#eclipse shadow on the paper more clearly

[smileinyourface73]

[yeyinde]

bos taurus | dogmeat series pt., i

mafia butcher Simon Riley x Reader

You don't question your brother when he sends you to drop off packages to his friends, but when the enforcer for the 141 shows up to teach the small-time dealer selling on their turf a lesson, you realize there are different ways to pay someone back with pounds of flesh.

(OR: your brother owes them, and Ghost is content to let you settle the debt. after all, if you wanted freedom, then you shouldn't have caught the eye of the butcher of the 141, should you?)

18+ SMUT. noncon. objectification. marking. kidnapping. threats of violence. unsafe sex (manipulation into unprotected sex). rough sex. size difference. breathplay. 10k of foreplay. light pussy slapping. overstimulation. mafia au.

SERIES MASTERLIST | AO3

The goal is to be as quick and discreet as possible. 

In and out, he says, looping the baggie around his index finger. Inside, a snowfall of white powder settles at the bottom. 

Meth this time. Oxytocin the last. 

He ties it tight before giving the bag a quick shake, breaking up the clumps. Satisfied with the way it looks, he turns toward you. Levels you with a sombre look, the picture of a concerned older brother. 

You almost fall for it. Believe it. But the clouded, flat edge to his gaze undercuts his worry for what it really is. A farce. 

“And if it seems sketchy—”

—run.

But your knees are locked, soles glued to the pavement. You can't move even though everything is screaming at you to flee. 

The problem, maybe, is that there's nowhere to go. Escape cut off, filled by a body, a man—even though the idea, the mere notion, of thinking this behemoth as human, flesh and bone; blood and tissue, is laughable when he's so clearly a beast. A monster. 

He fills up your field of vision. Your line of sight was eclipsed by the thickness of his waist, the broad expanse of his shoulders. Thighs that are as wide as the trunk of a tree. Arms boxing you in. A prison of obsidian. A black shadow. 

In the panic that surfaces, surging to the top like an oil spill, you catch a pocket where he doesn't root. A small alcove between the bend of his elbow and the slot of his knee perched against the wall. Enough room for you to—

“Wouldn't do tha’ if I were you.” 

His voice seems to shake the earth, rolling out of his broad chest like the low, brassy roar of a lion; a rumbling thunderclap. 

You feel sick—

The leather covering his hand is cold when it closes around your arm, grip tight. Bruising. Trapping you with just the slightest effort. 

“Go’ a problem, you and I,” he starts, and it's almost conversational. Might be, perhaps, if the clean, sleek outline of his gun inside the unclasped holster around his ungodly thick waist wasn't threatening you more than the grip he has on your arm. “How do you reckon we can fix it?”

You have a meagre twenty dollars in your pocket. Less money for them to take if things go awry. If they decide that the little girl standing in for her older brother was an easier target to rob—money and drugs—than to settle things fairly. Money, goods. Hand over hand. 

Just like the movies, he'd said. 

Just like the movies, you think when he leans in closer, bulk swallowing you whole. 

There is a pockmark in the corner of his crooked, misshapen nose and the crease of his eye. A scar, maybe. It's circular—almost perfectly so; a silver-pink moon on the angular ridge of his nose. Uneven, craggy, like crumpled printer paper. 

It looks almost like—

You think of the mark on your arm. Soot-stained. The smell of burning hair, tissue. The searing pain. 

“I–I can pay you—” you stammer out, tearing your gaze away from the ugly mark on his skin. A cigarette burn. It makes you shudder. 

He cocks his head slowly like a big, dumb dog, but there's something eerie in the ink spill of his eyes. The soft matte of a saltwater crocodile staring at you from beneath the murk. Calculative. Hungry. 

“Pay me?” He echoes slowly, dragging the words out mockingly. “D’you know ‘ow much trouble your brother is in? For sellin’ ‘ere of all places?” 

“No,” you swallow. It feels like your heart is stuck inside your throat. “I–I just—”

“Run ‘is errands,” he finishes cruelly but you can't deny it. “Ain't you a good little sister? Almost makes me wish I ‘ad somethin’ as sweet as you f’myself growin’ up.”

You don't answer. He doesn't seem to be looking for one, really; just empty words to fill space. To echo in your head, barbed wire around any sense of comfort you might have felt. Punishing cruelty. 

He has the upper hand, it says. He's the one who makes derisive jokes while you tremble in his grasp, and try to make yourself as small, as unassuming, as possible. Hiding from the predator in plain sight. Hoping he passes you over for something bigger, more calorie-dense; the effort to catch and consume you expends more energy than the return. Hardly worth it in the long run. The comfort of a risk-reward ratio, right?

But he's opportunistic, it seems. A snacking scavenger. 

Could eat, it says, like a basking tiger keeping a mouse trapped between his paws, letting it squirm and squeak as he slowly licks his lips. Not enough to fill its belly but enough to satisfy the gluttonous urge a predator has to eat. Sharpening its teeth on flimsy bones. Child’s play. 

It's a fitting image, especially with the way he arches over you, looms; fingers looped around the thick of your arm, holding firm, but not—

Not as tight as he could. 

It's a loose-fisted grasp. Lazy, almost. He knows you won't run—or, at the very least, knows you won't get far. 

You peel your gaze away from his, dropping it to the curve of his shoulders—the width of them is just as dizzying as his height; broad, muscular. Pulling it further down the length of his arm, covered in a thick jacket. Black corduroy. Ashes stain the cuffs. A bulky watch juts out from his wrist. Gold. Glinting even in the grey-blue gloom of an overcast evenfall. 

His muscles tense. Hand tightening around your arm, fingers digging hard. Rubbing muscle painfully against bone. 

A warning, maybe. Stop looking—

But something else catches your eye. Blood red. The colour of meat. A fresh kill. 

The back of his hand has a blooming rose. Petals spread out, unfurled. In the middle, a milky skull sits. Stencilled in boxy, yellow letters is ONE-FOUR-ONE—

You know what it means even as your mind whirs, gears turning, turning; plummeting into a tailspin, making excuses as it falls, dragging your heart down alongside it. An area code. Some special date. An inside joke. 

But you've seen the marking around town before. Heard whispers about them from your brother, his friends. 141, they say, and then: mafia. 

The real deal, he said, puffing around a joint his friend rolled. It's too tight. He scoffs, and rips it out from between his lips. Shitty roll, man, make another one—

Mob. Mafia. Gangsters. It seemed so extreme, Hollywood. Fiction, fantasy, all rolled into one. Tony Soprano. Ralph Cifaretto. Michael and Vito Corleone. Tony Montana. Larger-than-life men created on paper. 

You think your brother thought so too. Child's play. Grown men selling weed to kids for two hundred an ounce. Buying themselves sleek, black cars—G Wagons, Escalades, Cullinans—on the Xanax they sell at clubs, parties. Cocaine. Heroin. 

Nothing to worry about. 

Then his friend went missing. 

Sent out on a routine delivery to drop off cocaine to well-dressed men in suits outside of a local butcher shop. A normal, nondescript Tuesday. 

But he wouldn't answer his phone. Texts were being delivered, read, but no chat bubble appeared. Nothing sent back. Calls went straight to voicemail. He wasn't at home. Wasn't at his mum's. No one saw him. Heard from him. 

Your brother didn't call the police. Didn't report him as missing. 

It's just not what they do, he said. You don't involve them. Ever. 

The most shocking part of it was that no one saw anything. He just vanished. Disappeared—stock an’ all, your brother angrily spits—without a trace, picked up off the streets. 

If it was the police, someone would have said something by now. They're hardly discreet. And a rival—

Well.

The biggest problem was that your brother was blindsided by his own small-time success. An accumulation of little wins bolstered his confidence. Overfed his ego. This fallout was tunnel vision. A refusal to see the bigger picture. 

Or the storm clouds looming on the horizon. 

You'd heard of the 141 in passing. Little quips, anecdotes from the passel of friends that congregated around your brother—often getting high on the couch and watching old cartoons; sharing a joint back and forth between gossip. 

Through rheumy eyes, they'd talk about the real gangsters in town—much to the irritation of your brother—and swap tales of run-ins and feats they heard from a friend (of a friend, of a friend). Most of the guys were known already. Soap and Gaz are the biggest names that cropped up on the streets through reputation alone. Both fighters for a gym. MMA, mostly, but whispers of street fighting and extracurricular activities weren't uncommon. 

Liked the thrill of it, they said. But the worst was a man simply known as the Ghost. An enforcer for the 141—a fucking butcher, more like, Liam cut in, jaundiced eyes widening—the guy who took care of problems. 

“Can't be,” your brother scoffed, lifting off the couch to reach in his back pocket for his wallet. A small anthill of white powder poured into the glass table. “They don't get involved in our shit—”

And for the most part, you're sure that's true. Dealing to the same circle of people—outreach spread through word of mouth—seemed paltry in comparison to the scale of an operation that had a money laundering gym. But the problem was that your brother lacked common sense. His ego often got in the way of foresight. The shadow greed casts blocking out the bigger picture. 

Like—

Territory is territory—regardless of what's being pushed. 

You wish there was a modicum of surprise when his friend turned up. Barely recognizable. Sent right to the morgue as a John Doe. 

Most would see the marks on the man's skin—the distinct lack of blood—as an indicator to abandon ship, find the boss, beg for forgiveness, and maybe even try to strike up a deal. But—

That picture is hidden under his anger. Greed. Selfishness. 

He sends you instead. 

You're somethin’ they ain't expectin’, he said. Won't mess with you.

Right. 

He catches the realisation dripping down your brow—beads of sweat gathering at your hairline; anxiety, fear, churning your stomach—and hums. Cocks his head to the side. 

“Was expectin’ ‘im t’show up, though—” he murmurs, hand tightening around your arm. The pressure, the sting, is eclipsed by the gnawing sense of dread biting viciously into you. “Told ‘im if I caught ‘im sellin’ on our streets again, there'd be trouble. Thought we ‘ad an agreement after ‘is friend. But—”

His eyes cut to yours. It feels like a knife to your guts, sinking into soft tissue. A pain you can't breathe around. 

Won't mess with you, you think, and then viciously—sadly—he knew. Was warned by them and still sent you out. Let you take his place for whatever comeuppance they decided he deserved. 

It should shock you. You almost wish it did. Desperately clinging to the threads of surprise that slip through your oily fingers, grasping onto the nothing but empty air. Numbed to the resignation that trickles in. 

Of course he would leave you here to save himself. Letting you fend off whatever they threw at you alone. Leaving you trapped between a brick wall and a wall of a man. 

The excuses are there. They pool on the tip of your tongue—it isn't me, don't do this, it's my (stupid, selfish) brother you want, not me—but you swallow them down and try not to wince at how quickly they dissipate when you do. It doesn't matter in the end because whatever you have to say won't negate the drugs in your backpack. The empty house you'll lead them to—your brother probably squirrelled away somewhere until this blows over. Half-hopeful you'd call him and say everything is fine, the deal went smoothly. You're on your way back. Or that the debt he racked up with them is settled by you. 

It's half-hearted when it slips out again, caught between resignation and dread. A brittle whisper. A prayer—

“I can pay you. Whatever he owes, I can—”

He's already shaking his head. 

“Too late for that, birdie. ‘sides, I don't want your money.”

He moves back, rocking on his heels to put a small measure of distance between your bodies. In that scant space, he drops his gaze, sweeping it over you. His eyes darken.

When he pivots them down, catching yours, you can't stop the shiver that crawls up your spine. 

That calculative gleam is back. 

“But I think we can work something else out.”

Something else turns out to be ushering you into the backseat of an old Ford pickup. 

The door whines when he opens it. Rust flaking off, falling to the ground by your feet. Your mind reels. Spins comparisons to falling snow, dried blood. 

He hauls you in with his hand wrapped around the nape of your neck, thick thigh sliding between your own to boost you up. The protest—a mindless, reactionary squeal at being manhandled—only makes him chuff. A brief flex of his fingers around the skin of your neck is the only warning he gives before it pulls away, and wraps tight around your waist. His thigh flexes, muscle drawing taut as he shifts his foot up to the running board, lifting your feet off the ground and seating you fully on his leg like a child.

(In his hands, you feel like one, too.)

The motion makes you slip, back glueing along his broad chest with a shallow thump. You feel the rumble of his laugh trembling up your spine before you hear it. 

“Careful,” he drawls, oiled with amusement. “Might slip.”

Anything you could say in response is choked back when he bumps the corded steel of his thigh into the seam of your legs, pushing tight to your clothed cunt. His intention is unmistakable this time. Unignorable. And with the rasp of filtered, balmy air against your crown; the pull of a groan when you rock back into his groin, the noise still slicked with mirth, you feel a knot of dread spool tight in your belly. 

Something else is dragged back to the forefront, coiling like wisps of smoke around you. 

And you knew. It's shocking, you think, but not necessarily a surprise. To call it a dichotomy would be lying to yourself, and so, you settle against it. This notion that what he wants—wanted—is flesh. Not money. Not retribution. 

Not to talk things out like you'd hoped he’d try (grabbing onto the idealistic thread, holding it tight to your chest); bringing you in and forcing you to convince your—stupid selfish greedy—older brother that quitting was the only option. Dangling you—baby sister—over his head in an appeal to his emotions. Familial bonds. Love. 

That thread is cut. Snipped. 

Probably severed when they first came to him with an offer. No strikes against him and yet—

The idea of using you to make him bend was expunged from the drawing board. It's not even a plan b, or c, or z. 

And—

You knew. Have known. Maybe that's why it's so easy to swallow around the panic when it lances through your chest, climbs up your throat. You can think and feel and breathe around this dagger in your back like it was there the whole time and you've only just noticed it now. 

Nothing but a small, whispered oh in the roiling polyphony of your emotions. 

It sits there as he manuevers you into the passenger seat of his truck, your head spinning around the indescribable sensation of being woefully cognisant despite the paralysing fugue pressing against the bubble of stark awareness that keeps it at bay. It manifests itself as a numbed sort of shock. Or more accurately—

Indifference. 

Defeat. 

His hand brushes your cheek, the snag of dry leather against humid skin tugs uncomfortably at your flesh, stinging as they dance down to your jaw, the delicate line of your vulnerable throat, skimming over the curve of your breast—

And it's too much. Too present. Too real. 

Autopilot. Dissociation. Derealisation. All of these concepts slip past the bubble of hypervigilance, skidding the surface like a pebble thrown over a lake. Out of reach as he unashamedly gropes you, barely making an effort to mask his actions as just buckling you in. 

You pretend, though. Curl your fists around the sides of the seat, fingers digging into the worn foam. Head lulling back on the headrest. Eyes fixed out the window as he walked around the front, head and shoulders still visible in the windshield despite the height of the truck. It makes your heart leap, stuttering in your chest as the absurdity of his size is brought back into focus. Too big, you think. Grossly so. 

There's a moment when you think about running. Toying with the idea of sliding your hand over the lock, pulling the door open when he's too busy on his side to notice. It'll give you an advantage—a head start. Enough time to slink through the dense forest of concrete buildings lining the industrial zone, and into somewhere safe. Help, a behemoth is chasing me—

But the door clicks. Swings open with a squeal of rusted metal just as your fingers twitch toward the handle. Hope evaporates with each lurch of the cab as he climbs inside, metal creaking under his weight when he settles in the seat. 

From the corner of your eye, you can see his head tip. Chin angling toward you. Staring. Assessing. 

When he speaks, you feel the words like cold fingers dancing maliciously down your spine. 

“‘pected you t’run.” 

It's said idly enough. Nonchalant. Tone even, if a little cruel, and you wonder if this is some test. One that you passed—and failed—in equal measure. 

He doesn't look away. It takes less effort than you wish it did to peel your lips apart, to breathe in the stale, mulch scent of the cab—something overgrown, rotting, and damp—and mumble:

Where would I go?

It seems to amuse him. He hums around a mouthful of mockery before turning away, pawing at the ignition. Gloved hand curling over the wheel. 

“Smart girl.”

You don't feel very smart. In fact, you feel very small. Stupid. Maybe you should have taken a stab at it—running. Tried, at least, to save your own life before the jaws of the beast closed over you like an iron bear trap around your ankle. Fought like hell. Clawed and kicked and screamed. 

When most kids read the back of a cereal box, you learned about secondary locations. You know better than this. 

But the truck sputters to life in a belly-deep rumble, hacking up soot into the air as he pulls the lever into DRIVE. The fight inside of you—however ephemeral it might have been—dies inside the smoke spilling out of his exhaust. Gone so quickly that you begin to wonder if it was even there at all—

Must be, you think, eyes listing outward. Keen. Mapping the twists and turns—a futile effort in the end: he doesn't bother hiding where he's taking you, and you've been down these old, grim streets more times than you can count. 

It doesn't surprise you much when he turns down the street leading to the butcher shop. An old relic that still carries the marks of a booming farming town before it fell victim to industrialisation. Concrete skyscrapers in place of lush cornfields. Warehouses over old barns, ranches. Cattle, meat, produce—it all used to be a mainstay here but now hides under layers of steel. 

The dark windows of the small shop gleam with hazy smears of neon blue, red, when you pull up, catching on the array of rowdy bars across the street. All clubs that belong to the 141. A playground of drugs, sex. More money than you'd ever see in your lifetime. 

It's an uncanny juxtaposition to the quiet, assuming street right across from it. Barber, butcher, accountant firm, antique store. All dark inside and bathed in the smeared stream of glimmering neon as lights flash in the fading glow of twilight. 

He pulls up to the curb in front of the shop. A bold move if the streets weren't so empty. Lifeless. The clubs won't be open for four more hours. Everything else follows the same nine to five as the rest of the world. The shops closed an hour ago, and everyone in town seems to know not to linger here after dark. 

The air seems to stagnate in your lungs when he cuts the ignition. Slips the key into his pocket. 

“Don't get any funny ideas in tha' pretty little ‘ead o’yours.” 

“Funny ideas,” you echo, toneless. Flat. It rolls out with your exhale. Words that might have been smarter to swallow down. “Like following a stranger to a butcher shop?” 

“Lippy little thing, ain't you?” He scoffs. The truck creaks when he shifts. “Ain't go’ no one t’blame but yourself. Told you what would ‘appen if you kept sellin’ in our territory. You should ‘ave known better.”

“That was my brother.” The words slip out before you can stop them. “Not me—”

“‘ow am I suppose t’know that? You were sellin’ where I told ‘im not to—” he has the gall to shrug. Spit these careless words at you like it wasn't life or death. “That's all there is to it, birdie.”

“That's not fair—”

The truck groans under his weight, shaking from side to side as he leans over to push his door open before turning back to you, rolling his eyes. 

“Life ain't very fair, is it?” 

The acerbic words are flicked out from between his teeth; an apathetic, droning curl clinging to each syllable. He doesn't care. Won't. What happens to you next is your choice, and yours alone. 

And he's just doing his job—

“When I get out of ‘ere, you ain't gonna do anythin’ funny—”  

His hand lashes out. Gloved fingers close over the thick of your throat in a blink. Fear lags by a beat, giving him enough time to sink his fingers over your neck, and when it catches up—heart rabbiting in your chest, thudding in your ears; roaring as your pulse thunders beneath the press of his thumb—he’s already got you in his hold. The width forces your chin to lift, stretching up to accommodate the curl of his hand around you. 

Trapped like a rabbit. Cattle to the slaughter. 

He tilts his head down, keeping his eyes on yours as he forces your crown into the headrest, chin lifted up. It's uncomfortable. The curve of your neck cuts off your airways. Constricts your breathing to shallow gasps. An ache grows in your nape. 

The swell of panic, fear, in your eyes makes him hum. But there's nothing echoing back. An absence of light in the deep, placid pits. It looks like still water. A stagnant lake. 

It's unnerving how dispassionately expressive his eyes are. Wild, wild. Vats of ink. Pools of obsidian. Ringed in red-lined ivory. Long, ashen lashes dusting over the smears of charcoal under his eyes. Sleepless nights, maybe. Fatigue. The corners are tattooed with coal, leaving behind a thumbprint in the crease. 

But empty. Barren. No light.

Like black holes. Eating everything around it. Devouring all that gets too close, but giving nothing in return except a bottomless crater in the bruised-plum nebulous of space around it. 

You're not sure you like it. You can't look away. 

But in staring back so hard (getting pulled in deeper and deeper), you catch the twitch in his left eye. A shallow spasm. It throws off the symmetry when he blinks, one eye a sliver of a second behind. Desynchronized in a way that seems so—

Unlike him. 

Disjointed. 

You blink in response. Perfectly synchronous. 

His lid twitches again. Just once. Brief. Pale, pink eyelids drop, unveiling a nebula of indigo veins on the smooth, thin surface as they roll down to half-mast over his eyes, now narrowed slightly in contemplation. Thought. 

Whatever is happening in his head can't be good. It causes a ripple over the lake. Little rings rebound outwards. 

He looks away first. A quick slide of his eyes to the corners, glancing out of the passenger side window. Whatever catches his attention is unknown to you. The anchor on his hand around your throat keeps you still. Immovable.

(Every instinct in your body compels you not to look away from him because nothing outside could ever be scarier, more dangerous, than him.)

A second later, he breathes in through his nose. The fabric of his mask is pulled into his nostrils from the force, forming little black holes under the crooked arch. 

You hadn't really given much thought to his appearance outside of big, massive. But there's a strange asymmetry to the slopes and valleys beneath the balaclava. Trying to map his face, fill in the blanks with just black cloth and vague, lopsided outlines, is impossible. There are too many gaps. Too many missing pieces. You can only wonder, then, what he looks like under it. 

Monstrous, you hope. 

It's just a coincidence that he looks at you the moment the thought passes, but you flinch like a naughty child getting caught doing something you shouldn't when the heavy, dour weight of his impenetrable stare is levelled at you once more. Your heart stutters. It's loud in your ears. In the truck. 

You wonder if he can hear it just as loudly as you do—

Another blink, and his gaze flickers down, settling on the gap between your lips, watching the little tremble they make with each shallow hiccup of air you greedily suck in. His head tilts to the side, eyes never leaving your mouth even as he leans down, masked lips brushing over the beading sweat gathering on your hairline. 

It's a brief touch. A taste. You tremble when he pulls back, fingers tightening around your flesh. 

His eyes are lavascapes.  

“Are you, birdie?” 

You almost forget what he's asking. The conversation hidden between the scant beats it took for him to measure your worth with the blistering intensity of his stare, and the tumult of your feelings still looping around each other in your belly. Knotting up tight into a ball. There's fear, of course there is. 

But the rest—

You'd rather not think about. 

The grip on your throat eases just enough for you to shake your head no to whatever he is asking. Doing anything funny, you think, scrambling at the tangle of memories flipping past, trying to connect the pieces to a puzzle you've already forgotten. 

It must be the right response. Or maybe it's another question like before, a test where there’s no right answer. 

Run, stay. 

Smart and stupid. 

But it seems to appease him—marginally. His eyes crease. Tightening. His other hand folds over your throat, sliding until his palms kiss the sides of your neck in a near-perfect symmetry. 

Something frissons across the blank, placid lake of his expression. Another ripple. A shudder. He leans in for a moment, nose touching the apple of your cheek, and when he breathes in, it’s sharp, reedy. Cold air ghosts over your skin. Long, pale lashes flutter when you swallow. 

He hums quietly under his breath before peeling back. The flatness to his gaze is back; a cold, impenetrable distance widening like a chasm as he uncoils around you. You almost fall for this—this indifference. An icy nonchalance. But you've been eating the minuscule quirks of him just as ravenously as he's been devouring yours. 

There is something there. A fracture, maybe. A splinter. 

But what leaks through from the other side isn't anything close to warmth. It's—

Hunger. 

The shift in your throat draws his molten gaze to your neck, still wrapped tight in his firm grip. Your reflection blooms in the vat of black; eyes wide, all white. Pupils narrowed to a pinprick. Mouth slack, corners tugging downward from the pressure of his hand. The tilt of your head. His thumbs press under your chin, pushing you back further until it feels like your neck might break—

He stops. Shifts. You puff out a shallow breath. 

What looks back at you is unremarkable in the murk. A sliver of fear. A slip of unease.

Eye of the beholder, you think when his breath chuffs out shallowly through the mask. When that hunger is ground down to a raw, esoteric fissure hairlining the black of his eyes. The widening expanse of his pupil. 

You wonder if it's your fear that itches under his skin, dredging up something predatory in his hindbrain. The urge to chase. To bite. 

But the nearly indiscernible flicker of his gaze has you brushing that idea aside when it snags on the expanse of his hand coiled around your throat. Easily swallowing it whole with just his palms. 

You're not a small thing, but the indomitable size of him makes you feel insignificant. 

You think he feels it, too. 

His fingers flex over your nape, stretching. Pulling. It pushes the flat of his palm into your throat, ridges crushed against your trachea. But you can still breathe. It's shallow. Hoarse. A touch painful. Dizzying in a way that makes you feel like you're on a rollercoaster. A teacup ride that just spins and spins and spins—

The gap closes. A sliver of air snakes down your throat. Muscles flexing, shifting. Struggling to swallow around the pinch of his hand. A harrowing task when you feel the gloved fingers link to the first, then the second knuckle, tying together in a too-tight, impossible, noose around your neck. Thumbs overlap. Fingers slide into place. It forms a chain of his hands with no gaps between them. Not a single sliver of skin shows from under the leather of his gloves. 

He makes a sound when they meet—a nasal groan in the back of his throat, mouth clenched shut so the air has no choice but to tear through his nose. It's raw. Fractured. The devastating moan of a tiger nuzzling at its meal. 

Your vision blurs. A black fog presses into the edges, seeping over the arch of your peripherals. Dripping down slowly over the hazy smear of the man. The way the ochre sun peeks over the angular roof of the accountant's office illuminates his back and casts swaths of shadows over his front. Drenching him in murk. 

Despite the flickering darkness shuttering over your sight, you don't blink. Even as the tears prickle at your eyes, they stay open. Fixed on him. Black holes, you think, watching as the fever marbling those obsidian pools recedes. Cools. 

He makes that noise again. Softer this time. A purr from deep in his chest. A breath. And then he peels back. His hands go slack. His shoulders slumping back into the lax, easy spread from before as you gasp hard, nearly choking on the flood of air that roars down your throat. 

Your cheeks feel hot for a moment, and then cold. Icy. You don't have to touch them to know that you're crying. That the deluge clinging to your lashline spilt over, dripping messily to the collar of your shirt. 

The placid lake is back. In the stillness, you heave. Mouth hanging open, chin quivering. His thumb lifts, slides over the curve of your chin. You don't feel it. Numbed, maybe, by the brief kiss of hypoxia. But you see it. Watch as he slides it up to the jut of your lower lip, the black, angular tip tickling over your skin. He follows the seam between skin and lip, tracing it to the corner of your mouth. It's slick. Drool pools in the crease, dribbles over the top of his finger. His eyes drop when he mops it up, catching it on the pad. 

He makes another noise. An arid rasp bubbling between the soft tissue behind the roof of his mouth and the back of his tongue. It's ugly. The shiver you try to fight back slinks through. 

His hand peels away from your neck, movements lax. Slow. The unwinding gait of an idling tiger in no real rush, no hurry, because there's nothing in the frigid Arctic that can touch him. 

You watch him with flared eyes as he brings his thumb to his clothed mouth, and rubs your spit into the fabric of his mask. 

His eyes don't break away from yours once. 

Your spit doesn't stand out against the black of balaclava, but the idea of it burns through you. Throwing you headfirst into a dazed stupor. Dizzy. Confused. 

Satisfied with whatever it was supposed to mean, he clambers out of the truck before coming around to your side. Distantly, you're sure this is what he meant by funny ideas when he passes the headlight, head straight and eyes gliding around the empty street. An opening to run. You know where you are. It would be easy to flee. Hide in the construction zone just ahead, tucking yourself into the tightest corner you can find until help arrives. 

Help, though. 

Officer, please. I got caught selling meth in the mob's territory and now they're going to skin me alive. Please hurry—

Right. 

They'd rather help bury your body than get in the way of the mafia. Gangland violence isn't their concern unless it tumbles out into the street. Fat wallets keep even the most compassionate person quiet. Willing to turn a blind eye. 

You'd be thrown in a cell. Or dropped off at their doorstep. 

Either way—

You won't be coming back alive. 

There's nothing to steel, harden, when he pulls the door open, your nerves long since ground down to fine powder. Nothing to fight against, either. He hauls you out of the truck, hands firm on your skin. Bursting blood vessels easily between his fingers. Barely any effort at all to crack your bones. 

The moment in the car seems miles away when he pulls you in front of him, hand curling over your nape. Any flicker of humanity rendered out when he pinches you tight and shoves you forward. Dragging you back to the butcher shop by the scruff of your neck, leading you down a narrow set of stairs to the basement where pale white carcasses hang from hooks on the ceiling. He laughs when you tense. When your heels dig into the brown-stained linoleum. 

Ain't gonna hang you, he mocks, fingers dipping punishingly into the sides of your neck. “Not yet, anyway—”

It brings little comfort when he drags you to a room in the back, kicking open the door with the toe of his boot before pushing you inside with a nudge against your nape. 

It's dark. Walls covered in stains; mould, mildew. Something you hope is just rust. A single mattress is shoved into the corner; sheets stained with sweat and grime. Tinged a pale brown. Two pillows sit at the top, lopsided and matted with use. Threadbare. A twisted, black heap of fabric sits at the bottom. Wisps of cotton poke out from the cigarette burns. 

A pair of muddy, black boots sit against the wall at the end of the bed. A basket of clothes—jeans, black shirts, black sweaters—is piled on the wall across from the door. 

The room smells of stale sweat and old cigarettes. 

You don't want to be here. The thought is abrupt. Immediate. Unease prickles along your nape, warmed and damp under his gloved palm. Between the look of the room—the floors stained the same suspicious brown, the rumpled bed in a corner—and the smell, you know this is not a place you want to stay. To be trapped inside with a man cut from Everest; whose hands are more dangerous than the sharp end of a knife. 

He must feel the tension brimming beneath your skin; the spark of adrenaline surging through your veins. The clamp of his hand on your nape digs in tighter. Holding firm. 

A breath tumbles out, thickening with mockery. “Like I said,” he leans down, pressing the mountainous width of his chest into your spine. The accentuation in your size difference, how big he is in comparison to you, makes you feel like prey. Small. Brittle, thin. He eats you whole. Spares nothing for later. “I wouldn't do that if I were you.” 

Another nudge and you're pushed further into the room. He leans away, foot shoving back on the door until it snaps shut with a noise that cuts through the gossamer that spun around you, bifurcating reality from dream. The haze is wafted away, and all that remains is a barren room with a lumpy mattress, the smeared stain of rotten blood coagulating on the floor, and his body boxing you in. No escape. 

The rumble of his chest shakes loose the cobwebs spooling across your thoughts. A brush of humid air ghosts along the line of your jaw, dampening the skin below your ear as he leans in close, too close, and purrs: 

“Go on now. Strip for me.” 

Each scrap of clothing you slowly roll off of your body is exchanged for a slip of information about him—who he is (Simon Riley, the name rumbled through the split between his teeth; a low, brassy purr as his eyes gleam in the dark, drilling into the expanse of skin unveiled to him)—and what he wants—

Nothing, he tells you, lifting one massive shoulder up in a half-hearted shrug. Jus’ what's owed to me, pet. For stickin’ my neck out f’you. 

You don't think he did. Not really. But you're harshly reminded of the unsubtle threat. The gun balanced on his massive thigh. So wide, so big, it seems to make it look smaller in comparison. Tiny. A toy. 

Child's play. 

It's made worse, somehow, as he lounges. Sprawls out on the bed, legs spread, pulling taut on the jeans that stretch around the thickness of his upper thigh, bunching around his calves in a half-tuck inside his black boots. Arms flexing. Folded over his broad chest. He rolled the sleeves of his black shirt up to his elbow, showing off an impressive tapestry of harsh, faded black ink. Crisscrossing lines. All asymmetrical. Guns, barbed wire. A bullet with a wide, toothy grin—

All of it knits together; woven into a tangled mass of muscle. Of man, hidden under scar tissue. Rope burns on his wrists cut so deep that the skin is permanently dented in. More cigarette burns hidden inside the mess of ink. Jagged lines—from a knife, maybe; bullet wounds. 

His skin tells stories of a terrible life. Ink spills over the worst of them, but they're visible under the fading charcoal. A series of burns—acid, fire, chemical—and raw, torn skin. He looks like he's been mauled. Pressed into the cold metal of a wood chipper until chunks of flesh were taken out. But even with these deep gouges, craters of missing tissue, he's big. Bulky. Soft—like a tiger. Predatory muscle tucked away under a thick layer of fatty tissue. 

The pillowed pouch of his belly, the softness around his biceps—

It belies the danger underneath. The steel. 

But as scary as it is, it has nothing on his eyes. 

Glinting in the dim room. Dark pools of obsidian that follow each movement with an almost clinical keenness. Sharpened to a razor's edge. 

They might be pretty, you think, if they weren't so intense. So liquid. His eyes gleam like wet ink, languidly rolling along his lashline as you clumsily shed your jacket, your blouse. Shoes, socks. Pants. Until you're in nothing but your panties.

Swallowing around the influx of panic that flutters like little birds beating their wings against the soft walls of your throat, you slip your fingers into the hem, now or never, and—

And you hesitate. 

