the bar's bathroom stalls.

Even though she was very inebriated and probably only did what she did because of his brother, the girl’s minority opinion of him had a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.

“Holy shit did that girl have daddy issues,” he breathily mused.

Shaking his head and thinking about how much fun it would have been to be her ‘daddy’ for the night, Five paid his tab, then slipped past the dance floor, looking for signs of Klaus, but not seeing him.

He wondered where he’d ended up; whose bed he’d be landing in tonight, but really it didn’t matter so long as he didn’t bring back his conquest to their place because that would mean Five would have to sleep with ear plugs in and a pillow over his head all night.

As Five was midway to the door, he felt someone watching him. He stopped, cautiously surveying his surroundings.

He didn't see any threats but one of the dancers caught his eye. She was a hot little number. Slightly shorter than him, with soft looking hair and a white feathery skirt that covered her ass and not much more.

Despite her attire, she was dancing alone and appeared perfectly content that way. Five couldn't see her face but her body language said it all. She was dancing for herself and no one else, and that made it damn sexy.

When she finally turned to face him, Five stopped breathing, his fists clenching at his sides as the flashing lights lit up her sparkly halo.

She was the angel girl from the alley, and she was dancing with her eyes closed and a blissful smile on her angelic looking face.

It made no sense after what had almost happened to her that she’d be there.

In his periphery Five could see that two sleazy looking coyotes were circling her, trying to figure out how to slip in for the kill. As pissed as he was that she clearly hadn’t listened to him and gone home, he still wasn’t about to let them get to her before he took another bite out of her first.

He bolted through the crowd and slipped into the tiny empty space between her and one of the approaching stalkers, placing one hand on her shoulder.

Her eyes flashed open and for a second and they seemed to glimmer with unnatural light, but Five quickly waved it off, assuming it was the glare from one of the laser lights flipping around.

“You’d think with what happened to you earlier, you’d prefer hanging out somewhere a little less dangerous? Like at home since it’s past your bedtime.”

“I could say the same to you,” she said, her smile as sassy as his words.

Five bit down his ire and gave her an overly sweet smile of his own. “You know that you have a couple of new predators stalking you,” he told her, indicating the two men sulking at the edge of the dance floor.

She turned to look at them. “And you thought you’d rush to protect me, again?”

She rolled her body with the music, their proximity so close that she was forcing Five to mimic the movement of her hips to keep from stumbling like an uncoordinated idiot.

“Something like that," he quickly shot back, "or maybe I thought the look of my beat-up face might remind you that you are luring in all the sickos again."

One of her eyebrows lifted just a little. “I am sorry about your face but are you trying to imply that you’re less of a predator?” Her hand brushed across Five’s chest as her eyes slowly ran over him. “Because… You look like the devil to me.”

Five’s hand moved from her shoulder to the small of her back, pulling her close. “Angel," he deeply growled, "I am one hundred percent a predator, but trust me, unlike with them, you’ll like it when I eat you.”

She laughed, rolling her eyes and shaking her head at him.

The gesture might have been dismissive, but her body language was anything but. She closed the minuscule distance between them, keeping her body pressed against Five’s as she took control of the dance they were doing, guiding him with a suggestive sway of her hips and her hands gliding across his shoulder blades.

Five did not like to dance and only did so when he was shit faced wasted, but he was buzzed and she moved like liquid silk, luring his body to forget it had bones.

As strange as it was, Five would have been content to stay there with her, just dancing and flirt fighting the rest of the night, but then the song shifted to a more bass laden sounding tune, and noting Five’s discomfort, the girl took his hand and led him from the dance floor.

Her cool hand felt so good wrapping around his hot fingers, that alone was enough to make him follow but then she said, “Come on, handsome. You saved me, so I think that means I should at least buy you a drink.”

Five had known many compelling women but this little seductress leading him along had a very different kind allure about her and only part of that was in how she was so boldly handling him. Sure, Five had swagger, and probably a dictionary full of as many slights as he did pick up lines if he chose to deploy them, but there was something about the way this girl looked at him that made him feel sexier than he’d ever felt.

In a matter of minutes, Five had forgotten why he’d felt the need to confront her or protect her from the other men in the bar. Her face spoke of youthful innocence but everything else about her said differently and Five wanted to take care of her as much as he wanted to do very bad things to her.

Five knew something wasn’t right about that, but he couldn’t wrap his head around it.

Just like in the alley, he felt outside himself, only this time not necessarily in a bad way.

Chapter Two: The Devil's Advocate

After receiving their drinks, the girl took a sip, then gave Five a kittenish look that made his heart beat a little faster than it already was.

Though the girl was getting to him, Five did his best to feign indifference as he smiled back. “What happened to your wings,” he questioned as he looked at her shimmery white outfit while trying not to linger too inappropriately long on the tempting curves of her body.

“I parted ways with them because they were itchy,” she said with a pretty but sad sounding laugh. “Like you, I am more of a fallen angel type, so I fear the illusion I was trying to play off wasn't working that well anyway.”

Silence filled the space between them and Five looked down at the pink drink in his hand, his dark eyelashes fanning over his alcohol flushed cheeks.

“That bruising you’ve got going on really brings out your eyes,” she teased, reaching up to adjust Five's hair so everyone would be able to better see his two pointy devil horns.

Again, he'd totally forgotten that he was wearing the horns and since the girl seemed to be enjoying them, Five decided to leave them on as he huffed a little self-depreciating laugh of his own, then he sipped his matching fruity cocktail and said, “That's great. Just what I was hoping for when I threw my face in front of that gorilla's fat fist.”

Being the perfect flirt she'd been since Five spotted her on the dance floor, the girl giggled at his grouchy response.

Not sure what to think of this young stranger’s forward behavior with him, Five gave her a sidelong glance.

She sat on her barstool, swirling the ice around in her glass with the glowing straw. Since it was even more crowded than when he had been over there before, Five didn’t sit, but leaned on the bar as he cautiously watched her. Thanks to the booze flowing through him, he felt at ease, but yet not at all, and that contradiction was making it hard for him to let his guard down enough to fully enjoy the girl's surprisingly not horrible company.

“If that hurts too much, I might be able to help,” she offered, clearly referring to his busted eye socket and swollen lip.

Five gave her a hard look. “And how would you help?”

“I’d take you somewhere private and I’d find a way to make you feel better. I owe you and I always pay my debts.”

Five frowned. “Am I missing something or are you looking to get yourself into trouble again?”

“You aren’t missing anything.” She flashed her teeth, her smile so innocent looking that again it was impossible to ignore that she was way too young for him to be checking out in the way he was.

Forcing his eyes off the barely legal eye candy next to him, Five pulled up his cuff to check his watch, noting it was after midnight.

“Like I said before. I would have thought you’d have gone home or called the police to report that guy, not continued with your evening like nothing happened," he challenged as he hesitantly glanced back up then even more firmly added, "Please don't take this the wrong way, but coming into places like this where losers lurk around every corner isn't a very bright idea."

“What if I said that those kinds of losers were exactly what I was looking for before I found myself and even better catch?”

“I’d say you are fucked up,” Five replied, trying to laugh off her weird rebuttal, but as her hand came up and lingered near the knot of his tie, he stopped laughing and apprehensively asked, “What are you doing?”

“I am helping you.”

“I don’t need help,” Five sharply retorted, his smile beginning to melt away as a hard line drew between his eyes. He set his drink down, readying himself to scold her like an angry parent does a teenager. “I don’t understand why you are at a bar. There is no way you are twenty-one."

As he should have guessed, based on his own appearance, the girl looked very amused by him trying to put her in her place and that only irritated him even more.

“We have quite a bit in common and one of those things is me being older than I look," she said, simpering back at him. "Also like you, if I want something, I have my ways of getting it." She began to softly run her fingers up the back of Five’s suit coat, then to the back of his neck with tender strokes, teasing the ends of his hair.

The sensation felt so foreign yet so comforting that Five reactively shut his eyes for a moment before quickly opening them again, only now they were filled with alerted suspicion, not the droopy look of contentment he had just so easily given himself over to.

“I don’t think you should be touching me like that,” he cautioned.

The girl looked unconvinced as she leaned into his ear, her cool breath adding to the tickling feel of her fingers splaying through the back of his hair as her nails delicately scratched his scalp in a way that made him want to drool it felt so damn wrong but good. Both feelings mixed, overwhelming Five as wonderful shivers shot up and down his spine.

Unable to fight it, he shut his eyes again. He wanted nothing more than to lose himself to this.

“Oh, I think touching you like this is exactly what you need,” she shushed as she watched him helplessly falling apart. “On top of that, I am not used to such interesting gentlemen like yourself stepping in to right the wrongs of this world for me. Meeting you was a refreshing encounter, and you make me wonder if this thing we have could be more than..."

As she pushed back away from him, Five opened his heavy eyes. The girl's smile was borderline silly as she rolled her eyes around as if thinking really hard about what she was about to say but then she baffled him even more when didn't say a word. Further messing with him, she looked at him again, then plucked the cherry from her glass and began twirling it between her luscious looking red lips.

It was more than clear to Five that she was toying with him but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t eagerly eating it up as he hungrily watched her every move and melted more and more with every sweet touch, she so willingly gave him.

“Wondering if we could what?” he anxiously asked when he lifted his gaze from her mouth to meet her mesmerizing eyes again.

She said nothing, and his own eyes glazed over with raw desire and something much darker and harder to quench.

Five’s hand suddenly clamped down onto her leg, midway between her knee and her hip.

Holding his breath, he looked down. He couldn’t believe he’d put his hand on her like that, but it was there, and it was in a very intimate spot.

“It’s okay. I want you to touch me,” she soothed.

Five’s mind filled with all sorts of other things he’d like to be doing to her and touching her only there was just the tip of that iceberg of things he craved.

Heart racing, his gaze rose to her mouth again, lingering on her teeth that were studding into her lower lip.

Five moved in closer, his hand slowly inching higher.

As the girl parted her legs for him, for the third time that night, Five felt as if he was having an outer body experience.

As if her doing that wasn’t temptation enough, a voice in his mind was telling him not to stop, and it was doing it so loudly it was all he could hear.

His hand slid upwards, reaching the top of the girl’s thigh, high up under her skirt where her hip joint met her leg.

Five brought his body closer still, clearing any space left between them as her knees pressed to the insides of his legs, but remained pointed towards the bar, hiding what he was doing to her.

“Number Five, I know what you want to do,” she sweetly sang, almost so quietly and hypnotically that he thought he might have imagined it.

Five hardly thought it was possible that this little vixen next to him had any clue of the things he wanted to do to her but then she proved him wrong.

“You want to make me come, right here while I am sitting on this bar stool,” she said, calling him out without an ounce of doubt.

“Fuck,” Five coarsely muttered.

His fingers as if having a mind of their own brushed across the cool wetness that was soiling her panties. Five's body ached with yearning that was only worse from the feel of that, but his mind suddenly and very painfully kicked back in as if he was just hit upside the head.

As the lights from the dance floor scattered a rainbow across his face, he felt lightheaded and that had him frantically starting to question what was happening to him.

Five jerked back, but he didn't remove his hand and that was because he felt he couldn't; almost like something was mentally blocking his nervous system from doing what his brain was ordering it to do.

He was trapped.

Unfazed by his state of confusing, the girl reached down as her hand gently explored the smooth cotton that was covering his taut torso. She kept smiling as her fingers walked downward and then below the waistband of his dress pants. Five fought to think clearly, and pull away again, but her grip tightened around the top of the black wool fabric and she said, “Come on, lady killer. I am ready for you…”

“You said my name... But I didn’t tell you my name,” Five whispered as he started to panic.

The girl’s eyes were locked on Five’s slightly parted lips, and they flickered with that same eerie light he’d seen in them on the dance floor, only this time, he was sure it wasn’t the pulsing lights making them look so otherworldly.

Running her fingers along the sharp angle of Five’s jaw, she only enchanted him further with what she said next.

“Five, I know who you are, and I think you are beautiful. Because of that, I am going to give you something you can’t seem to find on your own, and just so you know, I’d want to give it to you even if you were still outwardly that sad but sweet looking old man you have living inside your head. You are special, and your real age has nothing to do with it.”

“What are you?” Five asked, now sure that the woman next to him wasn’t at all the angel she appeared to be.

Again, she flashed him her pretty smile but this time Five noticed her somewhat elongated incisors looked very sharp.

Five was stunned; his mind felt foggy, but the fear building in him kept trying to push through the haze.

“You don’t have to be scared of me,” she hushed him with her index finger softly tracing the line of his mouth, stopping before it graced the painful looking split on his lower lip.

Five was frozen in place as the girl’s icy looking eyes darkened and she said, “Like you, I may be a predator, but I assure that you’ll like how I bite.”

The girls’ legs nudged his, wordlessly inviting Five to proceed where he’d left off.

As if drawn to her like they were surrounded by opposite magnetic fields, Five reactively positioned his body even more so in such a way that casual observers would never know what he was doing.

With his hand still up the girl’s skirt, Five’s thumb hesitantly rubbed over her sex.

Five said nothing as he softly touched her, his fingers gliding under the silky fabric as his eyes remained locked to hers.

If the bartender came by them, he’d know exactly what was happening but Five couldn't bring himself to care about that or anything other than her.

The way she was touching him and the things she kept saying to him were all making the crotch of his pants so sinfully tight. That alone was making it hard to think straight but Five knew something was wrong, only he couldn’t bring himself to stop, not when wrong felt so fucking right and his brain kept shorting out.

Driven by unimaginable longing, Five came closer, his lips a mere inch from tasting her. “You may think you know me, but I assure you, you are meddling in things you don't understand,” he darkly warned, then he started to rub harder alongside the small nub of flesh between her legs.

The more his thumb circled her clit, the harder it seemed it was for her to resist rolling her hips against his touch and that empowered Five even more.

He felt like he was coming back to himself, but it was too late. He wasn't going anywhere.

“Beg me to fuck you,” he hotly whispered in her ear, giving her exactly what she wanted but denying himself nothing.

“Please. Plea-”

Not satisfied, Five upped his pace.

“Fff-uck- Fff-”

To his delight, she couldn’t finish her breathy hum of 'f' words. The girl dropped her head to Five’s shoulder, her lips brushing past the side of his cheek on the way there.

He tucked his chin against her temple as if in a lover's embrace.

The feeling of her body being so chilly compared to his enflamed skin instantly reminded Five of how it felt when he was fucking Dolores. That thought and the girl’s immediate obedience that matched that of his beloved, were making his dick so hard it felt like it might rip out of his pants.

Aware of his growing problem, the girl started slowly palming the bulging fabric between his legs.

