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schrodingers-romy · 1 year ago

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My Angel of the Sea [Tomioka Giyuu x Reader]

Pairing: Tomioka Giyuu x AFAB!reader Word Count: ~8,700 [Ao3 Link]

Summary: After a mysterious ocean creature helps save you, you have the chance to save him in return. And then, after you get closer, you get the chance to 'help' him in another way...

Warnings: Near-drowning, and a few mentions of anxiety resulting from this. Non-explicit mention of injuries. Reader has AFAB anatomy referred to with fem terms, but no other gendered terms are used. Graphic smut (MDNI). Biting. PIV sex. Heat/rut sex. Oviposition (whatever the egg thing is idk). Breeding. Weird sea creature anatomy. Very sweet for what was supposed to just be smut.

Notes: First post of my little event, Strange Lovers. Also serves as a submission for @monster-october-kny-2023! This ended up being way longer than I thought lol. Also editing your own smut is very embarrassing. Mdni banner template courtesy of @cafekistune

The impact with the surface of the freezing ocean shocked the breath out of your lungs, and you began to sink.

It hurt. The boat was tall, the deck elevated off of the water quite a distance. It had taken a monumental gust of wind to tip it and you enough to where you went flying. From that height, hitting the water felt like getting thrown down onto concrete. It was a wonder you were still conscious.

After impact, you sank like a stone. Through all the pain, breathlessness, and shock, you only had one clear thought: ‘why me?’

There wasn’t supposed to be a storm today; you were nearly to the shore of your home, barely a half hour’s ride away in fair weather. The storm was supposed to pass by after you were already curled up in your little seaside shack with a book. But as always, mother nature was vindictive in her unpredictability. It seemed strange to name a force so powerful and uncaring mother.

She certainly wasn’t being motherly towards you now.

The freezing ocean was less a mother’s embrace and more like that of death. Scarcely had you thrashed your way to the surface for a breath before a white-crested wave forced you back under. The sheer force of it disoriented you, making you spin around in a panic for the direction of air.

Your lungs burned as you kicked yourself upwards again. This time, an even bigger wave shoved you back down, before you could even finish gasping for air. Saltwater flooded your mouth and lungs instead of oxygen, and you started to drown.

It was so much more painful than you would have thought. Your lungs were silently screaming for air, but opening your mouth just brought in more water. Your limbs, aching also from strain, didn’t have the oxygen needed to push your body to safety.

Your vision began to spot black, and the pain began to give way to the numbness of unconsciousness.

Before you were completely gone, your brain fired its synapses a final time to grace you with the hallucination of an angel.

He had an unnaturally pale face, with eyes as placid and blue as the sea on calm days. His long black hair formed a spiky halo around his face, accented with the fluttery bluish fins he had in place of ears. One of his webbed hands seemed to reach towards you.

This water angel was the last image you saw before your mind slipped into darkness.

You awoke spluttering, coughing what felt like the entirety of the ocean out of your sore lungs.

You were dazed, but surprisingly…alive, for someone who was nearly drowned in her last memories.

You looked around frantically. You were beached like a whale on the sand. A familiar sand…

Whipping your head around (which wasn’t the best idea judging by how a thunderous headache made itself known as soon as you moved your head), you saw you were home. You had washed up on the beach right in front of your home.

But how? You had been sure your life was slipping away…and you were quite a way from this shore when the storm threw you overboard. There was no way the sea had just washed you here with the tides…right?

But you had no other rational explanation to why you were here, alive, if a little battered and sore. It was simply a miracle.

But in the back of your mind, your hallucination of the water angel lingered.

He never left your mind.

Even though you knew he was just a figment of your oxygen starved brain, you found yourself thinking of him constantly during the next few days. Small scraps of paper filled with scratchy, unfinished sketches floated around your home. Each one had him on it; some were attempts at a full figure, but others were just a singular feature. None of them were right. Your hand wielding a pencil was insufficient to render the creature you saw so clearly in your mind’s eye.

Other affects of your near-death experience also lingered.

You hadn’t been back down to the beach since you had washed up there. Once you awoke, you stumbled your way up to your little cabin without looking back to the sea once. You had spent the next few days resolutely holed up in your home, nursing your injured body and mind. The cold shakes and soreness took warm liquids and time to cure, but they did improve. Your mind was another story.

You just couldn’t bring yourself to even look at the ocean then. You knew, logically, that it was a force of nature with no feelings or intentions, but you couldn’t help but feel betrayed. You loved the sea, choosing a remote place just a short walk to the water because you wished to walk the beach every morning just to watch it. You wanted to be able to look out your window and see it. You wanted to be alone, isolated, with it as your only companion. But this companion, this friend your imagination made of the water, didn’t exist. It cared not for you, it had no feelings to return. Still, it was a bitter blow to learn the thing you cared for so much could have so easily been your end.

But you knew you had to overcome this.

Maybe, you thought, if you just went down to the beach again…even if you had to make yourself go. Seeing it again would remind you of your love for it, and perhaps also erase thought of the water angel from your mind.

You took advantage of this temporary burst of courage. Slipping your shoes and a sweater on, you stomped out your way out the door and onto the path to the shore.

You couldn’t yet raise your gaze, keeping it trained on the path you stiffly walked down. You could hear the gentle lapping of the waves; the sea was once more calmed, the beast inside temporarily sated after the last big storm.

Once you could see nothing but sand surrounding your shoes, you stopped. With a deep breath in, you looked up.

It…was just as you remembered. Smooth, gradient blue marred only by a few patches of white foam on the crests of gentle waves. It was…beautiful, and you felt calm once more. This wasn’t the harsh sea of your nightmare, but the same sea you had seen every day for forever now. This was normal. You were fine.

Everything was normal, except for the thing on the rock.

It had taken you a second to notice it; the rock in question was close to the shore, but a bit to the left of your vision. You waded out sometimes and sat on it, when the tide was low and the ocean quiet. It made you feel like you were sitting atop the water.

You weren’t on the rock now, yet it was still occupied. At first you thought it was a normal man, but then…you froze.

It was him.

Your water angel, that is. Clear and shining in the light of day.

Seeing him again, you realized what he was. Not an angel, not really, but some sort of sea creature. Half of his body was passable human, but at his waist skin faded into dark blue iridescent scales, covering a fish-like tail. Patches of scales decorated his upper body also, and the webs between his fingers were obvious, as were the gill-slits on his neck.

He was acreature of myth, never something you thought was real…but there he was. Looking right at you.

Your eyes were locked with his. His looked even more vivid above the surface, pupils slitted from the bright sun. They seemed to bore into you.

Unconsciously, you took a step towards him. This seemed to break whatever sort of spell was created when your gazes met, because he flinched back slightly, and slipped back into the water.

You ran over to the rock, uncaring of the seawater soaking your shoes. But he was gone in a flicker of blue.

Your water angel wasn’t something made up by your dying mind. He was real, and you knew it now.

In direct contrast to how you spent the last few days, the next week of your life was spent almost entirely by the water’s side.

Now that you knew your water angel was real, you were desperate to see him again. You had to know about him; what he was, exactly, and why in the world would he bother to save you.

You knew it was him who saved you, not a miracle of the tide. But you just didn’t know why.

So, you spent almost all your time sitting on the beach, watching the water. The only times you went back to your house were to prepare food or sleep; even then, you sometimes fell asleep on the sand instead of your own bed. Every time you closed your eyes, you could see him plastered on your eyelids, a ghostly figure printed on the blackness.

On the eve of the seventh day, you had to return to your cabin more than previous days. It wasn’t particularly cold out, but the wind was chilly and harsh, so you had to return for a blanket and to refill your thermos with warm drinks. The sky turned steely gray, and the sea mirrored it in color. Eventually, your anxiety at seeing the increasingly large waves won out against your dedication to seeing the water angel again. It was going to storm soon, and nothing was going to keep you out in it. Not again. You couldn’t risk it again, especially since it appeared your water angel wouldn’t be here to save you this time.

So, reluctantly, you bundled yourself up in your blanket, grabbed the basket filled with your things, and trudged back up away from the churning dark water and towards your house.

The storm rolled in quickly after that, and you were grateful you decided to move when you did. The sky was completely black outside; you couldn’t see the water at all. You couldn’t see anything. The only information you had about the outside storm was from sound; the howling of the wind, the vicious sound of rain lashing against your windows, and the faint crashing of the sea in the distance.

Your sleep was fitful that night. You would like to blame it on the noise of the storm, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. Because when you finally were able to fall asleep, all you could see were the deep eyes of your water angel, widened in something that looked like…fear.

The sun was scarcely revealed by the clearing thunderclouds before you were up and running down to the beach.

The light glittered on the ocean, highlighting its calm cerulean surface. As if that same ocean wasn’t tearing at the shore mere hours ago in the middle of the storm.

The beach was covered in driftwood and drying seaweed, remnants of what the turbulent waves cast up the night before. You picked your way across the debris, making your way closer to the water’s edge. It was a bit of a futile task; you hadn’t seen your water angel when you scanned the ocean earlier, and it wasn’t as if getting a few feet closer to the water was going to make any difference. Yet you still kept walking towards the ocean.

It was only when you were nearly stepping into the sea that you saw it. A flicker of blue in amongst the piles of wood.

Could it be?...

It was likely it was just a rock or a piece of sea glass, but you had to check. So, you went to take a closer look.

Up close, it was clear that what you saw was a patch of blue scales, buried under a pile of wood and matted seaweed. Your heart was beating a staccato rhythm in your chest. It could be just a fish, you told yourself. It might not be him.

But you worked quickly in removing the debris all the same. The seaweed was slimy and unpleasant feeling against your hands, but any thoughts of disgust flew out of your head when you saw what you had uncovered.

It was him. Your water angel.

Spread out on the damp sand, he looked considerably less ethereal than the night you met. He was rag-dolled across the ground in what looked to be an uncomfortable position. His eyes were closed, as if he was simply sleeping; but the dried blood painting half of his face told a different story.

You kneeled next to him, uncaring of the sand on your clothes. Up close, it was clear he was still alive; his chest rose and fell, if shallowly. Hesitantly, you reached out to touch his head. His hair was soft, even when dry and tangled, but you were much more concerned with looking for the source of the blood.

It appeared to be coming from a gash on his head, mostly hidden by his hair. It was nasty, but it wasn’t bleeding anymore. From just looking over him, he didn’t seem to have any other injuries, other than minor scrapes and bruises, so it was likely he had hit his head on something and been knocked unconscious.

You…weren’t entirely sure what to do, but there was no way you were just leaving him here. He could clearly breath out of the water, but he was an ocean creature, so he probably shouldn’t be kept out of the water too long, lest his skin…or scales… dry out. And it couldn’t hurt to clean the gash on his head, either.

Mind made up; you stalked off to seek supplies.

You made your way back with a garden cart full of first aid supplies and a rough plan you had cooked up on the walk. The first order of business would be to at least clean his wounds. Typically, you would bandage them as well, but…that would require keeping the bandages dry. And that would be virtually impossible while also trying to keep his skin from drying out, so a simple cleaning it was. The second step would be to somehow get him into the garden cart and haul him off to one of the larger tide pools a little farther down the shore. Your first thought was to bring him to your home and place him in your bathtub, so you could monitor him, but that wouldn’t work. Though his torso was about average sized for a human man, his tail made him somewhere around seven feet from the top of his head to the trailing tips of his tailfins. There was no way you could fit him comfortably in the tub, and you weren’t sure about putting a sea creature in a bathtub with fresh water. From what little you knew of fish, which he about half resembled, it could be deadly to shift the salinity of the water they were in. You could be wrong, but you didn’t want to take any chances. With the tidepool, it would be filled with the very same salt water you saw him swim in before, but even at high tide it would be shallow and calm.

Plan in place, it was now just executing it.

You started with his head wound first. First, you rubbed the dried blood off his face, revealing his delicate visage. You still stood by your first assessment of him; he did look angelic. The perfect symmetry of his face, the elegant line of his nose and the sooty brush of his eyelashes…it was all so well put together it became inhuman. His skin was cool and slightly clammy to the touch, and you wondered if that’s what it always felt like. The fins on the side of his face felt surprisingly delicate, and you made sure to be extra careful in wiping them clean. His hair was soft, a lot softer than you would have assumed; your hair always turned unpleasantly crunchy after drying from salt water.

You did your best to clean the dried blood from his skin and detangle it from his hair. There was still some left, around the area of the gash, but you were too nervous to scrub at it lest the scab come off and continue bleeding again.

You moved on to the rest of his body. There wasn’t much you could do about the bruises, but you could at least wipe down the scrapes and cuts. The rest of his skin felt similarly clammy, but the patches of scales littering his body were smooth and dry. They were small and scattered, until about his waist level, where they slowly faded into larger and harder scales at his tail. Even just lightly brushing down his body, you could feel the muscle beneath skin and scales. He must be a powerful swimmer, you mused.

Then you were faced with what would be your most difficult task yet: getting him into the cart.

You didn’t consider yourself a weak person, but there was a clear difference between being weak and not being able to lift a probably almost two-hundred-pound sea creature gently into a rickety cart.

