#everything changed and it never fixed itself and this conversation just has so much to chew on yk. normal abt it

[strawberry-halla]

something so amazing about solas is that he is very good at predicting his enemies and his allies moves. he’s always thinking 5 steps ahead, even varric says this. (long post incoming!)

but when it comes to lavellan, he could never predict her. when he first meets her, solas thinks she’s just another dalish elf that is unwilling to listen to his advice. nope turns out she can be willing and not only that but asks him about what he knows so she can better understand the fade/spirits/ancient elves.

and then the haven dream kiss! she’s the one who initiates and solas is once again thrown off guard because he never expected that. and then he just gives into it with so much passion and fade tongue.

in all new, faded for her, solas is once again surprised lavellan agrees with his plan to free his friend, the spirit of wisdom. because nobody in the entire inquisition (except cole) would be down for this?? like all the world knows about spirits is that they don’t ever come in contact with people unless very rarely. they’re an enigma, something to be feared even because they can become demons. but nah lavellan is like ‘yep sounds good let’s go save your friend!’

and solas after this tries to rationalize lavellan’s bizarre behavior as something the anchor changed about her. because he has always known how to read people. he can’t understand her. he thinks her ‘spirit’ has changed due to magic’s influence.

but no, lavellan surprises once again by pointing out that her choices are her own or that if the anchor did change her, wouldn’t she notice? like no wonder solas is so fucking down bad. lavellan subverts everything he thought about the modern people, not just exclusively elves. she’s constantly showing him new points of view and challenging his whole mission. and so the cracks start to form.

“you show a wisdom i haven’t seen since…*pause* my deepest journeys into the ancient memories of the fade.”

“your mind, your morals, your… *pause* spirit.”

“it would be kinder in the long run. but losing you would- *cuts himself off*”

and then if lavellan drinks from the well, this conversation and the previous quest itself (what pride had wrought) just cracks solas wide open (even if she didn’t drink). he’s visibly upset because he’s afraid the well will change lavellan and he knows first hand what it’s like to do everything for someone who made the wrong choices! so solas asks what she would do with the power of the well and he’s ONCE AGAIN thrown off guard by her answer. i really like the “help the world move forward” option because it almost aligns with solas’s plan but it doesn’t.

s: “you would risk everything you have in the hope the future is better? what if it isn’t? what if you wake up to find the future you shaped is worse than what it was?”

l: “i’ll take a breath, see where things went wrong, and then try again.”

s: “just like that?”

l: “if we don’t keep trying, we’ll never get it right.”

you’d think this would be an affirmation that solas’s plan is right, but it’s not. lavellan is wanting to fix things now and shape a better future with the well’s power. it’s eerily similar, but once again a path solas didn’t consider. she surprises once more. using the wisdom from the well to help, rather than command. sound familiar? this conversation just solidifies solas’s want. to be himself and to be solas, not fen’harel, with lavellan.

so he takes her to crestwood. somewhere intimate and quiet just for the two of them. a place where the veil is thinnest because it’s easy for spirits to cross and be comfortable. solas is going to tell lavellan the truth. he’s going to abandon his plan. but then solas gets in his own head. he fights with the possibility of her rejecting him because why wouldn’t she? he’s the very god in her culture that ruined everything. what if lavellan sees him for the monster history painted him? and then he realizes why he even wanted to tear down the veil. to avenge his oldest friend and right the wrongs he did to the elves. and it all comes crashing down in not even a second.

“then what i must tell you… *pause* …the truth.”

solas backpedals so fucking hard. the reality of everything just hits him. so he quickly redirects to the vallaslin topic because it’s familiar as he looks down at lavellan’s face and sees the markings of the very gods he locked away.

remove the vallaslin or not solas still loves her no matter what. and the sad option is still my favorite here because once again solas is slipping.

s: “you have a rare and marvelous spirit. in another world-“

l: “why not this one?”

and then at the end of veilguard, lavellan does one more thing solas doesn’t expect. after hurting her, betraying her, leaving her alone without any answers, killing one of her friends, and almost succeeding in his plan, she forgives him. lavellan abandons thedas and everything she knew to be with him. to the very end, she is subverting his tragic expectations.

“this journey is not yours alone. we make it together, always.”

[natriae]

Best friend omi and reader where it’s like mutual pining but one day omi just loses it and kisses reader and they make out filthily✨??

So i may be back from my mini (mega) hiatus... :0

I miss my omi-omi <3

CW// she/her pronouns used, reader is described as having hair (but no details on the hair itself), 14+ , reader is described as introverted (i'm projecting), please let me know if i missed any!

1.8k words

To say the majority of MSBY was shocked to see a woman bring Sakusa Kiyoomi a hearty meal and scold him about not taking care of himself would be an understatement. Meian genuinely thought he woke up in another timeline, and it definitely didn't help that Atsumu had barely reacted.

With the season just beginning many of the MSBY had not had time to meet their new teammates. Yes, they knew who they were, and yes, they had made light conversation with them at VBA events, but they didn't really know much about the new members. Barnes honestly had assumed Sakusa was celibate, or completely shut down anything that included sharing germs, yet here their new opposite hitter is letting this girl, no woman, sit him down and grab his leg to put in her lap. The man barely reacts. He just let her examine his ankle before listening closely for her next words.

‘There's no way she’s his girlfriend’ Tomas thinks, but the way Sakusa watches her makes him question everything. Didn't Bokuto comment on Sakusa never being able to pull. There's no way Sakusa could pull her, especially with his attitude.

"Hey, Miya-san," Meian calls over. Atsumu stops practicing sets against the wall to jog over to his new captain.

"’es, Captain," Miya quickly bows to his superior. Even out of college the older twin still has his boyish charm.

"Just Meian-san is fine," Meian quickly responds, watching Atsumu's face light up (oh will Meian regret that later). "Who's the girl with Sakusa?" he nods his head towards the two of you. Now you're fixing Sakusa's hair while he drinks his water.

"whatta' ya mean?" Atsumu asks, face scrunching in confusion. Sure, he has a few theories on what Meian is implying, but he wants to hear it outloud so he knows he's not delusional.

"Is that Sakusa-san's girlfriend?" Tomas interjects. The three men watch as the two of you converse with light blush on your cheeks.

"Y/N?" the finally toned-blonde laughs at the thought, "Sakusa couldn't pull her even if he had a fishing rod," the twin continues, "the two of them have known each other for years. I always thought Sakusa had a thing for her, but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere".

While Atsumu yaps, Meian can't help, but watch his new teammate in awe. Compared to the others, Sakusa was more introverted. As a captain he wants to know his teammates - friends - inside and out. Be able to build a bond with them that will last, yet Sakusa has proven to be the hardest of all. You make it seem so easy. The curly haired man will beg at feet if he must. How did you dig your way into him?

"Kiy," you poke your head through the locker room door, "it's getting late you almost done?" Behind the wall you hear the shower turn off and the soft wet steps of Kiyoomi. He's always been a gentle giant. On the outside he seems intimidating, but honestly he’s just trying to protect himself.  "Can I come in, yet?" you smile waiting for his response.

Ever since Kiyoomi joined the big leagues you can't help but bask in the joy with him. He's wanted this forever, and you're so happy you were able to watch him succeed. Kiyoomi's family was proud of him, yes, but not in the way you were. They didn't see all the highs and lows. They didn't notice the small changes in his mood, or how he would continually work himself to exhaustion. They always saw him at his best, but their Kiyoomi was not your Kiyoomi. Actually most people's Kiyoomi isn't your Kiyoomi. You know him better than most. You know how he struggled in highschool socially, and how he struggled again moving out. How he wasn't used to someone not commenting on his every move. So imagine his surprise when you didn't fill that spot in college. You always made him feel valid in his thoughts.

"I'm dressed," his voice responds. For most people they would be shocked to know that Sakusa now bathes after everyone else. It wasn't a germ thing. It simply just made more sense to shower before the chaos. Also, who wants to share germs with a teenage boy anyway. He changed his habit so it allowed some time to decompress before driving home, plus it allowed more time to spend with you before he drove you back to your apartment.

Walking in you round the corner to see the rows of lockers. It wasn't long before you spotted him. His sweatpants hung low on his hips as he began rubbing the moisturizer on his face. This was always your favorite time. Watching Sakusa perform his night routine always motivated you to do more. He's always been so disciplined.

"So how was that party with your friends," his voice cuts through your thoughts. Looking up you notice how his eyes remained on you through the mirror.

"it...it was okay," you responded, rolling your lips in between your teeth. It was much easier to direct your thoughts to caring about him than your own social life.

"it wasn't. Tell me," he says. The demand in his voice was one you still haven't mastered not being affected by. Something about talking to him was so easy, allowing the words to flow out like his words were a truth potion. 

"There were some new girls there I haven't met before, and we were telling stories to get to know one another, and um," Kiyoomi's eyes never leave your face through the mirror, "the topic of our first kisses came up, and when it got to my turn-"

"you froze," He finished for you.

"Yeah," you say looking down. You watch as his feet turn and begin walking to your position on the bench.

"So what did you end up telling them?" By the way he softly looks at you, you're sure he completely trusts you. He knows you would have told him if something had changed. You’re sure he already knows your answer before you tell him.

"the truth," you respond solemnly. He doesn't need you to say it to know how embarrassed you are. “Having a horrible first kiss is one thing, but being 23 and never having kissed anyone is a completely different situation.”

The way Sakusa turns back around to pack up his stuff isn't one of rejection, but in a way that tells you he'd rather finish this conversation when you have his full attention. "You know, at least you've never kissed anyone you would later regret," he shrugs, zipping up his duffle.

"look at you being on the bright side," you state, partly in shock, and partly in the hopes that the two of you can change the conversation. A smile breaks out on your face just from speaking to him. With his bag now on his shoulder he watches you, silently telling you to get up.

"hey, you’re more likely now to have a memorable kiss than before,"

"Sure, but everyone is way more experienced than me," you sulk trailing behind him out of the stadium.

"not everyone," He quietly says, just enough for you not to hear. 

The walk to the car was silent for the most part. The only noise heard were the late night crickets chirping and the occasional sound of a car passing on the main road. No matter how many times Kiyoomi explained it to you, it never made sense why he always parked at the very back of the parking lot. Which is quite far considering this is an official stadium. His long strides were no match for you, so while attempting to catch up you continued speaking hoping to remind him of your presence. “It’s just I’ve always received compliments from girls, which honestly is still pretty limited, but the best compliment a guy told me was, get this, ‘you’re not pretty now, but you’ll be prettier when you're older’. Well guess what I’m older and still nobody wants me,” you sigh.