Five’s head rolled back on his shoulders and a low groan came crawling out of his throat that fortunately was drowned out by the heavy rumble of the bass pulsating through the bar.

“What if someone comes by?” he hissed through his teeth as he tried to focus more on what his fingers were doing than on how good his dick felt in her hand.

“If they know, that just makes this all the hotter,” she breathed against his neck.

Hell yes, it did.

The thought of some stranger catching him fingering her and her not caring was driving Five’s mind crazy and that made waves of heat surge straight to his loins.

She wanted him to fuck her and Five wanted to do that more than ever. A deep tightening in his stomach was filling him with visions of dumping his load all over her, just like he liked to do with Dolores when he was in the mood to really shock her.

That wasn’t happening but he was still fucking this girl and just as Five was wishing his hand had more room to move, the girl’s legs drifted further apart.

To that, Five swiftly slid another finger under her panties and straight into her with no warning, causing them both to moan from the venereal tightness of the sensation. Reveling in the feeling of being inside of a real woman’s body for the first time ever, Five’s thumb continued to rub the girl’s clit, and her wet skin directly against his own was making him want to rip the rest of her clothes off and spread her wide as he could so he could bury his face where his fingers were.

Five’s body was blocking his finger pumping in and out of the girl, but when he caught sight of the bartender, who had a slightly different view than the rest of the bar, he returned Five's look of dismayed lechery with a curious looking smile, making it look like he knew exactly what was going on but didn’t seem inclined to interrupt the young devil angel combo that were actively getting off in front of his bar.

“You are such a bad boy, Five,” she whispered as her cool breath tickled his ear and her compliments continued. “You so fucking hot, I wanted you the moment I saw you.” She nipped at his ear, her teeth grazing the shell. “Fuck, I want to taste you,” she prettily growled, and to that, she did taste him, letting her tongue move up his neck before she softly kissed the slight protrusion of his Adam's apple.

As she continued to rub her hand over the fabric covering Five’s confined cock, he wanted to return her compliments but the only thing that would come out of his mouth if he opened it was going to be a moan, so he bit the side of his cheek instead and kept at it, fucking the girl with his fingers thrusting in and out of her slicked hole.

“Oh yes, Ah-Ffff !” she cried.

Her agitated sounds of delight continued as she pulled at the top of Five’s pants, dragging his hips in so his erection came up against the side of her knee.

Not even questioning it, Five automatically started moving himself against her, humping her with an unforgiving pace. To him, it felt almost exactly like he'd done it some many times with Dolores, and because of that, Five couldn’t help but let his tortured mind slip back to that comforting place of unconditional love that he always had with her.

Now he was safe. That quiet voice in the back of his mind screaming at him that something was wrong went silent.

In his mind, as he pressed himself against the girl, he created the image of Dolores. He could even feel the sensation of his hand holding the familiar shape of Dolores’s rigid fingers. It felt so real that Five could even hear her telling him that she loved him, and not thinking, he whispered it right back.

Dolores’s hand tightened around his, her lips softly kissing his neck again.

Five gasped. The world felt like it was slanting on its axis and he was about to fall off, and that startled him right out of his fantasy.

The seductress held him tight, not letting him move away. “It’s okay, Five. You can pretend I am her. I don’t mind."

Five’s eyes went wider and then even wider when her fingers abandoned his, then brushed through a gap between his shirt buttons, searching through the slits until she found his navel.

She tickled her fingers around under his clothes, pushing them down the very fine line of hair trailing downwards. He all out spasmed when she found the tip of his cock where he'd tucked it to keep it hidden but was now overhanging his belt because he'd gotten so hard.

The little angel’s finger swirled around the surge of wetness that had formed at his tip, while her other hand squeezed his where he had it digging into her thigh.

All at once, Five's mind was filled with more reassurances and words of love, only now they were not in the voice of Dolores.

With those sharp white teeth pinning her plump lower lip, the girl collected the fluid, then brought it back up to her mouth, licking it as she gazed back at Five in the most sinful way.

To add to Five’s shock, the girl reached back down and started rubbing her thumb up and down the underside of his cockhead, causing him to go weak in the knees.

Five’s mouth burst open, and his words flew out of him. “Oh my god! I know you are inside my head, but I don’t fucking care. I want to be inside you so fucking bad. I want to destroy you. I could fuck you through that wall right fucking now!”

“Ah-hah… That again,” she giggled. “Twice in a matter of an hour you've had that fun idea. You seem to love the idea of fucking people through walls, don't you, Five." This time her taunting was followed by a provocative nip at Five’s lower lip, her teeth scraping over the tender tear in his pink flesh.

Five felt like he was dying. His heart felt like it might leap right out of his chest.

When the wicked cherub seducing him pulled back, letting his lip go, Five let out a small, whimpered plea. “Please kiss me.”

Five watched the girl’s red lips happily spread as she leaned back in, slowly letting her mouth mold to his.

Five didn’t know what he was doing, but he’d kissed Dolores millions of times, so he thought about that, but let the girl take the lead for him because this was so much more than that.

The girl was being so soft with him, not at all mimicking the pace of his fingers viciously pumping inside her. Her skin on his was pure ecstasy but when she prodded his lips to part, it was all new territory. The gentle lashes of her tongue teasing his had Five feeling desperate and he immediately pushed for more.

Hand on the back of her neck, Five drove his mouth harder into hers, letting out a soft sound like his soul was breaking.

He felt consumed by the taste of her, and the rhythm of his hand slowed almost to a stop, but only for a second before he picked it back up again and then everything picked up speed.

If the music wasn’t so loud, Five was sure that the sound of the girl’s wanton moans and the sound of his fingers squelching inside her would be heard by everyone around them. As it was, there was no hiding the small thrust of his hips as he fucked her leg like the horny devil he was.

Their kiss had turned deep and wild, and the fresh cut on his lip was throbbing but it felt almost as good as her finger that was still playing with the bloom of his cock.

When she broke their kiss, feverishly panting, her lips traveled across Five’s neck, softly kissing below his ear with icy hot breaths.

He couldn’t take it anymore. She felt like Dolores, or better yet, like he wanted to believe Dolores felt.

He yanked the girl’s head back, forcing her mouth to drop open.

Now he saw that her teeth weren’t just sharper than normal, now her canines were dangerously elongated.

He hadn’t imagined it the first time he'd seen it. Five wanted to say so many things, but he didn’t and couldn't. He eyed her blood red lips for only a second before he crushed them with his own again.

Five had never kissed anyone before this. He had never had the nerve to. He had never trusted anyone enough to let himself go in this way. He had no reason to trust this girl and she was clearly not all she appeared, but after a lifetime alone, he was finally getting the chance to have this and for some reason all his worries felt like they didn’t matter anymore.

Five had believed himself damaged beyond repair and that no one would want him if they knew who he really was, and if they did, it would be for all the wrong reasons, but when this girl saw him from the inside, she still had said he was beautiful…

She started to gasp for air again, her lips moving against the side of Five's mouth. Knowing he had her right where he wanted, and not wanting to let up, Five covered the skin under her ear with wet kisses and daring little bites.

“Oh, Fi-vvve,” she keened, her hips pushing against his hand each time he pumped his fingers into her.

Wanting to make her cry out his name again, Five curved his fingers up, dragging them in and out.

A flood of unintelligible words spilled from the girl’s mouth as her fingernails scratched the skin on the back of his neck.

“OH! FFFfff-uuuck!” she cried.

Not wanting to draw even more attention than they already had even though he was loving this, Five immediately covered the girl’s mouth again with his, smothering her cries as he slid his tongue in, tasting her like he was starving.

The girl’s body started to tremble around Five’s fingers, the feel of it impossible for him not to notice.

She was trying to return Five’s ferocious kiss but was failing and he was in heaven just listening to the beautiful sound of her fighting him.

When Five felt that the pulsing flutter of her body around his fingers had eased to almost nothing again, it was as if the lights got turned back on and the music turned way down.

Suddenly feeling like a spotlight had been thrown on him and like he’d been drugged and was coming down from the high, Five slowed his hips to a stop.

Despite his bizarrely uncharacteristic level of blind trust unraveling by the second, Five was still careful to keep a steadying hand on the girl and keep her covered as he withdrew his hand.

She met his confused gaze, looking totally blown away as her fingers that had been clinging onto his tie instead came to the nap of his neck, softly stroking his hair again.

“What did you do to me?” The question came out of Five sounding both scared and so full of anger that the girl looked taken aback by it.

“Only what you had wanted,” she defended.

“I didn’t ask to be fucked with. Get out of my head!” he shakily snarled back.

Her voice came out so unwavering entrancing that it hit him physically. "I am not going to hurt you, Five. It’s okay. Come back to me. I promise it’s going to be okay if you do.”

Blinking slowly, Five shook his head, trying to wake himself up. In less than a few seconds, even though he intended to, he couldn't let the girl go.

“That’s it, Five,” she soothed as he started to look back at her in awe, rather than filled with venomous hostility.

She smiled with relief as Five hand started to lovingly stroke the inside of her thigh.

“You are so gorgeous unreal and I just... I have been wanting to do that for a very long time,” he quietly admitted while forming the most boyishly charming grin that it made the girl trapping him in her arms look at a loss for a moment.

“You’ve been wanting to finger me...for a very long time? But we just met?” she teased, followed by a laugh, that made the dimple in Five’s cheek grow even deeper.

“I wanted to know what it felt like to kiss someone who could kiss me back,” he coolly corrected.

“So, I was wrong," she dangled as she smoothed out the length of his shiny tie, her eyes purposefully getting wider the second her hand fleetingly passed over Five's cock again. "You weren’t thinking about getting your hands up my skirt so we could have a moment of shared public debauchery?”

Five lifted his hand to his mouth and nonchalantly tasted his fingers. “Mmm…” he hummed as he tilted his head to the side and his other hand naughtily grazed over the wet fabric between her legs. “I wanted to do that too,” he admitted with an air of playful confidence coming back to him.

Totally taken by the angel's spell again and feeling like he didn't have a care in the world, Five subtly rolled his hard length against her leg to the beat of the music.

“I think there’s more you want to do,” she said, giggling at him.

“What is your name?” Five suddenly asked, his hopeful eyes filled with emotion much deeper than his lust.

“It won’t matter after this,” she whispered just before her lips were on his.

Before he could even consider why it wouldn't matter, like before, her kiss tasted like a fruity paradise and Five wanted to drown in it. It was all teeth and tongue and madness, but then all at once, a metallic taste filled his mouth. He tried to pull back, but he couldn’t. The unpleasant flavor grew stronger, and the girl kissed him harder, her teeth locking down on his bottom lip as he moaned out of the sheer intensity of blinding pleasure hitting him and in pure terror and for what he didn’t even know any more.

Her kiss was consuming him, it was too much, but then the bloody iron like flavor abated and Five was suddenly swallowing something much colder and almost bittersweet tasting.

It tasted like nothing he'd ever known but he hungrily tried to get more. He kissed the girl back even harder than he already was. Five’s heart hammered in his chest and his body sizzled with heat so strong that he thought he might spontaneously combust.

Then it stopped.

He was standing there at the bar; the music so loud it was deafening. The girl was holding both his hands in hers as a curious smile graced her stained lips.

Five blinked a few times.

What the hell was going on?