You sighed. This would be quite an ordeal.

It took the better part of an hour, but finally he was settled into the tide pool. He looked perfectly angelic floating a few inches beneath the water’s surface, head cushioned on a seaweed-covered rock while his hair floated out in a halo around him. He looked much better when he was clean of blood and back under the water. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of you.

You were caked with sand, from kneeling to tend to his wounds and from flailing around trying to lift him. You were also soaked from sea water and no small amount of sweat. Overall, you were a complete mess in desperate need of a shower. However reluctant you were to simply leave your water angel to float in his pool, you needed to clean yourself. And to get some food.

Your eyes lingered on the creature once more before you left. Maybe you could make yourself another picnic. And maybe you should bring some extra food for him. You probably couldn’t go wrong with some fish, right?

It was strange sitting next to the creature while you ate your meal. It felt like sitting beside a hospital bed waiting for a coma patient to wake up, and a little bit like having lunch by a corpse. Not exactly the most appetizing, but your struggles getting him over into the tide pool had generated enough hunger to override the slight morbidity.

You began to wonder if you would need to bring out a blanket and camp out overnight, because who knew when your creature would wake up. Or even if he would at all, you thought, and the idea sent a strange pang through your chest.

Your gaze drifted to the sand. You didn’t know him at all, and yet your life was connected to his. And if he lived, his to yours.

Your musings were broken by a splashing noise.

The creature was upright now, partially. He was facing you, head and shoulders above the water and webbed hands gripping the rock. His wide blue eyes bored into yours. He looked stunned; there was also an edge of fear in his gaze.

He was finally awake.

You were the first to break the silent staring contest you both were stuck in ever since he awoke.

“Hi,” you said, breathless. “Thank you for saving me. It was you, right?”

He tilted his head to the side slightly, and you didn’t know if this was an acknowledgement of what you’re saying or not.

You continued anyway. “I found you on the beach. I…didn’t really know what to do, so I cleaned you off and brought you here, so you would hopefully be safer than where you were.”

His face was still blank as he watched yours. Finally, he reached one pale hand out towards you, like he was asking for something. You thought he was asking for some of the fish you brought out for him, and moved to give it to him. That wasn’t the right answer, apparently, as he let out a low hissing sound that caused you to startle and drop the food into the sand.

He held his hand out again, looking at you expectantly. You didn’t have anything else you could hand him, so you just looked at him in confusion.

He let out another noise, this one more of a low coaxing churr. His eyes glanced down towards your hand, then back up to your face. He repeated the churr.

Oh, you realized. He wanted your hand. You’re a bit hesitant, because the black claws on the tips of his fingers look wickedly sharp. But he looked so earnest…so you placed your hand in his.

You immediately regretted it.

Quick as lightning, he used his iron grip on your hand to yank you forward, until you tumbled into the tidal pool with him.

Your face went under the water for what was probably only a fraction of a second, but it was enough to ratchet your heartrate up to a dangerous speed. You had still not completely forgotten drowning.

Luckily for you, the creature took mercy on you and hauled you up until you were sitting up, half out of the water and balanced on the thick width of his tail. Still, you were once again soaking and spluttering, and you tried to yank your hand out of his grip again.

“What was that!?” you screeched at him, not expecting an answer.

“I’m sorry.”

You were left gaping at him. His mouth hadn’t opened at all, but you heard a voice, clear as crystal. “…What?”

“I’m sorry for pulling you into the water like that. I didn’t know how to get you into the water with me otherwise…” He let go of your hand, and moved that arm to rest behind your back, supporting you so you didn’t tumble back into the water. “You see, I can only speak to you when you are in the same water as me. I wanted to thank you. For taking me off of the beach, and for making sure I was safer. I probably would have been fine, but…it was nice. Of you. To do that. So thank you.”

Your mouth was dry. You had no idea what you were supposed to do or say now. “It was nothing. I just couldn’t stand to leave you there if I could help it. Anyway, it was the least I could do in return for you saving me, even if I don’t know why you did it.”

“You were scared. I could feel it. You were scared, and you were dying. It’s as you said before – I couldn’t leave you there if I could help it.” He sounded so earnest, and all of a sudden you were so so grateful that he happened to be there at the right moment to help you.

Overwhelmed, you threw your arms around his neck and pulled him into a hug. “Thank you for saving my life.”

He was stiff and cold under you, arms hovering awkwardly behind your back like he didn’t know what to do with them. “Ah…you’re welcome.” One hand came down to gently pat you on the back. You found yourself smiling at his small attempt at comforting you.

You pulled back, noticing how he shivered lightly at the brush of your fingertips on his shoulders as your arms retreated.

Your mood sunk a bit when your attention dropped back to the light scrapes and bruises decorating his skin, multicolored splatters on the pale canvas of his torso. “I’m sorry, did I hurt you? When I hugged you? I should have been gentler, you’re injured still –”

“It’s okay,” he said, placatingly. “I barely feel them.”

You pursed your lips together. “What about your head?”

At this, he winced. “Sore.”

“What even happened to you?”

He broke eye contact with you, for the first time. His face was still blank, but you thought you could see a flicker of something akin to embarrassment in the tidal depths of his blue eyes. “I got caught up in the storm…I should have gone farther out to deeper water, but I didn’t think about it. I’m not used to the shallows. The last thing I remember was getting swept up in a wave, and then I woke up here. I think I must have hit my head on a rock.”

Your lips tilted down even further, now a full frown. “Why were you in the shallows, then, if you aren’t used to them? I thought fish species typically stayed around the same ocean depth their whole lives?” It took you a second to realize what you said, and then you could feel yourself flush. “I mean I wasn’t comparing you to a fish! You’re clearly much more advanced than that! Much smarter. And better. Um.”

He seemed amused by your floundering. “It’s okay. I know what you meant; I’m not offended. I’m glad you think I’m better than a fish.”

You realized he was teasing you, if lightly, and you felt yourself flush even more. “Well, Mr. Better-than-Fish, what were you doing in the shallows?”

He broke eye contact again. He was embarrassed, it was clearer to you now. “…I wanted to check on you. To make sure you were alive.” He paused, drawing his eyes back from the horizon to your face. “You weren’t on the beach anymore, but I couldn’t see you for several days. I didn’t know if you lived somewhere else, and had already gone home, or if something had happened to you. I was hoping to see you on the beach again, just so I would know you were safe. And then I did see you. But I never meant for you to see me again.”

“Why did you stick around?” you said softly. “You saw me. You could have left then, and I would have never seen you again.”

“Maybe I liked seeing you. Maybe I liked watching you look for me, every day.”

Your breath hitched. “You could have come to me before now.”

“My kind aren’t supposed to interact with humans.”

“Your kind?”

“Mer, I suppose, is what humans call us.”

Ah. That makes sense, you thought. Mer. “I thought of you as an angel. A water angel.”

“Why?” He asked. There was the lightest dusting of cherry-blossom pink over the tops of his cheekbones.

“Because you appeared to me when I was on the brink of death.” You paused, debating on whether or not you should elaborate. “And because you were beautiful. Are beautiful.”

The pink on his cheeks deepened to a shade of rose. He was, in fact, still beautiful. Especially with that blush. You were glad you had chosen to speak your mind, if only so you got to see his cheeks darkening prettily like that.

“Sorry, I don’t think I ever introduced myself,” you said, sheepishly. You told him your name.

He repeated it, and you felt a tingle go down your spine at hearing it in his voice. “My name is Giyuu.”

“Giyuu.” You repeated. “Well, it’s nice to finally meet you, Giyuu.”

He gave you a small smile. “Likewise.”

Giyuu then turned, looking back out into the sea. “I suppose I should go now that I’m awake.”

A bolt of fear went through you, more severe than you ever would have expected. You found you couldn’t bear the thought of letting him go and possibly never seeing him again; not after you had just found him. “You should stay here,” you blurted out. “To heal, I mean. I can bring you food, and whatever you need. But you need rest.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, hesitantly. “I don’t want to cause you trouble.” A flicker of what almost looked like relief flashed through his eyes. Maybe he also did not want to leave you. This was the same Giyuu who stuck lingered for days just to watch you…perhaps he really did wish to spend more time with you. You could only hope he felt a sliver of the desire to remain as you felt to keep him with you.

“Positive.”

“Okay,” he replied softly.

The rest of your next week was spent with Giyuu. Every day, you would wake up, prepare breakfast for the both of you, and set off towards the tidal pool.

You would arrive to him doing slow laps around the pool; he would immediately swim over to the edge of the water to greet you, his ebony hair dripping water down his shoulders and across his torso. He didn’t ever pull you into the water anymore, and instead you would remove your shoes and socks and dangle your feet into the water while the rest of you stayed safe and dry on the rocks. And the two of you would just eat, and talk.

You would only really leave him to go retrieve more food, get a few restless hours of sleep, or to get human objects to bring down and show him. A majority of the time you spent soaking in his presence; your feet were almost permanently pruned at this point, but you wanted to hear him speak, so at least one limb was partially submerged at all times.

Likewise, he would never be anywhere else; when you were gone, you assumed he slept and swam in circles around the pool, but he abandoned whatever he was doing the second you showed up to talk with you.

You talked about anything and everything under the sun. You did not feel any reluctance in telling him all about your life, more than you think you’ve ever told one person. He was fascinated not just by the human world you described, but with you. You had never talked so much about yourself, but you didn’t feel self-conscious. Even talking about your greatest regrets, your deepest anxieties and fears…you found yourself spilling them to him and receiving soft reassurances in return. Even when he was awkward, and clearly didn’t know what to say, he tried his best, and he was earnest in his attempts to make you feel better. That alone was always enough to lift your mood.

Of course, you asked him about his life as well. You learned about what life was like as a mer, and what his family was like, before their passing. He told you about the other mer he met later on, about how they weren’t cruel to him, but they weren’t always kind, either. He said it was his fault, simply because he was hard to talk to. He confessed to you that he believed they all hated him, even though he did not want them too. He just didn’t know how to get close to anyone, not anymore. He even told you, in the softest of whispers, how he wondered sometimes if everyone hated him, and he would never again have the kind of love that he had with his family. You tried your best to console him, telling him you couldn’t imagine anyone hating him. “And if they do,” you added, “Which I’m sure they don’t, you always have me.”

He gave you another one of his small, but genuine, smiles, and replied, “Maybe I should just stay here with you forever.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” you said, and the subject was dropped. But you didn’t forget it. You only hoped that he was genuine…because you truly wouldn’t mind him staying by you forever.

But deep in your heart, you knew he couldn’t stay in that small pool indefinitely. You were already sure he was completely healed; most of his scrapes had faded to white lines by now, and the bruises were gone. Even the gash on his head was more than halfway healed, and he didn’t give any indication of having headaches or anything of the sort. And you saw him looking out, into the ocean…he needed the space.

You would just savor the time you did have; savor the talks, savor the sight of his elegant face covered in rice crumbs from messily eating the sushi you provided him, savor the sight of his powerful body gliding through the water effortlessly. You would make the most of your time before his inevitable departure; you would make enough memories with him to last you his impending absence.

It only took until you were used to your new routine for something drastic to occur.

You began your day as normal, making the short trip down to the tidal pools with a spring in your step. You had made a new type of food for Giyuu to try, and you were excited to see his reaction. You noticed that your overall mood had improved ever since he became a regular fixture in your life. Maybe you were lonelier than you thought, living in your remote little cabin by the sea.

However, once you arrived, you were greeted with a seemingly empty pool. No sign of Giyuu anywhere.

Your hands tightened on your picnic basket. Could he have slipped back out into the sea overnight? There was quite the expanse of rocks separating the pool from the main body of the sea, but it could be possible… You just didn’t know why he would leave you without even a goodbye.

Your heart clenched uncomfortably in your chest. Perhaps he really didn’t care for you as much as he seemed to…or as much as you cared for him. Perhaps he just needed the food, and had to keep the one giving it to him happy…

You crept closer to the pool, peering in from the edge. Finally, you saw something.

You exhaled in relief, shoulders untensing. He hadn’t left; instead, he was lying on the bottom of the pool. At first you thought he was sleeping, but his eyes were open, and he was flicking his tail back and forth like he couldn’t get comfortable.

You sat down, setting your basket aside. You gently patted the surface of the water a few times, creating small ripples that echoed out from where your hand touched. You saw Giyuu freeze suddenly.

In a second, his head was poking up over the water. Only his head breached the water, however, and he remained outside of reach from where you sat on the rocks.

Not only was his behavior that day strange, but he looked…sick. His face was flushed red, as if he was fevered, and his eyes were blown wide. He was breathing heavily as well, too heavily for how little he was moving.

“Are you okay?” you asked, brows furrowed.

He nodded jerkily, obviously lying. “I’m fine. You should just go back up to your cabin.”

“No!” you said, incredulously. “You look sick. I’m not leaving you here when something is obviously wrong.”

He let out a low rasping sound, almost a growl, startling you. You had never heard anything like that from him…it was deep, aggressive, and animal.

“No. You need to leave. Now.”

You scowled. “I refuse. Tell me what’s wrong.”