While you yap the car the lights blink once, and a small beep is heard. His trunk pops open and surprisingly he carelessly throws his bag in slamming it shut. It all happens before you have time to comprehend it. His long, lean body swiftly turns around and presses you to the side of his car. His forehead resting on yours while his hands grip your arms tightly. “You don’t get it do you?” he whispers before leaning in. 

His lips press on to yours with inexperience. Your eyes widened as he continued to chase your plump lips. You may have found the one thing Sakusa Kiyoomi is not skilled at, yet his passion is at an all time high. You want to laugh. There is so little time to wonder if it’s nervous laughter or if you genuinely find this funny. He’s clumsy and you swear his body begins to shake with nervousness, but he’s trying. It’s more than just a kiss. Your heart connects with his. You’ve never felt this type of euphoria before. Nervous, definitely nervous laughter.  His hands begin to loosen as he draws back from you. The sparks connecting the two of you begin to break. It hurts in a greedy way. You want nothing more than to just grab his collar and slam him back into you, but he’s your Kiyoomi and he knows exactly what you want without you having to ask. There’s only one way to describe the way Kiyoomi kisses. It’s messy and unskilled. Two words that he would never want to associate with. The second kiss is wet and the sounds are vulgar. His hand moves from your arm and wraps lightly around your hair as he presses into your head. He wants more. The greed has consumed you both and simply kissing is not enough. Finally gaining control of your arms you slowly run your arms up his chest feeling the soft cloth of his t-shirt, but like always he’s faster than you. Both of his hands grip your wrists to push them up to his shoulders as if begging for you to latch onto him. Everything about this moment is rushed. Even though your introverted brains are yelling at you, the chance of anyone seeing you two is all too exciting. Your tongue shy pokes out first. A small lick on Kiyoomi’s bottom lip to know if he wants it too, and just as everything else Kiyoomi’s tongue is licking into your mouth before you have time to process it. Your tongues dance through kisses just as the wind does the same between both of your bodies. Pressed so close to one another that you can feel his rapid heartbeat, but all good things will eventually come to an end and the black haired male draws back first. 

“I meant something like that,” he whispers, still holding you tight to his body.

A/N: I really hope y'all got my new girl reference. Also, FUN FACT I actually did receive that 'compliment' from a guy once (the only time a guy complimented me). Anyway, I really have not been in a good head space so I'm sorry for just kind disappearing, but writing does give me joy so i'm going to try and answer my asks.

[thefusioncelestial]

Mix 7: A Father's Gift

Mr. Jacobs was proud of his son. He was everything he wanted, if only his son, Derek would realize this.

But with the gift he was about to obtain, perhaps he would realize this.

Mr. Jacobs heard about a mysterious shop that was able to fix certain issues; of the bodily kind. Before he knew it, he was standing before its doors.

He scanned the surroundings before going in. It was wet and lightly raining, two tall walls of red brick, a reminder of the post WW2 era, flanking the doors on both sides. The door was wooden with no sign of paint or finish on them, and there was no sign save a strange symbol etched at the top of the door. Small enough to miss if you didn't notice. He couldn't make out the of the building, it seemed to never settle on a shape, style, or material. Mr. Jacobs soon put that out of his mind and walked through the door.

The room inside was darkly lit, but it had grayish carpet, dark green wall paper, and two Japanese style doors in the back. In front of them was a receptionist area that blocked access to them.

There was a man sitting behind it looking at him. His hair was concealed by a white turban, but his facial hair; medium sized eye brows & a carefully shaped mustache, revealed that his hair was jack black. He had striking green eyes. He was wearing a black shirt that had a galactic print on them. He could swear that he could see the stars twinkle & the galaxy itself slowly turn.

"Hello sir, I take you are here to take on a new look? You can be anything, or are you looking to heal some hurts that modern medicine has failed to heal so far," the receptionist asked in an confident tone.

"Not for me, but my son," Mr. Jacobs replied.

"How does this work? What do you charge?"

"What I charge depends on the reasons for the change, typically for men like you looking to change their sons, often for vanity reasons, I do not come cheap. I can't tell you how many "wimps" I changed into world class athletes," the receptionist replied.

He continued: "As for how, you go through the door to my left, pick the traits you want, and then get back to me & I'll handle the rest. Now give me your right palm, Mr. Jacobs." He came out of the receptionist desk & brought two chairs for both to sit.

He sat & so did the father.

He stretched out his hand.

As if instantly, Mr. Jacobs did as he was asked.

"How did you know my family name," he pondered.

"Oh forgive me, my name is Corsair, as for how, I would not make it as far as I did in my line of work if I didn't know who may prospective customers are," Corsair retorted.

Must be because my information is available online due to social media he thought.

Corsair had Mr. Jacobs's hand grasped in an embrace of both of his hands. He then moved his forehead to touch this embrace and closed his eyes. His secret revealed, he could read minds!

He saw the real reason for the visit. He did in-fact come to help his son. It was not to make him a star or make him more palpable to the marriage market or for some desire to use him for social gain. His son had confidence issues.

He dug deeper. Ah, there he is:

I see, from their conversations, the son feels mixed matched. He worked on himself hard both academically & physically and achieved a great result. One more year at university, and quite the healthy body with the aesthetics to show it. But he hates his face. Nothing he has done has ever worked. He considering plastic surgery. Mr. Jacobs supports his son, but wants a more natural way than the scalpel. My way is...magical if not natural. He just needs a little bump to bring out his features.

Corsair moved his head back up to face Mr. Jacobs & unclasped his hands and rest his on his lap.

"He doesn't need much. One measure. $1000," he said in a deadpan manner.

"Deal," Mr. Jacobs said quickly.

Corsair smiled, "Through this door."

He handed Mr. Jacobs a cup.

"Pick one to fill in that cup. The turn knob & valve is located under the giant cylinders. Keep walking forwards after you are done,' he said.

"Just like that," Mr. Jacobs replied.

"Just like that," Corsair replied with a big smile.

He opened the receptionist area to let Mr. Jacobs in, and he went through the door. It closed behind him.

The area was pitch black, but soon a green light, no a series of green lights sprang up. They were next to each other with some distance, but orderly. They were lined up on both sides of the room, forming a hallway.

He walked up to the first pair. They were giant green clear glass canisters. There was a glowing green liquid inside and to his shock; unconscious men with their eyes closed floating inside of them.

They seemed to be sleeping. They had a calm expression about them. Each canister had a distinct person in each. No matter the size, face, ect, they were all good looking & fit. It was a hallway of models.

Pick me. No me. No over here!

The men inside were mentally communicating with Mr. Jacobs.

"Wait you can speak without moving your mouths? Wait, are you being held against your will," he asked out loud.

In unison: NO!

Do not worry for us, for a part of us gets to live on in others. We get to live through others in more lives than what has been recorded in history. Choose.

Telepathy he realized. Fine, he would choose.

"I don't need much, I just want my son to be more confident himself. Realize his potential," Mr. Jacobs said loudly.

Far off in the back a canister glowed very brightly while the others dimmed.

After 10 minutes he approached the canister. For some reason he put his hand on it, and then a flash of the memories of the person on the canister flooded him.

A young soldier, living life. He was always positive no matter the situation. On track to a long distinguished career. About to go home. And then a large explosion occurred. A terrorist attack, killed his most of his platoon, and he layed on the ground suffering about to meet his maker.

Corsair appeared. He healed the soldier's body, but the soul was too detached to keep him going.

He was given an offer:" work through him to help others in need of help. You would live on by merging yourself with others to change their life trajectory in positive ways. You would still be considered dead to the public."

The solider, named Caleb agreed without hesitation, not caring for the life in the canister.

On the bright side, the canister men were given a new purpose & would join their new mental powers thanks to the green liquid that also anchored their souls to their bodies & gave them eternal youth. They created a gesalt mind palace where they could get to know of each other & live new lives in their perfect worlds.

Mr. Jacobs chose him. After he wiped a tear from his eyes, he looked down and found a water jug like hatch, the kind you find in barrel shaped drink dispensers, and pressed the release valve down. Green liquid filled the cup & he was done.

"Thank you for your service," said Mr. Jacobs. He bowed.

The serene body cocked a smile.

Mr. Jacobs wanted to take him home, but he knew he would die outside that canister and promptly left. He kept walking forward, not backwards as instructed, and came across a door.

He walked through it. He came out to the same receptionist area he used to come in. He turned and saw it was the first door he used to get into the hall way of perfect, to him, men.

Space time shenanigans.

He walked past the receptionist desk, turned towards Corsair.

"I take it you will keep the secret," he wondered.

"If this works, my life is yours," the father replied.

"The money has already been deducted, hand me the cup. The final step is near," Corsair said & then took the cup from the father.

He could not see what he was doing, but he heard shaking & swirling noises. They stopped. He pulled out a bag & In the bag was a green pill.

Corsair handed Mr. Jacobs the bag.

"Have him swallow it over night, right before he goes to bed," he said.

"Thank you so much, how do you take payment," Mr. Jacobs pondered.

"Payment is automatically deducted as I said before," Corsair replied.

They both wished them a great day & Mr. Jacobs went home.

His son was home the weekend before spring break, determined to do nothing. Maybe some extra studying.

His father gave him a bag with a green pill in it. Told him to take it before bed. Maybe an anti-anxiety pill? Some supplements?

He pondered. His dad has never given him anything bad. He did as he was told. He went to sleep.

His body began to float. He wanted to wake up and see what was going on, but he couldn't open his eyes, move his limbs, or get out of his dream. Did the pill he took induce sleep paralysis?

He had a mouth, but he could not scream.

He was floating about 3 feet above the bed, and then the bed sheets slid off, exposing him to the air from all sides.

Above him was a specter or ghost. It was Caleb. He was floating even higher than Derek was. Situated above Derek in the same resting position, he started to descend. Derek didn't move, couldn't move. Soon Caleb was occupying the same space as Derek.

Swoosh. A burst of wind flowed out from Derek's body.

Caleb faded away into Derek, and Derek soon glowed green.

In Derek's dream space, he met Caleb. Derek was scared at first, but he was able to be calmed down. He explained the situation. Derek was mad at his dad at first, but understood his good intentions.

"How much of me will change," Derek asked.

"I don't know, but you will still be driving the wheel of whatever it is we turn into," Caleb said.

Derek let out a sigh. It was probably too late to go back. He swallowed the pill after all.

"You will ride passenger seat no matter what," Derek said in confidence. Some of Caleb's mental aspects where seeping in.

Caleb smiled. Both of the men turned into tornadoes that then merged into one twister. It settled into a new person.

The green glow went away.

For Caleb's physical body, it began to change. During the mind meld, Caleb's DNA transfused into every part of Derek's body.