He felt…

Actually, he wasn’t actually sure what he was feeling, other than he felt better than he ever had, and all he wanted was to kiss her like that again.

~~~~~~

A few moments later, Five had stripped off his suit jacket and was tossing it on a purple lounge couch in a private room that the girl was able to acquire with a mere nod of her head towards the bartender.

After scanning the small room, he turned to the girl, his eyes running up and down as she approached him.

Coming at him hard, her hands landed on Five’s chest, pushing him backwards until he was cornered with the back of his legs against the couch.

“What are you waiting for?" she taunted. "I thought you wanted to fuck me through a wall, and I am pretty sure that I see one right here that should do the trick." She slowly moved her gaze to the busy looking wallpaper to their right as if he didn't know what wall she was talking about.

With a devious smile spreading, Five goaded the girl right back. “Angel, before the night is over, I will be killing that tight little pussy of yours by nailing it through a wall or just railing the fuck out of it any damn place I see fit.” Five shamelessly palmed the crotch of his pants as he added, “But first, this devil wants to use his demon dick to have a different kind of fun with you.”

The girl looked honestly shocked for the first time by something Five had said to her and that made him very happy.

He quickly undid the metal fastening of his belt, and then undid his pants.

She was speechless.

As she already had felt, Five was not small, but now his tight black boxer briefs were leaving very little to imagination. He looked utterly adorable standing there with his pants down and his slim fit dress shirt untucked but doing nothing to cover how much he wanted her.

With a steady hand pressing down on the girl’s shoulder, Five encouraged the girl to sink to her knees.

He confidently stood above her, the only tell that he wasn’t as sure of himself as he looked was the slight tremble of anticipation running through his body as he took her halo, throwing it back behind her.

Sliding a hand down, Five pushed his underwear down, freeing his stiff cock.

The girl let out a little whimper.

Feeling pretty damn proud, Five grabbed a wad of her hair, then sharply pulled her head, pushing the girl closer to his body.

“My turn, angel,” he tauntingly sang with misleadingly boyish play in his voice.

She licked her lips then opened her mouth around him, her tongue leisurely tracing up the veins covering his engorged shaft.

After only one pass, the girl stopped to gauge Five’s reaction.

The moment he locked eyes with the girl, she wrapped her lips around him again and Five was quick to push her down without warning, forcing her to gag around him as she struggled and gasped for air.

Smirking, Five let her sit that way, letting her adjust as he let out an unavoidable low groan over that sinful act of cruelty. His fingers played with the girl’s silky hair, petting her even if it was a degrading form of encouragement. Doing as he pleased, Five refused to adjust the pressure he was putting on the back of her throat, but for some reason, it felt okay to being doing this, just like she said it would.

With a small nod of approval from him for her quick submission, Five reached down, requesting the girl give him her hands. She did, then he proceeded to place them palm down on his thighs. Taking her hair again, Five allowed the girl to move freely, bobbing her head up and down, mostly working his tip with her tongue.

Her eyes fluttered and her nails gently dug into Five’s slouched pants as he started to rock her head back and forth over him again, making his dick disappear in her wet mouth. Holding her the way he was, with her head titled back, her throat open and lined up perfectly, it allowed Five deep penetration and a view he'd only ever seen in porn and the sight and the feel of it was making his already heavy cock feel like it might truly choke her if he got anymore turned on.

“If it’s too much let me know,” he said, clearly indicating that she should push back if he was too rough or if he made her take him too deep.

He wasn't expecting it, but she immediately pushed back, then started circling her tongue around his tip as she moaned. Since this was not what he wanted, Five's mind whirled with punishments he could deliver but his stomach filled with butterflies the more he listened to her. As she teased the underside of his shaft, his breathing grew heavy, and he couldn’t help but grind against her marvelous tongue.

Reaching up, the girl’s hand dragged down over Five’s abdomen. She was taking her time with him, and it was evident she was enjoying it and the feeling of each ridge between his muscles as he held his body tight, trying not to sway. Five had to admit, he was enjoying it too, but then she wrapped her hand around him, covering the base of his shaft but not moving. His hands clenched; his knuckles white as he let out a rough sounding sigh of exasperation.

Letting his eyes settle on her, Five was just about to start thrusting down her throat again when the girl’s cold hand began to move, and her head shallowly bobbed over his cockhead as she softly sucked.

Five’s body shuddered and she responded by moving her hand up his length, jerking him a few times before pressing her thumb gently but firmly against the underside of his tip where her mouth was just popping on and off.

Sudden waves of pleasure hit Five, followed by shaky breaths as his fingers tightened their grip on her. Taking complete control of her movements again, he quickly forced her head down, pushing her lips sliding all the way to his pubic bone and only pulling her head up again so he could fuck into her throat all over again.

It’s not like he hadn’t warned her or given her an out. That much was clear in Five’s fuzzy mind. There was no denying he wasn't getting a sick sort of pleasure from her tears and her wet gags and each and every spasm of her throat, and there was no way he wasn’t enjoying the sound of the girl’s desperate whines and moans.

She wasn’t tapping out, but her fingers were digging into his thighs almost painfully as her eyes rolling back so far Five was sure her brain must be turning off because he'd skewered it.

Loving every second of dominating her and roughly fucking her face so hard he was making it impossible for her to think, Five paid her back by not holding in his deep moans and low grunts of euphoria, but all too quickly he had to stop, or it would be over, and he didn't want that at all.

As his hips slowed and pulled away, the girl’s swollen lips gently popped off him.

Her brows furrowed upwards as she watched Five with a needy expression. Feeling like he could get away with it, he tapped her chin with the tip of his cock, spreading the drips of drool that the girl couldn’t help but have on her after taking him that long and hard.

Five smiled down at the girl, a cruel sort of look spreading across his face as he watched the little angel wordlessly begging. He tightened his grip on the back of her head.

“God, you are fucking beautiful,” he breathed, then suddenly yanked her hair back, forcing her to crane her neck back. “I can’t wait to paint that pretty fucking angel face of yours.”

After a few more taps to the girl's waiting tongue, Five swiftly brought her down on him again, immediately causing her to gag. The sound of her body fighting him and the feel of her moans buzzing against him as she twitched and repeatedly tried to swallow, all had Five feeling so damn close to the edge again, but he couldn’t stop now even if he wanted to.

Soon, his rhythm became even more aggressive as he took her head in both hands, sadistically slamming his cock into her mouth while griding the back of her throat before pulling off only to repeat the process.

“You really wanted my dick, didn’t you?” Five breathlessly sputtered as he threw his head back and his eyes fell shut.

Inevitably his brutal pattern became more erratic. Eventually, Five pulled back, fully pulling out. His hand that was tangled in the strands of the girl’s hair moved to the girl’s pouty lips instead.

Jerking her chin up he urgently asked, “You think you can swallow all of it?”

She eagerly nodded.

With an air of desperation coming out of him, Five stroked himself needily, bringing himself closer and closer as the girl watched in anticipation, her mouth open and tongue out.

With a few sharp inhales, Five’s body began to shudder, and his legs began to feel like they could give out on him. His heel squeaked on the floor as he drove forward, intent on delivering.

A long string of rough groans fell from Five's gapped lips as the girl flinched and shut her eyes in response to the pearls of white falling over her awaiting tongue.

Having had plenty of pent-up sexual tension from just the last few hours, not to mention a lifetime of being deprived of anything to this level of sexual eroticism, Five’s load repeatedly spurt out of him in heavy ropes.

The girl swallowed and swallowed, trying to keep up but even though she was, Five deliberately pulled back, letting the last of his cum land across the girl’s flushed cheeks and drip down between the mounds of her milky white breasts.

"Oh fuck," he gasped. His hand remained clasped around his shaft. His angry grip kept moving but slowly as it passed over his hot length and he road that the last incredible waves of his release.

Even though Five was on another planet as the heavy sound of his panting started to abate, he noticed that the girl was suddenly sitting there still as a statue. She was totally quiet, and her hands were in her lap as if waiting for further instruction or perhaps it was because she was too scared to move. The fact that Five couldn’t tell was quickly overshadowing his feeling of frenzied contentment.

His chest was still moving up and down faster than normal as he looked in shock down at the mess that he’d made of her. Appalled at what he'd done, he quickly pulled up his clothes and swiftly tucked his softening dick back in his tight black underwear.

Starting to panic, he stopped at zipping himself up, worriedly staring at her again with his belt still dangling open and his mind falling apart.

Five threw his hand back over his hair, brushing the dark strands out of eyes as he looked around the small room, trying to find something to clean the girl up with. He saw a convenient box of tissues, sitting on a small side table so he lunged for them, then gently as possible, he wiped his seed from the girl’s face.

As Five was about to draw another disposable wipe across the tops of her glistening breasts, he stopped short, realizing that maybe doing that wasn’t a great idea.

He tossed the soiled tissue on the floor, rubbing his shaking hand over his face.

As his fingers brushed over his eye, Five noticed it didn’t hurt at all. It felt totally normal, which made sense because he could also tell that it wasn’t swollen at all anymore.

All of a sudden, it dawned on him that it wasn’t swollen when they came into the private room. His lip felt normal too and being extremely horny couldn't be the only reason he'd ignored it.

Eyes still closed; the girl let out a small sound that Five wasn't sure how to interpret. Her hand floated up, a finger hesitantly poking at her sticky flesh where her white top dipped the lowest.

“I am sorry,” Five sputtered. “I don’t know what came over me. That was so-"

So ashamed of how he’d just treated her and confused about his face and that just let himself do that, Five couldn’t begin to formulate what he was thinking.

“I am going insane,” he breathed, his eyes falling away from the girl as he started to step back, but then her other hand found his, her cool fingers trapping him even more than the couch behind him.

She started to smile. Still her eyes were closed, and it was making her look so blissfully happy it only further confused Five. She was the hottest girl he'd ever seen but she was way too young for him, and from the time he'd seen her on the dance floor, he never intended to do more than have a friendly drink with her. But clearly something changed his way of thinking, but what that was, he couldn't remember and before he could get too upset about that and what he'd just done, the girl finally started to talk.

“You don’t need to apologize," she said, rubbing at her closed eye lids. "I loved every second of that, and I know that nobody has ever been lucky enough to say this to you, and you are more than worthy of the compliment, so here it is. Five Hargreeves, you have a very nice cock, and you taste amazing."

As much as it seemed she meant it, it also seemed she couldn't say such a dirty and brazen thing with out laughing about it and that made Five feel a lightness that made no senses with the rest of his heavy emotions.

This was not normal. Something wasn't right but he wanted so badly to pretend it was.

As nice as she was being about everything, Five couldn’t help but feel like a total asshole despite all his other terrify reservations, so playing along, he ineloquently countered that with the only thing he could come up with. “I do what I can do with what I’ve got, and unfortunately, I have nothing to compare that unforgettable experience to, but I can confidently say that was the most amazing blow job I have ever received, so thank you.”

“Your very welcome. I do what I can with what I’ve got,” she repeated, copying his words and tone so well that Five couldn’t help but chuckle a little.

Feeling some better, though he didn't understand why the sudden switch, his hand came down on her head again and he started to lace his fingers through her tousled hair, trying to fix it. He wanted to help her up and was reaching down to do it but that all stopped when her eyes started opening.

Five’s eyes blew wide as he stared at the unnatural light emanating back at him where before had only been the paleness of her bottomless eyes. Suddenly, he remembered begging the girl to kiss him while they were out in the bar.

He remembered the taste of blood.

Her smile grew wider, exposing her fangs.

In an instant, Five swooped low, wrenching her head back at the same time he pulled out the knife that had been hidden in the strap attached to his ankle.

Eyes ablaze; he brought the shining blade to the girl's neck.

Link to chapters 3 and 4

Thank you for reading and if you like, check out my other stories at the links below.

Master List Post to my Five Centric Stories and Art

Link to my other posts on Tumblr

Link to visit me on AO3

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zafirosreverie · 2 years ago

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Tía Y/N (Madrigal triplets & Reader) part 2

Part 1

_____________________

"GET OUT OF MY WAY!"

"I WASN’T EVEN PART OF THIS!"

"FÉLIX, I WANT A DIVORCE!"

"JULIETA, COME BACK HERE!"

“YES JULI, COME BACK!

“NEVER!”

“SHE DOESN’T HIT YOU THAT HARD!”

"BETTER YOU THAN ME!"

“YOU’RE THE ELDEST! YOU HAVE TO SACRIFICE FOR YOUR BABY SIBLINGS”

“I KNOW NO SIBLINGS BUT THE ONE WITH THE CHANCLA BEHIND US, YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN”

“JULIETAAAAAAAA”

Alma tried not to laugh and maintain a serious face, but it was quite difficult when her triplets, all 50 years old with their own families, ran as a soul that the devil carries to avoid what everyone is afraid of: la chancla.

She didn't really know what was happening, it had been a quiet and normal morning, with the whole family taking a day off to enjoy each other's company. She had been embroidering with Mirabel in the living room (she did it more and more often, in an attempt to fix the relationship with her younger granddaughter), when Isabela and Camilo had entered laughing out loud, with Felix and Luisa smiling behind them.

They did not even have time to ask what happened before three green, yellow and blue spots flew next to them, with a very angry Y/N yelling from upstairs.

Alma was no fool, she knew that you, her eldest daughter and the one who reminded her most of Pedro (at least in appearance), had long taken the role that corresponded to her in the life of the triplets. On the one hand, she was happy they had you, but on the other it hurt her heart and guilt consumed her for knowing that she was never really present in her children's life to the point where they had to turn to you for help.

She never knew when Bruno had told you that he didn't want to have his own family, that he was not interested in having a partner of any kind. She wasn't present when Pepa had run to you on the first day of her period, or in the long night talks about crushes when she met Félix. She didn't even know that Julieta liked women too.

Just a few months ago she had discovered that Pepa calmed down when she was caressed, that Bruno liked to play the guitar or that Julieta loved painting and that the beautiful pictures in your room were made by her. In truth, she didn't know her own children. But you did.

You had been with them on every step of the road, even when they took different paths, you had never let them be lost for a long time. A task that you later performed with the grandchildren as well. Isabela and Dolores had learned to walk with you, Luisa always looked up to you especially when she had a problem, Camilo told you the secrets that he could never tell his parents, Antonio still followed you around all day when he was feeling sad and Mirabel...for the girl you were the whole world. There was absolutely nothing that she didn't tell you.

