#everyone has their own method that works for them
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
mikakuna · 2 days ago
Text
reading lost days (ignoring the last issue and part of the second last) makes me so happy because we get to see a jason who goes on his own journeys and works alone without (generally) being concerned with bruce or the bats. it's so interesting watching him kill people and save lives while also not being portrayed as incompetent or reckless. and the few moments he is "reckless," it's done right. he sees he made an error and quickly fixes it without seeming stupid. those moments are more endearing than they are annoying to read.
this comic also doesn't do the whole "jason kills anyone and everyone who gets in his way, even the low level crooks." jason recognizes that killing isn't always needed so he doesn't always resort to it. not that hard of a key character feature to grasp but ofc recent comics write him with a gun to their heads
lost days highlights all his exceptional abilities and shows how interesting a solo-working jason todd is, one who isn't shackled down by bruce or the bats. someone who isn't nerfed to prop one of them up and to shove in the audience's faces how horrible his methods are/how much more morally superior the others are.
he's funny, cute, smart, tactical, calculative, attentive, and has a huge heart-- all traits that recent comics and even fandom sometimes tend to write off. he should get more runs like this. let him work alone and do his own thing. give him that freedom that most others in the batfam get. reading this jason and then comparing that to whatever the fuck recent comics did to him is another kind of baffling because who is that
53 notes · View notes
fenistinafenichkina · 2 days ago
Text
Tumblr media
Paslen 🎀 Silkworm 🎀 The Story about the hermit who wanted to get "white blood"
The community called "Krivika" offers seriously ill individuals a procedure called "union", in which two persons participate. First, one person takes special long baths for several days and drinks donkey milk, and then the second person must drink his/her blood and also take baths. Over time, the second person begins their joint "rebirth" in a completely unique way, becoming a kind of child of these two people. Union is possible between people of both different and the same sex. Those who have undergone the union can either leave the community or stay to work in it. They take care of children, the results of the recent "union", but they do not have the right to have their own until they leave the community. But not everyone wanted to solve their problems at the cost of a strange reincarnation, so Ivo Milkovski, who was the founding leader of the Krivika community, dreamed of inventing another method.
And so the child born to Ivo, a woman who was the product of one of these "unions", stood out from the crowd with his snow-white hair and long-gone green eyes. There was a boy named Paslen. He radiated an aura of perfection and was in good health. His greatest gift was blood, a small injection of which was enough to allow anyone to lead their best life. It was a true panacea. But their bodies no longer wanted to live without it. In order to continue to exist, these patients had to receive blood from their owner regularly. And so it went on until Paslen wanted to leave the community and let all the dependents die, so that no one else would want to depend on his blood. Ivo let his son go, but with one condition: if he ever wanted to use his gift again to save someone, he would return to Krivika. Paslen wanted to find a new home. And for some reason, he constantly changed his krozhum bracelet, moving from one community to another. He never stayed in any of them for long. And then he began to despise them all. Ivo's son was the first person to tear off his krozhum bracelet and continue to live without it.
A hermit named "Silkworm", also known as Paslen, lives in a house on a large old mulberry tree. He has blood that can make anyone almost invulnerable. But once you inject yourself with this blood, you can no longer exist without it. One day, he refused to give blood to those who could no longer live without it, so that others would be afraid and not ask for his blood. Now Paslen was hiding in the wilderness and wanted to get rid of his curse. So he lived on this tree and ate only compote. An old raven skeleton told him how to get "white blood", which can also help others, but without this terrible addiction. A dead bird told the hermit to dig a deep hole under the tree in the spring. Paslen should go down there to its roots, while someone else will spit in this hole. Then the roots of the tree would suck the Paslen's blood out, and the one who spat into the hole would eat all the mulberry fruits when they ripened. And the one who did this would get "white blood." But Paslen lived alone, so there was no one to spit into the hole. His father would not have done this, he would have called him crazy. Ivo already thought him crazy. In a rare act of pity, the father offered his son food, Paslen found solace only in baked potatoes.
Silkworm had nothing to do, so every morning he took a transparent glass with a small hole in the bottom, filled it with a handful of pink and purple marbles and shook it so that one of the marbles fell out. If the pink one fell out first, Paslen slept all day, and if the marble was purple, he had to find something and bring it home for the raven. He knew one place where garbage was taken and looked for all sorts of interesting things there. The raven said that he and his brothers used to have white plumage, but they loved garbage so much that their feathers turned black. The raven had died a long time ago and could not leave the tree, he was bored, so he sent Paslen to get garbage, but warned that his white hair could also turn black. Next to the trunk of the tree there was a pole made of krozhum with rings wrapped with threads. It was something like steps, but the threads inside the rings did not look strong enough. But Paslen walked calmly on it. On the tree was scratched the inscription: "These threads will not break under the weight of the one whose conscience is clear."
The small house on the tree was completely littered with junk, offerings for the raven. The raven had been blind for a long time, but he could “see” with the help of the rope that connected him to all these objects. And on the left by the wall there was a crossbar on which thin white threads of different lengths were hung. To communicate with the raven, Paslen used a special language involving these threads. In fact, it was quite simple. You just need to change their places while you think about what you want to say. And the raven will answer later, in your sleep.
The raven's favorite objects were: a small white woolen hat, splashed with green paint; a stroller in which there is a velvet pumpkin with an embroidered moon and stars; a red pot with a bubble racket filled with dandelion seeds; a glass bottle with a long neck, filled with water, in which instead of a bouquet there were several pinwheels on sticks, covered with bird feathers, and next to this bottle sat baby dolls and read books. This thing was called "strange stork".
But one day Paslen did not find an offering for the raven, but a strange guest came to him. Then let this guest become an offering, even if he came to put an end to Silkworm's quiet life.
20 notes · View notes
makenna-made-this · 2 years ago
Note
Tumblr media Tumblr media
I love you chickens and offer two of my own. Do you have any advice on how to improve my backgrounds? I have a lot of trouble with flowers and other plants, like the purple hyacinths in the first drawings?
all your BAWKtobers are so cute I love them
!!!!!!!!!! I'm so glad you are enjoying BAWKtober! It is the highlight of my year. And my goodness, these are lovely! Your choice of colors are so nice to look at, they feel like a soft place to rest your eyes.
Honestly, backgrounds have always been something I myself struggle with, and I don't know if that makes me more or less qualified to offer advice, but I can pass on what I have found helpful for myself.
1.) Start with something you LOVE. Trying to draw something you struggle with can already flick the little task avoidant I Do Not Want To Do This switch in your brain, so we are going to stack as many positives against it as we can in an effort to get our mindset as far away from This Sucks and I'm Not Doing It zone as we can, so: Start with something you love.
Are you passionate about nature and plants? Start practicing with nature backgrounds. Fascinated by roman architecture? We're gonna get drawing those pillars. Have a bunch of OCs that live in a fantasy setting and desperately want to be able to draw them interacting with the places you've imagined in your head? Get ready to get worldbuilding. If it's a subject you are already interested in it is going to feel significantly less like pulling teeth at the start than if you are stuck doing Boring Square House In 2 Point Linear Perspective (unless you love Boring Square House in 2 Point Linear Perspective, in which case, follow your heart).
I do this a lot with my BAWKtober drawings. I love drawing chickens and want to be able to have them interact in fun environments. The Chickens Part of the drawing are easy and familiar for me. It's something my brain is comfortable with. So I use it as a bit of a mental touchstone to keep myself skirting just shy of the This Sucks edge long enough to stay motivated on the background part of it.
Find your "Chickens."
2.) SIMPLIFY! Even complicated things are just many big and small shapes. Learn to break things down into their most basic shapes and use those as the building blocks to map out your background. Everything is Shape. Think Shape.
You don't have to get hung up on finer details right now. Those can come later. I did this with the rows of wheat field in my Harvest Moon prompt. Envisioned them as large blocks laid out next to each other. I mapped out shadows by darkening the sides away from the source of light (Big Ol' Moon Circle),
Tumblr media
And after i got that base work i built off it with details (notice how you can still picture those shapes underneath it all). While this is by no means a Complicated background, the general method works for more intricate things too.
Tumblr media
It's also helpful when trying to map out lights and darks. I do this a lot when I am trying to get a sense of depth and shadows for an environment:
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Start with the really basic shapes. I like to imagine the background, middle ground, and foreground are all on different layers stacked atop each other facing the viewer (think those cut paper shadow boxes).
GENERALLY speaking, you are gonna have things closest to you be darker and more vibrant colored, and objects in the distance will be lighter and less saturated as they fade into the atmosphere. There are of course instances where this is not the case ( a background of a dense jungle or mouth of a cave may do the reverse, getting darker and darker the deeper you go, to show the lack of light and shadows that grow the further you venture from light) but it is a good rule of thumb when starting out, especially with landscapes.
Tumblr media
Once you have that figured out, you can start slapping down more details~
3.) REFERENCES! I know everyone and their mother says this but it's true. The human eye and memory can be so, so faulty when trying to think back on how something looks. You might THINK you know, but when you try to sit down and draw it you sit there and have a 10min existential crisis (If you don't believe me, just try to draw a bicycle completely from memory. It's miserable).
So look at real things! Pay attention to the way your fav walking path curves over the hill on your walk home. Make note of how the distant skyscrapers on the outskirt of town fade into the soft pinks of the sunset much more the the stark, towering ones right outside your window. Look at cars and bushes spaced out in your local wal mart parking lot, take pictures of the flowers in your grandmother's window box. What's the simplest shape they can be broken down to and still be recognized? You are training your eye to see things in a new way and help you get good at positioning them in 3d space. Eventually, you will get better at this and won't need to reference things as often (but you always CAN. References are your friends!)
4.) Lastly, JUST DO IT!!!
JUST DO IT OH MY GOD JUST DO IT! JUST DRAW tHE BACKGROUND. I know, i know! It sucks and it's hard and it's not as fun as drawing the characters that you love and it might look bad at first but jUST DRAW IT BAD.
In the past i've spent so much time getting in my own damn way because I somehow get it in my head that there's some hidden knowledge or information or tutorial that i am missing, and if i wait until i Learn It i will finally understand the thing and Then i can go about learning it the "right way." Which is a wonderful way of shooting yourself in the foot before you even take a step.
It's really easy to get bogged down in the mindset of "i'm not good at this right now, so i have to wait til i Get Better so i can do it right" and this is Lies. This is the devil on your shoulder talking. This is the mind killer, and it is also a paradox. You want to get better at The Thing before you Do It, but you have to Do It to get Get Better. So you just do Nothing and then you feel bad 'cause you haven't moved anywhere.
So, just start trying. Pick something you love and let that carry you through the hard parts of the learning. Try not to care so much about how it looks at first. You are learning a new language, a visual one. If you get frustrated take a step back, or try drawing something else. Keep it simple, at least at first. And if you feel discouraged, remember i recently had a 10min existential crisis when i realized i couldn't remember how to draw an egg carton, which I see and hold in my hands every single day.
TL;DR DRAW IT BAD, BUT DRAW IT!
8 notes · View notes
spamtoon · 1 year ago
Note
(Out of nowhere, you are approached by a familiar lightbulb-headed Cog.)
Ah, it's you, cat. Thinking you're oh-so-slick. Muttering and whispering under those raggedy whiskers of yours... Thinking I am unable to hear it all...
Well, you've simply underestimated my fantastic hearing. You probably want to know the reason why I'm here, taking a 'break' from my incredibly important scientific breakthroughs? It's quite simple, really!
(She gets close, and squints her eyes.)
I know what you are.
Farewell, now!
(She then leaves the way she came from.)
(Spam giggles immensely, covering her face... it always seems like she's giggling, isn't she? This lasts... at least thirty seconds. Longer than usual.)
And I know what I am too, Sparky! You broke through something, that's for sure. Really, broke through...
(She looks down, continuing to laugh nervously.)
You know, I find it odd you Havent tried to bulb blast me into the stratosphere by now. I mean knowing how you acted with Frostbite. Is there something peculiar about me that you perhaps can't quite track? Something about me that you... don't know what I am?
I know, I know, I'm talking to nobody again. But you were there when I had a moment today with the one the only Frostbite The Bravecog. You may be remaining. Lurking in the shadows. Knowing about these thoughts that I'm thinking.
(The giggling resumes, lasting far shorter this time.)
Your brother's a piece of fucking barp, by the way
(She braces for impact for a few seconds, wincing while smiling, before comically looking around to realize nobody's there. She sighs.)
Wow, okay maybe toony superhero show logic doesn't apply in this situation. Cool.
WAIT I JUST FUCKING REALIZED WHAT SHE MEANT but like. Dude if she meant that then what's the point I mean the whole ahh sellbot department barping knows unless you're Really low on the ladder. Heheh... maybe she did mean what I thought she meant.
Oh i'm so fucking screwed. What kind of bitch gets filament fever
#bright spark#<- for finding this again later. haha i called her sparky#the way she talks fucking tickles my brain so much im so . ohguohguohoghog SHE#SORRY THAT THIS TOOK SO LONG you see i was in the mindset that i would do this one little thing and then i would do my work which uh.#that leads to so so SO much procrastination. including on fun things! oh so fun things.#today was an event.#i also spent quite a bit of time ruminating i “would she really say that” is worse when shes literally you#to clarify. she is spam's aunt by like. building standards. not really in her found family. so its fucked up but as i said in discord this#is like. a “your mom's kinda hot” level crush. you know. also sorry i really wanted to say filament fever its been eating at me okay#nothing SERIOUS the way my f/os (and spam's f/os (plural now?? i guess?? if today was a canon event)) are#honestly mark still feels like the only real one with her to me but damn it. if spam's reflecting My Changes then she's Reflecting My Chang#spam in toontown unlike my other sonas is the most “its just you again” out of all of them and thats partially because her main#cog connection... is frostbite. they bounce off each other like we literally bounce off each other and damn it shes been so stagnant on her#own because of it. mark happened and she mirrored that because i kept fucking talking about him while we were in character and ideally#i should TRY to fix her. but also man because i'm not doing Serious lore stuff with her i dont. even know if i want to.#i kinda brushed it over the rug by saying that she relies on her constant entertainment so readily because she herself still doesnt feel#like she has a place outside of cogs only. sure she's in high roller backstage sure she's in allan's family now but shes not Doing anything#with herself the way that her friends are. mole's a ranger. frostbite cohosts. wishes... has chip. and something she doesn't have--#living and fully growing as a toon. rather than being haphazardly slapped into a world. and in some respects she's envious of frostbite#finding themselves so quickly because she distracts herself because she's still kinda struggling with it. despite everything. yes she lives#happy and carefree a lot of the time but she keeps buying those dumb phones because when she's truly alone... her mind starts to wander.#that's what mark is for. so that spam can dream of a world where she has a purpose. even if its fake and fragile and just nothing compared#to the great friends that she already has. where she feels like its worth it doing something when she doesn't have anyone. and in that#respect. with the goons ma allan parallels in sonboy the spam cathal parallels shine. seeking tv (and to a lesser extent games) as a#method of escapism. even when one's life is already pretty good. because there's nothing else worth doing without friends or family.#the internet isn't just cool. it gives her something to be when it seems like everyone is something but her. and maybe thats a lazy#excuse for why it seems like she doesnt HAVE anything to call her own but that but damn it i'm trying my best to twist it around.#spam has such a HISTORY yknow? even if it feels like i havent established her much.#spam is the hearts to frostbite's spades not just because they're the duo of all time but because spam's fake stupid love keeps her going#sorry i just started rambling in the tags of this post about spam it. happens. she loves her friends so much i need to reiterate that okay
2 notes · View notes
light-wrath-paradise · 13 days ago
Note
dude no offense but as a system you are so painfully obviously plural i mean this in a completely neutral way but youre plural boi
Are you for real or are you kidding? Please you gotta be honest with me about shit like this, I'm constantly afraid that all of my problems are actually universal (and I am the only one who's bad at handling them) and that I am just "faking" that there is something wrong with me.
#if youre for real you need to tell me because i feel like whenever i ask if my experiences are universal i hear nothing but crickets#which to me implies that they ARE universal. and then i go 'ooohhh ok so im just making nothing into a problem'#and then im like 'i need to Git Gud because obviously this happens to everyone and i am the only one who is bad at living with it so i need#shut up and take it and get better at coping with it'#and i feel like im just making up the rest. i mean people keep saying it to me all the time anyway#people always tell me that its just me being neurodivergent; that its just my adhd. but you know the weird thing is other people with#adhd dont seem to have my problems. all methods that work for people with adhd; they dont work for me either. when i ask further; the#problem seems to be different. but i think that maybe im just making it up. maybe i want to feel special and i just dont know it.#maybe im just looking for differences. but still; it doesnt add up you know? i asked people. i asked people and it turns out that#'remembering' is something else than i thought it was. it turns out that not remembering and sudden remembering works differently#in other people with adhd. when i have a lapse in skills in memories its like...logically i KNOW i have eg seen Blender. i KNOW that#i worked in it because i can log on Nexus and see my mods. but i have never fucking seen Blender. i am utterly unfamiliar with it#sometimes for a reason i cannot name a vague memory of working in it may come back but its like: 'What? But I have never worked with#Blender. What is that? I didn't do that. I mean this memory seems to be telling me that I did but that isn't right. That's not even my#memory. But it's in my head so it has to be. But it doesn't feel like it. It feels numb and wrong and distinctively separate from me; like#movie about a character.'#and i think that may not be common but maybe it is and im just making molehills into mountains?#or like ive always thought that it is normal for your intrusive thoughts to like. have their own belief systems separate from yours#and to have their own voice and their own ability to 'control' you. i mean thats what intrusive thoughts do; isnt it? i mean why would#your own voice yell at you? of course intrusive thoughts would have their own voice with their own vocabulary and their own set of#experiences. after all intrusive thoughts are not you. so i assume this is what is meant by that.but theres a gnawing fear in me that#maybe intrusive thoughts are not supposed to be like that.#or like i have bpd. and i always assumed that that explains everything but after attending group therapy i noticed that i could relate to#others but they couldnt relate to me. and thats mildly worrying but surely it just means that im being paranoid and attention-seeking#like for example i thought that black and white thinking is when you think eg 'I really like them! I think their kindness is super cool!'#and another part of you suddenly goes 'Wow youre a complete idiot. They suck total ass and kindness is just a different word for weakness.'#and you go '???? Are you mental? Thats unhinged. That makes no sense at all. Plus I like them so shove it.'#and that part goes 'Well I hate them. So you can go shove it too.' and you dont agree with that part's feelings at all#nor do you understand their opinion so you're stuck feeling both strong affection and mild hatred at the same time and youre like this suck#and apparently that might...not be how black and white thinking works?
0 notes
sheeezu · 2 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
What to do if you have not shifted for +++years
(Most of my anons were along the lines of this same issue, I want to make a common post for them. I won't be telling you "you're already there" or "persist" I'm going to have a heart to heart conversation with your mental health in mind, this will be a long post)
First and foremost I have to say, this post is very heavily opinion-based. Alright, I'll divide it into topics, and two categories: before shifting and during shifting.
Tumblr media
Before Shifting.
Determining the laws of your reality.
This is where you've got to do most of the work. (Don't worry, it won't be 7 hour subliminal listening sessions) now let's present a very important note: I don't know who you are. But most importantly I don't know what you believe in. Shifting isn't a known set of rules, Shifting doesn't have a single method, it does not have a wikihow page. Everything that exist is because of you. Therefore there are differences in my reality and yours. What you believe in is acting out in reality. LITERALLY.