He grew more hair, eyebrows got thinner, his lips a more flush with blood getting pinker. His eyes reshaped themselves, while his ears changed angle a little to move towards the skull.

His chin and cheek bones thickening gave him a much stronger jawline. His skeletal changes generated new sensations, like the feeling of pops and pressures. From this moment forward, Caleb grunted. Not in defiance, but in acceptance of the new changes. You could hear "mmm" come from him.

With a suddenness & popping sound, his neck, shoulder, chest, arms, & legs exploded with new muscle at the same time as if he was hulking out. His fingers changing to meet the new proportions. His legs lengthened.

He let out an sharp "ahh" at the sudden changes. His body from his waist jerking up to make a weak triangle before settling flat.

His abs changed as well. He began to groan. He had a cross between his own and Caleb's. He could feel his abdominal muscles merge into one. The skin then constricted and reshaped them, giving form to each of his stones.

His nether regions were a 1 to 1 copy of Caleb's. Bigger & longer. Harrier too. As the changes came in, he could be heard breathing hard through his nose.

The changes were done. His transformation complete. He slept the rest of the night.

He got up before his father & went to the local gym: he needed space & a different environment from his father's home. No one saw him as a different person to his shock. He went to the locker room to get a full look of his changes:

He was bewildered. He was like a new man. Did he have to change this much? He loved the muscles, the power,....the confidence? He remember that Caleb was inside him now. Caleb was a soldier. A flood of memories hit Derek. Caleb's training & missions as a soldier, his buddies in the air force.

He returned home. His father was also shocked by his son's changes. They talked and found a happy medium. He wanted to know where this clinic was located, but his father forgot. No third chances.

He decided to go travel for this spring break. A visit to Caleb's platoon. The ones who survived. To the graves of the ones who didn't. They all deserved respect.

[truearchangel]

@thylightbringer inquired;

It’s been nearly two weeks since that… conversation in Michael’s room and Lucifer still reeled from it whenever he thought about it. When he’d first appeared back at the palace there had been a lot of screaming and hellfire from him, he’d startled his PA who’d been sorting more of his paperwork. Lucifer barely remembers having to fix the floor where he’d smashed it with his fists, but eventually he’d dragged himself to his room and curled up under his softest blanket while nearly strangling his duck plush.

Now he was back at the hotel, unable to keep away and continue to worry Charlie. Her messages had gotten progressively more and more concerned after the three day mark. While Lucifer had done his best to avoid his brother when he’d returned, he knew that he couldn’t avoid him forever. As mad and upset as he was to learn what he had… It’s always been difficult for him to stay mad at Michael.

Hence why he was… once again in front of Michael’s door with a basket of fruits, mostly apples, waiting for his brother to answer after he’d knocked.

          “Michael… I know you’re in there. I just want to talk,” Lucifer called out, adjusting his hold on the basket a little.

   The reaction that he had gotten for what he told Lucifer felt… extreme. To be quite frank, the reason that he had never told him, was for him. Who wants to tell their twin brother that everyone he knew and loved voted to kill him? Especially… especially right after everything that had happened. Why continue to beat him that hard down when he had already fallen so much? Why make things hurt more when he could paint a different picture? If it made Michael the enemy, as it had, then at least that was one person throw so much of his anger and hatred on rather than every other Archangel in the clouds. 

   Lucifer had loved Gabriel, he had coddled Zadkiel, he had laughed and danced with Raphael. Why make things worse than they already were, saying those people wanted him dead. The thing he believed was true, that Michael was just being as cruel as possible, was so much kinder in the end. 

   Merciful. 

   Why did the truth matter that much, why does the reason he chained him to Hell really matter when it doesn’t change the outcome? When the facts are still the same? What Michael did, he did. There is no undoing that. There is no taking it back. There is no changing history that has already etched itself in place. He did it and that was what Lucifer should be mad at, not the fact he kept the reason he did it from him. He’s making a mountain out of a molehill. Getting angry over the wrong thing. Blowing this out of proportion. He can’t even say he entirely sees why Lucifer is mad in the first place. 

   It’s been almost a week since things had blown up. Michael has continued his research, done what he wanted to, and moved on from the conversation. That does not mean he wants to talk to Lucifer. Apparently it wasn’t a choice he was getting though. The room has remained unchanged since the King of Hell was last in here, the suitcase was still on the bed, the blue and gold colors were still present. He hasn’t slept, he hasn’t unpacked, the paperwork on the desk has just grown. 

   And there is an insistent knocking on the door.

   Sighing tiredly he shook his head at the scroll he was reading and raised his hand up to rub at his eyes, trying to work some energy back into himself to deal with this. 

   Instead of getting up to answer the door, he calls out to his brother. “What do you want, Lucifer?” 

[elliespeach]

tear you apart part three | ellie williams

˗ˏˋ"you're a charmer, aren't you?" ´ˎ˗

pairing ellie wiliams x fem reader synopsis ellie owns her own vinyl store and the day you wander in changes both of your lives forever. she quickly becomes infatuated with you, desperate for your love that she believes is meant to be. when things in your life begin to spiral, ellie is there to catch you, but you'd never suspect she was the reason you fell in the first place. wordcount: 3.1k warnings: murder 😱 and stalking both cyber and in person, ellie is obsessive, manipulative, a gaslighter, a pervert lowkey, possessive and easily jealous, shes also so delusional like top tier delulu, shes based off joe goldberg so i mean put the pieces together. this is all from her perspective, most if not all of the inner monologue is ellie's thoughts about you, the italics is verbatim what she is thinking in that very moment if that makes sense. like joe, all of her actions are justified in her mind, and she doesn't see anything wrong with them. reader has a dysfunctional family. pls lmk if i am missing something! an: i cannot express enough how thankful i am for all the love for this story really it means so much. obsessive ellie nation rise once again, i come before you with this part and i hope it was worth the wait :) xoxo

watching you cry yourself to sleep on your couch made ellie’s heart throb. she wanted to be there for you, to hold you, to tell you everything was going to be okay, that she was going to make it all okay. but she knew better than to expect that you’d let her, after all, you still barely knew her. so how is it that she could lead you straight into her arms, where you belong? 

it was the next day, and although your state of mind was completely shattered by the events of the previous night, ellie was wide awake, ecstatic at her new idea on how to make you all better. she would hope that your encounter with her helped you, as much as it could but she couldn’t just rely on that, ellie had to take action. she never wanted to see you in tears over someone like that again. 

starting her day in the shop as normal, she filled orders, fixed a few finicky records and sold boring albums to boring souls who she wished was you. she spent the better part of the morning fantazizing about you wandering into her store yet again. needing help finding an album, or better yet just to talk to her. it hasnt even been more than twelve hours and she missed your voice already, replaying your conversation over and over in her head like her favorite movie. 

while the traffic in the store died down, ellie did more research on the newly found suzanna mavis. formally known as suzanna hardwick, she grew up in a cushy home, with preppy parents who supported every endenvour she seemed to possess. her facebook was littered with photos of shuana in every aspect of her life, along with her prized possession; a baby blue mercedes benz. but, there seemed to be someone missing, her husband of twenty five years was seemingly no where to be found on her social media. when ellie searched his name alone, mr. mavis seemed to have no social media at all. 

thats fine, ellie only needed suzanna. 

finding out where she worked required no effort at all as it was displayed clearly on her facebook profile. she was the assistant to some shareholder, blah blah boring. but the company name was one she recongized, their office building was just a few blocks down from her store. she passed it nearly everyday on her commute to see you. 

for ellie’s plan to work, she had to close the store early. it was barely noon when she found herself in the parking garage to suzanna’s building. there was a guard booth, but no guards and the garage itself was a ghost town of rich people cars. she spotted the blue mercedes, and her plan was in motion.. 

thanks to you so graciously and unknowingly, giving her suzanna’s personal cell phone number, she dialed and it only rang once, her preppy voice ringing in ellie’s ears. she almost felt her stomach whirling in anticipation, but the sensation quickly washed away into something more sinister. no. protective

“suzanna mavis speaking,” 

ellie paced back and forth near the elevator in the garage, “hey, mrs. mavis,” she rolled her eyes at her own voice, trying to sound not like herself, “i’m one of the guards down in the parking garage, looks like someone keyed your benz this morning.” 

ellie heard a loud sigh, then the distant sounds of heels clicking on the ground. “are you kidding me? you didn’t stop them?” 

ellie suppressed a sigh, “i was on lunch–” 

“your job is to guard our cars, if you can’t even do that–” her voice was shrill, and ellie’s patience was running low.

“ma’am, just come downstairs, the police need a statement.” 

ellie heard a few curses string from the phone before the call ended, she chuckled to herself before sliding her phone into her pocket. ellie slowly walked over to the blue mercedes, examining it up close. she crouched down, removing her small switchblade and flinging it open. she almost didn’t do it, it was unnecessary really. but the image of you so broken by her made ellie’s mouth twitch. how she had smiled at you while speaking about her husband, ignoring you, leading you on, preying on you. the switchblade moved as if it had it’s own mind, scratching the car from back to front in one swift movement. 

breathing out in relief, ellie heard the ding of the elevator behind her. 

she watched from behind a nearby car as suzanna stepped out of the elevator, a sour puss on her face as she made her way towards her car. she groaned when she saw the long, deep slice into the side of the car. ellie pulled up her handkerchief over her nose and while suzanna was busy inspecting her car, ellie pounced. 

she had a hand covering suzanna’s mouth, her switchblade pressed against her neck with the other. suzanna thrashed in her arms but ellie held her ground, “shh, shh!” ellie hissed in her ear, whisking her around and pinning her to her own car. “i’m not going to kill you, shut up–” 

ellie kept the switchblade at her throat, quickly looking around. with the coast clear, she slowly removed her hand from suzanna’s mouth. “take my money, please i don’t–” 

“i don’t want that either,” ellie looked suzanna up and down. her? you’re losing your mind over her? “i want you to speed up your big family move to california. leave tomorrow.” 

suzanna’s eye furrowed as if she was confused, “w-what?” 

“you’re moving to california at the end of the summer, are you not?” ellie’s paitence was growing thinner by the second, and the switchblade was pressed into her neck so deep any movement would draw blood. 

suzanna was shaking underneath ellie, and as she spoke her voice was weak, “what? my family was never moving to california, please i’ll give you anything!” 

shauna lied? why the hell would she lie about that?

“go anyway. leave the city.” leave you alone.