He dove back under the water in lieu of replying.

“Hey!” you yelled. Normally, you wouldn’t push him if he said he wanted space. But it was clear that something was wrong with him, and he was hiding it from you. What if you could help, and things just got worse because he was too stubborn to get your help?

You stood up, and made to start wading deeper into the pool, uncaring about how your clothes were getting soaked. If he was going to be like that, you would just have to chase him down.

It wasn’t the most well-thought-out plan; he was a much better and faster swimmer than you, built for the water while you were built for dry terrain. The pool wasn’t large, but it was big enough for Giyuu to swim around comfortably, meaning he could feasibly stay out of your reach by just swimming away. He could also stay under the water indefinitely, a skill you sadly lacked. It didn’t help that you were still hesitant to submerge yourself, your mind still lingering on its vivid memories of drowning.

Yet you didn’t think about any of this, your mind clouded with annoyance, and more prominently, worry.

You were nearly all the way submerged. The water was lapping gently at the dip of your collar bone, and your heartbeat had kicked up against your will. Your breaths were shallower than normal, dormant anxiety forming iron bands around your lungs, but you pushed past it. You were in no danger; there were no waves, the water wasn’t deep, and you were a reasonably competent swimmer. You were just about to dive into the water when he reappeared.

Unlike before, this time he was close. Close enough for your slightly gasping breaths to shift his wet hair. Up close, his condition seemed even more severe. His eyes were nearly all black now, deep blue covered by the spreading inkblots of his pupils. He was still red and panting, mouth open, revealing long, needle-like teeth.

“Why don’t you just leave?!” he said. His voice was deeper than usual, rough. You could hear a low growl starting up in his chest again, so low you could almost feel it through the water. “Don’t you understand how hard you’re making this for me? I’m trying so hard…”

“What are you talking about?” you asked, almost pleadingly. “I don’t understand. You just look like you’re in pain. You can’t expect me to ignore that!”

He bared his teeth, growling getting louder. “I’m not sick. I’m not hurt. But you need to leave. So you don’t get hurt. So I don’t hurt you.”

Your gaze softened. “Oh, Giyuu…I trust you. You wouldn’t hurt me. I just want to help you. Let me help you.” Impulsively, you reached one hand out to graze your fingers over his cheek.

He let out a full-body shudder at your touch, eyes slipping shut. When he reopened them, there was something dark in their depths.

“Do you really want to know what’s wrong with me?” Deceptively strong hands grabbed onto your waist, pulling you until your body was flush with his. You let out a gasp.

Through your wet clothes, you could feel the ridges of his muscles, the light pinch of his claws on your hips…and something else, against your front. Something large, and stiff, pressed between your bodies.

Your breath hitched. Was that…?

“I don’t think I told you before…” he purred, “But Mer have mating seasons…where all we want to do is fuck…and breed. Normally, I would just hide away, ride it out on my own…But then you had to come here, tempting me. How am I supposed to resist such a lovely creature bringing me food…taking care of me…acting like they want to be my mate? Offering to ‘help me’ with my rut? Don’t you realize what you do to me, baby?” He pulled you close again, grinding against your stomach almost unconsciously.

You could not even speak, only letting out a small squeaking noise as he rubbed against you. Mate? Breed? You knew he wasn’t human, but this…you should have been repulsed, or at the very least offput by this information. Instead, you could feel liquid heat pooling in your abdomen like molten lava.

His hands flexed on your hips, claws ripping through your clothes and scratching your bare skin. Then he let you go, leaving you to quickly flounder to keep your face above water. He looked like it physically hurt him to tear himself away from you, teeth clenching and muscles flexing as he hovered an arm’s length away from you.

“You need to leave if you don’t want this,” he said, panting heavily. “Because I won’t be able to hold myself back if you stay.”

The obvious answer was to take the chance and run. To not agree to get fucked by a sea creature. Go back and hide in your cabin until this was all over, and then continue as you were until Giyuu inevitably left you and all of this faded away like a dream.

And yet…he was beautiful. Ethereal, strong, and even caring…the thought of being bred by him was intoxicating.

You didn’t leave. “Fuck me,” you said, voice a little shaky, yet confident in your decision.

With those two words, he was on you.

Giyuu’s claws were back, this time ripping your clothes right off you. Soon, you both were surrounded by a halo of floating fabric scraps; even your underwear was not spared.

Divested of this one last barrier between you, hands on your hips yanked you back against him. He resumed grinding on you, frantically; you couldn’t see much of him because of the water, but you could feel him. His cock was thick, with ridges running along the length of it; you couldn’t get a good judge of his length with his movements, but you knew it would reach deep inside of you.

He wasn’t providing you any sort of real stimulation, humping your body like a dog in heat but missing where you were hottest. The water was disguising the wetness that you knew would otherwise be dripping down your thighs. He hadn’t even done anything, but you were more aroused than you could ever remember being, just hearing his panting in your ear as he chased his own pleasure, feeling the strange clicking, purring sound vibrating in his chest.

But it wasn’t enough for him.

He let go of your waist just to swim under you and hook his arms under your knees, lifting you up out of the water only to pull you back down so your exposed pussy rubbed directly against his cock.

You let out an embarrassing whine as you felt the ridges on his dick slide against your clit. You threw your arms around his neck to grip on his hair, pulling a light rolling growl out of him.

He ground against you a few times, fucking his cock between the swollen folds of your labia. You couldn’t hold back your own noises when you felt him nudge against the little nub at the apex of your sex, sending little electric jolts of pleasure up your spine.

And then the pointed tip of his cock caught against your entrance.

Giyuu froze for a second, wide, black eyes gazing into yours as you panted into each other’s mouths. You became hyper-aware of every sensation. You could feel the flutter of his gills tickling your forearms; the sensation of his damp hair tangled up in between your clenched hands; his webbed hands braced on your back, claws definitely leaving thin scratch mark in your flesh.

And then your focus was drawn back to a single point as he thrust his cock fully into your soaking pussy.

You let out a shriek. You weren’t exaggerating about his size earlier; you felt completely split open. Your poor cunt was trying valiantly to clench around him, but he had you gaping so much you couldn’t do more than lightly flutter your inner walls around his length. He was long, reaching up all the way to prod at the entrance of your womb. You could have sworn you could taste him in your throat, he was so deep.

He let out his own moan. “I’m so deep in you baby,” he said, almost deliriously. “I can feel it--uh--can’t you? I’m filling up your whole pussy.”

You moaned. “Yesss…can barely fit you…so big…”

He thrust into you, slowly, only once, like he was trying to get you used to it. You could almost count all of the strange ridges lining his cock as they ground against every sensitive spot inside of you, making you let out another gush of fluid to get washed away by the gently lapping water.

You clenched on him again, tugging at his hair. This seemed to rip away the last of his restraint.

He started thrusting into you rapidly, pulling you almost completely off of his cock only to force you back down as he simultaneously flexed his tail up, impaling you onto his thick length. It was like he was carving the perfect space for himself into your pussy, ridges sawing against your walls, making them even more sensitive. His tip slammed perfectly against your cervix, as if begging entrance to your womb, so he could breed you more directly.

The sheer overwhelming sensation of having all the nerves in your soft, wet cunt pressed and scraped against by his massive cock caused you to come almost immediately. Your head lolled back as you rode out your orgasm, waves of electric heat pulsing through you like waves crashing against the shore. You clenched down hard on Giyuu’s still-moving length, your pussy gripping every bump like it was trying to seal him inside you.

“Ohh, baby, so perfect for me…” he slurred. “Perfect mate, made just for me—”

You could do nothing more than whine, as he continued to abuse your pussy at the same frantic pace as before, almost ignoring your pathetic attempts to squeeze around him as you were pushed into overstimulation.

Your mind was starting to drift…after around the third time, you lost count of how many times you had come. It didn’t matter anyway, because no matter how many times you clenched around him and cried your way through orgasm, he never let up his tempo, continuing to fuck you as if it was the only thing keeping him sane. You would have thought he was completely in his own mind, unaware of the delicious damage he was doing to your body, if it wasn’t for the intermittent churrs of praise he panted into your ringing ears. These were interspersed by nips and bites to your neck and shoulders; you were so deep in pleasure that his needle-sharp teeth burned in a good way as they repeatedly pierced your spin, leaving bleeding marks decorating your skin red.

You were nearly unconscious by the time his rhythm finally faltered, his strokes turning harder and sloppier, no longer with the perfect staccato tempo of before. You would think your nerves would be too worn out to feel anything, but he still managed to hit your cervix hard enough to send an almost painful shock of pure sensation through you.

“M’gonna breed you now,” he whined, sounding absolutely wrecked, even though, by your count, he was the one wrecking you. “Gonna fill you up so good--my pretty mate—"

“Please,” you managed to eek out, tongue heavy in your mouth.

He thrust into you one last time, hitting the tip of his cock against the entrance to your womb as he came.

You could tell when he was about to come because his whole cock seemed to twitch inside you, and the ridges swelled up even more, until he was completely plugging your pussy, with no chance of pulling out. Then, he filled you with his come.

But…it wasn’t come, your orgasm-drunk mind realized after a minute. Your pussy was being filled to bursting with what felt like small, jelly-like spheres…

You let out a broken moan. He was breeding you. He was filling you with his eggs.

The steady pulse of eggs seemed to go on for eternity; the sensation of being filled so much caused you to orgasm again, more of a dry shudder at this point than anything else, but it caused Giyuu to coo at you and stroke his cool, sticky tongue over your lips in a mockery of a first kiss.

You let him lap fully into your mouth, closer to a proper kiss, even if it was messy and dripping…you tried to suck on his tongue, but it was too long, and he ended up fucking it in and out of your throat instead.

Once the eggs finally stopped, Giyuu gently ground into your throbbing pussy until he filled you even more, this time with a warm pulse of thick, sticky liquid that spread out in between what little gaps were left by his eggs. You could feel his whine vibrating up though his mouth into yours and he stilled completely for the first time in ages.

He pulled his tongue out of your throat to roughly whisper praise to you, but you barely heard any of it as your body slipped into blissful unconsciousness, its ordeal finally over.

You awoke to Giyuu cradling you in his arms, gently licking at the bite marks that scattered your neck and shoulders. He had pulled out, leaving your full cunt to drip his come slowly into the water. You felt bloated, and sore, and your neck stung, but you also felt a bone deep satisfaction.

“You’re awake,” he turned your head so he could look into your eyes. His pupils had shrunk back down to normal, revealing the deep ocean blue once more. “I’m sorry for hurting you,” he whispered, stroking a fingertip lightly along the red and inflamed puncture wound he had caused, eyes drifting to them, almost regretfully. “I couldn’t hold myself back…”

“It’s okay,” you said, voice raspy from screaming. “It felt good.”

He didn’t seem convinced; his face was back to its normal blankness, but you could see the faint furrow between his brows.

Seeing his distress, you lifted an arm up to pull his head towards you, pressing your lips together softly. This kiss, unlike your first, was chaste, just a brief meeting of lips, but it was enough to relax him. You gave him a small smile. “You’re so sweet, taking care of me,” you cooed, only slightly teasing him. It was amusing to see the creature who had just fucked your brains out mere hours ago blush prettily at being called ‘sweet’.

You would miss him dearly when he left you. He must have seen your face drop, because his mood shifted towards the melancholy as well.

“Still…I should have held back. I didn’t want it to happen like that.” He murmured, tucking his face into your neck, still ashamed.

You froze, hand mid-way through stroking his hair. “What do you mean?”

“I wanted to make you my mate before this,” he replied, “I had a plan…I was going to court you, once I was well enough to leave. Mer court their mates with gifts, and I have nothing here, even though you bring me things every day. But I had forgotten about my cycle, and here we are.”

You almost couldn’t believe your ears. “You want me to be your mate?”

He pulled back to look at your face quizzically. “I thought I had made that clear before.”

“No,” you squeaked.

His face dropped. “I thought my intentions were obvious…I thought you reciprocated, but it’s okay if you don’t. I thank you for your help anyways. I can leave whenever you want.”

“No!” you blurted again. If you knew nothing else, you knew you wanted him to stay. “Mates, that’s like marriage, right? We’ll be each other’s?”

He nodded, face still carefully empty.

You wrapped your arms around his neck, tugging him until your noses brushed. “That sounds wonderful. You being mine, me being yours…I don’t mind it if you leave when you want, as long as you remember to come back to me.”

“I’ll always come back for you baby,” he said, smiling softly as he kissed you lovingly. “My lovely mate.”

You had known him only a few days, but you couldn’t imagine your life without him anymore. He lit up your days, just with his presence; he made you happier than you had been in a very long time. You should have been more cautious, instead of immediately promising yourself to him, but the soft, syrupy warmth you felt as he kissed you was intoxicating. You only hoped that this sensation would never go away.