You were the only other family member besides her grandmother who didn't have a gift, you understood what it was to grow up with magical siblings when there was nothing special in you, you understood the looks of people's judgment, murmurs and teasing. That was why you had made your special mission to make the girl protected from all that.

Little by little, you wove a warm blanket of love and humility, you taught her that she did not need to have a gift to be a light, to shine and be a source of comfort. Mirabel could be identical to Julieta in appearance, but she was definitely a coal copy of you in everything else.

It took her too long to realize it, but now Alma understood that the miracle, the magic, was not what united them, that it was only a feature that most of them shared and nothing else. The answer was you. Really, you were the angel who kept the family together.

...And that's why no one should mess with you, unless they wanted all of heaven's strength chasing them. Or that it was one of the triplets. 50 years and they had not yet learned not to make you angry? Or perhaps it was their way of getting your attention when they felt you were abandoning them for the grandchildren.

A silly thought perhaps, but children will always be children, and the age did not matter, they would always need even if it was just a hug from their mother. And you were definitely the triplets' mother, no matter how much it hurt her.

"What do you think happened?" Mirabel whispered, taking her out of her thoughts

"I don't know" Alma smiled "but it must have been bad if your mother is running too"

It was true. Of the three, Julieta was usually the one that was spared from your fury. It was no secret to anyone that she was your favorite sister/daughter/family/person, despite Pepa and Bruno's anger, who would always get offended when her sister avoided your scolding.

"What about Julieta?! She also helped with the joke!" they would said

"Maybe, but she looks cute doing it" you'd shrug "besides, who could be mad at this precious face?" You would add while taking your sister by the cheeks

Your younger siblings would cross their arms and looked at you with an annoyed pout while a black cloud hovered on the redhead, and Julieta simply let you use her cheeks as a squishy and fill her face with kisses (something she took from you and did with her niece, nephews and daughters too), while she smirked at them.

The only times she actually got scolded was when she wasn't taking care of her own health. So either Julieta just wanted to do exercise or whatever the hell they did was really stupid and dangerous.

"YOU'RE ALL SO GROUNDED!!" You growled when you managed to get to the first floor.

You cursed Casita for siding with the triplets and letting them run while it trapped you on the second floor, but that didn't mean they were safe. Nope, there was no escape.

"What happened, mija?" Alma asked you walking up to you

"Your mocosos share the same fried brain cell and unfortunately for them, it wasn't Julieta's turn to have It" you growled

Your mother laughed and rolled her eyes fondly. She knew that you loved your siblings more than anything and that any insult you might have for them would never come out of the heart, just from a motherly anger, and there was something she could think that this was about.

"Did they try to test Julieta's gift with poisoned food again?" She asked

"They tried to test my patience" you answered "they used arsenic, mom. ARSENIC!"

Okay, that was new. Alma felt bad for thinking it, but she could have expected something that stupid and irresponsible from Pepa and Bruno, but Julieta? She knew better than that, she wasn't a silly girl who didn't know what arsenic could do. She must have been really desperate to get your attention if she let her siblings drag her into that.

"How are they even alive?" She gasped

"Félix caught them before they could even finish the empanadas and ran to tell me" you sighed "and I'm glad he did"

"Of course, I don't want to thinking what could have happened to them"

"And because now I can kill them myself"

Alma looked at you for a moment. You were frowning and looked ready to hit whoever stood in front of you, but she was still your mother and she could see the fear in your eyes, and honestly, she felt it too. She followed your gaze to see her younger children still running and she made a note to scold them right after you.

You felt your mom's aura changing and knew she was on your side, so you smirked and took your sandal with a single move, your eyes never leaving your adorably stupid siblings.

"Who do you want me to hit?" You asked, just for fun

Alma thought about it for a second. Julieta would definitely get the worst scolding once they were back for letting the other two convince her to do something stupid, but you both knew it hadn't been her idea. It probably wasn't even Bruno's, but there was someone who had never feared death nor god.

"The middle one" she told you

You nodded and focused on your victim for a moment before your chance flew directly at her. Your smirk never left your face and grew even more when Pepa fell to the ground after it hit her right in the head. Bruno and Julieta didn't even look at their fallen sister, they just ran faster to save their lives.

"AND YOU BETTER BRING IT BACK TO ME, YOUNG LADY" You yelled at the redhead while the whole family laughed behind you.

These three would be the end of you one day, you were sure of that. But god knew you wouldn't have them any other way. Besides, they were your cute little babies, so you guessed that gave them some points too.

#reader insert #x reader #madrigal triplets #madrigal triplets & reader #julieta madrigal #bruno madrigal #pepa madrigal #imagine #encanto preferences #encanto imagine #encanto x reader #encanto #tía y/n

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mlybrnte · 4 months ago

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Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (Book Review)

What no one tells you about reading Lolita is that there is an initial visceral shock to encountering a very fucked up story. And then years later, you read it again in full attention and skill without realizing that so much tears have run out of you.

Me at 15: “this is horrific.”

Me at 22: “sad, sad, sad.”

I found myself weeping the moment I woke up from a nap induced by the memory of Nabokov’s novel. Lolita is told from the perspective of the pedophile himself, Humbert Humbert. What I respect so much from Nabokov is that no matter how, in minute subtle ways, we get a glimpse of victim Dolores Haze’s mind, a triumphant reader is able to grasp the whole spectrum of her childhood. How her rebellious streak is a scream of help, her calculating participation in Humbert’s crime is an attempt to get away from him, that she, even in her young age, is able to discern and choose a miserable life as opposed to being with him. And contrary to popular opinion, Humbert was less manipulative. Dolores hated his guts, and had seen through his actions and words. And Nabokov presents Humbert only as a manipulator of a story rather than his own life. He is a terrible, pathetic, egoistic white man who believes he is not like other pedophiles by associating the beauty of his victim akin to Botticelli’s Venus. Lolita wasn’t groomed because Humbert was easily a charming man, she was groomed because she had nowhere else to go. And of course, who would dehumanize a 12-year old for not having enough agency to get away?

What is so incredibly impressive in Nabokov’s approach that I believe some authors should imitate is depicting a crime without making it pornographic. For a book that is basically a pedophile’s account, the scenes were not explicit or sensual. But since he aimed to write from the point of view of a man who finds this as aesthetically pleasing, the narrative is obscured in flowery language and metaphor. At one point, I could not gather whether he had already done it because of his attempts to pacify the reader with impressive writing. Even sickening was arguing that there was nothing wrong after all since Lolita was no longer a virgin.

At the very core, Lolita is a horror story. I am quite appalled at the common general belief that it is a love story; that at some point, Humbert did love his little girl. ‘The tragedy lies in their unrequited romance.’ Nabokov would’ve risen from the grave. I would argue that, yes, while the rape scenes were subtext, and the author did not attempt to exhaust anatomical details, (actually, no matter how embellished a rape scene is with highbrow vocabulary and figures of speech, it’s an issue of skill for not arriving at the conclusion that he raped her, or perhaps a denial of one’s own true mental compass.) one paragraph from the novel struck me as a very obvious admission of guilt:

“Alas, I was unable to transcend the simple human fact that whatever spiritual solace I might find, whatever lithophanic eternities might be provided for me, nothing could make my Lolita forget the foul lust I had inflicted upon her. Unless it can be proven to me — to me as I am now, today, with my heart and by beard, and my putrefaction — that in the infinite run it does not matter a jot that a North American girl-child named Dolores Haze had been deprived of her childhood by a maniac, unless this can be proven (and if it can, then life is a joke), I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art.”

Humbert himself acknowledges that to otherwise admit he had ruined Lolita’s life is a joke. He would go to hell in any religion because of the foul lust he had inflicted upon her. And no being could prove to him that he did not deprive her of a childhood. No subtext needed. No desire for hints. So many paragraphs are evidence alone. Nabokov never painted Humbert in a color different from a monster. Many times he was clearly written like a pathetic loser who died as miserable as he was living. I believe Humbert’s account to have someone sympathize with him is in earnest, a hypocritical and narcissistic attempt to not hold himself fully accountable. And to point a finger at the author for being a ‘creep’ because of his depiction of abuse is quite ridiculous. Reading the book carefully would equip you with a crystal clear conclusion that depiction is not always endorsement. So to arrive at romanticizing the story, Nabokov does a good job of holding up a mirror to show confirmation that abuse can be in the form of romantic prose, that we lack the ability to set apart roses from blood.

This is perhaps one of the saddest books I have ever read. I hope all Dolores Hazes in the world find peace and happiness.

#bookreview #bookblr #bookrecommendation #vladimirnabokov #vladimir nabokov #classic literature #classics #classicbooks #bookshelf #bookquotes #bookstagram #banned books

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immabethehero · 1 year ago

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A Starry Night in the Encanto

I DID IT. CROSSOVER WEEK FINALLY COMPLETE. @wdtajn IT’S FINALLY DONE

So context: there’s a lovely musical called Starry, based on the life of Vincent Van Gogh. It’s written by Kelly Lynne D’Angelo and Matt Dahan, both very talented. Dahan also did a bit of Starkid. The soundtrack is on Spotify, go listen to it now!!!

🌠🌠🌠🌠🌠

“His hair is red like Mamá’s. Fiery red,” Dolores reports.

“He’s only got art equipment on him,” Isabela says.

“The hummingbirds say a door appeared from a hill and he emerged from it,” Antonio translates, the little birds fluttering around his head.

“He hasn’t said much to anyone, just kind of wandered towards the fields where the donkeys were,” Luisa recalls.

“He’s a lot like you, Tío, weird and artsy,” Camilo admits. This earns him a smack from Dolores.

“So… you think you could try talking to him?” Mirabel asks.

Bruno blinks rapidly, struggling to keep up with all the sudden information. He had just been dreaming of watching sheep and rats dance in a field when a tremor that made his bones rattle and his teeth chatter startled him awake. When he opened his eyes, he quickly surmised the tremor had been all six kids shaking him awake.

“And you want me to talk to him because…” he begins.

“Because like Camilo said in a non-helpful way, he reminds the town of you,” Mirabel answers.

An artist who avoids socializing? Fair enough. Bruno sighs and swings his feet out of the hammock. “Alright, just don’t expect any fascinating conversations to happen.”

“We won’t,” Camilo responds.

True to what Luisa said, Bruno finds the man sitting on a rock, painting the donkeys grazing in the field. The stranger wears blue overalls over a yellow shirt, both covered in dried paint splotches. He chews on a spare paint brush as he contemplates his next move. Red hair pokes out from under his straw hat.

Bruno slowly walks over to him, whistling absentmindedly to get his attention. The stranger’s head perks up, but he refuses to tear his eyes away from his masterpiece.

Bruno takes a deep breath. Here goes nothing. “Um, hi!”

No response. The man keeps painting.

Maybe he doesn’t speak English. “Hola!” Still no response.

“Uh… bonjour! Ciao! Habari! Konnichiwa! Guten morgen!” Please say something!

The stranger finally (finally!) turns around. His blue eyes have a sad, faraway look, yet twinkle with determination. They’re also very judgemental, at least to Bruno. “Didn’t know you spoke so many languages.”

Bruno feels his face turn red. “Not really, I just know how to say ‘hello’ and ‘where’s the bathroom’ in many languages.”

The stranger nods and turns back to his painting. Bruno peers over his shoulder to see the work.

“Woah…”

The colours pop out of the canvas, the sky dancing and twirling in a polychromatic tornado. The field boasts just as many hues, every shade of green far more eye-catching than Bruno’s ruana.

The man stops his painting and glares at Bruno. “Can I help you with something?”

“Teach me to paint.”

“What?”

“Can you teach me to paint like you, please?”

The man glances back and forth between Bruno and his painting, confused. “You actually like this?”

“Why wouldn’t I? I’ve never seen the sky and fields painted like that before!” Bruno admits. “It’s… maravilloso!”

The man blushes. “You’d be the first non-family member to say that. My other friends would say it’s too… what’s the word…”

“Messy?” Bruno guesses.

“No… tacky. Something like that.”

Bruno scoffs. “You need new friends.”

The painter laughs. “You flatter me, sir. What’s your name?”

“Bruno Madrigal.”

“Vincent Van Vogh.”

As Bruno shakes Vincent’s hand, his heart begins to beat faster in excitement. There’s something very fascinating about this man.

“Do you need a place to stay?”

“Given my way here has suddenly disappeared, yes. Do you have a motel where I could spend the night?”

“I was thinking perhaps my place? My family's house is big enough to house a guest wandering the Encanto,” Bruno says.

“Encanto?”

“It’s where you are. Encanto, Colombia.”

Vincent’s pale face turns ghostly. “Colombia?! That’s so far from France! How did I get here? How do I get back?!”

Bruno waves his hands nervously. “Don’t worry! This town does all sorts of magical stuff. I’m sure once you’ve settled down and explained how you got here, a way for you to go home will arrive. For now, let’s just settle on finding you a place to stay. I promise my family doesn’t bite. But the pets might.”

Vincent squeaks in response.

As they near the brilliant “Casita”, as Bruno calls it, the man suddenly stops Vincent in his tracks.

“Before we get any closer, I need to warn you of some things. This town is known for… its eccentricities, to say the least. For one thing, my house moves independently.”

Vincent nods warily. “Like… it’s haunted?”

Bruno laughs nervously. “No, it just has a mind of its own.”

The two continue on their way, and Bruno motions to Casita. “As you see…”

The window shutters on the top window suddenly swing and the tiles of the roof roll in a wave. Vincent yelps in surprise.

The window shutters shake back and forth slowly, as if waving. Vincent meekly waves back. The door opens (on its own!) to welcome the men inside. Vincent marvels at the building’s beautiful colours. He’ll have to paint it once he’s made sure he’s awake and not just hallucinating. Or dreaming. Or completely losing his mind. Maybe he should have taken up Segatori’s suggestion to see that doctor from wherever-the-heck.

“My family has magic as well. Some are a bit more noticeable than others,” Bruno explains. “For example-”

A roar of thunder echoes through the courtyard, startling Vincent. He looks up. There’s not a single cloud in the sky, how-?

He is soon answered by a tall woman wearing a bright orange dress. Her red hair is pulled back into a pretty braid. She eyes Vincent suspiciously.

“Who’s this, Bruno?” she asks.

“He’s Vincent, he’s… new here,” Bruno explains. He turns to Vincent. “This is Pepa, my sister. She can control the weather.”

Pepa scoffs. “It’s not so much control as it is just summoning clouds when I get emotional.”

“It’s still a very cool gift,” Bruno says. Pepa smiles and shoves him playfully.

“Whatever you say, hermano.”

Vincent hears loud footsteps above and looks up to see six, well, five young adults and one child curiously watching him from the mezzanine.

“Oh boy, there’s two of them now,” the teenaged boy mumbles. The girl with the red headband elbows him hard.

“These are my nieces and nephews!” Bruno says, grinning. “Come on down!”

Once they’re all standing in front of Vincent, Bruno introduces them. Isabela, Dolores, Luisa, Camilo, Mirabel and Antonio.

“Pleased to meet you at last, Señor. What’s your name?” Mirabel asks, pushing her bright green glasses up. Vincent marvels at her beautiful skirt.