“i can’t just pick up my whole family and move to another state, we-we have a life here.” suzanna was trembling now, her voice shaking just as much as her legs.

well, if you won’t leave on your own. “i really didn’t want to have to kill you,” ellie said casually, almost annoyed. she moved quickly, snatching a clump of suzanna’s hair in her hand and whipping her around. ellie barely blinked as she slammed suzanna’s face into the baby blue mersedes. once. harder. twice. harder. three times. even harder. four times. as hard as physically possible. blood stained the blue on the car, and suzanna’s body fell to the ground as ellie let go. limp. dead. 

out of your life. 

– later that day 

ellie realized she had fucked up big time when she got back to the store.

the night she saved you, she shouldve given you her number. she had no way to check up on you, to make sure you were okay with the news to come. she would have to go back to her tried and true; “accidentally” running into you. before she could see online which bar you and your friends would overdrink at tonight, ellie found you standing outside her store. you came all this way to see me. 

“hi ellie,” you smiled brightly, illuminated by neon red sign on her store. you must not know yet. poor baby. 

“hey stranger,” ellie kept her voice calm, but she hoped that her bodys reaction to seeing you wasn’t visible. she could feel her face grow hot, and she did her best to hide it by keeping her back to you as she locked the stores door. she could smell your sweet perfume from here, and she cleared her throat before speaking again, turning to face you now that the redness in her face had diminished, “if you’re here for a vinyl, i’ll ring you up still–” 

“no, no, i came to see you.” you replied shyly, quickly glancing at your feet before meeting her gaze again with your soft eyes. while you had glanced away, ellie took you all in. she admired the dedication you put into your outfits, and she liked to believe you picked this one out just for her.

“oh?” was all ellie could say. she was busy imagining you standing in front of your mirror, trying on a thousand different outfits. ellie would’ve loved every single one of them regardless, as long as they are on you. she thought about you doing your makeup all pretty, how long that must take. detailing your face for hours, just for me. 

“yeah. i wanted to see if you’d like to get drinks with me tonight?” 

oh.

her eyes widened, never did she think that you’d ask her out. she wanted to be the one to wisk you away for a perfect date that you deserved. but ellie would settle for drinks for now, until she finally could take you on a real date. she composed herself, remaining casual. as casual as she could be. “yeah, i’d love that. we could go now, i’m done with the store for today.” 

“yeah, let’s go,” you flashed another smile at ellie, which she returned. it was like the universe was rewarding her for her good deed. you coming to see her, to ask her out. it seemed like everything was falling perfectly into place. now that suzanna was gone. 

ellie had been racking her brain all day about what suzanna had told her. that there was never any intention to move at all. that shauna had lied, for what? a reaction? why would she even want that kind of reaction out of you in the first place? 

what was shauna hiding?

“so, why’re you in new york? are you from here?” ellie inquired, for no other reason that to hear you talk. you’re here for your art.

“not from here, i moved here to hopefully make a name for myself as an artist. what about you?” ellie didn’t want to talk about herself, not when you were so lovely. but you were asking about her, and she couldn’t say no to you if she tried. 

“i moved here a few years ago,” ellie revealed, but immediately diverted the conversation back to you. “you’re an artist? well, now i have to see a piece of yours.” ellie’s looked through your instagram enough, she’s seen every one a million times already.

you laughed, looking away sheepishly. “i’m no picasso,” 

“no, but you’re you. so, they can’t be that bad, can they?” 

again, you blushed, giving ellie a shy smile. “you’re a charmer, aren’t you?” 

“i try, what can i say.” ellie shrugged, and you pointed out the bar to her.

she held the door open for you, the music already defenening her ears. it wasn’t a regular bar where you could sit and talk, it was a dancing bar. the bass in the speakers rumbled at her feet, sending shock waves up her spine. this wasn’t ellie’s crowd by a mile, but you looked back at her with the face of an angel and grabbed her hand softly to lead her towards the bar. ellie wasn’t going anywhere, not as long as you were here. 

reaching the bar, you asked for four green tea shots, two each. “yuck, green tea shots?” ellie teased, basically yelling over the music. this time ellie wasn’t worried if you wanted to over indulge, this time she could watch over you for real. and she wasn’t about to make the same mistake your friends made. 

you leaned into her so that you could speak into her ear, and ellie’s heart fluttered in her chest. you were close, very close. the top you were wearing exposed the entirety of your upper torso and she found it hard not to stare. “yes, green tea shots! keep up, ellie.” you laughed, pushing two of the shots to her that bartender left on the counter. 

ellie picked one of them up, holding it out for you to cheer to with your own, “i’ll do my best,” she responded, looking into your shimmering eyes. the things i do for you. you tapped her shot glass, and you both took down the shot with ease, although ellie’s grimaced face told you that she did not like shots, but she picked up the second one before you. 

her grimace didn’t go away with the second one, it actually went down worse for ellie. but it seemed her reaction made you laugh, and ellie was okay with the burning in her throat. before she could recover from the back to back shots, you took her hand again. the same electricity as before stirred inside of her at your touch and she barely noticed you brought her out to the middle of the dance floor, people on all sides dancing to the beat of the very loud music, that seemed to only get louder. 

but you started to sway your hips to the beat. 

and ellie’s breath caught in her throat. 

she realized way too late that she hadn’t eaten today, and those shots were already starting to make her head feel fuzzy. and now here you were in front of her, moving your body in ways that ellie had only dreamed of witnessing firsthand. literally. 

with the alcohol swiftly entering her system with every second that went by, she started to move to the music with you. only a minute went by before her hands were planted on your hips, unable to stop herself before doing so. though, you didn’t seem to mind, if anything it looked like you had closed the remaining gap between the two of you. not ellie.

with your bodies touching with every movement, and ellie’s hands on your hips, it became very intimate. very fast. ellie’s mind was no longer racing at the thought of you being this close to her, instead, it felt like it ignited something inside of her. between the sensual music blaring, the alcohol and most imporantly your chest brushing against ellie’s own every chance it got, she was losing control over herself. 

finally, ellie removed a hand from your hip, bringing it up to your cheek. she held it there for a second, looking into your eyes as she did. you stared back with the same intensity and ellie knew she wasn’t going to be able to stop herself. she watched as you glanced down to her lips, you saw the makings of a smirk before her lips were on yours. 

for a second, ellie thought she was going to wake up. that this had been a dream somehow, she’s had a similar one before with you in it, but when she felt your hands lightly tugging on her hair she knew she couldn’t be fake. ellie pulled you closer, the people around you both be damned, she just wanted more of you. her hands were now wrapped around you, resting on your lower back while your tongue slipped into her mouth. 

ellie groaned. which you shouldn’t have been able to hear, but you felt the vibration on your lips. ellie didn’t care anyway, not when your body was pressed against hers and she could feel very inch of you. 

ellie was no where near finished, but you had pulled away. the music was no longer muffled in her ears, and she was desperately clinging to the sensation you left on her lips. but your attention had been moved to your phone. 

“sorry, i could feel it buzzing non-stop in my pocket. my friend’s calling me, can we go outside?”

shit. shit. shit. shit. “yeah, no problem,” big problem. big big problem. 

ellie followed you outside, preparing herself for the worst. as the night air slapped ellie in the face, her thoughts became more clear. i kissed you. you kissed me back. 

you put the phone to your ear, and ellie made herself busy by pretending to look at her own phone, scrolling through her settings. 

“hey shauna, sorry i didn’t see your calls, i’m on a da– what?” your voice, that had been caring a rather happy tone turned cold, and undeniably shocked. 

“do they know who did it?” you asked, turning away from ellie and slowly pacing as you listened to whatever shuana was saying. you nodded your head a few times before speaking again, “do you want me to come over?” your voice started to shake, and for a second ellie regretted her decision. this will be good for you. in time you’ll realize she was no good for you. 

“okay…if you need anything, i mean anything shuana, please call me.” 

ellie looked up from her phone, an eyebrow raised slightly. “everything okay?” she chirped, sliding her phone into her pocket. you turned around, those beautiful shimmering eyes glistening with tears. “hey, whats wrong?” ellie moved closer, her tone soft and welcoming. 

“my best friends mom was just murdered,” you managed to choke out, and before you could say more, ellie’s arms were wrapped around you tightly. she knew you’d hurt for a while, and that was okay. she would be kind of weirded out if you weren’t, but with time she knew you’d be better. you’d both be better with each other. your face was buried in ellie’s neck with tears marking her shirt while she rubbed your back slowly. 

ellie was calming you the best she could, whispering a soft ‘it’ll be okay’ every few seconds that you remained in the crook of her neck. 

you spoke against her skin softly, your voice sounding weak and defeated, “can you walk me home, ellie? please?” 

“of course,” she kissed the top of your head, not letting you out of the hug until you pulled back. you locked your arms around hers, using her for support as she walked you home. 

ellie had to remind herself to ask you how to get there, after already taking one right turn by accident she was scared you’d question why. but obviously your mind was elsewhere. 

ellie knew her night with you was over, that she would remeince on your shared kiss for days to come until you felt well enough to see her again. to kiss me again. the walk was silent, not an uncomfortable silent but a shared understanding that the mood was low, and ellie was content just being with you, she didn’t need to talk. she was prepared to walk you all the way up to your door, and tell you to call her if you needed anything but when she stopped at the main door to your apartment, you looked back at her with doefully sad eyes. 

“can you stay with me?” 

can you stay with me. rang in her ears like a song. don’t smile. dont fucking smile.

“yeah, i’ll stay with you.” 

you brought her inside, and ellie looked around like she had never been here before. the apartment was dark, and you didn’t go to turn on any of the lights. instead, ellie followed you into your room, choosing to ignore the mess that was your apartment. she decided to focus on you, and when you sunk into your bed, ellie was next to you in a heart beat. 

she didn’t move to cuddle you, fearing she would be over stepping. im in your bed. and youre in it too. like a kid on christmas morning, but your soft crying brought her back down to reality. you shifted, bringing your body up against ellie’s for the second time tonight, resting your head on her shoulder with an arm draped over her. ellie wanted to hold her breath, scared you’d move at the slightest movement from her but you were leaning on her for comfort. her whole plan was to comfort you back to normal. 

her hand moved to your back, and the slow circles she rubbed lulled you to sleep. but ellie was still wide awake. 

————

tags <3 @aouiaa @kissmxcheek @spaceshipellie @strgrlxox @machetegirl109 @uraesthete @mousymaven @ucannotcompare @imahallucination11 @thatgiraffefromtlou @cjrights @sc0ttstre3ted @nicolicht @p1llowthoughtss @ellabsmasc

((sorry if you’ve seen this already and are getting tagged i totally forgot when i posted!!))

[unoriginal-and-dumb]

i need to know everything about your infected like. now

Okay Dokay! (I’m gonna say everything that comes to mind I might miss stuff or repeat previously said things but I love never re-reading what I wrote)

God I got a lot to say sorry, I put this at the bottom too but if anyone ever has specific questions I will be (very) happy to answer them!!!