#giyuu x reader #giyuu tomioka x reader #giyuu smut #tomioka giyuu x reader #tomioka giyuu #kny smut #kny #mdni #kny x reader #monster-october-kny-2023 #writing tags like i'm throwing spaghetti at the wall #romy can write #strange lovers event #afab reader

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fmhiphop · 1 year ago

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Catastrophic Dam Incident Creates Turmoil For Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant In Ukraine

Have you seen the destruction caused by the recent collapse of a major dam in Ukraine? The consequences are truly heart-wrenching! As we speak, a massive disaster is unfolding before our eyes. According to the host of All Things Considered, Ari Shapiro, the once sturdy dam holding back a body of water comparable in size to Utah's Great Salt Lake has given way, unleashing an overwhelming flow of water that is now mercilessly rushing downstream, swamping villages and towns in its path. The extent of this disaster is unbelievable! But let's not overlook the ripple effects of this calamity. Upstream, the situation is becoming increasingly dire at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. The plant, already grappling with its fair share of challenges, is now confronted with the added burden of this catastrophic event. The dam's collapse has amplified the strain on the plant, adding to its stress. Caught In The Crossfire: The Dam's Harrowing Encounter With Ukrainian Forces And Russian Troops Allow me to introduce Geoff Brumfiel, the intriguing science correspondent from NPR, who plunged into the profound implications behind the dam's collapse. Geoff led us on a journey to unravel the gripping chain of events that unfolded at this ill-fated site. Brumfiel claims it was caught in the unforgiving grip of Ukrainian forces and Russian troops as the dam became entangled in the dangerous crossfire. With artillery fire and explosions constantly hammering its foundations, one cannot help but wonder: How did this monumental structure become stuck in such a horrific clash? And what does its relentless attack signify in the grand scheme of this conflict? "In May, the reservoir controls flooded with spring rainwater," Geoff said. "It seems like no one was on the Russian side to open the dam's gates up and let some of that water out." Did you witness the action? The water level surged to such heights that it spilled over the dam's crest, flooding everything in its path. And then, on that fateful morning of June 6, an astonishing sight unfolded before our eyes—the dam, nearly wiped out by the powerful forces of nature. Russia swiftly points an accusing finger at Ukraine, alleging an attack. Conversely, Ukraine accuses Russia of purposely destroying the dam. But ask yourself this: considering the immense strain the dam endured, is it possible that it simply gave in to the pressure, submitting to its own weakness? The Challenges Ahead For The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant Shapiro asserts that the dam restrained a considerable amount of water, with the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant perfectly situated along its shores. In light of this, let's consider the serious risks this situation holds for the plant. Could this setup bring about unwanted outcomes? Is the plant exposed to potential risks due to its proximity to the reservoir? Let's see what Geoff Brumfiel had to say. "Yeah. Well, nuclear plants create a lot of heat, and that heat needs to be dissipated to avoid a meltdown," he said. "And this is why nearly all nuclear reactors are located near lakes or the ocean." Once a vital resource for Zaporizhzhia, the reservoir now gradually disappears. Nevertheless, please do not worry, for the power plant reactors have been effectively deactivated, bringing a comforting halt to their once fiery cores. But what lies beneath the surface of this draining pool? What secrets does it hold? How will this transformation impact the region's landscape and ecosystem? As the power plants simmer down, a new chapter begins, loaded with intriguing possibilities and unforeseen consequences. The Role Of The Cooling Pond: Temporary Stability Or Long-Term Solution? Furthermore, Brumfiel conversed with Jacopo Buongiorno, a distinguished nuclear engineer from MIT. Interestingly, Buongiorno reveals that the current demand for keeping all the reactors cool amounts to nothing more than a mere fire hose's worth of water. But can we truly fathom the remarkable results of this seemingly impossible task? Can such a small amount of water possess the power to reduce the immense heat generated by these reactors? Jacopo Buongiorno confidently assures us that the water supply is far from running dry anytime soon. But wait my dear listeners, let's delve deeper into the matter. As Brumfiel explains, the plant relies on its own cooling pond, which may offer temporary stability. However, we must confront a sobering reality. Should we ignore that this once critical source dam is now lost forever? How can we dismiss this challenge in the medium to long term? Indeed, while Buongiorno's assertion provides a glimmer of hope, we must ponder the underlying issues. Are we neglecting the long-term effects by relying solely on the cooling pond? How can we ignore the irreversible loss of the dam, which served as a reliable water source for years? These questions force us to confront a pressing problem that demands our attention and foresight. Chernobyl's Legacy: Comparing Past And Present Safety Measures Shapiro sought confirmation from Brumfiel regarding the potential consequences of the situation. With Brumfiel's response, the immediate threat was ruled out. However, Shapiro's inquiry delved deeper, contemplating if this chain of events could eventually lead to a major nuclear meltdown. Brumfiel argued that, theoretically, such a possibility exists, although it is distinct from Chernobyl's catastrophic events. Remember, the Chernobyl disaster is the world's worst nuclear accident developing in Ukraine. However, Brumfiel emphasized that these reactors boast modern advancements and enhanced safety measures. Nevertheless, the plant has faced many challenges, enduring endless warfare, shellings, blackouts, fires, and the brutal Russian occupation. And now, it faces yet another difficult trial. It's hard not to wonder which final straw might break the camel's back. Indeed, this current situation presents itself as one of the heavier straws, demanding our attention and concern. Amidst its many uses, the reservoir served a purpose beyond the nuclear plant. Shapiro wondered: what other problems could this cause in southern Ukraine? Could it unleash a cascade of unexpected results? Could it sow the seeds of environmental imbalance and pollution distress? The effects of such a complex system left Shapiro curious, wanting to dig deeper into the region's potential challenges. "Yeah. Towns on both sides of the reservoir used it for drinking water," responded. "I spoke to David Helms, a retired meteorologist with the U.S. government who's been tracking what's going on at the dam very closely. He guesses roughly around a million people are going to need to find water from somewhere else." Ensuring Water Supply For The Affected Population In the wake of this colossal dam disaster, how can we ensure a sufficient water supply for the affected population? David Helms proposes a radical solution: water transportation by trucks. Can you imagine the scale of this undertaking? Trucking in water for a million people presents an immense challenge, demanding our attention and innovative thinking. How can we overcome this hurdle and ensure the basic necessity of water reaches everyone in need? It is a daunting task, but we can conquer this challenge with determination and resourcefulness. Under the warm sun, a vast reservoir of water glistens, quietly nurturing a web of channels and canals that stretches for a thousand miles. Imagine the immense scale of this network, one of the grandest in Europe—these canals, like lifelines, hydrated fields filled with vibrant vegetables and valuable cash crops like rapeseed. The Indelible Mark On Ukrainian Society What if this reservoir, this essential source of nutrition, were to vanish? Think of the catastrophic outcomes that would grow. As we venture into a scorching summer and forge ahead into an uncertain future, the people of Ukraine stand on the brink of facing a multitude of economic and humanitarian predicaments due to the impending loss of this vital water supply. The impact will reverberate far and wide, touching the lives of Ukrainians on both sides of the front lines. Rhetorical as it may be, I ask you: How will they cope with the devastation, with their once fertile lands turning into dry wastelands? How will they bear the weight of shattered livelihoods, dreams fading under the sweltering sun? In truth, the stakes are too high. Beyond mere numbers and statistics, the loss of this reservoir will leave an indelible mark on Ukrainian society. It will plunge communities into despair, disrupt trade and commerce, and test the resilience of a nation. We must confront the harsh reality that lies ahead. We can mitigate the upcoming tragedy only through understanding and joint action. Written by Nikiys Biggs | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook Follow and like FMHipHop on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Spotify! Read the full article

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movedtoferinehuntress · 1 year ago

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The smoke burned Caitlyn's lungs, as her body threatened to give way once more. Shock slowly started to wear away to the anguish that lingered in her bones as she gasped in pain and tried to process it. For a moment, a figure flitted through the smoke, shifting and turning but it wasn't real. Caitlyn's eyes fluttered close to try and ignore this impending sense of doom hovering over her mind. The fire licked behind her, threatening to swallow her whole as it did the rest of the enforcers. Every single one gone, in seconds they were burned. They didn't even have a chance to scream or yell out. In a swift twist of events people that once existed no longer breathed the same air she did.

Echoing ringing bells told her the entire city was on alert yet she couldn't process much else. Eyes flicked up toward the only person she could see, who had found her first. Her fingers could feel the white pants he wore to the ceremony; she had missed his speech. Instead of focusing on her wounds, it was the first thing that came to mind. What was supposed to be a joyous event of progress and development had turned into a scene of chaos and murder.

What was he saying? Caitlyn strained her eyes to try and hear his words but they were as distant as the birds flying over the ocean skies; barely a sketched in pencil drawing on paper. Her brows shifted downward, the confusion and inability to focus made it hard to process. But she could catch the distant voice enough, finally hearing the last few words. I've got you. A promise made, a promise kept. Caitlyn had made it so many years ago, that she always be there for him. She would always have his back even when times go rough.

Fate had a twisted sense of humor when it came to putting the two of them in situations that pushed them to the edge.

"Ah… ow," Caitlyn gasped as she felt her body being lifted. Try as she might to move her arm around his shoulder, she let out a cry of pain that erupted through her shoulder. The flexing of her skin pulled at the burned flesh that now leaked blood and oozed plasma. The pain that erupted from all the movement caused Caitlyn's eyes to fog over and she slumped up against him from the dizziness of her head. Her head bobbed downward to roll up against his shoulder as she struggled to maintain consciousness. The blood on the side of her face smeared his pristine ivory coat, matching the same red color of his crest as her legs shook. "The hall," Caitlyn whispered, lifting her head toward the open door to the academy hall. "She… she went in there. Don't… don't worry about me," Caitlyn pleaded, not sure what she was doing in there but it if she was planting more bombs… if she stole something.

This was on her. This was all Caitlyn's fault. The last person standing, and she knew Marcus would use this against her finally.

Those thoughts came quickly and faded away in par with the struggle to stay in the waking world. Instead, the hall became a distant thought as they moved away from the wreckage and burning building, Caitlyn weakly trying to walk but more likely being dragged as she forced every last inch of strength to stay awake. "I'm sorry," A whispered on her lips as she turned her dull blue eyes toward Jayce, the red of the fire reflecting in her eyes making them almost appear purple. Losing her footing she nearly fell back down to the ground as she frantically grasped for his shoulder and leaned up against him in an attempt not to fall to the ground.

What has she done?

𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐋𝐃 𝐇𝐀𝐕𝐄 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖𝐍 𝐁𝐘 𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐖𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐋𝐔𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐃 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐎 𝐀 𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐌-𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐄, 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐘 𝐑𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐘 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐘𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐖𝐀𝐘 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐆. He of all people should have known something would happen — sooner or later, if only because personal experience & the pattern shown so far whenever things got to be too quiet, something happened to knock things over, causing them to tumble & crash down. What's worse though, is this time, it's another explosion.

That nagging, screaming voice that rises as soon as he hears & feels the tell-tale quake sharply reminds him Caitlyn was on duty that evening — images flickering to the forefront of his mind of the last time she'd gotten caught up in something so literally explosive. His mind is not kind with the images it conjures, all worst case scenarios he hopes aren't possible realities.

As soon as he hears the initial sound, the commotion caused wills him to move fast, draws him in with wide eyes & a thundering heartbeat to seek out the source with carefully held breath. It doesn't take him long to find it — something he's unsure of being a completely good thing as twin pools of gold scan along the scene. Dread clutches him tight, lead weighing heavily in the pit of his gut like a sinking anchor in the ocean the more everything settles. The roaring flames are still in the process of being calmed, smoke hanging heavy in the air & burning in his lungs with each breath as he continues to look over the small groups of Enforcers in the remaining carnage. He doesn't find Cait anywhere among them.

It should be reassuring. Keyword being should.

But knowing her, knowing her brand of special luck & how she seemed about as bad as a magnet at times for dredging up danger, ever willing to charge in headfirst when the faintest whiff is caught — he has an idea in mind of where she could be. He only hopes he's wrong. To ease his own paranoid state of mind, to double check just in case & to be completely sure — he takes another sharp inhale before he steps down the stairs. Shoes clattering against the ground in loud footfalls, he swiftly slips into the throng of frozen panic, dark brows knitting together as he goes towards where the flames burn the strongest.

Calling out for her, he takes care to scrutinize each space he pilfers through, grimly searching for human shapes in the flames or peeking through among the littering debris. Still nothing. His voice is starting to grow hoarse from all the smoke, every few calls of Caitlyn's name, he can't help but cough loudly the thicker it gets, but he’s nothing if not stubborn. This is stupid. It's stupid — but he doesn't want to leave until he knows for sure she's not caught up in this — that somehow in a paranoid way, she'd gotten tangled up in something else dangerous because of him in some way shape or form.

The flames grow hotter, sweat beading along his brow, dampening his suit where his limbs crease, causing a strange sort of cold-hot clamminess in his hands from the mix of heat & fear — uncomfortable, but ignorable. Unimportant. Not a priority. Jayce's jaw strains, the drumming sound of his pulse nearly drowning out the sound of someone calling out. Somehow, he manages to catch it, stopping quick, turning, looking around before his eyes catch on something — no, someone.