So first you need to ask yourself some questions, with full honesty, oh and don't apply the thoughts you have by certain reprogramming affirmations, don't force yourself just because you have to persist.
"What am I?" What do you believe you are? Currently, are you a soul, a human? Or you something greater, seek within yourself to answer what you believe.
"What is reality?" How is everything working around you? Why are you here.
"Who is in control?" Who makes you shift. Who or what makes everything happen.
"How to shift?" Self explanatory. If you write with utmost truth on what you think shifting is like and when and how it happens; you'll basically have the code of how reality works for you.
Relax.
After you've gathered your research sheets. Take a breath, since you've got all the answers you need. Now, close your eyes, whenever you like. Imagine a serene atmosphere, for example, sharp sunlight falling on your skin, warming you up, or the rain droplets drowning your senses, as you run across a forest. Tell yourself, "this is what shifting is" , and "I've shifted." That's all it is. You feel some you get some.
Some important realizations,
• Time is not linear.
• Failure is a perception.
• You're not beneath anyone.
• You don't need to prove yourself to anyone.
• you'll survive, you'll be alright.
Don't. Kidnap. Yourself.
The title sounds weird, but it is regarding heavily applying the principle of assuming until you have it, to EVERYTHING. Idc if people come after me. I don't want anyone to suffer by stamping their foreheads with "persist!" Even if it works. I love loa, until it crosses over into toxic positively. Don't just put yourself in a coffin; don't become a prisoner to your thoughts! Don't make it feel like there's an angry witch in your mind, who will scream at you if something goes wrong, the problem is! Something might go wrong and you'd end up highlighting the idea that you are being forced to assume against something. Don't feel forced. Simple. (You can still use loa, if you like)
Declutter your mind.
I said it before. and @ilovecatfr explained this here, there's so much in your mind. I can tell. Each and everyone has their own unique spin on shifting. That's great and they put out advice to help people, similarly you... also have it within you. Afterall, these bloggers, big well written and decorated posts are the projection of your assumptions. I'd like to say, majority of the bloggers are kindhearted with the aim to help others. Although for some, you being desperate in their asks is an ego boost, nothing is wrong with feeling good about yourself for your knowledge, but you the person at the other end of this screen, are not a pawn, not just another anon, alright? you know how to shift, look back at what your answers were to the questions.
Control your emotions towards this reality.
I've always wanted to discuss this. Emotions are the puppeteers of this show. They're a grounding mechanism of any reality. If you feel something deeply, you're angry at circumstances you form an attachment to this reality, it keeps you here. Think about what happens to a person when they get disassociation. Similarly belief + emotional investment = reality. Its a code. I can confidently say anyone who has not shifted (... not targeting anyone, genuinely trying my best to help; ty ty back to the text) is because they're giving too much emotional importance to this reality. This can be in the form of stressing that you have not shifted, being worried that you're not in your dr, putting much focus on the "What ifs" of if you wake back in this reality.
But we can't just go BLANK. we're still humans who feel deeply (for now huehue) so what's the solution to this non-issue? Direct these feelings towards your destination, your intended reality! This would mean feeling like your dr self, if you're experiencing negative emotions you can last second convert them to any scenario related to your dr, emotional investment there pays well, here? It just wastes time.
Don't let feelings get the best of you and keep you here; you're their creator after all.
(Optional) Create a homey dr.
This comes from personal experiences. If I don't mention this I won't be completely open with each one of you. I shifted through intense love and reverence for my home. I knew that each and every second spent in this reality led up to me shifting to my home.
So for ease later on when you can't decide between drs, it'll be comforting to have a reality you can call home and choose over and over again.
Rewire.
This is where you come back to what you answered to the questions. Do you like your response? A human is living in a reality, and your answers are the universal law there. Will they have an easy time with shifting? If you think so, then choose to not do any "rewiring" and act upon the answers you wrote, shifting in accordance to them as they have become the pillars of your reality. If you think the person's reality's laws regarding shifting are complicated, then you can choose to rewire them. This can be a simple manifestation. As it has no basis in the 3D yet, you will manifest it within seconds. You can either write it down, listen to a subliminal, or simply think of the new beliefs in your head (eg "I shift in seconds") and let go. Stop.
(Severely optional) strive for spiritual awakenings
*shrugs* I thought I should mention based on personal experience.
Tumblr media
During shifting.
Confuse your logical brain
You don't have to give it validation. Instead, just make it unable to predict the next move of it creator. Its built to look at everything with skepticism.. but it has nothing when you don't give it the chance. For example, the anti method by @hrrtshape is the best example. I like that you can do this, pre-method like a little warm up. (You can also manifest to not think logically)
Know your game
To act like you're in a battle field is not the way to shift. You don't have to give the actual practice of shifting much or any importance. You know how to shift, then why is there a need to have plan B's and checking your own environment? You are the commander in front, you're the one switching the reality, your reality is not the one switching.
Senses shift last
Explained by @stilljuststardust here.
Be blind and deaf to each and everything other than your intended reality
...and be so obsessed with your intended reality. Live out entire days, you're there, no, time is not passing by, the previous reality has disappeared by your hyperfixation on your intended reality. Ever done that exercise where you stare at a dot for so long, everything around it disappears? Well then, EXACTLY. Make it dissapear. Make it dissappear by not giving it any more of your energy. ....how I shifted. This is based upon being your dr self, that's snatches away the spotlight from this current reality.
Keep yourself comfortable
All of you are experienced enough to know, you don't need to lay in the starfish position. But remove the unnecessary thought that if you dare move your finger you might mess up the whole attempt (This is a subconsciousness belief) here's how to not worry about your 3D: again, senses shift last, Your current reality = intended reality.
It is about breaking free from human functions
Your software is set to being an earthly human. This is why acting like your current reality (the noises from the environment, physical annoyances) are from your intended reality, helps. This allows you to trick your human brain and move forward. The more you try to make sense of shifting, the more less it'll make sense. You don't have to know everything about shifting. The point is to be awfully natural about it. Just like how you wake up in this current reality without any requirement. You don't overthink it, then why overthink shifting.
Tumblr media
Hope I cleared everything, I spent 5 hours on this post. If anything is not clear, please send in an ask, I am 100% avaliable to answer anything amiss.
Now let's see how much time I take to actually make this post aesthetically pleasing, so people don't have to bleach their eyes or ruin their blogs with this.
Dedicated to @lilyblairkinda who gave me this idea, once.
Tumblr media
5K notes · View notes
shiftthemoon · 6 months ago
Text
reality shifting isn’t hard. you’ve been told it’s hard because everyone’s too scared to admit it’s not. they cling to their 800-step methods, their must-have crystals, their perfect conditions because they think that if they let go of that control, they’ll fail. but here’s the thing: the more you try to control the process, the more you convince yourself it’s out of your control. and that’s the problem. that’s why so many people feel stuck. shifting isn’t some big, far-fetched thing. it’s just you. it’s always been you.
we’re conditioned to think we’re powerless. think about it—school, work, society, all of it drills this idea into us that everything has to be proven, earned, validated. so, when you hear about shifting, your brain freaks out and says, wait, wait, this is too easy, this can’t be real. and then you spiral. you overcomplicate it. you make yourself think you need the “perfect” script, the “right” subliminal, or that you have to meditate for three hours while the stars align perfectly. like, no… you don’t. all of that? it’s fluff. it’s noise.
at its core, shifting is belief. just belief. no, really, let that sink in. you don’t need to “do” belief perfectly. it’s not something you master through sheer willpower. it’s something you already have. you’ve believed in things your whole life. you believed in gravity without needing proof. you believe your favorite songs are beautiful without needing to explain why. belief is natural. it’s effortless when you stop overthinking it. that’s the energy you need to bring to shifting—trust. trust that your mind knows what it’s doing, and that if you let it, it will take you there. every single extra thing you pile on? the overthinking, the doubt, the need for guarantees? that’s what’s slowing you down. not the “lack of progress,” not some mythical “block”—it’s you convincing yourself it’s harder than it is.
and let’s talk about social media for a second. oh my god, the shifting community on social media… i get it. it’s comforting to see other people on this journey. but let’s be honest—how much of that content is actually helping you? like, really? 90% of the time, scrolling through shifting advice isn’t inspiring; it’s overwhelming. everyone’s got their own opinions, their own “best methods,” their own rules. one person says scripting is a must, another says it’s a waste of time. one person swears by affirmations, another says visualization is the only way. and before you know it, you’re sitting there questioning everything you thought you knew, wondering if you’ll ever get it “right.” spoiler alert: you already know how to shift. you don’t need a thousand voices telling you what to do. in fact, the more you listen to them, the harder it becomes to hear yourself.
take a break. seriously. log off the apps. give yourself space to breathe and think. ask yourself: why do i want to shift? what’s stopping me? what feels right to me? no tiktok trend, youtube guide, or reddit post can answer those questions for you. only you can. and i know that sounds scary. we’ve been conditioned to think we need external validation for everything, but shifting is a deeply personal thing. you don’t need a step-by-step tutorial. you need to trust your instincts. that’s it.
and let me be clear: i’m not saying methods or subliminals are bad. they’re fine if they help you feel aligned. but they’re not what makes shifting happen. you are. methods are just tools. if you use them, great. if you don’t, that’s great too. because the truth is, shifting isn’t about doing things “right.” it’s about letting go of the idea that you need to.
so let me break it down for you. the only things you really need to shift are:
1. a desire. you have to want to go to your desired reality. no brainer, right?
2. belief. this is the big one. you have to trust it’s possible. no “what ifs,” no “but hows.” just trust.
3. persistence. if it doesn’t happen right away, that’s okay. don’t give up. if you’ve ever learned to ride a bike, you know that falling doesn’t mean you can’t do it—it just means you’re learning. shifting is the same.
that’s it. no fancy rituals, no endless research, no “perfect” conditions. the process is simple because it’s natural. you’ve probably done it before without even realizing it— the only reason it feels hard now is because you’ve convinced yourself it has to be.
stop making it harder than it needs to be. shifting isn’t this unattainable, mystical thing reserved for “chosen ones.” it’s something anyone can do. you can do it. your mom can do it. that anti-shifter lurking in every crevice of shiftblr could do it. you’ve always been capable. but you have to stop getting in your own way. stop doubting yourself. stop relying on others to tell you what’s possible. this is your journey. own it.
and above all, be patient. shifting is not a race. it’s not about how fast you can get there or how perfect your dr is. it’s about trust, intention, and focus. log off, tune into yourself, and let it happen. shifting has always been yours to claim. it’s not something you need permission for. it’s not something you need to earn. it’s just you, your mind, and your belief. always has been, always will be.
4K notes · View notes
reiding-writing · 4 months ago
Note
cold!reader used to work with VCAC? the idea that she's good with children despite just hating everyone is so funny to me
would you consider writing a fic where the BAUs main witness is a kid and cold reader is the only person to get through to them? and then the kid becomes like super attached and the rest of the team is just like 'hm, strange' because they never expected her to be good with kids? thank you!
Tumblr media
𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐲-𝐬𝐢𝐱 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬.
A family annihilator who's killed three families in two months makes a fatal mistake. He leaves behind a witness, a child, and she's the only one that can help solve the case.
s10!cold!reader ❅ 10.0k ❅ series masterlist. ❅ main masterlist.
CW | typical criminal minds violence, violence against children, mentions of trauma and ptsd, you do not know how tempted i was to kill this child but i didn’t
The scent of burnt coffee lingers in the air, mingling with the sterile chill of the air conditioning.
The conference room is dim, the overhead lights casting a dull glow against the crime scene photos spread across the table. Three families, their faces smiling in old photographs, juxtaposed with the horror of their final moments.
You sit stiffly in your chair, arms crossed, watching as Hotch stands at the head of the table. His expression is unreadable, but the tension in his shoulders speaks for itself.
The team is silent as he clicks to the next slide on the projector, displaying the most recent crime scene. Blood splatters across beige carpet. A broken picture frame. A child's shoe, left in the doorway.
“This is our unsub's third family in six weeks,” Hotch says, his voice steady but heavy. “All killed in their own homes, in the middle of the night. No signs of forced entry, no clear connection between the families. Each time, he’s managed to evade security cameras and forensic evidence. He’s methodical, careful, and fast.”
“Spree killer tendencies, but controlled,” Spencer interjects from across the table. His fingers drum against the tabletop as he speaks. “He escalates quickly, but there’s no erratic behaviour at the scenes. He’s not disorganised—he knows exactly what he’s doing,”
“Until now,” JJ murmurs. She leans forward, her brows drawn together, eyes fixed on the next image—a little girl. The survivor.
She’s small, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, pressed into the corner of what looks like a hospital bed. A police officer stands nearby, talking to her, but there’s no recognition in her eyes. She looks… empty.
“She got away,” Emily says, glancing at Hotch. “How?”
“The unsub killed her parents and older brother before she managed to escape through a back door,” he explains. “The neighbours called 911 when they heard screaming. By the time officers arrived, the house was quiet, and the suspect was gone. She was found hiding in their backyard shed.”
“A survivor,” Morgan says, shaking his head. “That changes things. This guy has a pattern—he wipes out the entire family unit. That means she wasn’t supposed to make it out alive,”
“Which means he might try again,” Rossi adds grimly.
A beat of silence. The weight of the statement settles over the room like thick fog.
“Local PD has had no luck getting her to talk,” Hotch continues. “She hasn’t said a word about what happened. Refuses to answer questions. She’s traumatised, barely verbal, and right now, she’s under police protection until we can confirm if she has any extended family who can take her in.”
You shift in your seat, already sensing where this is going. A slow dread creeps up your spine as Hotch’s gaze flickers toward you.
“We need to get through to her,” he says. “She’s the only witness we have, and if the unsub left anything behind—a name, a face, a detail—she’s the only one who can give it to us.”
His words hang in the air for a second too long. You feel everyone’s eyes move toward you.
And then Hotch says it.
“I want you to talk to her.”
You inhale sharply, jaw tightening. "Hotch—"
“You have a PhD in Psychology,” he cuts in smoothly, as if he already anticipated your pushback. “And your time in VCAC makes you the most qualified person here to work with child victims.”
The mention of VCAC makes your stomach twist. You fight the urge to grimace.
“I moved to the BAU for a reason,” you remind him, keeping your voice measured. “Children can be… difficult. Especially ones dealing with trauma this severe. She’s not just going to start talking because I ask her to.”
“I know,” Hotch says. “But if anyone can get her to open up, it’s you.”
Silence stretches between you.
You don’t want to do this.
You hate working with kids. Not because you don’t care, but because they feel too much.
They cry, they panic, they cling, and their emotions are messy—unpredictable in ways adults rarely are.
You spent years in VCAC, watching helpless children break apart under the weight of their own trauma, and it wore you down in ways you never admitted.
That’s why you left.
You’re not the nurturing type. You don’t coddle, you don’t reassure with empty promises, and you don’t have the patience for endless sobs and incomprehensible explanations.
And yet.
You glance at the image of the little girl again. She looks so small. So completely alone.
No one else in this room is going to be able to reach her. And if she doesn’t talk, if she doesn’t tell you what she saw—
The unsub will keep killing.
You exhale slowly, forcing the tension out of your shoulders.
“Fine,” you say finally. “I’ll do it.”
“Good,” Hotch nods. “Wheels up in 30.”
The meeting disperses, chairs scraping against the floor as the team gathers their things. You stay seated for a moment, staring at the blurred-out image of the girl on the screen.
A hand brushes against your arm.
You look up to see Spencer standing beside you, concern flickering in his eyes.
“You okay?” he asks softly.
You almost say yes, but stop yourself. Instead, you shrug.
“It’s just… not my favourite thing to do,” you admit, voice quieter than usual.
He nods, as if he understands. Maybe he does.
“You’ll be good at it,” he says. No hesitation. No doubt. Just quiet certainty.
For some reason, that makes your chest tighten.
You swallow, push back your chair, and stand.
“Let’s hope so,” you mutter, grabbing your case file.
And then you follow the team out the door.
The jet touches down in Minnesota under a dull, overcast sky, the kind that promises rain but never quite delivers. The air outside is biting, cold enough that you pull your coat tighter around you as the team steps off the plane.
The local PD is already waiting for you on the tarmac, their unmarked cars idling, exhaust curling into the frigid air. Hotch exchanges quick introductions, then splits the team without hesitation.
“Rossi—you’re with me at the latest crime scene. JJ, you’ll work with the department’s media liaison to handle the press. Morgan, Prentiss, you’re going to the ME’s office to go over autopsy findings.”
His gaze lands on you. “You’re going to the station to talk to the girl.”
You nod, ignoring the way your stomach tightens at the assignment.
“I’ll go with her,” Spencer says, stepping forward.
Hotch gives him a brief look, then nods. “Keep me updated.”
You don’t say anything as you and Spencer break off from the group, climbing into the backseat of a waiting squad car. The officer driving doesn’t speak much, just gives you a curt nod before pulling out onto the highway.
You spend the drive flipping through the case file, rereading the details you already know.
The survivor’s name is Madelyn Carter. Eight years old. No prior history of abuse or neglect. No suspicious activity leading up to the night of the murders. A completely normal kid—until the night she lost everything.
The police reports are frustratingly sparse. Non-verbal. Unresponsive to questioning. Won’t engage.
You tap your fingers against the file, jaw tight. She’s just a child, but already, you can feel the weight of the challenge ahead of you.
The police station is small, tucked into a sleepy suburban district, the kind of place that probably never sees much worse than drunk and disorderly charges.
But today, it’s buzzing with quiet tension.
You and Spencer are led to a small interview room at the end of the hallway. The walls are a washed-out shade of blue, meant to be calming, but the effect is ruined by the harsh fluorescent lighting.
And there, curled up on a chair too big for her, is Madelyn.
She’s impossibly small, arms wrapped around herself, knees drawn up to her chest. Her hair is tangled at the ends, her clothes a size too big, probably donated by someone at the station. A stuffed rabbit sits limply in her lap, its fur worn and patchy.
She doesn’t look up when you walk in.
The officer standing in the corner—a middle-aged woman with tired eyes—gives you a look that’s equal parts sympathy and frustration.
“She hasn’t said a word since we brought her in,” she murmurs.
You nod, but your focus is on the girl.
You know better than to overwhelm her right away, so you take your time settling into the chair across from her. No sudden movements. No clipped, authoritative tone. Just careful, deliberate quiet.
“Hi, Madelyn,” you say gently.
She doesn’t acknowledge you.
That’s fine. You expected this.
You shift slightly in your seat, keeping your posture relaxed as you introduce yourself to her. “I’m a Doctor, I’m going to try and help you,”
Still nothing.
You glance at Spencer, who watches the interaction closely, hands tucked into the pockets of his cardigan.
“That’s a nice bunny,” you say, nodding toward the stuffed animal in her lap.
Madelyn doesn’t respond, doesn’t even flick her eyes toward you. She just tightens her grip on the rabbit, her small fingers curling into its worn fur.
You exhale slowly, adjusting your approach.
“I used to have one kind of like that when I was little,” you continue, keeping your voice soft, conversational. “Mine was a bear, though. His name was Theo. I took him everywhere.”
Nothing.
Not surprising, but frustrating nonetheless.
You lean back slightly in your chair, glancing at Spencer, who watches the exchange with quiet patience.
“You’re good at this,” he murmurs under his breath, just for you to hear. “Just be patient,”
You barely resist the urge to roll your eyes. “She hasn’t said a word, Spencer.”