“I’m Vincent. Vincent Van Gogh,” the artist says. “Your skirt is very pretty.” So many colours…

“Thank you! I just added some new designs.” Mirabel twirls, allowing Vincent to see the skirt in full.

“Where are you from?” Luisa asks. She towers over all of the kids. Her muscular build would be something Johanna would fawn over.

“Arles. It’s in the south of France.”

“That’s over 8000 kilometers away!” she gasps.

A heavenly scent fills the room. Vincent follows it to another woman approaching, holding a pot. Her curly black hair is swept up in a bun.

“This is Julieta, my other sister. Her cooking can heal any injuries,” Bruno says. “Julieta, this is Vincent Van Gogh.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Julieta says, holding out a gloved hand. Vincent shakes it, startled by all the people. He’s never met a group with such colourful clothing before!

“Where did you come from?” Julieta asks.

“Arles, France.”

“That’s quite far. How did you get here?”

“I was just getting back from a long day of painting when I saw a door glowing in an alleyway. When I went to investigate it, I could hear people and animals inside. So I opened it and walked through and came here.

“That must have been the door in the hill where the animals saw you come out!” Antonio cries.

“What happened to the door?” Mirabel asks.

“When I turned around, the door was gone.”

The Madrigals glance at each other nervously.

Mirabel holds up her hand. “Family meeting!”

While the Madrigals huddle in Dolores’ sound proof room, Vincent stays in the courtyard, entertained by Casita. The painter has never seen a house juggle before.

“So… what do you guys think? Should we let him stay?”

“Well, now that you’ve invited him, it’s not like we can just throw him out into the streets.”

“Besides, he came from a magic portal. We can’t send him back either. We’ll have to wait for the Miracle to find him another way home.”

“All in favour of letting Vincent stay, say I.”

“I!” twelve voices echo.

Casita conjures up a guest room with a reasonably sized window for Vincent to look out. As soon as he sees the view, Vincent requests another canvas and immediately begins painting. Bruno can’t wait to see the result.

He also can’t wait to get to his vision cave. He can’t put his finger on it, but there’s something important, significant, influential about Vincent. His artwork feels familiar, and Bruno knows his Gift can help him solve the mystery. The seer flies through his room and into his vision cave, taking the steps (which have thankfully lessened dramatically) two at a time.

Surrounded by sand, salt tossed and match lit, Bruno begins to search for Vincent Van Gogh’s future.

Bruno is the first person Vincent sees in the morning. Grinning, he holds up the finished artwork of his view of the Encanto. The clouds and sunset have never looked so vibrant before, the colourful houses below compliment the beautiful sky.

“You like it? You can keep it if you do! I have so much art in my flat, it’s kind of a problem. I really need to find new homes for them…”

Vincent looks up from his work to see his host’s eyes red and puffy. Without saying a single word, Bruno throws his arms around the shocked painter.

“Bruno? Are you okay?”

Bruno simply hugs him tighter.

Unsettled, Vincent decides to paint in the courtyard of the lovely house. Just before he begins pouring his paint, he notices the kids approach him, all holding painting gear. His stomach drops. They’re not going to-

“Is it ok if we join your painting session?” the girl with the colourful dress asks. “We saw you sitting alone and well, we just thought a good way to get to know our guest is through his favorite activity!”

Vincent freezes. He prefers painting alone, when no one can judge him or tell him how to paint or-

“We’ll be as quiet as possible! We just thought it would be fun,” the tallest girl says. The rest nod, smiles nervous but… honest.

Vincent nods and gestures to the floor, hoping it doesn’t come off as curt. He jumps when the tiles on the floor suddenly move, rolling chairs, easels, and a large table their way. He’s never going to get used to that.

“Alright guys, let’s do it!” the first girl says, setting her painting supplies down. Vincent fakes a smile as the rest of the kids file in.

“Mirabel and Antonio are coming soon,” a girl with a red headband says to Vincent. “Tío Bruno as well, but first he needs to see Julieta because of a headache.” Vincent nods, puzzled. How does she know that? Wait, what’s her name again?

Vincent studies the people around him, trying to remember Bruno’s rapid fire introductions from yesterday. Isabela has the colourful dress, Louise(?) is really tall and muscular, Dora(?) has the red headband. There's also a teenaged boy wearing an orange poncho, or ruana, as Vincent has been informed. He’s already forgotten that kid’s name.

The painter relaxes a little when he sees Mirabel and Antonio (frankly the more approachable kids of the youth) show up. He stops relaxing when he sees what Antonio is riding on. Christ, he’s never seen a cat that big!

“What- what’s that?” he stammers, pointing a shaking finger at the giant cat with razor teeth.

Antonio looks down at his ride. “This is Parce! He’s a jaguar, and he’s one of my best friends!”

“And your parents are okay with this?” Vincent squeaks. Antonio nods happily.

“I can talk to animals! They all love me!” That checks out. Vincent keeps forgetting about the magic part.

“So… I’m guessing you all have magic too?” Vincent asks.

“Yeah! Luisa has super strength!” the teenaged boy says, pointing to the tall girl. To demonstrate, Luisa lifts up the table with one hand. One. Vincent’s jaw drops. That’s why she’s so muscular! Johanna would love this girl.

“Dolores can hear anything from miles away!” Isabela says, pointing to the girl with the red headband. The girl in question suddenly perks her head up and smiles.

“It seems Tía Julieta is baking a treat for us.” Right on queue, Vincent begins to smell something delectable wafting from the kitchen. Incroyable!

“Isabela can grow any plant at will,” Mirabel says. Isabela waves her hand and a bouquet of sunflowers appears in her hand. She hands them to a stunned Vincent.

“And Camilo can shapeshift into anyone!” Mirabel exclaims, pointing to the teenaged boy. So that’s his name!

Camilo gets up and twirls. In seconds, he transforms into Vincent. The painter gawks at his own clone smiling back at him, though he thinks the smile would suit Gauguin more. Paul always has a smug smile.

“Tía Pepa can control the weather with her mood,” Luisa continues. “And our mamá, Julieta, can heal people with her cooking!”

Vincent realizes one kid hasn’t shown off yet. “What about you? What’s your power?” he asks Mirabel.

Mirabel shrugs. “I don’t have a Gift.”

“She’s our Miracle holder,” Dolores says.

“She keeps us sane,” Camilo adds.

“She’s the heart of this family,” Isabela concludes. Mirabel blushes with pride.

“And what about Bruno? You haven’t mentioned him.”

“Tío Bruno can see the future!” Mirabel says.

The future? As in, what’s to come? Or what could be? Could this explain why Bruno was crying when he saw Vincent this morning?

“Is that why he looked sad to see me? He was so happy when I came to stay, but when I saw him last, he was crying,” Vincent explains. The children exchange worried glances.

“I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about!” Mirabel hastily says. “Why don’t you show us your talent?”

The Madrigal begin pulling out their art supplies, waiting eagerly for the painter to begin. Eyeing them all suspiciously, Vincent resumes pouring paint onto his pallette.

Vincent decides to do a portrait of Parce, the jaguar lying by Antonio’s side. He begins sketching the outline.

“How long have you been in painting, Señor Van Gogh?” Dolores asks.

“Almost seven years,” Vincent answers.

“What do you usually paint?”

“Whatever I feel like. Which right now is the giant cat and his fascinating pattern.”

“He’s a jaguar. They’re great swimmers and they can kill with just one bite!” Antonio says.

Vincent dares a peek at Parce, who winks at him. The Dutchman gulps and ducks behind his painting.

Bruno suddenly runs in, carrying his painting equipment and a tray of something that smells devine. “Sorry! Sorry! Got held up with Julieta. Anyone care for some carimiñola?”

Half the snacks are gone in seconds. Vincent quickly grabs one before they disappear entirely. He takes a bite.

All of his senses ignite at once. His skin has cleared, his crops are thriving- He’s found Heaven in this little treat! It’s as if the chef has made it specifically for him. They aren’t kidding when they say Julieta’s cooking is magical!

Bruno chuckles as Vincent begins snatching more for himself. “Julieta has some more left over if needed. Quite the chef, isn’t she?”

“This is magique! Remind me to get the recipe before I go home,” Vincent exclaims between bites. “Also, send my compliments to her.”

“Will do.”

After eating at least three more of the carimiñolas, Vincent continues painting. The rest of the Madrigals contentedly paint beside him, most of them humming or whistling to themselves as they work. Another thing Vincent has learned about the Madrigals: they’re very musical.

Theo and Johanna would love Encanto. Theo would be amazed by all the artwork here. The weather would do wonders for his health. And the Madrigals! Johanna would consider the Madrigal women her sisters. Theo could chat with the husbands for hours… probably about how much they love their wives. The thought makes Vincent chuckle to himself.

Hours pass. As Vincent finishes his work, the Madrigals begin showing off their paintings. Isabela has painted a cactus with a large orange flower on it. Dolores painted a guitar with little swirly designs on them. Luisa shyly presents the lovely unicorn she drew, mumbling how art isn’t her strong suit. Vincent has to admit, he’s envious of the way she paints equidae. Mirabel shows off a giant butterfly with rainbow wings, while Antonio shares an adorable picture of Bruno’s pet rats. There’s at least fifty rats on that paper, just how many does Bruno own?!

“Camilo, you haven’t shared your artwork yet,” Mirabel points out. The teenager ducks his head, canvas facing his chest.

“It’s… uh… still ongoing,” he mumbles.

“I’m sure it’s fine, just show us already!” Isabela urges.

Camilo reluctantly turns his canvas around. The group stares at the photo, stunned by the results.

Mirabel finds her voice first. “How lovely! It’s a… is it El Mohán?”

“It’s a chicken. Screaming,” Camilo admits. “It’s from the chicken incident, remember?”

The Madrigals begin nodding and smiling. Apprently that’s a story.

Vincent ducks behind his own canvas to keep Camilo from seeing his amused smile. He really hopes the kid doesn’t want to make a career out of art. Oh god, the other painters would be appalled if they saw that. Gaugin would never let the poor boy hear the end of it.

“It’s bad isn’t it?” Camilo wails. “I can’t draw at all!”

“No kidding…” Bruno mutters a little too loudly. Mirabel shoots him a glare while Vincent giggles behind his artwork.

Camilo scowls and stands to face the snickering painter. “My art is very amusing, isn’t it? Why don’t you show us what you made, Señor Van Gogh?!”

Vincent, still chuckling a little, shoots the teen a smug smile and turns his painting around. Camilo immediately sits back down, gawking and stuttering. Vincent’s smile widens.

“I’ve never seen Parce so colourful before!” Antonio squeals. Parce roars in agreement.

“Look at all those colours!” Isabela and Mirabel gush.

“It’s so pretty!” Dolores sighs.

“You’re such a gifted painter!” Luisa exclaims.

Vincent blushes from all the compliments. He’s surprised it made such a hit with this crowd. The other artists would be whining about the bright colours, the Madrigals adore it. Maybe it’s a cultural thing?

Vincent hands the painting to Antonio. “Consider this a little gift.” The child gasps with excitement, warming the painter’s heart.

“Thank you, señor!”

At last, Bruno presents his artwork. It’s of two anthropomorphic rats in masks, one black with a red spider on its shirt, the other wearing a similar outfit, only white with hints of pink and black.

“What is that?” Vincent asks.

“It’s a scene from a movie about people who share magical spider powers! We’re gonna watch it tonight!” Bruno explains.

None of those words are in any religious writings. As far as Vincent knows. “What’s a movie?”

“It’s a thing in the future, it’s where… art moves on futuristic… canvases?” Bruno trails off, words failing him. Vincent looks even more lost.

“Could you show me these ‘movies’ with your Gift? Maybe I’ll understand then,” Vincent finally says.

Bruno’s smile disappears. “You… want to see my Gift?”

“You’re the only one whose Gift I haven’t seen yet, of course I want to!”

Bruno glances at the kids, who nod and motion to Vincent. The prophet turns back to the artist, forcing a smile. “Sure. Let’s do it.”

But first, Antonio wants Vincent to help him hang up the “Portrait of Parce”. Bruno silently thanks his sobrino for the extra minutes as he paces back and forth in his room, fidgeting with his ruana. The rats watch their master warily, some crawling to him for comfort. Bruno smiles and picks one up, stroking her back.

The door suddenly opens and Bruno nearly drops the poor rat in surprise. He sets the rat down and turns to see Mirabel.

“Tío? Is everything ok?”

Bruno whines wordlessly and flops face first into the sand. Mirabel crouches beside him and puts her hand on his shoulder.

“You don’t need to worry! Vincent has seen so much weird stuff by now, I’m sure your Gift will look normal compared to everything else!”

Bruno lifts his head up. “It’s not that I’m worried about. I… I saw his future. And I don’t want him to see it.”

Mirabel frowns. “Right… he did ask about that before you showed up.”

Bruno squeaks. “He did?”

“Yeah. He said you were crying. What did you see?”

Bruno hesitates, choosing his words carefully. “He’s been through a lot. Everyone thinks he’s odd, and his paintings aren’t selling. He barely has any friends.”

Mirabel hums to herself in thought. She finally says, “He kind of reminds me of you.”

Bruno scoffs lightly and gently elbows her. “How dare you? I have tons of friends. Human friends, that is!” That’s actually not true, but he hopes Mirabel will humour him.

“You and the town didn’t always see eye to eye, but look at you now! You’re loved and respected in the Encanto! I’m sure it will be the same for him!”

Bruno chuckles sadly. “It’s… it’s not the same where he’s from. It can’t be solved that easily.”

Mirabel huffs. “Well, there has to be something good coming his way! You need to look for the butterfly! Like you did with my future! Surely one nice thing appeared when you looked into his future!”

Bruno ponders this silently, picking at his ruana. He suddenly lights up.

“Actually… there is. It’s the reason I looked into his future in the first place! Gracias, Mirabel!”

“So how will this work? Will there be smoke? I’ve got some matches! Do I need to close my eyes? Are there cards involved?” Vincent’s questions are endless as he takes a seat in Bruno’s vision cave. Bruno sits across from him, slightly unnerved by how talkative the painter has become. And to think he didn’t even want to talk to Bruno when they first met!

“You just need to stay inside the circle I made,” Bruno says. “Also be careful of the flying sand. It lets you see my visions, but it also can get into your hair and clothes.”

Vincent shrugs. “I’ll be fine.”

“It’s also going to get very windy.”

“Again, not an issue. I’ve painted in the rain plenty of times, the wind is nothing.”

“How strong is your immune system?”

“Very, now can we please begin?”

Bruno strikes a match and lights up the four leaf piles. He takes a deep breath. Look for the butterfly. Vincent watches with wide eyes.

The wind begins to pick up the sand. The room gently shakes as Bruno’s Gift awakens. Bruno feels his eyes glow and opens them.

“You might want to hang on,” he says, holding out his hands. An amazed Vincent takes them, his own hands trembling.

“Are you okay?” Bruno asks.

“Just shaking with excitement, I think,” Vincent says, gripping Bruno’s hands tightly. “Keep going.”

The sand swirls around them, creating a large bubble that envelops the gentlemen. Vincent gasps as bright green grains of sand begin forming images.

“This is what a movie looks like!” Bruno yells. Vincent watches with anticipation as the outline of a rectangle appears, the images inside moving as people below the screen watch.

“First they show them in these giant theatres before putting the movies on smaller vinyls for people to see whenever they want!” Bruno explains.

“That’s wonderful! Thank you for showing me!” Vincent says.

“While we’re here, there’s something else I wanted to show you!” Bruno exclaims.

“There is?”

“Your future!” Bruno closes his eyes in concentration, willing the good images to come to him. When he opens them, he feels a sense of relief rush through him.

Vincent watches as multiple versions of him appear, each one deeply engrossed in painting. Man, he really needs to fix his posture. When he looks closer, he recognizes a few paintings, but the rest are new to him.

The paintings then float together, each one receiving a fancy frame before lining up side by side. A ribbon holds back what seems to be crowds of people staring at the art. Vincent’s art.

“Thousands of people will come each day to see your art!” Bruno explains. “I’ve always wondered why your art looked so familiar, now I know. I’ve seen it before. These are revolutionary!”

Vincent stares at Bruno incredulously. “Are you sure it isn’t someone else’s art?”