He doesn't think twice in rushing forwards, breath catching in his throat the closer he gets, taking in Cait's battered, bruised & burned form. She looks awful — the scent of burned flesh clinging to her like a macabre perfume, iron thick in the air & mingling sickeningly with the scent of smoke. He wants to grab her & move them out, but the shock of the state he’s found her in freezes him in place, hands hovering shakily over her frame, taking quick study of where the worst of her wounds lay. Jayce will’s the heavy tremble from his own hands as he holds his breath a moment. He needed to focus. His eyes sting, burning painfully along their edges, but he's just thankful she's still breathing & in one piece.

❝ Cait! Cait, hey — stay with me! I’ve got you! ❞

He tries his best not to let his mind rush & wander to those worst case scenarios, but the amount of blood he sees on the ground, puddled beneath . . . It's hard not to. She's weakly trying to talk to him - panicked eyes flitting back down the hall in urgency, but he ignores it for the moment in favour of trying to calm her down — to reassure as he bends to try getting a better hold on the enforcer, swallowing down past the taste that poisons his throat. He winces, doing his best to not focus on the way she hisses, struggles to breath with each tiny shift & jostle of her wounds.

They need to leave — & she needed immediate help. His mind is nothing but a steady stream of curses as sharp eyes catch the way her hands shake. He has the urge to keep her talking, to ask what she knew — what caused this, but he saves it for later. Now was far from the time. Holding her as carefully as he can manage, he guides them from the wreckage, heading in the direction where sirens blared the loudest.

#knightfeared #[muse] caitlyn — interactions.#[default verse] — welcome to piltover.#thread: the heat of loss #tw: explosions #tw: blood

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lesetoilesfous · 4 years ago

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For DADWC: from the Florence + The Machine Prompt List list > "And the heart is hard to translate, it speaks a language of its own". You're my favorite fenders writer 💙, so fenders fic, pretty please!

Aaaaaaaah so I got this twice and I love it SO much so thank you both! @contreparry - I really hope you enjoy it!

(If you’d like me to write you a dragon age fic, send me a prompt from here!)

@dadrunkwriting

Pairing: Fenders

Characters: Fenris, Anders

Tags: canon-typical graphic depictions of violence, Anders was right, anti-chantry, fluff

Rating: Mature

“And the heart is hard to translate It has a language of it's own It talks in tongues and quiet sighs And prayers and proclamations in the grand days Of great men and the smallest of gestures In short shallow gasps”

- All This and Heaven Too, Florence + The Machine

It started on a beach in 9:30 Dragon. It was raining, and Fenris, Hawke and the rest of their companions were hot and sticky with blood when the clouds had burst. They’d left a litter of broken slaver bodies in the sand dunes behind them, stumbling down to the grey waves of the Waking Sea beneath a cloudy sky.

And then it had begun to rain, and the mage: a foolish, willful man utterly ignorant of his own privilege, had yelped and begun to take his clothes off. Fenris can still remember the way the sand had felt between his toes, and hear the buzz of insects in his ears as he’d stared at the tall, blonde man, and the sand between them had grown dark with water.

Anders had stripped down to his smalls, blood streaked up his forearms in long vivid slashes, and dropped his staff carelessly into the long, stiff silver reeds. Admittedly, it was a cheap thing: clearly scavenged or stolen, and nothing that any self-respecting magister would have been seen dead with. Still. Fenris had never seen a mage just drop their staff like that before. Just to the right of Anders’ chest, half hidden by thick red-blonde hair, was a deep and jagged scar directly above his heart. His belly was almost concave, hip bones jutting in a way that could only be unhealthy. There were more scars, but Fenris barely had a chance to see them before Anders was running at the freezing sea.

From behind, Fenris saw that his long back was latticed with more scars than he had previously imagined. The mage yelped as he got into the waves, feet hopping as if the water were burning hot, not freezing cold. And then he got past the shallows, and dove in beneath the cresting waves. Behind him, somewhere between the beach and the horizon, seabirds leapt squawking into the grey sky. Anders had burst up out of the blue water, laughing, tossing his hair back from his face in a whip of antique gold, tipping his long, crooked nose back and shutting his eyes as he raised his face to the watery grey sunlight.

And then Isabela and Hawke, laughing, had pulled each other’s clothes off and followed him, and Fenris had been left standing uncertainly on the beach, watching them, unable to decipher the ache in his chest as he waited for them to rejoin him on the shore.

It started in the Alienage in 9:30 on Wintersend. Anders had just delivered triplets, which was a labour that was exactly as harrowing and arduous as he had worried it would be. He hadn’t slept in 48 hours, and for weeks after he’d ascribed the events of that night to a waking dream. The elvhen women whose children he’d delivered had attempted to press what silver they had into his hands, and Anders had pressed it back into the mother’s wife’s hands, dizzy with the expenditure of his magic and the sheer weight of fatigue. Then he’d taken his staff, more as a cane than anything, and slowly left the narrow confines of their home.

His knee had been blistering with pain: and he’d known before the first kiss of snow that the weather had changed. His worst scars always warned him before the sky broke. Still, the coat he’d armoured over the years with reinforced leather and what other supplies he could scavenge provided little warmth against the night, so Anders was shivering as his breath fell in white clouds into the dark. Around the Vhenadahl, candles flickered against the wind in a way that only magical fire could, and Anders sent a silent half-hearted prayer to the Maker that the templars would stay inside their barracks tonight, and not make any midnight excursions into Lowtown.

The last person he had expected to see leaving Merrill’s home was Fenris, and he certainly hadn’t expected to see the elf wrapped in a mossy green, knitted woolen scarf. For a second the pair of them stared at each other, caught like apprentices out of bed past curfew. Then Fenris had flushed, ruddy against his dark skin, and marched past him. Anders had expected it to end there, but when Fenris got to the foot of the steps to the alienage he stopped, greatsword strapped like steel lightning to his back.

He turned on the steps, and frowned at Anders. “Are you coming?”

Anders had followed. Fenris said nothing for the whole journey, but he walked Anders to the door of his clinic, and when Anders swayed as he tried to heave open the heavy doors, Fenris had caught his elbow. Anders had stared at him, more startled by the unexpected gesture than he would have been by the Darktown floor, and Fenris jerked his hand back like he’d been burned. In one of the undercity taverns, a chorus of festival goers were singing. Fenris gave him a short, sharp nod. “Good night, mage.”

Anders nodded back, speechless. Through the broken walls of Darktown, snow drifted in silent clouds and disappeared into the blue ink of the Waking Sea. Anders was convinced for years that he imagined it when Fenris stopped again, on the staircase outside the clinic, and spoke in a murmur. “Happy Wintersend.”

It started on Sundermount in 9:33 Dragon. Fenris had fallen, feet slipping in the mud, right calf failing him thanks to a slice to his leg that felt like it had split a ligament. His leg was a screaming burn and the rest of him was little better. The fog on the mountain was thick and white as dragon’s breath, and much colder, seeping through his armour and into his skin, and making the lyrium sewn into his flesh numb the veins around it in a bruising ache. Fenris couldn’t see Hawke, or Isabela, and he did not trust the mage to be anywhere than at Hawke’s side, for all that she had clearly long since promised her heart to Isabela. It was with a grim certainty that Fenris had looked up into the bloody, snarling face of his would-be killer, even as his mind ran through every formal strategy and dirty tricky he could think of. His fingers scrabbled in the dirt for mud to throw into his eyes, but his fingers were weak and stiff with the cold. The slaver’s sword fell.

Which was when six feet two of mage tackled him. Fenris stared as Anders charged at the slaver who would have killed him, throwing him down into the dirt. The mage’s staff was nowhere to be seen, and his hair was almost brown with the rain. His pale face was streaked with blood, and his coat and shirt were torn and scorched in places, exposing his bare, newly healed skin. Fenris stared as Anders tackled the slaver down into the mud and then reared back and punched him, hard, breaking his nose before punching him again, and again, and then taking a dagger from his belt and slitting his throat with brutal efficiency.

When the act was done, Anders dropped the knife into the dirt and scrambled to his feet, long legs skidding in the wet mud like a newborn colt. Fenris almost laughed, but in the absence of mortal peril his injuries were attempting to set his nerve endings on fire. His efforts to sit ended in him collapsing back onto the hill and praying to a Maker he struggled to believe in that Hawke and Isabela had dealt with the rest. And then Anders was there, face covered in blood and mud, hair clinging like kelp to his newly freckled and faintly sunburned cheeks. “Oh no you don’t.”

Magic fell over Fenris’ ruined leg like holy fire, and Fenris’ pain evaporated, washing away from one heartbeat to the next until it was merely a distant, terrible memory. Slowly, stiffly, Fenris managed to sit up, and for the first time in three years, Anders gave him a warm, honest smile. “There you are.”

Then he’d stood, and Fenris had been dizzily reminded exactly how tall he was. And then there was a long, calloused hand, red with blood, fingers crooked with breaking, thrust into the foggy air between them. Despite himself, Fenris took it.

It started on the Wounded Coast in 9:33 Dragon. Aveline was attempting to woo her soon to be husband, Donnic, and Anders was struggling to understand exactly why that required Hawke and her friends to put their lives on the line. But the summer was late and hot, and the days were long, and Marian’s eyes were very blue. So he’d found himself in the shifting, midge-ridden dunes of the Coast, killing slavers and Tal-Vashoth, and only occasionally cringing with second hand embarrassment at Aveline’s attempts at flirtation.

They’d dispatched most the ne’er-do-wells stupid enough to show their faces between the sand dunes, and were waiting for Aveline and Donnic to catch up in an appropriately concealed spot beneath the hissing reeds. Soon enough, their voices came down the path, not quite smothered by the close crash of the ocean and the whistle of the wind.

“So I think it’s always best to start with a quick downward slash, and then follow up with a parry. It’s predictable, sure, but I think it’s good to get recruits started on what’s tried and trusted.”

Fenris had laughed, and for a second Anders thought the wind dropped. The elf’s voice was rough and low, and his laugh was too. He’d curled his lyrium-twined fingers at Isabela, and Isabela had rolled her eyes and presses a silver into his waiting palm. Fenris had pocketed it. Then he’d caught Anders staring, and cleared his throat, colour rising to his high cheekbones. Isabela had leaned across him, and Fenris’ flush had risen up the back of his neck and into the tips of his ears. Anders had tried very hard not to stare at it.

“Do you want in? Fenris thinks it won’t be until the third path.”

Anders had spoken, as he so often did, without stopping to think. “I wouldn’t have figured you for the romantic type.”

Fenris had met his eyes, then, and the elf’s were deep and green and beautiful. “There is a great deal that you do not know about me, mage.”

Anders had not been able to think of anything else for the rest of the night.

It started in 9:37 Dragon. They were in The Hanged Man, and Fenris was staring at the monster that wore the face of his nightmares. Corff was nowhere to be seen, nor were Maraas or any of the tavern’s other regulars. Fenris was trying to beat back the tide of cynicism in his mind telling him that he should have known they would betray him, all of them. That he should never have trusted anyone but himself.

His sister stepped back, and his blood roared so loudly in his ears that he barely heard what Hawke said. But he heard his domi - Danarius - talking about his affection and his skills. It took everything Fenris had not to vomit on the tavern floor, and his mind revolted in a dizzy kind of horror as the impulse conflicted with memories of merrier disasters on these same stained floorboards. Then there were demons, and his mouth was thick with sulphur, and Fenris was fighting for his life.

It was like being back in the Provings again. Danarius had found his way onto the wooden staircase of The Hanged Man: the staircase that led up to Varric’s rooms, the staircase on which Fenris had once kissed Isabela and been pleasantly surprised by her response, the staircase where he’d found her kissing Hawke and told them it didn’t matter. Danarius had desecrated this place that despite the best efforts of Fenris’ anxieties had become like a home to him. Danarius had stood there, and watched, and Fenris had heard his friends’ screams as his master’s demons had ripped into their flesh.

Fenris had lost track of time, arms burning with the searing remnants of dismembered spirits, hands slippery with sweat and blood. But at some point the familiar relief of healing had disappeared, and he had belatedly looked up through sweat-stinging eyes to see Anders’ body arched in a translucent prison of blue light. Danarius had been watching the mage with an expression of terrible curiosity that Fenris knew well and feared more. His expression had been almost impassive as the mage shuddered and spasmed, blood oozing from his ears and flowing from his nose and down over his chin.

Isabela was clutching a gash in her side that was turning her white canvas tunic cherry red, and Hawke was dragging a mangled leg through the broken furniture as she made her way towards her. Fenris stood frozen in the smouldering wreckage, trapped like the butterflies his master liked to collect on pinned boards in his study. Anders had collapsed in a heap at Danarius’ feet, and Danarius had stepped forward. Fenris’ heart lurched.

But then Anders had surged abruptly to his feet and punched Danarius in the balls.

Fenris laughed, a shocked bark that was too loud in the tavern following the battle, and Danarius had wheezed, and blood had spun about his fingers, and Anders had grabbed the back of his head with one hand and slammed his knee into Danarius’ nose with a jarring crunch, chest heaving as he panted.