There's a difference between undressing willingly and doing so to save your life. It should spurn you on—survive, survive, survive—but you freeze at the apex. The summit is within reach. 

You know what happens when you climb it. Cross over the invisible threshold. 

What you've been trying to ignore this whole time, ever since he shoved you into the room with a huff, taking his perch on the edge of the bed, legs spread wide, but in such a terrifying state of vulnerability, nearly nude, you can't any longer. Can't avert your gaze to the stained linoleum in a thinly veiled effort to keep from glancing at the thickening bulge lying prone against his thigh. 

His—

Well. 

You knew what he wanted when he grabbed your face in his hand, squeezing your cheeks until your lips pursed, puckered for him to run his finger along the inseam. Prying your teeth apart. Rubbing his finger over your tongue, eyes dark—full; black holes pulling, tugging you in, dragging you closer to the event horizon framed in a ring of arsenic—and locked on to the sight of his gloved knuckle disappearing into your mouth. Wanting. Hungry. 

You knew. And now—

Committing to it is legions above what you’re mentally prepared for. Nausea brims, churns your stomach. Unease curdling inside of you like rotten milk. 

You don’t want this. But you don’t have a choice, do you?

That notion, the idea, prickles along your nape, raising the fine, peach-fuzz there until it stands on end. 

You freeze. Movements still as every muscle in your body tenses. Coils. You can't do it. Can't—

A huff is dragged out of his chest as he sits up, knocking the gun carelessly to the mattress. His eyes daggering, sharpening into needlepoints, as he stares at you. 

“Gotta do everything f’myself, do I?” 

A grunt and he’s up. Pulling himself to his feet with nothing but the flex of his abdominal muscles. 

There's no reprieve. Not a moment graced to gather your bearings before he crosses the distance between you. Once a comfort, a chasm, now conquered in a single stride.  

The tips of his gloves are cold when they brush over your skin, sliding down the slope of your waist until they meet the hem of your panties. The last piece of modesty you have—

But he doesn't wait.

You're aware that this isn't a non-consensual thriller where the lead looms over the hapless love interest, eyes blazing with passion and need. That each interaction is drenched in a thick, palpable tension tethering the two together. Urges coalescing. Threads pulling taut, magnetic, dragging them closer and closer to the brink until they tumble over. 

This is reality. And he doesn't stare into your eyes with an all-consuming desire as he slowly removes that last scrap of fabric keeping him from devouring you. No. 

His skin-warmed fingers push under the elastic band with a rough shove, curling into the fabric until it tightens across your pelvis and thighs, and then he huffs, annoyed, and pulls. Pulls—

Until something gives. 

The lace yields to the tension in his flexing bicep, and scrapes over your skin as it rips apart in his hand, threads snapping. Popping. 

It hurts. Stings. You hiss, but the noise is ignored when he peels the ruined scrap of fabric from your legs, shoving it into his back pocket with a grunt of satisfaction. He looks back to you, eyes rippling like the dark, ink-black surface of a lake during nightfall, and coos, mocking and mean—

“Not s’hard, was it?”

He leans closer to you, a hand skimming up your spine before his fingers curl around your nape, keeping you still for just a breath before he pulls you into him with too much force. Your hands lift, palms slapping against his thick stomach when the movement nearly topples you over and threatens to break your nose on his chest.

“Makin’ me do all the work when y’supposed t’be payin’ me back? Ain't very nice o’you, is it?”

He touches you like he's taking stock of your worth. Grabbing a heavy, rough palmful of your beast in his hand, squeezing. Testing the weight, the softness, how supple you were between his fingers like he might with a piece of fruit. Meat. Prodding into the flesh, feeling the ripeness there. Gauging whether or not it was a piece he wanted to keep. 

It's demeaning. Humiliating. He treats you like cattle; presses into the elasticity of your muscle, examines every inch of your skin for blemishes. Scouring for imperfections. There's no softness in the way he grabs handfuls of your body—squeezing your breasts, pushing them together, rolling your nipples between his thumb and forefinger; pinching your belly, your sides, your waist; curling his fingers under your thigh, lifting it until it hitches over his waist, cunt exposed and pressed tight to the bulge trapped in his jeans. Your ass is handled rougher than the rest. Each cheek sitting in a hand, squeezed and punched and spread embarrassingly wide. 

He ruts into you as he does it. Pushes the thick, fat length of him into your belly, rolling his hips against you with a heavy, ragged puff of air. 

He feels big. 

Everywhere, of course—it’s not so much his height, but the absurd width of him that really digs into your hindbrain, crossing all those intricate wires until they're tangled up, knotted together. Seeing his thigh, the same scale as a tree truck, slotting between yours—a mere branch by comparison—makes your belly flop. Turn over itself.

The muddled wires spark. Heat pools between your hips.

He could crush your head between them like a bear pushing its paw down on a watermelon. 

It's fear and heat. 

The two work in tandem, forming a seamless cohesion, as they flit down your spine, brimming up the urge to sink to your knees, the need to roll over and show your belly. A paradoxical desire to both run and be chased. 

You're not sure if he's tendering your meat to eat later or if this is the usual type of foreplay he engages in, but once satisfied you're softened up enough for him, he shoves his fingers between your thighs with an abrasive hum that reverberates through his belly, tickling your palms. 

“Tired o’waitin’,” is what he says when your head jerks up, eyes widening in shock. Terror. Horror. “Don't look so surprised,” he huffs, dryly. Voice a rough scrap over your cheek. “What'd y’think was gonna ‘appen?”

“Wait—” but he doesn't. 

His fingers twist, pushing through your folds to graze your clit. It isn't gentle. It's sudden, quick. You gasp more from shock than pleasure; the rough slide of leather feels strange on your flesh, and your head is too muddled to separate fear from bliss.  

Despite that, your body heats. Reacts to his touch. Your lower lip wobbles. You bite back another sound that crawls up your throat when his knuckle catches on your clit again, the pressure just shy of too much. 

The burn, the fever, melts the unease. Shallow gasps spill out. Your cunt clenches, fluttering around nothing—throbbing, growing sticky, slick; achy and empty—when he starts to glide his digit between your folds. Little sawing motions drag each groove and stitch of his gloves over your pebbled clit, each thrust of his hand between your thighs making heat pool between your hips. It's done so clinically, so detached, like his hand rubbing over your leaking pussy was nothing to him. An action to get done, a task to complete. 

It's the shame of that, the embarrassment, that makes you want to weep. Your fingers dig into his chest, nails pulling uncomfortably on the pleated bumps of his jacket as you grip the fabric right between your fists, clinging to him like a newborn fawn—all wet-nosed, teary-eyed; knobbly knees threatening to buck. 

“S–stop—” you mewl when the monotonous rhythm melts into something harder, more intense. Heart thudding in your chest, heat burning you up as he turns his hand, palm up, between your sticky, shaking thighs. He rubs his hand back and forth, curling his middle finger up when he passes your hole, tip pushing against your leaking rim. 

The friction aches. The stretch stings. The leather feels strange, foreign when it pries your folds apart and dips inside of you. 

You don't like it. It's too much—

He makes a sound—a tut—when you pull away from him, standing on the tips of your toes until the blunt curve of his finger slides out of you. He sucks his teeth in a mockery of disappointment before digging his fingers, hard, into the sides of your neck. A warning. You whine. Whimper—

It goes unheeded. And when you press your thighs tight together, shivering at the slip-slide of your skin rubbing against each other, he growls. The noise is inhuman. Animalistic. 

Your act of deviance comes with a swift, bruising punishment. 

His fingers tighten on your neck once again. A warning squeeze as he reaches down with his other hand, grabbing your hip. It keeps you still, immobile, as he bullies his boot between your feet, kicking your legs apart. You're not expecting it. When you stumble, he huffs in amusement. Can't hold yourself up? Want me that bad, huh? Needy fuckin' thing, ain't you?

You don't get a chance to respond. His palm splays wide over your hip, leather creaking as he flexes, stretching his fingers out, tapping some soundless beat out against your skin. Touching you like he's owed the privilege. The right. And in many ways—

Go’ a problem, you an’ I

—he does. 

Brute strength, and an unmatched, almost laughable, dearth in your physicality ensures that he has the upper hand—even without the gun he left on the mattress; darker and flat, a full matte compared to what you were expecting. 

(They're always so shiny in movies, aren't they?)

The threat of it—dull as it might be—roots you to the spot as he slides his hand down, thumb brushing over your belly button, dipping in; pressing until your stomach starts to ache—

It peels away when the whine wells up, sloping down, down. Teases your mound with the tips of his fingers, gentle swipes along the sensitive seam of your belly and pelvis, the sensation is an odd tickle that pulls at your navel, pulses at the apex of your thighs. You mewl—a slow, soft thing that barely makes it out from between your teeth—and he lets his hand drop. Palm flat against the soft flesh of your mons, fingers reaching, spreading, until they curl over your folds. Index and ring finger tucked tight into the hollow bend of your pelvis and thigh. The tip of his middle rubs gentle strokes over the skin above your clit. It's a whisper of pleasure. The idea of a touch. 

Mindless, your hips flit, following his hand—

“Needy.” 

It cows you. Douses you in icy shame. There's barely any mockery in his even, observant tone, but you feel it unfurl over your shoulders all the same. 

He doesn't give you a moment to think, to let the ripples of humiliation take over, forcing you to pull away, hide. His fingers trail over your hood, the pebble of your clit. The sensation, the cool undertone in the leather of his glove, is unlike anything you'd felt before. The thick stitches in the fabric catch on your flesh, nerve endings flaring in pleasure. Heat blooms in your belly. 

It feels good. 

You gasp, head tipping back. His hand winds around your waist when your knees buckle, catching you with a rasping huff—

“Feelin’ good, ain't you?” He pulls you tight to his chest, finger rubbing circles around your throbbing clit. Your cunt clenches, empty, and you whine, needing something more. Something to fill the ache inside of you—

His finger slips. Slides easily between your folds, parting your lips around the thick of him until he reaches your drenched hole. The sounds it makes when he taps his finger against your fluttering core makes your toes curl. Has heat blistering over your cheeks, down the slope of your neck. 

It makes him groan. The low growl makes you throb, clenching in needy little pulls, pulses, as his finger dips into the slick dripping out of you. 

“Suckin’ me in,” he grunts, and pushes his finger inside, thrusting up to the last knuckle. Palm tapping against your folds as his index and ring finger close to give him more room to sink deeper into you. The messy, slick squelch is loud, rolling over the mewling gasps that tumble from your lips. 

Heat floods your belly at the belly-deep groans he lets out when you squeeze around him. 

“Stranglin’ my fuckin’ finger, birdie—” 

He leans down, knocking his forehead against the side of your face. It's more intimate than you were expecting. Jarring. The proximity plays a twisted game inside your head—the urge to run, to roll over coalescing into a paralyzing tailspin. Rooting you to the ground when the warm, damp knit of his mask grazes your cheek. 

The intimacy of his head on yours is eclipsed when you can feel the shape of his mouth through the fabric. 

It's softer than you expected. A plush, fleshy give when he presses his lips against your skin. And—

A gap.

On the side of his mouth, there's a gouge. A pockmark. You feel the gap, the absence, of his flesh when he rolls it over your cheekbone. You try to read the asymmetry of his face—mapping all of these misshapen parts; his mauled lips, the crooked nose that digs into your skin and leaves behind a tacky smear of condescension when he breathes out through his nostrils in a heavy puff of air—and convince yourself that you're doing it so you can bring these patchwork pieces to the police later. 

Survival, you think, your head tilting back as he noses down your neck, tickling along your skin. 

(And when your cunt flutters around the rough, thick drag of his finger petting along your walls, you add: a bodily reaction. That's all it is.)

He takes another lungful of your scent before he rocks back on his heels, pulling away from you. Straightening up. Looming above you once more. 

“Now—”

He pulls his finger out of you slowly and you try not to whimper at the empty feeling that brims up. The way your hips rock toward him, seeking and eager. Wanting.

Needy, just like he said. 

Just a bodily reaction—

He holds his hand up to the dim light flickering over his head, fingers spreading apart as he takes in the glossy shine of his middle finger. 

The gleam of it makes your ears feel hot. Shame pools in your belly as he makes another noise—a groan, deep and low, in the back of his throat. Eyes darkening as his pupils bloom, eclipsing his irises in an endless pool of black. They flicker toward you, listing half-mast in a way to leonine, so predatory, that it shudders through your bones. Run, run—

His hand flexes around your waist when you twitch. A warning. A threat. You tremble when he leans in, masked lips brushing over your cheek once more. Breath ghosting through the fabric, tickling the inside of your ear. 

He smells of war. Of fire and brimstone. Napalm and nitroglycerine. You want to close your eyes, look away, but you can't. His proximity alone roots you to the spot. Turns you into a prey animal, frozen on instinct alone as he prowls around, creeping closer. Maw stretching wide, drooling dripping off razor-sharp canines—

“Let's see if y’worth all the trouble.” 

—and he bites.

Knocks his palm into your sternum, roughly shoving you down on the mattress.

His hands fall to the button of his jeans. “Ready?” He asks, but doesn't seem to care about your answer. Opts, instead, to fall to his knee beside you. It pulls on his zipper, tugs it all the way down with a sharp, metallic sound that cuts through the stagnant air as each ring of teeth is pried apart. 

You can't help it. You look. Dragged there by something primal, magnetic—the morbid curiosity to see the monster for yourself as it tries to take a bite. 

And almost immediately, you wish you hadn't. 

The spread of pale skin, dark curls jutting out from the split of his jeans, makes everything feel more real, and moving fast. Whiplash quick. Happening in a blink:

The shift of fabric as he pulls the mask up over his lips, letting rest on the crooked bridge of his nose. A flash of his mouth, mangled. Mauled. Full of ugly, pale pink scars. A gap where tissue once knit his upper lip together. The bite of crooked teeth as he brings the sticky, wet tip of his glove to his mouth, sinking in. Pulling. Tugging. The roll of skin—a rose, a gun, a skull—all encased in barbed wire; thick rivers of blue-green veins. 

Another pull and it's free. Dangling between his teeth for a moment as he reaches up and shoves the jacket off his shoulders. Rolling and thick. Wide. A broad chest. Soft belly. There's an inch of flesh around the expanse of him—biceps, thighs, calves, chest, stomach, shoulders—but it's a buffer for the corded, streamlined muscle beneath. A layer of fatty tissue. 

Like a tiger, hiding its dizzying musculature beneath a thick, loose pelt. 

When he moves, it flexes. His shoulders roll; muscles bunching together, pulling taut under soft skin. The jacket slides off. Falls to the ground behind the mattress. Forgotten, discarded. The glove is next to go. Dropping from between his teeth, landing just beside your ankle with a muted thud. 

He follows after it. Ink spilling over his lashline as his eyes drop, staring at the roll of his skin tucked on the outside of your thigh. Trailing up to your knee. Your hip. The split of your cunt beneath your other leg; knee tucked to your chest. 

A flash of something, a flicker, is the only warning you get before the back of his hand is nudging the glove off of your skin, replacing it with the rough, calloused grip of his palm. 

You jerk at his touch, flinching back—

He's intimidating above you like this. Leaning back on his haunches but still as tall as you are standing up. The sheer absurdity of his height—his width—is dizzying. Gives you vertigo when you look up. 

His throat shifts when you move. A swallow. Coarse stubble grows down the column of his neck, dusting over his lower jaw, chin. The rest is swallowed by the balaclava bunched around his crooked nose. 

He's not—

He's not handsome. 

A smattering of crisscrossing scars, burns, skin pocked and gouged out in deep pockets along his flesh—the slide of a knife carving away at him, you think; digging down to his marrow—all take away from any sense of modern attractiveness you might feel for him with his broad, jagged nose and full lips. 

But there's something rugged about him. Untamed. Wild. Appealing in a dangerous way. 

You don't know if you would have let this happen under different circumstances. If this minacious beauty of his would have worked on you enough to want it outside of this awful, almost unfathomable trade. 

He's too big. Wouldn't even fit inside of your house—

The graze of his thumb on your angle knocks the thought loose, and you're dragged back to the heat of his hand. Rough and coarse; palms slightly damp from the glove. It tugs on your flesh as he draws it up, a rubbery sort of pain as it catches on the soft, dry skin of your ankle. Your shin. 

He follows behind a second later, pulling himself into the mattress with a huff, knees shuffling forward as he crawls over you. The jostling rocks your body. Makes your breasts shake as he lumbers on the bed, hand still sliding up, up, until his fingers curl over the bend of your knee. 

The bed dips under his weight. Your body sagging, rolling into the divot beneath his knees. Tucked under him. Loomed over. He stares down at you through the cutout of his mask, eyes liquid in the gloam. Pools of melting, dripping obsidian. Black holes. Event horizon—

You look away before it drags you in. Submissive. Softened under the harsh burn of his flat, wide stare. He chuffs when your nose brushes over the thin skin of his wrist, mouth sliding over the thick, pulsing vein stretching down from his inner arm and curling into the bend of his hand. Your lips purse, and he makes that noise again. 

Quietly amused, and—

He shuffles forward until the backs of your thighs are pulled over his, spread out on his lap. Bare. Open to him. 

And he looks. 

And looks. 

Hungry, you think. Quietly amused and hungry—

The notion is wrenched out of your head when he shifts his weight. Watches the folds of your pussy open for him as he pulls your knees wider apart, head dropping between his massive shoulders, gaze drilling into the split of your thighs. Gasping at the sting, the sudden stretch, does little to deter him from shoving your leg down until the outside of your knee touches the bed. Muscles straining. Pinching. It hurts; hipbones twinging in agony. 

But the embarrassment burning through you singes all the pain. 

You're spread open under him. Bare. Legs tangled around his waist, stretched wide around the width of him. Ankles knocking into the hard plains of his lower back each time he shifts. 

“Fuckin’ hell—” he grunts. Snarls. The word ripped up from the back of his throat, forced through the twisting channels of his nose. Nasal and ugly when it scrapes out between his teeth. “Gonna ruin this pretty pussy, birdie.”

It's a threat. A promise. You twist, mouthing your protests into the warm skin of his wrist. 

There's something about his voice—that airy, brassy tone—that strikes a chord deep inside you. Makes heat pool between your thighs, leaking out in a syrupy mess—

His hand peels away from your knee, sliding down your sticky, damp inner thigh until his knuckles graze the sensitive slip of skin sitting between your outer lip and hip. That ticklish, belly-fluttering sensation blooms in your groin as he rubs his scarred knuckles over the crease, catching the slick gathered there on his thick, meaty thumb. 

“Fuckin’ soaked,” he groans, shifting his fingers until they cover the whole of your cunt, cradling you in his hand. He holds you like that for a beat, eyes locked on the way you're swallowed up by the broad stretch of his palm. 

The rough drag of his skin over your folds feels good. An all-encompassing heat spreads over your tender flesh from the curve of your ass to the bump of your mons where his middle finger rests, almost touching the strip of skin between your loins and your belly. Held in his grasp. Cradled in his palm. 

Your thighs twitch. A shallow jerk as your knees try to bend over his hand, but you can't. With his thumb and pinkie tucking into each crease between your outer lip and leg, it keeps you from closing your legs. Hinged by the wide, flat cup of his palm. 

And it shouldn't bludgeon through you the way it does. All heat. All want. Need. A growing ache you can't think around. 

(bodily reaction, you think even as the image of his hand—big with thick fingers, scarred knuckles; streaks of faded, ashy ink etched into milky, veined skin—laying over your pussy, swallowing it whole, sears into your mind—)

“Can feel your little cunt,” he grunts, feeling the pulse, the little throbbing pulls of your muscles as they twitch at the sight. The feeling. Clenching down around nothing. “Greedy little thing, ain't you, birdie?”

Anger paints his words as he rasps them out. A teeth gnashing, jaw clenching frustration that needles into the scorn, the fury, forced out between the tight seam of his crooked teeth. 

You don't understand it. Can't, maybe. 

But it's tucked away as quickly as it appeared, shifting into an ugly, mocking derision. Dry. Acerbic. His teeth flash, lip pulling upward in a sneer—a snarl—before he hums, sliding his hand down. The drag of his damp, rough fingers over your swollen folds has your knees falling open wider around his thick thighs, baring yourself willingly to him. 

Want it bad, don't you? He mocks, and the sound of his voice alone has your pussy clenching tight, belly fluttering around the abrasive scrape of his tone. Brassy and full. Gritty. You whine, hips inching up—

His hand peels off of your slit. The rush of cold air drags another whimper out of you, hips pushing up to chase the heady, molten feeling of his skin on yours. And he's amused by it—a laugh echoes out, crackling in the hollow of his throat at your desperation—but you're too achy, too hot, to feel the simmer of humiliation nipping the apples of your cheeks. 

He's not even making a real effort to pleasure you, to make you feel good, and yet—

Your hips twitch toward him in needy, mewling cants; please sits on the tip of your tongue, cradled between your teeth. Slips out on a shaky, breathless gasp when he meets you on the next buck of your hips, palm slapping over your wet slit. 

The crack echoes through the room. Rough, dry skin on soaked flesh. 

And it shocks you more than it hurts. The sting is there, of course, but it's just an afterthought to astonishment. An eye-widening disbelief masking the way your cunt smarts, throbbing from the slap. Nerves muffled behind the burn in your eyes, the searing heat pooling in your sinuses. 

Wrenched open, unblinking as you stare up at him, your eyes begin to sting, to water. You blink, and feel something hot trickle down your cheek. A tear. His eyes snap to it. Pupils narrowing to a pinprick as he watches it slide down your face, little droplets clinging to your jaw. 

“Poor baby,” he mocks, tilting his head as he tracks the teardrop. “Better behave.” 

Behave. Like he's admonishing a child and not an adult. 

It morphs; rots. Becomes yet another thing you shouldn't feel feverish over. The slick, sticky feeling grows between your thighs as your cunt flutters at the humiliation of it all. 

And deeper—maybe—the bastardized sense of care—

(Punishment is affection in its own, special (awful) way and you've been aching for something just like it, haven't you—)

It's pushed down. Swallowed. And you know in the back of your head that if you keep eating these feelings, you're going to be sick. But you can't stop. Barely breathe around the idea of them sometimes—

“Tha’s’it,” he coos like he knows. Sees them bright and burning behind your irises. Little flickers of need, a smouldering want that you'll never grasp at yourself. 

So he gives it to you. 

The rough slide of his hand, all scarred and dry and calloused, scrapes over your slit once more. A full, flat stroke upward until your clit bumps into the ridge of his palm. Then down, down—

His fingers spread. Ring and index prying your folds apart as he pushes up once more, opening your seam to slip his middle finger through the slick, sticky mess that drips out of your burning cunt. 

“Gonna be good f’me?” 

The slide of his fingers drags the tip up to the bump of your clit. You stare down at it, fixed on the jut of his ink-black knuckles threading through your folds. The crease of his nail as he slips his fingers up higher, pad pushing over your pebbled clit. They're dirty. Grey-black under his nails. Congealed with dirt. Blood, maybe. 

Your stomach churns even as your hips lift. Eager, searching. Hating yourself each second of it. It's gross. Disgusting. 

You want his dirty, thick fingers inside of you—

“When I ask a question—” the tip circles over your clit. A shallow roll that pools heat between your thighs. “I expect an answer.” 

“Y–yes,” you stammer out, hips flexing against his hand. Seeking more of that white-hot bloom of pleasure he brings with each pass of his finger. 

“Good girl—” and you hate how it burns you up from the inside out. “Wasn't s’hard, was it?”

The retort is bitten back with the slow swipe of his finger drawing tight, small circles around your clit. His fingers are rough, scarred. Too dry. The abrasive drag over your soft sensitive flesh makes you whine—a drawn-out whimper nestled between clenched teeth. 

It's too much. 

Too harsh. Too sharp.

He rolls your clit under the pads of his fingers in jerking half-circles. Puts too much pressure on the bundle of nerves than you ever would—your touches are always soft, sickeningly sweet; gentling your flesh until you cum—and the sting, the burn, of it makes your toes curl. Body burn. 

It's good. 

And that's the problem. 

It shouldn't be. His touch shouldn't make you so wet, growing slick and sticky between your spread thighs, bare to his hungry, prying gaze. Shouldn't make you moan. Hips twitching with each stroke of his fingers—

And then he peels away from you, but the time to mourn the loss of his touch, the fear of losing this trembling ember pleasure, is snuffed out when he presses his wet, slick fingers against the inside of your knee. The touch is intentional. Insistent. He makes an impatient noise in the back of his throat before pushing it down to the mattress. The twinge of pain swallowed up as quickly as it forms when he drops to his elbows between your thighs, forearms curling under your legs, and tugs you sharply into him. 

Heat floods your belly when the backs of your thighs press tight to his broad, muscular shoulders, but it's nothing compared to the sight of him on his knees between your legs. It's so obscene you nearly weep—

And then he leans down and licks a long, broad swipe of his tongue over your cunt. 

You hadn't expected it, maybe. His mouth on your pussy, his broken, jagged lips sealing over your pebbled clit. Going down on you seemed too intimate for what he was after. His end goal. It does nothing for him at all—

You realise your mistake when he dips his tongue into your hole and his hips jerk forward. Unconscious. Eager. Seeking. The shifting drags his jeans down his hips, and his cock slips free. 

Most of the cocks you've seen—in porn, pictures, art—jut out from the person's groin. standing at attention, the nasty comments used to say. Jokes whispered on the playground. But his falls. Droops down between big, folded thighs. Skin marbled in shades of red, peach. Deep gouges dot his upper thighs, some sinking deep enough to reach bone. More scar tissue than flesh. 

—than man.

It looks raw. Fresh. Some injuries not too dissimilar to the Wagyu hanging in the front of the storeroom, on display and oh, so out of place in a town where the richest man must be just a hair above the poverty line. 

On paper, anyway. 

You swallow, avoiding his gaze as he pauses, dark eyes watching you with his mouth pressed against your seam. Unmoving. Still as a predator between your thighs, cock visible between the bow of his torso, jutting sickeningly from mangled legs as you gawk at this hideous thing that makes several, half-hearted attempts to spring up towards you, spitting clear, milky liquid all over with each jerk. Tugged down by its own weight. Too heavy to fight against gravity like the rest of the cocks you've seen have done—

Normal cocks, you amend. Textbook. 

His is anything but. 

Ugly, you think again, stomach churning. Roiling. Obscene. An odd thing considering what you're looking at but all too fitting with the way it droops, big, flared head drooling pre-cum all over the bed in long, dangling stands that prickle over your jaws—half nauseous, half hungry, too. Saliva pools in your mouth even though the sight of his cock scares you. Fills your belly with dread. Misery. 

It looks like a bruise. Skin smeared with purples, reds. Patches of pink. Long, thick veins run up from the fattened, full base to the divot of his frenulum. Thick. It hangs low. Drips. 

He raises slightly and shoves his hand down between his thighs, big hand curling over the fat base of his cock. His grip is tight around himself, and he strokes up, from base to tip. It squeezes more precum from the flushed, fat head, and dribbles between your spread thighs in a thick, pearlescent puddle. 

It makes your mouth dry. That twinge in your jaws coming back. Festering. You wonder if he'll make you take that thing in your mouth. Choke you on it. Taste his precum—

“Fuck,” he snarls into your cunt, hand jerking over his cock. “Keep lookin’ at my cock like tha’, birdie—”

You gasp at the rough grunt, the way it seems to tremble through your sensitive flesh. More, though, from the way he sounds. His voice brassy, rough. Unkind, but the words bloom a fresh heat behind your navel. 

His voice does things to you. Things you're not allowed to like. 

Those thoughts are knocked from your head when he bows down again, eyes still fixed on you, and seals his wicked mouth over your cunt. It's hard to compare it to anything else other than being devoured. Eaten in the truest sense of the word. 

His tongue splits down your seam, tip digging into your slick hole. A groan bubbles up at your taste—the soft, fluttering clench of your body trying to drag him in deeper. Needing him deeper. A huff of air ghosts over you, dipped in the same derision as earlier but the harsh slap of skin on skin, his hand working furiously over his cock, makes you acutely aware of how much this affects him. 

“Taste good, birdie,” he grunts, and then sucks your fold into his mouth, laving it with his tongue and teeth until the skin is tender, swollen. “S’fuckin’ good—”

Your breath catches when the crooked arch of his nose presses taut to your clit. Pleasure twisting in a dizzying pirouette inside your belly, winding tighter and tighter—

His nose jerks up on your clit. Lips moulded to your seam, you hear him rasp eyes on me, birdie. Don't fuckin’ look away—

The rough snarl trembles through your body, sinking its teeth into the coil until it snaps under its jaw. Your knees snap around his head as your release locks your joints tight. His name, Simon, a hoarse cry on your lips. You barely have time to bask in the ripples of pleasure throbbing through your body before he rips away from you with his teeth bared, and his chin wet. 

“Fuck—!” he snarls again, shoving your knees apart as he lifts his massive body up from between your thighs. “Gonna fuck you, birdie. Gotta be inside your tight cunt—”

He towers over you, grinding his cock into the apex of your thighs. The drag of his cock—a little damp from being stuck inside his jeans all day; balmy—against the dry skin of your belly makes you shudder. Shivering beneath him as he huffs through the mask. Head bowing. Dipping to look at the way his cock slaps down on you. Cockhead nudging above your belly button, dribbling a small puddle of pre-cum that gets smeared into your skin when he rocks back on his haunches. 

His hand wraps around the thick base of his cock once more, squeezing tight as he grips himself above you. It makes the head swell, engorged with blood. Thickening in his hand as globs of pre-spend leak out onto your belly. That feeling in your jaws comes back—nauseous and wanting. 

He leans back with a hum. “Like my cock, eh, birdie?” 

The crass words bring a fresh bloom of heat simmering in your veins, creeping up your collar. Like doesn't really cover what you feel when you stare at it—his inked hands running along the long, veined shaft—and the unsettled feeling in the pit of your belly rears when he nudges forward, the weeping head of his cock bumping your mound. 

It's humiliating how much want floods through you just looking at it. At him. Disgust, dread, desire. 

You don't answer. Not that you really need to—

Your silence is loud enough. 

“Don’t worry,” he murmurs, the rasp thick in his throat. “M’gonna give it to you, pet—”

And he does just that. Slips the head of his cock down the slope of your mound, letting it graze your clit until you're panting, whining softly for more, and pulls it over your slit until his pre-cum is smeared over your drenched folds. You know exactly what this is even without glimpsing the ugly burn of his possessive desire smouldering in the back of his eyes—ownership. Greed. Hunger. It revels in the stain on your skin, from belly to slit; his, all his. Outside and soon—

In. 

It shocks a creeping sense of worry into you. “Wait, what about a condom—”

He snorts, ugly and caustic. “What about ‘em?” He taunts, and it's flat. Playful. 

“You should—”

He drags his gaze away from the pearlescent smear of his spend on your folds, your clit, and the even, placid look in that stagnant lake tells you everything you already knew. 

“I've never—” you start, wincing at the kernel of fear lacing your hoarse words. “Not without a condom—”

It's the wrong thing to say. Near cataclysmic. He drops his head back with a groan that rumbles out of the slope of his throat, sounding like the rip of a chainsaw. 

“Firsts for everything,” he purrs, and he nudges your entrance with the bare, weeping tip of his cock. 

“But—”

His hand lifts, catching your jaw in the too-wide span of his palm. The force makes your teeth clack together. 

“Need me to gag you, birdie?” 

You swallow. It's not much of a choice. Gagged and fucked raw, or—

Just fucked raw. 

No gag. No condom. You fight back a shiver and wish it was all just from fear. 

“No,” you murmur, like you have a choice. “No gag.”

“An’?” 

“Um. No–no condom, either—”

It's not enough. "What are you gonna let me do to this pussy, birdie?"

You know what he wants. What he's angling for. But there's a line, you think. A delineation between unwilling participant, coercion, and giving into the need that slinks down your spine, and rots inside your belly.

(Being forced to ask for it isn't permission, but what happens when you want it more than your next breath?)

The shame can come later, you think, and feel yourself give in. 

"Cum—cum inside me—"

“Good girl, birdie.” 

You hate what that does to you. How eagerly your body reacts to the dark possessive curl in his eyes when you do something he likes. 

He nudges your entrance again, this time with purpose. Intent. A heavy pressure pushing on your rim. Too tight, you think, and the sting of the first inch he feeds—forces—into you burns, pulsing behind your navel. His tip isn't even in yet, and it's already too much. 

You think about telling him so, offering up your mouth instead, but he leans down on his forearms, and catches your lips in a bruising, biting pantomime of a kiss. A blood-soaked parody with more teeth and tongue—sinking into your lips, nipping hard until the skin splits; catching all that spills with his tongue. 

With his weight pressed against you like this, there's nowhere to run when he cups your throat in his hand, winding the other up above your head, forearm tight on your crown to cage you in. And then he shifts. Bears his hips down on yours until the fat head of his cock pops inside of you. 

Your squeal is chewed up between his teeth, swallowed down with a rumbling groan. 

Caught beneath him, trapped, he works himself into you demanding, heavy thrusts. Each inch burns more than the last. A stinging stretch that brings tears to your eyes. It's already too much and it's not even half. Barely even the tip.

“Can't—” you slur into his wet, demanding mouth. “No more. I–I can't—”

The breath rushes out between his teeth. Your watery eyes drop to the divot above his canine. A permanent snarl. A condescending sneer. 