“That doesn’t mean she’s not listening,”
You don’t respond, but his words linger in your mind as you turn back to Madelyn.
She’s still curled up, still silent, but you notice the way her fingers twitch slightly against the rabbit’s ear. It’s a small movement, but it tells you one thing, she’s aware of you.
That’s something.
You decide to change tactics. Instead of talking, you lean forward, resting your arms on the table between you. Then you take out your notepad and a pen, clicking it open.
Madelyn doesn’t look up, but you catch the smallest flicker of movement in her posture—curiosity.
Good.
You start to doodle. Simple things. A flower, a star, little patterns in the margins.
Still nothing from her.
But when you glance up a few minutes later, her eyes are on the notepad.
Just for a second. But she was looking.
You resist the urge to smile. Instead, you gently slide the notepad across the table toward her, placing the pen on top.
“You can draw something, if you want,” you say simply. “You don’t have to, but sometimes it helps.”
Madelyn doesn’t react immediately. But then, slowly—so slowly—her fingers twitch again, and she reaches out.
She doesn’t grab the pen. But she touches it.
Your heart stutters slightly in your chest.
Progress.
You let her take her time. You don’t push, don’t rush. You just watch as her tiny fingers trace the edge of the pen absently.
You glance at Spencer again, and his expression is warm. Encouraging.
After a long silence, he speaks, his voice gentle.
“Do you like stories, Madelyn?”
She doesn’t answer.
But after a moment, she nods. Barely. But it’s a nod.
You share a look with Spencer, and for the first time since walking into this room, you feel the smallest spark of hope.
She’s in there.
You just have to find a way to bring her out.
You don’t know how long you sit there, watching Madelyn’s fingers trace absent shapes against the edge of the pen. Time moves strangely in moments like this—slow and thick, like wading through molasses.
Spencer stays quiet, offering his presence but not overwhelming the space. You appreciate it more than you’d ever admit.
Madelyn doesn’t speak. But she nods. And she touches the pen.
That’s more than you had ten minutes ago.
So you build on it.
“You like stories,” you say, keeping your voice soft. “What kind of stories?”
No response.
You lean back slightly. “I like mysteries.” A pause. “Not the scary kind, though. More like… puzzles. Things that make you think.”
Nothing at first. But then—so subtle you almost miss it—Madelyn shifts. It’s small, just the faintest movement of her shoulders, but it’s acknowledgment.
Encouraged, you try again.
“I think you might be really good at puzzles,” you say casually. “The way you were looking at my drawings earlier—that was you figuring things out, right?”
She still doesn’t answer, but this time, you catch the way she avoids your gaze, like she’s fighting the urge to react.
She’s engaged. Even if she won’t admit it yet.
So you take another risk.
“Do you want to play a game?”
That gets her attention. Not fully, but her head tilts just slightly—like she’s listening more closely.
You grab the notepad again, flipping to a fresh page.
“It’s really simple,” you tell her. “I draw something, and you guess what it is. If you guess right, it’s your turn to draw something for me.”
You don’t expect an immediate response, so you keep moving. You draw a cat. Just a simple, messy sketch, the kind a kid might do. Then you slide the notepad back toward her and wait.
Silence.
You don’t push.
Then, after an agonising pause—Madelyn reaches for the pen.
She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t look at you.
But she writes one word in the space beneath your drawing.
Cat.
Something in your chest unclenches.
“Yeah,” you say, voice even softer than before. “It’s a cat.”
Madelyn’s fingers tighten around the pen.
Then—hesitant, almost reluctant—she starts to draw.
It’s shaky, unsure, but after a moment, you recognise it.
A rabbit. Her stuffed animal.
You don’t rush to answer. You let the moment sit, giving her control.
Finally, you say, “Is it your bunny?”
Madelyn nods.
Not small. Not hesitant. A real, full nod.
Your breath catches. Spencer’s posture shifts beside you, like he can feel the significance of it, too.
You’ve got her.
It takes another hour before she agrees to talk.
You don’t push her. You keep playing, keep gently pulling her out of the dark space she’s been locked in. She tells you her bunny’s name is Milo, that he’s red because it’s her favourite colour, about things that don’t hurt to answer.
She tells you her friends call her Maddie. You ask if you can. She agrees.
And slowly, carefully, she leans into it.
Finally, when the moment feels right, you set your pen down.
“Maddie,” you say gently. “I need to ask you about what happened that night.”
Immediately, she shrinks in on herself.
You don’t reach for her. Don’t move too fast.
“I know it’s scary,” you continue. “And I know it hurts to think about. But you’re the only one who knows what he looks like.”
Her grip on Milo tightens.
You lean forward slightly. “I want to stop him,” you say. “I don’t want him to hurt anyone else. But I can’t do that without your help.”
She’s trembling. But she’s listening.
Spencer speaks for the first time in a while, his voice quiet but steady.
“We can do it in a way that’s not so scary,” he tells her. “You don’t have to remember everything at once. We can do it piece by piece, and you can stop whenever you want.”
Maddie hesitates.
Then, after a long, agonising pause—she nods.
You take a slow breath.
“Okay,” you murmur. “Let’s do this together.”
The cognitive interview is exhausting. For her, for you, for everyone in the room.
You guide her through it carefully—asking her to picture the house, to focus on what she remembers before things got bad.
She whispers about the TV being on. About how her brother was playing a game on his tablet. About how her dad was in the kitchen, and her mom was upstairs.
Then—the noise.
Something breaking.
Screaming.
Maddie shakes violently, curling in on herself, and you immediately pull back.
“It’s okay,” you say quickly. “You’re safe. You’re here with us.”
She nods, but her breath is coming too fast, her body trembling too much.
Spencer places a gentle hand on your arm, meeting your gaze. You understand what he’s asking. Back off. Give her a moment.
So you do.
You wait.
Finally, she whispers, “He—he was big,”
You go still.
She’s talking about him.
You nod encouragingly. “Okay. Big. Can you tell me anything else?”
A shaky breath.
“H-he had a… a hat.”
You glance at Spencer, who’s already jotting this down in the case file.
Maddie’s voice is barely audible.
“I think it was red.”
Your heart pounds.
Piece by piece, she tells you more. His height. His clothes. A scar on his arm.
By the time she stops, she’s crying.
You reach forward, gently—so gently—and brush a piece of hair from her face.
“You did so good, Maddie,” you tell her. “So, so good.”
She hiccups, her tiny body wracked with exhaustion.
And then—before you can react—she throws herself into your arms.
You freeze.
You’re not the nurturing type. You don’t know how to do this.
But right now, this kid trusts you in a way she doesn’t trust anyone else.
So you let her cling.
You let her cry.
And for the first time in a long time—
You don’t pull away.
The interview is over, but somehow, it feels like the work is just beginning.
Maddie doesn’t leave your side.
Not even for a second.
You’d thought that once the interview was done, you’d be able to hand her over to someone else—maybe the police, or someone from her extended family who was supposed to arrive soon. But instead, Maddie just… clings.
After the interview, she refuses to let go of your hand. You try to tell her she can go with one of the officers to get something to eat, but her grip tightens.
When you tell her it’s time for you to go back to work, she just looks up at you, her eyes wide with that quiet, vulnerable desperation that makes you want to soften, but you can’t.
Her tiny fingers dig into your sleeve when you stand, like she’s afraid you’ll disappear.
You can’t blame her.
You’ve been the one who’s been there for her, the one who’s gotten her to speak, the one who’s made her feel safe for the first time in days.
But the child is persistent.
Everywhere you go, she follows. To the small break room where the team is gathering, to the bathroom when you briefly step away, back to the conference room where they’ve gathered for a case update.
She’s your shadow now.
And the team notices.
You try not to make it awkward, but it's impossible when she insists on sitting at your side, her tiny body almost engulfed by the chair next to you. Her stuffed bunny sits in her lap, its fur nearly as frayed as her nerves, but she holds it tightly. It’s like her last link to some semblance of safety.
Morgan raises an eyebrow as he walks in. “I thought we were done with the interview?”
“We are,” you say, keeping your tone neutral. “She just… she doesn’t want to leave me.”
No one teases you—at least, not directly—but there’s a quiet amusement in the air as they all take in the sight of Madelyn curled up in her oversized chair, the edges of her blanket practically touching the floor, with you sitting across from her.
Hotch is the only one who doesn’t seem particularly surprised. He’s worked with children before—he knows how attachment works, especially after trauma.
But the others? They’re bemused.
JJ glances over at you as she sips her coffee, a smile pulling at her lips. “She seems to have taken quite a liking to you,”
You tilt your head, barely acknowledging her. “I’m just doing my job.”
Maddie, of course, doesn’t let go of you, even as the case discussion begins. She stays glued to your side, her small hand clutching the sleeve of your jacket, her eyes darting from one agent to the next as they go over the details of the unsub’s pattern.
You keep your voice even, answering questions when necessary, but it’s becoming increasingly hard to focus when you feel the weight of her gaze fixed on you, like she’s waiting for something.
Spencer notices.
He’s been watching the whole scene unfold with quiet fascination, his arms crossed, his head slightly tilted, like he’s trying to puzzle out the situation. Finally, when the meeting breaks up, he sidles up next to you as you get ready to leave the conference room.
“She’s really latched onto you, huh?” he says, his voice low, but the smile tugging at his lips is evident.
You glance at him, your expression unreadable. “It’s nothing. Just transference.”
“Uh-huh.” He doesn’t believe you, but he doesn’t push.
Maddie hasn’t let go of you once during the discussion, and now that it’s over, she’s still following you around, pressing close to your side as you move toward the exit.
“Are you hungry, Maddie?” you ask her gently, glancing down at her with a touch of exasperation. “You haven’t eaten, and I’m pretty sure there’s a café close to here.”
Her head nods almost imperceptibly.
Spencer watches, his eyes softening slightly as he observes the quiet bond that’s developed between the two of you. It’s not obvious at first—just the way the girl clings to you like you’re the only thing tethering her to some kind of reality.
“Maybe we can grab lunch,” he suggests, his tone more teasing than anything. “I mean, you’ve earned it. Getting the kid to open up like that? Not easy.”
You roll your eyes, though there's no malice behind it. “I’m just doing what needs to be done.”
“You’re good at it.”
You mutter something under your breath about it not being a permanent situation, but Spencer just chuckles.
He walks with you as you lead Maddie toward the small café a few blocks away. As you cross the threshold of the restaurant, you notice the oddity of the whole situation.
It’s strange to have someone at your side like this. A small, vulnerable child who insists on being with you despite everything that happened.
The waitress gives you an odd look when you request a secluded booth, but she doesn’t say anything. You slide in, Maddie immediately beside you, her fingers still clutching your sleeve.
Spencer orders for everyone, giving Maddie a soft smile as he does. You can’t help but notice the way his expression softens around her.
“She seems to like you,” Spencer comments as you sit, his voice light but carrying a certain warmth.
You cross your arms and shoot him a glance. “What can I say? I’m just a magnet for clingy children.”
Spencer laughs quietly, but it’s warm. “You’re good with her. I think she feels safe around you. And you are good at what you do.”
“Thanks,” you mutter, but there’s something unsettlingly genuine in your voice.
Spencer raises an eyebrow, but he doesn’t press you. Instead, he changes the subject, discussing the case with you as if nothing’s out of the ordinary.
But in the back of your mind, you can’t shake the feeling that something has changed.
As you eat, Maddie picks at her food, her gaze flickering from you to Spencer and back again. She looks at you with a certain familiarity, like she trusts you completely, like you’re the one person who’s made her feel safe in the whirlwind of everything that happened.
After a while, she speaks.
“Are you boyfriend and girlfriend?”
Your fork stops halfway to your mouth. Spencer looks at you from across the table, just as surprised.
You freeze. How do you explain the whole weird mess that is your and Spencer’s relationship to an eight-year-old? How do you explain the not-together-but-kinda-together situation that doesn’t even make sense to you half the time?
So you side-step the question.
“No, sweetie,” you say, “Not quite.”
Maddie doesn’t seem disappointed by that answer. She just nods, although a little confused.
You glance at Spencer, who’s trying to hide a smile behind his cup of water.
“It’s okay to be curious,” he tells her gently.
You roll your eyes and take another bite of your food. “It's just complicated,”
Maddie shrugs, her focus shifting back to her plate. She doesn't press any further, and for a brief moment, you almost feel normal again—just two adults eating lunch with a kid. Like a proxy family.
But normal doesn’t last long. The reality is that she’s still attached to you, and you're still the one she turns to. For now, at least.
And despite all your reservations, there’s a part of you that’s starting to understand why.
The evening sets in with an oppressive stillness that mirrors the tension in the air.
Maddie has been tucked into a small cot, an officer stationed outside her door to ensure her safety. She’s asleep now, her face still flushed from the day’s events, her small form curled tightly under the blankets. The moment she closed her eyes, a quiet kind of peace settled in the room, but the unease in your chest hasn’t subsided.
The case isn’t over. Not by a long shot.
The team has reconvened, sitting around the large conference table in the BAU’s temporary Minnesota office. The maps, photos, and notes are all spread out before you, the room filled with the usual quiet hum of focus.
They’re all working with urgency now—calculating, piecing together information, and drawing conclusions. But none of them, not even Hotch, seem willing to speak the one truth you’re certain of.
Madelyn is in danger.
It’s only a matter of time before the unsub comes back for her.
“Based on the pattern,” Hotch begins, his voice steady, “we can assume the unsub is going to strike again. He’s methodical. The way he works suggests he’s already been planning this next move. We have a window.”
You listen, but you’re not really hearing him. Your eyes are fixed on the girl’s picture—the innocent smile frozen in time, the eyes full of unspoken fear. She’s just a little girl.
“And our best bet,” Morgan continues, leaning forward as he studies the information in front of him, “is to get her back into her old house. Lure the unsub out with a setup that looks weak—something that’ll convince him to make his move.”
Your stomach churns.
“That’s what we’re doing,” Hotch affirms, his eyes briefly meeting yours. “We need to make sure he’s brought to justice, and we’re running out of time.”
You can feel it—the tension rising in your chest, suffocating you. It’s not just the decision they’re making. It’s the plan. It’s the idea that they’re considering putting Madelyn in danger again.
You can’t stay silent.
“Are you serious?” Your voice cuts through the conversation like a knife. “We’re going to use her as bait?”
There’s an edge in your tone, one you rarely let genuinely show. The room goes still, and all eyes turn toward you.
Hotch looks at you with that ever-steady gaze of his, the kind that’s usually so impenetrable, but you can see the frustration beneath it. “We don’t have many options here. If we can’t draw him out, we risk losing him completely.”
“By using a child?” You repeat the word like it’s a poison, something that doesn’t belong in the same sentence as the word justice. You stand, unable to keep still, the anger making your pulse quicken. “This isn’t some game, Hotch. This is a real little girl. She’s already been through enough. We can’t just—”
“You’re overreacting,” Morgan interjects, his voice quieter now but firm. “We’re not putting her at direct risk. The setup will be controlled, and we’ll have backup in place,”
You shake your head, the words slipping from you before you can stop them. “Controlled? How do you control something like that? How do you control what he does to her when he finds out she’s there?”
Spencer speaks up from across the room, his voice calm but carrying an underlying note of empathy. “We’re not doing this blindly. There’s a risk, yes. But we’re also talking about a chance to stop him, once and for all. This is what we do,”
You turn to him, frustration boiling in your chest. “This is not our mission. She’s not just some tool to help us find a solution to our problems. She’s a child!”
Spencer’s eyes flash for a moment, but he softens his tone, lowering his voice. “I know, but we’re doing this to protect her. We can’t just sit back and wait for him to come to her. That’s not an option anymore,”
The conversation swirls around you, their voices growing distant in your ears as the weight of the decision begins to settle over you.
The plan, the baiting, the manipulation of this little girl’s already broken world—none of it feels right. The thought of putting her in harm’s way, even with all the precautions in place, is enough to make your stomach turn.
But no one is listening to you.
And you know, in the back of your mind, that it’s already decided. They’re going to go through with it.
Hotch gives you one last look, his gaze unreadable but firm. “I understand your concern, but this is the best option we have.”
You hold his gaze for a beat, the frustration still burning in your chest, but you can’t push it anymore.
Instead, you take a breath and step back, your voice tight. “Fine. But don’t expect me to like it.”
The rest of the team doesn’t speak up—no one challenges the decision. They all know what needs to be done, even if it isn’t easy. Even if it feels wrong.
And in that moment, you realise just how far this has gone. You’re not just part of the team anymore. You’re now complicit in something that you can’t reconcile with the woman you thought you were.
That night, you sit at your desk, staring at the case file in front of you, though you’re not really looking at it. Your thoughts drift back to Madelyn—her fragile, trusting eyes, the way she’s clung to you all day.
You didn’t sign up for this.
Spencer walks past your desk, pausing when he sees the way you’re hunched over the case files.
“You’re really not okay with this, are you?” he asks quietly, his voice soft but knowing.
You don’t answer at first, focusing on the photo of Madelyn. Her smile, her bunny clutched tight in her hands, all of it makes you feel like you’re trapped in a nightmare you can’t wake up from.
Finally, you speak, your voice barely a whisper. “I just—I can’t believe we’re doing this to her.”
Spencer’s silence speaks volumes. He doesn’t say anything for a long time, and you don’t expect him to. Finally, he leans in, his tone steady but sympathetic.
“Sometimes, we have to make hard choices,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean we forget who we’re doing it for,”
You glance up at him, meeting his eyes. There’s something in his gaze—a quiet understanding, a recognition of the struggle.
“You’ll be okay,” He hesitates before setting a hand against your cheek, thumb brushing over your skin. “And so will she,”
The silence in the room is almost oppressive. Madelyn has been tucked into her cot for the night, her small body curled into the covers as if trying to make herself as small as possible.
You’ve been avoiding looking at her, because every time you do, the weight of what you’re about to ask her presses down harder on your chest.
You know that this is necessary. You know that this is the only way to stop the unsub and give her a chance at safety. But that doesn’t make it feel any less wrong.
The plan is set. Tomorrow, they’ll use her as bait. And you, the one person she trusts in the world, are expected to stand by and watch.
It doesn’t matter that you’ll be there to protect her. It doesn’t matter that you’ll be the one closest to her. The thought of her being used like this leaves a bitter taste in your mouth that no amount of logic can cleanse.
But there’s no getting around it. The team has made their decision.
So you sit at the edge of her cot, trying to steady the storm of conflicting emotions swirling inside you. You’re the one who has to make her understand, and that terrifies you.
Maddie is lying on her side, her bunny tucked into the crook of her arm. She looks so small in the dim light, so fragile, and it hurts to see her like this.
The trauma she’s endured is still written on her face, though the interview was a step forward. But that doesn’t mean she’s ready for what’s about to happen. None of you are.
“Maddie?” you say softly, your voice quieter than usual. She doesn’t respond at first, her wide eyes flicking from her bunny to you. She’s so still, almost as though she’s bracing herself for something worse.
“Hey, sweetheart, look at me,” you coax gently, reaching out to touch her shoulder. She hesitates for a moment, but then she turns, her face a mask of anxiety and exhaustion.
You swallow hard, forcing yourself to hold her gaze. “I need to tell you something important. Do you remember what I told you earlier, about keeping you safe?”
She nods, her lips trembling. “You’re gonna stay with me?” Her voice is barely above a whisper, like she’s afraid of hearing the wrong answer.