“That was you painting all of them, right? I promise your paintings are going to change lives! People will come from far and wide to see them, inspired by your determination and passion. You’re quite the artist, Vincent Van Gogh.”

A slab of green glass materializes in front of the two men. Bruno takes it and uses it to shield them from the falling sand. He brushes off the last few grains and shows it to Vincent. The picture depicts a lovely view of Vincent’s art, hung up for people to see. The painting in the middle catches Vincent’s eye, one of a starry night over a town.

Bruno rubs his temples, blinking away any red spots in his view. When his vision finally clears, he’s surprised to see the artist wiping away a few tears, still gazing at the piece. Bruno gulps. Did he overwhelm the poor man?

“Did you get sand in your eye? Was it too much?!”

Without saying a single word, Vincent throws his arms around the shocked prophet.

“Vincent? Are you okay?”

Vincent simply hugs him tighter.

Mirabel is jolted awake when the door to Bruno’s room opens, tipping her over. She falls flat on her face. She feels a hand pull up her by the arm.

“Sorry, I didn't realize you were here.” It’s Vincent. When she pushes her glasses back up to see him, she’s surprised to see them glistening with tears. Her stomach plummets.

“Are you okay? What happened?”

Bruno appears behind Vincent, his smile bright, but his eyes rather red. “It’s fine, Mirabel. I think Vincent just needs some time alone.”

Mirabel nods and lets the artist pass. She watches him slowly walk to his room, clutching the emerald tablet in his arms.

Bruno gives Mirabel a hug. “Thanks for the advice, kid. I think he really needed to see that.”

He pulls away from the hug, stumbling. Mirabel grabs his arms to help steady him.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m getting too old for double visions. I’m going to take a nap.” Bruno hobbles back into his room, the door shutting behind him.

“I will never understand artists.” Mirabel turns around to see Camilo leaning on the rail of the mezzanine.

“Camilo, you’re an actor. Isn’t that technically an art?”

“There’s a difference, prima.”

“No there isn’t.”

Bruno sees the door first, shimmering and glowing. The doorknob has an encrusted “V” written on. He calls for Vincent.

The prophet and the painter work together to get Vincent’s stuff packed up for him, while Mirabel wraps the vision tablet up in a spare blanket so it doesn’t get destroyed. Included is the recipe for her mother’s carimiñolas.

Vincent holds his painting of the Encanto. “Before I leave, I want you to have this. I don’t have any currency on me, so I hope you’ll take a painting as payment for letting me in.”

Mirabel excitedly takes the artwork. “Gracias! We’ll definitely have to find a nice place for this!” She throws her arms around Vincent. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Señor Van Gogh.”

“It was a pleasure staying here,” Vincent says. Mirabel runs off to hang up the art. She turns back and winks to Bruno.

Vincent turns back to Bruno, smiling. “I’ll miss seeing you every day. It’s not everyday I meet someone as kind as you.”

The compliment makes Bruno flush. “I’ll miss you as well. I’m… so honoured we got to meet. I don’t think I’ll ever meet a friend like you again.”

The painter pulls his friend in for a hug one last time. He feels Bruno’s arms wrap around him. He’s quite certain he’ll never feel the warm embrace of a friendship like this again. He’s never felt so seen before.

Bruno has never felt so seen, so connected before. He almost doesn’t want to let go, feeling a bit colder as Vincent pulls away. He never knew friends like Vincent could do that to him.

Vincent glances at the door. “So… do I just… touch the doorknob?”

“That usually does the trick,” Bruno advises.

Vincent apprehensively touches the doorknob. The glow of the door brightens, brightens, forcing Vincent to shut his eyes. When he opens them, an image of him has been carved onto the door, the outline sparkling with magic. The figure holds a paintbrush and a pallette, reaching up to touch the dancing stars. He gasps.

“Looks like you’re part of this family now,” Bruno says. “Goodbye, Vincent Van Gogh. I hope we cross paths again!”

“We’ll meet again! I promise! ” Vincent says. He opens the door and walks through.

Vincent lugs his gear through the door and right into his brother’s house. How convenient. The door closes behind him and the beautiful glow disappears. Vincent smiles sadly. He’ll miss Bruno.

His thoughts are interrupted by someone running downstairs and into the front hallway. It’s Theo! Immediately Vincent is tackled by his younger brother in a hug. He’s been hugged a lot recently. Vincent happily returns it.

“Hello, brother!”

“You’re here! Oh thank God, I was so worried!” Theo exclaims.

“What?”

Theo pulls out of the hug and begins checking Vincent for injuries. “Where were you, Vincent? Paul wrote to us and said he hasn’t seen you for four days! You couldn’t be found! What happened to you? Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine. I feel great, actually!” Vincent responds. “A family looked after me.”

“I’ll be sure to send them my thanks,” Theo says. “Where was this family? In a different country?!”

That’s not far from the truth. “They live…” Vincent trails off. There’s no logical way to explain where he’s been, or even how he got there. Even if he did try, what if someone heard him? Arles would have even more to say against the artist. He shakes his head.

“It’s a long story… But I did get a new recipe I want you and Jo to try-”

Right on cue, Johanna appears from around the corner and runs to hug Vincent.

“There you are! I’m so glad you’re back, Vincent!” she cries. “Where were you?”

“Like I told your husband, it’s really complicated-”

“Why don’t you stay at our place for the night, then you can head back to Arles!” Jo immediately begins dragging her brother-in-law to the couch.

“Can I unpack first? I need to find a place for my stuff-.”

“No worries, there’s a free bedroom at the end of the hall!”

As they organize the free room, Vincent unwraps the vision tablet on his bed. Where could he keep this?

“Oh my goodness! That’s a gorgeous piece of art!” Theo exclaims. “Who made that?”

“My friend Bruno,” Vincent says. “It’s a… talent of his.”

“Then we’ll definitely have to find somewhere to hang it up,” Theo says. “He’s very talented.”

“He’s Gifted,” Vincent agrees. “And a great friend.”

“How come you never told us Vincent was a famous artist?!” Camilo whines. “It would have been nice to know that before I showed him a drawing of a screaming chicken!”

“You never asked, kid,” Bruno says with a chuckle. “Besides, he’s not famous yet, I don’t think. You still have time to right your wrongs.”

Camilo faints onto the couch, howling dramatically.

“This is amazing! I knew he had a Gift for painting, but this is exquisite!” Mirabel says, studying the painting. After much deliberation, the Madrigal family decided to hang it up in the mezzanine, where anyone passing by could be reminded of their friend. “And he really drew this from a view in his window?” Bruno nods.

“I can’t believe we got to meet an internationally celebrated painter!” Isabela gushes. “I the Miracle will let us meet him again.”

“I’m sure we’ll see each other again,” Bruno says. “He promised we would.”

Camilo sits up. “Oh yeah? What gives you the idea he’ll somehow magically appear again?”

Bruno winks. “20-20 vision.”

#bruno madrigal #mirabel madrigal #disney encanto #wdtajn #vincent van gogh #starry musical #encanto fanfiction #apparently i can write

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patheticbatman · 10 months ago

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Part Four

I'm very proud of these dolls, and I'm also leaving them at my parents' house, so I did a little photoshoot with some books as background so I can have nice pictures of them. This set of pictures is exclusively dolls that I painted, so I’m very pleased to show them off.

This is the fourth and final post, so check out the first for more info!

First up is Sisu, with The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. I swear that I did not rip the cover. I think that copy is like 50 years old, and I swear I had the ripped of part until recently. I’m very sad about losing it. But in any case, I feel like Sisu would relate heavily with being the only one of her species left for a long while, about how human vice affected her status as an endling, about spending time in a body that isn’t really hers to survive, and the whole quest really. Hell, in the book, Schmendrick and Molly end up together, and we all know that’s going to happen to Raya and Namari eventually lol.

Second is Mirabel with In the Tike of the Butterflies, by Julia Alvarez. I feel like Mirabel would be the most invested in her family in keeping up with the outside, in magical world, as both a breather from all her family’s guilt and drama, and as a future head of the household later on. In her life. I also know that the Latin world paid a lot of attention to the struggle and loss of the Mirabal sisters (The Butterflies) and what with the book being told by Dede (the non-revolutionary sister, the only survivor) and being about a 4 sisters, Mirabel would empathize with this a lot. She’s one out of 3 sisters + a close girl cousin, and is the only one who’s not involved with what made her family famous. Encanto takes place in about the 1950s, maybe 60s, so Mirabel would definitely be interested in this book, because she would have definitely been interested in the real life events that occurred when she was young (the events of the book and the real life murders of the Mirabal sisters occurred form the 40s to 1960, but this book was published in the 90s)

Third is Dolores with Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. I feel like she is a more overlooked member of the Madrigals, and she probably is a BIG Romantic at heart, though I bet she keeps it secret. as such, I gave her one of the most Romantic books I have as a background.

Fourth is Isabela with The Giver, by Lois Lowry. I think she would find the themes of huge responsibility and the focus on perfection by society to be quite pertinent to her lot in life at the beginning of Encanto.

Fifth is Luisa with Jacob I have Loved, by Katherine Paterson. The title is a reference to the Bible saying, “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.”. I DID think about giving this one to Mirabel, but ultimately chose Luisa because I feel like Mirabel never felt she had a chance to live up to Isabela, while Luisa probably felt like she had a chance to under all that *pressure* (lol), like Sarah Louise (the Esau) with her twin sister Caroline (the Jacob). I think the themes of small town life (SL in the book moves from a small coastal island to a mountain town, and the Madrigals live in the mountains) would also speak to Luisa.

I couldn’t decide for Shuri and also wanted to show her off more, so she gets two books! The first is my copy of the collected Infinity War comics, because she appears in it, and the second is The Deep by Rivers Solomon. Shuri gets The Deep because it’s about a mermaid whose people were the magically-transformed fetuses of pregnant African people who were thrown overboard while being transported to the Americas for enslavement. As Shuri’s movie is both about a strong African nation and about a people pushed underwater by colonialism and racism, I just felt that it was fitting. If you look in her hands, one has a heart shaped herb and the other has the bracelet from Namor.

As a romantic and a girl obsessed with the surface, I believe Ariel would love The Princess Bride, full stop. I also think the framing premise would tickle her.

Last but not least, Asha! Her movie ofc hints at her becoming the fairy godmother and crossing over with fairy/Disney tales, so I gave her The Sisters Grimm!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

#all the girls are in order of appearance/mention #dp dolls book photoshoot #the last unicorn #in the time of the butterflies #pride and prejudice #the giver #Jacob I have loved #infinity war #the deep #the princess bride #the sisters grimm

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the-nimbasa-trio · 6 months ago

Note

*Echo smiled, blue eyes lighting up.*

"That's so sweet! I know how hard a language barrier can be, it was uh-hm." *She paused, before pushing forward.* "I'm an empath. It's meant to connect me with Titan and other pokemon. Part of the whole-" *She gestured to her hair.* "Shiny business. Doesn't allow me to do much other than know if a pokemon is happy or sad or whatever. But it made me a very weird kid, especially since I couldn't tell what other *people* were feeling."

*She shrugged, a lax expression on her face.*

"Like I said, kids would bully me, but their pokemon would protect me. Started up a rumor that I was mind controlling pokemon, and since I could only tell the...vibes of the pokemon, who *liked me*, it was exceptionally easy for me to be tricked into getting hurt. And then the pokemon would realize their trainer was hurting me in some way, and that'd cause infighting, and it just-"

*She sighs, looking over at the twins.*

"It was so hard, feeling like I was speaking a language nobody else could understand. I can only imagine how hard it is to *actually be in that situation.* I'm sure you guys were probably the one good thing happening to Elesa when everything else seemed like it was horrible."

*She smiled at their comment on trains, rocking back and forth slightly.*

"I'm no expert when it comes to trains, but I'm well aware you guys are. When we have some free time, you should *absolutely* infodump on me. The steam engine is a work of *art* and you guys could probably give me the entire history on the paints alone."

Ingo nodded in understanding, but towards the infodumping he perked up. He had to hold himself back, and Emmet, from infodumping right there and then. Now was not the time. "Well, don't worry, Mx. Echo! We'll keep you safe."

Emmet nodded in agreement and gave a respectful solute. "I know how it is to get bullied," they commented and shrugged a bit, brushing it off. "It isn't fun. I also have the curse of knowing if someone is lying, too. If someone lied to my face, I'd sense something is wrong. I'll try and get more information. As a result, it makes me kind of weird."

"It's useful," Ingo replied and patted his brother on the back. "But hey, we're just a group of weirdos that can stick together. That's why we befriended Elesa, too! He needed a friend that understood him. We happened to fit the criteria! Now we're inseparable, and no matter what happens, we'll stick together."

"Yup yup! So now you're part of the squad. Welcome!" Emmet cheered which, surprisingly, went along with the sudden cheers of the crowd around them.

The twins spun on their heels to look at the battle, and on the screen behind Elesa, it displayed how many Pokemon each trainer had. Elesa was down to Typhoon, who looked tired and weakened, while the opponent had only his Togekiss. Ingo and Emmet were caught off-guard by how quickly the battle was nearing its end, but when they checked their respective watches, it's been going on for far longer than expected.

When the opponent trainer flew his hand out in front of him, he didn't need to call a command. The Togekiss flew forward and a ball of pink energy formed in front of her mouth, and she torpedoed it forward. The Moonblast struck its target despite Typhoon's attempt at avoiding the fast strike, and smoke flung in every direction from the sheer power this Togekiss wielded.

Emmet shielded Echo and the Zorua from the smoke, while Ingo coughed and acted as an extra barrier. Once the smoke cleared, Elesa's dumbfounded expression and posture became visible, and Typhoon's fainted body laid on the runway. The opponent was the victor.

Elesa gave a small smile and recalled Typhoon into his pokeball. He sighed and walked up to the purple-haired trainer. He extended his hand and clasped the opponent's in a show of sportsmanship. "Congratulations, Dolor, for defeating the Nimbasa City gym. You fought well out there."

When he pulled away, the badge was in Dolor's hand. It shone brilliantly in the light of the stadium. "It was a pleasure, Elesa. You fought brilliantly, as well."

Elesa nodded in response and turned towards the crowd. "And here you have it! The winner of the battle! I'll sign autographs in ten minutes, so get ready for a personal meet and greet!"

The crowd began cheering again as Elesa left behind stage.

#pokemon #ingo #subway master ingo #chapter 2 #lebirbybitch #submas #subway boss ingo #ingo pokemon #elesa pokemon #elesa pkmn #gym leader elesa #pokemon elesa #subway master emmet #emmet pokemon #pokemon emmet #emmet #pokemon ingo

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gamerbearmira · 2 years ago

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NATM Encanto AU beginning

Abuela!

Abuela, help me, my hand is-

Luisa! No, no-

Abuela, there's a big wave coming! What do we do?

I...I don't know, Mirabel! I'm sorry I couldn't protect you all!

And then the wave hit.

Alma opened her eyes. Wait, why was she standing in front of a wall? There was a wave coming, Mirabel was clutching onto her, and then...But now, she was standing there, completely dry, holding the candle.

The candle, that had burnt out just over a year ago. Why did she have it?

"Abuela?"