“You can,” he says decisively, words ground out from between crooked teeth. He presses them to your cheek, nipping at the skin under your eye. Possessive and wanting—

(Hungry for something you can't name—)

“And you will.” 

—Or maybe you just don't want to. Can't look at the thunderous need draped over his mangled, battered face without thinking of the rumble in your chest that echos back against his thundering call—)

Stupid, foolish thing—

The dark promise of his words isn't a threat until his hand tightens around your neck, nails grazing your skin, and he adds, all of me, birdie as he grinds his hips into yours shallowly. Broad chest expanding with each ragged inhale. Cementing his taunt with a steel edge as you try not to come undone beneath him. 

You'll take every fuckin’ inch—

He pulls back until only his glands stretch you open, and you know what's coming when his fingers grip the sides of your neck tight. Holding on. Anchoring you to the bed as he nudges his forearm tighter between your skull and the wall, a protective hold. 

Before you can tense up, bracing for it, or even cry out no, please, don't, you can't take it, he huffs, and then slams his hips forward, splitting you open on the fat stretch of his thick, too heavy cock. 

Maybe it's hysteria, delirium, but the blunt press of his length against your tender, sore walls balms the ache, the sting. The deeper he pushes, the less it hurts. A paradox that leaves you whimpering under his hand, heels digging into the broad stretch of his waist as you struggle to decide if you want to kick him away or pull him closer. 

A war you don't have the power to win when he surges forward, burying himself to the hilt with a growl that shakes the fragile tendons surrounding your heart. Fear, misery. Pleasure, pain. It admixes. Coalescing into a dizzying sense of fullness, unbearable pressure. Catastrophic in its heaviness as your mind reels, struggles to come to terms with the gut-wrenching, heart-aching uncertainty of how you're supposed to go on without having him seated as deep inside of you as he can get. You've never known emptiness before him. Before now. Mere seconds ago. 

And now, the thought of it leaves a palpable hollowness itching behind your ribs. Festering. Rotting tissue and bone. 

“Simon,” you choke, sobbing his name out under the firm press of his hand. “Simon—”

But he knows. 

His arm curls over your head like a crown, and you can easily forget the pinch of each thorn when he holds you tight. Protectively. Possessively. Securing you in his arms before he lifts up, palm sliding over the mattress, touch tender against your cheeks, and then settles it on the indent of your knee. Widening you for him as he spreads his thighs under yours until you're opened up for him. 

Those dark eyes are dragged down to the split of your legs where his cock disappears into your slick, swollen cunt. You follow it down, gazing at the impressive width of his stomach bowing over you until they land on the jut of skin pushing out from a messy smatter of damp curls around the base of his cock. 

The coarse hair of his groin unfurls as it sticks to your wet lips, and he rolls his head back over his shoulders he heaves through the too tight stretch of your walls over his length. You feel the pulse of him inside of you, thudding like a heartbeat. It blooms molten under the feverish weight of his lidded, dark gaze. 

“Fuck, birdie,” he rasps, and it's scorched. Charred. “Look at you—”

As the world is condensed, narrowed down to nothing but the near impossible stretch of his cock seated as deep inside of you as he can get, he leans down, scarred, mangled lips brushing cruelly over your ear, and whispers, see? Told you'd take me. 

Every fuckin’ inch. 

Your hand jerks to your belly, fingers dancing over your navel as if to feel him there, bulging from under your skin. Nearly hysterical as you try to come to terms with the pulsing, white-hot ache of him inside of you, slowly acclimating to his girth, his length. 

He grunts when he sees what you're doing, eyes flaring as your fingers skirt around your navel. 

“It's—” you shudder, gasping for air. “It's too much, Simon, I can't take it—”

He rolls his hips with a groan. “m’cock too big for you, birdie?” 

His usual cadence is flat, droll, but an unmistakable sense of masculine pride, a deep, egotistic sense of satisfaction, drapes itself over his brassy words. Glueing to the scorching rasp of his voice in a way that makes you unerringly certain that he likes it. Likes that his cock is too big for you. That it hurts. 

“Y’can take it,” he prompts, forcing more of himself into you until something snaps. Splits. Makes room. Carves out a space for him to fit. 

The brief flash of pain is soothed when he's seated deep. That same paradoxical balm making itself known as he flattens his hips into yours with a noise—half a grunt, or a growl; a lazy, pleasure-soaked snarl. You're not sure what it is, but the sound knocks the air from your lungs, igniting inside of you like a spark inside a tinderbox. 

It's only when his balls are flush against you that the same masculine pride brims up again. Primal. Animalistic. The urge to present your soft belly rears up suddenly, and it's only stifled when he grunts again, looking down at you with lidded, black eyes. 

“Now, be good and let me fuck your tight cunt.”

He's not looking for assent. Nothing you could say at this moment will sway his mind one way or the other. There's a nasty spool of determination welling up like blood on a pricked finger. Beading up to the surface in a clean, neat droplet as he rolls his broad shoulders, and shuffles into a comfortable position on his haunches between your spread thighs. The motion jostles his cock in a way that makes your breath hitch with each jerk. 

It's not painful. Not particularly. But you're overwhelmed by the sensation of utter fullness in a way you've never experienced before. Each grind of his cock against your overly stretched walls deeping that incipient feeling of anxiety brewing in your belly that one wrong move and you'll tear. He's just—

Too big. 

And despite his claims—or rather, in spite of them—you don't think you can do it. Don't think you can take him. It's too much. It feels like being turned inside out and then put back into place. An uneasy sense of discomfiture blooms with each too-tight, too-sharp tug of his cock pulling taut on your rim. 

Almost deliriously, you think you can feel the pulse of his cock inside your goddamn throat. 

“Simon—” you start on a tremulous breath but he cuts you off with a hum. 

“Relax.” 

You can't. Can't—

“Fuckin’ hell, bird,” he rasps, leaning down suddenly until his face was pushed tight into the curve of your neck, breath shallow on your thudding pulse. “Stop squirmin’ ‘round me like tha’ or I'll cum right fuckin’ now.”

Your heart stutters. Gallops painfully in your chest. His words make you dizzy because for as much as this feeling of him, his cock, inside of you dances on a delicate precipice of being more than you can feasibly handle and somehow the most incredible thing you'd ever experienced before, you hadn't considered how he'd feel. 

Inexplicably, it pleases you. 

There's something so strange—so extraordinary—about bringing a man like him, like this, to his knees. Pleasuring him by just heaving through the white-hot stretch of his cock inside of you. Making him bury his head in your neck, groaning about how he was gonna fuckin’ bust, pretty thing, fuck—

It was a powerful feeling. 

Unwarranted, maybe. But incredible, nevertheless. 

“Fuck,” he grunts, and you feel his throat work around a thick swallow. “Gonna fuck you, birdie. Gonna fuck this pretty cunt so fuckin' hard until you beg me stop—”

And he does just that. Rears back from your neck, and settles again between your thighs—quicker this time. With an urgency that makes you whimper when his cock grinds against your walls hard enough to bruise. 

When he finally pulls out until only the flared head of his cock remains, you knot a fist into the thin pillow, clinging on, and latch the other onto his hip as if that could somehow stop the vicious promise in his eyes about poundin’ you into the goddamn mattress. There's a flash, a brief flicker of his eyes, and then he thrusts back inside of you with a grunt that makes your belly clench, and your back arch. 

True to the promises he gave, it's brutal. Violent. 

Any pleasure you feel is leached through osmosis. A tether bound around his own. 

His arm is shoved under your back, angling your pelvis up. Thighs dangling over the thick spread of his own, ass seated in his lap. He drives into you, thrusts deep—grinds his hips until your moans break into hoarse screams, whimpers. Makes your eyes roll so far back, all you see is black even when you blink your eyes up at him. 

He carves a spot deep inside of you with each delirious piston of his cock, pounding into you with brutal thrusts, and then holding tight when his balls slap against your ass. Digging the head of his cock into the seal of your womb until it aches behind your navel. Each breath feels like glass in your lungs—

“Tha’s it,” he slurs in your ear, mouth damp against your skin. “Take my cock so good, pretty birdie. Little pussy was made for it, weren't you? Tight cunt all mine—”

His gruff words tug on that tether until you're wrapped around him like a bow. Following him down this endless spiral as he slams inside of you over and over again, cooing in your ear about the sounds you made for him, pretty cunt so fuckin’ wet f’me, birdie, hear tha’? all f’me—

“Cum f'me, birdie. Want this pussy cummin’ ‘round my cock—”

“Can't—” you gasp, arching into him, desperate and needy. It rides a line between pain and pleasure; a needlepoint you wobble on. “Need—”

You try to reach down, to touch your clit, but grinds his hips into yours with a snarl. “Cum ‘around my cock, birdie.”

“Touch me—”

“Fuckin’ hell—”

It edges on too much. Pain and pleasure teetering on a knife's edge, split apart by a line the width of a razer. Looping and tangling around each other until you can't differentiate between the two. But it makes sense, you suppose, staring up at him arched above you like a black cloud of smoke. All hunger and fire. Consuming, devouring, everything in its path. A wildfire. 

Butcher, you think again when his hand wraps around your throat. A mimicry of what he did in the truck, forcing your eyes on him. Your life tucked neatly against his palm.

These hands take lives. It's what they're made for. All scarred, and thick. Scar tissue and bone. Muscle and cartilage. Meant to render meat of cattle. Slaughterhouse in the shape of a man. Consumption personified. 

But where there should be fear, all you feel is an echoing sense of hunger. Leatherbound to each other, maybe—

The look that passes over his eyes as he stares down at you, cupped in his palm, seems to fit perfectly into the fractured gaps inside yourself you try so hard to ignore. And what doesn't—

Well. 

He'll make room to fit. 

You reach up, curling your fingers around his thick wrist. His eyes flash, but he doesn't slow his thrusts. Doesn't stop. Just watches as you peel his hand away from your neck, bringing it up to your mouth. 

On his palm, there's a piece of skin that's unblemished compared to the rest of his worn, burnt hands. A strip just big enough for you to sink your teeth into. 

And you do. 

“Fuck, Birdie—!” The snarl is ripped from his throat. His thrusts grow harder, sloppier. Each bit of strength in his muscled hips and thighs is used to pound into you until your vision blacks out. It hurts. Aches. Your heels slip down, catching on the broad expanse of his lower back. And you tighten them around his waist, pulling him closer. Deeper. “Fuck, Birdie, fuckin’ cunt was made f'me, wasn’t it? So cum on my cock. Now—”

Whining, you shake your head. “Can't. I can't. I need—”

You don't get to finish. With a huff of anger, he rips his hand off of the mattress, leaning back on his haunches, and shoves his hand between your thighs, scarred fingers stroking over your pebbled clit. It's rough. Sloppy. His anger hums through his body, skewering into you as he glared down, gaze swinging like a pendulum between the split of your thighs where his cock disappears into your swollen cunt, his fingers rubbing over your clit, and back up the hand around your neck, the tears staining your cheeks. 

There's an edge to his thrusts. A viciousness in the way he pistons his hips into you. Dark eyes catching every flicker—each wince, gasp, moan, whine all meticulously catalogued and exploited. He finds the spots that make your hips jerk, twitching both toward and away from him. Angling into the ones that have your eyes rolling back into your head, drool dribbling past your slack lips as you gasp his name out into the dank, humid air. 

It smells of sweat, sex, and him. Something brutal, bloody, and dark. Rotten leaves. Charred forests after a rain shower. Dangerous. Tinged with a slight acrid, chemical stench—benzene, oxidizing iron. It drips down your throat, and drenches your lungs. Staining you from the inside out. 

And he exploits that, too. Leans in, and breathes heavily against your upper lip, your cheek. Drowns you in his scent. His sweat beads along his jaw, droplets raining down over your brow. Soaked in his essence. Unable to see, smell, or touch anything that isn't him. 

With his hand over your mouth, teeth sunk into his palm, all you can taste is him, too. Leather. Gun oil. Blood. 

The ravenous look in his eye sharpens, turning into deadly points. 

“Such a pretty fuckin' bird.” He rasps, the words shattered, mangled in the back of his throat. They carry the scent of blood when you breathe them in, and you wonder if he forced them through glass. Pushed them out with his bloody fists. 

You bite down harder in response, keening through the white-hot pain of his cock spearing deeper than before, stretching you past your limits. The taste of blood on your tongue, the rasping snarl pulled from his chest, his fingers toying with your clit, push you over the edge once more. Again and again, and again, and—

His hand peels away from your oversensitive clit, dropping down to the mattress beside your face. He follows quickly after several impossibly deep thrusts that shove you higher up on the mattress, pressing in until his balls sit flush against your ass, cockhead battering against your cervix, and he groans—deep and liquid—when he comes, spilling inside of you. Rooted deep, cock twitching, Simon drops to his elbow beside your head, smothering you under his weight as the tension in his body bleeds out. 

Your teeth stick to the divots in his hand, and the sensation of ungluing them from the wounds you gave him makes you shiver. Slowly, you roll your tongue out, chasing the drops of blood, and breathe heavily through your nose as he burrows deeper inside of you, chest shuddering over yours. 

“Fuckin’ hell,” he rasps, hips jerking into yours with a slap that echoes through the room. “Little tease, ain't you?” 

Even with his cock softening inside of you, it's still thick. Fat. Stretching you open as he yawns out above you, bloodied hand dropping down to cup your neck again, forearm resting heavily between your breasts. He raises slightly on his elbow, black eyes glinting in the shallow dark of the room. Piercing as they drill into your sweat-slicked face. 

It aches when he moves. When he presses his hips harder into yours, the muscles in your legs throb as his broad waist splits them apart. Your feet dangle, sliding uselessly down his back, over his ass, before coming to rest curled around his thighs. Melting into the mattress, tender and sore and all chewed up—

You feel like a massive contusion instead of a person. A pestle. His. 

The thought makes you shiver, and his eyes flash in triumph like he knows. 

The feeling of him pulling out of you draws a whimper from your lips. The drag on your sensitive, bruised walls is a strange mix of tender pleasure and pain. He chuckles at your mewl—dark and low; the sound of nightmares, you think. Crackling sap on charred wood. 

You try to pretend it doesn't make you shudder, but the way he hums in response dashes the feigned oblivion before it can form. All you can do is heave on the bed, and watch him through narrowed slits as he leans back on his haunches once again, head cocking to the side. His dark eyes fixed on the split of your legs. The ache in your cunt growing sharp under his molten stare. 

“Fuck,” he rasps, the shallow groan pulled out from between clenched teeth. You wonder if the mangled curse was unintentional. Ripped from his throat before he could clamp his jaws around it—a crack in the facade. A hairline splinter in the indomitable mask he wears. 

Your heart lurches. None of this makes sense, but your head is too muddled, too syrupy, to think much at all. A quandary for later when he throws you from his bed with a harsh slap on your ass and a and don't think about doing this ever again. 

But you don't think you can move. “Give me a minute,” you start on a trembling breath. “And I'll—”

His brows move but his eyes stay fixed on your sore cunt. You can feel him leak out of you, spilling on the mattress in thick globs. The sensation makes you shiver. 

“You'll what?” 

It looks like he has to forcibly tear his eyes away from you, reluctance forming a cold, angry crater between his brows. The brunt of his ire—white, burning—makes you want to supplicate yourself at his feet, roll over on your belly and show the beast you mean no harm. 

(Run, and run far—)

He huffs. “You'll what, birdie?”

It takes a minute to find your voice through all the panic clogging your throat. “I'll leave, um—”

He peels away from you with a loud, rough snort, and drops to his his elbow beside you. Hands curling possessively over your waist, fingers tight. Unyielding. 

“Not goin’ anywhere, birdie. Told you, didn't I? You're mine.” 

“I'm—”

“Go to sleep.” 

He pulls you roughly to his chest until your head is pillowed on his shoulder, and then rolls on his back, keeping you cushioned at his side. You try to move, but his arm wedges under your neck, curling over your shoulder. Trapping you to him. 

The panic wants to come now. To rage against the shackle of his embrace, to run home and scrub your skin until it bleeds. But the exhaustion collapses over it all until your eyes feel too heavy to hold open. Too painful.

As you drift, aimless and dreamless, his voice cuts through the fog. “Gotta learn ‘ow to cum with nothin’ but my cock inside of you sooner or later, birdie. Or you won't be coming at all—”

It sounds like a threat. A promise. You fall asleep with the words echoing in your head, his arm an anchor around your waist. 

He wakes up hungry. 

A gnawing in his belly pulls him from the thin doze he fell into after fucking you three more times—with your face pressed into the mattress, ass in the air for him to rut against like a beast; teetering over his hips, the spread of them too wide for your thighs to split over leaving you precariously unbalanced and shifting your weight above him as neither knee sat comfortably on the mattress; and on your belly with him crushing you to the floor under his bulk. The memory of which makes his spent cock stir, twisting limply against his damp, sticky thigh. Matted down with drying cum, sweat, the slick wetness of being buried inside your messy cunt. 

Filled now with his cum. 

He groans low in his throat as he thinks about it. The sloppy way you let him take you over and over again until you couldn't keep your eyes open anymore, passing out before he finished. Letting him fuck his cum inside of you as you whimpered in your sleep—

Perfect little thing, aren't you? So good to him.

Simon can't remember the last time he fucked someone, much less when it was this enjoyable (an understatement, of course; in the back of his head, wheels spin round and round as he tries to come up with a plan to keep his cock buried inside of you at all times while still doing his work—), and the overflow of unquenched lust churns in his belly. A hunger he can now slake on your willing body. In the silence, he purrs—

But the effort, the exertion, dredged up a different need inside him. 

Simple hunger. An appetite. 

He could eat—

his eyes slant toward the top of your crown in the dark, and he amends it, quickly, to: in more ways than one. 

He'll go home in a minute. Make himself a steak from the prime cut he butchered a few days ago, leftovers that no one had any qualms about when he took several pieces home with him. 

(and really, why would they argue with the butcher who keeps their wallets fat and their bills paid?)

It was left on the counter earlier before he got the call that your brother was making another move. Now a perfect room temperature as it waits for him to come back. Cook it the way he likes—

Rare. 

The perfect grill is a nice char on the outside, but bleeding red on the inside. Basted in duck fat and garlic. A sprig of rosemary in the pan, but not touching the meat. Just enough to give the juice that earthy, sweet flavour. Let it rest for ten minutes under foil with the rest of the fat poured over it from the pan. Served as is with maybe a dash of salt and pepper on the side. 

Simple. But incredibly difficult to perfect, he finds. 

Everyone tries to make it fancier than what it needs to be, but at the end of the day, meat is meat. And going from picking scraps from the garbage outside of the Italian butcher on the corner to ordering his own pretentious filet mignon still gives him a sense of unease. Whiplash, perhaps. Nothing to something—how about that, Tommy? 

Maybe that's why he prefers to raise and butcher his own cattle. A never-ending supply of meat for him to sink his teeth into even if this whole thing goes belly up and he's back to begging for morsels on the corner. Tommy hiding in the shadows with a baseball bat waiting to ambush the richer men who happen to feel altruistic that day. 

This practice bled over into his current occupation, too. The basement of that same Italian butcher shop he used to sneak expired sausage from out of the bins is now his home base of sorts. A money laundering front of the 141. Headquarters for them to congregate in secrecy upstairs. And here—

A torture chamber for those who tried to cross them. Strung up on meat hooks like the cattle they eat, the ones he feeds them, until he makes up his mind on what he wants to do to them. 

It's where you should have been, he supposes, thumb brushing a spot of dried blood on your shoulder, right below a nasty bite mark on your forearm. The ring nearly black from the clotted blood pooling in the indents. It matches several others on your thighs—top, insides, back—and neck, belly, collarbones, sternum. All chewed up. Marked by the butcher. 

In working for the old Italian man who ran the shop when he was eighteen, he learned that most of the butchers preferred to mark their carcasses when they came in. A little x on the fat to signify they'd be the ones carving up the prime meat. 

He didn't think you could handle his knife, so he gave you his teeth instead. But the implication is clear. 

His. 

It's overkill considering his reputation, and the claim he already had on you. Because even before this, back when he saw you through the window of his shop as he was moonlit as a legitimate butcher and businessman instead of the enforcer, the brute, everyone already knew he was, his interest was clear. You were off-limits. His to deal with. 

And while Price refers not to get involved in small-time street dealers, the warnings Soap and Gaz impressed onto your brother should have been the end of an irritating situation and not the beginning of a fuckin’ headache. But no. He had to push. And push.  

Until Price gave the order to take care of it. 

And that he did. 

(With the added benefit of killing one bird and keeping the other in a pretty cage.)

Price probably won't like his solution, but Simon racked up enough favours to keep a little pet of his own. Been a good boy for a long, long time now, and he supposes he's owed a bone. 

Or a sweet thing tucked tight to his side having passed out some two hours ago after he slaked his dizzying thirst on you over and over again even though it doesn't feel like it's been enough. 

It's rare that he has an appetite for people. Even rarer that he lets this meagre hunger consume him like this. But there's something about you that makes his teeth ache in the same way they often do whenever he's hungry for meat. 

He wants to devour you. Consume you. Eat you alive and save nothing for anyone else to taste. 

(So—

Price will just have to let him keep you, won't he?)

The mattress vibrates under him. His phone buzzing with an incoming text. He reaches over, pulling it close enough to read the notification on his screen. It's from Soap.

All her stuff is on your porch. 

He hums, but doesn't reply. Simply opts to drop his phone on his belly, and tug you closer to his broad chest. He'll wake you in an hour, and the stirring in his groin tells him it'll be for another round. Maybe he'll take you in the freezer. Make you cling to the hook hanging down from the ceiling as he fucks you like that. He has a pair of ties for ox, lamb legs, that he can loop around your wrists and heft you up on. 

It'll hurt, he's sure. The binds weren't designed with comfort in mind, but he can easily bear your weight as he pounds into you from below, your pretty legs wrapped tight around his waist. 

The image, the thought, alone has him thickening against his thigh. He reaches down, gripping the base tight in his hand as he pulls you even closer, burying his nose in your crown. 

At the very least, he wouldn't be lying when he told Price he strung you up. 

Three rounds—on your back, your hands and knees, perched above him like a pretty goddess he stole away from a temple—and he still isn't satisfied. Fuck. He breathes in your scent and doesn't think he ever will be. 

He'll get you out of here, take you home. Make you the steak he likes for a late dinner, rare and simple—the same one he gave your brother weeks ago when he dragged him into the shop, strung him up on a hook, and demanded payment for his disrespect. 

Who'd have thought that his payment would be you? 

(fitting, though, since he'd had his eye on you for a while now—)

He nudges you when his phone chimes again with another message doubtless from Soap telling him all your things have been tucked away. Matters dealt with. 

“C’mon,” he grunts, running his hand down your spine. “We’re leavin’.”

You blink at him slowly. “Leaving?”

He nods. “Get dressed.” 

You're quiet as he turns, reaching for his jeans left in a heap beside the mattress, but he hears the hitch in your throat. The click when you swallow. Unbothered by it, he turns, giving you his back as he wedges his feet inside the trousers, pulling them up his legs. 

The bed shifts behind him. “I—I can walk back to my brother's—”

The hope in your voice is a delicate thing. Fragile like fine china. A pretty, vulnerable tchotchke meant to be seen, admired, but not touched. Not handled roughly. 

Unfortunately for you, he's never had much of a gentle touch. 

When he throws a glance over his shoulder, he's not surprised to find your arm folded over your bare breasts as you kneel on the mattress, your palm resting flat between your parted thighs, wrist and forearm covering the slip of heaven between them from his greedy, prying gaze. 

It paints a startling picture, he finds. One with you looking thoroughly ravaged. Taken. But presenting it in a soft sort of sensuality meant to make a man feel both hot under the collar and like an unrepentant voyeur. 

Pretty bird, he thinks, and feels his cock stir. 

He rises swiftly, hiking up his jeans around his thighs as he goes, and then turns to you with a heady desire to crush that gossamer of hope between his greedy hand like a silken cobweb that will stick to his fingers. 

“Not goin’ to your brothers,” he says, pushing his tongue against his cheek to stem the ache burning in his muscles. 

You shiver, eyes growing wide, frenzied with fear as you stare up at him. The shift of your throat when you swallow makes pre-cum dribble out of his fattened cock. He's never really had much of a taste for it, but he's overcome with the urge to see you cry—

“Where are we going?”

Amid the ache in his loins, the flickering fantasies of your pretty, lachrymal face gazing up at him helpless, hopeless, and needy, he catches the edge of panic when you speak. The razor-sharp tremble of fear. 

But buried amongst it, hidden in the bruised look you give him as he towers over you with his cock bulging in his slacks and his eyes burning with want, he finds a keen sense of eagerness amongst the rubble. Agog, almost. 

And fuck. If that doesn't do something awful to him. 

“What?” He taunts, cocking his head to the side as your breath grows shallow and your eyes wide. “Did you think that was enough to pay your debt, birdie?”

“What? You can't—”

“Don't like it—” he lifts his shoulder up in a cool, indifferent shrug, enjoying the dismayed expression that falls over your brow more than he should. “—go to the police.”

“The ones on your payroll?” You spit, eyes flaring wide like an angry cat. “You—”

Several things might have continued in place of your choked, angry sob, but it's swallowed down as pragmatically as it was the first time he cornered you earlier today. And as beautiful as your ire is, he finds the cornered look on your face to be much more pleasing. Prettier. 

“C’mon, bird,” he mocks, holding his hand out toward you with a tick of his lips. “All your stuff is at home. Don't be stupid.” 

“Stupid?” You gasp in indignation, but there's a bruised look in your eyes. A wounded thing that makes his breath hitch in his lungs for reasons he can't really ascertain, but just knows that he likes it. Likes it a lot. “This is—insane.”

Again, he shrugs, but the indifference this time isn't the same manufactured callousness meant to inspire fear. The conversation is stale already. Grating on him. He's not used to having his orders ignored or questioned. What he says usually goes—either through association or reputation, or just the fact that no one has ever come close to filling the same measure of space as he does—and questioning him like this makes him feel too much like a boy, and not enough like the living ghost he pretends to be. 

“You can't do this. It's not right.”

An appeal to his humanity. Cute. He huffs, reaching down to fasten the button of his jeans. The sound the zipper makes cuts through the room. “You're mine, birdie. Better get used to it.” 

Catching your eye as he says it was only meant to reignite the kindling fear you have of him from extinguishing. A scared prey animal was a better pet than an angry one. But the look on your face catches him off-guard. 

It reminds him of a flightless little bird shivering in a child's shoebox. Tiny broken thing his mum warned him not to touch or its mother would abandon it to die on its own. 

“Until the debt is paid off.”

A statement, not a question. He shrugs, but doesn't respond. Tilts his head toward the door. “Let's go.” 

His lack of reassurance doesn't soften the flint in your gaze, but the prospect of recompense seems to spurn you on. Another wishbone of hope to cling to. And despite himself, he lets you keep it. Lets your little finger wrap around the delicate bone for comfort because as much as you might think there's a fifty-fifty chance of getting the bigger piece, he has no intentions of letting something like that get in the way of his appetite even if you do. 

(And his hunger has always been particularly voracious, hasn't it?)

“Come, birdie. Gotta get you home, and fed, don't I?” 

[comicaurora]

thoughts on Castlevania: Nocturne?

HO BOY WHAT A RIDE

ok to start off, the short list of things I wasn't a huge fan of

The dialogue was a little bit wack in places; Richter's extremely badass "there's something you've forgotten about belmonts, I'd forgotten it too" line fizzling out into "ok I was gonna do a one-liner but eh fuck it" was a pretty representative example. Kinda snapped me out of the scene when I was otherwise hella invested

Erzsebet's dumb onion haircut

this is a nitpick but solar eclipses are only visible from very small areas of the earth because the moon's shadow is much smaller than the earth so even if Erzsebet is magically holding the moon in place it'll only produce eternal night in like a third of france

castlevania let even one mom survive a season challenge 2k23

On to the good stuff!

Every character, even the nastiest antagonists, being clearly and consistently motivated by core traits that sometimes lead to them switching between opposing and helping Team Good Guy, I lost it when Olrox smoked his way into Casa Good Guy to give them a plot device in the most unnecessarily threatening way possible

Love that Richter's brand of snark is a blend of Trevor and Sypha's, he's just as sassy as Trevor but all his quips show Sypha's chipperness. Also love that he copes with the Belmont Trauma by constantly deflecting and light-heartedly downplaying The Horrors until he finally cracks

Maria's cute lil pokemon

Richter getting his magic back!! What a beautiful scene, what good animation, what powerful shots

Richter's unique fighting style! As soon as his magic comes back it's All Throwing Hands All The Time and I really appreciate how anime protagonist he is about it

ALUCARD'S RETURN

Edouard's singing being so good it keeps giving people their souls back, also one of the most gorgeous night creature designs ever put to paper

Annette's entire deal is so profoundly powerful and I love how they're using her ancestral magic to expand on the ramifications of Castlevania's "all legends are true" undercurrents

This show feels extremely focused on the specific political landscape of the historical period it takes place in unlike Castlevania's more loose historical setting

The THEMES of colonialism and vampirism being one and the same

Olrox being like "oh you want to make a new world empire of absolute conquest? heard that one before" and somehow none of the other bad guys pick up on the subtext of "and it was FUCKING BAD"

Sekhmet-Erzsebet's cape shoulder-halo thing being the Egyptian sun-on-a-boat symbol is subtle and it slaps

"who's dracula" lmao

[pocket-sized-nightmare]

my second entry for @mcyt-yuri-week!

prompt: post-canon

ship: nature wives (shelby/katherine), post-witchcraft smp!

There’s so much that’s changed since Empires, but the one thing that will always stay constant is the inordinate amount of blaze powder Shelby goes through in a month.

She has a new blaze farm now, far away from the Evermoore. It’s bigger and fancier, but unfortunately, it’s also a bit farther from her new house. Shelby usually goes alone, but Katherine insisted on coming along today. (She says it’s just to protect her partner, but Shelby is convinced she wants to test out her new battleaxe on some monsters.)

They hold hands as they walk across the nether wastes, and Shelby rambles about something new she’s learned. “I have to be really careful tomorrow. I don’t know if it’s totally true, but Cleo told me something back during the witch trials about penumbras messing with weather magic. I think it’s something about the shape of the shadows–”

“Penumbras?”

“Those weird shadows from a partial eclipse. There’s supposed to be one tomorrow.”

“Oh, no way!” Katherine gasps. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.”

“We should have a midnight picnic!” Shelby realizes. She stims with excitement for a moment, then scribbles the idea down on a crumpled piece of paper in her pocket.

To her surprise, when she puts the paper away and turns around, there’s a child in front of her mimicking her stims.

“Oh, hello!” Katherine says. The girl turns and runs away, then peeks out shyly from behind a boulder of netherrack. She’s clearly an Origin – not quite human, but not quite a full mob, either. Her hair is pink with a large white streak, and she’s short and chubby. Judging by her upturned nose and the sharp, fang-like teeth that show in her wide grin, she’s probably a piglin hybrid. She looks to be about nine or ten years old, and she clearly isn’t used to being around other people. Shelby notices the way the piglin nervously fidgets with her hair every time she sees Shelby or Katherine’s expression change, while Katherine realizes that her clothes are singed and ripped in ways that indicate she hasn’t been taken care of in years.

“Hold on a second,” Katherine says. She takes something out of her inventory and walks over to the girl. As Shelby watches from farther up the path, Katherine hands the piglin a tiny golden star charm from a necklace she’s been making. “This is for you!”

The piglin takes the charm and stares at it, moving it around to watch the way it catches the light. She smiles brightly. Katherine is about to walk away when she notices the piglin brush her tangled pink hair out of her eyes for what seems like the fifteenth time that minute. She reaches into her inventory and notices the two pink hair ties she keeps around for emergencies. “Hey, do you want me to tie your hair back? It’ll keep it out of your eyes.”

The piglin cautiously nods and sits down in front of Katherine. She takes out the hair ties and gently styles the girl’s hair into two pigtails. “There. Much better, right?”

The piglin makes a few happy squeaking sounds, squeezes Katherine’s hand gratefully, and scampers away. Katherine laughs as she walks back over to Shelby.

“Aw, you’re so good at that,” Shelby says. “She’s so sweet. I hope that little sprout’s okay.”

“Little sprout?” Katherine asks. “That’s adorable.”

“That’s what my grandma used to call me when I was a kid,” Shelby says with a sentimental smile.

They walk for a few more minutes before Shelby notices something wrong. “Whoa, stop!” She grabs Katherine by the arm and pulls her back.

“What happened?” Katherine looks around, then notices the source of Shelby’s concern. The ground below her is mostly netherrack, but she nearly stepped onto a large patch of gravel – gravel with nothing below it. “Oh, void. Thanks.”

“Anytime.” Shelby smiles and wraps an arm around Katherine. Katherine leans into her and rests her head atop Shelby’s.

“You’d think we’d be better at this whole Nether exploration thing by now,” Katherine chuckles. Shelby grins and elbows Katherine playfully. “Hey, speak for yourself. I’m great at this–” Katherine holds out an arm to stop Shelby from falling into a shallow pit.

Shelby puts her head in her hands, then rests her head against Katherine’s shoulder, laughing all the while. “What are we even doing today?” Katherine asks.

“Not well. We are not doing well.” Shelby picks up a piece of glowstone from the ground and studies it, then hands it to Katherine. “Here. A good-luck charm.”