Your heart aches. You can feel the weight of what you’re about to say hanging in the air like a storm cloud. But you can’t lie to her. Not now. She deserves the truth. Even if it breaks you to say it.
“I’m not going anywhere, okay?” you promise, trying to keep your voice steady. “But tomorrow… tomorrow’s going to be a little different.”
She furrows her brow, her small hands twisting the edges of her blanket. “How?”
You take a slow breath, carefully choosing your words. “Tomorrow, we’re going to do something to make sure that bad man never comes back. Something that will keep you safe. But it’s going to be a little scary, and I need you to trust me, okay?”
She looks up at you, eyes wide with apprehension. You can see her processing, the fear bubbling under the surface, trying to break through. But she doesn’t pull away. She stays there, watching you, waiting for the rest of it.
“It’s not going to be easy,” you continue. “We’re going to go to your old house, the place where all this happened, and we’re going to make it look like it did before. We’re going to have people watching from close by, and I’ll be right outside. The whole time, okay?”
Her lips tremble again, and you can see that she’s struggling to understand. The idea of going back to that house—where so much horror happened—is almost too much for her to process. You don’t blame her. You’d feel the same way.
“I won’t leave you,” you say again, making sure she hears the sincerity in your voice. “You’ll be safe, Maddie. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
The trust in her eyes is palpable, but the fear is too. Her small body stiffens for a moment, and she looks down at her bunny like it’s the only thing holding her together. “What if… what if I’m scared?” she asks, her voice barely audible.
You lean in, your heart breaking just a little more. “It’s okay to be scared, But we’ll make all the scary things go away.”
There’s a long pause, and for a moment, you almost feel like you’re breaking. The responsibility is too much, the pressure too great. You want so badly to pull her out of this situation, to find another way. But you can’t. You have to do this, not just for her, but for everyone who’s been affected by this unsub.
Madelyn bites her lip, her eyes filled with uncertainty. “You promise?”
You nod, your voice thick with emotion. “I promise.”
She looks at you for a long moment, as if weighing your words, trying to decide if she can trust you. And then, just as you’re starting to doubt yourself, she nods, barely perceptible. “Okay. I trust you.”
The words settle between you both, and for a moment, you feel the quiet weight of the promise you just made. This isn’t just a case anymore. It’s her. It’s her safety, her future, and you’re the one who has to make sure she’s protected.
“Good girl,” you say softly, brushing a few stray strands of hair from her forehead. “You’re so brave, Maddie. I’m proud of you.”
Her eyes flicker up to you again, and this time, there’s a faint smile. It’s small, but it’s there. “I’m not scared if you’re with me.”
That’s the moment you realise: she’s not just trusting you to keep her safe. She’s trusting you to give her back a sense of control over her own life, something she hasn’t had since the night her family was taken from her. And you can’t let her down. Not now, not ever.
“I’ll be with you,” you repeat. “Every step of the way.”
And as you watch her settle back into the covers, her bunny tucked tightly under her arm, you make a silent vow to yourself that no matter what happens tomorrow, no matter what you have to do, you will keep that promise.
Because no one else is going to.
Not like you will.
The air inside the old house is heavy with tension, each creak of the floorboards under the team’s feet amplified in the stillness.
The plan is simple. Madelyn is placed in the house, under the guise of a minimal police presence, to lure the unsub into taking the bait.
Everything has been carefully orchestrated, right down to the smallest detail. Outside, the team is positioned in hidden locations, all eyes on the house. They’re watching for any signs that the unsub is approaching, but you know they’re all thinking the same thing—you hope this works.
You’ve spent the entire day getting Maddie ready, talking her through the steps again, reassuring her that this is the right thing to do, that she’ll be okay. And, despite your own misgivings, you’re trying to convince yourself of the same thing.
You’ve promised her that you would stay by her side, and you have to see that promise through.
The door to the house is left slightly ajar, a weak police presence positioned just inside. You take your position on the floor below Maddie’s bedroom, staying close, but not so close as to be obvious. Your heartbeat is a loud thrum in your ears as the time ticks by, every minute stretching into what feels like an eternity. The silence inside the house feels like a storm waiting to break.
Then, it happens.
The motion sensor outside the house triggers, and you hear it—the unmistakable sound of someone breaching the perimeter. Your stomach lurches. The unsub is here.
It’s go-time.
The team moves in quickly, and in that same instant, you spring into action, your focus singular. Your only thought is Maddie. The unsub can be handled by the others. They’ve got it covered. But you can’t take your eyes off the one person you promised to protect. You know exactly where she is, and you don’t even hesitate to run toward her.
You burst into her room, your heart pounding. The light is dim, casting long shadows across the space. Maddie is standing by the window, looking outside with wide, fearful eyes. The moment she hears the door open, she turns to you, her face a mixture of confusion and terror.
She doesn’t say anything, but you can see the fear etched into her small features, the tremor in her hands as she holds the bunny close.
Without thinking, you move towards her in two quick steps. You scoop her up in your arms, holding her tight to your chest, pressing her small form into you as though you can shield her from all the horrors in the world. The weight of her trust feels heavier than ever.
“Shh,” you whisper, your voice as steady as you can make it, though it cracks just a little. “It’s okay. You’re safe now. I’m right here. See? I told you you’d be okay.”
She clings to you, her fingers curling into your shirt. She’s trembling, but she doesn’t pull away. In this moment, she’s not just the scared little girl caught in a nightmare. She’s the child who trusted you with her safety—and that trust is all that matters.
You stroke her hair gently, trying to soothe her with the rhythm of your hand.
Your heart is racing, but you can’t afford to let that show. She’s looking up at you now, her wide eyes full of questions, full of fear that you can’t quite banish. But she trusts you. That’s enough.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” you say again, even though you can’t promise it. You hold her tighter, wanting to shield her from everything outside this room, from the danger lurking just beyond the walls. You’re not thinking of the unsub anymore—only of Maddie. She’s the only thing that matters.
For a moment, everything else fades away. The outside world is a blur of movement and sound, but you are anchored in this small, dimly lit room with this little girl in your arms.
You don’t hear the team’s voices anymore, don’t hear the chase or the shouting, don’t hear anything except Maddie’s breathing against your chest. She’s calm now, her body still trembling but no longer with fear—more from the shock, the exhaustion of the night.
It’s a strange thing, the weight of her small body in your arms. There’s something deeply instinctive about it, something that stirs in you like an echo from a past you thought you’d finally buried alongside your Professor.
In this moment, holding her like this, you can’t help but think of what might have been. If you’d had that child, if you’d stayed.
What would it have been like? To raise a child of your own? To care for someone who needed you as much as she does?
The thought catches you off guard. It’s a brief moment of reflection, one that passes as quickly as it comes, but the weight of it lingers, like the fading scent of something once held close. It’s not the first time you’ve thought about it, but it’s the first time it’s felt so… real.
You quickly push the thought aside, focusing again on Maddie’s presence. Not now.
This isn’t about you. It’s about her. Always her.
“Hey,” you murmur, pulling her back slightly to look into her eyes. “You did great. You were so brave. You’re okay. It’s over now.”
Her eyes are wide, still searching your face for reassurance, but she doesn’t speak. She doesn’t need to. You know that she’s still processing everything, still trying to make sense of the danger, of the chaos, of everything she’s been through in the past few days. But she’s safe now. She’s in your arms, and you’ll keep her safe for as long as it takes.
“Do you trust me?” you ask softly, even though you already know the answer.
Maddie nods, her small hand clutching tighter onto her bunny.
“Good,” you say, giving her a small but sincere smile. “Then we’ll get through this together.”
The storm has passed. The danger is over. Madelyn is safe. The unsub is in custody, and the team is in the clear. You’ve done your job. You’ve kept her safe, just as you promised.
But now comes the hardest part.
Her grandparents are here, having arrived just after the house was secured, the paperwork signed, and the chaos of the operation settled.
They’re older, frail but warm, and there’s a visible relief on their faces when they see their granddaughter—safe, unharmed, and sound, despite everything she’s been through.
They approach her cautiously, with a tenderness that is obvious in their every move, but it’s clear that Madelyn isn’t ready to leave yet.
She’s sitting on the edge of the bed, her back to you, staring down at her hands, her bunny still clutched tightly in her grip. Her eyes flicker toward the door every now and then, but she doesn’t look up.
She can hear the voices outside—her grandparents—her family—but she’s frozen. The transition from being with you, the one person she’s come to rely on, to a completely new environment is more than she’s ready for.
You move closer, kneeling beside her. Her head doesn’t turn, but you can tell she knows you’re there. The silence between you is comfortable, not awkward, but weighted with the realisation that this is the end of the road for you both. This is where you have to let her go.
“Maddie,” you say softly, your voice a little hoarse from the long hours. “Your grandparents are here. They’re going to take you home. You’ll be safe with them.”
She doesn’t say anything, but you can see her shoulders tense, just a little. Her fingers flex against her bunny’s fur, as if trying to hold onto some sense of control, some last shred of the familiar. She’s scared. You understand that, even though she’s made it through the worst of it, she’s still just a little girl. And little girls need security. They need the things they’ve trusted, and right now, that’s you.
“I know it’s hard,” you continue, gently brushing her hair back. “But you’re going to be okay now. You’re going to be with your family. You’re not alone anymore.”
Madelyn stays quiet, but this time, she finally turns her head to look at you. Her eyes are wide and vulnerable, and it’s all you can do to hold back the swell of emotion threatening to break free. She’s asking with just a look—Can I stay? Can you keep me safe?
But you can’t. You’ve done what you promised. You can’t be her protector forever, and you both know it. She needs her family now, the people who can be there for her in ways you can’t.
“I’ll always be here if you need me,” you say, your voice steady, though your heart is anything but. “But you’ve got your grandparents now. They love you, and they’re going to take care of you. You’ll be safe with them, just like I promised you.”
Maddie looks down at her bunny again, as if deciding whether to give it up. For a long moment, she just holds it, her fingers tracing the worn fabric. You don’t push her. She needs to come to this decision herself, in her own time. But eventually, she looks up at you, and her face is as serious as it’s ever been.
“I want you to have him,” she says quietly. “He keeps me safe. Maybe he can keep you safe too.”
Your throat tightens at the simple, honest offer. The bunny—her constant companion, the thing that has been with her through every terrifying moment, every flash of panic—is now being entrusted to you. You can feel the weight of it, of the trust in her small hands as she holds it out to you.
For a brief moment, you hesitate. You weren’t expecting this. You didn’t want this. You didn’t want to accept anything from her, to make it feel like a goodbye, like this was the end. But the way she’s looking at you—her eyes filled with the kind of vulnerability that only a child could show—it’s a gift. A gesture of complete trust.
You reach out, slowly, your fingers brushing against hers as she places the stuffed animal into your hands. You don’t say anything at first. You don’t need to. The weight of the moment says it all.
“I’ll look after him,” you say finally, your voice soft. “I promise,”
Maddie gives a small nod, her lip trembling slightly, but she doesn’t cry. She doesn’t need to. She knows she’s safe now. She knows that the danger is over, even though it’s going to take a long time for her to truly feel like it. But she trusts you. That’s what matters most.
Her grandparents step forward now, gentle and patient. Her grandmother reaches out, her hand trembling slightly, but Madelyn doesn’t move. She looks up at you one last time, and it’s like she’s asking you for permission. You nod, brushing a hand over her hair one last time, offering her the comfort and security she’s going to need in the days to come.
“You’re going to be okay, Maddie,” you repeat, knowing it’s true. You’ve done everything you could for her, and now it’s time to let go.
Madelyn doesn’t look back as her grandparents gently lead her out of the room. She doesn’t cry, though you’re sure the tears will come later. For now, she’s holding herself together, with the knowledge that she’s safe, and that she’s going to be okay.
The hum of the office is soothing in its familiar monotony. You step inside, the heavy weight of the case finally lifting from your shoulders. It’s strange—part of you feels relief, the other part feels like an echo of something left behind. Something you didn’t quite expect to feel, but there it is, nestled in your chest, quietly tugging at you.
You take a deep breath and walk to your desk, setting down your bag and the files you’ve been carrying all day. Then, without really thinking about it, you place the stuffed animal on the corner of your desk, the soft bunny now a permanent fixture in the workspace that’s been both home and battlefield for so long.
It’s a small thing, but it’s a thing that means something. And as soon as you set it down, you feel a soft exhale escape your lips. A sense of finality, of closure, as if everything has settled into place.
The case is over. Madelyn is safe. But something about this—about the stuffed animal—feels like a piece of you that will always remain in that small room with her, in the moment when you promised to keep her safe.
You don’t realise Spencer is watching you until you hear his soft voice.
“She gave it to you,” he says, a quiet smile tugging at his lips.
You glance over at him, momentarily surprised. His gaze is soft, understanding, and there’s a certain warmth in his eyes that you’re not sure you’re ready for.
You glance back at the bunny and then back at Spencer. It’s an odd feeling—the way he’s looking at you, almost as if he sees more than just the case, more than just the professional side of you. He sees the part of you that changed over the past 36 hours.
“She did,” you say, your voice low, not quite sure what to say after that. It’s true, but you hadn’t really thought it through. You hadn’t thought about what this moment would mean.
“You didn’t have to take it,” Spencer offers gently, taking a step closer. “But I think it’s... a good thing. That you did.”
You swallow, unsure how to process the mix of emotions stirring in your chest. It’s strange, this feeling. The feeling of having kept a promise, of having kept someone safe. You’ve done this kind of work before, but never like this. Never with this kind of personal connection.
“Yeah,” you say, your voice thick with something you can’t quite put into words.
Spencer steps closer, his posture relaxed, yet there’s an unspoken care in his movements. He looks at you—softly, steadily—and you feel the warmth of his presence settle around you. He reaches a hand out, his fingers brushing over the edge of your waist. It’s a gesture that’s comforting, gentle, not pushing, just there.
“You okay?” he asks, his voice barely above a whisper, as if he’s afraid of breaking the moment. His touch is subtle, yet you can feel the tenderness in his gesture.
You nod, but the answer feels incomplete. How do you explain that you're fine, but also changed? How do you explain that the girl who clung to you, who trusted you with her safety, left something inside you that you hadn’t expected to find?
“I’m fine,” you say finally, because it’s easier to say than to explain.
Spencer doesn’t press, doesn’t ask for more details. He just gives a soft nod, his fingers still lingering for a moment longer than necessary before he steps back slightly. He doesn’t push. He’s always been good at giving space when needed.
“Want me to take you home?” he asks, his voice gentle. “Or… we could just go somewhere. Get some food. Something to relax.”
The offer is simple, but you can tell that it’s more than that. It’s his way of letting you know he’s there for you, not out of obligation, but because he wants to be. Because he sees you in a way that not many people do.
The soft affection in his voice, the quiet care in his words—it’s enough to make you feel like maybe, just maybe, you’re not as alone as you’ve felt in the past.
You glance at him, a soft smile tugging at the corner of your lips. For a moment, the world outside the office fades, and it’s just the two of you. He’s standing there, so patient, so steady, and the weight of the last 36 hours begins to feel a little less heavy with him around.
“That’d be nice,” you say finally, surprising yourself with the answer. You don’t know why, but you do. You could go home, retreat into the silence of your apartment, but there’s something about the idea of being with him—of having someone there, someone who understands, someone who’s seen the way you’ve changed—that feels better.
Spencer smiles, a quiet relief crossing his face. He steps forward, offering you a hand, and you take it without hesitation. His fingers close around yours, warm and comforting. It’s a simple gesture, but it feels like a promise, like something new is beginning.
“Let’s go then,” he says, giving your hand a gentle squeeze.
2K notes · View notes
obeymeluv · 5 months ago
Text
In Your Defense [PT 1 - Heartslabyul, Savanaclaw]
You decide to work at Sam's for Valentine's Day and your crush just happens to hear a customer hitting on you. If they get arrested, can you be their alibi? AKA: This person has a death wish and you find out your crush might be jealous?
Note: Each one is random and some will be longer than others. If I made everyone the same length this thing would be MASSIVE and I would probably die.
Not proofread because of the length. Trying to get everyone done today. It's my last day off for a few.
Whatever part Ortho is in will be platonic, obvs.
Happy V-day!
Riddle likes to think he's made great strides not being angry but hearing some utterly disgusting joke about 'how much do you cost?' sends him like nothing else ever has. This guy is tall and so unimpressive, so plain, so average that Riddle can't really recall him at all. Maybe that's just the absolute fury blurring his vision. He knows he's not breathing but his chest isn't burning near as much as his face; the heat is spreading quick and he can feel it in his cheeks and neck. Temples pounding, his vaguely aware of the growl bubbling in his chest as it threatens to slip past his clenched teeth.
Ace calls it his teapot snarl.
Before Riddle knows it, he's flown off the handle and he's going off on a rant. The whole shop is quiet, people physically backing away as he just methodically unravels everything about this cretin from outfit, posture, presence, delivery, unoriginality--everything. Honestly, he doesn't even remember everything he said. The redhead doesn't even tune back into the sound of his own voice until he ends the onslaught with, "You've just paid twenty thaumarks to embarrass yourself but that pales in comparison to the fact that you thought you had a chance with them. You should be ashamed!"
The man slinks away, sad little bag dragging off the counter.
Whispers and giggles diffuse throughout the shop. He ignores the looks that come his way, using the time to come back to himself. Riddle fixes his cute casual clothes, content with the fact you picked them out together. He catches sight of the matching rose clips on your outfit and in you hair and smiles softly. "A strawberry cookie and a cake pop, please." he clears his throat, fishing his wallet out of his pocket.
Sam had an assortment of sweets and he was going to capitalize on strawberry's popularity while he could. He saw you root through the display case, carefully considering the designs even though they were all supposed to taste the same (allegedly).
"Sure thing. Your total is 12 thaumarks. Thanks for stopping by Sam's Mystery Shop! Happy Valentine's Day!"
He hands you the thaumarks as you take the time to slide the I LOVE YOU cookie in his bag.
----
Deuce is an honors student! He is a good boy that's going to make his mother proud!
HE IS SO GOING TO PUNCH THIS MOTHERFUCKER IN THIS FACE!
His shoulders tense, fist clenching at his side. "Why, you think they're cheap? Something to be bought? What an insult!" his head snaps up as he stares down the slightly taller boy. Deuce's teal eyes turn a dark turquoise; the giddy glint of seeing you and chocolate eggs in one place turns to something sharp and steely. He hands the chocolate eggs to Ace, turning right back around to stare the creep down. Old habits die hard; he's grinding a fist into his hand.
"Aren't you the guy always complaining about limited time sales being unfair? Not my problem you missed the window." the guy scoffs, leaning back against the cashier counter. "Anyways," the guy tilts his head back and starts talking to you.
You look uncomfortable and angry that you can't handle this yourself. Professionalism and all.
"You may have caught the window but I'm about to show you the door." Deuce draws up on him with a quickness people have never seen. Not many people know about all the fights he used to get into. Gripping the guy's hair almost to the point of pulling it out, steering him like a panicked bull, Deuce all but chucks him out the front door of the shop. He turns around to walk back inside and buy his chocolate eggs but that spine-tingling feeling of someone fixing to take a cheap shot makes him pivot and nail the guy with a solid kick to the chest. The guy falls back on his butt, breath hitching.
Deuce scoffs and wipes his shoes on the step before going into the shop. The door is almost closed behind him when he hears a strained grunt. He's been in enough fights to know the guy is off the ground and making one last attempt to catch him from the back. More than done with this and just wanting his damn eggs and to say hi to you in all your festive lace, he shoulder checks the door like he's trying to shove Jack out of the lunch line (which he would NEVER, EVER DO).