Infected is, at face value, pretty good at kinda acting like Kasper. Which is why nobody else really seems too bothered by his switch up besides Lampert. Lampert knew him best and for REAL so, well yea you know. He would know when his best friend is acting wrongggg

I think that the virus was inside the roomba that infected has in their apartment. The irony is too perfect, because I don’t imagine Kasper being gods cleanest fella so the idea of the thing that basically wiped out his consciousness coming from something he got to try and start being cleaner. I think he would’ve gotten the roomba because Lampert was basically begging him to do something to try and fix his fuck ass apartment

The virus itself feeds off of consciousness, it overwhelms and takes over the pervious one then kinda produces a shitty copy of it so it can continue feed off any form of consciousness that could’ve been

Infected MAY have the iq of wall paper. Stupid and dumb.

Infected kinda just has like 0 form of self preservation because the virus itself doesn’t really… understand it I guess? It’s more of like a “FEELING PAIN IS A WASTE OF TIME!” Although it wouldn’t just be pain-centric. He just kinda does fuck-all because it’s fun or everyone else does it or whatever

The error pattern on his arm (and other parts of his body tbh) can spread to other things via touch, but it doesn’t really just stay there

The virus is kinda weird because it’s like. Very much digital but it also is clearly affecting him physically? So it kinda just. Is both things at once I dunno magic elevator magic virus yellow person with dot eyes and no nose what can I say.

Infected is a flat and static character, he is unchanging as is, he is only the face value personality of Kasper, it’s like trying to hold a conversation with a half baked answer machine. After a while he kinda just starts repeating things.

Infected is friends with Split and Poob, as mentioned on the wiki. It’s not even remotely comparable to what Kasper and Lampert had though (😢). They are more of like yea let’s invite Infected over to a party since he kinda seems to just stand in the corner and be a freak. They enjoy Infected’s presence, but again it’s like speaking to an answer machine after awhile

Kasper would frequently change up his look, keeping a few things like his hat always but he was like constantly trying out different colors and whatever clothing stuff, but when he became Infected he kind of jsut got stuck on the tough guys wear pink shirt era (going full npc, wearing literally nothing else because ah yes this is Kasper and I am “Kasper”)

Almost nothing truly gets to infected, yea he’s upset about pop tart but it’s all very shallow and more played off as a joke. Bros life is all sunshine and rainbows wait till he hears about taxes 😭

^ however, it’s not impossible for things to really break through for them. Albeit really just not that likely, they could be made SUPER MEGA UPSET! It’s times like that when he actually seems to have even just undertones of Kasper existing (which is why, despite Lampert HATING infected, I think there would be a time he shoves those feelings aside and tries to comfort infected because that’s still his best friends face)

Infected cannot stand be called Kasper. He ignores it for a bit but after a while he lashes out pretty badly. To be fair though, having 0 memories of someone but everyone else claiming you are them is kinda weird

Infected (specifically) would sound like cooper2723, shitty mic and all

Infected skates like skate 3. He does that speed glitch every time and nobody gets it. He also sometimes rolls full force into a curb and just flies off the skate board (he forgort)

Eczema rep as mentioned before, the stupid error texture is super extremely itchy, but that’s also why it’s spread so much because he fucking scratches the hell outta it. It also just hurts in general (LIKE IF U HAD SAND PAPER. ON UR SKIN. ALWAYS.) but again 0 sense of self preservation bruh don’t give a fuck

He wears the arm warmer to try and hide the error texture. He consciously does not really have a reason but it is in order for the virus to try and be more discreet. Not many people have really taken a notice or care at least so it’s kinda working..? (Not rlly it’s pretty obvious)

Infected HATES unpleasant a blood curdling amount. It doesn’t matter if unpleasant does literally nothing they will blame EVERYTHING on unpleasant. Uh oh bad weather? It’s that fucking gradient’s fault

Infected sometimes just starts tweaking. Like straight Blair witching or honestly even like the boss in s2 of smiling friends. He goes right back to normal but he just does that sometimes (it’s because there’s another backseat driver getting pissed off and existing again before going bed bye go the next however long)

Kasper had pretty bad anger issues but he was able to not start genuinely losing it. Infected however. Infected is gods happiest/angriest soldier

He could be a real smiler, a real big yaaaayyyyyy typa fella one second but one thing sets him off and he is a nightmare to be around. We talking cod lobby throwing shit hair pulling slur yelling type stuff

Infected lives on energy drinks.

They also don’t really sleep, it’s seen as a waste of time when he could be saying terrible things online or skateboarding off a building. Only real time he does anything that a normal human NEEDS to do is when he’s like sims 4 forced to (I.e straight up passing tf out on the floor)

I made this up because I wanted BOTH but his stupid ass SNOT, when it’s green that’s just icky snot when it’s pink that’s not snot or blood but a malicious 3rd option (the error infection thing, although it is kind of just like blood for him at least)

Infected doesn’t really realize that people change appearance over time and that’s like normal so he may do absolutely fuckall half the time but he does maintain appearance (hair cut/dye clothes) and stuff very well because they think they have to look exactly like how Kasper did at the point of infection

Errr he’s aroace :) and trans :) yah :) because kasper is :) 🧡💛🤍🩵💙🧡💛🤍🩵💙🧡💛🤍🩵💙🧡💛🤍🩵💙 yaaaayyyyyyyyyyy

Infected’s eyes actually are white, that’s not just stylistic choice. Or at least they kinda catch the light the way a cat’s does. He is very very eerie in the dark because of this. The error pattern is unaffected by lighting (because. It’s an error texture.) so that combined with white ass eyes and some guy who stands and moves like something else puppeteering a human is… eerie.

He’s Wasian! Korean-American specifically. He does have a Korean name but really just doesn’t go by it ever

This isn’t Infected-centric but relating to Kasper, he grew up mainly with his mom cuz his dad peaced tf out (lol). He did like his dad though, which is why he wore the hat all the time, at this point though he doesn’t really care about his dad and just wears it because it’s his fucking hat and he does not take that shit off

Infected constantly acts out of it, extreme fever style. Weird forgetful says nonsense half the time and just laughs at everything when he’s not busy smiling creepily

Infected is indifferent on everyone, he doesn’t particularly hold grudges (he just forgets about any arguments in general or ignores them) he only really hates unpleasant

He isn’t really enemy to anyone due to the infection trying to get a good way to spread (if ur around a bunch of people all the time, I mean likeeee)

There’s other things but this is very long and I dunno, if anyone has specific questions I’d be happy to answer!!!

[lefarte]

How would they take care of a sick friend?

Characters: Levi, Olivia, Daan, Pav

Some of these could be read as platonic

A/N: This is… entirely self indulgent because I myself am sick….😭 but also hey hii hello. This was very comforting for me. No one requested it, but I actually wrote this a long time ago in my notepad app before I even made this blog. I learned a lot about writing in this time so I’m sorry if the quality is a bit worse.

TWS: sickness (obviously)

Levi

Levi has been through this before. He’s been sick more times in his life than he’s been healthy at this point. He knows what to do. He talks you through it slowly and precisely, he holds you hair back when you throw up, he changes your blankets when they get covered in sweat… he would never make you feel gross or ashamed, no matter how bad it gets.

That said, his personality isn’t going to completely flip on itself just because you’re sick. He wants to help you, but he is naturally timid. It might be awkward for a while. He struggles to carry a conversation at the best of times. Much less when you are in so much pain…

And depending on how feverish you are, it might be scary to fall in and out of sleep and see him staring at you from across the room with his big ass eyes. (It’s not his fault, he’s just worried.)

I also imagine he’s the type of guy who gets sick when he sees other people sick. So he’ll be holding back his own nausea for until you’re asleep, or until you’re back on your feet. Until then he would be on high alert, even more vigilant than usual. If an enemy made it inside while you were vulnerable, he would never forgive himself. So he’d pull out all the stops, barricading the doors, covering the windows… (even if it’s not necessary and you’re in a safe place, like the train.)

Hope you don’t plan on going anywhere once you get up because he’s going to get sick too now 💔

—

Olivia

She’s going to be all over you. Of course she doesn’t want to be overbearing, but she really doesn’t want to see her friend in pain! And she can’t wait to impress you with her knowledge of botany. She has something for every symptom, an oil or lotion or extract. If she doesn’t have it, she will track it down!

She really loves the feeling of you depending on her. This is a rare opportunity for her to prove her skills to you, and to herself. And there is no one better to understand your pain than her! She knows the feeling of being trapped in bed rest, antsy and lonely, better than anyone else.

Olivia is determined not to let you feel that way. She cares about you. She wants you to get better! If you refuse her advice or try to pretend like you’re not sick, she will be dejected.

She will try to take you outside to look at the flowers and get some sunshine, and she explains every flower in detail. (She would be happy to do that anyway.) She even brings you little bugs, and if she’s lucky, a frog or a lizard!

Will share her comfort items with you. She has weighted blankets, lots of medicine, and heat pads!

She reads books to you, and her voice is so beautiful you’ll fall asleep.

—

Daan

He lowkey feels guilty for failing to take care of you

After everything he lost, you’re his treasure! He would give you the best bedside care you’ve ever imagined, you’d never want for anything. All the stops, backrubs, cuddles, cleaning your forehead with rags. He would even pull out some tricks from his old butler days and make you some yummy soup.

If you look at him with big sad eyes or god forbid he sees a single tear, he’s whipping out the Sylvian magic. You’d have to beg him not to.

He absolutely would give you kisses, doesn’t care a bit if he gets sick. “Nothing that an ibuprofen and some cigarettes can’t fix, my darling.”

He would straight up give you opium if you asked, there is literally no better partner if you’re easily sick or chronically ill. Your face would be covered in lipstick kisses by the time it’s over.

Immediately after he’s done, he would go back to being a sarcastic and calm guy. Perhaps a little shy?

—

Pav

“Have a beer, sweetheart.”

This is not… the best person to be stuck with in this scenario. Because of his experience in the war, his pain scale is a little screwy, so it would take a lot for him to be concerned.

He still sticks around you though. He’s loyal to a fault with his partner, I truly believe this, he’s protective and affectionate. He would not abandon you at your weakest, no no no no. That’d be cruel.

He holds your hair up when you throw up. He will draw you a bath or or give you cuddles! He’s definitely a bit more accomadating when you’re sick.

Pav doesn’t mind kissing you when you’re sick. He tells you he’s never been sick before, in his life. You’ve certainly never seen like it in front of you, but if he’s lying, it’s totally debateable. It could be that he does get sick, he’s good at hiding it. But knowing that, he’d still give you hundreds of kisses all over.