“Why, thank you!” Katherine says in a jokingly formal tone, then takes a flower out of her pocket and tucks it behind Shelby’s ear. “And one for you, too.”

“Why, thank you!” Shelby says with a curtsy. 

They giggle together, then keep walking towards the blaze spawner. From out of the corner of Katherine’s eye, she sees a small blur of movement.

“Oh, hey!” Katherine grins and points to the other side of the path. The girl they saw before is back, hopping across the netherrack to collect tiny pieces of glowstone. She sees Shelby and Katherine and beams with excitement.

“Hi, kiddo!” Shelby calls. The piglin waves, thinks for a moment, then leaps forward and does a cartwheel for her new friends.

Katherine laughs and nudges Shelby. “Aw, she’s got so much energy. Reminds me of you.” Shelby giggles. 

Across the path, the piglin notices the gravel floor that Katherine nearly stepped on earlier. 

Shelby panics, grabs Katherine’s arm, and calls out to the girl. “Hey, little sprout, that isn’t stable–”

It’s too late. The tiny piglin girl joyfully dashes out onto the patch of floating gravel and digs her feet into it. As she kicks up tiny rocks, she realizes just a moment too late what she’s done as her feet sink through it.

“No!” Katherine shrieks as she watches the gravel give way and fall towards the lava below, taking the piglin with it.

The piglin manages to catch herself on a ledge and tries desperately to grip the netherrack and catch herself. Her nails dig into the cliff for a moment, but she isn’t strong enough to stop her fall. She slips off the ledge and falls into the ocean of lava with an awful squeak of terror.

Shelby and Katherine race to the edge of the cliff and look over it. There’s a terrifying moment where they both think she’s dead, but her head finally peeks out of the lava as she struggles to swim and reach the netherrack shore.

The second Shelby sees that the piglin is alive, she impulsively jumps into action. She takes out a fire resistance potion with one hand and grabs her broom with the other. Before Katherine can react, Shelby takes flight and dives towards the lava herself. “Be careful!” Katherine calls after her as she drops downwards.

The tiny piglin is putting up a good fight to survive. Shelby knows piglin hybrids can survive in lava for extended periods of time, but that doesn’t mean they’re immune to it. The girl is covered in burns, and she’s crying, but she’s alive, and her eyes light up when she sees Shelby come closer on her broom.

Shelby’s feet dip into the lava (thank goodness for fire resistance potions) as she comes close enough to reach her new friend. “I’ve got you! It’s gonna be okay!” She holds out her hand to the piglin, but she can tell from how stiff the girl’s grip is that her hands are burned too badly to hold onto anything.

Shelby takes a deep breath and murmurs a silent wish of please don’t let my broom catch on fire, then dips deeper into the lava to scoop up the tiny piglin herself.

The child goes limp in her arms as Shelby picks her up, but her heavy breathing makes it clear that she’s still alive. Shelby holds her closer and tries to untangle some of her singed pink hair. “Hold on, all right? My partner and I are gonna help you.”

Shelby’s used to flying fast and making sharp movements, but she does her best to work against her instincts and give her new friend a gentle ride. She still reaches the top of the cliff with ease and comes to a just-slightly-too-sharp stop at the top. Katherine reaches out and gently takes the piglin from Shelby’s arms. “She’s burning up.”

“You’d be hot too if you just came out of a lava lake.” Shelby flicks a few remaining drops of lava off her boots to prove her point. “Can you help?”

“On it.” Katherine gently lays the piglin down on the netherrack, then scans through her inventory and finds a small red shulker box with “first-aid kit” written in cursive handwriting. She turns back to the girl and says in a soft voice, “It’s okay. I have to patch myself up when I get hurt all the time. And don’t even get me started on her.” She points to Shelby, who laughs. The girl giggles a bit, too.

Katherine takes out a few things from the kit. “Okay. I’m gonna put some magma cream on your burns first, all right? It might hurt a little bit, but it’s gonna help them heal faster.” 

The piglin nods. Katherine takes a few dollops of magma cream and rubs them into the red, burned patches of the girl’s skin. She winces and squeaks as the touch stings, but she slowly relaxes as her burned skin slowly fades back to its normal pale pink.

“There. That feels nice, doesn’t it?” Katherine ruffles the piglin’s hair. “Okay, I have some potions for you now.”

The girl sticks out her tongue and shakes her head. Katherine bursts out laughing. “I know, little one. Potions taste bad sometimes. But Shelby makes really, really good ones. Like this one–” she takes out a level two healing potion– “tastes like watermelon and lemonade.”

The piglin takes the potion suspiciously, uncorks it, and takes a tiny sip. A grin spreads across her face as she drinks the rest of the bottle in seconds.

“See? Told you it was good. You can have this one, too. It’s strawberry- and mint-flavored, and it’ll help you heal even more!” Katherine takes out a level two regeneration potion, and the piglin happily drinks it. She squeaks happily and curls up against Katherine as the potions take effect. Katherine gently hugs her back. Shelby sits down next to them, and the girl leaps into her arms for an even tighter hug.

“What’s your name, little sprout?” Shelby laughs as she ruffles the piglin’s hair. The girl stops smiling.

“Can you talk?” Shelby asks softly. The girl shakes her head, thinks for a moment, then tilts her head sideways to indicate kind of.

“Sometimes, but not right now?”

The piglin nods. Shelby holds out her communicator so the piglin can type instead.

no name

“Did you ever have one?” Katherine asks.

not sure

i’ve lived here forever and ever

i think i had a name once but then everyone left

and so now i have no name

“Would you like a name?” Shelby asks. “I think I’m okay at naming things. I know a lot of magical weather and space things, if you want something like that.”

what’s weather?

Shelby freezes. “Oh, right, you’ve lived here forever. In the Overworld, we have a big, warm sun that shines over everything and helps green plants grow. And sometimes fluffy clouds cover the sky, and water falls down. That’s called rain. And at night, we have a moon that glows and a bunch of bright stars in the sky. You haven’t even seen the sky…”

i like the moon

and the sun

they sound pretty

“What was the thing you were telling me about?” Katherine asks. “The weird shadow when there’s an eclipse? That’s the moon and the sun at the same time.”

“That’s called a penumbra,” Shelby remembers, and the piglin nods and jumps up and down.

pretty!!!

“Do you want that name?” Shelby asks. Penumbra nods happily.

“And we can call you Penny, if you want!” Katherine adds. Penny hugs Katherine tighter than she’s ever been hugged before.

Shelby joins the hug. “Aww. It’s nice to meet you, Penny.”

Penny stays wrapped in their arms for a minute. As they hug Penny tighter, Shelby hears the piglin take a deep breath and murmur, “Let me stay?”

“What?” Shelby asks.

“Stay with you. Go home.”

Katherine and Shelby look at each other with the same expression of hope and love in their eyes.

“Of course,” Katherine whispers as Shelby scoops up her newfound family member and puts her on her shoulders. “Let’s go home.”

In the end, Shelby thinks as she steps back through the Nether portal with a smile on her face and a tiny piglin on her shoulders, this was always how it was going to turn out, wasn’t it? At the start of Empires, she and Katherine were just lost kids looking for acceptance. It’s been eleven years since then. They’ve found each other, they’ve found a family, and they’ve found a world that believes in them.

It’s their turn to show that same love to someone else.

[the-era-of-shadow]

This is Who We Are

Written by Aikshlin Rose

Summary:

With Doom in control of Shadow’s body for the time being, Shadow gets a chance to explore its mind and find out not just what caused the conflict that occurred that morning, but so much more about themself and how its been affected by their past.

THIS STORY CONTAINS: Swearing, mentions of death, processing of trauma

Author's Note:

Shout out to @transpanda-1 for the incredible "thank you for existing" phrase that I made use of here. Sorry for the tag ^^"

As the light from its necklace faded, Shadow found itself still standing aboard the Aerth Temple. Though now they were in a wide open area of it, rather than within Eclipse’s laboratory.

But still, the familiarity was… odd. Hadn’t they intentionally transported somewhere? The memory containing what it was that they were supposed to be doing was beginning to fade from them, which frustrated Shadow quite a bit.

“Perhaps if I take a little walk… It’ll come back to me,” Shadow thought to itself, and with a self-agreeing nod, it did as such.

Without much thought given towards the act, Shadow ended up walking in the direction of the bedroom it shared with its mother Widow and brother Garrick. Made sense to go there on paper, a place such as that should be a place of safety, of protection.

Should be.

But when Shadow arrived in the room, it was a different story. Items thrown about and damaged, if not outright destroyed. Cracked walls. Various burns left behind by chaos energy.

This once serene place was now nothing more than the aftermath of an unexpected disaster. 

An unexpected disaster orchestrated by Shadow’s own two hands.

As guilt crept over them, another sensation came over them as well. Its memory was beginning to return to it. 

Shadow was going to go lay down in order to go looking around its mind. Something had happened in there that caused this strange outburst of theirs, and Shadow was supposed to figure out what it was. 

Yeah, that seemed to be right… Even if something did still feel a bit missing.

This room of the temple was too damaged to rest within, however, and even if Shadow did feel alright with resting within it, they would surely just get in the way of the others when they eventually came around to fix the place up. So they decided that they would try going to Rouge and Omega’s room instead.

But as it turned away from the ruined room to begin heading over there, Shadow felt a presence become closeby to it in the hivemind.

“Hey, how’s it going with you explorin’ your mind?” 

“Huh? I… haven’t started yet. I’m heading over to Rouge’s to lay down so I can,” Shadow responded to the voice that spoke to them. Wait, was that… Yuki?

“Is that so?” Yuki questioned, as if surprised.

“Yeah?” Shadow replied, confused by Yuki’s confusion. He was there when Shadow said it was going to go lay down back in Eclipse’s lab, wasn’t he?

“Well you should probably get to it, then! Shouldn’t leave anyone waiting now!” Yuki remarked.

“... What are you talking about?” Shadow questioned him.

“Dammit… Your mind’s trying to hide it from you again, isn’t it?” Yuki lamented.

“Hide what??” Shadow yelled, perplexed. 

Yuki paused for a moment, seeing clearly that the current approach to whatever it was that he was trying to convey to Shadow wasn’t working. Most likely, it was preparing a plan b of sorts.

“Shadow, you said you don’t remember lashing out at Widow and trashing your room, right?” Yuki asked them.

“No, I don’t,” Shadow confirmed.

“Tell me what you do remember,” Yuki instructed.

“All I remember is waking up with you… pinning me to the floor…” Shadow’s face briefly became warmed, but it pushed the feeling aside in order to focus on the matter at hand. “It was like… a black-out in my mind.”

“And just how often do you have these ‘black-outs’ and do stuff you don’t remember, Shadow?” Yuki inquired.

“... Not that often, I guess. But the black-outs… They usually last really long, it seems. There’s… whole years I just… don’t remember…” Shadow confessed.

Shadow heard Yuki sigh over the hivemind.

“Look, I can try to explain all I want, but it seems that what you really need right now is to see it for yourself,” Yuki deduced.

“See what??” Shadow questioned once again, feeling no less uncertain than it had felt a few minutes ago.

“You’ll know it when you do, my liege.” With those words, Yuki’s presence faded from Shadow’s senses, leaving it alone to figure out just what he was referring to on their own.

“Well, might as well start walking over to Rouge’s place,” Shadow surmised. “Wouldn’t want to keep Doom waiting,” It added in a moment of regaining memory. Specifically, the memory that Doom was planning to possess Shadow’s vessel so that Shadow’s responsibilities could still be taken care of while it took care of this situation. 

But as that memory returned to it, an avalanche of others came with it in tow. Most importantly the memory of Shadow having already switched out of its vessel for Doom to take over.

This place that it was in at this moment was their mind.

“… So why-?” Before Shadow had the chance to complete their thought, they noticed a rumbling of sorts shake through the area.

“Theeere we go~!” A presence came over Shadow again, similar though not the same as Yuki’s, for it was instead one of the others that shared the same vessel as Yuki, Reacuel.

After the rumbling, as well as Reacuel’s presence, subsided, the area then began to change itself right before Shadow’s eyes. The sunrise sky that surrounded it both above and beside them shifted into a deep spacey hue that was dotted with stars, before being obscured by a metallic dome ceiling and walls, now only visible through massive windows that were littered throughout the walls. The floor, once ancient and marble, got a modern overhaul that was just as metallic as the ceiling above it.

“That’s enough, you two! Leave Shadow alone to talk with their own vesselmates!” A third presence appeared as Shadow was still processing what was happening around them. Leanni, the third and final member of the trio that shared that one body, left just as quickly as she had arrived, likely taking Reacuel and Yuki with her once and for all.

But despite her clear annoyance, Leanni’s interjection had given Shadow just enough time to truly take in its new surroundings.

And once it had done that, it quickly realized where it was that they were.

“This is… The Space Colony ARK??” Shadow questioned.

Shadow walks over to one of the many windows surrounding it, staring out into the space outside.

It wasn’t long until they heard a pair of voices speak up, however.

“Supposed to be.” The first one is rough, as if strained. A purposeful tough-guy act.

“It’s a replication, made to our mind’s best ability.” The second is soft and feminine, but also a bit like a stereotypical alien voice.

Shadow turned around in the direction of the two voices.

The owner of the first voice looked shockingly like Shadow itself, but without any sign of Black Arms DNA… They were how Shadow used to be on the ARK, before Shadow took off its inhibitor rings for the first time and messed with the balance between mobian and Black Arms inside of their vessel.

“Don’t call our body that, you alien scum…!” The other Shadow scowled.

The owner of the second voice was the polar opposite. They didn’t look much like Shadow at all, and appeared to be an outright Black Arms member, darkling subspecies specifically. They had a gentle aura, though from the way they tightly grasped the other Shadow with just one hand, Shadow could tell that they were also the ‘no-nonsense' type. They just smiled at Shadow.

“Who… are you?” Shadow asked the two.

“I’m you, the better you!” The other Shadow answered harshly, trying to wriggle out of the grasp they were being kept in, but having no luck in doing so.

“I call him Sunny.” The darkling added.

The use of ‘him’ made Shadow recoil in disgust and dysphoria, but ‘Sunny’ didn’t seem to mind it.

“He was the one who took control of our vessel after we plummeted to Aerth post Biolizard fight.” The darkling elaborated.

“I was the one who defeated Neo Metal Sonic! The one who founded Team Dark! I was the one who killed Black Doom and eradicated the Black Arms! And I would’ve done it again if it weren’t for you!” Sunny yelled angrily, lunging at Shadow.

“That’s enough out of you…!” The darkling scolded as they pulled him back to them. “Can I get this one an escort back to his chambers?” They then called out into the distance.

“Can do!” A second pair of voices responded from somewhere beyond Shadow’s view, which was quickly being obscured by welling tears.

Without another word spoken, Shadow backed up onto the wall behind it and began to cry, sliding down the wall until they were sitting with their back touching the wall.

“Hey… Are you okay?” The darkling quickly offered comfort as Sunny was dragged away.

“I… I don’t know…” Shadow choked out. “I should be… happy… That I wasn’t the one who killed my father… And yet…”

“You can tell me what you’re thinking. Promise,” The darkling told it.

“I… Even though I didn’t remember committing such acts… I used the apparent fact that I had killed Black Doom and so many others of the Black Arms before to justify doing it again… I might not have been the one that made the 2005 Aerth Invasion go awry, but I did destroy the New Black Comet… I did kill Black Death, and so many of the Black Arms that were on the New Black Comet with him…” Shadow vented. “I did all that… And it was all based upon a lie…!” Shadow curled up into a sad little ball. “And somehow… That makes it feel even worse…” 

“That… That is true, but… Even before knowing about Sunny, or the rest of us in here, you realized you weren’t the person who started that fight, and so you chose to end it… You made amends with the Black Arms that remained, hell, you became their new leader!” The darkling assured them, placing a hand on its shoulder. “You’ve made a lot of mistakes, yes. And those mistakes were made based on a misconception you had. But you’ve also had so many successes! And now that you know about us, you’ll have so many more! We’ll have so many more!” The darkling continued, pulling Shadow’s hands from within the ball it had rolled up into and pulled them towards them in excitement. “Y’know… It’s for that reason I like to think we exist. You went through so much pain, Shadow… Too much to face alone. So we came to be in order to help you through it!” They elaborated. “... In our own special ways…” They looked off into the direction that Sunny was taken with an awkward expression.

Shadow, admittedly, didn’t know what to say in response. This was all so much at once. So much to take in, so much to process… 

Without warning, a desire shot through its mind. A want. A need. 

It sprang out of the seated position they had been in and wrapped themself around the darkling, hugging them.

“Thank you…” Shadow muttered as it once again cried, though this time out of pure, unbridled joy. “Thank you for existing.” 

“You’re welcome…” The darkling said as they hugged it back. “The name’s Siloh, by the way.”

“Siloh… That’s a lovely name,” Shadow noted.

“Thanks…” Siloh replied, releasing Shadow from their hug. 

“... Sunny… He… Seems to go by different pronouns then I do,” Shadow then observed. “Are you the same way, or…?” 

“Kind of. I use the same two you do, with the addition of a bit of ‘she’ in there,” Siloh answered. “That is… unless you’ve already-”

“Oh, so it/they/she for you?” Shadow inquired.

“Yeah,” Siloh confirmed.

“Got it…” Shadow nodded. Though suddenly, something came to its mind. “Wait, what was that last bit you said? About me…?” 

“Oh, don’t worry about it! I’ll just let you figure that out on your own!” Siloh responded nonchalantly. Already having learned quite a lot about itself for one day, Shadow decided to shrug it off. 

“So… Those two who came by to take Sunny to his chambers, who are they?” Shadow wondered.

“Oh, I-I should probably tell you about them before you meet them, huh-?” Siloh realized. But before it could do such, the two of them had returned to the area that she and Shadow were in, standing face to face with Shadow.

Immediately, Shadow recognized the two. A human and a hedgehog mobian, both feminine, both so sweet – even just standing there.

“M-Maria??? Amy??” Shadow hollered. “What- How- When-???” It shook with emotion, most of it being confusion. “It makes sense that Maria’s spirit could possibly possess me like Doom’s has, but Amy?? Amy’s still alive, how could she-???” 

The two girls just giggled so sweetly, playfully amused by Shadow’s confusion. 

“Yeah… That’s why I was gonna get ahead of the jump there,” Siloh stepped in. “They’re not actually Maria and Amy. Not the real ones, anyways. They’re people that came to be in our mind just like Sunny and I, they’re just based upon the two of them,” They explained.

“So… They’re like… Replications?” Shadow asked.

“Yeah! That’s basically it, I think!” Amy replied.

“That’s how Siloh explained it to us, anyways…!” Maria added.

“Oh geez, I hope that didn’t give you guys too much of a crisis!” Shadow remarked.

“I like to think we handled it well enough,” Maria assured them.

“The ‘real’ Amy’s been a bit of a hardass recently, anyways!” Amy added, to which Shadow chuckled.

“I’m so glad you’ve finally become aware of us, Shadow…!” Maria beamed.

“Oh! I have an idea!” Amy piped up excitedly.

“Oh?” Maria and Shadow uttered in unison.

“Let’s catch up over a tea party!” Amy suggested.

“Oooh! That sounds lovely!” Maria responded. Shadow nodded in agreement. 

As Amy and Maria set off to go grab supplies, Shadow readied itself to join them. However, it was distracted from doing so by an odd silhouette that they noticed in the distant space surrounding them.

“Who’s that?” Shadow inquired to Siloh, who had been standing next to it, assuming the silhouette to just be another person in its head.

“Huh? I thought we had everyone covered-?” Siloh replied with confusion, noticing the silhouette Shadow was referring to as well. “Oh!”

“Do you know them?” Shadow queried.

“I think that’s Garrick!” Siloh remarked.

“We have a replica of Garrick, too??” Shadow exclaimed.

“No, I think that’s actually Garrick!” Siloh clarified.

“Wha- WHAT’S HE DOING IN HERE??” Shadow blurted in shock.

Siloh squinted at the silhouette for a bit, watching as it hovered in place for a while before moving once more, as if it was swimming in the great beyond. 

“Looks to me that he’s not technically here, he’s accessing the hivemind via their own mind and through the hivemind we’re able to see each other – somewhat.” Siloh surmised.

“Ohhh…” Shadow replied in awe.

“We’ve got the stuffs!” Amy announced as she and Maria returned.

“Oh! Wonderful!” Siloh remarked.

And so the four of them sat around a table Siloh formed into existence, most likely with chaos energy. They sat and talked and drank their cups of tea and ate various snacks. They caught up with one another on a personal level and they got Shadow caught up with the memories that it was missing – to the best of their ability. Siloh even personally helped Shadow regain its long forgotten ability to shapeshift. And by the end of it, Shadow felt so much better than it ever had. But also, they felt rather tired. But it was a good kind of tired, like the kind of tiredness you feel after a day out at an amusement park.

Approaching an area of this replica ARK that looked to be a control panel of sorts, Shadow saw that there was a sort of chaos energy field surrounding it, separating Doom from the rest of the headspace. At first, Shadow worried that this forcefield would prevent them from entering the area, and by proxy, prevent them from regaining control of the body. But upon thinking about it further, Shadow realized that there would be no reason for that.

So they took a step forward. 

And they entered the area without any issue.

“Shadow… Are you ready to return to your body?” Doom asked it, seemingly having sensed their presence.

“Yeah, I think I am,” Shadow answered.

“And did you find what you were looking for…?” Doom inquired.

“Yeah. And then some,” Shadow replied.

“What did you find, if I may ask?” Doom wondered curiously. 

“I found… me. All of me. The parts that make up ‘me’ as everyone knows me to be. Knows… us to be,” Shadow explained. “Shadow, the Ultimate Lifeform…

This is who I… no… We are…” 

Shadow advanced forward and took the spot in the center of the control panel that Doom had once been in mere moments ago, and smiled, as it was ready to face the world once more with a new understanding of themself.

[paradoxrealm]

She sat down beside him in the bench, giggling at his confusion as she pulled the folded paper from her pocket unfolding it to reveal it to be a child's drawing depicting a small family.

Well-

When I say "small", I mean the base family of two parents and three kids is small. When you consider the added family members be it found our naturally from extended family on the parents' sides, it's actually kinda flipping massive-

Each figure in the drawing was "labeled". The drawing consisted of three children all of similar age shown as "Azzy", "Ari", and simply "me" for the child who made the drawing, two parents Moon knew to be Astel and Mikearu (or "Mama" and "Papa" as written in the childish handwriting), and... let's see... One... two... four... FIVE other adults in the drawing, as well as a strange little spirit creature, not including the three shadows behind Astel and Mikearu.

Sweet lord just how big did that family get-

Of the adults there were, "Grandma Arty" shown as a woman with cyan eyes, a ghostly looking knight shown as "Great Grandpa", a man with draconic features shown as "Grandpa McCloy", a woman with fiery features like a phoenix shown as "Grandma 'vita" (DANG these kids have a lot of grandparents even the narrator is just now realizing this, sweet lord-), a hooded... robot??? shown as just "Grandpa", and the little spirit beside the triplets was shown to be "Ori". Sweet lord-

As for the silhouettes behind Astel and Mikearu, there were the obvious two culprits - their Shadows, as shown as "Uncle 'kearu" and "Auntie 'clipse". Wow, looks like someone's gone soft.~

But... that didn't explain the third silhouette. The one right beside Eclipse behind Astel. It was clearly female, looking similarly to Eclipse in nearly every feature aside from a few differences. On namely being her fiery orange eyes that seemed to match the eyes of "Grandma 'vita". And she was shown as "Auntie 'night"... What...?

...Yeah, I'm married.~ To Mikearu actually.~ Who isn't a lich anymore.~ He's actually living now, he's alive.~ And we have three beautiful babies.~ There's Dovah, our oldest, he made the drawing, and the twins Ariella and Asriel.~ Or "Ari and Azzy" as Dovah calls them.~ I know that, to you, it seems so fast. But to me... I've had a few thousand years to get to where I am. A lot of... heartache, love, and loss, and a lot of goodbyes... And I-... ...we made a lot of discoveries. Discoveries that were rough in the moment, but in the end turned out good in the longrun. Because our family grew from them.~ And I don't just mean that metaphorically, as you can probably tell by the obvious new additions.~

I know what I am now.~

And I know who I used to be...~

The new shadow...

_____________

He didn’t give much of a reaction outside of slight nods to show he was listening as he scanned over the paper, trying to line details up with names. “It’s less about the time in which it happened and more about the fact that it did happen.” he hummed. It was mostly because he himself had a hard time imagining any world in which he had a significant other- much less children. “Life choices aside, I take it that’s one of the discoveries?” He tapped at the third shadow on the paper, looking at her as one of his eyebrows quirked up.

[notsocheezy]

Brain Curd #215

Brain Curds are lightly edited daily writing - usually flash fiction and sometimes terrible on purpose.

Cole Nicole would love it if you checked out his portfolio.

It was dark by the time Cole stepped through the front door and plopped down on the couch. He hadn’t worked this hard in a long time. But after two photo shoots, he felt like he’d earned a nap.

Ginger clearly disagreed. She turned on the lamp next to her armchair and crossed her arms. “Where were you today? I told you to get that sand cleaned up.”

Cole groaned and pulled a wad of cash out of his sweatpants pocket. He counted up an amount that seemed reasonable to him and stuck out his hand to give it to her.

“Get Gretchen back.”

~

Cole woke up the next morning feeling refreshed. The sunburn was beginning to fade and he’d caught at least eight hours of sleep. He cracked his knuckles, stretched himself out, and laid back down to get more sleep. That was the plan, anyway.

Ginger came knocking on his bedroom door. “Cole! Cole!”

“What? What?”

She barged in and he covered himself with his blanket.

“Hey! Privacy, please!”

Ginger snorted. “Yeah, as if. Say goodbye to privacy. You’re the hottest thing on the whole internet.”

“Huh?”

She tossed her iPad into his lap. There he was, on the front page of Rolling Stone, with one hand on Rikki’s chin and the other pulling his leash. The headline read, “Rikki Numbers Shadow Drops New Double LP” and the tagline read, “Guess who’s (not) back on top.”

“You’re famous, Cole. You put the most popular femboy of our time on a leash!”

“Technically, he put himself on a leash. But sure.”

Cole read through some of the article. It talked about how this new album, Eclipsed, was some work of artistic genius unseen in the pop space for years. It had already shot up to number one before most of America was awake. “The question on my mind, and that of most music fans, is who is the mystery subject who shares the spotlight with Numbers on the cover? We may not know until the album releases on vinyl next week.”

Cole put down the iPad and looked up at Ginger. “Wait, no one knows who I am yet! Do you think they’ll recognize me?”

She looked him over. The pale sunglasses shape around his eyes stood out immediately.

“Uh… no, absolutely not. No way. On that note…” She took the iPad back. “We’re out of milk and I have a meeting scheduled in twenty minutes. Can you go out and buy some?”

~

“Aaaaaaaaaaaah!” Cole screamed, as he ran down the sidewalk in sandals swinging a paper bag with a milk jug in it.

The cashier had noticed him at the register and blurted out, “It’s the sun prince!” Which sent the whole Trader Joe’s into a frenzy.

Now, a crowd of at least a dozen crazed fangirls chased him down the street, where he hid himself behind some garbage cans in an alley. The deception worked… mostly.

“Hi!” said a voice next to him.

Cole scrambled to get away, but she grabbed his leg.

“I’m your biggest fan!”

“That’s great, thank you! I need to leave!”

“Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“Can I come with you?” She fluttered her eyes.

“Uh… on second thought, I’m going to work. And we’re not allowed guests in the building, so, uh, you won’t be able to come in. Very sorry.” He brushed himself off and called Ginger for help.

“I’m kind of in the middle of something, Cole.”

“Yeah, me too! I was spotted!”

“So?”

“I need a ride. I’m not safe.” He made eye contact with the girl and covered the mouthpiece. “Not that I feel threatened by you of course.”

She nodded, beaming.

Cole whispered. “These people are insane!”

“That’s showbiz.”

“What the hell do you know about showbiz?”

“I’ve watched child star documentaries.”

“Can you stop joking around and come help me?”

She sighed. “Alright. This meeting is just about email policy anyway.”

Please comment, reblog, like, and follow if you enjoyed - I'd love to know what you think! See you again tomorrow.

[softeninglooks]

hori and kashima | all the times i almost kissed you, and the one time i did (gekkan shojo nozaki-kun)

gsnk is one of my all time favorite mangas, so here's a hori/kashima piece in celebration of me finally getting around to watching the anime adaptation. that last summer festival episode got me back into the gsnk feels (•‾⌣‾•)b

“Nozaki-kun, why don’t you take inspiration from Hori-senpai’s real personality for this play? It might be helpful! That way, Kashima-kun wouldn’t be the only star of the play.”

Sitting at his desk, Nozaki scratched the tip of his nose with the gel pen caught between his fingers. Sakura had made a very good point. If inspiration didn’t strike, he could always use the actors as reference points. Hori’s big return to the drama club stage commanded nothing less than a play which complimented—and enhanced—his already admirable acting skills.

Hori was known to be an extraordinary actor by those who had seen him in productions before, but ever since he had stepped down to let Kashima shine, many Roman Academy students didn’t suspect the drama club president’s calling for the stage. With his outstanding ability to mold his character according to the script and rigorous approach to acting, Hori was beyond the shadow of a doubt capable of the most brilliant performances, even in only a student play.

But for this, Hori needed a script. A good script—which is when Nozaki and Sakura came into the picture.

“I’ve always made Kashima into a flirty prince. She’s charismatic, so it makes sense that she would always be under the spotlight. But with this play, we cannot simply rewrite the last play,” Nozaki pondered out loud, staring at the crumpled balls of paper discarded in the bin. “You’re right, Sakura. Maybe if I focus on Hori-senpai more, the right story will come to mind.”

“That’s the spirit, Nozaki-kun! Let’s see, how is Hori-senpai?”

“Meticulous. The perspective in his backgrounds is always flawless.”

“Ah, true!” Sakura pushed the image of hand-drawn underwear to the back of her mind. It would be nothing more than a testament to Hori’s sense of humor. “He’s also really committed to the drama club. He’s always busy with working on sets, and…”

The graphic memory of Hori tackling, kicking, dragging, and punching Kashima in a variety of daily situations finally took center stage in Sakura and Nozaki’s imagination. Despite all of their best efforts, they knew the answer to the question.

“He’s violent and scary,” they agreed, mortified.

“Like an evil spirit who wants to take revenge on their former foe!” A stroke of inspiration came over Nozaki, who asked for Sakura’s approval with a happy look.

“It isn’t a horror play, Nozaki-kun,” she had to cut his exultation short. 

“What about this: since Kashima usually always plays the part of the prince, what if we reverse the roles?”

Nozaki’s sudden excitement passed down to Sakura, who met his suggestion with the same sparks in her widening eyes.

Then a moment of internal deliberation.

“Kashima will take back the role won’t she?” Sakura murmured defeatedly.

They could already picture the scene clearly enough: Kashima, even in the most elegant and queenly attire, would deliver her lines in the smoothest voice and readily grab the nearest sword to fly to the prince’s rescue, eclipsing all other actors. Knowing Hori, he would even encourage such a reversal by praising her princely features. In the Roman Academy drama club, the part of the prince existed solely through Kashima, its beating heart and charming face.

“Then let’s… Make Hori-senpai into the princess?”

“Nozaki-kun, I’m not sure Senpai… I mean, do you think he could pull that off?”

“He could be a princess disguised as a soldier who fights undercover to reclaim her kingdom, which was taken over by an enemy king. Kashima can play the part of the future prince, an officer who helps the princess take back her kingdom!” Nozaki perked up. “Which means senpai will get to be the main character, it won’t only be Kashima under the spotlight! And then the princess reveals her tragic past to the officer, who was by her side all along to help her, and they get married! So he becomes the prince!”

“Your imagination sure is wild, Nozaki-kun… But this could work! I mean, Hori-senpai is always happy when Kashima plays the prince, right? And because he’ll be a princess disguised as a soldier, there are only minor costume changes for senpai, which will make it easier for him to play.”

“Then it’s decided! I’ll write a good play for Hori-senpai!” Nozaki clutched the pen in his hand with determination. 

Standing by the drama club stage, Hori meticulously leafed through the script handed to him by Nozaki. After the initial shock at the sight of the casting, with the role of princess printed next to his name, he still gave his trusted friend a chance, in any case thankful for Nozaki’s serious work when it came to fulfilling his end of their bargain. And there was nothing to be said: Nozaki surpassed himself with this play. 

“Senpai, Nozaki-kun, Chiyo-chan, what are you all doing? Let me in!”

As expected, Kashima was quick to join the group. She leant over Hori’s shoulder, lips curled into an expressive pout to plead her case.

“This is the play Nozaki-kun wrote!” Sakura informed her optimistically, pointing at the notebook in Hori’s hands.

“Oh, really?! What’s it about? Who will succumb to my charm, this time?” Kashima winked at her small audience.

Hori scratched the back of his head, cheeks reddening from what seemed like an ongoing inner debate (and presumable annoyance at Kashima’s attempts to read the script over his shoulder), and finally slapped his hand over the script decidedly. “Alright. I’ll do it. Nozaki, I trust your script.”

“That’s wonderful, Hori-senpai!” Sakura cheered, while Nozaki celebrated their victory with a joyful “yosh!”