The guy falls with a satisfying thud and Deuce tries his best to relax his face as he resumes his place in line. It's red from aggravation and the fact he's fishing for his thaumarks because he's forgotten what pocket he put it in. "Sorry about that," he tries to uncrumple the thaumarks a little before handing them to you. "And the face. My face. Not your face! Your face is fine! Like, you're not ugly! I just, uh--"
"Take the change, Deuce-y!" Ace is standing behind him, guiding his nervous body like a puppet. He makes Deuce grab the change and turns him around, shoving him away from the counter before he can make it any worse. "Now help me move this guy's body! He's out cold!"
---
Ace can only laugh when he hears that line. First of all, it's weak. Secondly, the dude must not have any faith in his game if the delivery depends on you being captive behind the counter. During work hours. With an obligation to be forward facing and listening to whatever he says.
"Why? You worried about your budget, buddy?" Ace laughs, hands laced together behind his head.
The guy snaps up, stick-straight. "N-No! I was just--" his face is blooming pink.
"People aren't products, bro. There's no discounts." Ace shakes his head.
"W-What I meant was, I want to take you on a date!" the guy turns back to you and flashes a big smile. All of Ace's pouty mutters fall on deaf ears. Not because he's being quiet, but because the guy is straight up ignoring him. He's not sure where the idea comes from--he'll blame it on an itchy hand--but he sneaks a couple of small candies in the guy's pocket. Sam's familiar top hat bobs into view, snaking around the shelves.
"DON'T FORGET TO PAY FOR THE STUFF IN YOUR POCKETS!" Ace felt confident in his sleight of hand tricks. It wouldn't be the first time he tricked NRC students. It's actually really easy to do. That works in his favor because if everyone can't get their story straight or agree on what they saw, he's a free man.
Sam materializes at the edge of the aisles and seems to stare into the boy's soul. "Young man, please step aside."
Ace looks like the cat that ate the canary as he moseys up to the counter and slaps the box of cherry cordials down. He buys a cherry sucker at the last second, not seeing it at first. "Thanks, Sweets!" Ace winks at you as he strolls out with the bag.
Sam nearly scares him out of his skin, leaning against the wood just outside the door. Ace finally feels the tug of shadows on his feet. "Speaking of sweets," Ace flinches and hides his ear with his blazer, groaning as Sam hooks an arm around his neck and pulls him into his chest sternly. "I understand your frustration, Little Imp. Young love is adorable in all it's wiles! But mark my words, Little Imp: if you lie about wrongdoings in my shop again, you will not come back. Clear?"
"Yes sir." Ace gulps.
"Happy Valentine's Day, Little Imp."
---
Trey isn't really surprised to hear what he just did. 'Boys will be boys', as the saying goes. Frankly, he's disappointed. He's heard smarter things come out of his little brother and sister.
He adjusts his glasses, mentally trying to relax the knot between his eyebrows.
Should he say something? Of course he wants to. It's you! He's been on the other side of the counter plenty of times and has had vivid daydreams of sticking a customer in a stand mixer. But, then again, he has a reputation to uphold and anything he does could reflect back on Riddle.
And send Riddle into a fit, giving him something else to handle.
The more he thought about it, the more he realized he'd have the element of surprise. People--especially men--don't cook enough to know how much arm strength it takes to lift twenty pound bags of flour on the regular. Or the stamina it takes to walk said bags from Sam's shop to Heartslabyul. Even the small five-pound bag of sugar in his basket would suffice as a weapon; the sugar was packed enough to hit like a brick if he lobbed it.
Trey's running the options through his head, almost settling on just saying 'how much for you to stop?' when he sees the end of a sucker rolling between the guy's teeth. Too easy, Trey pushes his glasses up on his nose, hand hiding his smile and the quiet incantation for "Paint the Roses".
All of a sudden the guy is gagging and running for the door. You and everyone else are wondering what the hell just happened. He doesn't come back in. One brave soul suggested he had a really bad gag reflex and the sucker did him in. Only Trey knows it was a mix of sour milk and the pungent soy sauce tart nightmare he tricked Riddle into making once.
"Just this, please. Oh! And what Sam had on hold for me." Trey hands you the sugar, relishing in the brush of your hands.
"Candied violets and a bag of sugar. Twenty thaumarks, please."
"Thanks." Trey smiles at you, laying the sugar flat so his delicate, delectable candied violets don't get crushed.
"Thank you." you smile brightly, handing him the change.
----
Cater wants to gag. Normally Valentine's confessions are cute and IN THE RIGHT SETTING pickup lines are amazing. This? This is a tragedy. Mostly because there is ZERO chemistry and you look #uncomfortable.
He's big on consent since he's always looking for collabs and people to pose with on Magicam so maybe that's why this scene bothers him. Aside from the fact that you're out of this guy's league, obviously. Like, it's really an insult to your time.
'How much do you cost?' Really? You're #priceless.
His brows furrow, lips thinning as he wonders what to do. He plays with the idea of Split Card and creating a small crowd of copies to boo and jeer the guy but the store would be even more packed than it already is. Cater's green eyes twinkle as it hits him. Turning his phone longways, he zooms in on the guy and tells him to keep going because he's live on Magicam. "Don't worry! I've already got all the V-day tags on there! Everyone will see it!"
He's friends with practically everyone at NRC so this guy will be seen by everyone.
Something sick and unfriendly and satisfied swirls in him as the guy's face pales in real time. If he zooms in a little, he can get the beads of sweat in there. "I'll, uh--another time, okay?" the guy darts off and abandons his handful of candy at the register.
"Haul coming later! 'K, bye!" Cater sends a peace sign to the camera, smiling at his own face. He swipes the little chocolates into his basket nonchalantly. He's not even the biggest sweets person but those are his now!
"Gonna have a spicy Valentine's Day, huh?" you ring up the cups of spicy ramen.
"You know it!" he laughs.
"I get it. You have to balance out how sweet you are." you smirk up at him. "Twenty-four thaumarks, please."
#in love. #kiddingnotkidding. #sendhelp. #downbad.
----
Leona doesn't even know why he bothered to show up to Sam's. He could just send Ruggie to get whatever he wanted. The variety of jerky was somewhat tempting but he could just as easily take the bus and get a proper meal off campus. And yet, he stood there with a gloved hand in his pocket, tail swishing back and forth in mild agitation. His green eyes sweep over the winding line until they land on you at the front.
His cheeks warm a little and he scoffs at himself, pretending to pick through the hanging strips of sunflower seeds as the line moves. Every step gets him closer to this soft, powdery scent with just a hint of sweetness. He starts to blame it on all the chocolate and candy and sugary shit exploding out of every possible spot in the store but there's this unmistakable undertone of skin.
Your skin.
He's only caught the scent a million times while hiding from people in the Botanical Gardens. Or when he's forced to attend class, catching a hint of you in the halls.
Leona's not sure why he cares anything about you because you're not magical. You're not interesting.
You shouldn't be, but you are.
You're literally the only person he's ever met from another world. You have no context for the Sunset Savanna or the hierarchy of it. To you, everyone is impressive. He can be something to you.
Why does that matter? He doesn't even know. That's what he tells himself, anyways. You say you have no magic but Leona thinks you can read minds. The look you always give him isn't a pitying one, but a curious one that seeks to dissect him and force him to face everything he keeps shoved deep down inside himself.
Part of him is waiting for the day you pull the right thread and he comes undone in the way he knows he need but can't find the strength for. Somewhere in that knotted mess is his true feelings for you. The stuff he can't admit.
You stand admirably on your own two feet, roughing it out like Ruggie, but you're so far from the intimidating women of the Sunset Savanna. You're approachable and soft; you're built like prey but you have the quick thinking of a predator.
Something in your demeanor changes--your hands pause and flutter nervously--and he's on alert. He's careful to relax his grip lest he crush the box of protein bars for Jack. His ears sling forward and his eyes narrow as he catches that half-baked flirting attempt. Leona doesn't even bother to hide the sneer twisting his face.
Just the thought of you with that hopeful schmuck is nauseating.
Suddenly the scent of all the males around you is overwhelming. Disgusting.
"If you have to ask about the price, you can't afford it. Haven't ya ever heard that before?" Leona 'hmphs' triumphantly, one hand on his hip as he bends down slightly to stare the chump in the face. "Askin' about the price is tacky."
"Wh-what was my total again?"
All Leona had to do was stare at the back of the human's neck. Humans, much like prey animals, grew really squirmy when a predator stared at them too long. Or encroached on their space, much like he was doing. It was for the hell of it at this point.
Leona made a mental note of the guy's face as he scampered off like a terrified cub and looked forward to the day he could send a stray spelldrive disk in his direction.
"Hey Herbivore," Leona plunked the basket down unceremoniously.
"Hey Leona," you looked down at the random stuff in his basket, trying not to smile at what just happened. Something warm and--dare he say it?--proud welled up in his chest when he realized you were happy about him scaring the guy off.
The heart-shaped stickers he kept finding on everything when he got back to Savanaclaw helped, too.
----
Ruggie lived for the holiday specials at Sam's. He was a bit put out that he wasn't picked to staff the Valentine's shift but the in-store discounts were a small consolation. It'd be better if he could stack them with an employee discount but he'd take what he could get! His mouth started watering as soon as he entered, sniffing out deliciously fluffy donuts.
Hopefully people would be distracted with the lollypops and chocolates and leave his donuts alone!
He choked down the occasional nervous whine when people gravitated too close to the donut display, distracting himself with the decor and wondering what would be most profitable to flip. His eyes began to wander to the people in front of him; Ruggie tsk'd at how casual and unguarded they were. Ripe for the picking, he looked at their wallets and fistfuls of thaumarks just out in the open.
If he wasn't worried about being banned from Sam's and losing some gigs he'd--
"How much do you cost?"
EXCUSE ME?! Ruggie freezes, eyes going wide and ears twitching when he hears that. The dude said that and LIVED?
Oh, right. You're not a Savanna girl. The girls back home would beat him up and make him pay them to stop. Or just smack the shit out of him hard enough to put him in a coma. Maybe break his jaw so he can't drop anymore awful lines.
Women are to be respected! Not treated like something you can purchase!
Given that you weren't a Savanna girl and were bound by the rules of 'I'm currently on the clock', Ruggie took things into his own hands. You could just treat him later!
"Laugh with Me!" Ruggie hisses, backing into the closest display. It was a little bump to him but far more to the guy up front. He waved his arm around, skimming the bags of gummy candies while the guy at the register knocked down a whole tower of balloons on a stick. Bending over just enough to line the guy's head up with the counter, Ruggie lunges forward.
WOMP!
Oh it was so satisfying. The guy is hopelessly, helplessly stunned. He gathers his bearings and Ruggie slides his foot out; the guy loses his footing and slams into the counter again.
Only two times before he gives up? Kind of weak-willed, Ruggie thinks with a little smirk as he side-steps the disoriented guy and waits patiently to check out. Sam tends to him while you get the donuts he's been craving.
They'll taste even better because they smell like you. Happy Valentine's Day to him!
-----
Jack is usually very stoic but a lot of people mistake his stoic observation for irritation. He would blame it on his intimidating physique but he's not sorry and takes great pride in his appearance. He's a beastman--a Howl!--he's supposed to be intimidating! Intimidating appearance aside, Jack is also a very helpful soul.
A good boy, if you will.
The only reason he's in Sam's is on Ruggie's behalf. He was tasked with picking up a few things and was more than happy to help out his senior. They were from the same dorm, after all! Practically a pack! You have to help your pack!
He's not really bothered by the amount of people, more focused on keeping his tail out of people's way and making sure he doesn't knock anything over. All at once, the atmosphere changes a little. There's a hint of sour in the air and a noticeable hike in someone's pulse.
It's your pulse. You look...distressed? Why are you distressed? Where is the threat?
Whatever it was, he missed it and he's cursing himself.
His ears swing forward as he catches bits and pieces of conversations. Some people are complaining the guy is taking too long, other people are laughing at his crappy pickup line. Some people are wondering if it's going to work.
This was a weak display if he ever saw one. The guy didn't even look confident in himself! All of your body language has now firmed up into rejection but the guy's not getting the hint. He's trying the 'oh, c'mon!' thing his siblings do when they want to play.
You don't know it, but you've been feeding Jack when he trots by in wolf form. He likes to finish off his morning jogs in wolf form to really stretch his joints and obliques. It was supposed to be a one-off thing, him following the tantalizing aroma of food to your door. Your cooking is fantastic and while you don't know that you're a pack mate, you're a pack mate!
You're just a pack mate who feeds him and gives him occasional pets. And these to die for scratches that he'd kill to feel with his real skin instead of fur. Any touch would be fine, really. Not that you'd ever know.
Jack doesn't even know he's growling until people start moving out of his way. The growl crescendos as he walks towards the guy. Tail bristling, Jack opens his mouth to show off sharp canines. "Get lost! They're not interested in you! They're just trying to work!"
As expected, the guy tucks tail and runs. Jack snorts, licking his lips that have suddenly become dry. His ears don't know what to do, caught between catching all the murmurs behind him and wanting to press down in embarrassment.
It's quiet but he hears it. "Thank you, Jack."
"Don't mention it," he crosses his arms, looking everywhere but you as you scan his items. He was avoiding looking at you directly but he notices you slip a few extra beef sticks into his bag. He blushes.
Yeah, don't mention that either.
1K notes · View notes
charlietheepicwriter7 · 2 years ago
Text
Despite Danny's best efforts, no matter how much time past, Amity Park refused to see Phantom as a hero.
Sure, there were pockets of support, particularly among teens, but most of the town blames Phantom for the property damage, saying if he didn't fight the ghosts then it wouldn't be so bad, to that time he got mind controlled by Freakshow and "attacked" the mayor. It wears him down. It wears Tucker and Sam down. Jazz can only try to support them all.
Then one day, a member of the Justice League visits. Someone minor, and kinda a jerk... maybe a Wonder Twin? Zan? Whatever. They don't investigate; they don't look deeper. They listen to the town folks and declare the ghost hunters, Red Huntress and the Fentons, to be the official heroes of the town.
Worse? Danny Phantom is officially considered a villain to the Justice League. Tuck hacks into the Watchtower and confirms that they have a file (a heavily inaccurate file) about how to defeat Phantom.
Danny doesn't think he can do this anymore.
A few weeks later, a young villain escapes into Amity and demands (begs) that Danny help them escape from the hero after them. No idea who, I can't find a lot of info on teen villains in DC, so let's fudge some ages and make it Kyd Wyckyd from the Teen Titans cartoon. Danny agrees, because to hell with the Justice Losers, and they defeat the hero, becoming friends in the process. Kyd confesses that they became a villain after being ostracized bc of how they look, and they've been trying to avoid villain organizations because HIVE was abusive, but it's really hard to be a villain alone bc of all the heroes.
Sam gets an idea. Tucker agrees with the idea. Jazz is just happy they'll end up making friends.
The next day, the Teen Villain Alliance is formed, ready to assist with any teenage illegal shenanigans their allies might get into.
Some notes:
It's created to be a healthier option for teen "villains" to connect with others and support each other.
It's more important that this is for Teens rather than Villains. They're tired of adult villains taking advantage of them. The TVA would rather ally with a teen vigilante than with an adult villain.
Again, no idea who the teen villains are, but Klarion is definitely here. He leaves the Light for the chaos of the TVA. Maybe Ember is there too?
Timeline wise, this is around when Tim is still Robin, but Damien has arrived at Wayne Manor.
This is because, when it comes time to try to infiltrate the TVA, they'll have a convenient child-assassin who has none of the monitors of a teen hero that Phantom immediately picks up on.
Damien, who at this point has been abandoned by his mother, dismissed and scolded by his father, and has had no success at carving his own place in the family, jumps at the chance. He is then surrounded by peers who don't insult him or try to change his behavior (too much; jazz is trying to help him find healthier methods of expressing himself). He... might not want to continue being a spy.
Danny, Sam, Tuck, and Jazz are the founding members.
Danny reinvents himself as the High Prince of the Infinite, Prince Phantom Dark. He got kingship from fighting Pariah Dark, but since he's still alive, he's only a prince. He steals the last name Dark as an intimidation tatic against those in the know; only Danny would have the balls to claim family with Pariah.
Sam works as a powerless villain, but she might no be powerless? Either way, Danny gives her a bunch of repurposed Fenton tech, and she buys the rest with her parents credit card. She does NOT care if that's traced back to the Mansons. She would choose something goth, maybe something spider related or even bat?
I love Pharaoh Tucker, so I think he should get magic powers? Since pharaohs of old were considered the balance between the real and the divine. He's still a tech guy, now he's a tech and magic guy.
Jazz isn't really a villain, more of a team mom who's planning on using everyone's psyche's as her thesis paper. You know what, that's her callsign, she's Psyche. Sometimes she flirts with Nightwing.
10K notes · View notes
hyruling · 2 months ago
Note
number 50 for the prompts! 🫶🏻🫶🏻
50. putting a hand over the other’s mouth to shut them up
“You’re staring.”
He is. Has been, all night, and apparently finally been caught.
They’re in the kitchen, again, and Buck is watching him, flushed from the alcohol they’ve been drinking and the exertion of the game of charades that got a little too rowdy. Everyone else is in the living room, clustered around Bobby like a herd of elephants protecting their young, and when Buck got up to refill the snacks Eddie unfolded himself from the armchair and followed.
So yeah, he’s been staring. As if it’s his fault. Buck is wearing that cardigan that pulls tight across his chest and makes his eyes look stupidly blue. He’s forgone any hair product, curls bouncy and so touchable it’s been driving him crazy all night. And Bobby is in his house, something he thought he’d never get to see again. Chris is home, tucked away in his room with Denny and Mara and probably Jee, entertaining themselves away from the embarrassing adults. The world is right again, and pleasantly fuzzy from all the wine Karen’s been plying him with all night.
And Buck. He’s already mentioned the cardigan, and the hair, but Buck has been in his element tonight. Full of laughter, the spirit Eddie was worried had been broken forever repaired and thriving. He’s been fluttering around the house, refilling drinks and serving food with a bright smile that he can’t get enough of.
Buck’s glancing over at him now, hands busy with re-plating a charcuterie board. He has a soft smile just for Eddie, and it makes him a little nauseous with how painfully in love with him he is. How stupid he’s been to have wasted so much time pretending he wasn’t.
“Earth to Eddie?” Buck says, grin widening into something teasing.
“Hmm?” Eddie asks, settling against the counter behind him while Buck works at the island. He fiddles with his wineglass, nearly empty, and watches Buck cut up a block of gouda cheese. He’s pushed the sleeves of the cardigan to his elbows, forearms flexing, and Eddie can’t quite make himself look away.
“I said you’re staring,” Buck repeats with a little laugh. “Did you follow me in here just to watch, or are you gonna help?”
“I’m fine right here,” Eddie answers, delighting in Buck’s eye roll, the blush that creeps into his cheeks. “It’s a good view.”
Buck goes crimson, drops the block of cheddar he’d been about to slice. “Eddie. You can’t say that kind of shit when I have a knife in my hand.”
“Why?” Eddie teases, and the back of Buck’s neck turns red. Not for the first time, Eddie wonders how far it spreads. “Does it make you flustered, Buckley?”