You have the honor of sharing snacks with him (greedy hoarding bastard). If you’re good.

[fnlbeautifca]

the other day i was thinking about how cute it would be if all the Lis personalities swapped around

i figured:

kylar personality -> whitney

sydney personality -> alex

robin personality -> eden

whitney personality -> robin

eden personality -> sydney

avery personality -> kylar

alex personality -> avery

yapping below… ���💖

(yes i did just really want to think about timid yandere whitney. dont judge me…)

i had this in my drafts for a while… this is more just me typing random things with no real plot or structure . so do not expect a full fleshed out story :3c idk if i will expand on this in the future so here is this…

anyway i think it would be silly… i like to think it just magically happens one day and pc has to go on a wild adventure to fix everything because kylar acting like a snob and robin acting like a jerkwad throws off the balance of the ecosystem

okay… anyway… the first person you run into is, of course, robin… you go to get them to walk to school with you, but they tell you to screw off and slam their bedroom door in your face. well thats very new. you dont want to make them more upset, so you just head off to school on your own.

the next person you see is whitney. well they see you, then rather creepily tugs on your sleeve. you expect kylar to be asking you for “alone time,” but no, whitney is asking you instead. “is this a joke?” you ask, and whitney looks genuinely taken aback, they assure you its not, and slink away like a kicked puppy at the rejection of their advances. you tried to wrap your head around the sudden change in the two— maybe it was just a coincidence. yes, a coincidence! a weird off day… maybe you could go confide in sydney…

lunch rolls around, and sydney isnt at their usual table. weird, maybe they got swamped with work in the library…? you make your way there, and they sit at their counter, working. when you approach, at first they meet you with a mean glare, but their face softens when they see its you. “hello.” is all they say. you try to make conversation, but theyre much less talkative than usual. whenever someone comes in with a late book, they have a genuinely irritated and upset look on their face, sending the book criminal off with a couple of harsh words. when lunch is over, you quietly leave the library.

after school you bump into kylar, and say hello. they dont return the politeness, and insist on a date tonight at a fancy restaurant. they seem to almost look down on you… you reject the date, and they scoff, and turn away.

while walking to your job at the cafe, you bump into avery, who is for once not in their car stalking the streets for you. they talk louder than normal, and is strangely friendly. before they wanted to keep up their appearance, but even as people give sideways looks at them, they dont seem to care all too much. they insist on buying you something to eat, and send you off after your mini date.

next, you bump into eden. literally! you hadnt visited them in a while, and fearing the worst, you brace yourself to be dragged off back to the forest… but it never comes. instead, they politely ask if you will visit again soon. they dont even seem to be too mad, more like a sad puppy. you tell them that you will come visit soon, and immediately get on a bus after they leave, to go straight to the countryside.

the sun is lower in the sky by the time you get to alex’s farm, but when you get there, you can see alex lecturing a group of workers who were caught with beer. knowing alex’s inclinations, you question them as the workers slink off to finish up what they were doing. alex teaches you about the importance of being in control of your vices. it is all very strange

when the sun is below the horizon, you go home, thoroughly confused about what happened today. since when was alex so uptight? sydney so cold? robin so mean? kylar so stuck up? whitney so timid? eden so meek? avery so friendly?… you may never know, but you hope this problem resolves itself

also sorry if i didnt get the personalities completely right 😔 i am sleepy and i dont really hang out with anyone who isnt whitney a whole lot so… do not judge me too bad!! i did my best

[tryslora]

Hi

Do you have any advice on dialogue and how to make it flow?

I'm constantly stuck with "he said as he looked away"

"He smirked and replied"

It never feels flowy

I don't write fics I mostly write OC stuff so I have to build around my characters to really put them together.

It's just having my quiet and stoic character respond to the hyperactive pyromaniac is hard because one doesn't speak much and the other speaks too much.

Or when my other two characters are in the conversation it gets all messy and hard to keep up with who is talking and what they're doing.

Maybe I'm just blind to my own writing and don't see everything I want to see, yknow?

Hullo, Nonnie.

I’m so sorry for taking so long to reply to this question! Life has been… a particular form of chaos for the last couple of months, and I’m trying to wrangle all my tasks under control now. Which includes keeping up with responses and blogging!

ANYWAY. You’ve asked a really great question, and I’ll admit, I might struggle to answer it.

I’m one of those folks for whom the personalities come first—complete with dialogue patterns and habits—before I get descriptions, setting, plot, or oh… anything else… so breaking down how to best make your dialogue snappy and flow means taking a step back from what I do and looking at how I do it.

This is going to be a mix of advice from how I do things, and advice I’ve adopted and found useful from other writers.

First and foremost: there are two parts to creating natural, flowing dialogue. One is the dialogue itself—the words the characters choose, and how they come out—and the other is the description around it (such as the dialogue tags you reference in your examples). They have different focuses, but both are important to how the text flows.

I’m going to drop a caveat here first, because it’s my downfall: we, as humans (and uh, especially those of us with ADHD, *cough cough me*), have a tendency to repeat ourselves. We also um, ah, like, y’know, a lot. Some of this is fantastic in dialogue. Too much can change flow into drag. So. With everything else I say, please take that into account as well. When I’m editing, I have been learning to trim out the spaces where I am saying or doing the same thing multiple times in a few paragraphs. BUT. That’s the important part—it can ALL be fixed in edits!

Let’s talk words first. You say you have quiet and stoic character matched up with a hyperactive chatterbox (a dynamic I enjoy). And you’re right, this can be tough when the stoic character is like “grunt” or “mm” or “yeah” and there’s nothing else coming out. BUT. This is true to the character and gives great insight—in this case, the character’s actual dialogue is going to come from their actions. So, we’ll get to that.

The thing with the stoic character is that every word needs to mean something. Every word they say is going to be solid and important because they say so little. It might even be overloaded. I’ll admit, with this kind of character, I love writing from their POV because I can put the few words out into the open, but let them ramble inside their own head (which yes, can sometimes be like pulling teeth). I get that flow out of their thoughts more than what they say. The freebie story I drafted for my newsletter subscribers is an outtake missing scene from my next book written from the point of view of my (more) stoic character in the book, because I wanted to play with that myself.

For the chatterbox, I’m curious—do they talk so much in order to hide what they’re really feeling? I know most of my talkative characters are spilling everything in order to hide in plain sight. After all, if you’ve left every card on the table, no one can claim you’re hiding something. Even if you are leaving that one important thing out (keeping a last ace up your sleeve), no one will notice in the glut of other information.

One way to handle this is to have the stoic character really listen and pay attention to what’s underneath all the chatter. Let them respond to the one thing that really means something in the flow of words, which might stop your chatterbox in their tracks. Being seen/heard can be a shock for the kind of character who lets it all hang out.

Let’s get back to those dialogue tags and talk about actions. Every character (every person!) has body language that does a lot of the talking for them. If someone’s arms are crossed, they might be resistant to and idea, or they might be cold, or they might be trying to hold themself still. One of the things I’ve done is to roleplay my character through a scene—move like they move, fall into why they say what they say, and what they do when they are not saying something to hold back. What actions do they take, and how can I put that on the page? Not just movement, but also what do they smell/see, what’s going on inside their head, and all the why involved.

And here’s the thing: sometimes “He says” is a valid way to do it. It’s okay. Let the dialogue do its thing and don’t worry. Remember, you can add blocking later, if you need it. 

Here, quick example from one of my serialized pieces:

“I don’t feel like I can talk to Hannah.” Nevaeh scrunches up her nose. “God, no, I don’t mean that I want to be involved with her. Just. She was so weird about Stevie, and I think she might get even weirder if I asked Liz out. And I don’t know if Liz is even ready to do dating things. Or if she’s into girls! We’ve never talked about it. Why is it all so weird and complicated?” That’s one thing Pawel can answer. “Because humans are gloriously complicated beings, and we have a tendency to take even things that could be simple and overcomplicate them by worrying at them. Anxiety, intelligence, fear… they all make things feel big. And these questions are both very big and very small all at once.” “Because labels are helpful, but not necessary,” Nevaeh says. “Because they make it easier and harder all at once.” “Yes.” He’s not sure if she really gets it, so he adds, “Follow your heart.” “Is that what you do?” No, it’s not. Pawel has too many things to weigh before he can make any decisions. His career. The kids in his care. His own son. There are so many variables in his life, and he hasn’t had any chance to just leap after emotional responses. Not since Conor was conceived. Not since Chelsea first disappeared. “When I can.” He glances sideways at her, away from where Alanna and Jennie have finally stopped their game and are on the swings. “I’m glad you feel comfortable talking to me.”

This is a chatterbox teen talking to the guy her two dads are trying to bring into their relationship. And Pawel is a chatterbox as well, but he’s definitely the kind who will talk constantly in order to not say a lot of things, which is illustrated by letting him ramble internally in the final paragraph of the example.

Also, they’ve been given a setting where they are both somewhat distracted by two of Neveah’s siblings playing at the park, so they have something to do. If I were better, I’d have included things about summer scents, the sky, etc. etc. in the descriptions (they are my downfall).

If you look at the dialogue, you’ll see that the sentences are all over the place in length. Long ones, short ones, and ones that aren’t much more than fragments. I try to echo how people really talk, but avoid the pitfalls of things getting circular or buried in extra words (except Neveah says “like” a lot and it is absolutely on purpose).

One of the biggest things for me is being inside the head of the point of view character. Being able to hear the things they don’t say can really help when it feels like they aren’t saying anything, and you a build a whole story in those subtleties. Kind of like having subtitles that interpret what’s happening rather than what’s said.

If you have a lot of characters, it’s going to get confusing—90% of the book I excerpted above included multiple adults on screen and 7 or 8 kids. It was chaos. People talk over each other. In those cases a simple “Neveah says” is the easiest tag. Let them talk, and let the dialogue shine. And if characters have quirks, let those shine, too. If someone’s screaming about sugary desserts in that book, it’s probably Jennie—no need for an attribution. Growling is Leo. Finishing each others’ sentences are Emma and Conor. Spattered with “like” is Neveah. Little quirks and details are things you can hang a lot on.

And just to say… yeah, we’re all blind to our own writing. It happens. We are so close to our own words that it’s hard to see them as words anymore. I usually have to set something aside for months if I want to do a truly deep edit on it, because I need to see it as Not Mine first. Then I can be objective. Do you have a reader? Either an alpha cheerleader, or a beta you trust? That’s the best. They can tell you if they trip over something, or if something feels stilted. Or if you’ve had someone shrug six times on one page (I certainly do that, like, all the freakin’  TIME).