“Kashima, you’ll be a kind of prince. An army general who becomes the prince at the end of the story. And…” Hori cleared his throat, avoiding Kashima’s quizzical gaze, and in the most matter-of-factly tone stated: “I’ll be the princess.”

“The princess?!” 

“A princess who goes undercover as a soldier!” He explained hotly. “Because I can save myself.”

“But what about me? Is it not a prince’s role to save the treasure dearest to him?” Kahsima flashed a languid smile at Hori and was met with a violent kick. 

“Does the drama club just put on the same production every time?” Sakura deadpanned, at which Hori sighed softly.

“Don’t worry, senpai! I’ll make your dream come true!” Kashima vowed wholeheartedly.

This time, a hopeful light swept across Hori’s face—might she mean that she will do her best to work hard and perform her best? Kashima, of course, meant that she would carry Hori princess-style, as she had guessed he secretly dreamed of from the shadows backstage. (She got it all wrong.)

“Kashima-kun!” A member of the drama club called out Kashima’s name, which had the immediate effect of having her forget entirely about the matter at hand. The girl approached her with hopeful eyes, holding a heavy stage prop. “I need someone to hold this side while I fix this part. Could you please help me, Kashima-kun?” She pleaded, cheeks flushed from Kashima’s magnetic appeal (not an unusual sight).

“Of course, my princess. I wouldn’t be your prince if I couldn’t help you, could I?”

And just like that, Kashima scurried away with the rejoicing girl, Nozaki’s script already long forgotten.

“Kashima! You better come back here!” Hori yelled after her, before apologizing to his friends for Kashima’s dissipated behavior. “I’ll make sure that she reads it, though I have to say I can’t complain about her when it comes to acting. She may not look like it at first, but she gets the job done,” he admitted, a faint smile showing through the exasperated look that crossed his face.

“She’s practically always in character, isn’t she,” Sakura chuckled worriedly. “Do you think Hori-senpai and Kashima-kun will make it out alive? I don’t know if Hori-senpai will kill Kashima-kun first, or if he’ll die from how much it takes to keep Kashima-kun focused,” she whispered to Nozaki. 

“By the way, Senpai, how are rehearsals going?”

“Ah,” Hori sighed deeply from his seat in front of Nozaki’s table, fingers coming to a still over the background he had been sketching. “Kashima has no trouble with playing the general/prince part. To be honest, I’m the one who’s struggling…,” he trailed off, running a tired hand through his hair. “Every time Kashima tries to treat my character like a princess before the big reveal, it takes everything in me not to send her flying across the stage. It’ll ruin the emotional scene if she keeps doing that.”

“You have sent her flying across the room, haven’t you?” Sakura interjected, unfazed.

“On multiple occasions,” Hori admitted under his breath. “So, basically, she’s acting too princely. The point is that people don’t know the princess is the princess until she trusts the general enough to tell him, which is the big plot-twist. And then the audience will come to admire the princess even more because of everything she sacrificed to protect her people and take back the kingdom. But because I’m playing the princess, Kashima is even more forceful than usual…”

Nozaki nodded happily in return, elated at Hori’s thorough understanding of the play—and completely unconcerned by his friend’s struggles.

“True, the audience has to believe you’re just a normal soldier, so that the emotional scene makes a real impact. The general himself doesn’t know. But it’s not so easy for Kashima to contain her princely behavior,” Sakura commented empathetically. “Good luck, Hori-senpai! I’m sure that you’ll do your best and do justice to Nozaki-kun’s script.”

“You two really have no idea how to help me, do you?”

“Why don’t you try rehearsing separately, Hori-senpai? Kashima-kun is always so excited when you act, so if she rehearses with someone else, she might not be distracted as easily.”

“Now that you say it, we could try that,” Hori nodded thoughtfully, chin resting on the back of his hand. “I just want to get her focused so she can play her best.”

“Then try that, Hori-senpai! We could help, right, Nozaki-kun? Mikoshiba-kun?”

“Sure.”

“Of course,” the corners of Mikoshiba’s lips curled into a confident smile, aimed at Sakura with no timidity. “You know you can always count on me to get the job done.”

As most times with Mikoshiba, his self-assurance waned as soon as it was time to rise to the occasion. Not that Mikoshiba didn’t put all of his good will into helping Hori and taking on the part of the undercover princess, but Kashima didn’t facilitate the matter at hand. In fact, Sakura and Nozaki wondered if rehearsal hadn’t been more successful when Hori himself had played the part. 

Even though at this stage of the play the prince and princess were still merely comrades in arms, Kashima evidently gave Mikoshiba special treatment. A gentlemanly hand extended to lift him back up after a tumultuous battle, a flirtatious word of encouragement surreptitiously whispered into his ear, a gentle hand brushing his arm to make sure that he wasn’t hurt. Kashima’s princely manners, paired with Mikoshiba’s flushed cheeks and stammering attempts to stick to the script, blew his cover in a matter of seconds.

“Let’s have Nozaki-kun play Hori-senpai’s role,” Sakura patted Mikoshiba’s shoulder, taking the crumpled script from him to pass it over to Nozaki. “That might work better.”

Cue to Nozaki delivering his lines in the flattest of tones, brandishing his sword mechanically as he staved off imaginary opponents.

“I will save this kingdom,” he raised his voice, still with no significant modulation in his countenance.

“You’re my greatest solider. Your love for this kingdom is admirable.” Later in the play, the general came to congratulate his winning army for their valorous feats on the battlefield. Extending his hand to Nozaki, Kashima looked deeply into his eyes. “I have no doubt that if you keep doing your duty, you will be promoted to higher ranks.”

“I am not doing this for honor.” The line, strong and bitter, resonant with all the princess’s love and determination to save her home, came out monotonously from Nozaki. “I want to save my people, that is all.”

Nozaki did try, bless his soul. But it seemed like acting was not exactly the playwright’s calling, nor a way to enthuse those around him. Kashima’s own eagerness petered out along with his passive interpretation.

“Hori-senpai will kill us if we break Kashima…!” A horrified Mikoshiba choked beside Sakura. “Sakura, you take Nozaki’s place.”

“Me? But I’ve never tried acting before…”

“Because you think Nozaki has?!”

“You have a point, Mikorin.”

“Chiyo-chan!” Kashima waved excitedly, welcoming a flustered Sakura on stage. “No need to be so nervous,” she took her friend’s hand into hers, bowing before her with long lids half-drawn over her eyes. “You know I will always come and save you.”

“Sakura… I believed in you…” Mikoshiba lamented through gritted teeth.

But then Sakura opened the script, clearing her throat to give herself courage, and started reading her lines in the strongest voice she could muster.

“General, let me join your army. I wish to help you save the kingdom I grew up in, and repay the king for everything he did for us.”

“I know a brave man when I see one.” Immediately, Kashima’s princely aura sparkled about her, invisible but palpable to all spectators, a magnetic force enthralling all eyes. “Let me warn you that if you join my army, you have to be prepared to make sacrifices. Though I will do everything in my power to watch over you.” With this, Kashima took a step closer, hand flying to rest on Sakura’s shoulder.

“Yes, sir. I will do everything to take back our kingdom,” Sakura’s assertive declaration boomed across the stage, insensitive to Kashima’s charming demeanor.

Sakura! Mikoshiba clenched his fist victoriously with a proud grin. She only has eyes for Nozaki, so she’s completely immune to Kashima!

“How are rehearsals with Kashima going?”

“Thanks to Sakura, rehearsals are going well. What about you, Hori-senpai?”

“Well… How do I put this…” With arms crossed over his chest, Hori’s gaze mindlessly fell onto the manga panels lined up before him. “When someone else plays the prince part, I just can’t take them seriously.” His eyebrows drew together out of barely contained frustration and he slammed his hands on the table. “Kashima is the drama club’s prince! That part is hers!”

“But there are only a few days left before the big debut. Won’t you rehearse together at least once?”

“I really don’t want to ruin all our efforts before the premiere… Worse comes to worst, I’ll adapt to whatever Kashima does on stage. We can’t let everything we did go to waste. If things go badly in rehearsal the day before… I don’t even want to think about it.”

“You really feel strongly about this play, Hori-senpai,” Nozaki beamed, touched by Hori’s commitment to the story.

“Who knows when I get to go on stage again, so I kinda want to make most of it, you know?” 

Hori’s crossed expression softened, giving way to a meditative look. With a small smile, he sighed, picking his pen back up to trace the outline of the next background. Not to mention that it’ll be my first time properly acting alongside Kashima, and I don’t think I’ll ever come across a better prince than her.

“Chiyo-chan…” On the other end of the situation, Kashima’s lifeless voice sounded like a cry for help. “I haven’t seen senpai today… Have you seen him…?” She asked desperately, a look of overwhelming sadness distorting her usually cheerful features into a disheartened pout.

“Kashima-kun… There, there,” Sakura patted her back with compassion, trying to reassure her friend. “YHe’s been rehearsing for the play with Wakamatsu-kun.”

“Does he hate me now?”

“Absolutely not, Kashima-kun! He’s doing that so both of you can concentrate while you rehearse, it’s a momentary measure! You’ll get to see him again soon.”

“But he doesn’t even go looking for me anymore,” she sulked. “He hasn’t even kicked me today!”

“Kashima-kun… You should sort out your priorities.”

The premiere took place two weeks later.

The joyous beams of spotlights swept across the filling room, landing onto the curtain drawn over the yet empty stage. An impatient trepidation rustled in the air, hushed voices speculated on the drama club’s new play, gushed over Kashima, and waited for the chime that announced the beginning of the production. The news that Masayuki Hori, president of the drama club, would himself star in the play alongside Kashima after so long drew even more curious eyes to the show. 

“I’m sure that Hori-senpai and Kashima-kun will do their best and make the script you’ve written come to life, Nozaki-kun,” Sakura commented keenly, sat between Nozaki and Mikoshiba.

“Yes, they’ve been working hard,” Nozaki seemed just as excited in his own way.

“Kashima and I have been doing great,” Mikoshiba puffed out his chest proudly. “She’s more than ready.”

“Let’s just hope that acting with Hori-senpai won’t have the opposite effect…”

Another few minutes of mounting anticipation, and the lights went off with a soft clank, extinguishing the ambient swish of bubbling voices. A single halo remained alit over the stage, an invitation for the actors to occupy the space opened for them as the curtain lifted. 

“There we go!” Sakura whispered with growing enthusiasm.

Walking out of the wings with his head held up firmly, Hori stepped into the spotlight, a hand clasped over the sword pressed against his thigh. Clad in period military attire, his gazed fixed on a distant point along the horizon, beyond the room, he addressed the audience in a strong voice.

“I have sworn to protect our people and our land with my life, if need be. Today, the time has come to fulfill that promise, or perish. While we lament the death of our unjustly slain king, we cannot remain defeated and remorseful. We must honor the late king by taking back our kingdom. We must deliver our people from the rule of a newly come tyrant whose army is wreaking havoc in the country and decimating homes that were built after years of toil, with love and care.” Hori slowly revealed his weapon’s sharp blade, glistening under the direct light. He glanced at it, the ever so light trace on sadness on his features solidifying into resolve. “I have sworn to protect our people and our land with my life. The time has come. To the general I go, to offer him my services in the kingdom’s army.”

He sheathed the sword and strode away, only the clicking of his heels cutting through the silence. The audience held its breath, enthralled by the drama club’s president mastery of his craft, as if a soldier of the past had truly materialized before them, sharing the poignant story of his kingdom and goals with the spectators. 

 “President!” 

Backstage, Hori was greeted with congratulatory hands over his shoulders and impressed smiles from his fellow club members.

“Hori-senpai, you were brilliant! Let’s keep going!”

“Kashima-kun, you go on stage now.”

Kashima was dragged away before she could congratulate Hori, but the fervent glow in her eyes and rosy excitement splashed across her cheeks spoke a language that did not need words. Hori’s acting was nothing short of prodigious! She drew on all of her resources to keep her cool and stay in character not to disappoint him.

Heaving a deep sigh of relief, Hori took his place in the wings and waited for his cue to join Kashima on stage. Now that the play had begun, all the built-up tension tumbled off his shoulders, leaving room for unabashed enjoyment, the delight to act again and see Kashima, his homegrown prince, flawlessly deliver her lines as the army general.

Sakura and Nozaki had been right—perhaps their separate rehearsals did add a sparkle of magic to the performance. It may have been to keep Kashima focused, but watching from backstage, her acting came to Hori as a discovery all over again; a jewel that one day washed up on the shore unannounced, brought by the waves of luck. With Kashima’s arrival, life was breathed into the characters living in Hori’s stories, like colors that lit up a black-and-white world, and brought daylight into each day.

True, there had been a fair share of complications, swarms of distracting visitors who came to see Kashima in the drama club room, expeditions through the school to bring her to rehearsal, and a whole lot of mischief. But above all else, Hori was grateful to have found his person, the one who set the standard in his life, no matter how many times he had had to put up with her antics and kick her back to reality.

“You’re my greatest solider. Your love for this kingdom is admirable. I have no doubt that if you keep doing your duty, you will be promoted to general.”

They stood together on stage. Kashima extended her hand for Hori to shake, a thankful and solemn gesture that presaged nothing of the crucial revelation to come. If internally, Kashima was close to combusting from the happiness of sharing the same stage with Hori, she betrayed no unnecessary emotion besides recognition of her soldier’s bravery.

In a matter of seconds, of words confessed under the now dim stage lighting, the course of the play would be altered. 

“I am not doing this for honor.” Hori clasped the hand presented to him by Kashima briefly, then let go. “I want to save my people, that is all.”

“Still, I greatly appreciate your loyalty. Where do you come from, soldier?”

“Ah, general, sir, I am afraid I could not tell you the truth on this occasion.”

“Why is that? We just risked our lives together, which I hope would be sufficient enough for me to have gained your trust. No matter what your past is, whatever wrong you may have done, I can guarantee that your devotion to the kingdom wipes the slate clean.”

“It is not a wrong which I have done, general. In fact… Ah,” a melancholy smile passed by Hori’s lips as he looked away from Kashima, making his voice sound higher than usual. “It is not my past which I wish to conceal, but my true identity. You see, if I love this kingdom so much…” He hesitated, taking a few steps forward, then lifted his head back up with determination. “It is because I am the late king’s daughter,” Hori’s dignified declaration resounded through the room. “I could not hide and remain idle when our enemies have so trampled our fellow countrymen’s homes.”

“The late king’s— daughter?!”

Stifled gasps reverberated through the audience, and Sakura caught Nozaki victoriously pumping his fist out of the corner of her eye. Mikoshiba, on the other hand, sniffled softly, staring at the stage through a glossy film of tears. Hori’s interpretation, the sudden gentleness washing over his until then hardened features, his fleeting glance directed at Kashima, became one with the princess searching for a kind soul to hear her story; he took her from the pages of the script, and made her come onto the stage.

“Indeed, general.”

“But—”

“To join your army, there are some things I have had to sacrifice, but none of them come close to all the suffering endured by our people. Long hair and sumptuous clothes are a small price to pay in exchange for the safety of this kingdom, are they not?”

“Princess… Your majesty, I am sorry you have had to—”

“There is no need for this, general. I am still the same soldier, sir. I will keep doing my best to save our kingdom.”

From then on, Kashima had permission to fall back into the patterns she knew by heart, her prince-charming act which had seduced so many. And yet, going through the final act of the play, each of Kashima’s gestures seemed to bear a gravity unusual to Hori. To see her so focused had always been deeply gratifying, but this—this felt different.

Kashima was not merely inhabiting the fantasy world created by the drama club as the prince everyone knew her to be, but she, as the commanding army general and future prince, paid attention to the princess, who before anything else had been a comrade, a soldier and a friend whose commitment stemmed from a shared love for their kingdom. Kashima protected Hori’s back as if it were the whole world she meant to push back, and when she helped him stand back up, the tenderness at the tip of her fingertips prickled Hori’s skin. 

He had never seen Kashima so entirely absorbed in a play; so breathtakingly beautiful from up close, with her face bathed in light, and the next line spilling from her lips, keeping up with Hori’s intense acting. They had just defeated the enemy king, and there she was descending to her knees, looking up at Hori with clear green eyes that held in them the warmth of an unconstrained smile.

“Your majesty, I thank you for your help and the valor you demonstrated as a soldier. Please allow me to say just these few words, and if they are not to your liking, dismiss me at once. I speak no longer as your general, but as someone whom you once confided in, and who since then fell in love in the line of battle, against all odds.” Kashima’s hand touched the left side of her chest, where beat her heart, then extended her open palm toward Hori. A few misplaced strands of hair brushed her forehead, beads of sweat darkened her hairline. Hori was never more confident that she was his star. “I love you. Will you have me?”

“General, rise.” Hori took Kashima’s hand in his, lifting her up from her knees, and his thumb rubbed a featherlight circle into her knuckles. “I am grateful for your help—and for keeping my secret safe. I will have you. You see, those feelings are quite mutual,” he cracked a smile, locking eyes with Kashima.

The last line of the script read ‘the prince and princess kiss.’

“Chiyo-chan! Nozaki-kun! Mikoshiba-kun! Hori-senpai told me I was the best kouhai! You hear that, the best kouhai!”

“That’s what you’re going to remember?!”

[chatonne-rousse]

Turtle-y Awesome

@sketchy-panda sent me the following ask last week:

...and this is the story that sprang from that ask. You never know what you're going to get when you share a headcanon with me! 😉

Read it on Ao3 here.

"...et puit, quand il fut bien certain que personne ne pouvait le voir, Benjamin alluma sa veilleuse."

Adrien turns the last worn page and sets the book beside his knee on Hugo's bed.

"What do you think, kitten? Benjamin was turtle-y being a scaredy-cat, wasn't he?"

Hugo giggles, eyes bright. "He's not a cat, Papa, he's a turtle!"

Adrien nods sagely at his son. "Right you are," he says, patting the book's cover. "If this book tortoise anything, it's that Benjamin is definitely a turtle."

The number of turtle puns in the world is finite, and Hugo has heard his dad tell them all repeatedly, but he still laughs every time. The sound is music to Adrien's ears. He grins as he leans down to tuck the duvet around Hugo's shoulders and lifts his son's dark fringe to place a kiss on his forehead.

"Can we read another story, Papa? I'm not even tired."

Hugo's big green eyes scrunch shut as he yawns widely.

"Mmhmm. I can tell. You know what?" Adrien grabs another stuffed turtle from the bookcase and tucks it in beside the Carapace plushie already cradled in Hugo's arms. "Monsieur Vert looks very tired. He was almost sleeping over there! Maybe if you hold him really, really gently, that will help him fall asleep. I'm sure Carapace is tuckered out after a long day of superheroing, too."

"He is," Hugo says, nodding. He strokes his little hand up and over Monsieur Vert's soft shell. "I'll help them, Papa."

Adrien smiles even as his chest squeezes with emotion. "I know you will, my kind-hearted kitten." He can't resist pressing another kiss to Hugo's forehead and delights in receiving a loud, smacking kiss to his own cheek in return.

The turtle lamp on the nightstand is switched off and the Carapace nightlight beside the bookshelf activates, dim light glowing green through the plastic.

"Bonne nuit, ma petite tortue."

He watches his son cuddle his turtle and Carapace close as the closing door slowly eclipses the bed in shadow from the hallway light. Leaving the door open a crack, Adrien listens for a moment as Hugo gets comfortable in his bed.

He smiles as he pads down the hall toward Emma's room to join his wife for another round of goodnight kisses for their precious kittens.

*****

"Kitty, this is getting ridiculous. How is that the only thing he wants for his birthday?" Marinette shakes her head, but her grin betrays her lack of any real annoyance.

Adrien rubs his face and groans. "I know. Believe me, I know. Can you imagine if Nino knew?"

That surprises her. "You haven't told him? I told Alya ages ago when he said Carapace was his favorite." She thinks for a moment. "I don't think I've shared the, um...depth of the obsession, though."

He stares at her, deadpan, before they both laugh.

"Turtles I could handle, Mari. They're cute. They're green." He bats his eyes at her and she swats his arm playfully. "But Carapace? Carapace? When Chat Noir is right there? I don't get it."

"Awww, Chaton. Is my kitty jealous?"

"Of course not," he says, pouting, though he can't keep up the ruse and his smile breaks through. "Okay, maybe a little."

"Nino made a wonderful hero, and is the perfect holder for Wayzz, and you know it."

She scooches closer to him on the sofa and rubs his back gently. His eyes close for just a moment before opening them to find his wife gazing at him with what might just be his favorite look in her eyes - a teasing glint, a touch of heat, and an endless well of love. Everything goes fuzzy momentarily, but he catches her next words clearly.

"Besides, my favorite hero will always be Chat Noir. Always."

"Yeah?" he breathes.

She nods.

Her eyes go wide when he hauls her petite frame from the sofa beside him and settles her across his lap. She laughs as she wraps her arms around his neck and presses a kiss to his lips.

"What a coincidence, My Lady," he murmurs into the whisper of space between them, "because my favorite hero--" He pauses, kissing her again, "is also Chat Noir."

There's a beat of silence and then she's laughing, pressing her face into the crook of his neck to muffle her giggles. His arms tighten around her shaking shoulders as he laughs along with her, swept away by the sweet sound he will always love. There's no joy in the world quite like making his wife laugh.

"You know I'm kidding, Bug," he finally whispers into her hair when their laughter subsides. "Emma and I share a favorite hero. The greatest of all. Prettiest, too. Oh, wow, is she ever beautiful. And strong. And smart."

"Rena Rouge?" Marinette asks cheekily, her nose still pressed to his neck.

"Nooooo," he croons, tickling her sides until she laughs again. "It's Ladybug, jumping above, Lady magique et lady chance!"

"Kitty, no!" she begs through her giggles, "Don't get that in my head!"

"Too late!"

He silences the last of her laughter when he captures her lips with his, twin sighs mingling in the late-night quiet of the living room.

With forever in his arms and their shared future asleep down the hall, Adrien simply loses himself in this blissful moment, forgetting that their baby will turn five next weekend, that the passage of time is as inevitable as the dichotomy of creation and destruction. Wrapped up in his wife, time seems to stop altogether. Marinette - her love, her care, their unshakeable bond - is eternal.

But of course, the clock still ticks. And when they part a few minutes later, after one last kiss and a nuzzle of her nose against his, he still has to ask.

"So we're really throwing Hugo a Carapace-themed birthday party?"

She nods. "Yep."

"And we're buying him the new Shell-ter Secret Hideout Super Bunker, complete with Carapace action figure, power-ups, costume changes, a Turtle-mobile sports car that Nino never had, and four different colored shields that he also never had?"

"There's a jet, too, for some reason. But...yep."

Adrien nods slowly, a smile spreading across his face. "He's going to love it."

"Oh, he is," she affirms, her grin matching her husband's. "And so is Uncle Nino."

He snorts a laugh and pulls her close once more, breathing in the familiar scent of her shampoo.

"This'll be hilarious."

Marinette smiles against his shoulder.

"Yep."

*****

Everything is green.

Their normally colorful apartment seems to have transformed into an emerald dreamscape that doubles as a turtle sanctuary.

Everything is green, and there are turtles everywhere.

Sea turtles, tortoises, turtles of all kinds - including a certain turtle-themed superhero - adorn every surface. Adrien had been surprised by the amount of Carapace party merchandise he was able to find online. He's used to the numerous Carapace items in Hugo's bedroom, pieces he's added to his collection one by one over the past year or so. But this, his best friend's face dangling from streamers, emblazoned on little party hats, is just a little weird.

He's proud, though. A little jealous, a lot amused, and very, very proud. No desperately sad, pitifully lonely teenage boy has ever found a better friend than Nino Lahiffe. He's the brother of his heart, the mellow to his anxious, the staunch protector of their little group of best friends and hero teammates. Adrien has to admit that Hugo has great taste in favorite superheroes.

Someday he'll discover that his idol is also his Uncle Nino, but today is not that day. Today, the magic and wonder still shines in his son's eyes, and it's a beautiful thing.

Adrien putters around the kitchen making last-minute preparations to the food and drink selection, making sure there are plenty of cups and plates (all printed with a Carapace action scene, of course) stacked on the island. Oddly, he couldn't find Carapace napkins to go along with the other paper goods, but Marinette had saved the day by snagging a pack of sea turtle patterned napkins that coordinated perfectly in a pinch.

He smiles at the thought of his resourceful bug, his grin widening as he hears her welcome guests at the door. This is followed by a squeal of glee when Hugo and two of his classmates run off to his bedroom to play. Adrien shakes his head, still smiling. He'll have to lure them out in a bit with snacks and the promise of gifts and cake.

It's not like he doesn't already know from several years of experience that children's birthday parties are mostly adults mingling and intermittently making sure the kids don't get into too much mischief as they play together.

He takes the spinach quiche from the oven where it was warming up and sets it on the table with the other food, rebelliously placing a black potholder with a neon green pawprint pattern under the hot ceramic dish.

A towering, tiered tray of green macarons has pride of place on the dining room table, the top half of each cookie painted to look like a turtle's shell in edible glittering gold. They look almost too pretty to eat, and the same goes for the expertly-decorated turtle cake nearby, made by Hugo's grandparents and brought straight from the bakery for his big day.

The vegetable plate is an array of green, from broccoli to peppers to celery. The party has barely begun, but the celery is already running low, thanks to Emma's clandestine snacking in the hours beforehand.

Everything is green, and Hugo loves it. And that's what it's all about, really.

*****

Adrien is on his way back from checking in on the now half dozen kids playing in Hugo's room when he hears Alya's laughter from the entryway. Clearly she's spotted the party decor. He rounds the corner to find Marinette hugging her best friend, Alya's pregnant belly only getting in the way a bit and not stopping her from throwing her arms around Marinette's shoulders.

"Sorry we're late, Mari," she says, then pitches her voice to a stage whisper. "I had to pee. Twice." She leans back from the hug and cradles her bump. "Actually, I'm just going to..." She points down the hall, and Marinette laughs.

"Go for it, Als. We've all been there."

Nino is still crouched by the door, helping his daughter out of her jacket and shoes. He just shakes his head and laughs. She races off to find her "cousins" and Nino stands, kissing Marinette on each cheek and wrapping Adrien in a hug.

Surveying the apartment over Adrien's shoulder, he claps him on the back and says, "I love what you've done with the place. Very inspired design choice."

Adrien rolls his eyes and all three of them laugh.

"Hugo is obsessed with turtles. You have no idea."

"Oh, I think he has some idea, Minou." Marinette smiles at her husband over her shoulder, linking arms with Alya when she joins them again and ushering her into the green-bedecked living room.

He glances sidelong at Nino with a sheepish grin. "This isn't too weird for you, is it? It was all Hugo's idea. He hasn't stopped talking about his 'Carapace Turtle Party' for weeks," Adrien says, air quotes included.

"Nah, mec, it's cool. Kind of flattering." Nino raises an eyebrow and laughs. "What do you think he'll say when you tell him someday?"

Adrien just shakes his head. "Probably ask if you can adopt him and be his dad instead." His smile is teasing but just a touch rueful.

Nino laughs again. "No way, man. Number one, I've already got enough kids. Number two, you're the best dad. They love you like crazy, bro. Seriously."

His chest fills with warmth. Nino is such an incredible friend. And he's right (about the last bit, at least).

"They're incredible, Nino. Being a dad is..." He trails off, unable to find the words.

"I know, dude." He claps Adrien on the shoulder. "They're a pain in the ass, but they make up for it by being totally awesome."

Nino glances around, finally spotting the table full of green food and turtle-themed treats.

"Wait. Bro. Is that a turtle cake?"

*****

"You know," Nino says a few minutes later, washing down a matcha macaron with a swig of turtle punch, "I could get used to this. It would mess with my head, but after a while--" he looks at the cup with his face on it and shrugs, "it's not so strange. Better than having my face plastered on a billboard outside the Galeries Lafayette."

Adrien groans. "Et tu, Brute? Why would you remind me of that?"

"Because I can." Nino takes another bite of macaron and nudges his best friend's shoulder, laughing.

*****

As the kids snack and carry on, Adrien finally decides it's time to let his best friend see the Carapace shrine that is his son's bedroom.

Nino takes in Hugo's completely green, turtle-filled bedroom as Adrien waits with bated breath beside him for his reaction.

It is, as usual, relatively chill.

"Little dude has good taste!"

"Indeed." Wayzz peeks from Nino's collar with a pleased smile on his face. "The turtle has always symbolized wisdom, strength, and longevity." His tiny smile widens. "I'm also partial to the color green."

Nino steps farther into Hugo's room to examine the bookcase. "I...did not know they made this much Carapace merch."

"Believe me, there's more. We have to draw the line somewhere." Adrien closes his eyes and sighs. "Although he does brush his teeth with a Carapace toothbrush."

Nino's laugh starts as a snort and builds when he spots the Carapace wastebasket beside Hugo's bed and the Carapace plushie propped against his pillow. It turns positively raucous when he sees his best friend's face.

"Holy crap, dude," he wheezes. "This is hilarious. You must be so jealous."

"I am not!"

"You totally are."

"Well--" Adrien sputters, "Marinette is, too!"

"Not as much as you are, Kitty!" she calls from the living room.

Adrien throws his hands in the air. Nino doubles over.

"Chat Noir is cool, too," he mutters, petulant.

A still-laughing Nino pats his arm consolingly. "If it makes you feel any better, Chat Noir is my favorite hero...after Rena Rouge."

That actually does make him feel better, but he's not telling Nino that. Instead, he just grins a sly half-smile at his best friend. "Good save, man."

"Hey, I know which side my bread is buttered on, mec. Don't act like you don't."

Adrien is helpless to the smile that spreads across his face.

Nino groans. "You've been married for seven years, dude. Are you ever not going to go all gooey just thinking about Marinette?"

Adrien quirks an eyebrow and glances sidelong at him. Nino nods once and pats Adrien's shoulder.

"That was a dumb question, wasn't it?"

"Yep," Marinette says from the hallway behind them.

Adrien's heart beats faster at the twinkle in her eye. He wonders how much she heard. Probably all of it - she always did have sonic hearing, but motherhood seemed to ramp it up to eleven. Not much escapes his wife.

"Time for cake and presents," she announces. "Nino, you can revel in Hugo's Carapace shrine later."

"And I will, don't you worry," Nino says with a laugh as he turns to head back to the party.

Adrien throws an arm over his best friend's shoulder and smiles brightly at Marinette.

Hugo has merch, but Adrien has a real, live Ladybug who promised eternity to her Chat Noir. He holds his own favorite superhero in his arms every night, and nothing, nothing compares to that.

*****

Surrounded by wrapping paper and bows, the birthday boy sits on the floor with one last gift in front of him. The box is taller than he is when seated, and he has to stand up on his knees to tear the paper off the top. As soon as he can see what's inside, he shouts with glee and jumps to his feet. Overjoyed, he scampers around the coffee table to his parents, first thanking Marinette with a hug and kiss, then getting swept up in Adrien's arms for a bear hug.

The fact that Hugo doesn't push away from him to return to his barely-unwrapped gift is not lost on him, nor is the fact that he abandoned it and thought to thank them first in his excitement.

Sometimes Adrien feels like he's been given so much more than he deserves. Marinette alone is a blessing beyond his imagination, but Emma and Hugo, too? It's too much and he knows it, so he holds them close and relishes every single moment like this one with his little boy hugging him tight and murmuring thanks into his neck.

A few minutes later finds Hugo examining every detail of his new treasure (after Adrien wrangled all the parts out of their plastic-encased prison).

He claps his hands when he sees that this set comes with a bonus Chat Noir action figure in addition to Carapace and his shields of many colors.

"Maman!" he cries, jubilant, holding Chat Noir above his head so she can see. "Look! It has Chat Noir! You love Chat Noir!"

Blushing, Marinette pointedly avoids looking in the direction of the two moms of Hugo's school friends who've stayed for the party but smiles widely at her son. "I do. He's my favorite superhero of all time."

Hugo nods, turning to his dad where he sits beside him on the floor, struggling to snip the tiny plastic anchors holding each piece to the cardboard backing.

"See, Papa? He's Carapace's sidekick."

"Hey!" Adrien says indignantly. He looks up from the mess of cardboard and plastic in his lap as Marinette, Alya, and Nino laugh.

Nino, best bro that he is, chimes in. "Nah, little man, Chat Noir is no one's sidekick. He's way too brave and cool for that." He grins at Hugo and points first to the Carapace action figure on the coffee table and then to Chat Noir in his hand. "They're a team. Best friends and superheroes at the same time. That's why they're so awesome."

Hugo looks at the Chat Noir figure for a long moment. "Wow," he breathes. "Chat Noir is as cool as Carapace." He says it like a revelation that's rocked his entire worldview.

Alya sniffles and Marinette hands her a tissue.

"Okay, but Ladybug is still the coolest," Emma pipes up from Hugo's other side.

All the adults besides Marinette nod. Adrien reaches around Hugo to pat Emma's back.

"You're absolutely correct, kitten."

Marinette blushes again and Alya blows her nose.

Hugo tucks Carapace into the driver's seat of the Turtle-mobile with Chat Noir beside him as his passenger, racing the sports car across the rug toward his friends so they can play with his new toys, too.

Adrien looks from his son to his own best friend, and Nino gives him a thumbs up and a grin.