He knows it does. But that certainty was hard earned, having spent weeks agonizing over living in such close quarters with Buck, telling himself all kinds of stories about why his heart raced when their hands brushed over the coffee pot, convinced Buck must not feel the same way. Until his tía had walloped him upside the head, metaphorically speaking, a few weeks in and told him to lock Buck down before it was too late.
In her own words, of course.
He suspects she had a similar conversation with Buck, given the way he’d come inside after seeing her to her car, red-faced and avoiding Eddie’s eyes. They’d stuttered and tiptoed around each other for a few days before settling back into their normal, which Eddie had finally come to realize was not most people’s normal.
“I—shut up,” Buck says, and picks up the cheese.
But now that he’s started, he can’t help himself. Fueled by three and a half glasses of wine, and the profound joy that’s bursting to spill out of his ribcage, he inches closer until his hip presses into the island right next to Buck.
Buck goes briefly rigid but recovers quickly — Eddie wouldn’t even have noticed the slip if he wasn’t watching him so closely. He keeps slicing cheese methodically, eyes fixed determinedly on his hands.
“Looking a little flushed there, bud,” Eddie says. “Too much wine?”
Buck huffs and flushes harder. “I only had two glasses. What’s that, your fourth?”
“You monitoring my drinking?” Eddie asks, and Buck chuckles.
“Only cause I know you’ll have a massive headache later,” Buck replies. “Good thing I stocked up on Excedrin last week.”
He finishes the cheese and starts in on some sausage, unwrapping it from the plastic, and Eddie can’t resist.
“Nice sausage you got there.”
Buck chokes on spit and drops the knife, turning to face Eddie at last. “Eddie. What is this?”
“What?” Eddie asks innocently. He’s too drunk to properly flirt, never flirted with a man before and is rusty nonetheless; but Buck is responding beautifully, in a way that he knows only he could tease out of him.
“You’re complimenting my sausage?”
Eddie shrugs. “It’s a nice one, that’s all. Thick, firm. I’d like to taste it—”
Buck’s hand covers his mouth, cutting him off, and his blood sings from the contact, from Buck flush against him, so close he could count his eyelashes. He barely resists the urge to lick his hand.
“Eddie,” Buck says in a low, plaintive voice that’s doing nothing to calm down his dick, which is not uninterested in the sudden lack of personal space. “You gotta—you know what you’re doing. Don’t—don’t be mean.”
And that—he knows then that they’re not on equal footing, that Buck is still operating under the illusion that Eddie’s not attainable, not already his. That the uptick in Eddie’s heated stares, his hand on Buck’s lower back while he’s cooking, the hip checks at the bathroom sink, have not communicated as clearly as he thought how much he wants this.
So Eddie nods, still silenced by Buck’s hand, and purses his lips until Buck can feel them against his palm. Buck snags it back like he’s been burned, eyes wide.
“Yeah, Buck,” Eddie says softly. He picks up Buck’s hand and presses another kiss to his knuckles, keeping his eyes fixed on Buck’s. “I do know what I’m doing.”
Buck looks lost, staring at him the way he had when Eddie appeared amongst the rubble and dust weeks ago — like he’s a ghost, like he’d never seen him before.
“A-are you sure? Because Eddie, I can’t—”
Eddie closes the scant distance between them, catches Buck’s jaw in one hand, and kisses him.
Buck doesn’t kiss him back at first, frozen in Eddie’s gentle grip — and then he’s making a soft, hurt sound and pulling Eddie closer, hands immediately snaking under his shirt to find the skin of Eddie’s back. His head spins when Buck’s tongue teases at his lips, and he tastes like wine and salt and—
“Buckaroo, what’s the hold up—oh.”
Buck rips away, putting nearly a foot of space between them, and Eddie laughs, giddy. Chim looks like the cat who got the cream when he turns around, face split into a wide grin.
“Whatcha doing gentlemen?” he asks with a snap his gum, crossing his arms and tilting his head.
Buck sputters behind him, but Eddie just shrugs and leans back until he feels Buck’s chest pressed against his back.
“Nothing really. I was just asking Buck about his sausa—”
Buck’s hand slaps over Eddie’s mouth again, pulling him tighter against his chest with the move, and Chim howls out a laugh.
“I knew it!” he cries, clapping his hands together and spinning around. “Maddie! You owe me fifty bucks!”
“Hey!” Buck calls, but it’s too late — Chim’s gone.
Eddie does lick Buck’s hand then, and Buck releases him with a squeal. Eddie turns around and chuckles at Buck’s red face, staring at him helplessly. He can’t help but lean up to press a kiss to his flushed cheek, stroking over the other with a gentle thumb.
“We’re about to be swarmed,” Eddie says. He can already hear exclamations and shrieks coming from the living room and knows they have seconds before their little bubble is shattered. “I love you, and I mean it. And I really can’t wait to try your sausage.”
Buck snorts and drops his head to press against Eddie’s forehead, eyes brimming with what look like tears. Eddie thumbs a stray one away with the hand on his cheek. “Eddie, I—I love you so much, it’s—I—”
“What have we here?”
It’s Hen that breaks them apart this time. Buck’s smiling sheepishly over Eddie’s shoulder, and when Eddie turns, he sees at least four people trying to crowd in the doorway, the rest cloistered behind them in the dining room. Buck sighs, and drops a kiss to the top of Eddie’s head before beckoning them in.
“Alright. Get in here, you animals.”
Like a dam breaking their family descends, pouring into every nook and cranny, and Eddie swears his kitchen has never felt so warm.
prompts xo
673 notes · View notes
vaguely-concerned · 8 months ago
Text
the more I play the more I think lucanis basically knows it's illario who betrayed him right from the beginning (he's had a year in the ossuary to think. not that many people knew where he was going. when you ask him 'did Illario know you'd be on that ship' his only answer is the hardest flattest 'yes' you ever heard). so it's not so much about figuring out who the traitor is (because that's ludicrous. we all know. immediately. they didn't really bother to hide it lmao) as about methodically closing off every single avenue of denial lucanis has clung to that whole time with as much or little gentleness as you might prefer until he has no choice but to admit it. because the moment he has to admit it, he'll have to do something -- feel something -- about it. and that's such a catastrophic event in lucanis' inner landscape (he has had TWO people in this whole entire world up until now and will do anything to hold on to them with a heartbreaking child-like desperation, even at and especially through the detriment of his own self) that he'd rather just. not. what if we quite simply. didn't. what if we just stayed here in the emptiness where we can both pretend you didn't hurt me in a way I should never forgive. I have so much practice in that with caterina already it's always worked out great for everyone so far. (press x to fucking doubt but that's trauma logic for you lol)
after everything illario did, so much of the storm of lucanis' emotions around it is 'what the FUCK did you get yourself tangled up in this time and how do I get you out of this mess safely'. what's worse: the fact that your brother murdered you, or that he put himself in horrible danger doing so and thus exposed you to the risk of losing him forever. lucanis' heart certainly has an opinion here and it's fucking unhinged (affectionate)
the themes of dissociation in lucanis' character in general makes me feel nuts. allllll these contradictory messy things he needs to cut off from each other because they can't coexist or be easily reconciled inside him. but all remain stubbornly true separately anyway and will have their due one day. love and resentment. tenderness and fear and rage. terror and longing. love and freedom don't coexist. the burned out golden child anthem is playing in the background. he was always caterina's favourite and he has to keep striving to deserve that dubious honour with every breath he takes and then, presumably, mercifully, some day he will die and be excused and can rest. and until now he's suppressed all the -- natural, healthy, protective! -- negative feelings that threaten the few attachment relationships he actually has, at the cost of ever actually having his needs for connection and safety met and leaving his core self imprisoned and compromised. and spite goes 'what. no. that's dumb fuck that' (*spite voice* I do not understand that and even if I did I would not respect it) and does not allow him to fall back into that, which I think is what saves his life, ultimately. it took being possessed by a demon for lucanis to even contemplate telling anyone he loves 'no' in any way, but hey. whatever gets you there right lol
lucanis is dealing with the freeze response allll the way down baby. and he was even before the ossuary, that just turbo powered it and brought it to a breaking point way before it could happen naturally. but something was going to break eventually no matter what, and I'm just glad that in the end, through the power of friendship and also pure spite, it doesn't have to be him
1K notes · View notes
sunderwight · 4 months ago
Text
Fic where Su Xiyan lives but she's like, a huge asshole about it.
Tianlang Jun still gets stuck under the mountain, see, and Su Xiyan's been thoroughly betrayed by her own master, and seemingly not just him but also all the other major sects too. They all sided against her and against her lover based on prejudice. The fact that they were tricked likely wouldn't be known to her, from the outside it would just look as though they all readily dogpiled on at the first opportunity to take down a heavenly demon, even though he never did anything wrong.
Plus her own reputation has been ground to dust, going from the respected head disciple of the second greatest sect to being slandered as a honeypot who seduced a demon emperor in order to bring him down. She was used to destroy the man she loves, she almost died trying to keep her baby, her cultivation's probably taken a massive hit and she has no chance of getting to that mountain and digging her lover out from under it. Even if she could, he believes she betrayed him, so what kind of reception could she hope for?
Not that this will stop her from trying to dig him out anyway, but it's not like she can just snap her fingers and get him out. There's a whole mountain on him, and she's on the run with an infant.
So she decides she's going to make this everyone's problem as much as she can.
For a couple of years she lays low, just trying to rebuild her cultivation and look after the baby. If she's being honest, she's not great at it. She loves her son but maternal instincts don't really kick in, he's kind of a shriveled ball of misery and mess, and she doesn't really see the appeal. It gets better as he starts to get bigger and more of a personality asserts itself, and she can start treating him more like a small human than a wailing parasite that's latched onto her tit.
She would still hire someone else to look after him at the first possible opportunity, but she's paranoid about some aspect of his seal slipping and giving them away. With no body ever recovered, Huan Hua Palace is still looking for her. So she's stuck with childcare and she hates every minute of it and spends most of her time changing diapers just seething about dropping her old shifu into a mountain of shit and watching him suffocate.
Once Binghe is big enough to walk, and Su Xiyan is well enough to fight, they make for the borderlands. Su Xiyan starts teaching her son the earliest forms of cultivation he can learn, but his demon heritage is still sealed and right now he's too weak and small to risk unsealing it. So she focuses on herself, on rebuilding her own strength, turning to demonic methods and forbidden techniques (why not, when one has already been tarred and feathered and was never particularly precious about righteousness to begin with?) and hunting other cultivators just as often as demonic beasts.
Time passes and Su Xiyan begins to build a reputation even worse than Wu Yanzi's. A deadly rogue cultivator known only by some epithet or other who kills even powerful disciples of mighty sects. She experiments with what it would take to destroy a mountain, how much force, and what could provide it. Sacrificial arrays that feed off of the energy of cultivators or demons. Rituals and artifacts that demand high prices. Ways to summon demons or open gateways for them to possess others. She even considers using her son -- his blood is heavenly demon blood, his body is the closest thing she has to a suitable vessel for Tianlang Jun.
It would probably work, is the thing.
As the thought turns around her mind and she washes the blood from her hands, she decides that she's got to send her son away, actually. He's too weak and burdensome (and the fact she'd even consider using him such a way means that not even she is fully safe for him to be around any longer, not with the kinds of things she's doing, not with the kind of creature she's becoming). Now that he's big enough to survive on his own, she can ditch him somewhere to level up and bring him back once he's got enough strength to actually make himself useful.
So she sends him off, tells him not to come back until he's strong, ignores the tears and the hands gripping her robes until she finally has to wrench them away and strand the boy in a city far enough from her hunting grounds that he can't easily get back on his own.
Of course, he does still try, but he's lost and doesn't know where he's going. A kindly washerwoman takes pity on him and takes him in. The now-named Luo Binghe (his mother only ever called him 'son') isn't sure what he's supposed to be doing, but he suspects it's not just keeping house with his new caretaker. However, at the ripe old age of five he doesn't really know what else to do, so he stays and gradually the memories of the cold-eyed woman he called mother start to fade, until he wonders how much of it was merely a dream.
When his second mother dies and encourages him to go become a cultivator, Binghe decides that sounds right, so he goes to the Cang Qiong entrance exams and gets taken in. There's something familiar about his new shizun. Not in his looks, really, but in the way he acts, how he snaps and sneers, how he seems to hate Binghe but also claims him. Luo Binghe finds himself utterly desperate for the man's approval, even though he can't completely explain why. But it feels like, if he could just get this person to love him, the world might make sense.
Shen Qingqiu doesn't love him, though, if anything he hates him, and that only seems to change at random after a qi deviation. Which at first drives Luo Binghe slightly mad trying to figure out what he did and guarantee he can keep it, but gradually his thoughts and feelings on his master start to shift as, it seems, the man becomes someone completely different.
Meanwhile Su Xiyan has built up enough strength and information that she has a plan to move a mountain using a legendary blade that can open portals. She's also gradually begun to infiltrate her old sect again, using dark techniques to turn some of her former shidimei into puppets. By the time the Immortal Alliance Conference comes around, she's built the underpinnings to take the entire sect out from under her old master, and the chaos of the conference provides the perfect opportunity.
Shen Yuan has no idea what he did to cause the Huan Hua Palace Master to get ripped apart by demons during the invasion, and he's even more confused by the woman who materializes during the final hour and does him the favor of throwing Luo Binghe into the Endless Abyss herself, saying something about needing him to fetch a sword for her before she'll welcome him back to her side.
827 notes · View notes
fictionalsweethearts · 5 months ago
Text
A CHILD FOR ZAUN | SEVIKA X READER | ARCANE
Tumblr media
Synopsis: Under pressure from the Council and with a heavy responsibility on her shoulders, Sevika decides to have a child with her wife to show her commitment with the cause. However, indirect methods are too risky and she ends up choosing the traditional way, being an equal part spectator and participant.
Contains: mention of pregnancy, threesome, male participation, voyeurism, breeding kink, wife!Sevika, dirty talking, jealousy (I could keep going).
MINORS DNI
Note: Alright, so this is some kinky ass shit, I admit, so if you're not into male participation you can enjoy my other works on my masterlist. If you're staying... enjoy.
“A child?” Sevika asked, her eyebrows knitting together at Shoola’s sudden proposition. The councilor had waited until the session had adjourned and the rest of the councilors had left to discuss this with Sevika.
The work at the council seemed endless; since the war with Noxus and all the havoc it caused—from half of Piltover in ruins, to hundreds of casualties, widowed wives an husbands, orphaned children, and protests and riots on the bridge due to Zaun’s refusal to actively collaborate with the other side of the bridge—Sevika had barely had time to make amends and command a plan of action to favor Zaun in this whole mess. She was chosen by her people to represent a city whose fate hung in the balance. There were internal disputes, the districts seemed to want to take sides in the war and attack Piltover now that it has weakened, but Sevika knew that this would cost her authority and the promise to finally include Zaun in the Council's plans and stop being marginalized from public discussion. There were sessions and sessions of disputes and long speeches, where Sevika was ignored or the problems she brought up were disregarded by the rest of the members; by everyone of course, except for Shoola and Caitlyn. Both knew the importance of including Zaun, of making its needs known, even if in the past Sevika had been the enemy, or vice versa.
"A child," Shoola insisted, professional as ever. "You're in a difficult position, you don't yet have the trust nor approval of the rest of the Council. They don't know who they're dealing with."
"How a child would make them see me differently?" Inquired Sevika, both hands on the table before her.
"You must understand that you are rare case by being on the Council and being a Zaunite," Shoola explained. "In the eyes of the others, you are still a threat. The others do not trust you to have a say in matters on this side of the bridge, because they do not know what you are putting at stake."
Sevika clenched her jaw. She was a Zaunite at Piltover's council table, a fish out of water in a world of politics and alliances.
"My loyalty lies with my city, not this side of the bridge."
"Your loyalty will bear no fruit if you are not listened to. You must prove that you are not a mere visitor, Sevika. Committing to the cause means having something to risk."
"And what do you suggest, Shoola? A Zaunite child to hold as a bargaining chip? A token that ensures our cooperation?"
"Not a token, but a proof. A proof that you're not just advocating for your own interests..." she said, her tone growing more serious. "But for those of someone you care about, and the Council can see that you do so."
"Isn't the whole city of Zaun proof enough?" She inquired.
"It's about making yourself seen, Sevika," Shoola insisted. "The rest of the Councillors have entire nations behind them; children, parents, countrymen, enemies and allies. Yet you show up here without the full backing of your people, only a small portion who are not related to you in any way other than mere conviction and ideology."
Sevika looked away, Shoola's speech seemwd to acquire more sense with every word. "Besides... a child of your own will keep you grounded, it's a reminder of why you're here and what you're fighting for." She added.
Sevika knew Shoola had a point, no matter how much she hated to admit it. She was a lone wolf in a pack of powerful families and nations, at a disadvantage before an entire lineage of renowned nobles and politicians.
"I understand the need for solidarity," she said through gritted teeth. "But a child isn't a toy to be used for political gain. I won't endanger a child just to prove a point."
Shoola's expression softened, she interlaced her fingers. "It's a necessary decision, Sevika; causes require sacrifices," she said. "There are children waiting for a change there, using one could help dozens, hundreds. You can't keep arguing with a wall."
Sevika stood there in tense silence for a long moment after Shoola left. The room felt more empty than ever. Her mind raced with the idea of being responsible for a child, of being held accountable for their well-being. With a frustrated growl, she slammed her fist down hard onto the table, the sound of her prosthetic arm hitting the wooden top echoed in the room.
"How long am I gonna fight against this?"
┈ ⋞ 〈 ⏣ 〉 ⋟ ┈
"Margot won't allow it." Mumbled Sevika under her breath, letting out a heavy sigh.
Sevika took another drink, stamping the glass on the desk before looking back at the map hanging on the wall. She had been in a resounding silence for twenty minutes, interrupted by her own murmurs and growls. The plan to reduce the coverage of the red light district to favor the construction of hospitals seemed more like a fantasy than a plan, taking into account the powerful influence that brothels and sexual services had in Zaun. Sevika knew that truncating that specific area would be liquidating much of the city's income; she herself, when she used to be a regular customer, could realize how essential the business was.
Suddenly, a couple of arms wrapped around her chest, the softness of your cheek against her back and your smell interrupting Sevika's thoughts.
"You're going to pierce the map if you stare at it for so long, wifey." You purred.
Unconsciously, Sevika's shoulders relaxed as she heard your voice behind her. "It's called strategizing." she said with a half smile.
"What's the deal this time?" You inquired, peeking from your wife's wide back to take a look of the map too.
Sevika's grip on the edge of the desk tightened as her gaze traveled over the map pinned to the wall. She seemed to be studying the layout, her mind working through the challenges and options.
"The Rapturewalk," she replied. "It's becoming problematic. Profits are up, but the city needs hospitals, not more entertainment venues."
"Margot won't allow it." You said, just like Sevika thought before.
She sighed loudly. "I know. But the needs of Zaun are not being met. We're prioritizing profit over basic necessities. People are suffering while Margot makes money."
You ran your hands over her shoulders, your eyes sharpening at the markings on the map before you. "Keeping Rapturewalk is your best card, actually."
"How so?"
"It's a constant and safe source of income, after Shimmer's factories." You argued, crossing your arms as you looked at the map. "Let's say that whores are the economic basis of Zaun, whether you like it or not. And the best way to generate reserves to allocate them to other projects is to take advantage of the profits of the red light district."
It was not the first time you had helped Sevika to unravel a problem of this nature. She used to pay attention to your judgment as much as the councilmen's and she trusted your vision as much as her own.