And in the end, less is more. It’s okay to strip things back and focus more on sentence length and how words taste in your mouth if you read them aloud. It’s okay to write just the conversation first, then figure out how they move around each other while talking. It’s okay to write the blocking first, then fit the dialogue around that. Sometimes stepping back to one piece of the puzzle helps the other one shine in your mind’s eye.

I’ve rambled a lot, and I’m not sure if this is what you were looking for. And uh, again, I’m sorry how late this response it. I really hope you are still here and see this!!

Best of luck with your words, Nonnie. And remember: whatever you write today, that’s another step on your writing journey. It’s okay to delete them, edit them, love them, put them in a box for later… whatever you want to do. Just write them, and tomorrow write a little more. Even if this isn’t your final book, pieces of it will come back in another way later. I’m currently writing “fic” of people I’ve been building over the last uhhh thirty or so years. 

Enjoy your characters and your stories. And remember, everything comes with time. Keep writing, and keep learning. You’ve got this!

[dragonfly0808]

S1 ch8

To this day one of my fave chapter titles and one of my fave chapters overall, I was so excited to write a whole chapter from the boys’ POV and I tried very hard to really get across their personalities and how they each think of their squad, I remember I spent like a week planning the chapter and then another week writing and editing just to make it perfect, and I’m still very proud of this chapter.

First: Sky being so proud of his team and of himself for getting jobs not due to his royal status but due to their hard work.

First mention of Shirley, though no name drop. And, in case yall didn’t know in this chapter Riven makes mention of Cloud Tower inscriptions -“Have you started preparing the papers and the essay?” Another pause, “I know it’s still a long time for the due date but it’s best to start preparing now.” Another longer pause and Riven sighed heavily, “Just listen to me for once please. Start checking everything. - cause originally Shirley was older and was gonna start Cloud Tower in s2 instead of s3 but then I made a very soft reboot of her age (cause I realized I wanted her to be close in age to Roxy so she could be part of that squad) so that’s a little fun fact right there.

THE BOYS DON’T EVEN REALLY KNOW EACH OTHER YET, THEY’RE JUST STARTING TO LEARN ABOUT THE OTHER AAAAHHHHH

This makes me very emotional, again, them just starting their friendship, what do you mean I once wrote them before they were bonded for life and brothers?

Tiny Brandon POV, mostly to show that his main trait is being a protector cause it’s Brandon duh.

Riven taking charge of the situation! Being instinctually protective and trying to distract the everyone so they won’t be scared. 

Idk why I wrote Flora a lot more… she’s bowing and shit? I think that was gonna be a Healer thing from Lynphea but then I forgot and never brought it up again

Tecna being exhausted from keeping the Owl from sinking for a minute… ugggh they really had a power crawl didn’t they?

Damn, the days when the girls were inexperienced and the boys were justified in trying to keep them away from the action… so much has changed

Timmy’s POV, trying to fix the walkie talkie and everytime he gets a clear voice someone just snatches it away ajajajajajajjjajaa

All of them panicking and fighting, they’re still learning how to be a team! -Soon all four of them were yelling, all sense of compatriot ship forgotten in the face of panic.-

“The plants were scared?” Riven’s tone became dismissive, which earned him a few angry glances from the other girls when Flora shrank into herself.

“Hey, she just kinda saved your asses so watch the tone.” Musa was quick to retort, stepping in front of Flora.

“It’s fine Musa-”

“No it’s not. Now, are you gonna keep being idiots and insist that you don’t need anyone, or are you going to let us help you so we can find the troll and get this over with?” Musa didn’t wait for an answer, whipping around and taking the lead, dragging Flora with her.

Musa’s ride-or-die ass showing itself for the first time. And Flora used to be so quick to back down it makes me want to cry!!!!

Tecna awkwardly hovering around Timmy, trying to help him fix the walkie but not knowing how to engage in conversation, the start of their dynamic, I’m dying.

And finally, a longer Brandon POV to show his connection with Stella and we see Stella’s first instinct is to take care of and protect the girls. I think this is when I finally started to figure out how I wanted to write Stella.

————

It might seem weird to see me essentially fangirling over my own fic but I don’t even care I’m proud of my baby and it’s been AGES since I even read s1, I have like 3 scenes i’ve gone back to to check details but aside from that, this is like reading it for the first time to me

[oboetemasuka]

Order of Attack, part 17

If all goes according to plan, there's one part left after this.

But since when do things ever go according to plan?

Watch me finally write a Normal Conversation between Mahiru and Amane after writing a ton of angsty comfort conversations behind closed doors.

-

“Amane-chan, what brings you here?” Mahiru asked as the little figure peeked out from the opening door.

“Nothing special. I just wanted to talk,” Amane responded. She stepped out of the door’s path, letting it close behind her.

“So this is an ordinary visit?”

“Yes. What else would it be?”

“You usually don't seek me out just to hang out…”

“That is true. But even if I do not have important words to impart to you…”

As Amane tried to find the right words, Mahiru chuckled.

“Is something funny?”

“Oh, it's just… I miss seeing this side of you.”

Amane smiled and swiped at her bangs with her sleeve. “As I was saying, I do enjoy your company even if I do not have anything meaningful to say.”

“I’m glad you do.” Mahiru’s gaze was focused on the sleeves. “Mind if I fix those for you?” she asked, gesturing at them.

Amane paused in contemplation.

“I just wanted to offer,” Mahiru added quickly. “It's fine if you-”

Amane nodded. “Okay.”

Mahiru began to roll up one of Amane's sleeves. “You know, you were so eager to return to your cell when everything calmed down…”

“That does not mean it is the end of us spending time together.”

“I thought you'd gotten tired of us.”

“A little.” The room was quiet for a moment. “More than a little.”

“Well, I'm glad you came back.” Mahiru arranged the sleeve strap like a bow.

“I was not going to leave forever. I just… needed some time to myself. Some time to breathe.”

“And how has that been?”

“It has been much calmer. My neighbor is not keeping me up as much these days.”

Mahiru put a pin on Amane's sleeve. “Well, I'm glad Mikoto-kun is feeling better. I feel bad for not reaching out to him more.”

“Don't be. He was not so keen on accepting help in the first place.”

“Hmm, that reminds me of someone.”

“No, it does not.”

“For someone so eager to give out help, you're so unwilling to accept it in turn.”

“I do not know what you are talking about.”

“Back during the intermission, you wouldn't have accepted my help with the sleeves. You would have made a show of pulling them up yourself instead.” Mahiru got to work on the other sleeve.

“…I admit that is true.”

“So what changed?”

“Mobility has its perks.”

“Did Yuno-chan tell you that?”

“Yes. And… I realized that sometimes…” Amane looked up pensively. “We get more things done as a team.”

Maybe I should have gone to Mahiru-san instead of trying to help on my own when things with Fuuta-san got worse.

“Is there something you wish you had done differently?” Mahiru asked, snapping her out of her contemplation.

“N-no… All of my actions were my own… I wouldn't have them any other way.”

Amane’s recurring nightmares told a different story, but Mahiru knew not to press the issue.

“Anything we could have done differently…?”

Of course, the guilt seemed to get to Mahiru more than anyone else. But Amane never blamed her.

“What is done is done. I think you did well, considering how alarming the circumstances were.”

“Oh? That means a lot.” Mahiru finished the other sleeve and gave it a gentle pat. “There you go. Wow, this fabric is really tough.”

“Indeed. Every night, it manages to patch itself over.”

Amane ran her now-free hand through her bangs.

“Would you like me to do your hair too?”

“…Sure. Why not?”

While Mahiru went to get a comb from the vanity, Amane held her eyepatch in place with one hand and carefully pulled the elastic off from around her head.

“Maybe we could stand to be more persistent,” Mahiru said as she started combing Amane’s hair. “Enough force seems to work against the fabric.”

“But it is quite exhausting. Not worth the effort.”

“Well, as long as we have other ways to deal with the sleeves…” After Mahiru finished clipping Amane's bangs to the side, she paused to admire the hairstyle. “Say, this suits you. How about some pigtails?”

Amane nodded, and Mahiru moved behind her to brush the rest of her hair.

“And your outfit…” The black skirt falling to Amane’s knees was hard to miss, and Mahiru could surely see the scrunched collar of her blouse from that angle. “You picked it yourself? You have good taste.”

“Thank you. I figured I deserve a treat for being a good girl.”

“You have always been a good girl. Don't let anyone say otherwise.”

“…It is not that easy.”

“Then big sis Mahiru will stand by you and tell anyone who dares disagree that Amane-chan is the sweetest and most kind-hearted person I have ever met.” Mahiru patted her shoulder.

Amane chuckled, but then her breath caught on her ribs.

“Oh, sorry! I didn't mean-”

“It is fine. …It means a lot. Perhaps they will see reason in such a good-natured person as yourself.”

“I'm flattered.” Mahiru added one last clip. “All done! What do you think?” She picked up a mirror from the vanity and handed it to Amane.

As Amane examined her reflection, she made a wide grin. “I… I like it. It is very much my style. You are very talented, Mahiru-san.”

“Thank you! Say, why don't we take a walk around the panopticon? Show everyone that you're in high spirits. Maybe even pay a visit to Muu-chan to cheer her up.”

“I would love to do that.”

[thenerdykneazle]

Sallow Soul - Fusion

Summary: Sebastian freaks out when MC disappears. Once she's back, she agrees to talk to him, but then she overhears something that sends her running again. Things culminate in a rather explosive argument - and more. Even so, all is not as it seems to Sebastian.

Sebastian Sallow x F!MC

Warnings: 18+, sexually explicit content, aged-up characters, angst, toxic relationship, bit of a breeding kink

Word count: 11,247

Read on AO3. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 5. MC's perspective (Kindred Spirits).

Part 4: Fusion

In lieu of his normal run, Sebastian paced around his flat on Wednesday morning as he tried to come up with what to say to MC. He considered everything from demanding another chance to laying his soul bare to “I am but a worm desperate to return to your soil.” It all sounded terrible. He had all but lost hope at the prospect of reconciliation. He was starting to wonder if he could ever even be happy. His whole life had been blown up – Anne was gone, Ominis was estranged, and MC hated him – and he had no one to blame but himself. There were no words to fix what he had done – even before the mess of things he’d made more recently. He resigned to be honest with MC about how much he had missed her, how sorry he was, and how ardently he wished to have her back. The rest would be up to her.

All throughout the morning training, Sebastian tried to steal a moment with MC. He struggled, though. Sofia seemed intent on partnering with her. Sebastian tried catching MC between drills, but Mikko kept coming up to praise his performance or ask for advice. Normally, Sebastian would preen at the compliments. Given the current circumstances, they just annoyed him.