Then he’d picked up Danarius with all the strength promised by his tall, muscular frame, his training as a Grey Warden and the hearty meals Varric had spent nine years coaxing him into. Anders hurled Danarius down the stairs, where he landed in a heap at Fenris’ feet. Anders had looked at him, beard red with blood, body trembling with fury or pain or both.

“He’s all yours.”

And just like that, Fenris was free.

It started in 9:37 Dragon. Hawke and Isabela had fled across the sea, and Anders didn’t blame them. The Chantry was gone, and he was still getting used to the idea that he was meant to survive this. He still wasn’t entirely sure that he should, and Justice had been all too silent on the subject. So he spent his days in a waking dream, trekking for days and then weeks into the Vimmark mountains in the vague direction of Nevarra.

He hadn’t seen another living person for three weeks when an elf emerged from the fog, wreathed in white light like a ghost. Anders had stopped. His body and mind had long since become stretched too thin with hunger, horror and grief. Fenris’ countenance, for all its grim finality, came as an abrupt relief. At least he could stop running, now.

He’d dropped his staff, slowly, and held up his hands. “If you’re here to kill me, I won’t stop you.”

Fenris had not drawn his sword, but he hadn’t let the light die in his lyrium, either. When he stepped closer, he didn’t make sound, and for a moment Anders thought perhaps he really was a ghost, summoned by his imagination and too many nights in a decade spent longing for a man he couldn’t have.

Around them, birds had sung in the early morning, and not far off a stream made its laughing way down the cliffs. “Why did you run?”

Fenris asked the question as if it held the secret to the restoration of the Golden City itself. Anders laughed, stepping forward and stumbling over his own feet and the thick mass of pain that was his long since ruined knee. Fenris moved toward him through the long, dew-soaked grass, but didn’t quite breach the space between them. Anders swayed into a mostly intentional sitting position on a moss-covered boulder. “Does it matter?”

Fenris had met his eyes, and his own were dark and green and beautiful. “It does.”

Anders shrugged, and shut his eyes, leaning his head back and up into the fog. Water kissed his cheeks, and he thought: it would have been worth it, for this. It would have been worth it, to feel the weather again.

Something skittered in the bushes, and Anders opened his eyes and watched Fenris turn, bristling, to scan the trees. After a moment Fenris’ shoulders lowered, fractionally, and he turned back to Anders. He’d asked the question again, patiently, persistently. “Why did you run?”

Anders shook his head. “Because I didn’t want to bring you down with me.” Fenris’ eyes had widened a little, and Anders hurried on. “Any of you. I knew what I was doing, but the consequences were mine alone. I wasn’t going to subject you to them.”

Fenris had tilted his head, and the lyrium in his skin had sent shimmering refractions of light dancing iridescently through the fog. “I did not think you bore me so much good will.”

“More like I didn’t bear you so much ill.” Anders had corrected, before sitting forwards, feeling abruptly the weight of too many decades of exhaustion lying heavy on his aching shoulders. “It’s alright. I think killing me is the best decision, too.”

The glass had rustled, then, and Anders thought it must have been deliberate. But then Fenris’ feet were in front of him, stained green with the grass, and the light of his lyrium faded, leaving them both wreathed only in the sunlit fog. Anders looked up at Fenris, and he looked like some ancient king, backlit by the bright sky, skin dark and olive against the shimmering silver of his lyrium. “I’m not going to kill you, mage.”

And then there was a dark, calloused hand, silver with lyrium, fingers slender and elegant, thrust into the misty air between them. Anders stared at Fenris, and Fenris’ poker face cracked as he gave him a small, crooked smile. Despite himself, Anders took his hand, letting Fenris pull him easily to his feet.

“I’m going to help.”

It started in 9:40 Dragon, when the Circle of Dairsmuid was annulled, and over five hundred mages between the ages of six and seventy were murdered because they were allowed to see their families. It started in 9:40 Dragon, with the rebellion of the White Spire. It started in 9:40 Dragon, when Lord Seeker Lambert declared an end to the Circle of Magi.

It started in a tavern in Nevarra, at a meeting of former slaves and runaway mages. It started with elves, and second-hand weapons, and an apostate with a Fereldan accent who looked like an Ander. It started with an elf from Tevinter with white tattoos that looked like Vallaslin.

It started with rebellion. But that isn’t where it ended.

“No, words are a language It doesn't deserve such treatment And all my stumbling phrases Never amounted to anything worth this feeling All this heaven never could describe Such a feeling as I'm healing, words were never so useful So I was screaming out a language That I never knew existed before.”

- All This and Heaven Too, Florence + The Machine

#dadwc #fenders #da2 #fenris #anders #my fic #barbex #contreparry

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nomadjones · 1 year ago

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closed for: @christinaxwagner

where: outside ocean crest

Out of the frying pan and into the fire -- Dallas had never resonated with a random jumble of words more than that stupid adage when he emerged from his second sweep through the smoking structure that had been his home a few hours previous. Being a probie meant that learning the ropes was his main focus at the station when all he had wanted was to be truly involved in the action.

Now it was all hands on deck and there wasn't so much as a second for him to stop and wonder was he ready for this.

He had to be.

A series of coughs left his mouth after he shouldered his way out of the building, a woman he had assisted being traded off to paramedics to administer care as he looked around at the manic scene that had formed. Tenants who had gotten out, bystanders who wanted to gawk, sirens blaring and flashing lights in abundance.

He knew he had to go back inside and make it up higher this time, but once he spotted a face he had been searching for in the smoke his relief had him heading towards her on a brief detour.

"You're out, fuck, you got out. I didn't know which floor you where on, I was looking, I was..." His explanation is breathless, both from the physical exertion of his trips inside and also because the worst thoughts had been as heavy on his mind as his protective gear was on his body. He wants to reach out and touch her to prove to himself that she's real but he doesn't, his gloves dirty and marred. The breath he let himself take was shortlived as he realised that it was just her standing in front of him.

"Colton wasn't here, was he? Christina, where is he?"

#closed starter.#ft. christina wagner.#christina 003.#aurorabay.fire #event: fire at ocean crest.#christinaxwagner #long post cw

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hankwritten · 4 years ago

Text

The Weight of Other People’s Thoughts

Demoman/Soldier, 2k

Request for @lilythedragon05, Scotland

It was a bad idea to follow that tugging cord at the center of his being, the one that called him to Ullapool, and he never would have dared to entertain it if he knew it would have brought him here.

Jane sat by the ocean, stone’s throw from the town, but his distasteful frown kept his eyes locked firmly ahead instead of gazing dubiously at it. What had he been thinking? Coming to Ullapool had only make him feel worse, not better, a smirch against Tavish’s memory if there ever was one. Rubbing in Tavish’s face that he’d never go home again—and here Jane was, free to frolic across the whole damn planet, even if it took him to stupid countries ending in ‘land’.

He leaned further over his knees, barely feeling the sea breeze as he thought about his dead friend.

His murdered friend, he reminded himself. Murdered by someone who he thought he could trust, who now had to carry that guilt with him for the rest of his life.

Everywhere Jane looked it reminded him of Tavish. Maybe that’s why he’d come: self-flagellation. Appropriate punishment. Or maybe he was so desperate not to forget, he’d take the pain that came with remembering. Torturing himself truly, since he could look on the hills and surrounding coast that he had once only known through enthusiastic descriptions, see for himself the places where a young Tavish had played with dummy-grenades. He could imagine him talking to the local shopkeeps. He could practically see him walking up this very path, groceries in one hand, a newspaper filled with fried fish in the other as he took a large bite out of it-

Wait.

Tavish stopped dead, his face enveloped in utter shock. Still mid-chew, he said, “Jdra-ne?”

Jane leapt to his feet. “Apparition!” He pointed an accusing finger at the offending spirit. “Do not think for a second I will be cowed into repentance by the spectral manifestation of my guilt!”

Tavish nearly choked as he tried to swallow his bite of fish. “I…what?”

“Ghosts serve no purpose on my journey to recovery,” Jane continued. “Not even ones that look like my dead friend! Be gone creature of the other world!”

“What I- I’m not bloody dead.”

Jane squinted at him. He definitely didn’t look dead, totally opaque, no fettered chains representing his sins in life and his guilt over failing to help his fellow Man.

“…Are you sure?” Jane pressed.

“You’d think someone would know if they were dead,” Tavish grumbled poignantly, now glaring at Jane for some reason.

“I killed you though. It was-” -pickaxe right through the sternum, crushing, all the red bits coming out when they should have been in- “That was definitely fatal.”

“Aye, was, but I managed to limp my was back into Respawn range. Took a better part of an hour, but I made it.”

There was something odd to Tavish’s voice, something he wasn’t saying, but the realization that he might actually-seriously-really be alive was starting to set in and Jane was too afraid to believe it.

He took a step closer, past the bench he’d been enjoying his solitude at and completing a full circle around the Demoman. Tavish’s head followed him all the while, up until Jane came to a stop in front of him. “…Promise you are not a ghost?”

“I’m not a ghost,” Tavish said, as convincingly honest as he’d always been. Not that his acting skills hadn’t covered for his mendacity before-

-no, no that was a trick, it all turned out to be a lie a damn lie-

“Fine then. You’re not.” Though Jane would keep his eyes peeled for phantasmal anyway. “What the hell are you doing here then?”

“I live here,” Tavish huffed. “Gravel Wars are over, wasn’t going to spend the rest of my years in some blighted desert. Better question is what are you doing here, yank?”

Crap. Well, maybe a half-truth would suffice. “You always talked so much about Scotland I thought…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”

Tavish stood there, one hand still clasped around his groceries. The moment dragged on, vast seas of unsaid things between them, of regrets still festering, to which he ended with, “would you like me to show you around?”

Jane looked down, trying not to stare at his shoes but instead at the foreign soil around them. “…Sure. Why not.”

“Everything is incredibly vertical,” Jane complained as they climbed up yet another hill Tavish insisted was part of the journey.

“Aye, that’s why they call it the Highlands, BLU.”

Jane hated how fucking smug he sounded. Hated, and missed it all the same, missed how this bastard could set a fire in his gut just with one of his damn smiles.

“And there she is,” the Demoman said proudly as the crested the final ridge.

“Damn. Really went to crap in the last couple centuries.”

“Oi, don’t point fingers at me! I’ve only been around for forty of those.”

DeGroot Keep was shriveled and hunchbacked since Jane had last seen it, folding under its own legacy as ages had eaten the tallest spires first and chewed its way down to the cob. Still, he could just make out the choke points, the parapets, the places he used to go charging into with his mêlée weapon held high—all sanded down by the years, the vaguest memories of control points where a portal in time had briefly allowed Jane to witness their existence.

“So what,” he asked, following Tavish into the slight dip in the Highlands where the Keep nestled, “you live in here like some sort of anti-Italian?”

“An anti- what now?”

“Anti-Italians! Despises sun, allergic to garlic, doesn’t show up in mirrors, no sex life. Basic literary reference, RED.”

Tavish rolled his eye. “No, I’m not squatting in the dilapidated castle. Got a perfectly nice home down in the village, I just happen to have inherited this along with…all the other crap.” He waved his hand. “I’ve considered shelling out to having it restored but…dunno. Seeing it go from its heyday to this makes me think that in another couple hundred years it’ll just fall apart again.”

He sat on a piece of tumbled rock, one that used to hang over the Keep’s gate, a bright and shining keystone now used as a stool. Jane joined him.

“Don’t get much of this at home, do you? Old crap. Yer country’s still a wee babe you know, nothing’s even falling apart yet.”

“Incorrect!” Jane amended. “There are plenty of old things in America!”

“For last time lad, Thomas Edison wasn’t immortal, and he didn’t be build a second Shangri-La under Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“Your statements reveal both your ignorance and your compunction, but I was actually talking about mounds.”

“Mounds,” Tavish repeated dubiously.

“Yes! Mounds! Fourteen hundred years ago Americans were building ceremonial mounds in order to track celestial events! They look like animals from the top, lynx, bears, fish, all that crap. I used to walk next to this bird one every day on the way to school.”

Tavish blinked at him, tilting his head. “No offense Jane, but including Native people usually isn’t in your worldview. Where’d you even learn all ‘o that?”

“My mother taught me, so think insinuating more cyclops—lest you show disrespect against her memory and I am forced to take out your other socket!”

Tavish raised his hands defensively, but there was a smile creeping at the corner. “Alright, alright, I get ye. A Mum’s honor is a serious thing.”

“Hm. Good.” Jane glanced ahead, suddenly afraid of lapsing back into silence, as though Tavish would start to slip away from him if they did. “How is your mother?”

“Ah…she passed some years back.”

“…I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s alright.” Tavish paused. “I still see her sometimes.”

“Metaphorically or…?”

Tavish glanced at him, but then away just a quickly, as though frightened of what he might see. “I’d rather not talk about it, if that’s alright with you.” Instead, he stared ahead, the sun setting between its cradle within the mountains. “Heh. At least there’s something that’s the same no matter where you go. Always a sunset.”

“Guess so.”

Still, Jane found he liked this one better than the ones back home. At least, better than all the ones he’d seen before he’d met Tavish.