She whirled around. There was her entire family, lined up behind her as if there was nothing wrong. But no, that couldn't be right. Bruno was the first taken off guard from the rapids, Luisa was swept under the water, Dolores was hanging onto a branch that broke, and Mirabel-

Mirabel had probably drowned with her. But there they were, looking as confused as she felt.

Where was here, anyways? What she originally thought to be a wall seemed like it was actually a hole taken out of a wall, brightly painted and full of strange lights.

"Oh, gracias los dios, are all of you are okay?"

"Si, mama," Julieta looked around. "Where are we?"

"And what happened to us?" Pepa asked. "I don't know what happened, but there was a lot of water, and there was a storm I couldn't control, and oh dear, I'm getting a cloud-"

"Flash flood," Camilo cut in. "Apparently, even though it was sunny in the Encanto, it was raining hard everywhere else and the river overflowed." He looked up grimly. "Almost the entire village was swept away. Including us."

Mirabel looked shocked. "But why are we here now? And how do you know that?"

Camilo pointed down. "It says so on the description."

Description? Everybody looked, and both Agustin and Bruno fell out trying to see. Bruno quickly scrambled to his feet, and started reading.

"The village of Encanto lasted barely over fifty-one years before, for some unknown reason, a large flash flood occurred on April 25th, 1952. A flash flood is when there is excess rainfall over a short period of time, and the river in the village overflowed...Madre de dios, why didn't I see the flood earlier?"

"It doesn't matter. What matters now is that we are here now, we are all together, and, for some reason, the candle is back-" Suddenly, Alma looked at her hands. They were empty, why were they empty, they held the candle just a few moments ago-

Suddenly, they heard snickering from above. All twelve of them looked up just in time to see a monkey holding the candle. The monkey looked down at them, snickered, and ran off, turning invisible-invisible!

AN INVISIBLE MONKEY THIEF!

"CATCH THAT MONKEY!!!!!"

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THIS IS SI COOL WHATTTTTT

I thought everyone forgot about this au but it's nice to see its getting attention 😭😭 ALSO. HOW THEY EVEN ENDED UP THERE. HOW THEY DIED. THAT'S SO SAD :((((

But. I do like it so far. Very cool. I do find it funny how confused the were tho 😭 like imaginw think you dead and gone and then you wake up in a museum, made of stone no less. And then a monkey jacks your candle. LIKE LET THEM BREATHE THEY JUST GOT HERE 💀

#submission #my asks are open #my asks #encanto #encanto au #au #night at the museum #natm au

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bombasticprimekitty · 1 year ago

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Side Story: The Plight Of A Living Home

The family was down. That much Casita could tell.

Not that it can blame them.

For the most part, they were handling it relatively fine. But only when they were together. The very moment they were left alone and that they thought no one was watching was when they fell apart. Their grief let out to the world and yet still cages to the confine of its halls. Their tears soaking its floor, their fingernails scratching its walls, even upturning their furniture when things get too much to bear.

Everyone is trying to be strong for one another. But what Casita knows about humans is that they can only take so much before they break. And when they break they can’t be fixed like it can. They don’t have tiles that can be replaced, or a paint that can be renewed, or a window sill to be changed. Humans are fragile creatures, they need each other to survive.

But it can’t really help them all that much, even when Lord Arceus gave life to it and tasked it to protect and care for them.

It was just that Casita doesn't understand how. It was after all, just a house. An inanimate object.

Alma never gives it a chance to help deal with her grief. Even when she was still grieving for Pedro and taking care of the three infants. The old woman never falters in her decision. Remaining stubborn till this day to carry her baggage alone. Casita had all but given up on trying to comfort her and just help her with whatever task that needed it’s help.

It doesn’t know where to begin to comfort Julieta, whose eyes are hollow and dead, and body seemingly decaying due to the lack of effort on her part to take care of herself, making her not too dissimilar to that of a corpse. Though, thankfully Agustine was there to help her through her hardship, Casita can only hope he takes care of himself as well.

With Pepa, Casita would let her storm through its halls, just letting her grief and rage out, letting the woman destroy any tiles or things with her lightning and wind if it meant she didn’t bottle her emotion up. So she wouldn’t crumble under the guilt and sorrow that her sister fell victim to.

Everything in its halls are replaceable, the family isn’t.

Felix in its opinion was handling his sorrow the ‘best’. He was trying to be productive, constantly going on patrol with the other men. Checking every corner of the Encanto to make sure it is safe, and generally helping strengthen the Encanto’s defenses. But on the other hand, he was spending less and less time in the house, in turn making Pepa worse as there was no one there to help calm her down.

And then there were the kids. Casita didn’t know where to begin with them all. Camilo and Mirabel were easier to handle, while they were sad, a playful distraction was enough to get their minds off of their sadness. Although this method only works with Camilo most of the time while Mirabel only reacts a couple of times, she was unfortunately too wrapped up in her own head to respond to it most of the time.

Luisa had been crying nonstop and had barricaded herself in her room, everyone had tried to get in, to try and comfort her but she had wanted to be alone, even placing a large rock in front of the door so that even Casita couldn't get in. But it had a lot of tricks up its walls, so it had been putting a glass of water next to the crying girl to hydrate herself. She’ll come out on her own when she’s ready, she always does.

And finally Dolores… Out of everyone in the house, she would be the one who takes it the hardest. She was very close to the two of them after all. Isabela her self-proclaimed twin and rival, Bruno her favorite person. And she was dealing with her sadness in the worst way possible. Her mood was all over the place, sometimes she was sad, sometimes she went timid, and sometimes she wasn’t responsive at all. But most of the time she was angry.

Very, very angry.

Many times now, Dolores had snapped at everybody. It doesn’t matter what they did, it just seemed to set her off. She had even yelled at one point, and she never yells as it hurts her ears. Even her partners weren’t safe from her wrath. Though thankfully none of the other kids was ever under her crossfire. But sooner or later, she’ll or someone else will get hurt.

Casita doesn’t know where all the rage comes from. Though it had been alive for years, human emotions and motives still escape it. Finding itself confused whenever they do something that doesn’t align with what they normally do. Like Dolores right now.

So Casita is oblivious to how to help her.

Sometimes, it wishes that Lord Arceus gave it some semblance of a guide to help it traverse through this confusing time. It wishes to do more for the family from just the day to day mundane task. Casita had grown to genuinely love this family, beyond the artificial bonds that Lord Arceus had included in its creation. It doesn’t want to see them sad like this, destroying themselves like this. All of them are falling apart, and through all the chaotic mess of emotions they were feeding it, it feels itself growing weaker and weaker by the day. Experiencing so many emotions through their connections at the same time was… Tiring.

But it was just a house that was born from Lord Arceus' will. It was not designed to handle such heavy emotion. But that begs the question…

What can it do?

#Encanto #encanto au #Lost Constellation Au #Side Story #set before the main story #casita #mirabel madrigal #julieta madrigal #agustin madrigal #pepa madrigal #felix madrigal #dolores madrigal #camilo madrigal #abuela alma madrigal #luisa madrigal #pokemon au

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basket-of-loquats · 2 years ago

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I posted 376 times in 2022

That's 133 more posts than 2021!

275 posts created (73%)

101 posts reblogged (27%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@/basket-of-loquats

@/romantaeicc

@/i-like-eyes

@/yashi-ghost

@/sad-mexican-boy

I tagged 342 of my posts in 2022

Only 9% of my posts had no tags

#loquat asks - 112 posts

#bts - 88 posts

#*loqdraws - 85 posts

#bangtan boys - 71 posts

#self rb - 63 posts

#bts art - 58 posts

#bts fanart - 51 posts

#bangtan seonyondan - 47 posts

#kpop - 45 posts

#kpop fanart - 34 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#jungkook is the boyfriend. your parents stick your nose up at his tattoos and piercings but you think hes the coolest thing youve ever seen

My Top Posts in 2022:

STILL, NOT ENOUGH.

[Image description: a digital painting of Jung Hoseok. The palette is blue and indigo. Hoseok stands in the center, looking deadened. He wears a white outfit from the ‘MORE’ music video. He's surrounded by abstract darkness with only a single window of light behind him. Shards of glass point at him. The word "More" is repeatedly written all around him. End ID.]

649 notes - Posted July 1, 2022

“Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.”

[Image description: Digital art of Goncharov and Andrey looking at each other, both seen in profile. Goncharov holds a cigarette in his hand, while Andrey has one in his mouth. Goncharov is primarily blue, Andrey is primarily red, and the background is yellow. End ID.]

736 notes - Posted November 23, 2022

sons of gondor

[Image ID: A digital drawing of side by side portraits of Boromir and Faramir from Lord of the Rings. Both are visible from the waist up. On the left is Boromir, a middle-aged white man with red hair down to his shoulders and a scruffy facial hair. He is drawn in profile facing left, wearing a blue overcoat with silver clasps worn over embroidered red short sleeves. Below the red sleeves he wears chain mail. A brown strap is across his chest, attached to his shield on his back. Behind him is a golden frame. On the right is Faramir, a slightly younger white man with light red-brown hair that stops above his shoulders and a short beard and mustache of matching color. He is drawn in 3/4 view facing the right. He wears a brown top with the Tree of Gondor embroidered in silver. Beneath his top is a loose gray shirt. He also wears a pale green cloak with the hood down and a brown leather belt. Behind him is a pale green frame. The background is a warm yellowish paper tone. End ID.]

1,063 notes - Posted January 15, 2022

I am lost very deep in the x files sauce

[Image ID: a digital drawing of Scully and Mulder from The X-Files. Mulder holds Scully with his arms wrapped around her as he smiles gently. Scully hugs him back, arms disappearing under his jacket, and her eyes are closed. End ID.]

1,087 notes - Posted August 24, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

“luisa or isabela” bro DOLORES

[Image ID: A digital drawing of Dolores Madrigal from Encanto. She can be seen from the chest up. She wears her canon movie outfit, a loosely ruffled white top with yellow trim and patterns adorning it, and a large red bow tied around her head. She also wears her red choker with a golden and red charm, and golden heart earrings. She leans slightly to the right. She is grinning slightly, and her eyebrows are quirked into a playful expression. The background is off white with a yellow border framing the drawing. End ID.]

1,891 notes - Posted January 9, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#Cant believe gonch made the list Ew #When ur a BTS artist but only one of your bts pieces made it 😔

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pomegranate-cuties · 3 months ago

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Appendix II-E: The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute Letters, Part 1 (pp. 586-608)

This is a minor point, but I'd noticed "matter of fact" -> "matter a fact" from Johnny before, but it seems like Pelafina does it too. Interested to see what other writing quirks he picks up from her.

Some quick math I've been putting off. Johnny was ten when his father died in July 1981. Pelafina sends her son a birthday letter dated June 21, 1983. The Introduction by Johnny is dated October 31, 1998. So, we know that Johnny is a Gemini sun, was born June 21, 1971, and is around 27 years old.

Pelafina is a bit of a poet, and grammatical errors aside, it's clear Johnny has some poetry in him. His foster parents' assessment of him as "exceedingly bright" and "a very strong reader," his mother's gifts of books and a dictionary, and her encouragement all paint a picture of a precocious child.

Pelafina is also just a joy to read. "[L]ove inhabits more than just the heart and mind. If need be it can take shelter in a big toe," as a reference to her stay at The Whalestoe? The wordplay? Unparalleled. "Felicities my felix feline boy" just rolls off the tongue so well, beyond simple alliteration. Also unsure how "felix" is used here, unless Johnny's original name was Felix. The only other thing I can find is felix culpa, which would be... interesting, if that is indeed how she intended to use it.

I like how Pelafina's mental state can be inferred from not only the content and effusiveness of her letters, but also her parenthetical asides on the Director: "(he is a good man)" in the January 20th letter to "(he is a decent man)" in the April 17th letter. Also the implication that she has written many more letters to him, beyond the ones we've had access to, but was advised to not mail out.

Also far be it that I disparage the bond between mother and son, but is anyone else also a little creeped out by how affectionate Pelafina is in her letters? It seems to exceed mere doting to me; she puts him on a pedestal, and the liberal use of mythic and celestial imagery (See Note 4), coupled with her dream, seems to confirm this: > From November 7, 1982: "You have so much inside you that you have yet to discover. As long as you keep striving, inspecting, and exploring, you will come into possession of untold glory." > From June 21, 1983: "Born on the day most suffused with sun, you have always been and always will be my light." > Almost the entirety of August 19, 1983: "I dreamt about you last night. You had long hands which glistened in the starlight. There was no moon, yet your arms and legs seemed made of water... you eyes... were infused with strange magic... Gods assembled around you and paid their respects and doted on you" > From December 24, 1983: "My little Viking warrior! Let the monsters all tremble! Let tomorrow's Mead Halls rejoice! Their Viking soon will come. Micel biþ se Meotudes egsa, for þon hi seo molde oncyrreð!" > From June 26, 1984: "my fine young boy, unleashing arrows like some Apollo, scrambling across cliffs like the agile and ever wily Odysseus... Hermes once again pattering on terra!" > From October 4, 1985: "My darling J, I remain your only Mary."

bambino dell'oro (Italian, transl. "golden boy"), the second half of which sounds similar to (Ha!) the call-and-response of echoes in Chapter 5: "Chi dara fine al gran dolore? L'ore." (Italian, transl. "Who will put an end to this great sadness? The hours passing.")

I like that you can see the early warning signs of her psychosis through her paranoia in her dream where Johnny is worshipped by gods.

Micel biþ se Meotudes egsa, for þon hi seo molde oncyrreð! (Old English, transl. "Great is the fear of the Lord, before which the world stands still!") is from "The Seafarer." Thank you Reddit!

Ok, so I wasn't incorrect about his abusive foster father. Apparently, it was bad enough to where Johnny was hospitalized, but even then, he was made to stay with this family. Possibly because he had already bounced through so many others? Not sure how the US foster care system works.

The Whalestoe Letters have been giving big Gothic vibes. Madwoman locked in "the attic" (Peep the full name of these letters), and now Pelafina's brief escape from the institute in thunder and lightning, seeking revenge on her son's (And by extension, her) tormentors? It's a total vibe.

Fuit Ilium... Ira furor brevis est. (Latin, transl. "Troy is no more... Anger is a brief madness.") The former is from Virgil's Aeneid, the latter is from Horace's Epistles.

Pelafina's clearly well-read, but her casual inclusion of French, Italian, Old English, and Latin makes me wonder what her background is.

Hmm! Hmmm! Another "pieces" -> "pisces," which first came up in the variations on Echo's myth. Near identical wording too: "tore me to pisces." Bold emphasis mine.

Hige sceal þē heardra, heorte þē cēnre, mōd sceal þē māre, þē ūre mægen lytlað. (Old English, transl. "Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, spirit the greater as our strength lessens") is from "The Battle of Maldon."

Pelafina's warning against the "inadequate amazements of liquor and pills" is saddening considering what we know about Johnny now.

Honi soit qui mal y pense (French, transl. "Shame be whoever thinks ill of it.")