*****

Later, when the dishes are washed and their living room looks slightly less like a turtle habitat, Adrien sits on the sofa with a cup of tea and watches Hugo play with his new, treasured birthday gifts. The Shell-ter Secret Hideout Super Bunker is open, its many accessories strewn around Hugo where he sits cross-legged, Carapace in his left hand and Chat Noir in his right.

"I'll protect you!" "Carapace" cries, Hugo's voice pitched to sound brave and true but still carrying his sweet child's tone.

"Thank you for keeping My Lady safe, Carapace!"

Adrien snorts a surprised laugh into his tea. "Chat Noir" speaks in a husky growl, though Hugo gives him a note of cheery confidence, as though he truly appreciates Carapace's brave deeds, as though Chat Noir can take the decisive cataclysmic swing knowing his beloved partner is safe from harm.

And honestly, Hugo has the right of it. Adrien wonders how his son could possibly know that this exact scene - with slightly different dialogue, of course - played out many times over, years before he was born.

Hugo mimics the sound of an explosion, then an "oof!" as Chat Noir falls to his back but springs up again quickly. Just as Carapace returns to Chat's side with a confident, "What can I do to help save the day, Chat Noir?", Marinette's hands snake around Adrien's shoulders from behind, surprising him.

He sets his mug on a coaster on the end table and wraps his hands around her forearms, pulling her in closer. Leaned over the back of the sofa, she nuzzles his cheek with hers before pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

"I think we pulled off the dream turtle party pretty well, don't you, Chaton?"

"Oh, we turtle-y did."

Adrien delights in the huff of laughter she exhales against his cheek. That might be the most overused pun in the house, but sometimes it still lands just right. They watch Hugo play, matching grins making their cheeks press closer together.

"Looks like that was one shell of a gift, eh?"

He swoons dramatically, his head falling to the back cushion of the sofa so he looks at Marinette upside-down. "My Lady, you know what it does to me when you pun."

"Oh, I do," she says, completely unapologetic, and boops his nose.

He just has to lean up to kiss her because, well, she's so beautiful and he loves her so much and she's right there.

They break apart a moment later when they hear Emma call for Marinette from her bedroom. She plants one last upside-down kiss on his forehead and lets her hands drift slowly across his chest and shoulders as she stands.

She gives him a wry smile. "Duty calls."

"Hmmm," he hums thoughtfully, picking up his tea and taking another sip. "And here I thought her name was Emma."

Marinette groans at him as she walks away, and the sound catches Hugo's attention.

"Papa? Will you play superheroes with me?"

Of course. Always. I will never, ever be too busy for my kittens, he thinks.

"Sure, buddy," he says instead.

Finishing his tea in one big gulp, he slides from the sofa and scampers on hands and knees like a giant cat to where his son is playing. Hugo giggles at his dad's ridiculousness.

Adrien takes stock of the many accessories scattered around the play set and asks, "What are Chat Noir and Carapace up to today?"

Hugo explains the situation, the bad guy's motives, and what the heroes need to do to save Paris from disaster. Adrien listens carefully. Looking up at him with green eyes that match his own, big and wide and crinkled at the corners with his happy smile, Hugo offers the Chat Noir action figure to his dad.

"Will you be Chat Noir, Papa? He's Carapace's best friend in the world and they need to work together to save the day."

Adrien cradles the action figure in one hand and gently pats the pocket where Plagg hides with the other. His kwami presses a paw against his chest in return. Overwhelmed, all he can do is grin at Hugo and try not to cry.

"It would be my greatest honor," he vows grandly, holding up a hand in oath. "I purr-omise to be the best hero I can be. Cat's honor."

Hugo laughs. "You said honor twice."

"So I did. That's because it's very important."

His son nods solemnly, then reaches for Carapace's super jet. He places the hero in the cockpit and flies the jet around his head, making zooming noises.

"Are you ready, Chat Noir? I'm coming to pick you up!"

The jet has only one seat, but that doesn't seem to bother Hugo. Adrien readies the tiny plastic baton in Chat Noir's hand and uses it to vault from his own knee into the imaginary sky over Paris.

"Meow-velous!" he crows, delighted. "This cat is ready to be whiskered away in your very realistic jet! Allons-y, my turtle friend!"

Hugo giggles, Adrien's heart melts, and they set off on a grand adventure together.

[thewheezingwyvern]

OOO OOO PICK ME PICK ME!

I would like Bakugou or Kirishima please 🥺

Imma pick number 13 for inspo unless that's been done already. SFW or NSFW whatever you want I'm just excited to read 👀 can you take my Katsukikitten blog when/if you answer this?

🖤 Katsukikitten

Ooooh @katsukikitten you gave me some good wiggle room to work with. I ended up going SFW because I had an idea! Hopefully this helps fill your Bakugou needs!

𝘈𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰'𝘴 𝘊𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦

Oracle!Bakugou x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Angst, Mention of blood and death

It was midday by the time you and Bakugou reached your destination. Rather, you reached where your partner had intended to take you and until that moment you had no idea what place it was he had in mind. Turns out, it was an old canyon that speared through the vast expanse of the Aural Desert. Sweat was pouring from your skin and Katsuki was no better, having shed his shirt during the travel some time ago. The horse you two had taken, a northern dunn that was bred to travel in the desert, nickered softly in approval once shade eclipsed over you. It was still blazingly hot but the further you strayed into the craggy paths tucked away from the sun’s glare, the cooler it grew. The change in temperature was a blessing, small on paper but large in practice.

“Keep up.” He snapped back at you over his shoulder.

A frown twisted across your lips, brows furrowing. Katsuki was not known for his calm nature but he had been far more irritable and snappish in the past few weeks. And not once had he even given you a hint of answers until today. It was slow work picking through the canyon, razor ferns creeping through cracks in the rocky walls that threatened to slice your flesh if either of you brushed against their leaves. Your mouth was incredibly dry and you wished you had the proper gloves so you could pluck those leaves off their stems and cut them open. When carefully handled, razor fern leaves stored a lot of water and could help slake your thirst.

“Where are we going Katsuki?” you asked for the fifth time that day.

“If you ask me one more time, I’m going to leave you behind, brat.” He snapped back at you, “Now shut up and follow me.”

Crestfallen at another question unanswered, you followed with a scowl. Katsuki had come and found you just before you joined your father in his tent with his retainers. Your absence would surely be noticed so you felt that you were owed at least something of an explanation. But your friend, crush and body guard was impossibly stubborn and you knew you would sooner have luck asking a mountain to move for you than get him to change his mind. Bakugou, however, was going out of his mind himself. As your bodyguard , appointed by the chief himself, he knew it was risky to bring you into the desert. A calloused hand touched the hilt of his curved scimitar sheathed at his hip. If anyone or anything tried to touch you, he’d make them regret it.

“We’re here.” He finally said.

‘Here’ was a rocky alcove, the wall of the canyon stretching up to blot out the light of the sun. Buried in the wall were long bands of vibrant color, smoky purples, vivacious reds, shimmering golds and streaks of laughing teals that were like the captured spirit of the seas so far away. It was a stunning alcove. And the cliff was clearly formed of the rocks and clay that your people used to craft their paints and makeups for use. But it was still just a wall and you couldn’t figure out why Katsuki would want to bring you to it. You folded your arms beneath your breasts, looking around once before turning back to your protector.

“It’s a wall.”

“Heh, shows what you know.” He sneered.

The blonde advanced forward to a large stone slab that was settled up against the wall. It didn’t look any different than the other rocks in the area. That is until he started sliding the rock to the side, fine granules of sand on the ground helping fill the air with a crunching sound. When he was finished, he revealed a tunnel that was worn into the side of the canyon. Katsuki smirked smugly at you before gesturing towards the opening of the hidden cave.

“After you, princess.”

When you glared at him as you walked by, he closed in behind you snickering. The light from outside streamed in enough to illuminate your first several steps into the cave. But just around the bend there was a distant light as well, it pooled on the walls and beckoned you forward. You’d never seen a glow like that and it was entrancing, urging you forward without being nudged by your companion. The passage snaked deeper into the rock, bands of the same color following you along until the both of you emerged into a chamber. Above in the ceiling, a small hole allowed a beam of sunlight to stream through until it gathered on a large pool of water that was nestled in the center of the chamber. At first you thought the water was glowing because of the single ray of sunshine that struck the calm surface of the pool but closer inspection revealed that wasn’t the case. Mesmerized, you feet carried you forward without your permission to see that this was more than a simple pool. There was a sharp drop cut into earth, almost like a sink hole that led deep into the ground. The water glowed in a myriad of icy blue, deepened violet and fractals of starlight.

“What is this place?” you whispered softly, your voice echoing off the walls.

“This is a sacred pool.” Katsuki supplied, falling beside you, “This is where oracles like me used to go to magnify their foresight. They used to be everywhere but they’ve been drying up more and more as the years pass.”

“I thought those were a myth.”

“They’re real…”

A far off, haunted expression flickered over his face, leading you to touch his arm, “Katsuki…what did you see?”

His foresight had proven invaluable for your clan and he was almost never wrong. But never before had you seen him look so tortured. Silence fell over you both for several moments before he started to walk forward. Even with his back to you, the pool bathed him in an ethereal light, shadows gathering along the contours of his back. Bakugou turned his head and looked over his shoulder at you.

“It’ll be easier to just show you. Come here.”

Tentatively you drew closer to him until you both were standing at the edge of the sacred pool. It swirled before you, begging for you to enter it’s depths and see the it’s wonders. But it was really, really deep and it was hard not to feel nervous. Bakugou seemed to notice your hesitation and snorted with disdain.

“You really think I would have you do something dangerous, brat? I’m supposed to protect you.”

“Well there was that one time-”

“That was your idea, dumbass, not mine.”

You giggled, “It worked out didn’t it?”

Katsuki let the corner of his mouth twitch before he turned to face you. Suddenly you were aware of how close he was to you and how he still wasn’t wearing a shirt. The tanned plains of his chest begged for your hands to touch and wander but the serious expression in face made that thought evaporate. A rough hand came up and clapped you on the top of your head gently, shaking you a bit in a display of affection.

“Trust me, princess…”

“…Ok.”

Bakugou pulled you to him and the both of you leapt into the pool. The initial contact was like normal water, refreshingly cool and it chased away the heat that had built up in you from the desert sun. But soon the feeling evaporated and it was like the two of you were floating in the night sky. With surprise you found yourself able to breathe and you drifted with Katsuki, sinking deeper down into the embrace of the sacred waters. Flecks of fiery red flaked off of your companion, swirling around the two of you until they shattered into fractals to form intricate images. Images of fire and blood. Thick plumes of smoke were rising from the the caravan of tents that your clan made their homes in, blotting out the sky in inky clouds. A flash and you saw your father with a sword hilted into his chest and the culprit was one of his own retainers.

The pool shifted colors then to golden yellow, showing Bakugou trying to warn your father. It showed him being ignored, dismissed that his vision was incorrect and that he just didn’t know what he was seeing. Your body guard hauled you against him, your back pressed up against his chest as he cradled you close. His arms squeezed you tightly, as if he were afraid you would drift away from him if he let go. The fractals of light continued to swirl, shifting to paint out your future, each more grim than the last if you stayed to fight. A thousand and one ways you could try to save your clan and a thousand and one ways you would fail.

“There is no hope for them…” he whispered out hoarsely, “But there is for you…runaway with me.”

“But…but maybe with me there my father will-”

“I’ve already tried to warn him. And I’ve already tried to see that way too. He won’t listen.” Katsuki buried his face into your shoulder, his arms squeezing you even tighter to him, “If you don’t leave…your death is the nicest fate out of all of them.”

“Is there really no other way?”

“No…No there isn’t.” Was he crying? “I’m supposed to protect you but even I can’t stand against an entire fucking army. Princes…please. Runaway with me.”

“But-”

“I can’t save them,” he interrupted, “but dammit I can save you. Don’t be stupid.”

Tears were flowing from your eyes as you felt reality crash down around your ears. Live with your clan wandering the sands was over no matter what choice you made. But the thought of leaving behind your family without even trying left a bitter taste in your mouth. But there was really no way out. And that was how you decided to leave your life and clan behind: bathed in starlight and sinking into a never ending pit.

((Want to participate in Arcane April? Check out my post here about the event and send in your requests!))

[crybabyjam]

nobody like you

for valentines day

ship: bakudeku

rating: t

summary: Izuku takes Katsuki on a date to a parfait shop.

content warning for (light??) heavy petting/making out. age difference.

available on ao3

---

Katsuki grunts on impact as Deku barrels into him excitedly, like a giant puppydog that doesn't know its own strength.

He was underneath the awning of Aldera Junior High, one of the last students there besides the sports kids and the class reps who had to do whatever bullshit it is that they do.

Still, they were all inside the building. So it's quiet enough that, when Deku takes a moment to nuzzle his face against the spiky softness of Katsuki's hair,  Katsuki can hear Izuku's heartbeat.

Strong and steady, a deep 'thump, thump, thump' that makes Katsuki's own pick up in speed.

He hears it more clearly in his wrist when Deku lifts his hands to lay them gently across the back of his neck and trace his thumb along the jaw, until Katsuki's nose flares and he can feel his cheeks flush.

Fucking romantic. It made Katsuki want to swallow his entire mouth so that he can chew his own heart out.

(read more)

"Kacchan, are you ready?" Deku asks, peering down at Katsuki from his bullshit height of 6'4''. Second growth spurt at the end of his first year of high school. Asshole.

Katsuki'll catch up or die trying.

"Yeah," Katsuki grunts, ducking his head down to dodge the kiss that Deku tries to stick on his cheek.

Deku, undeterred, lets it land instead on Katsuki's hairline. The thinner, more bristly hairs near his sideburns tickle Deku's lips, and Katsuki is left with a vibrating laugh ringing in his ears when Izuku pulls away.

"Let me hold your bag?" Deku asks as he reaches out to grab it anyway.

It's just a briefcase, smaller than Deku's yellow monstrosity by a large margin. But he's learned that Deku will get annoying if he doesn't let him do some 'boyfriend' things, so Katsuki lets him grab the briefcase and hook it over his shoulder.

"Yeah, yeah, pack-mule. Where are we going?"

Deku hooks his arm over Katsuki's shoulder and begins to gently lead him along down the sidewalk. With that same hand, he pats along Katsuki's chest until he snags his phone with a grin and unlocks it.

For as many times as Katsuki has threatened to change it to lock him out, he never has. But Katsuki almost regrets giving him the code, just because of that giddy look.

"It's not far," Deku is saying, gesturing with one finger towards the left as his thumb runs across the map on Katsuki's phone. "It'll be nice and quiet like you like. They even have booths."

"Took one of your other boyfriends there?" Katsuki huffs.

Deku looks at him, bemused. "You're the one who made me choose something private! I would have been happy announcing how much I love my Kacchan to the entire world."

"'Cause you're a fuckin' embarrassment."

And, as if that was a compliment, Deku perks up and says, "Oh, right!"

Deku tucks the phone back in Katsuki's pocket and sneaks his fingers, instead, to his backpack. It takes a bit of struggling because he refuses to let go of Katsuki's shoulder while he does it.

Katsuki ends up in a bit of a chokehold, and he elbows Deku in the gut. It feels solid, a literal wall of dense muscle. Katsuki digs his pointy elbow in meanly, until Deku curves his tummy away with a grunt and a laugh.

"Here!"

A gaudy red object is shoved in his face, distracting him from his attack.

Katsuki snatches it away from Deku's scarred fingers and squints at the thing.

A teddy bear. Red, fuzzy, and tiny. In its arms is a stuffed heart, and on its back is a box of chocolates (heart-shaped, of course) that overshadows the thing by about 300%.

"I would have gotten orange, but you don't like orange-flavored candies, right? This is a variety pack instead. Although, I know you don't really love chocolate— so it might be kind of a waste. But it's a holiday! And Kacchan deserves a nice Valentine's box, after all—"

"Looks like roadkill." Katsuki thumbs across the sewed nose of the thing, and the button eyes that feel like marbles. The fur is soft, and doesn't shed even when Katsuki scratches at the scalp of the thing.

And the box itself isn't bad. Covered in transparent, plastic-like paper and, beneath that, the box itself is outlined in white lace. Kind of dainty for a guy like Katsuki, but he couldn't say he didn't like it.

Deku always did have a different idea about him than everyone else, anyway.

Deku's shoulders drop, relaxed. More of his weight leans on Katsuki, and he throws his head back with his belly laugh.

"Does that mean you like it?"

Katsuki tucks the bloody-colored bear under his arm, careful not to ruin the packaging of the chocolates too much. It jostles noisily, and Deku looks half a second from stealing it back from him just to carry it again.

So Katsuki nods. "It's… good."

As if he'd just gotten powered by the sun itself, Deku's smile brightens by megawatts. He gets these ridiculous dimples when he smiles like that, deep and perfectly pokable.

Katsuki resists, and instead turns to face the sidewalk as if he was the one leading the way.

Deku sneaks a kiss to Katsuki's cheek, close to the edge of his mouth. It was purposeful, too, because Deku tugs his arm away and runs a few steps ahead to walk backwards as he leads the way.

Katsuki stuffs his hands in his pockets and glares at the ground even as he fights the grin off of his face like he's fighting a dragon with a shield made of paper lace.

The grin wins.

 ---

 They make it to the little venue Deku had chosen for them.

And, of all places, it's a parfait shop. It's darkened glass windows to keep the inside cool on hot days, and small; cornered and squished by taller buildings on either side. Across the small street is a busier shop that's stuffed full with a line out the door— a bakery.

Katsuki squints at Deku, and Deku gives him a coy look in return.

"C'mon."

He leads them up the two short steps and Katsuki holds the door open for Deku's wide ass backpack.

The inside is even smaller than it looks. Overfilled with pillows and stuffed animals and floral banners announcing the Valentine's holiday, it was like Katsuki had been dropped into a love commercial.

But it's quiet, and there's only two workers and one other customer in the entire shop. Deku leads them towards a booth to set down their things, and the cushioned seats creak when Katsuki flops into it.

It's too big of a booth for just the two of them. Curved in a corner, faced in a way that they're hidden unless someone walked right in front of the table.

It smells like a park in spring over in their corner. Mixed with something sweet in the air, it's like he's floating on cinnamon-sugar clouds.

"Can I order for you?" Deku hums, chewing on an open straw even though there's no drink in front of him. "There's a cake I think you would like."

"Mm." Katsuki cursorily sweeps his gaze across the menu, though there aren't many pictures to bely what the snacks would actually taste like. Just flowery descriptions that use the word 'decadent' way too much, in his opinion.

"I'll also get us a parfait. To share?"

Deku's eyes are hopeful. Way too fucking green and bright for his own good. His gaze is impossibly soft, and Katsuki feels like he just got wrapped in silk and laid in satin.

He scratches at his skin to keep himself from looking too excitable. But he does nod. "We can share."

Deku waves down a waiter.

Katsuki watches how his school uniform shifts with him when he raises his hand up, how it strains at the shoulders. He'd really filled out over the years, and it seems his clothes couldn't really keep up.

Deku catches him looking and winks, face turning pink like a freshly blossomed flower.

The waiter arrives, interrupting Katsuki before he gets started.

Katsuki tugs off the jacket to his own uniform as Deku lists off a few items to the worker.

It's cool inside, as expected, but Katsuki always ran hot anyway. So that it doesn't drop on the floor and get dirty, he stuffs it behind Deku's bag, which is between them in the booth like a boulder stopping the flow of a river. He's careful not to squish his chocolate box, moving the bear to the empty spot of the booth opposite of Deku, on top of the table.

Katsuki leans across it, ignoring the poke of utensils and notebooks, and blinks his eyes slowly as Deku laughs at something the worker says. It's a muted sound, polite so that he doesn't disturb the literally only other patron in the establishment.

His lips look soft when they part in a smile like that. Smooth and dusky and plush.

Katsuki hides his own against the sleeves of his button up, suckling the lower one between his teeth to mimic the way Deku likes to nibble on it when he's in a tease-y mood.

"Kacchan?"

Deku blinks at him, just noticing the shift in positions. The worker bows their head quickly as they leave, still smiling, but Deku's focus has entirely shifted to Katsuki. As it always has and always will.

Deku scooches closer, so that he eclipses the other side of the bag. Katsuki gets shadowed along with it, and he has to pluck his head up to continue looking Deku in the eye.

A hand hovers close to his brow, and he eyes it carefully before he nods and lets it comb through his hair. Deku focuses on the tangles, first, and then lets his fingertips focus on the temple worriedly.

They're cold, colder than the restaurant. Bad circulation from turning his bones and his veins and his nerves to dust too many times.

"Tired?"

"Sick of your bullshit," Katsuki says, with no venom whatsoever. Deku can tell, because his eyes just (somehow) soften even further.

As if Katsuki is actually asleep and he's afraid to wake him, Deku lays the lightest kiss on his skin. Across his temple, warm to replace the cold.

"Sorry, Kacchan," Deku says, teasingly. "I think you'll always be sick of me."

Impossible, but Deku didn't need to know that. Let him figure it out on his own, when he needs to.

"But it's okay because I'll always be there to get on your nerves even more, Kacchan."

Katsuki snorts. It's a jarring sound, rising above the lilting music playing in the background. Inside, his heart is hammering at the declaration. What a fucking dumbass.

Only Deku could make a stupid sentence like that affect Katsuki so much.

He grabs Deku's wrist and shoves it against his cheek, squeezing it between that and his shoulder so that it gets trapped there.

"Yeah, well. You're fuckin' stuck with me, too. Forever, asshole."

The words are growled, said too fast and awkwardly. Like Katsuki had dropped them in a pile at Deku's feet and hastily picked them up to show them off.

Deku accepts them graciously. As if the words were dipped in gold and sprinkled with diamonds.

His face goes from pink to red, and Katsuki is reminded of the awkward kid that used to walk him to and from elementary when Deku was just beginning junior high.

He'd been lanky then, like Katsuki is lanky now. All bones and jumpy like a skittish rabbit perpetually in the middle of a street.

He'd always had a red face back then, too. Maybe from crying, or from laughing too hard when Katsuki would steal his homework to try to do it instead, maybe three years before he'd learned the material.

"I'm glad, Kacchan," Deku says, eventually. His fingers curve against Katsuki's skin, warming up pleasantly. Katsuki's own are sweltering. If they got any hotter, they'd ignite and explode like fireworks.

Katsuki swipes his palm across his pants to clean them. Squeezes the loose material between his fist just to steel himself.

Deku glances down at the motion, and brings his other hand up to press it against Katsuki's face. To comfort him, maybe.

Katsuki interrupts by shoving his own against Deku's face first. It's awkward, and he does it too fast because there's a soft 'plap' sound when his clammy palm connects with Deku's cheek.

Still, it fits there comfortably. Deku's chubby cheeks curve into the space of his palm like he's about to roll a ball of mochi.

Dumbass was built like a brickhouse and still had the babiest face.

Katsuki relaxes when Deku doesn't shove him away. Not that Deku ever would, not when Katsuki's heart was about to shove it's way up his throat and make good on that chewing promise from earlier.

Deku's hand, which had been hastily shoved out of the way so Katsuki could grab him first, comes to instead rest atop Katsuki's own.

He presses it firmly against Katsuki's, fitting his fingers between Katsuki's smaller ones and curving towards the middle so he can tickle at Katsuki's heart line with the tips.

"You make me so happy," Izuku mumbles, against Katsuki's palm.

As if he'd been released from chains tying him down, Katsuki knees the schoolbag fully out of the way, shifting up onto it so that he can atleast match Izuku in height.

"Deku," Kacchan says between his teeth, just before Izuku pulls him forward to kiss him silly.

Izuku always likes to build up to kissing. Likes to leave his touch across Kacchan's skin so that it can tingle and thrum with the feeling it leaves behind. He likes leaving a trail of kisses up his neck, across his chin, and just a bare brush of lips across lips. And he likes how Kacchan looks when he does it, eyes half-lidded and dark, mouth dropped open with the barest hint of a smile, cheeks flushed.

But, right now, he can't help going straight for it. Kacchan doesn't mind either way (or, atleast, says he hates when Izuku teases him, wants him to just get on with it), so he's already there with an open mouth and a moan.

Izuku is quick to shush him, feeling along Kacchan's shoulders and noting how the muscles beneath his button-up tense and subsequently relax. Izuku curves the touch lower, fitting his arms beneath Kacchan's so that he can rest them, crossed at the wrist, against the small of Kacchan's back.

They fit there nicely, especially when Kacchan climbs into Izuku's lap to take up all the space between his belly and the table.

Izuku tugs him closer by that hold, sinking down low so that Kacchan, for once, has to dip his head down to kiss him back.

Their lips move across one another, connecting them together more solidly than a red thread of fate could in that moment. Kacchan is concentrating hard on the moment, Izuku can tell because he begins to minutely rock back and forth the motions of his breath. He always kissed Izuku like he had something to prove, but Izuku was just happy to hold him. To love him.

Still, Kacchan kisses him so deeply, like he's trying to transmit every one of his thoughts directly into Izuku's temporal lobe, that Izuku gets lost in the current that is Kacchan's desire.

Static from the seat zaps the back of his neck when he slides in the booth more, gathering it by his hair rubbing against the leather. He pulls his hand away to pat at his nape, but Kacchan tugs it back before it gets very far.

He encourages Izuku to grab a handful of his thigh, lifting up a few inches so that his fingers can curve comfortably around the underside. For himself, Kacchan busies himself with sneaking his fingers beneath Izuku's blazer to try to fit it past his shoulders.

Izuku doesn't realize he's still sliding down the seat until his feet hit the other side of the booth, and he breaks the kiss to laugh when Kacchan flinches at the dull noise.

"Sorry," Izuku whispers, leaning over to glance past the barrier of the booth. "We should probably slow down before we kicked out before you even get to taste—"

"Shut up," Kacchan says, also in a whisper. His soft fingers come back to Izuku's cheeks and press them in so that Izuku's lips pop out.

Izuku laughs again, and it gets muffled when Kacchan kisses the noise away.

Warmth furls around Izuku's chest, like love had grown a physical form and decided to wrap itself around his ribcage as the first thing it did. He can't breathe in too deep, or else he's afraid he'll melt right in Katsuki's hands.

He feels along the cascading dip of Kacchan's spine, all the way up to the shoulderblades. He's been working out recently, eager to join Izuku at U.A. and surpass him before Izuku graduates.

It's been paying off, little by little. He's still tiny, not that he'd ever say so. But it's true, especially when he fits himself in Izuku's arms and lets himself get cradled there as he swallows down his soft, breathy sounds.

Izuku writhes in his seat. He blinks his eyes open to find Kacchan already looking at him with a grin.

"You get like this just 'cause of one little kiss? Virgin."

Izuku doesn't mention that they took each other's virginities.

Kacchan's face is bright red, lips not exactly kiss-swollen but close enough. Still, his smirk is wide enough that the tips of his sharper teeth peek out between his pink lips.

"Kacchan," Izuku huffs. Kacchan settles his weight fully on Izuku's lap, carefully angled away from that spot with a quick pat on the hip from Izuku's hand.

They were already being too forward as it is.

Still, Izuku shifts upwards so that he's sitting correctly in his seat, just so that he can peck Katsuki across the lips properly.

"Happy Valentine's Day, Kacchan."

There's the gentle clack of hard-soled shoes across the floor as the waiter approaches with their food, and Izuku hurriedly shoos Kacchan back into the booth as he takes off his jacket like Kacchan wanted.

Though, unlike what Katsuki is expecting (which is him hiding his kiss boner with his wadded up uniform), Izuku drops the jacket across Katsuki's shoulders and tucks the sleeves firmly across his lap.

The waiter arrives just as Izuku has smoothed out his own shirt again, swiping his big hands across his curly hair to fluff it out.

Katsuki buries his face against the collar of the jacket. It's warm like he's a tea kettle over a freshly stoked fire. It's a good thing his belly is empty or else— pfft no.

Izuku is once again making nice with the waiter as they explain the order, handing off two long spoons to each of them. Izuku already has his own shoved between his lips before Katsuki even grabs for his.

He lays it on the table, resting his chin in his hand as a large slice of cake is slid in the empty area of the booth opposite of them. In front of the red bear that is laying half on its side, kept upright only by the heavy chocolates weighing it down.

With a snort, Katsuki sidles closer to the school bag to get back on his portion of the booth.

Izuku reaches out to stop him, bowing his head in thanks to the waiter as they head off.

Katsuki, just to tease, dodges the touch and only gets two paces further before Izuku whines and drags him back, leaning his full weight across Katsuki's back to smother him in butterfly kisses.

They focus mostly on his jaw, unable to get at his face with the position, but Izuku takes what he can get and peppers each smooch thoroughly across Katsuki's skin until the latter shrieks like a banshee between his laughter.

"Idiot, you just said you didn't want us to get kicked out!" Katsuki gripes, twisting in Izuku's grip just to grit his teeth right in Izuku's face.

Izuku lets his hold loosen, one arm behind Katsuki's back. Katsuki trails his own across Izuku's and tucks his fingers in the back pocket that's closest to him.

"I can't help it when I'm with you, Kacchan. All I wanna do is kiss you!"

"I hate you," Katsuki says, resolutely. He leans his head against Izuku's shoulder and gestures at the parfait in front of them. "Now let's fuckin' eat this junk already."

It's tall, with mostly pink fruit to keep up with the theme of the holiday. Strawberries and syrupy peaches cover the top of the pink ice cream, color offset by white powdered sugar and dark brown chocolate shavings sprinkled on top. The cup itself is lined in chocolate drizzle, in a wavy pattern that gets a bit smeared when Izuku pokes his spoon into the top.

There's also a little heart shaped cookie on top.

"Look how pretty it is, Kacchan!" Izuku says excitedly. He carefully wipes excess whipped cream off of the rim of the tall glass and laps it off his thumb. Some smudges at the edge of his lip.

Katsuki lets out a fond sigh and gestures him forward.

Izuku comes to him willingly, always happy for whatever it is Katsuki gives to him.

Instead of kissing him again, Katsuki swipes the whipped cream up to instead smear it directly across Izuku's freckled cheek. Only two of his more prominent ones get covered completely, but it dissolves the two of them into a fit of giggles anyway.

"Kacchan!" Izuku wipes off the mess with the back of his sleeve, completely disregarding the perfectly good handkerchief he has tucked in his back pocket. Katsuki can feel it brushing against his fingertips when Izuku shifts forward to 'ooh' and 'ahh' at the parfait again.

Katsuki watches him for a moment, and feels his insides shift with a bursting need to tell Izuku right now that he loves him so much that his very soul belongs in Izuku's strong, mangled, soft, gentle hands.

Somehow, the idiot has powdered sugar in his hair.

Katsuki grabs for his briefcase and flicks it open as Izuku takes his first bite, chirring happily like a bird that just learned how to fly.

When he pulls out the small chocolate box, Izuku cuts off abruptly.

"Kacchan?" The name is garbled around the spoon, but the inflection is clear. Hesitant, yearning. Disbelieving. It's just a simple box wrapped in a ribbon, but Izuku wants to treasure it immediately like it's his first autograph from a hero.

"Made this for you," Katsuki says, gruffly. He shoves it across the table, and it slides right into Izuku's hand.

Despite the size, the box is a bit heavy. Izuku weighs it for a moment, eyes already brimming with tears.

Katsuki grimaces, turning away to tug the parfait close to himself instead and swirls up a bite of strawberry flavored ice cream with one of the peaches, shoving it in his mouth instead of explaining further.

"Can I…" Izuku pauses to wet his lips, and they're doing that thing where he's caught between a smile and a grin; between overjoyed and overwhelmed. "Can I open it?"

"Just said I made it for you," Katsuki mumbles, swallowing the ice cream down too fast. It melts in his throat and leaves an empty spot that fills with tense nervousness.

He takes another bite of ice cream to fill it as Izuku carefully unravels the present.

And, on the inside of the simple black box, is a plain chocolate. Homemade, of course, and hard-shelled. It was a bitch to temper, but the shine came out well if Katsuki did say so himself.

The top is outlined with a white chocolate heart, and the message inside of it is a mix of white and dark chocolate— because Izuku didn't actually like the taste of white chocolate. Katsuki taste-tested it a million times to make sure he couldn't taste it more than the rest of the chocolate but…

Katsuki rubs his sweaty palms across his thighs again.

The message simply says, 'To my Number One hero.'

Because Katsuki wasn't… couldn't actually convince himself to do the lovey-dovey shit. The heart shape was pushing it but… he knew Izuku would do something that would make him feel like this, so. He had to.

Katsuki bites his tongue to quiet his own nervous thoughts. Shit, he was hanging around the nerd too much.

Izuku likes it, though. Because he's crying harder, laying the box on the table so that he doesn't crush the edges when it becomes too much for him.

"Kacchan, you're—" Izuku interrupts himself with a sniffle. And then a soft sob.

"Deku, don't fuckin' cry," Katsuki says, only mildly panicking.

He's just begun preparing himself to crawl back in Izuku's lap and kiss the tears away himself when Izuku finally swipes them away with the edge of his already dirtied sleeves.

With a quick nod, he centers himself and looks Katsuki directly in the eye.

"I won't let you down, Kacchan. I'll become the Number One for real, soon."

He was still only in high school, but Katsuki had a feeling that this was a promise Izuku wouldn't break.

Katsuki had a lot of catching up to do, but he didn't really mind. Not right now.

Instead, he gestures with his spoon towards the homemade chocolate.