The next day was spent in the village, and Jane couldn’t help but yearn for more of Tavish’s time, more of his attention. His friend. His friend who was still alive. Tavish had a kind word for every person they passed, all of whom didn’t seem to notice Jane at all, simply starting up a conversation with their fellow local and submitting to the rhythm of the morning. Breakfast was some sort of potato scone, but Jane wasn’t hungry, so he just walked beside Tavish as the other man ate. They found themselves at the same bench where they’d first run into each other.

“So,” Tavish asked. “Ullapool everything you thought it would be?”

“Hm. It’s…nice. It is obviously not perfect for geographical reasons entirely outside of its control, but. I understand how it made you the man you are.”

“Me? Nah.” Tavish wiped off his mouth with his sleeve. “I made myself like this.”

Again, he wouldn’t look at Jane, wouldn’t say what they were both thinking. That things had gone wrong, that they had both fucked up. One of them more than the other, but Jane had found him again, and maybe they could still figure something out, still have time to unearth all that they had deemed too dangerous and buried in the sand.

Jane reached forward, and put his hand over where Tavish’s was resting on the bench.

And watched it pass straight through.

Jane sprang away. “I knew it! I knew you were a ghost!”

Likewise, Tavish stood up sharply. “I am not. I bloody told you I was’t.”

“Liar! I will not be swayed by any more perjury from your ethereal mouth!”

“I’m not lying!” Tavish snarled at him, his eye dark and narrowed, burning hotter than the words would imply. “I never lied. I never wanted any of-”

“Blasphemy!”

“Would you just listen for-!”

“You cannot guilt me apparition! For I know that-”

“Shut up! Just fucking shut up!” Tavish’s fist closed around the neck of his scrumpy bottle, half drained before noon, and threw it full force at Jane’s head.

Jane raised an arm to block the incoming blow, but the impact never arrived. A second ticked by, then two, then three, and slowly he lowered his forearm to reveal the panting Demoman behind it, shoulders heaving and an inscrutable expression tearing across his features.

“How’s that for the truth you bleeding idiot,” he said.

Jane looked to Tavish, then rotated his neck slowly, staring at the bottle that had landed in the grass behind him. He blinked, willing what he was looking at to make sense, to suddenly disappear and go back to where things were a second ago. To believe he hadn’t seen that bottle connected with his own nose.

There was something he didn’t want to do, but he did it anyway, turning his gaze forward inch by agonizing inch, staring down at his own hands. Fully taking how translucent they were.

The moment shattered, Tavish tore his eye away. “Fuck. Fuck I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve…”

Jane was still looking at his hands. There was panic, deep and overwhelming rising within him, but there was no raised pulse to accompany it, no sweat on the back of his neck.

He lifted his chin to Tavish. “What? I don’t…”

“I didn’t die,” Tavish said thickly. “You did. I killed you and I walked off and you just bled out for who knows how long and-”

-the pickaxe but also a sword, just as deadly buried two feet into his chest and the man above him trying to shove it in a few extra inches, strangled screaming as it pushed deeper-

Jane hadn’t been paying attention to the last half of Tavish’s muttered confession. The Demoman was crying now, pawing furiously at his one lone eye as stared out valley below them, looking anywhere but at Jane as his sclera turned red.

“I’m sorry,” he sputtered. “Christ Jane I’m so fucking sorry. If you came to haunt me or whatever I just- I just want you to know that you can’t hate me more than I hate myself. That it’s been killing me every day since.”

He collapsed on the bench, curling away from Jane as he buried his face in his hands.

It could have been some sort of trick. A ghost bottle or…no Jane wouldn’t even try. He attempted to remember what flight he had come in on but couldn’t. He grasped for how many years since the Gravel Wars had ended, and couldn’t find the answer.

Jane was a ghost, yet everything still hurt as much as it had when he had lived. Immaterial, and he still so badly wanted to touch Tavish’s hand.

He sat on the bench next to him. “I didn’t come to make you feel bad, Tavish.”

“Then why did you come?” It sounded like it was meant to be venomous, but instead it only sounded empty—empty and wet with tears, like a plastic bag trampled into a puddle.

Jane looked down at his hands. His useless, ghost hands that he could still knit together. “I…I wanted to see you,” he said truthfully. “I missed you.”

Tavish looked at him, bleary-eyed. He whispered, “I missed you too. So damn much.”

“Whatever I was doing before, I missed you enough to come here. To someplace I thought you would be.”

A panicked jolt crossed Tavish’s face. “You’re not leaving, are you?” The same man who a moment ago thought Jane had come to smother him with guilt was despondent at the idea that Jane might go after all, that he wouldn’t get a chance to hurt himself with his own regret anymore.

“No, no not yet,” Jane said. He tried his best to wrap and arm around Tavish’s shoulder. The mortal shivered where their skin met.

“Okay,” Tavish said quietly. “Okay. Good. Thank you. I don’t think I can…When I saw you sitting up here I couldn’t believe it could be fore something good. That the only reason you’d want to haunt me would be because you hated me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

It was true. Even though he remembered now, remember lying there, thinking how they’d killed each other, Jane had only ever hated the man who’d believed the TV’s lies.

“I really did come because I was thinking of you. Missing you.” Jane paused. “Today was fun. I’m sure you have a lot of other places to show me, right private?”

“…Sure. Sure whatever you want.” Tavish wiped at his nose. “I’m sorry Jane.”

“It’s alright Tavish.” He held his head in the crook of Tavish’s neck. “I’m sorry too.”

#demosolly #boots n bombs #tf2 fanfiction

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axewchao · 3 years ago

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Last but certainly not least of Team Hoenn. The first 'mon, the OG, it's the one and only Valerie!

Nature: Rash, "A little quick tempered" Level: 43 Ability: Overgrow Known Moves: Pursuit, Leaf Blade, Giga Drain, Slam

Fast n' feisty with a fighting spirit, Valerie's the one that started it all.

Val was always eager to battle, as nothing tasted better than sweet, sweet victory. Especially whenever she managed to win against her rivals, AKA the Torchic and Mudkip from Birch's lab. When the chance to get stronger arose, Val was most likely to take it, which unfortunately led to her rushing into fights with both Trainers and wild Pokémon, much to her Trainer's chagrin.

While this behavior was mostly ironed out (both through evolving and through the genuine desire to watch her teammates get stronger too), Valerie soon grew frustrated with how... cautious her Trainer was. He never took any risks! No leaps of faith! Whenever things got dicey, he'd look like he was about to cry or something! It made no sense!

...Alright, then. He helped Valerie sort things out, now it was her turn to help him. They were friends, after all, and Valerie would've never gotten as far as she had without him.

Unfortunately, Valerie's idea of teaching her Trainer to take risks hit her at the worst possible time. The sun was scorching hot, ready to either evaporate oceans or burn the land that was already above the waves. The key to stopping it was hidden within a cave, and Valerie dashed inside, ignoring her Trainer's calls to stop and give him a chance to think.

Of all things to happen in her life, Valerie never thought she'd get the chance to take on a god.

The events that followed became a blur. Dodging attacks of fire and rocks, her own attacks hardly making a dent in the thing, and her Trainer's non-stop cries to stop fighting and just run away. The ground beneath her shaking constantly. Rocks falling everywhere. Rocks falling on her. Her Trainer calling her name. The sound of a Pokéball opening, and a male voice sounding frantic...

To say that Valerie feels guilty over what happened would be an understatement. The world was still saved, sure, but the cost came in the form of her arm and her Trainer becoming a hollow shell of his former self. He had given up on the Gym Challenge. He had given up on being a Pokémon Trainer. He had given up on everything.

...She needed to make this right. Her Trainer, no, her best friend shouldn't force himself to give up because she didn't listen to him.

His parents mentioned a new region. A fresh start, away from all the bad memories. Maybe that would work...?

As long as Dalex smiled again, Valerie didn't care what Sinnoh would bring.

Trivia

One of Valerie's parents is an Ampharos, hence the markings on her crest and the seeds on her back shining like orbs. This is a common theme among all of Trainer!Dal's starters, in that none of them are purebreds.

Her injury references how she was nearly OHKO'd by Groudon in the actual game by a single Earthquake.

Valerie does not like staying in her Pokéball, and will only return to it in emergencies.

She suffers from phantom pain, but tries to deal with it on her own to avoid bothering her Trainer. Of course, Dalex can always tell when the pain is too much for her, so he keeps medication on hand and offers to massage her arm if she doesn't want to take the meds. If Nimby's around and it's late at night, she'll ask the bird to sing her to sleep. Hey, it makes Nimby happy and Val can just snooze through the pain, so it's a win-win.

It's unknown whether Valerie counts as a party member in later regions, or she's listed as a "seventh member" that doesn't battle due to her injury but is required to stay with Dal as he's the one helping her recover.

#pokemon #pokémon #Sceptile #Valerie Sceptile #Groudon knocked this giant grass lizard down #but she's not out. not by a long shot.#axewchaoscribbles

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dadukos-arc · 3 years ago

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@kalixus said : ❛ is there a good ending for us ? ❜

𝟒 𝐏𝐌 𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐒 𝐈𝐍 𝐒𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐒𝐔𝐍𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓. it cuts through the windshield, it paints half his face: a lopsided cut that slices him in half. he looks different in the sunlight — as if a secret code, the flavor of an ancient tenderness can only betray itself when brought forth by the warmth of the rays reflecting over him. she can see it in his left eye, the way the sun ignites it: molten gold, a tribute to summer. he speaks and she doesn’t answer, she only turns, her head leaning over the headrest, looking at him the way she looks at sunsets over the ocean: begging for more, more of that warmth, more of that burning — equal parts restless and at ease. the tide is a kind shelter, too: it can save its shipwrecked souls. his nose is a mellow curve, only the tip is bathed in light — his lips, from the side, have the gentleness of a cherub in an ancient painting. no sneering, no grinning: in the light he looks like a child. and she imagines him, before. with all his organs in the right place, the blood spinning with the imperative to live, not to survive. she wonders, sometimes, when he smiles at her — is that the child’s smile ? is that the tenderness he’d have reserved for the first winter snowfall, or the unexpected gift of a kitten’s quiet purring ? he bleeds in her, still. his sorrow, echoed tenfold, latched onto her own scars — but in the sunlight, it doesn’t hurt.

freddie has no magic trick to offer, no way to make the illusion disappear. she has nothing but the hope inside of her: the stubborn candle refusing to let the storm snuff her out. there was a time he would turn away from that flame, and she knew a part of him called her stupid, and a part of him called her naive, and no candle can ever bear the cold fangs of winter when they close in on its flame. but something’s different now, she can tell — something’s changed in the way his gaze looks forward and lets the light in, in the way she reaches out, her hand on the side of his face, and it’s imperceptible almost, but he pushes his cheek back against her hand, and welcomes her. his skin is warm, she lets her thumb draw one circle over his cheek, and it’s a small ritual: this fire is shared. though it flickers, and it wavers, it won’t give in to the winter.

“ hey ”, her voice is quiet: there’s a sacred silence in here, the quiet that has wrapped them up for the best of two weeks. she’s careful not to startle it, even now that they dip their feet back into a world that never quite looked as tragic and hungry as it does now. the parking lot outside means nothing to either of them — cars and passer-bys go by towards their own tragedies, each unaware of the essence of storms, how everything could blow up, how their very world could end. but in it lies the moral of the story: freddie dawson’s world has ended, and somehow it has begun again. how does a storm, or the winter, snuff out a flame like that ?

“ there will be. we’ll make it work ”, she speaks in whispers, and she speaks not to the man but the child. the part of his heart that made him come back: his very own flame, unrelenting in the face of oblivion. when she gets closer still, forehead against his, the tips of their noses graze each other and their silhouettes dance in the sunlight, hide-and-seek through shadows and light. she imagines them both as children, restless and wild, sun-soaked with mud under their fingernails and a hunger much bigger than the world could ever have for them. there is a version of events where nothing goes wrong —— but still this is the version of events where both their hearts have been carved in half and traded between them, and now hers belongs to him, and his to her, and distance has become akin to abuse, no survival can exist with half a heart ripped from its chest. love is a story of gore, but it can be tender. it is still tender.

outside, over the crest of the arkansas mountains, the setting sun battles fiercely against gathering storm clouds. it’ll be a long way still. at night she swears she can hear the wind sowing threats along its currents, telling tales of the tempest that awaits: but it’s strange, for the first time in decades, freddie dawson is not afraid.

as her right hand cups his face, her left hand looks for ilias’ — and when she holds it it’s tight, it’s unforgiving, it’s the unspoken oath to live and die by his side, should it come to it. “ we made a promise, yeah ? you and me. ”. pulling away, her nose grazes his once more — her kiss, on the cheek, is tender. “ whatever comes for us, wherever we end up — it’s gonna be you and me again. we’ll be happy again. ”

QUESTIONING MINDS —— not accepting.

#kalixus #𝐈𝐍𝐁𝐎𝐗 — each side is a loser: so who cares who fired the gun ? ( ic ).#𝐅𝐓 — ilias aborn.#i started writing this right after listening to the song you sent me #so if you're tempted to yell at me #consider that it's your fault <3 love u.