Between pouts, jokes and a kiss on her cheek, you proposed possible solutions. Sevika responded with a grunt, dragging on her cigarette before looking at the map again. "I've only been on the Council for three months… and I'm going crazy already."
"Take the mining and taxes thing as advice only," you said. "I'm just the wife, the final decision is up to you."
"Don't say that." she said firmly, walking up to you and gently grasping your arm. "You're my partner, in every sense of the word." she stated, placing a kiss on your forehead.
And the truth is that your role in Sevika's life was not limited to just being a wife. From the beginning you were a pillar for her when she didn't believe in pillars or in the need to seek support from other people, you showed her that asking for help was not a sign of weakness but of strength, although to this day it was still a bad habit of hers to swallow her problems until she vomited them out between complaints and a few days of drunkenness. That night was no exception, and as soon as you moved away from her, you noticed her staring at your abdomen longer than usual.
"Is something wrong?" you asked.
"No, nothing's wrong." she grunted, knowing she was lying.
"You sure?"
Sevika remained silent for a moment, her tone sobering. "How does children sound to you?"
You seemed speechless for a moment.
You raised your eyebrows and a flash of excitement crossed your face before you turned serious. “Sounds like something we never considered possible…”
"I know we've never discussed it. But the thought has crossed my mind a few times... I never thought it would be an option, given our circumstances. But then again, I never thought we could have a life together in a room above a poker den either."
"I, uh..." you stuttered. "It's a sort of fantasy of mine, actually." you admitted. "You always said you weren't interested in children, and I respect it."
"Well, things has changed, haven't they?" Sevika took a step closer. "We've changed."
But something wasn't fitting, and you sensed it. "Sev. Why are you suggesting this all of sudden?"
She took a deep breath, her hand dropping back to her side.
"The Council has been... making suggestions," she said. "They think it would be a... symbolic gesture. A way to bridge the gap between Zaun and Piltover."
And all clicked.
"So you want a heir, not a son." you stated.
"No, I want what's best for Zaun. And if having a child serves a greater purpose, then that's what I must do."
"A child for a purpose? A symbol." you spat, crossing your arms as the anger began blooming. "Are you trying to please those snobs? Who made you think a heir would change their vision towards you, or towards Zaun?"
"It's about making them respect us. Showing them that Zaun can play the game they set and still come out on top. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good."
"Haven't you done enough sacrifices?" you insisted. "Following Vander, then Silco's cause, then Jinx. You've sacrificed what you are every damn time and they still believe it's not enough?"
"What choice do I have?" she snapped back. "If I don't show them, if I don't do something significant, they'll continue to disregard Zaun."
"And using a child is the proper way to earn approval?"
"Babe, it's about respect!" she snapped at you, followed by a sigh when she noticed you flinched.
Silence, thick as fog, settled in the room. Sevika looked not only exhausted, but hopeless. She was making drastic decisions and she knew it. "Love… I don't expect your approval in this, just your support."
You reached out, cupping her cheek as she looked into your eyes, speaking with them. You couldn't stand against that look, you never could. "I'll think about it." you whispered. "But I want you to understand that if we have a child, I will treat him as a son first and as a political tool second."
"I understand." she nodded. "I swear I do."
As the days went by, while the Council gave no respite and neither did Zaun, Sevika planted the seed of a child in your mind frequently. She would talk to you about adoption processes when you were cooking, accompanied by a well-placed caress on your back and a kiss on your neck, and then, after making love, she would talk to you about the possibilities of testing fertilization in a laboratory. Usually you limited yourself to nodding or emitting an "mhm", still questioning the changes that a child would mean, not only as a political symbol, but as an addition to the family.
Sevika would be a good mother, no doubt. She took care of Isha for a whole month without even mentioning she cared for her, but she still came to Jinx's lair with treats and toys or gadgets that she bought at the market. She asked you to cook an extra portion for dinner and whenever you asked her why, it was because "she got hungrier lately", knowing well that it was for Isha. And when she finally admitted her affection towards the blue-haired girl, she passed away.
Sevika remained strong for Jinx and for herself, but you found her asleep in the bathtub the day she found out, her eyes swollen and stinking to whiskey.
"I loved that kid," she admitted later, once you were able to get her out of the tub. "Why is everything dying around me, babe?"
That day you promised yourself to be Sevika's anchor, and bring more joy than worries to her life.
“Baby?” you whispered after Sevika turned around. “Do you think we could visit that doctor you mentioned the other day?”
"Dr. Allard? Yeah, we can. Why?"
"We could ask for advice... about the fertilization process."
Sevika rolled over, her eyes pierced into yours. "Do you wanna... try?"
"Yes, I-" you said before Sevika swallowed your words with a kiss.
And she kissed you later that day, as you two waited for the test results. Fertilization using hextech was still in the experimental phase and was certainly based more on theories than successful cases, but you still hoped you were a suitable candidate for the procedure. Sevika held your hand as the doctor entered, her solemn face not indicating good news.
"The preliminary tests show that your body's response to the hextech fertilization process is not as strong as we would have expected. The success rates will be much lower than we had originally suggested..."
It was the formal way of announcing that achieving a baby by that means was not feasible. And Sevika read your disappointed expression while the woman continued explaining technical details that you stopped listening to. Your wife squeezed your hand and wiped the hint of a tear from your eye. "We'll find a way."
And frustration was beginning to overwhelm you and Sevika. You drank at breakfast and dinner, ruminating on the possibilities and pressuring the Zaun orphanage just to find out there wasn't a goddamn orphanage in the first place. A month of arguments, tears and breakdowns went by. The Council gave no respite, Sevika was on the verge of collapse balanced by two cities that refused to cooperate, drowning her anguish in whiskey and smoking her worries, sleeping barely a few hours and giving up her intimacy and quality time with you. You watched Sevika fall into a cycle of slavering work from which you could not get her out until you found her unconscious in the living room, passed out from exhaustion and alcohol.
And that was the last straw.
"I'll look for candidates," you said in bed, after having fed Sevika a substantial dinner and a spoonful of Shimmer. "You can choose the one you like the most."
"And if I say no?" she dared to argue.
"Then you'll quit the Council."
She was silent for a moment, too weak to argue and too tired to find another solution. She couldn't believe she would consent this.
"Fine," she said grudgingly. "You can look."
It took you no more than a week, spreading out a series of files on the living room table and asking Sevika to study each one carefully. The process took barely an hour.
"This one," she said finally, laying the sheet on the table. "It's the most suitable.
You kind of expected it, Misk. A thirty-three-year-old Zaunite in impeccable health; a rarity in a city like ours. He was an athletic man who was both handsome and noble. He was known to run a humanitarian business, providing beds, food, education, and health. A true symbol of the spark of humanity struggling to survive in the city and an indirect ally of Sevika, if she could put it that way. The file was accompanied by a photo of the man in question. He had tanned skin, pale, slanted eyes, a straight nose, and generous lips. His black hair, usually tied back in a half ponytail, was dazzling with silvery glints and vitiligo had paled half of his face, spreading across his left arm and left pectoral. You knew Sevika had chosen him for his unusual features, she had a thing for Zaun's genetic diversity.
"Did you find him handsome?" you dared to tease her.
"Qualified." grunted Sevika. "I could never call a man handsome."
┈ ⋞ 〈 ⏣ 〉 ⋟ ┈
"I won't repeat myself," Sevika said firmly. "We bought your silence, you keep your mouth shut. Whatever happens in this room, stays in this room."
You were sitting on the edge of the bed, an olive-colored robe as your only garment, your hair loose and your skin soft and smooth from the scented bath you took earlier. The room smelled of floral, penetrating honey, while the lights were dim and invited to retreat and intimacy.
You had prepared the room in advance for the special night; cigars lay on the coffee table in front of the wide bed with silky damask sheets. Three glasses of whiskey with ice, a jug of water, poppy oil beside the bed, aromatic herbs hung from the ceiling and a series of candles spread across the furniture and the windowsill, through which the silver bath of moonlight filtered in. You looked at Sevika, clad in a wine-colored kimono, revealing a glimpse of her bare chest and long, shapely legs. Her hair loose and her mechanical arm gleaming with Shimmer. Certainly her feminine energy was taking more prominence tonight, and you couldn't help but finding her even more beautiful.
Sitting on the couch, Misk watched Sevika intently, sipping whiskey and taking orders with the abnegation of a soldier. He had a robe on and his hair tied in a ponytail. He was more handsome in person and when Sevika first watched him walk in, she let out a chuckle. "He looks like a puppy."
"Sevika."
"He'll act like a puppy, alright."
Misk greeted you and your wife cordially, acknowledging the reasons why he was there and taking a seat on the sofa.
"This is not about your pleasure, but about the purpose. You will do as I say." continued Sevika. "You will touch my wife only when I allow it, and you will not speak unless spoken to. Understood?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"C'mere." she commanded, watching Misk stand up and come closer.
Sevika wrinkled her nose, blowing smoke into Misk's face as she studied his bearing, his face, and his scent. She parted his lips with her fingers, taking a look of his teeth and then his eyeballs, looking for any indication that would cast doubt on his medical certificate. He smelled healthy. "You're in good shape," she said, cupping the young man's jaw to look at his angles as if he was a rare animal.
Certainly for Sevika he was, she only adresses men for gambling, business or brawls. The sole thought of sharing a bed with him was uncanny still. "My wife chose well."
She ran her hand down his throat, feeling his pulse, which felt strong and steady. "Have you been in a threesome before, young man?" inquired Sevika with a dark grin.
"I have." nodded Misk.
"Good, I'm not into teaching men what they have to do." said Sevika, letting his throat go. "No funny business or I'll rip your cock off."
"Sevi." you protested from the bed.
Sevika grinned, her eyes flickering to you. "My wife seems to have a soft spot for you," she said. "Don't push your luck, then."
Misk nodded, his expression serious. "I understand."
"You're scaring him, babe." you insisted.
"He has no reason to be scared," she said shortly. "If he behaves, he'll be rewarded. If he doesn't, he'll remember it for a long time. He also signed a contract, remember? He knows what's he getting into."
Just then, Sevika seemed convinced enought to start.
“Take a seat and watch,” Sevika ordered, leaning over to stub out her cigarette in the ashtray. “You’ll join when I say so.”
You stood up, ready and eager as Sevika approached you with confident steps. She caressed your cheek. "Are you sure you're okay with him watching?" you whispered softly. "He can enter later."
"Let him stay. He can learn a thing ot two."
┈ ⋞ 〈 ⏣ 〉 ⋟ ┈
You squeezed your tits between your fingers, Sevika gave you a slow and methodical oral, she ate you out with all her heart and her whole face, diving between your legs and moaning against your pussy. She took all the time in the world on it, making you shudder and whimper for relief, only for your wife to straddle you on her thigh and order you to ride her as soon as you reached your first orgasm. You refused her nothing, even when Misk was on the couch watching everything and made you shy for a moment. But Sevika gave two shits about his presence, urgently kissing your mouth, whispering obscenities that only she was capable of saying and pinching your nipples between her fingers.
Misk realized that he was in front of an experienced couple, totally in tune.
"Don't look at him," she murmured. "Eyes on me, baby. I'm the one you're riding right now."
Sevika kissed you hard, filling all your senses so that you wouldn't even consider looking at a man while you were with her. She didn't take pleasure in letting a man possess you, not now or ever, but she couldn't deny that she was attracted to your pitiful moans and the way your lips would part when Misk fucked you. Sevika knew that this encounter wasn't just for a particular purpose, it was pleasurable in equal parts and she was certainly spoiling you by consenting to it.
"Admit it." whispered Sevika. "Admit that you're dying for him to fuck you. That you're dying to be the center of attention."
"No, Sev..." you whimpered.
Sevika grabbed your throat and looked into your eyes. "You're an attention seeker, even in three years of marriage that hasn't changed. And I love how desperate you are."
"Ah." that's all you could do, pant. "Ah, ah..." and your eyes softened before Sevika let your throat go and you cried your orgasm out.
You fell on top of her. Sevika cupped your neck with a tenderness she only stored for you and placed a kiss on the top of your head. "You're not allowed to be tired," she whispered to you. "Misk is still watching."
You asked for water, Misk was the one who handed you the glass and while you drank, Sevika drew circles on your back. She looked at Misk with analytical, wary eyes, knowing that the unpostponable could not be postponed.
With a kiss on the top of your head, she made you descend from her lap and wait on the bed, still a little shaken by the two previous orgasms. Misk remained in place, Sevika reached for a cigarette on the coffee table and lit it solemnly.
"Misk." she said. "Take good care of her."
You swallowed, still not believing that Sevika was giving you over to a man. A rush of adrenaline and anticipation ran through your body when Misk nodded, looking at you lying on the bed. You stood up, bare and glowing still, allowing him to come closer.
"Can I…?" he asked, clearly afraid of angering Sevika with the slightest contact on your body.
"Yes." you whispered, allowing him to wrap his hands around your waist and kiss you.
Sevika drowned her jealousy in her cigarette, watching as Misk laid you down on the bed and ventured into your skin, your breasts and your abdomen. His touch was gentle, you appreciated it since your wife had left you quite sensitive after her intervention, but you couldn't stop looking at her while he rubbed you between your legs.
You needed her close, not to be removed from the equation.
Sevika read your thoughts clearly, sitting on the couch, the tip of her cigarette glowing with each drag before she placed it on the ashtray. “Stand up,” she ordered, to which Misk seemed to back away. “I didn’t say you were leaving.”
Misk seemed to understand, allowing Sevika to position herself behind you, cupping your breasts in both hands as she began to kiss your neck. You greeted Misk with another long kiss, feeling more secure with your wife’s close supervision. Only then you moaned opnely with pleasure, parting your legs so Misk could once again rub a sensitive but so wet pussy that it left his fingers with a wet sheen.
With your wife's intervention, the evening flowed (very) well. You were already sitting on the bed, leaning against your wife's chest who was already easing a couple of fingers in you, while Misk was busy pleasing your nipples with his tongue. You moaned, looking at your wife and giving her a short kiss before looking at Misk again. The man seemed engrossed in his task, his robe sliding enought to reveal his chest and the paleness of the vitiligo. You thought he was handsome, an ideal candidate for a beautiful baby.
However, you didn't allow yourself to look at him for too long, knowing that provoking Sevika's jealousy would probably end with a dead man in the room.
"I wanna eat you out." you whined then, cupping your wife's cheek.
"Aren't you busy enough?" she teased.
"Please..."
Sevika wasn't going to deny you anything either, she loved to indulge you in everything. Not in vain she was allowing a man on her bed. Still, she hadn't pay attention to him, much less touched him; he was there as a mere tool, she insisted. Sevika tangled her fingers in your hair, her palm firm on the back of your neck as she watched you trail kisses from her chest to her pubis. She hissed, Misk kneeling behind you and kissing your spine slowly. She felt the urge to break his nose with a punch, but you kept her busy with your mouth between her legs.
“Fuck.” She growled, looking at you. “If it wasn’t for you…” she added in a whisper.
"Mhm." you moaned, venturing to ease a finger into her. And Sevika's anger was soon replaced by a stronger feeling.
You gasped, noticing the presence of his phallus, hard and wet against your entrance. Your body bristled in anticipation, believing yourself ready to receive Misk. Sevika frowned, her hand between your locks clenching tightly. Her blood boiled.
"You hurt her and I swear I'll rip your cock off," she threatened, not caring if she was ruining the mood or not. She only cared to know that her wife was willing to continue.
"It's fine." you purred, pulling back to look at Sevika. "I'm... I'm ready."
Your hands on either side of her hips, you watched Sevika the entire time. You didn’t look away from her grey eyes, not when Misk rubbed against you, not when you arched your back to allow him in. Sevika sucked in a breath between her teeth, holding your chin when your lips parted in a shaky moan.
“Fuck.” you breathed out, kissing your wife as Misk buried himself in you.
And you were embarrassed by how fucking horny you were.
You didn't know how to put your pleasure into anything but moans, words fell short. The feeling of kissing your wife, her hand around your throat while you were being fucked was delicious. Being the center of attention turned you on like nothing else, the moans, the grunts, the obscenities that reached your ears and made you smile. You soon agreed with what Sevika had said before; you love attention. The clash of skin on skin filled the room, Misk held your waist and squeezed your skin while Sevika caressed your lower lip, watching you, almost admiring you.
"Seems you're having fun." she said against your mouth. "Breaking into moans for a man, aren't you ashamed?"
"So ashamed." you whined before Misk leaned to place a kiss on your shoulder and you read Sevika's jealousy in her eyes. "But you love watching."
"I love you." she whispered, only your ears catching such strong phrase.
You lost count of how many times you gasped, or how many times Misk made you shiver with a precise thrust. Your wife watched everything, absolutely everything, scolded and admired you in equal parts, finished smoking her cigarette and gave you a tobacco-flavored kiss before forcing you upright.
"You're already all wasted, I thought I taught you better than that." she said, gripping your chin as your eyes fluttered with exhaustation. Misk had a firm hand on your shoulder, making slower but deeper thrusts. You felt him fill you again and again, causing a slight numbing sensation in your pussy.
You were reaching your limit.
Misk let out a groan, his breathing becoming irregular and noisy. "I take this is how men let you know they're about to cum?" asked Sevika with a raised eyebrow.
"Sev." you whimpered. "I'm..."
You didn't know if you were about to cum or faint, whichever came first, but it worried Sevika. You weren't used to this amount of stimulation and Misk seemed insatiably focused on his task. It was then that Sevika kissed you and left the bed. Your chest hit the mattress, Misk growled against your ear and his hips moved incessantly, to the point that you felt imprisoned by his body. You wanted to cry, it was an unknown pleasure and your body gave signs of wanting to give up.
Until you felt it, like a warm, wet torrent that made its way inside you and filled your insides. It was then that you stifled a cry into the pillow, Misk didn't seem to stop.
"I told you to take care of her, son of a bitch," Sevika said.
Misk stopped dead at the cold touch of a cannon against his temple. "You get away from her right now or I'll shoot you in the balls, you hear?"
You didn't see Misk leave the room, but you heard him. You were lying on that bed, your legs shaking, a thread of his seed seeping between your legs. Until Sevika made you close them.
"Relax, it's all over now…" your wife whispered, sitting next to you and placing a kiss on your shoulder. "I shouldn't have agreed to this in the first place."
"I'm fine…" you murmured. Exhausted and sore, you couldn't deny that you'd never felt this pleased in bed. It wasn't Misk the important addition, it was the dynamic of being watched by your wife and realizing the desire that prevailed in her gaze.
Well, desire until she seemed to kill Misk at the last minute very appealing.
"Keep them closed, sweetheart. I won't let this happen again, either you get pregnant or I set the Council on fire. You won't go through this again."
You looked up, glancing at Sevika beside you on the bed. She covered you with her kimono, tracing circles on your lower back before frowning. “Tell me the truth.”
“Mhm?”
“You fancy Misk, don’t you?”
“You already said it, Sev. It’s suitable, but I don’t like him.” you smiled despite your exhaustion, leaning over to place a hand on your wife’s knee. “I just want to give you a child, Sevika. I want to be and make you a mother.”
“You’ll look beautiful pregnant.” Sevika whispered. "So damn beautiful, round and glowing. I wonder how I got myself such gorgeous wife."
"I wonder the same..." you smiled and Sevika leaned down to give you a kiss before patting your bottom lovingly.
“I’ll run you a bath and dinner, okay? Get some rest.”