Ohhh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Johnny's foster father calls him "beast." Pelafina refers to him as "feline" (Recall my thoughts on Johnny's description of the beast in Chapter 4, Note 2). Mental illness, specifically hallucinations and paranoia, run on his mother's side. What are hallucinations if not perception distorted? Like echoes. Oh my God, the typos. ... I see why the footnote was at the end of Chapter 5 now. It's too soon to say anything for certain, but I'm glad I decided to take notes, since I would've forgotten these observations otherwise.

Non sum qualis eran. (Latin, "I am not what I used to be.")

Did Johnny really go to boarding school after Alaska, or did he just tell Pelafina that so as to not worry her? Four years have passed since his father's passing.

Also does anyone else have a horizontal line at the bottom of the May 11, 1985 letter?

Si nunca tes fueras. (Spanish, "If you never were.") Thank you MZD Forums, which contains translations for all of Pelafina's foreign insertions.

The New Director is the same Director as before :(

"Your mother loves you like the old seafarers loves the stars." Oh my heart.

Rompido mi muñeca (Spanish, transl. "Broken my doll")

I wonder if Pelafina realizes the inconsistencies between Johnny's letters. In the May 11th letter, she's under the impression that he's summering in Alaska before attending boarding school, but the September 14th letter indicates he was working on an Alaskan fishing boat, and is now working at a cannery... but still thinks he'll be going to school?

Also, are we just going to gloss over the fact that the fishing boat sank and he had to leave a crewmate behind, possibly fighting them for the life raft?

House of Leaves Reading Log

You know what they say, third time's the charm! And finally, I have my own copy of the book (A nice hardcover with library binding, I might add), so I can take my sweet time.

I believe the farthest I'd ever traversed is about 100 pages into the book, including footnotes, appendix entries, etc. so I anticipate the first bit of re-reading to be a familiar slog, before I start remembering the little bits and pieces I'd forgotten.

This reading log is to keep my notes, exclamations, and observations in order, and a nice way to keep myself on track without talking off the ear of anyone unfortunate enough to make eye contact with me. If it's been a few days (or weeks, or months) without an update, I probably fell off again or found a job or something, but rest assured, I will finish this book at some point, and when I start up again, the ol' reblog chain will still be here.

#house of leaves #mental health #mythology and folklore #ancient greece #the seafarer #the aeneid #epistles #pomegranate-cuties

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in-tua-deep · 5 years ago

Note

Hufflepuff Five! He has traits that would help him fit in any of the houses, but underneath, everything he does is motivated by his love for his siblings so Hufflepuff would be the best fit. Also, just the idea of the house full of sweethearts dealing with Five the undercover sweetheart is funny and adorable. In this au would Delores be a fellow Hufflepuff that Five bonds with or would she be a ghost or a painting?

Hufflepuff Five is a valid child, bless. Me? Purposefully sorting the Hargreeves so that there’s two to every house except Five who is alone? It’s probably about as likely as you think actually but in hindsight it’s a cool move

Five isn’t sure what to make of Hufflepuff at first, admittedly. Someone told Five that Hufflepuff is for “everyone else” and is a catch all house for rejects from the others, so he’s not exactly thrilled about it. Especially because he’d rather be in a house with his siblings

(Ravenclaw definitely because he loves Ben and Vanya best, but he’d grudgingly accept Slytherin - maybe not Gryffindor though because quite frankly he doesn’t want to get between Luther and Diego butting heads ugh)

Five is sorted last of the siblings because his name is listed as ‘5 Hargreeves’ and they weren’t sure whether they should put numbers before or after letters and they ended up putting it after so Five got sorted last.

But his new housemates are surprisingly fierce. They tell him that they’re not the catch all house, and even if they were all that means is that one of their ideals is acceptance and no one gets left behind.

(Five refused to leave any of his siblings behind, not even Luther who he thinks is an idiot every day ending in a y. So he understand that ideal on a personal level.)

They tell him that Hufflepuff means loyalty and hard work. It means forming ranks and protecting one another, of standing firm and tall and strong. Bending, but never breaking. Hufflepuffs are unassuming, everyone discounts them, but it was a Hufflepuff who was chosen to represent the entire school during the triwizard tournaments.

(They whisper Cedric’s name with reverence, with mourning, but also with pride. He wasn’t the Chosen One, he was just an ordinary boy and he was still chosen and performed admirably, with noble intentions and kindness. He was a Hufflepuff.)

So the older years look at the boy with a number for a name who is wary of everyone and protective of his siblings and they soften. Strangely enough, the child abuse cases usually end up in Slytherin with far more frequency that then other houses (there is something to be said, for cunning and resourcefulness sitting in the hearts of eleven-year-olds) but Hufflepuff has had their share.

So when they catch Five sneaking out in the middle of the night, the prefects show him the secret passageways and the quickest routes to the other common rooms and look the other way. When they notice Five stealing away food in napkins in the great hall, they take all the little firsties on a field trip to the kitchens and show them how to tickle the pear.

(When Five approaches a seventh year with hands clenched into firsts and asks how to cast silencing charms around his bed, the seventh year takes him to the library and presses books about wards into his hands. If the pages with wards to chase away bad dream is bookmarked well, it came like that.)

(Five spends the next week sneaking into the Slytherin dorms and carving runes into Klaus’s bedposts. He only does his own as an afterthought, honest.)

Five pretends he doesn’t really care for his housemates, except they keep sneaking under his skin. The magicborn ones have nightmares, too. They lived through a war. Some of them tell Five they’re orphans, but he learns later that their parents are in wizarding prison for following a genocidal maniac. Five ends up carving good dream runes on almost every bed in the dorm.

They teach him how to play exploding snap and gobstones. They beg him for help in charms and ask him to read over their transfiguration essays. They show him all the good passageways. They drag him along behind them when a handful of them want to go investigate the Forbidden Forest because Five is the best at defense spells! Please! They’d be so much safer with Five there.

Abby keeps snacks in her pockets and is always offering some to Five, who takes them because his ability to jump tends to jumpstart his metabolism and takes a lot of energy. James helps Five with wand movements and sends for books from his family’s personal library when Five can’t find what he needs.

Jasmine is a fifth year who ruffles his hair and picks him up and spins him around, but she always telegraphs her intentions and gives him the option to back up and duck out. Hamish is a seventh year who fusses over all the first years and walks them through difficult homework assignments in his spare time. Rowan teaches him all the fun jinxes which aren’t actually in the curriculum but they insist are extremely important for every little witch and wizard to learn.

No one minds when Five ditches them at meals and muscles his way into the Slytherin table to pile more food on Klaus’s plate and trade barbs with the Slytherins (who are all secretly fond of the Very Slytherin Hufflepuff). No one minds when Five steals Ben and Vanya from the Ravenclaw table and drags them to eat with him so they can regale him with the riddles they’ve answered and slip Five books they they stole from their common room

(not that Five couldn’t get into the Ravenclaw common room. he can and will get into every house common room. It drives all the other house prefects and house pride kids insane. No one can figure out how he keeps popping up and bypassing the security. The other Hargreeves children roll their eyes but keep their lips zipped as well.

The other houses have approached Hufflepuff to beg them to put a leash on Five, but they close ranks and smile and tell them that if they can’t keep a first year from their common rooms, then it’s really their problem, isn’t it?)

sometimes Five mentions something offhand that he thought was normal but then the others just look like someone hit the ‘pause’ button for a few seconds as they process before giving Five a look which screams on god i will escort you to a psychologist myself

One of the seventh year prefects corners Five early on and asks him if he’s safe at home and basically offers to smuggle him out of Hogwarts come break if necessary. Five, who assumed it was common knowledge, is just kind of like “oh we lived with McGonagall for most of the summer. I dunno where we’re going next summer, but we’re staying at Hogwarts for winter break and stuff, so. yeah.”

and that prefect breathes a sigh of relief and passes on to the other prefects (in Hufflepuff and out of it) that the Hargreeves kids are Not In Custody Of Their Shitty Abusive Father

James: wow muggles sure have to get creative to abuse their kids huh

Five: i think dad was just. a special case. most parents can’t just toss their kids off a roof and expect no repercussions.

Abby: oh hey you could bond with Mr. Longbottom - the guy who’s training under Professor Sprout and is always around the greenhouse? I think his family tossed him out a window.

honestly the ONLY reason Five and the squad were probably taken away wasn’t even the Rampant Abuse because let’s be real Neville and Harry were never looked into. The reason was that Reginald was planning to ‘expose’ the magical community through the kids ‘powers’ and they couldn’t have that, especially not by a muggle goodness gracious.

(Honestly, there’s a high likelihood that Reginald/Pogo/even Grace if that’s possible were probably obliviated - with contact with government people in the know to fix records etc. - and the knowledge of the magical community and the kids was straight up erased. After all, if Reginald was planning to expose ‘magic’ then he can’t be trusted with any knowledge even related to it)

as for Dolores

Five is thirteen and he learns about the chamber of secrets and all that and everyone is like “yeah only a parselmouth can get in there” and Five is like “haha you thought” because he can jump regardless of apparation wards so he trots on over to the girls bathroom, inspects the sink for a while, and then jumps

which was probably a mistake because he jumps into the empty space underneath yeah but it’s a dramatic slide down fuCK and he just pinwheels down and ends up in the chamber of secrets. Nice.

and so he does what everyone in the books didn’t seem to do - he explores. And look, Slytherin clearly spent a good amount of time down there, he probably left a bunch of stuff. It’s probably booby trapped, but Five has a passion for wards after the bad dream ones and he’s a malicious little shit so he also loves booby traps so.

Slytherin would probably roll in his grave to know that a thirteen-year-old goes down to the Chamber of Secrets to systematically dismantle all the fun curses and traps just to pass the time.

And within one of the booby trapped rooms is a painting, and within this painting is a teenage girl with close cropped hair and a raised eyebrow. She’s older than Five (for now) and she asks him what he’s doing here.

“Exploring,” Five says, with a shrug, rifling through some of the pieces of parchment still on the desk. “What about you?”

“What do you mean?” The girl asks, looking confused.

“What are you doing down here?” Five clarifies, poking at a suspicious looking jar with his wand.

“I’m a painting.” The girl says, crossing her arms, “Someone put me down here.”

“Who?”

“None of your business!”

Five shrugs, “Okay. Do you have a name, then?”

“Dolores.” Dolores says, not offering a last name. “You?”

“Five.” He shrugs through her incredulous look, “Yeah, like the number. Do you know what’s in this jar?”

It turns out she does. In fact, she knows an awful lot about pretty much everything down in the chamber, though she refuses to give him hints when it comes to what curses and wards and traps there are. She laughs at him when his attempts blow up in his face and ruins his umpteenth uniform for the year

(“Honestly Mr. Hargreeves.” Professor McGonagall says severely when he shows up with burned holes in his robes and a mildly sheepish expression. “This is the fourth time this week.”

“I can’t seem to get a hang of this spell.” Five says, mild as milk even though they’re both fully aware that he’s lying.

McGonagall just fixes his robes and tells him to ask a seventh year to help or something with his ‘spell difficulty’ and Five thanks her brightly and flounces off to go directly back to the chamber and do some more wardbreaking while Dolores critiques everything he does)

“Did you know Salazar Slytherin?” Five asks her, frowning down at the book on ancient runes.

Dolores sniffs, “I don’t want to talk about Sally. He wasn’t even that impressive.”

Five pauses in his writing for a second, “I am calling him Sally every day for the rest of my life and especially when I sit at the Slytherin table holy fuck.”

“He sucked at arithmancy.” Dolores offers with a shrug, “And his charm work was mediocre.”

“And yours was better?” Five asks with a raised eyebrow.

“Please,” Dolores scoffs, “I could cast circles around him.”

“Teach me?” Five asks, because he’s never been one to discard any leg up or resource.

“I’m just a painting.” Dolores says, frowning. “I can’t actually cast spells.”

“You don’t have to. Just explain them.”

“Oh,” Dolores bites her lip, “Oh. I don’t think anyone’s really cared about what paintings know before.”

“That’s fine. I’ll be the first.”

“Just for that I’m teaching you the shitty ones first.” Dolores tells him.

Five doesn’t tell anyone about her. He doesn’t tell anyone at all about the chamber, though he initially wanted to go down there to set up a spot for him and his siblings to gather. But it ends up being a place he can just go and escape to be by himself - because not many people know how to get down there.

“You know I’m not real.” Dolores tells him one day, when he’s trying to tackle the curses on one of the hidden rooms.

Five shrugs, “You seem pretty real to me.”

“I’m just a painting. An imprint of someone who died years and years ago tied to paint. I’m - ”

“Two dimensional?” Five asks with a grin, and she swears at him colorfully for his cheek. “Look, Dolores. I never knew whatever version of you walked among us mere mortals - though I’m sure she was appropriately terrifying - so I don’t care about that person. I know you, as you are. I don’t care if you aren’t ‘real’ or whatever. Does it matter? I like talking to you.”

Dolores is silent for a long while after that. Five turns his attention to his notes while she thinks - sometimes she needs a moment to process.

“Hey Five?” She asks, only continuing when she hears him hum. “Can you figure out how to destroy a magical painting?”

He looks up at her, a question in his eyes.

“I spent - I was down here for a really long time, Five. Alone. You’re going to leave Hogwarts one day, and you’re going to get all old and gross and wrinkly and then you’re going to die. But I won’t, because I’m not alive. I just want - ” Dolores trails off, looking frustrated. “I just want to know if it’s something even possible.”

Five considers this, and then he shrugs. “Yeah, okay.”

“Just like that?” Dolores sounds shocked, but Five just nods.

“Yeah. It’s your immortal not-life, I figure you should get a say in it, right?”

Dolores is quiet after that, but when Five goes to leave, he hears he whisper a quiet thank you. Five only offers her a smile as he mentally carves out time to raid the library and maybe the Ravenclaw common room for information.

I think Five keeps her company until she’s ready to let go (unlike the actual show where he lets her go). I dunno it’s just a really sad and poignant side story in Five’s life about letting go and mortality and agency and choice and what it means to be a person and how to live and how to die

Five and Dolores’s relationship is really complicated in the show so I wanted it to ALSO be really complicated in the wizarding world oof so yeah there you have it in this particular hp au Dolores is a painting in the Chamber of Secrets of a teenage girl who is just a little too smart and just a little too sentient and just a little too lonely

#funkierdionysus #hp au #tua/hp crossover #five hargreeves #hufflepuff!five #five is assimilated into the great badger fold #five makes hufflepuff friends!!#he sneaks around and is dramatic and makes mischief!#five probably finds so many secret passageways he isn't supposed to know about #i just feel like the castle would like five as a whole tbh #purposefully lead him towards shit #dolores is a painting and it's very sad #klaus still has nightmares but five tries to help #five is boss at ancient runes and arithmancy #i feel like wards would be a specialty because it's kind of like maths?#wards are sort of equations shush

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