"Yeah, yeah. Better fuckin' hold onto it while you can before I take my title back."

"Of course, Kacchan." Izuku is grinning, and his face is red like it always gets (after crying, after laughing, after kissing). "I look forward to it."

Katsuki shoves another bite of parfait past his lips, and, when Izuku drops a kiss to his cheek for the umpteenth time that day, he lets a full smile grace his lips.

"Happy Valentine's Day, Deku."

--

ao3 link

[spell-cleaver]

DAY 14: WHUMPTOBER: Is Something Burning? @whumptober2020​

Again, this is set in The Pirate Son ‘verse! This is how Luke escaped being hanged.

His father wasn’t going to help him. The queue for the gallows snaked forward and forward, until Luke stood in front of the platform and there were hands under his shoulders, hauling him up. He shivered as the cold wind blew through his hair, but lifted his chin, stoic, as the hangman shoved him none-too-gently onto the trap door. The cuffs which suppressed Luke’s magic were stiff against his wrist, making him feel even heavier. Every footstep thumped like a battle drum. A death knell.

The hangman leaned down to whisper in his ear. “I can’t wait to see you get what you deserve, pirate.”

Luke said nothing. He kept staring out at the crowd—he had a better view from up here. The Emperor’s box was directly front of him, draped in red silks, with his father standing at the Emperor’s right side. Palpatine was watching him closely, goading him—he was mouthing something at Luke, but Luke refused to look—and Vader, under his eternal mask, looked impassive. There was nothing to see there, so Luke did not view him for very long.

Instead, he just set his jaw, and stared at the fluttering edge of that red silk. Embroidered in gold and black, it was fraying, damp from the rain and mud that permeated the rest of the square.

He kept his eyes fixed where that scrap of fabric had been in his vision even when the hangman eclipsed it, dragging the coarse rope of the noose around his neck. His breath was hot against his ear.

“My brother was a great sailor. A loyal man. When he was assigned a ship on Tarkin’s pride ship, the Death Star, it was the family’s honour.” Luke did close his eyes before this man could spit in them. “Until some nobody pirate sank it and sent him to the bottom of the sea.”

“You wish I was a nobody pirate,” Luke whispered back. “You wish that all of us were nobodies, or and you think that your precious sailors are any better than we are. They’re not. We’re not. And if breaking unjust Imperial laws that perpetuate oppression, sadism and death makes me a villain, or a scoundrel… I am happy to be one.”

The wounds up his back, his face, from the keelhauling still stung. They stung like crazy. And when that hangman backhanded him so hard he saw stars, they hurt even more.

“I hope your death is agonising. It seems to be. And I know you will suffer thereafter.”

Luke spat at his feet. “All the suffering this life directs at people like me, I’d hope that I wouldn’t.”

He cringed back when he heard movement, bracing himself for another hit, but the hangman just grunted. There—there was a moment where he pulled on the rope, and Luke cried out as it constricted his throat momentarily, tightly, for three long seconds—

Then the guy loosened it again and walked over to the lever, probably smiling to himself.

It occurred to Luke that it probably wasn’t wise to antagonise the man who held his life in his hands, but he was going to snuff it out anyway. Might as well enjoy antagonising him while he could.

His gaze found that scrap of fabric again, blowing in the wind. His vision was still blurry from the hit—or were those tears? He didn’t want to die, after all, much less at his father’s order—so when at first he saw the smoke, he thought he was imagining it. The first shadow he would see, among many.

Then he blinked, while the hangman began to read his charges.

“Luke Skywalker, pirate, self-styled ‘privateer’ who served aboard wanted ships the Falcon and the Rogue, is sentenced, for dozens of counts of murder, piracy, theft, sabotage—”

Was… was that…?

“—damage of Imperial naval and civilian property, collusion with Rebels, treason—”

Smoke?

His mouth dropped open when he saw it; the gesture was uncomfortable, against the rope digging into his neck.

There was a fire burning.

There was a fire burning under the Emperor’s box.

Someone had set fire to the silks.

“—resisting arrest, and most notably, the destruction of Governor Tarkin’s naval vessel the Death Star and the wanton slaughter of all personnel on board—”

Palpatine had no idea. Palpatine was staring at Luke, as Luke saw when he finally deigned to look at him, with a sadistic glee on his face, a faint smile. Luke smiled back, allowing his bitterness to shine through—and none of his hope.

His gaze flicked to his father, at Palpatine’s right. Did he notice the smoke, the flames eating the box away as the hangman drivelled? Surely he must. Surely—

But Vader did not flinch.

He kept staring at Luke.

“—for these crimes, and many others not listed, in the name of His Majesty the Emperor Palpatine and the glorious Empire he protects, Skywalker is to hang by the neck until dead—”

A shadow flickered. Luke raised his gaze further, to see a silhouette atop a nearby house around the square, the sun on their shoulder, raising a bow.

Aimed right at him.

Kill me, he mouthed. Kill me quickly.

“—and,” the hangman finished, “may God have mercy on his rotten soul.”

He lowered the scroll of paper, his heavy black clothes moving around him in a way that was uncomfortably similar to Luke’s father’s as he stepped up to the lever. Luke didn’t let himself look away as he put his hand on it, ready to pull.

“Does the condemned have any last words to express?” Palpatine called out suddenly, the rest of the square awed into silence by his voice. “Anything he would like to say. I am not a man without mercy, if he repents.”

The hangman paused, clearly resentful that Luke might not be killed after all, but he paused to look at Luke.

Luke looked levelly at Palpatine, and pointedly did not look at the fire underneath him.

“I hope you burn,” he said.

Palpatine’s lips twisted. “Do it.”

And then several things happened at once.

Out of the corner of his eye, Luke saw movement, and instinctually flinched, expecting the yank on his neck any time soon, expecting—

He was not expecting—

The archer on the rooftop fired. The arrowhead was broad, and sharp—and scythed right through the rope. Luke gasped as he felt it thump against his back.

That—

How—

He didn’t stop to think. He didn’t stop to breathe—he just reached up, with his hands that were bound together in front of him, and seized the noose, yanking on it until it loosened, tearing it off his neck and stumbling toward the edge of the platform.

“Hey—!" the hangman shouted—but not at him. There was another thunk, and a spray of blood, and the hangman went down.

His knife was on his belt.

Luke’s eyes alighted on it, and he scrambled for it, hurrying, ignoring the way a hailstorm of arrows was descending from the rooftops, picking off assailants climbing onto the gallows one by one, crawling toward the hangman’s corpse awkwardly to where the blade reflected  the steel grey sky…

He smelt burning before he heard the crackling.

When he looked up, he expected to be the recipient of a furious glare on Palpatine’s part. Nor did he expect his father to be please, either. But when he glanced up, Palpatine—of course—had bigger issues to worry about.

The stand was on fire.

He was surrounded by flames.

The red guards were shouting, grabbing for His Insincere Majesty, trying to get him out soon—and Luke laughed when he turned his head and closed his hand around the hilt of the knife. He sawed at his bonds, quickly, not wasting any time, even as the smoke rose and the crackling got louder—the surroundings got hotter.

Leia was here! It had to be her; there was no one else he knew who was so deadly in aim, so brilliant, good enough to plan this out. And Wedge—Wedge, whose alarming pyromaniac tendencies they’d had to aggressively curb on a ship at sea, it must have been him who suggested the fire, and Han who had the sheer balls to pull it off—

These were his friends, they were coming for him—

The ropes gave. He gave a sigh of relief, then—then had a thought. Jabbed the tip of the knife into the lock on the shackles that bound his magic, twisted it, wriggled it…

It fell loose.

He crowed as his magic flooded back into him. Whipped his head up and glanced around—and when one of the city guard came for him, sword out and face contorted in hatred, Luke shot him back with a strong spell to the gut.

Then he got to his feet.

Every part of him hurt. His back and face roared with his keelhauling injuries. His neck smarted, sore, where the guy had tightened the noose. His old, old wounds, from his capture, were still scrapes over his torso. His existence, as it had always been, was pain.

But his magic thrummed through him and all was well.

The fire was spreading. The crowd ran, screaming, and torn scraps of crimson silk danced in the wind, flickering about them, burning to embers and dust among the carnage. The Emperor’s beautiful box burnt, and before Luke’s very eyes, the fire jumped from wooden stand to wooden stand, until it gnawed at the very gallows he was standing on. He made to jump, to leave, to escape, to find his friends and get out of here and return to the sea where he belonged—

But he glanced at the Emperor’s box for one moment too long.

It was a monument to destruction, all orange and black. All he could see were silhouettes—but he knew those silhouettes.

Vader was pointing a sword at Palpatine.

Luke stared.

Vader was pointing a sword at Palpatine.

His father opened his mouth to roar words Luke could not make out, and then sparks bluer than the fire itself erupted between the lords, obscuring Luke’s view, and—

Luke had delayed too long.

The fire was on the gallows, the deadweight noose shrivelling to a husk, the soles of his boots heating up. Smoke clogged his lungs.

“Jump, Luke!” a voice shouted, floating on the ashy air.

Luke took a running leap, and jumped.

The crowd was a thick knot of people, pushing and pulling in every which way, their terror evident in their screams. But one knot was put together, they knew what they were doing, hidden behind the helmets of Vader’s 501st soldiers—Luke’s friends were geniuses, that was the perfect way to smuggle themselves in—and when he jumped, they raised their hands to catch him. They grunted when he landed, letting him down harshly—his back twinged—but gently enough that no injury was done. One of them placed a hand on his shoulder.

A very tight hand.

“We have him,” an unfamiliar—no, not unfamiliar, no—voice said. “Tell Lord Vader we have him.”

“Lord Vader has left the Emperor’s box; he’ll meet us at the Lady,” another voice came, and then Luke was being hauled up, multiple hands clasped onto his arms, and—

“What!?” he asked, trying to shake them off. “What—what are you—”

“You’re coming with us, Skywalker.”

“What!? No!” Luke stopped. Kicked, struggled—screamed.

When they just shifted their grips on him so he couldn’t fight as easily, he cried out from pain of it.

“Where are my friends?” he demanded. “What are you—”

“Your friends aren’t here, Skywalker. Vader rescued you.” Luke’s jaw fell open. “And if you want to survive, if you want to escape being hanged, you are going to walk with us.”

Luke did not walk with them. And he did not make it easy for them to drag him.

Even undead soldiers disliked it when their fingers got ripped off.

[snow--blanket]

painter and eclipse

word count: 4099

collab with @otumbalt~ my piece for the @ikevampzine!

characters: vincent van gogh

fandom: ikemen vampire

tw: implications of depression, suicide ***

The end of everything felt like a warm bowl of soup, Vincent realised. 

When he woke up, he felt his body sway like he was being bounced in the hold of his mother, with her soft face and her sparkling eyes. Vincent came to realise that he was on a ship, something he'd never been on before. He stood up, pausing when vertigo took him, and walked to the edge of the ship, where he saw the water was murky and indecipherable. It was so dark and still, despite the ship breaking its waves. He couldn't even tell if there were fish underneath. 

He walked alongside the rim of the ship, and then stood over the bow, where he felt no cool breeze or wind to grace him. Odd. How did it move without wind? His eyes wandered above. He could not tell if it was dusk or dawn. The sky seemed to be gray as glue, and there was a hazy mist of smoke that seemed to spread itself thick, rendering the horizon distant and unknown. 

“I will not allow you to become a gift to these waters,” said a voice behind him, and Vincent nearly fell overboard. His hands found purchase in the grit of the grainy wood, and he leveraged his arms to look behind him. 

Vincent blinked. There was a woman, and she was dressed in a white dress with dark red and black lace. Vincent recalled painting an eclipse before. He was staring at one. “Hello,” he answered back. “Where am I?” 

“We're headed elsewhere,” she replied. She held a rather blurry smile, like a smudged painting. 

Vincent opened his mouth, but hesitated. “Is it someplace I know?” 

She was quiet. “Yes.”

He nodded. “Then, that's alright.” He pushed himself up from the gunwale and extended a hand. “My name is Vincent.”

She reached out hers and held his. “You can just call me whatever you'd like.”

“You don't have a name?” 

She shook her head. 

Vincent thought about it, and then smiled. “What about Lisse?” 

Her eyes widened. He realised that they were like dark chocolate. “Like… Elise?” 

He shook his head. “Like eclipse.” Vincent pointed to her clothes. “Your dress reminds me of an eclipse.”

“Oh,” she said it so softly, like a gentle wake up call. “That's very pretty.”

Vincent smiled back. “You're a very pretty person.”

Lisse smiled at him, and it further proved his point. She had a lovely smile. It was less like a painting now and more like charcoal on paper. She fitted well amongst the black waters. 

It was hard to tell the passing of time on the ship. Vincent had tried to count the seconds, then the minutes, then the hours—but like her smile, the numbers smudged in his mind in a blur and he could not tell where one started and two began. 

He had tried to go into the hold of the ship before, but she was there like a ghost before he could enter. She simply smiled and shook her head, as mysterious as the Mona Lisa. He did not know why she smiled. 

There was a plate of pancakes in front of him, doused with syrup that looked like the glue of the sky in its thick ribbons, and the sticky way it clung to the pancakes. Vincent turned the plate this way and that, wondering if there was a trick of the light that had convinced his eyes golden. 

Lisse was sitting across from him, a plate of thorny stone fruits in her lap. They resembled sea urchins, but when she cracked open the hazardous exterior, there was a golden nugget there. She took it and put it in her mouth, her tongue swiping her bottom lip. She looked at Vincent. “Aren't you going to eat?” 

Vincent woke out of his trance, her voice the sound of heels snapping a twig on a forest floor. He smiled sheepishly. “In a second. I'm curious about something.”

She regarded him carefully. He had tried to make conversation with Lisse before, but she was a quiet person, making do with only smiling as her method of communication. When she spoke, he could barely hear her above the sound of the sloshing water. “I didn't poison it.”

His heart climbed. “N-No! I don't… That's not what I meant. I was wondering if this was really syrup.”

Lisse blinked. “You can taste it…”

Vincent smiled bashfully. “That is true, however, I'm accustomed to looking at things.” Of course, if he was back home with Theo, he would not have hesitated to gobble down the dish in a second. Here it was different. When he looked closer to the water, it was not murky and black like tar, but foiled like silver ribbons. As if someone had cut a portion of the night sky and tied it to the barren earth. “It's a bit silly, isn't it?” 

She cocked her head. “Why would that be silly?” 

He felt red flush to his face. “I guess it's not.” 

She was quiet for a while, and then stood up. Vincent followed her with his eyes, and he didn't resist when she took the plate of pancakes from his hands. She headed to the rim of the ship, and Vincent followed suit when she beckoned. “Look.” She took the spooned syrup and let it dribble slowly into the water, which then turned to small rivers of gold. The syrup that had touched the surface of the water did not have the transparent sheen of honey, but rather the gilded luster of a crown. 

If Vincent were to open his mouth any wider, he was sure his jaw would lock. He looked over to Lisse. “That's amazing…! And I can eat something like that?” 

Lisse nodded. She didn't look as impressed as Vincent was, but he was too absorbed in watching the path of gold slowly trail behind the ship slowly, like the touch of Midas. 

She handed him back the plate of pancakes and returned to sitting on the deck, where she cracked open more of the thorny fruits. In the end, Vincent ate his whole stack of pancakes (he felt rude if he didn't), using the remaining syrup left and opined the shimmering water on his new canvas, his spoon the brush. 

It was the next meal, and Lisse did not eat.

Vincent looked at her—mostly in concern, but also out of curiosity. “You're not hungry?” 

She shook her head. “I don't feel hunger.”

His breath was in sync with the gently swaying ship and the crests of the waves. “I sometimes don't feel hunger, too.”

He has gotten to know her a little better. When she is shocked, her ears flex slightly, and her jaw becomes… much softer, rounder. As if she was made from flesh and not sculpted from stone. Her eyes shone like tempered chocolate, a sheen finish glossing them. “Humans are always hungry for something,” she said. Her stare pierced him, the glass cage around his heart shattering by a single well-placed nail. “What is it like to not starve? To not want anything?” 

“It feels like…” Vincent's hand took to his belly. “Like there is only night in my stomach.” He did not look at Lisse. He did not try. “Like it is an eternal solstice. Like I am in an endless desert and all I could do was walk for hours on end.”

Vincent could not bear to look at her. They were both in each other's company, walking through the desert and only tasting sand. 

Her voice broke the silence, and he could hear it clearly this time. “I will pray for you.”

“For what?” Vincent toyed with the spoonful of syrup and the tanned pancakes that reminded him of his mother's wedding ring. It was not like the golden river of syrup at all. It was dull and muted, a sign of an unhappy marriage. 

“That whatever causes night in you might leave stars.”

Vincent was quiet. “I will pray for you, too.”

Lisse tilted her head, puzzled. “What for?” 

“That whatever causes the ocean in you might leave pearls.”

She laughed, a gentle sound. The breeze carried, then, and it was as if her voice was a summer wind-chime and he had been waiting all his life to return to. 

The moon changed her face, and Vincent could not breathe. 

He felt his lungs fill, felt his throat seized by a snake binding itself around his neck like grapevines to wood. He made wounds in the water, as if it could liberate him from the smothering hold of the sea. The water was neither kind nor gentle, and he was foolish to think otherwise. The tides kept rising, and Vincent only now realised that even underwater, shadows could form. 

He would seek a water sleep, then. 

He ignored his pained eyes—strange how they burned, still, amongst moistness—and closed them. Lisse was wrong, he realised. He would not be a gift. He would be an intruder. Vincent let his body convulse and throttle uselessly against the current. It was dark below the water, and even without opening his eyes, he could feel the glow of the sea lanterns and its orange light guiding his way deep, deep down. 

Suddenly, he felt the harsh glare of the sun on his face. Strange. There was no sun to be seen above. Vincent slowly opened his eyes, regaining focus. The water wanted to exit his windpipe, so he allowed himself to cough and sputter onto the deck. His hands were too weak to push himself up, so he remained there, the ridges of the wooden planks hard against his back. His chest heaved like a spazzed fish out of water. 

He breathed, and it felt as if he was being sewn together tightly. He could feel the metallic tang in his mouth, needle and thread closing the seams between his ribs. Air returned to him like an unwilling old flame. Lisse watched him silently, and when Vincent had enough strength, he sat up. 

Lisse stood up, walking into the hold of the ship. When she came back, she was holding two plates of pancakes. She placed a plate near him, and started to eat her own helping. 

Despite the cold water, Vincent did not get chills when the slight gust of wind passed through him like a paper doll. He let a sigh slip past his lips, and then he took the plate of pancakes and began eating. 

“It tastes normal,” she said in between chews. 

Vincent looked at her. Surely, the pancakes were dull in comparison to her who ate gold and thorns for a meal. “It tastes better after a hard day's work,” he said. The words were not foreign, for they were not his. He was merely recounting Theo's from memory. He had missed him so. 

She stayed her hand, and then looked at Vincent. “Did you want to become the night sea so badly that you dove in without thought?” 

“I—” Vincent stuttered, “I'm sorry.”

“I did not ask for an apology. I was asking for an answer.”

He felt himself flush red under her attentive stare, feeling like he was back home again, where the nuns and sisters would reprimand him for his lack of focus. “I thought dying would be easy.”

She was quiet. It was a strange thing. Whenever other people were silent, he could usually hear their voices in his head. He could hear Arthur's lopsided grin and Theo's blaring, sarcastic voice. Even William's bass-like words, like the sound of cello strings being played on. When he was with Lisse, he could not hear her voice or the voice of others. As if her silence itself was a language, and his mind quieted itself trying to understand it. 

“Death will not be easy for you,” Lisse finally spoke. Vincent blinked at her. “To die means to leave something behind, to be on a pilgrimage to the unknown.” She leaned closer, then slowly, she traced his stomach to his heart with her finger. The movement sent his heart tickling and butterflies fluttering in his belly. She looked him in the eyes, and her eyes were not chocolate, but the colour of soil. The colour of a grave dug up, a wound in the earth. “What is left in you to leave?” 

She knows. Vincent felt his heart pound, strangely alive in irony. She knows. She knows that I'm empty. She knows, she knows—

Vincent's breath quickened involuntarily, and Lisse retreated her finger, pale like the moon. Her eyes returned to normal, but he could not look at her in her eclipse-like sight. He felt that if he did, he would go blind. “Do not try this again.”

I will not allow you to become a gift to these waters. She had kept true to her word, so why did it feel like his lungs were full of water again, and not air? 

It is however-many days after his attempted suicide, and like a spider, he spent his time eating his own heart. 

He weathered the night in him like one might weather an oncoming storm. What is the difference, anyway? The sea at storm in her might as well be eternal night in him. Vincent felt that if he were to give shape or words to the darkness that plagued him sick and hollow and unbaked like mud, he would sooner fall into the ocean again. 

He remembered what Arthur had told him. The young doctor pseudo-detective told him about the things he had seen during his time in the War, and he personally recounted his own experiences to illustrate his example. He called it post-traumatic stress disorder. He said it was a common illness amongst soldiers, but not limited to them. 

Vincent remembers the somehow-always-damp room and the way Arthur had threaded his voice from sensuous silk to comforting, fuzzy wool. His voice was warm like simmering milk. “Sometimes I get these… signals.”

“What kind?” 

Vincent was not a very good student in school, and often daydreamed as a means for an escape. His leg started bouncing, and he stilled his knee with a hand. “I don't know. Like—like I start feeling jittery and I feel like… Like there is a stone on my chest. Like I am barely above water, and I forgot how to swim.”

Arthur leaned, resting his chin in his palm. A quiet swept them both, and Vincent let Arthur's voice echo inside his head like a rattling bell. “How long does it last?” 

“I think, a few minutes. It's—it's really weird. I feel like a feral—beast whenever it happens. Like, you know one of those mythological creatures? Werewolves or vampires or something? Like one of those.” 

Arthur hummed. “Do you feel like you're in danger whenever that feeling comes?” 

Vincent shrugged, turning his attention to the dusty shelves, finding them very interesting at the moment. “Not… exactly. I just feel like I'm about to die. I know that my life isn't being threatened, but my—mind just fizzles out after being lit like a firecracker, and then it shrivels up into smoke. I find myself unable to do anything for a few hours just because of how tired I get.”

Arthur poked Vincent's nose with a pen. “I think what you're experiencing are called panic attacks.”

“Panic… attacks?” 

He nodded, then pushed his glasses further up. “Panic attacks are actually more common than you think, and they happen to a wide demographic of people, not just people who have been in war.” Seemingly having gotten an idea, Arthur left the room in a hurry, and then came back with two glasses of iced tea. 

He gave one to Vincent, who accepted it with a small thank you. Arthur reached for an ice cube and showed it to him. “Whenever you're feeling like that, press an ice cube to the roof of your mouth.”

“Why?” 

“It's the quickest way to shock your body in a harmless way. Some people use pain—via elastic bands—but I find ice cubes to be most effective for me. Of course, it varies from person to person on how well they work, but this is a good start, no?” 

Vincent looked at the drink in his hands, then reached for an ice cube. He contemplated it for a few seconds, then popped it in his mouth. His eyes widened, and he looked at Arthur. “It's really refreshing,” he said. 

Arthur grinned that perfect, toothpaste-commercial smile. “Isn't it? It also helps because it's likely that you're dehydrated.”

Vincent could not tell the time, so he did not know what day or hour he woke up not being able to breathe. 

He was drowning again. Drowning in the midnight waters, just as he had before. 

His whole body was shaking. He was not in the hands of the gently swaying ship anymore, but a leaf in a thunderstorm. Vincent tried easing his breaths into following the rhythms of the ocean crests, but he could not follow. What is left in you to leave? 

Lisse was here this time, for the second time he had drowned. She crouched in front of him, and as if embarrassed, Vincent hid his face in his hands. Don't look at me, he thought. If you look too closely, all you'll see is an empty box. 

He could not form the words to tell her to go away, nor had he the heart for it. Lisse realised that fact fairly quickly and capitulated on it. She was unending in her cruelty, but Vincent found even that part of her beautiful. She sat cross-legged in front of him, only staring in silence. She did not smile or speak or hush him kindly. Any port in a storm, as they say. He could not have Theo's grounding hand or Arthur's silver tongue to tether him, but it was okay. She was an anchor. She would not let him drift. 

When his breaths returned to him in gulps, he wiped the sweat off his brow and felt his muscles relax. He lied on the wooden deck, like a squeezed out dishrag that had grown tired and damp from use. Vincent's chest felt different this time. Not like he was drowning, but as if his lungs were see-saws, and there were children playing in the cavity of them. 

Vincent pushed to sit straight and faced her. “Thank you,” he said.

Lisse did not smile. He learned this, too: if her silence was a language, her lips gave them tune. When she did not smile that indecipherable, Mona Lisa smile, it was something new he had to pay attention to. “I didn't do anything.” This fact was not untrue. 

“Just being here helped,” Vincent insisted. He smiled at her. 

Lisse looked away, and her hair caught the light in a metallic glow. “You are stronger than you think,” she said. 

Now it was Vincent who looked away from her. He could not reject her kindness, so what he said was: “Thank you.”

He could feel her stare even without looking. “I have never met someone who thanked me so much for doing nothing.”

“Not nothing. You pulled me out of the water twice already.”

She blinked. “Twice? It was only once.” 

“Nevermind that.”

“Only dead things stay afloat,” she whispered, like a gust of wind blowing through a ghost town. “You sank. Does that not mean there is something in you?” 

He started to fiddle with his fingers, humming and hawing. “Nothing worth looking at.”

“Must you be someone worth looking at to exist freely?” 

“If I—” he started, but quieted when he realised he had raised his voice. Lisse seemed like a person that was able to accept you for everything that you are to the point that it was all too easy to mistreat her. Vincent took a deep breath. She did not deserve his frustration. If it was even that. “If I am not… worthy of looking at, or creating things worthy of looking at, then there is no point.”

The world was full of beautiful things. Therefore, the things he created had to be beautiful by proxy. He dared not give a shape to the night inside him. No torch to light his path, lest lesser creatures might prey on his mind that was brittle like glass, cracked like defected vases. He had tried to cover the gaps with sand, with clay, with the blood under his nails. But the water kept coming onto him like tides, as if it was the harmless August breeze and he crashed into himself like windchimes.

“Even if you are not beautiful, the fact that you have lived is true.” She paused. “You may not know what is in yourself that is worth looking at, but… aren't you creating? Aren't you giving value to this world, if only for yourself?” 

It was an inevitable conclusion that he had to voice out. “But what value is there in being myself?” 

Lisse did not avert her eyes. “I… don't know. I have seen many people on this ship, many who did not cross the river in the end. I cannot say many of them are worthless people, even if they are horrible to others or to themselves in their lives. But they are living, and isn't that something? That's why…” She stood up, dragging him by his hands. She walked to the gunwale, and smiled at him one last time. 

“You must wake up now.”

Lisse shoved him overboard. 

Vincent woke up heaving. He squinted his eyes shut when he did, not used to the light after spending so much time on the ship with only the moon as his lantern. When the nurse came in, her eyes widened like saucers, and the clipboard she held in her hands fell to the floor. She called for the doctors, and then men and women in white coats fussed themselves over Vincent, saying something about kidney failure and miracles. 

After the doctors left, Theo trudged into the room with the heft of a soldier but the face of a mother, and Vincent knew he was where he was supposed to be. “Good morning.”

“If you even think about putting another bullet through you again—” 

“I won't—” 

“What makes you think I'll—” 

“I won't,” he said, smiling. He had missed Theo dearly. The grit of his gravel voice like walking down a forest path. “I'm sorry, Theo.”

Affronted by his honesty and the genuine repentance in his eyes, Theo's breath halted in frustration, then he sighed. “I won't ask why,” he said, “I already know the reason. I just—” His face scrunched in pain, and Vincent's chest stung again, water in his lungs. “Don't put me through that again, Vincent. Please.”

Theo's cruelty and Lisse's were the same. Vincent almost laughed. “I promise I won't try anything like that again, but I can't promise I won't worry you anymore.”

“I don't need that kind of promise. I'd rather worry about your sleep schedule every day for the rest of my life than cry about a bullet that went through your brain.” Theo's rough manner of speaking was like sand, too. Remembering himself, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I'm sorry. I don't mean to be crass.”

Vincent laughed. He found it surprisingly easier to laugh now. “What else can you be but crass, Theo? It's who you are.” He looked at Theo with a newfound love and tenderness, and he did not know where this love had escaped him when he could not breathe. What nook of his body was unexplored, fugitive to his hands? He did not know. Perhaps he would spend his life figuring it out. 

Vincent didn't know himself well enough yet, but that's who he was. A painter, and a person who thought the world was beautiful. He looked outside of the window then, and he did not flinch when the glare of the afternoon sun yielded itself to him. He stood up and walked towards the window, looking downwards to see a dog barking at him, slack-jawed and salivating. The dog continued to bark and yelp, even as the onlookers walked away, announcing his existence so clearly. 

His name was Vincent van Gogh, and he had a place in a family of things. 

When he was finally released from the hospital, he sat in front of his canvas and painted the moon in eclipse and a black river like the night sky. In those waters, he would not be a stranger. 

[vannahfanfics]

Hello! Can I request some Hawks/Fuyumi (huwumi) from bnha with the prompt 11. Moonlight (Grace Vanderwaal) or any other prompt you think that might fit them? I really love these two together 'cause they have so much potential as a couple considering their plot in the manga. I hope you can write something about them. Thank you :)

Thank you for your patience. At long last, here’s your story! I hope you enjoy it and always feel free to request again!

Two-Toned

“Oh, dear,” Fuyumi sighed. “Is it really that latealready?” She was frowning deeply as she gazed nervously out of the spaciouswindow beside her desk in her currently empty classroom. Above the silhouettedskyline, the night sky was enveloping the world in its gentle, dark embrace.The moon was a slim crescent, diminishing the amount of light it was able tocast upon the world, and the stars were blotted out by a combination of bothwispy gray clouds and the light pollution of the populated city- meaning thatthe only things that would illuminate Fuyumi’s way home were the puddles oflight splashing down on the sidewalk from the flickering lampposts. She hadn’tmeant to stay in the school building so late grading papers, but once she goton a roll, it was very difficult to pry her attention away from her task. “Oh,dear,” she tutted once more to herself, but there was nothing for it; she hadto get home at some point, after all, and it wouldn’t do to stay out any laterthan this. She quickly gathered her things into her spacious satchel beforescurrying out of the door, being sure to lock her classroom behind her.

Fuyumi reflexively clutched her bag close to her hipas she scurried quickly and purposefully down the sidewalk. It wasn’t like shehad anything valuable to the average person. The act of grounding herself tothe bag seemed to alleviate her anxieties somewhat, but only just. Even withheroes patrolling the city day and night, the streets at night were still adangerous place for a young woman such as herself. Besides, despite everything,many crimes went unpunished and even unwitnessed to heroes, because they simplycouldn’t be everywhere at once, and if criminals had proved anything, they wereadaptable and cunning. If I could just make it to the train station, I’ll bejust fine, she told herself with a small gulp. Statistically speaking,crime rates were still relatively low, so the chances of anyone hassling Fuyumiwere favorable.

As it turned out, statistics were not in herfavor that evening.

A shiver crawled up her spine as a sharp wolf-whistlepierced the cool night air. The fine hairs on the back of her neck began toraise as thudding, heavy footsteps overshadowed her own light, feverish ones.She knew that someone was walking behind her, perhaps even multiple someones. Staycalm, she told herself as she dug her trembling fingers further into thebrown fabric of her satchel. If she stopped and acknowledged them, then she waspretty much allowing herself to become a victim. She cast a fervid glance intothe glass window of the next building she passed; her face paled frightfully asshe caught glimpses of two male figures tromping behind her own reflection.They were very obviously staggering drunk. Stay calm, she remindedherself. Even her inner voice was squeaking in fright.

“Hey, baby. It’s a little late to be out by yourself,”slurred one of the strangers. Invisible hackles raised over her shoulders atthe proximity of his sluggish voice. Involuntarily, her pace quickened untilshe was jogging feverishly down the street. The train station was close, right?Her fear-fogged mind was mixing up the directions that had become secondnature. Suddenly, the buildings didn’t look familiar; had she somehow made awrong turn? Surely not, she thought she recognized that little cake shop on thecorner, but then again, maybe it just looked a lot like the one she bought amuffin and coffee from every morning. Was it even a cake shop at all?

Her breath came in ragged gasps as fear and exertionbegan to overtake her system. Dammit, she should have invested in that pepperspray like Natsuo told her to! She could hear the men laughing raucously behindher and their slamming footsteps.

“Why are you running, doll?”

“Yeah, we just want to chat! The night is young! Let’sgo drinkin’!”” the other yowled not unlike a feral beast on the chase. Scaredtears began to sting Fuyumi’s eyes as she desperately repeated “train station,train station” under her breath like a prayer. The soles of her flats scrapedloudly against the sidewalk as she whirled around a corner, hoping the suddenand athletic movement would be too much for the drunkards to replicate. It was;they cursed angrily as they slammed halfway against the brick corner andtumbled over some silver trash bins. Had Fuyumi executed her plan perfectly,she would have created enough distance between them to escape. However, it wasclear that luck had abandoned her. She whimpered pitifully as she staredwide-eyed and tearfully at the eight-foot-tall dirty brick wall that wasobstructing her path.