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aurorabayrpg · 1 year ago

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On Friday night Ocean Crest Apartments caught fire, having started in a vacant apartment on the 10th floor. What was originally thought to have been an accident though was quickly discovered to be an act of arson.

Ten minutes after the fire in Ocean Crest began, town hall was raided and set on fire from within. Aurora Bay's mayor, Raymond Ellis, was found tied to a chair. He was rushed to the Emergency Medical Center but due to his severe burns and smoke inhalation, he did not survive.

It is evident that there were multiple people involved in this, though no one has been found guilty at this time.

Detective Diego Martinez is leading the investigation, so there is no doubt in anyone's mind that there will be an end to this soon.

Sadly, though, not everyone made it out of the Ocean Crest. The apartment fire took the lives of three residents from extensive burn injuries and smoke inhalation, and the town hall's fire took the lives of two.

While Ocean Crest is still standing, there is quite a lot of damage done to the interior. The fire damaged most of the top floors rather than those below, but those who live in Ocean Crest must find places to stay during renovations, which will take approximately one month. Thankfully since school is out for the summer, the shelters will stay in place in the gymnasiums in our Elementary and High School, and the Seascape Hotel will offer discounted rates for those affected by the fire. Just like we did during the storm our town saw a few months ago, we will take care of our residents to the absolute best of our ability.

Ocean Crest Deaths:

Darren Winters (NPC)

Tina Delores (NPC)

Adrian Hollyn (NPC)

Town Hall Deaths:

Mayor Raymond Ellis (NPC)

Secretary Karen Michaels (NPC)

Those injured:

Celeste Zhao (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) - smoke inhalation

Connor Rose (Andrew Garfield) - smoke inhalation, burn on his arm

Dallas Jones (Mason Gooding) - smoke inhalation

Jude Bordelon (Charlie Hunnam) - smoke inhalation, burns on arm and chest

Lucas Donovan (Tom Holland) - smoke inhalation, burn on his arm.

Wes Evans (Timothee Chalamet) - Smoke inhalation, burn on his arm.

Suspects:

Blake Dixon (Hailee Steinfeld)

Darcy Anthony (Zendaya Coleman)

Evie Watson (Maya Hawke)

Imani Lihn (Karrueche Tran)

Jackson Ellis (Alex Fitzalan)

Jameson Cassidy (Joseph Quinn)

Ulysses Flynn (Jacob Elordi)

Head Detective on the case:

Diego Martinez (Oscar Isaac)

Firefighters that helped:

Cristian Valdes (Pedro Pascal)

Dallas Jones (Mason Gooding)

Raleigh Reese (Sophia Bush)

A statement from our Head Detective will be given within the next few days.

OOC Info below the cut:

While it is now known that the Mayor was stealing money from the town, the fact that the fires are linked to that is still speculation at this time.

People will have heard about masked figures that were spotted fleeing the scenes of both crimes that night, so there will definitely be talk of that.

The suspects are listed above, so feel free to have characters completely believe they are guilty or totally innocent. (but of course, none of the suspects above are guilty, as the culprits are both NPCs, but it just adds to the drama!)

What people will start to realize is that the descriptions of the masked figures seen leaving the scenes will not match the descriptions of any of the names listed above, so with that, along with other evidence that will come out slowly, the suspects above will be ruled out.

We've asked the mun of Diego Martinez if they would like to write a statement for him to share, so that will be posted along with more information about the event as the mystery starts to unfold!

If you have police officers or firefighters who would like to make statements, please message the main and we can plot it out!

As stated above, those who are living in Ocean Crest will need to find places to stay until renovations are done. Feel free to plot out temporary-roommates or anything like that! anyone without a person to stay with can stay in either of the school gyms, or can rent out a room at the hotel or b&b

So! The mystery has yet to be sovled! We wanted to give time for characters to speculate about what is going on and who is behind it! We love the IC drama and there's just so much that can happen with this!

Admin notes will come out every few days with more information on what has happened and what's going on. We'll also keep our muns who have characters heavily involved in the case in the loop!

As always, after the first three open starters are posted, please reply to at least two before posting your own!

You may continue threads from the event, but please tag them aurorabay.fire

#aurorabay.adminnote #aurorabay.fire #aurorabay.event

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fmhiphop · 1 year ago

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Catastrophic Dam Incident Creates Turmoil For Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant In Ukraine

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wolveria · 4 years ago

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Unable to perceive the shape of you - Ch. 9 [End]

Pairing: Connor x f!Reader x Nines

Summary: After breaking the RK twins out of the MarineLife facility, you were determined to return them to the ocean before getting caught by your employer.

What you hadn’t counted on were the brothers deciding you belonged to them.

Prompt: Mermay! (Shape of Water/Splash AU)

Word Count: 1.8k

AO3

There was nothing in the bitterly cold darkness. Just a sea of inky black where you were lost and unable to remember.

There was something important you had to recall… but you were very, very tired. Hadn’t you struggled on for long enough? Wouldn’t it have been easier just to sleep and forget the events that were already slipping from your mind?

You might have surrendered to the nothingness, but the frozen sea around you was illuminated with a soft glow. The light increased, shining brighter, blue and luminous from two pairs of hands, touching you with a tenderness that was achingly familiar. It called you back, pulled you away from the edge of nothing.

That’s when the burning started. Igniting you from the inside out, molten liquid in your veins as unbearably agony dug into your stomach.

You tried to scream, but you had no voice. No air. There was nothing you could do but suffer, because there was no enduring this.

When you thought you couldn’t withstand the molten fire under your skin, you did. The heat moved from your chest and stomach down to your legs. The agony worsened beyond anything you imagined was even possible.

The hands were still cradling you with gentle firmness as if trying to comfort, but you knew this had to be Hell. Punished for some terrible deed you could almost remember.

What had you done to deserve this?

I failed them.

With a shuddering gasp, you opened your eyes. Clear, bright sunlight caused you to blink rapidly, your heaving chest taking in the salty air. It was cold against your heated skin.

Everything around you was the exact opposite of the damnation you’d expected to find. Shimmering blue water expanded out before you as far as the eye could see, lazy seagulls wheeling overhead against the cloudless sky.

Barely able to move, your limbs uncooperative and heavy, you turned your head and saw you were lying on a sandbar, barely crested above the waterline. You were propped up against something warm and alive.

Your heart leapt in your chest as adrenaline surged through your body. Everything was too much. Too loud and too bright, and there was an animal panic rising to the surface you couldn’t control.

Someone spoke a name, you thought it might be yours, and a hand reached toward you.

Snarling, you bit down on the pale, muscled forearm. Warm, blue fluid filled your mouth; you almost let go but you were too terrified to do anything but latch on tighter.

Words were shouted in a panic. Your brain was slow to catch onto them, struggling to form them into something you could understand.

“Nines!”

“I’m fine, Connor.”

The voices spoke above you. Again, you felt that sense of familiarity, but you also noted the deeper timber of their words. They were larger than you, bigger and stronger. You ground your teeth down harder, trembling and growling in your throat.

“Don’t move,” the second voice spoke again. “Give her space. She feels threatened.”

It took you a moment to process that they were talking about you. There was an undertone of concern there. As if…

…they knew you.

You squeezed your eyes shut.

The lab… driving in the car… the motel pool…

Your jaw went lax.

The campsite… the bridge… the river. Gunshots ripping you open. Nines unmoving on the ground. Connor, in agony, but still trying to comfort you in your last moments.

Releasing your hold on Nines’ arm, you finally lifted your head.

Connor stared down at you from where he was kneeling on the sand, hands curled into fists on his thighs and his face pale. You’d never seen him look so worried before, as if he wanted to reach out but held himself back.

You tilted your chin up to realize your head was resting on Nines’ crossed legs. They were both naked and without their tails, and you saw pale star-shaped scars on their skin. Two on Nines’ torso, one each on Connor’s chest and thigh.

The gunshot wounds. They had healed through them. They were alive. Impossibly, incredibly alive. And somehow, so were you.

“H…How…”

Your voice was hoarse and abused, barely sounding like you at all. You tried to sit up but Connor placed a hand on your bare shoulder. You, too, were naked, and you should have been freezing in the chilly water and morning air. Why weren’t you cold? Instead, you felt almost… warm. As if the earlier fire was still inside you, reduced to a faintly glowing pile of embers.

“You shouldn’t move.” There was something in Connor’s tone that set the hairs on the back of your neck upright. “Just… stay still for a while.”

Frowning, you tried to pull your legs up so you could at least turn toward the two brothers to speak—

Panicked welled inside you. Thrashing clumsily, terror gripped your throat as you writhed on the sand.

“I can’t—I can’t move my legs!”

Nines’ hands were on your arms to hold you still, but you twisted harder, feeling a dull, strange movement in your lower body as you heard the sound of splashing seawater.

Connor was at your side in an instant, your face in his hands as he tried to get you to look up at him, but it was too late. You’d already looked down.

You shook off their hands, propping yourself up on your elbows as your heart thudded in your chest. The slapping sound of the water stopped as the panicked limb stopped thrashing.

“…oh,” was all you said as you stared at the sleek, muscled fin that used to be your legs.

You couldn’t stop staring at it. It was impossible, and yet there it was, staring you in the face. An actual, real tail. Thousands of questions should have been flooding your mind. How this was possible? What exactly had they done to you? Why had no one documented this kind of transformation before?

All the questions were silenced as you reached a tentative hand forward and touched where your thighs used to be. It was warm and rubbery under your fingertips, the pattern a sort of greyscale gradient. The fin was dark along the back, grey along the sides, and a pure white on the underbelly.

You gave it an exploratory pull on a muscle you had no idea how to use, and the fin twitched in response. It definitely didn’t seem as deft and precise as a pair of legs, but you could sense the power lingering in the muscle mass.

You could have stared at it forever, but you eventually tore your eyes away to look back up at the brothers. Connor’s expression was wide and vulnerable while Nines was closed and grim.

“We… we didn’t know what else to do.” Connor’s voice was tight, as if on the verge of panic himself. “You were dying. We had no choice.”

“There was no other way,” Nines added, softer than his brother. “Allowing you to die was… unacceptable.”

“You’re… one of us now.” Connor bit the inside of his cheek, brown eyes wide as he silently pled with you. “Please… don’t be angry. We had to-to do something.”

“Angry? Connor, you…”

You found it difficult to speak past the tightness of your throat. You forced it through, needing them to understand there was only one wrong that had taken place, and it wasn’t theirs.

“You… you saved me. If anyone’s sorry, it’s me.”

You lowered your gaze to the bite mark on Nines’ arm that was still trickling blue, but the apology was meant for so much more than that.

“I... made a promise to keep you safe, and I broke it. I let you both down.”

The lump in your throat grew as your eyes burned and your vision blurred.

“I should have known… it wouldn’t be that simple to get you home. That someone was following us. I should have known Gavin—“

It wasn’t Connor who moved toward you first, but Nines; he pulled you into his arms and against his chest, holding you tightly. Connor joined him immediately after, one hand planted on your back while he pressed his cheek against your shoulder.

Your world narrowed down until there was nothing but you and the brothers. That was appropriate, because they were your world, and without them you would have lost everything that made it warm and beautiful and alive.

Connor and Nines said nothing, allowing you to fall apart within their arms, your soft sobs barely heard above the lapping water. Words were unnecessary, always had been with the two of them. You’d understood them, truly and in all the ways that mattered, before they’d ever said a word.

One of them softly stroked your hair while the other trailed his fingers along your back. You didn’t know which touch belonged to whom, and in the end, it didn’t matter. You loved them both with everything that you had left in you to give.

You clung to them both as tightly as possible, unable to truly believe they were here, alive, and you were there with them. All of your knowledge and education and expertise told you it shouldn’t be possible.

Perhaps humans had a lot to learn about what that word actually meant.

They held you until the last of your tears dried and your hitching breaths had become smooth breathing. You didn’t want to move, wrapped in solid warmth that made you feel truly safe in such a long time, but the strange, new limb was already itching to be used. It flexed almost on its own, gently flicking at the water as if it knew exactly what it was meant for.

And you realized, for the first time in as long as you could remember, there was no pain.

Too soon, Connor and Nines pulled away, their hands never leaving your skin. Now that they were touching you, they seemed as reluctant to let go as you were.

“What do we do now?” you asked as you looked up at them, feeling for the first time that you were the one out of your element, relying on them for guidance. The future was tenuous and unknown, and you hadn’t begun to figure out what it meant yet.

Nines’ brows rose as a subtle curve touched the corners of his lips. But Connor’s smile was wide enough to show teeth, his eyes bright and full of something too indescribable for you to name.

“Now,” he said. “We swim.”

Unable to perceive the shape of You,

I find You all around me.

Your presence fills my eyes with Your love.

It humbles my heart,

For You are everywhere.

#detroit become human #detroit: become human #connor x reader #nines x reader #mermay #mermaid!Connor #mermaid!nines #rk800 x reader #rk900 x reader #rk1700 x reader #my writing #my fanfiction #unable to perceive the shape of you

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