You nodded, rolling over to lean back on the soft pillows of your bed as you watched Sevika get dressed.
"Are you gonna kill him?" you asked after a moment.
"I wanted to." she admitted. "But I have too many things to attend to add murder to the list. As long as he doesn't cross my path on the street, I won't try anything."
"Okay..." you mumbled, watching Sevika leave the room. "Love you."
"Love you more."
You sighed, tired and sore, barely processing the situation that took place in that same bed you were laying on. You had never been in a threesome, and it was a good but unrepeatable experience. You stared at the ceiling for a moment, wishing with all your might that this method would work and that you could have a child for Zaun.
But above all, a child for your wife Sevika.
889 notes · View notes
neverstophyo · 11 months ago
Text
shifting is self discovery.
Tumblr media
excuse the yap but i think it’s very important that people realize how fundamental you are in your shifting journey and that you are literally the only thing you need to shift.
you do NOT need:
a method
subliminals
(guided) meditation
to look for advice hour after hour online
symptoms
the void state
lucid dreaming
to visualize
to use your 5 senses
a script
you DO need:
yourself
you can say fuck you to the universe, doubt as much as you want, and still shift. i say that because i’ve done it before even with doubts! so you can too!
Tumblr media
“how do i shift?”
every time someone asks this i lose 5 years off my life span. i can’t determine that for you, nobody can. i can tell you what has personally worked for me and so can others, but there’s no guarantee it’ll work for you.
“so what do i do?”
sounds a bit harsh but you figure it out. and that’s what i mean by self-discovery.
of course, you can & should see what other people are doing to create a base line of what you think could work for you. for example try getting into the void state, see what happens from there. doesn’t work or you don’t like it? (because that obviously won’t do the same thing for everyone) try something else!
play around. add new things into the mix. affirmations. intention. you can visualize or use your 5 senses. keyword can. you don’t have to. because what do i think works the best? minding your business and shifting your own way.
remember that you can literally just say “fuck you i want to shift” and shift. you can shift accidentally. so who’s to say what you’re doing doesn’t work? (if it really doesn’t then you can adjust it slightly. look back on your behavior and think about what you want to change.)
seriously!
you can shift:
tired
awake
asleep
in the hypnagogic state (the state of the transition from wakefulness to sleep)
in the hypnopompic state (the state of consciousness leading out of sleep)
while dancing
sitting
standing
laying down
on the floor
accidentally
through a lucid dream
with doubts
and so much more i didn’t mention. seriously no need to overcomplicate it.
just remember that other peoples’ shifting journeys are not yours and that you’re the most important part of your own.
you are what makes you shift.
it’s not your subliminals or your method or whatever, it’s you. YOUUUU. subliminals? “methods”? those things? just helpful tools. they can HELP you shift, but there’s no guarantee.
for example, i personally have been getting more effective results after listening to specific subliminals regularly (psst.. i make sure they’re safe! to check if they are safe, look at the comments around the page and if you’re still not sure and you feel uneasy then do not use the subliminal. if it makes you feel unsafe or weird then do not use it. always read the benefits or what you can find in the description.) it works for me. it got me results (along with other stuff) but it might not give them to you and that’s okay. you don’t have to use subs.
just a reminder that you don’t need anything but yourself to shift <3
it’s self discovery because you’re learning from it and actively finding out (discovering) what works for you.
your shifting journey is yours so don’t make it rely on what someone else does.
THERE’S NO KEY TO SHIFTING EXCEPT YOURSELF.
Tumblr media
2K notes · View notes
starcurtain · 28 days ago
Note
Please do elaborate on Kaeya and Diluc's fanon! Your post on Kaeya and Venti was amazing to read.
First, before any Diluc lovers come out of the woodwork trying to defend their favorite from me, I gotta place my disclaimer: I am also a Diluc lover; he is definitely in my top three favorite Mondstadt characters (after Venti who is my favorite archon and Kaeya who is one of my favorite Genshin characters in general). So as I make this post, please just keep in mind that I also love and respect Diluc and his role in the story; recognizing a character's flaws and mistakes isn't a personal attack, mmmkayy?
All right, so anyway...
Tumblr media
When it comes to Diluc and Kaeya's shattered relationship (personally I view them as strictly brothers, but I can also stay in my own lane, so there is no ship hate intended by this post), everyone talks about the damage Diluc supposedly did to Kaeya's eye and focuses on their duel on the night of Crepus's death.
People are quick to forgive Diluc because he had an obvious reason to be completely overwhelmed; having just lost his father, Kaeya's timing of coming clean about his secret was absolutely abysmal. If Kaeya had managed to wait even one day, the situation might have been very different, so I don't think there's any particular surprise that Diluc ended up attacking his brother, and I think this is where fanon takes on Diluc and Kaeya tend to focus--that Diluc had an warranted emotional response on the night of his father's death and lashed out, and Kaeya has mostly his own terrible sense of timing to blame for what occurred.
Therefore, the fanon approach to Diluc and Kaeya seems to be largely that both of them owe each other reconciliation and that, if they want to mend their relationship, both of them need to put in equal amounts of work.
But personally, I think this is neglecting two glaring aspects of the canon material we're given:
Kaeya's physical injury (if there even actually is one) is absolutely minuscule in comparison to the emotional damage Diluc's attack did. Even years later, Kaeya is not okay.
The diametrically opposed ways that Kaeya and Diluc understand and react to the people around them make Diluc's methods of atoning for his behavior virtually incompatible with what Kaeya emotionally needs from his brother.
I am not downplaying the incredible pain that Diluc would have gone through, having to mercy kill his own father after barely surviving a brutal attack thanks only to his father's sacrifice. To then learn, on top of that, that the brother you had loved, who had been an accepted and trusted member of your family for years, was actually a foreign entity planted in your country with the possibility of becoming a sleeper agent for the enemy--this is beyond the pale of what any normal person could accept. Diluc's anger, pain, and desire to lash out are understandable, and turning on his brother in that moment was essentially inevitable.
However, what people neglect is that Kaeya told Diluc the truth in that moment explicitly because of guilt.
Tumblr media
Kaeya felt that his own reaction to Crepus's death wasn't appropriate (he felt liberated by Crepus's loss because it resolved Kaeya of the pain of making the choice between his blood father and his adoptive father) and he was trying to immediately atone for his perceived selfishness by being honest. Kaeya believed that telling Diluc the truth in that moment was better than continuing to perpetuate another lie for the person who had just had to confront his father's likely lifelong deception with the Delusion.
By baring himself completely, being honest for the first time in all his years in Mondstadt, Kaeya thought he was doing the right thing--even though he knew it would cost him his relationship with Diluc.
Tumblr media
Diluc repaid Kaeya's honesty with rejection, and Kaeya viewed this as a deserved punishment.
Kaeya's confession was effectively a form of self-harm. He was disgusted with himself because he perceived his complicated feelings over Crepus's death as insufficient grief--Diluc had just lost the most meaningful thing in the world to him, and so Kaeya wanted to "make it right" by losing what meant the most to him too. It was self-sabotage of the highest caliber, provoking Diluc into attacking him because that's what Kaeya thought a liar like himself deserved.
But even though Kaeya knew what the outcome would be, it's clear that he did not understand the extent to which he would internalize the messages he learned that day:
No one should put their faith in me, because I will eventually betray everyone who cares.
and
If I tell the truth, I will lose everything I have.
We're told that, as children, Diluc and Kaeya were thick as thieves, but that Diluc was the extroverted and outgoing one, while Kaeya stuck "in his brother's shadow."
Tumblr media
Stories from their childhood reveal that Diluc was the troublemaker who dragged Kaeya into his antics. Kaeya's hangout confirms that Kaeya was a quiet, well-behaved child (it's possible he feared that acting out would cost him his place in Mondstadt) and that his people-pleasing tendencies were already firmly in place, if the stories Adeline has to tell are anything to go by.
Tumblr media
And yet the Kaeya of the present is described as shifty, deliberately untrustworthy, and even the type to put others in danger to suit his own ends, refusing the trust of even those closest to him:
Tumblr media
It's obvious that there's intentionality behind this behavior--a double-edged blade: Kaeya successfully deceives everyone around him about his actual past, blinding people from asking the hard questions with flashiness and diversions on the surface--and yet he also cannot bear to be trusted. He has internalized the impression of himself as a liar and a betrayer so deeply that he actively repels others' attempts to get closer to him, acting shady and unreliable to introduce doubt into every relationship he forms, so that when the inevitable happens and his secret is finally revealed to the world at large (as it was once revealed to Diluc), he won't face the same pain of loss again.
Kaeya cannot betray anyone ever again if no one ever trusts him to begin with.
Thus, Diluc's reaction to Kaeya's reveal didn't just cost Kaeya his relationship with Diluc. It effectively cost Kaeya his relationships with everyone.
Kaeya went from being a quiet, well-loved child to the kind of person who would smirk while putting his own men in danger, the kind of person who every single other character in Mondstadt (and even the Traveler!) calls a "mystery" whose words can't ever be trusted:
Tumblr media
The people of Mondstadt, particularly his fellow knights, clearly love Kaeya; they want to be close to him. The archon of Mondstadt clearly loves Kaeya. But Kaeya's self-image is so horrifically warped by the fact that he revealed the truth of himself one time (just one time!) and immediately lost everything he loved because of that truth, that he has become incapable of letting anyone close again, sabotaging all his relationships in advance before the people on the other side can figure out that he's not who he claims to be.
Because of how Diluc reacted, Kaeya has subconsciously drawn a connection between honesty and pain: So long as Kaeya hides who he is, he can be accepted and tolerated in Mondstadt. But if he dares to reveal the truth, he will be met with violence and outrage.
Tumblr media
Thus, Kaeya has resigned himself to a literal "lifetime of lies," a "never-ending performance" in which he can never be honest with those around him--even while other characters like Albedo cruise through life with seemingly no care that people know their Khaenri'ahn connections.
Tumblr media
This is why "acting" is so prominent a theme in Kaeya's character, both in the past and present, why we constantly see him "playing a role" (as a prince, as a bandit, as a hero, etc. etc.)--he is never the real person, always a performer, and it is often only through his performances that he's able to express some of his own true thoughts and feelings, masking himself behind someone else's script as a way to "safely" express the tiniest hints of his own truth.
Tumblr media
What happened with Diluc fucked Kaeya up bad, in the most basic of terms.
Because the problem is: Kaeya doesn't want to be the way he is. He clearly loves the people of Mondstadt with everything he has. He adores Klee, greatly respects Jean, and has an incredible desire to protect the city that took him in. He wants to be close to others. He wants to reconnect with Diluc. He's a desperately lonely character who practically begs the Traveler to spend time with him and reacts surprisingly harshly when the idea of his being lonely is dragged into the light.
Tumblr media
I'd even go so far as to argue that his legitimate issues with alcohol stem from the fact that the taverns of Mondstadt are the one place where he is guaranteed to find company, where no matter what time of the night, he is sure to find someone--even if it's just bandits and treasure hunters--to fill the silence.
Because of his past experience, Kaeya can neither be honest with others nor comfortable with lying to them, constantly forced to keep others at arm's length to avoid the painful possibility of further rejection for just being himself. What happened the night of Crepus's death essentially shut Kaeya out of any healthy adult relationships, leaving him entirely alone even in the middle of a city full of people who want to love him.
(This is why it's so important to me that Dainsleif already knows all of Kaeya's background, even the parts Kaeya is still keeping quiet about--but that's just the DainKae shipper in me jumping out, so I'll move on lolol.)
While grappling with the very real fear of his own future, of knowing that his destiny will catch up with him--but wracked with the uncertainty of not knowing where and how--while struggling with his divided allegiances, while just trying to figure out where his own place in the world even is, Kaeya is entirely alone, trapped on the sidelines of his own life in no small part because he took the risk of being himself one time and it cost him everything he loved.
Tumblr media
And this is where I think fanon struggles, because it's much easier to just say that Kaeya is dishonest by nature, that he was always going to be a deceptive character, or that the worst outcome of his duel with Diluc was the scar on his face. There's this ridiculous notion that Diluc is already done atoning for that physical wound...
But the scar on Kaeya's face (if there even really is one) is utterly meaningless. The reason Kaeya won't take off his eyepatch has nothing to do with his appearance. He won't take off that eyepatch because it's symbolic of his fear of revealing himself. Kaeya's eyes are synonymous with his identity as a Khaenri'ahn, and thus his refusal to reveal his other eye is nothing more than a visual indication of his discomfort with himself, his divided loyalty, and his internalized belief that the cost of revealing himself fully will be the thing he most cares about: his home in Mondstadt.
Kaeya's entire personality, his sense of self-worth--his life--was reshaped on the night he dueled with Diluc.
And this is the tragedy, of course: Diluc's actions were understandable. Even Kaeya knew Diluc's lashing out was inevitable. It's not like we can really say "This is your fault, Diluc." But the fact of the matter does remain: If Diluc had only managed to control his emotions just a little bit better, if he had only been able to stop himself for a moment to think about his brother as a person who was also hurting and fraught in that moment, he might have realized the emotional significance of Kaeya revealing who he truly was. If Diluc had accepted--or even just tolerated--Kaeya's truth, Kaeya's entire adult life would be different, and that's just a basic fact.
Diluc has his own flaws though! He has his own crosses to bear that made it impossible--that I think, to a certain extent still make it impossible--for him to understand the damage he did and can still do to Kaeya.
So this whole fanon notion of them being on a reasonable path to reconciliation, that they'll be able to resolve their past disagreements by meeting each other in the middle... I just don't think that's really all that accurate to canon. I don't mean that they're not working toward reconciliation or that they won't get there eventually, but that the notion of "reconciliation" in the first place is entirely tangled up with Kaeya's sense of self-identity, and until he is able to resolve the truth of his past and his lingering loyalties to Khaenri'ah, I don't think he'll ever be able to fully repair the relationship that was lost between himself and Diluc.
And to be honest, this is just my personal view of the situation, but... I find it particularly hard to stomach the idea that Kaeya should be the primary driver of repairing the relationship between himself and Diluc, which I've seen in a lot of fanon takes (perhaps because fans in general agree that Diluc is a lot less likely to take action in an emotional situation than he is when fighting monsters lol).
I don't believe Kaeya really thinks it's possible for him to fully reconcile with Diluc. Kaeya cannot apologize for his existence, for being Khaenri'ahn--he cannot change who he is. He cannot "undo" his revealing the truth or make the reality of his double life go away. Thus, in Kaeya's eyes, he effectively has no way to make himself "acceptable" to Diluc again. This is why he continues to shy away from Diluc, even all the way to the recent archon quest, where he tries to excuse himself immediately, claiming that they'd just get in each other's way:
Tumblr media
It's why he behaves like a thief sneaking into the Dawn Winery and repeatedly calls himself nothing more than a "guest" in the house, even though Adeline and the other employees pointedly tell him it's still his home and he's still welcome.
Tumblr media
It's why, despite continually doing things to show he still cares--keeping Diluc's Vision safe, sending letters while Diluc was away--Kaeya isn't even brave enough to call Diluc his brother to his face anymore.
Tumblr media
Kaeya cannot "fix" what happened between himself and Diluc, and his own image and sense of worth have been so shattered by what is now years of internalized self-doubt and self-imposed isolation that he seems afraid to even genuinely expect anything of Diluc at all, let alone consider the possibility that Diluc might owe him an apology instead.
Diluc knows he does, though.
Tumblr media
He just can't give it because of who he is.
This is, I think, the most frustrating--but also most realistic and best written!--part of Diluc and Kaeya's relationship: Diluc clearly does want to atone for what happened the night Crepus died. He is doing many things, in his own Diluc-ish way, to signal to Kaeya that he wants to put the past behind them and restore their relationship.
He kept and displays the vase Kaeya hid his Vision in (despite it being garish on purpose); he also keeps the lantern Kaeya brings him from Sumeru in Kaeya's hangout.
Tumblr media
He responded to Kaeya's letters during his absence from Mondstadt. He allows Kaeya into the Dawn Winery, with the implication that the doors were always open for him in the first place.
Tumblr media
When Kaeya tries to leave during the most recent archon quest, Diluc essentially makes it clear that there's no reason why they shouldn't stay together.
Tumblr media
Showing a picture of Diluc's in-game model feels like character assassination at this point...
Although Diluc can be prickly and doesn't always have the nicest of things to say about Kaeya to others, it's pretty clear that he isn't intentionally holding a personal grudge. For the most part, it comes across as if Diluc seems set on quietly putting aside their past--as if it didn't happen.
This is, effectively, an apology without actually speaking one: If Diluc allows Kaeya back into his life, acts as if Kaeya is making a big deal out of nothing (like when he told Kaeya to quit guilting him over the eye injury), and implies that Kaeya still belongs in the Winery family, at the Angel's Share, etc., then isn't he doing the right thing? Isn't he showing Kaeya that he does accept him as he is? That he knows who Kaeya really is and still can tolerate him?
You can almost feel the thought process: Do I really have to spell it out?
But the problem is that Kaeya's sense of self-worth is so crippled by his internal perceptions--I'm a liar, I have and will continue to betray my loved ones, I'm not meant to be here--that Diluc's presumptuous and silent form of reconciliation is essentially incompatible with what Kaeya actually needs to hear and experience. Kaeya does, in fact, need it spelled out. In glaring red letters. And then probably fifteen more times for good measure before he'll actually start to let himself believe it.
Over and over and over again, people reassure Kaeya of his place in Mondstadt and in the Dawn Winery family specifically:
Tumblr media
But over and over again, Kaeya dodges and dismisses their reassurances, because until he believes Diluc has forgiven and accepted him, he will never feel confident in his place in the Ragnvindr family (and by extension, Mondstadt) again. Even though Kaeya has visual proof of Diluc's continuing care--the vase in the lobby of the winery--he doesn't dare to make any major assumption. He isn't confident enough to take Diluc's string of small gestures for actual, meaningful acceptance.
Despite how obviously Kaeya wants to be Diluc's brother again--the moment at the end of the recent archon quest is the most joyously animated we've seen Kaeya in a long time--
Tumblr media
--their reconciliation is effectively doomed to continue at a glacial pace because of who they are as people.
Diluc's method of handling the emotional issues in his life is critically avoidant, while Kaeya desperately needs direct and unambiguous confirmation that he cannot rationalize away.
Until both of them are able to confront the heart of the matter--which is Kaeya's identity and Diluc's explicit acceptance thereof (Kaeya's explicit acceptance thereof!)--they will continue to make minuscule progress as Diluc lets his gestures, rather than his words, speak on his desire for reconciliation, and Kaeya tentatively toes the line and then retreats, two steps backward for one step forward.
It's my personal belief that we'll likely see a "real" reconciliation between Diluc and Kaeya only when Kaeya is able to finally reconcile with himself.
But Diluc could fix this problem at any time, if he wasn't, you know... Diluc. 😂
Anyway, all this to say that I think fanon really favors Diluc over Kaeya in a lot of cases and that there's a critical lack of reflection on the long-lasting and very serious effects that their falling out had on Kaeya's emotional and mental state.
It's not about the duel, it's not about the eye scar--it's about Kaeya becoming convinced that his entire life must, by necessity, remain a lie forever, crystalizing his belief that he can never feel comfortable in his own skin.
He was already struggling and uncertain about his dual allegiances, but to take the risk of revealing himself to someone he loved only to face immediate and violent rejection... Kaeya knew it was coming and it still messed him up a lot, a lot more than people seem interested in talking about.
Just sayin'.
421 notes · View notes