“Aw, doll, you just wanted to find somewhere private?How nice of ya,” one of the drunks crooned before giving a disgusting, loudbelch. Stay calm, stay calm, you just have to catch them by surprise andpush by, Fuyumi told herself frantically as she whirled on her heel andfaced her stalkers. She gulped loudly as she held her satchel up to her chest,almost like a shield. Their hulking forms eclipsed the little amount of lightpouring in from the lit street; their shadows stretched yards, ending rightbefore Fuyumi’s quivering form. “Don’t be scared, doll,” echoed the sing-songvoice laced with ill intent. “We just want to have a nice talk over a couple o’drinks.”

“You look like such a pretty, nice lady. You’llindulge us, right?” the other cooed in a false soothing façade.

“I am not interested,” she stated clearly. Her voicewas much stronger and firmer than her frantic soul; even in this state, shecould somehow summon her teacher’s scolding voice. “Please excuse me.” It was afool’s thought to think that politeness would get her anywhere with thesethugs. All she earned in response were a pair of bitter resounding laughs.Fuyumi reflexively backed up against the wall as they continued to lumbertowards her, swaying like nightmarish beasts.

“Why the hurry?”

“Yeah, all you uptight girls just need to let looseand have a little fuuuuuuun,” he stretched out the word into a slurred drawlthat made every inch of Fuyumi’s skin crawl. As one of them neared close enoughfor arm’s reach, she snatched up the closest discarded item- a splintered slabof plywood- and lashed out at him.

“Get away from me!” she screeched. Her attacksurprised him and his reflexed weren’t exactly stellar given his immenseinebriation, so the hunk of wood actually connected with his skull.Unfortunately, the wood was half-rotted and thin to begin with, so rather thanknocking him out, it snapped in half on contact and only served to infuriatehim. Fuyumi yelped as he roughly grabbed the remaining piece of wood and yankedit right out of her hands to toss it down the alleyway. The clouds parted justenough to allow the sliver of the moon to shine down on the harrowing sceneunfolding in the alleyway; the thin trail of blood leaking from the gash in hisforehead glowed like a fiery ruby, matching the flame of anger burning deep inthe dark pits of his eyes.

“Lady,” he snarled, “That hurt.” Fuyumi inhaledsharply and pressed back so hard against the wall that the indentations of thebrickwork were sure to be imprinted into her skin. Her knees buckled againstone another and refused to unlock, leaving her just a quivering, vulnerablemess. Was this really it? Was she really just going to stand there and be avictim? She always prided herself in being strong and capable, willful androbust, but it was like every ounce of her courage had been siphoned away withthat one dreadful, murderous look. She begged her body to do something,anything, but it refused to comply. She could almost see the cloud of mistpouring from her mouth as her entire body froze into a block of ice. She turnedher attention to desperate, silent prayers, calling out on instinct to herfamily.

Natsuo. Shoto. In her addled state, she would eventake her shitbag of a father.

“Someone, please save me,” she breathed as fourgroping hands reached for her, unseen in the dark of the moonlit night.

“Now, that is no way to treat a young lady.”

“Oh!” Fuyumi exclaimed as her red-and-white hair andthe loose fabric of her dress ruffled wildly with the onslaught of a sudden,swirling wind. The air rang with the fluttering of countless feathers as thewind descended before her, and the hulking frames of the two drunks wasreplaced by a strong back adorned with two large, red wings. Lazily, a handdrifted up to weave through tousled blonde locks.

“Nope, nope,” clucked the hero before her in scolding,“ladies should be treated with respect and dignity- not herded into a dirtyalleyway like livestock for the slaughter.” Though his tone started offlighthearted and almost unbothered at first, by the end of the sentence it haddeveloped such a hard and savage edge that even Fuyumi winced, though it was inno way directed at her.

“Oh, shit, it’s Hawks! What the hell is he doing allthe way over here?” one of them cried fearfully.

“Who gives a fuck? Run!” The other barked.Fuyumi could not see them behind the sprawling mass of those ruby-red wings,but she imagined they were clumsily turning on their heels to flee like thecowards they were.

“Nope, nope. Class ain’t dismissed,” Hawks sighed.Based on the flex of his toned shoulder muscles, she guessed his arms snappedout to grasp them by the backs of their necks. She was so impressed with hisspeed and agility that she completely missed the very obvious reference to herprofession that implied familiarity on his part. A very loud thunking combinedwith piercing yelps indicated he had banged their heads together to daze them.“Really? You dopes make all that fuss, and that’s all it takes to knock youout? I’m disappointed,” Hawks pouted with a tiny flutter of his wings. Fuyumiwatched owlishly as he deposited them a few feet away; she grimaced at the veryobvious goose eggs growing on each of their foreheads. They would be feelingthat in the morning, for sure. “Now, to get you punks to the slammer before youwake up and have any more bright ideas,” the winged hero muttered under hisbreath as he quickly typed a text into his smartphone. He gave no notice toFuyumi. Blinking, she timidly peeled herself off the wall to shyly take a fewsteps toward him.

“Um… Mr. Hawks… sir?”

“Oh, right, are you hurt, miss?” he laughed, shovinghis phone deep into his pocket and rubbing the back of his neck with a brightsmile. “Sorry, sorry, I was alerting the authorities; I didn’t mean to ignoreyou.” For a pro hero, he sure is… flighty… The adjective was almost tooappropriate. He smiled wider when she shook her head. “Good, good. Endeavorwould sure drive a stick up my ass if you got hurt on my watch- uh, pardon thelanguage,” he corrected quickly as a faint blush appeared on her cheeks.

“Oh! No, it’s not that, um. I just wasn’t aware thatyou were familiar with my father.” Fuyumi had been under the impression thathis assistance in her father’s televised fight was mere circumstance.

“Nope, nope! We’re buddies!” Hawks grinned widely.Fuyumi had to giggle; most definitely, it was a one-sided friendship, knowingher father’s grumpiness. Though Fuyumi had been through such a harrowingexperience, his easy-going nature and smile was doing wonders to drive her downfrom that adrenaline high. She hugged the satchel of papers to her chest as shesmiled shyly.

“Oh, well… I appreciate your help.”

“No problem~” he chirped with a dismissive wave.“You’re a little late in your schedule, though, yeah?” Fuyumi’s eyes widened asshe stared at him blankly. How could he know that? It was his turn to blush.“Ah, no,” he stammered quickly while holding out his hands in an appeasinggesture. “It’s not like I stalk you or anything; I just, uh, always fly overhere because there’s this place that has suuuuuper awesome bubble tea, yeah,and I always see you walking home at the same time, you know? I mean, you’rejust, uh, really noticeable. In a good way! You don’t look weird or anything!Um. Maybe I should stop talking?” His wings drooped low as he lookeduncomfortably at her. Fuyumi ought to be a little creeped out, she supposed,but he was just so cute and flustered that she just found it all endearing. Hiseyebrows sloped downward worriedly as she began to laugh lightly.

“It’s all right. I feel grateful that the number-twohero takes notice of a quaint little teacher such as myself.” The bubble teashop was right next to the school she taught at, so it wasn’t much wonder heknew she taught, either. Honestly, Fuyumi was quite flattered. A famous hero,taking notice of her? It was dreamlike. A bashful smile graced his pretty faceas he fluttered his wings hopefully. Fuyumi suddenly gulped as she beheld themarvelous appendages. She was no stranger to famous heroes, and after watchingthe televised fight, she had taken notice of Hawks and begun following hisexploits. After all, she wasn’t blind; he was handsome and, dare she say,dreamy. As such, she had harbored a wee little fantasy. “M-may… May I touchyour wings?” she whispered. His eyes widened and he compulsively looked at oneof them.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” he shrugged and extended one out forher. She sucked in a sharp breath as she admired the way the scarce moonlightplayed over the surface of the feathers, tainting the red hue with a silver-redcolor. Hesitantly, as if she were about to commit some blasphemous act eventhough he had expressly given her permission, she stretched out a hand. Thevery tips of her fingers just barely shook as they journeyed across the smallspace before connecting with the blades of his wings. She could not help butopenly sigh as her fingers came into contact with the impeccably soft feathers.Her expression melted as she softly stroked the downy mass. Somehow, it wasrelaxing. Her fingertips skipped up to run across the hard bone of the frame ofhis wings, feeling the occasional tiny notch of a scar. She wonderedmomentarily how many battles he had been in, but it flew from her mind as hejumped slightly. “Sorry, it tickles a little,” he smiled nonchalantly at her asshe looked at him. Hey eyebrows crept up her forehead slightly, as the dustingof pink across his cheeks did not go unnoticed by her. She looked back down atthe wings. Though she ached to just dive her hands into the soft feathers andplay with them, that was stepping a little over the line, she reasoned.

“Erm… Thank you,” she said and retracted her handbefore she grew too bold. He rolled his shoulders as he pulled the wing backin, before lifting his visor to smile at her with glittering eyes. Sirens werebeginning to wail in the distance, growing closer by the second. Fuyumi felt alittle saddened by their implications. “I… suppose it is time for you to leave,isn’t it?”

“Now, what kind of hero would I be if I didn’t escorta young lady home?” Bird-like as he was, his voice still rumbled like a cat’spurr. It vibrated in Fuyumi’s chest, stirring her heart up into a frenzy. Shestraightened up reflexively as he took a few steps toward her, now standingless than a third of a foot in front of her; if he puffed out his chest enough,theirs would meet. “That is, if the young lady would grace me with her presencea little longer.”

“Oh, dear,” she breathed out. She couldn’t help it. Helooked impossibly sexy; the moonlight was framing him just right, catching allthe highlights in his hair and accenting all the ridges of his face and makinghis wings shine like that of a true angel’s. She found herself nodding beforeshe could even command her brain to think about his question.

“May I?” he asked chivalrously and held out his armswith a slight stoop of his body, obviously intending to scoop her up into hisarms. Again, her head bobbled in an entranced nod. As his thick arms slippedaround her, one bumping into the backs of her knees and the other securing heraround her shoulders as she stumbled into him, she automatically grabbed ontohis sturdy shoulders. Immediately, her fingers itched with the inane need totrace the lines of his muscles so obviously encased by his hero uniform. Herface immediately flared pink at her indecent thoughts. This was a pro hero!Holding her close… His breath mixing with hers in close proximity… Really, shecould kiss him without much effort… She wondered if it would be a welcomereward for her rescue? Oh, dear, Fuyumi! Hush! She begged herself.Almost as if he was reading her mind, he smirked knowingly down at her. “Youbetter hold on,” he remarked just as the police cars pulled up and the officersexited. “Thank you, gentlemen, but I gotta fly! I’ll come and give report atthe station later Oh, dear, that’snice… she thought absently, not even really aware of the way her two-tonedhair was flapping in her face.

“You’re missing the view,” Hawks laughed at her. Shewrenched herself back into the present and hastily swept her hair from her faceto look around.

What a view it was.

“Oh, dear…” Though only a few seconds had passed, theywere now sailing high above the city line. The lights of cars and buildingstwinkled in little orbs below, mirroring the expanse of the black sky above herhead. Everything seemed so small, so inconsequential, that it took Fuyumi’sbreath away. “It’s beautiful.”

“It is.” She looked at him and blushed when she foundhim staring directly at her. Momentarily, she wondered if she had been watchingtoo many cheesy chick flicks and was dreaming. She pinched herself, sure thatshe would awaken in her bed with no memory of how she got there, but though thesharp pinch made her nerves complain loudly, she didn’t jolt up in her bed. Thisis… real… she thought as she stared deeply into his golden-brown eyes. “Youknow, we’re acquainted so well, and yet I don’t even know your name,” hechuckled bashfully all of a sudden.

“Fuyumi,” she answered with no hesitation. “FuyumiTodoroki.” The smile he gave her was one laced with obvious affection.

“Huh. Imagine that. A beautiful name to match a beautifulface.” It was such an obvious flirt that Fuyumi became overwhelmingly shy andburied her face into his shoulder, feeling it jump as his laugh rang out in thenight air.

“Do you flirt so shamelessly with every young womanyou rescue?”

“Nope, nope, just pretty teachers.” Oh, he’s arascal, she thought with a twist of her stomach, but she couldn’t deny thatshe was very excited by it all. After all, she would be a fool of a woman notto be! Hawks seemed like he was genuine enough, too.

“Hey.”

“Hmm?”

“Do I get to know your real name?” she asked, liftingher head to peer up at him. He gazed thoughtfully at her for a moment beforegiving her a lop-sided smirk.

“Depends. Do I get to have the young lady’s phonenumber?”

Instead of an answer, she gave him another embarrassedsqueal and buried her face back into his broad shoulder. He had been soflustered earlier, but now he was spitting game like it was second nature tohim! He was laughing again, and the way her head was jostling up and down withevery loud chuckle didn’t help the nervous twisting of her belly. “Keigo,” hesaid suddenly, making her look up at him in mild shock. “Call me Keigo.”

“Keigo,” she repeated softly. “It has a nice ring toit.”

He snorted with a smile and turned his head as his wingsshifted to bank sharply, catching the light of the moonlight in such a way thatthey glowed mostly white, but two-toned with occasional dark streaks of redwith the way the shadows fell. Fuyumi smiled and reached up to play with theends of her wind-swept two-toned hair, thinking that in the moonlight, theymatched.

What were the implications of that, shewondered?

Enjoy this oneshot? Feel free to perusemy Tableof Contents!

[vajranam]

The Path Of Freedom

Even with all The outward Signs of success And bravado There was no contentment. And for eight long years Enlightenment was for me, A beautiful theory of which I could describe eloquently. But in truth, None of us believed it.

Within the walls of this So-called monastery, Hiding behind robes, Pawing beads, and mumbling prayers… Were criminals, drunkards, opium smokers, thieves, Thugs, slanderers, gamblers, liars, bullies, Whore-buyers, pimps, and sex offenders… And I grimaced At the one in the mirror, For I saw all of this And more In myself. But, For me at least, All this would change One seemingly normal day While Studying out on the balcony… Looking once more Over some tired old texts that were As Lifeless and uninspired as I was. Old books, Like old scholars… Are rarely useful Other than to be put On a shelf by their possessors’ For the bragging rights Of owning them. I owned the books, Nalanda owned me And we were both fakes: Bad forgeries Of some original, Pristine Idea That somehow loses its purity When made to stand still In paper, brick, And skin. But on this day, You could say, The natural order Of things broke down. I had the first of many Mystic Visions, An encounter with Pure Awareness, Or as others believe A meaningless encounter With a crazy person, that Made me crazy. Perhaps, It was both. But, As I sat there studying, Half reading And half mind wandering aimlessly Suddenly, the text disappeared in shadow. The balcony, the chairs, myself, And even the air itself was immersed In darkness. Turning to see The cause of the eclipse, Behind me stood, and caused no small startle, A most horrifying looking old woman!

It was an uncommon sight To see a woman in a monastery of monks Much less one so Ghastly as to even blacken The Sun! Yet, Even though her terrifying shadow Fell over everything, I saw in vivid detail All of her unwholesome and Grotesque features at once! Her eyes were red, blood-shot and bulging, Her hair, a greasy stringy mess sitting atop A huge forehead, her face was cracked, wrinkled skin, Her nose, shriveled and almost Nonexistent. Her ears were a large, lumpy Mass, her jaws were crooked and covered in Yellow stubble, her mouth distorted and pulled to the left, Her teeth, missing, twisted, and rotten, Her back, bent and humped, Her feet, bare, red and puffy, skin flaky and scaly With yellow, long toenails that were filthy and She stank of death and cabbage. Leaning forward on her cane She spoke, “What are you studying there, boy?” For a second or two No words would come To my mouth. My mind Was reeling around trying To land on a logical answer To what I was seeing and hearing And at the same Time trying to formulate A reply to her question. Finally, I sputtered: “I…I…uh… I study books on grammar, Epistemology, spiritual precepts, and logic.” “Oh good,” she said, “do you understand the words or What they are pointing to?” I took a guess, “The Words.” With this answer, The old woman let out A shriek of delight! She began to holler And dance about Swinging her cane In the air and laughing Wildly. Thinking that I could Make her even happier I shouted, “Yes! And I understand What the words are pointing To as well!” Openly That you only Understand the words you read But now you break my heart By lying, Saying that you Have any idea of their meaning?” At first, Anger rose up like fire in my belly Toward this woman! I quickly thought Of thrashing her like a dog And even throwing her off the balcony! Did she not know, I was the Great Scholar, Naropa, The man who defeated 100 challengers in debate, And was begged by the King and all the rest To be Abbott of this Noble Institution because of My supreme intellect?

But the anger subsided into the Truthful resignation that, She was right. This time It was me leaning forward Asking the questions, “Lady, tell me then please,” I said weakly. “Who does know the meaning?” The woman slowly rose To her feet with the help Of her cane She looked at me and began Smiling again: “You must see my brother about this, He knows the Way…Go find him now, And beg him To show you.” And with these words, I found myself Starring directly

Into the sun. I turned my face quickly And used my hand to shield My eyes. There was no longer Shadow Nor woman there. And the only thing worthy Of mention was, At a great distance, A rainbow barely Visible. Suddenly, Feeling again the text I squeezed So tightly In my hand I relaxed a bit And sat back in my chair, The features of the woman, Very strongly imprinted On my mind, like parts of A dream you remember when awakening.

Her rotten teeth, twisted face, And body broken by time… All of her features, All reminders Of the Human condition, My condition. “What I saw, should not be.” I thought. “A sick, tired body…our only reward For a lifetime of struggle.” It was my vanity, It was my Fear, Raising resistance To an unwanted, unwelcome, And undeniable Fact, “I’m growing older, Sicker, and going to die here… A fake monk, a phony playing The role of Abbott.” Today a great scholar, Tomorrow forgotten. “Poor old feeble fellow, I heard he did something great once, no?

Perhaps it was someone else I forget”, they will say this of me. Not all these years Of study Nor a thousand years Of the same Will ever Dispel even one iota Of my dissatisfaction With Life….I simply know too much. Looking down at the text I saw it all very clearly now… A lifeless book Being held in a lifeless hand. I, Naropa, Thought of those That wrote these ancient texts, And wondered, “Were they like me… All ink And no Bliss?” And there’s not one left

Still breathing To tell me if these be truths In fact Or merely a groping attempt At recognition and immortality. All at once I felt the weight Of a life wasted in memorizing Unimportant facts And accumulating Impermanent, useless knowledge. Slowly, And reverently I put the text back in its cloth case, Tied it with a small ribbon, and placed It softly back into my bag. And somewhere between The sitting and standing position, I abandoned everything That I thought I was.

Nothing was left, Save the desire to find this Woman’s brother And make him my Guru. Leaving behind my books And belongings I announced to Nalanda That I was no longer their Abbott But was leaving the world For the homeless life, Seeking One in whom Dwells the Truth. At this news, All of Nalanda Was plunged into despair. (So it seemed to my ego, anyway.) Five hundred scholars, The King, And his Royal Ministers all Assembled to beg me Reconsider. (As I remember it.) They said that it was Against the Buddha’s Dharma

To forsake the Sangha, the community. They said that it was Against the Buddha’s Dharma To forsake my position as “Expounder Of The Teachings.” They even said that it was Against the Buddha himself To cast aside the robes for The Wandering, homeless life. And yet, My face set like flint… I, Naropa Did walk out of the Eastern Gates With only these words On my lips: “Whatever is born will die, Whatever is joined will part. How can we find the Path Of Freedom and immortality In that which only builds up Karma?

I know all the scriptures which are as vast As the sea, All five branches of learning have I mastered With grammar and epistemology, Yet without a competent Guru The fire of my craving will not die.”

Naropa

[notaburgler]

Morning meetings are such a drag... Endeavor x assistant Fem!reader SFW

His shadow passed your desk, each thump of his massive boots echoing along the hardwood floor, “Good morning, Satan,” he grumbled. Oh that cute little nickname he had for you… Such a sweet boss.

“Good morning Mr. Endeavor,” you greeted him with a smile and a small wave for the three interns trailing behind him like ducklings. “I’ll be in your office shortly to go over your schedule for the week.” You were sure your chipper tone was almost as annoying to him as you were, both facts he made obvious by immediately storming away. 

It wasn’t that your boss hated you. On the contrary, he absolutely needed you — and he hated it. He’d forget his head at home if it wasn’t attached to his neck, and he despised knowing that someone as tiny and weak as yourself would always remember it. You didn’t even have a useful quirk. You were just some college graduate who managed to snake their way into a job as a receptionist at his front desk. He clearly didn’t think you would stick around as long as you had, especially with how difficult he was to deal with at times. But five years later, you had unintentionally taken control of his entire schedule.

You grabbed a green smoothie and pulled out his schedule book for the day. Picking up your tablet, you made your way to his office, ready to fight. You originally had his schedule downloaded to his phone, but the man is so technologically inept that he had no idea what was going on when he looked at it in the morning. Paper copies only for the top hero Endeavor. 

You wrinkled your nose as you passed the thermostat, giving it a menacing glare. No matter. A quick adjustment and you were off to ‘ruin his day.’

“Damn it,” he growled. You could only guess that he had hoped you wouldn’t make good on your threat.

You held out his schedule book, already open to the proper page, knowing that otherwise he wouldn’t even glance at it. “We will start the morning with a staffing meeting, and you need to stop touching the thermostat.” 

“I get too hot!” he snarled, slamming his hand to the desk.

You gave him a beatific smile, as if you hadn’t had this conversation before. “Turn off your flames when you’re in the office.” 

He huffed in response. You went on. As you glossed over his day, you reached for the can of Red Bull on his desk. Lifting it by the rim with a smile and direct eye contact, you dropped it in the garbage. “You know these give you kidney stones.”

He snarled as you replaced the energy drink with the green smoothie. “This is much better. And it prevents this from happening again.” You held up your phone, showing an image of Endeavor curled up on the floor in the fetal position. 

You didn't bother playing the video, he knew what it was and the last thing he would want was his young interns to hear him crying in pain. It would be thoroughly humiliating. And you, some demon woman spawned from the depths of hell, had a video of just that to use as blackmail. 

“Who is that? And why did Endeavor call her Satan when we showed up?” The green-haired intern called Midoriya asked quietly.

Endeavor’s intern and son Shoto sighed, shaking his head before dropping it into his hands, “Endeavor is stubborn, and his assistant, Miss (Y/N), makes sure he follows his schedule.” 

You kept going about his day. “You have a meeting with other heroes, a lunch meeting with a tabloid paper to get them off your back, more meetings, and finally patrol. He sunk lower into his seat with each meeting you mentioned. God did he hate meetings. Even worse, meetings with the media.

“I don't like talking to the tabloids — cancel it.”

“No.”

“Just who is the boss around here?” 

You stopped reading and glanced up. He hated that look. You were so calm and so sweet on the outside. It actually played to his advantage. Most of the time you were at his hip with his schedule book, coordinating his day and making sure that he wasn't going too far off schedule. Not many knew how much control you had, and if they did, he would be in for quite a headline in the news the next day.

Side by side, you stood at about his lower chest. He’d smirk with crossed arms when you'd try to get sassy.  He even bought you a step stool to keep in his office as a joke. When you got mad and wanted to glare him down, you could stand on it and nearly be at his eye level. He still eclipsed you, even on the stool, but it made him chuckle and reminded him that he could crush you at any second if he so desired.

You let your glare fall and went back to your list of things he needed to do that day.

“Endeavor is afraid of some twerp like her?” The third intern, Bakugou, clearly thought Endeavor should be ashamed. But, there was a calmness about the pro hero. Like he had dealt with her for so long, he didn't even get upset. He just pretended to listen then did as he pleased.

With a sharp tap of your nails on his desk, you caught Endeavor’s attention once more. “Did you hear that last part?” you inquired sweetly.

He tilted his head and rolled his eyes in response. You knew he hated how you had taken over. All he wanted was to go fight crime and leave the boring shit to the staff he hired. He often grumbled to the effect of “why do I have staff if no one is doing all of this shit?” 

“You have patrol from one to three. I need you back by four for an interview— and you will be there.” As his flames sparked and burned higher, you pulled your face into a stern grimace. “Don't you flash your flames at me!”

He rolled his eyes again. You relaxed your face at that, knowing he was internally cursing your very existence. 

“Miss (Y/N) plans and executes Endeavor’s entire day and week to the second. If it wasn't for her, he'd probably starve.” Shoto mentioned under his breath, earning himself a glare from his father and a tiny flicker of flames.

You smiled, catching Endeavor’s attention again. “I've preordered your meal for lunch today and no, you won't be able to bribe the staff into getting you a big steak. You promised you would watch your red meat intake after your doctor's appointment, so I got you that chicken dish you like.” He grunted, seemingly mollified you got him some form of meat and not the dreaded salad. 

“Oh, and don't bother looking for the candy stash in your top left drawer. I already confiscated it and won't be giving it back until you get down to your normal weight and BMI.” 

Shoto let out a small chuckle at his father’s thunderous expression. 

“This girl is scary.” Midoriya noted, taking out a notebook to scribble down all the information he could on Endeavor.

“I'm also not taking the lock off the training facility until you can prove to me that you are getting a good night's sleep and eating well. You overwork yourself and end up dehydrated and malnourished. People depend on you to be in top shape and we can't have you passing out, again, because you haven't eaten all day.   Eat a protein bar, drink a bottle of water, sleep for eight hours, and I'll unlock it for you.”

Shoto’s eyes glinted. You guessed he was enjoying this more than his friends knew. If only you’d been around when he was growing up, he might not have quite the daddy issues he does. You keep his father grounded and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, practically forcing him to take care of himself. You could only hope your interference would help Shoto realize he wasn't the only one Endeavor was hard on. He was just as strict with himself as he was his son. If only the boy’s mother had shown the same ability to keep Endeavor in line, his childhood might have been vastly different.

With a pointed sip of his green smoothie, Endeavor tapped the touchpad on his laptop a little harder than necessary. He frowned, clicking faster. Just as you were about to call him on his electronics abuse, he gritted his teeth and puffed out his chest. “Unlock the Wifi.” 

You turned away, ignoring his request in favor of double checking his schedule for the day. It was going to be long and those kids would be trailing him. “I'm not invoicing the city for this morning’s villain attack and subsequent defeat. You are behind on your pro bono hours and now that you are the number one hero, you have more to do than normal.” You glanced back and flipped through a few pages in his schedule, “I have added more times where I expect you to do pro bono work to keep up appearances.”

The three students exchanged glances. You imagined they hadn’t realized how busy a real top hero was. Meetings and events to promote. A personal assistant to keep them on track. Countless sidekicks to take on the little work that the hero was above doing or couldn't get to. It was all amazing. A hero’s day wasn’t just comprised of fighting villains and catching the bad guys. It was bound to be a rude awakening to the real world that they hadn’t seen the last time they were out with heroes.

As Mr. Aizawa had made clear, this time around, the work would be more rigorous. It would be closer to the real thing than any of them had experienced. They anticipated fighting villains and late night patrols. They anticipated getting beaten up and tossed around only to have the hero they worked under rush in to save the day. What they didn’t anticipate was sitting in a boardroom for three hours going over profits and losses and how to make up revenue. No, being a hero was more like owning your own business. They had to track expenses and factor in labor costs. A lot of work goes into being the top hero, and most of that work was behind a computer. It was no wonder why Endeavor was so annoyed. None of them would be thrilled about meetings and public appearances. 

They had spent a little time working on interviewing skills, but they didn’t think they would be so important. Midnight tried to press the issue, but each student, the present three in that room included, didn’t care much about the political part of hero work; an important, albeit annoying aspect of the job. Not even the number one hero was immune to the force of the media. You made that painstakingly obvious to the trio as you went over the approved questions you would give the reporter at the lunch meeting.

“Unlock the wifi.” He demanded again, this time his voice showing his irritation.

Again, you continue on with your rant, not paying any mind to his demand. He did this every morning. He would sit on his phone, not paying any attention to your debrief. You masterfully solved the problem by changing the password every day before he arrived and only giving it to him when you were done.

You turned and placed your hand on the growing stack of papers on the corner of his desk, “Procrastinating will get you nowhere. All of these papers need your signature and to be filled out completely by the end of the day; No exceptions.”

You finished your briefing and looked to him for questions. He stayed silent not wanting to drag this on any longer than it already had.

“Oh and Mr. Endeavor, Sir.” Your usual bubbly and happy go lucky demeanor got a bit more serious, “The doctors called… about your wife.”

Shotos attention was undivided. Once he heard doctors and wife in relation to his father, he stopped relaying information to Bakugo and Midorya about the unusual relationship between his father and his assistant, and focused solely on you.

You saw his face go white, “Don't worry Shoto, it's nothing serious.” You hoped your smile would calm him down, “It's just been a minute since someone made an appearance.” Your glare burned holes through the flame hero. 

He hated that glare. And he hated this topic, especially in front of Shoto. He felt a bit embarrassed about visiting his wife more often now. He’d leave her flowers, of course, you would go pick them up for him. 

“I'll go see her later. I've more pressing matters-” 

You cut him off. “You know, I think you have time tomorrow. I'll schedule a visit for you.” You smiled. 

He grumbled at your reaction. This was not the time or place for this subject. But thank the holy heavens this briefing was over. 

****

Your day went by quick. Endeavor had been showing his son around the small changes made and his classmates followed. You couldn't help but notice that the other two boys had been getting neglected in his training. You called over Shoto to have him help you, much to Endeavors dismay. This forced him to spend some time training the other two and not focus solely on his own prodigy.

The end of the day arrived and as your boss left, you stopped him, “Those papers?” You asked with a tilted head and a cute smile.

“I'll have them done later.” In public, he puffed his chest and showed a more dominating side not shown in private.

“This is when it gets… interesting.” Shoto whispered knowing that the assistant respected her employer a bit too much to cause a scene in front of the people that thought of him as the sole ruler of castle Endeavor.

“I need them done today.” You repeated your earlier demands. 

You really didn't ask for much. All you needed was for him to complete the tiniest of tasks you needed from him and to be where he needed to be at the time he needed to be there. It wasn't hard. As a matter of fact, all of his speeches- if he even does them- were all written by you. All of his interviews were arranged and practically directed by you. You write the questions they would ask, you write the answers he would give- or at least a readers digest version. He wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, so you’d have to make sure that they were questions he could answer on the fly.

He was clearly irritated that day. He started his day in a foul mood, and it was no shock to anyone he would end it that way or worse. 

“I said I'll get it done later.” He yelled having raised his voice at you for the first time in years, “I know you think I can't live without you, but I'll have you know, I'm perfectly capable of doing all of this myself. I use you to make life easier on me. Don't go thinking that you aren't replaceable.” 

You looked at him like a deer in headlights. To think that he would say such a thing after all you had done. You had got him coffee and scheduled appointments that were not even work related. You spent countless hours calling tailors that could cater to his massive physique and wouldn't take forever. You picked up dry cleaning and went grocery shopping. You found the restaurants that served a healthier version of his favorite meals since he requested that you make sure he stopped gorging on junk food and garbage like instant ramen.You woke up in the middle of the night to do nothing about his kidney stones and just watch him writhe in pain on the floor until they passed. All he wanted was moral support while he squirmed and cried for hours. He trusted you. Maybe even loved you, to a certain extent. So these words, they hurt.

“You can do it alone, huh?” You gripped the papers in your hands tight, turning your knuckles a ghostly white.  

“Fine!” You tossed them in the air, letting them rain down on him like a baptism of clerical duties, “Do it yourself!” You huffed, grabbing your purse and jacket to storm out. “I don't get paid enough to deal with this shit.”  

Every single eye in the building was on you as you stomped to the elevator. Endeavors flaming shoulders were like ice cubes compared to the heat your rage was putting off. People parted like the Red Sea as you made way through the many desks and cubicles.  If you had any strength, the force at which you pushed the elevator button would have crushed the whole pad and destroyed it entirely. 

You waited, tapping your finger to your forearm. The stares from everyone were noticeable, how could they all not stare? This was a big commotion in the office. Everyone thought you and Endeavor had such a good relationship. You bickered, of course, but mostly it seemed the two of you had an understanding.

The door opened and without hesitation, you stepped on- or tried to. You were tugged back gently by a large hand, your body staying in the elevator door, stopping it from closing. His tough face donned a pout. His flames had been extinguished. He tried to stay tough, not wanting to show weakness in front of his staff, but he knew he’d have to eat crow. 

“Can I help you?” You asked with sass.

“Please,” He looked to the floor, “Don't le….”

You heard him. He tried to hide it, but you heard him. The question was: Was it enough?

“I'm sorry Mr. Endeavor, I can't quite hear you.” You cupped your ear with your free hand.

“Please don't leave.” He said louder, standing tall and gaining his composure.

He was so damn stubborn. This was your chance to finally get him to stop acting like a goddamn child and realize that he needs to take some accountability for his own Hero agency.  That means not having someone holding his hand all day to get him to do his work, even if it wasn't hero work. 

You tilted your head implying what it was you wanted to hear. “I'll take your morning debriefs more seriously.” He said with a sullen tone.

“And?”

“And we can discuss a significant raise if you keep helping me the way you do.” 

“And?”

He’d catch on in a second.

“I'll go get those papers done.” He sighed, having been defeated by a midget in a dress, “Right now.” He let go of your arm.

You looked up at him with a cocky grin on your face and walked back to your desk.

You sat down and organized the papers you had thrown and glanced to the three boys standing shocked at what had just happened, “Like a fiddle.” You smirked, going back to your duties and watching his defeated form pass your desk and back into his office.