He was stuck behind her on the walk to the cafeteria – too far away to talk to her, although it did give him a rather prime view of her arse. It was hardly his fault. The sway of her hips was damn near hypnotising, and she’d changed into leggings after her shower, which wasn’t helping. He could see the cleft of each cheek, and it made images of her arse in nothing but a green G-string flash into his mind. Gods, it’d have been so easy to pull that string to the side and fuck her from behind. Sebastian shook the thought from his head before Sofia could overhear it or his body could get too excited by it. Besides, he needed to focus on the task at hand, as tempting as it was to take full advantage of the fleeting chances he had to memorise every detail of her. The memories would fade, anyway. They always did.

At lunch, Sofia and Mikko separated him from MC at the table, so he couldn’t easily lean over and ask for a private chat. He was desperate enough to just shout across the table, but Sofia would not stop rambling long enough for him to break into their conversation.

“I really like his style, because it lends itself to rereads. He has these great twists that you don’t see coming, but then you go back and see all the hints he had dropped leading up to it. It’s just enough to make you feel like you could have guessed it but never enough to actually predict it ahead of time and spoil it for yourself. I can’t give examples, as that’d ruin it, of course, but I will say–”

Sebastian could’ve bashed his head into the table in frustration. Honestly, did that woman breathe? It hardly mattered, though, because Mikko was playing 20 questions with Sebastian about his workout routine, which made it difficult to focus.

“What sort of running shoes do you prefer?”

“Do you always run outside or do you use a treadmill sometimes?”

“Aren’t you worried about slipping on the ice?”

“Do you have to change your shoes for the winter?”

“What sorts of warm-ups do you do?”

He was relentless. Sebastian went for a wee just to remember what his own thoughts sounded like. It turned out to be a rather brilliant decision, because he took the opportunity to walk by MC on his way back.

“Hey, can we talk for a second?” he asked, having resisted the urge to lay a hand on her shoulder.

MC had a look of fear in her eyes as she turned to Sebastian. It was crushing. He hated that his proximity made her so uncomfortable, especially when he wanted nothing more than to just be near her.

Before she could respond, a voice came from over Sebastian’s shoulder. “I wanted to ask you something else about your intervals,” Mikko said.

The large blond was genuinely one of the nicest people Sebastian had ever met, but in that moment, he could’ve garrotted the great git.

“Can it wait?” Sebastian asked through gritted teeth.

Mikko gave him a friendly smile. “I just didn’t want to forget. How often are you doing time intervals vs distance, because I feel like it’s hard to push myself for the timed ones. But when it’s distance, the faster I run, the faster it’s over, you know?”

The man, by all accounts, took working out entirely too seriously. Surely, he had nothing else going on in his life to be this dedicated. Sebastian, on the other hand, had much more pressing matters to attend to.

“Then just do them by distance!” he snapped. He really could not give less of a fuck about Mikko’s intervals.

The whole table stared at Sebastian, who let out an exasperated sigh.

 “Look, mate, we can discuss it later,” he said, clapping a hand on Mikko’s shoulder and willing him to understand the importance of the conversation he was trying to have with MC. “All right?”

Mikko’s eyes narrowed at him in a way that quite unnerved Sebastian. He didn’t know his face could look so unamused, so…unfriendly. “I’d really rather talk now,” Mikko replied. It wasn’t up for discussion, evidently.

Sebastian glanced down to MC, who avoided his gaze, and then Sofia, who had a similar look to Mikko. His jaw tensed as he realised what was happening. It was all intentional. They were keeping him from MC on purpose. He glanced at MC once more in hopes of catching her eye, but he didn’t. “Actually, I’m gonna go get settled in the conference room,” he said as he met Mikko’s hard stare.

Sebastian felt numb as he skulked out of the cafeteria. He didn’t know how to process the fact that people felt the need to protect MC from him. The thought made his breath shutter. Was he still so dangerous – so dark – that the Hero of Hogwarts needed saving from him? He loved her. He wanted to be the one protecting her. He would never hurt her. But, then, he had, hadn’t he? Constantly since they were 15. He might never have used an unforgiveable on her since they were trapped in the Scriptorium, but he had caused her plenty of pain – and when he should’ve been the one easing it.

Sebastian didn’t try to talk to MC again. She clearly wanted space. He would give it to her. He would wait until they got home to try to talk to her. If she refused, he would leave her be for the night and try again in the morning. He just hoped she’d hear him out before she left for England.

As such, he didn’t rush after her when she darted out of the conference room at the end of the training. Unfortunately, when he apparated into his flat after completing his cleaning duties, it was empty. Sebastian wasn’t totally surprised by this. MC had gone out frequently enough. He hoped it was to pick up dinner and not dick this time, though. He didn’t think he could take knowing she was with someone else again, even if they did end up using her bed instead of his.

As the time dragged on, the probability that she had gone out just for food dwindled. An hour after Sebastian had gotten home, he started to feel sick. He was certain she’d run off to some stranger’s arms. Not that he had room to judge her on that front, but that didn’t stop him from hating it. In a rather rash decision, Sebastian snatched up his cloak and headed out. He might’ve stumbled upon a receipt in the pocket of MC’s discarded cloak after her last tryst, so he knew where he was checking first.

But MC wasn’t at that pub. Or the next three he tried. After he had spent two more hours searching, frequently stopping back at his flat to check if she’d returned, Sebastian began to panic. What if something horrible had happened to her? He couldn’t search a whole city on his own.

He sent a patronus to Niko before showing up at his flat. Sebastian implored him for help finding MC. The younger lad folded his arms and arched a brow as he considered the terrified Brit. “Why exactly do you think something bad happened? You said she’s gone out before, yeah?”

“She wasn’t out this late before. Something’s not right. She…She would’ve told me if she wasn’t coming back,” Sebastian argued.

“Weren’t you convinced she was missing last time, though?” Niko argued.

Sebastian huffed. “Yes, but something feels wrong. I’m supposed to keep an eye on her. She knows that. She wouldn’t’ve just disappeared without a word.”

“You think she’d have left a note? ‘Gone out to find a bloke to bang. Might stay at his. Don’t wait up.’”

Sebastian narrowed his gaze at his friend. “That’s not funny.”

Niko shrugged. “I wasn’t really joking. I think you’re crazy–”

Sebastian opened his mouth to argue.

“But,” Niko continued before he could speak. “I’ll help all the same, Sepe.”

Sebastian gave him a small smile. “Thanks, mate.”

“Don’t mention it. I don’t want you getting fired on the off chance she actually is in trouble. I like having you around.”

Sebastian had Niko stay near the flat to keep an eye out for MC returning. Sebastian checked further and further locations. He talked to dozens of people, but no one recalled seeing her. He even sent a patronus to try to find her. It was a long shot, as most magical businesses had wards against spectres. He didn’t get a reply.

He sent Niko home at 2 in the morning. Sebastian himself wandered for another few hours, checking both muggle and magical hospitals, before going to the headquarters. His eyes were heavy, but he was too anxious to sleep as he waited in the hopes that MC would show up. If she didn’t make it to the training, he would file an official report that she was missing. He sent another pantronus, but he still received no reply.

As he waited, a thousand horrific scenarios played through his head on what might’ve become of her: slipping on a patch of ice and cracking her head open, running into some thugs that caught her off guard, going home with the wrong guy who attacked her. She could be unconscious in hospital, being tortured, or already dead. There was nothing he could do about any of it. Sebastian had never felt so powerless since his parents’ deaths back before he had magic.

Sebastian alternated between sitting on one of the weightlifting benches and pacing around the room. He was doing the former when the door to the training room opened a little after 5 in the morning. His head snapped up at the sound, but he sat frozen as he looked at the figure walking toward him. Relief flooded through him as MC walked across the dark room, heading straight for him. He worried that she might be a hallucination until she was in clear view.

 “Hello,” MC said in mild surprise once she spotted Sebastian gaping at her.

It was as if her voice reanimated him, and Sebastian instantly shot to his feet as a fury filled him. “That’s all you have to say? Bleeding ‘hello’?” Sebastian yelled as he marched over to her. He was filled with the inferno of his favourite spells. “Where were you? I was up all night trying to find you!”

MC was clearly caught off guard by his outburst, and she skittered back as he advanced on her. “Sofia let me stay at hers,” she replied as if it were no big deal.

Sebastian breathed out a bitter laugh. He was going to need to have a long chat with Sofia about her meddling into others’ lives. “And you didn’t think to tell me?” he demanded.

MC crossed her arms defiantly over her chest as she glared at him. “I told you I don’t need a babysitter.”

Sebastian gripped handfuls of his hair rather than MC’s shoulders to shake some sense into her. “You are literally the biggest pain in the arse I’ve ever met!”

“Then it’s a good thing you don’t have to deal with me anymore,” MC replied, turning to walk away.

Sebastian’s arms went slack at his sides. What was she implying? She was done with him? Gone? It didn’t make sense. Her things were still at his flat. Or, at least, they had been a few hours ago. That might’ve changed. He felt a new wave of panic rising in his throat. “W-what? You’re not coming home tonight?”

She gave him a disdainful look over her shoulder as she headed for the conference room. “I don’t get to go home until tomorrow. But, no, I’m not staying at your flat tonight if that’s what you meant.”

Sebastian jogged after her as adrenaline flooded his veins. No, no, no. She couldn’t leave. He already had so little time left with her. He was supposed to say things. Memorise her features. Maybe give her a message for Ominis if he could find the words.

“Look, I know I crossed some boundaries the other night…” he started.

MC just scoffed, not bothering to look at him.

“I shouldn’t’ve…propositioned you like that,” he continued. “I just…Look, I know I’m never going to get to see you again after tomorrow. I just want one honest conversation before that.”

MC laughed. It was cruel and humourless. “You make it sound like you’re so torn up over this,” she said acridly. “Doesn’t really fit with how you’ve been acting, though. So, what is your real goal here, Sebastian?”

He sighed, defeated. He didn’t know how to convince her he was telling the truth. “I know I’ve been a git for…forever, essentially. I really do just want closure. I’ll answer all your questions, too. I haven’t been the most rational the last two weeks, but…I’ll try to explain. Tonight, yeah? After I finish cleaning this place.”

MC chewed her lip. “Fine,” she gritted out. “But leave me alone until then.”

Sebastian’s face broke into a smile. She’d agreed! She’d actually agreed to talk with him! “Okay. Yeah,” he said eagerly despite trying to temper his excitement. He didn’t want her to change her mind. “I’m not even here.”

He was so elated that he almost hugged her, but he quickly retracted his hands and clenched them into firsts, which he shoved in his pockets for good measure. He gave her a nod of his head, instead, before jogging out to the conference room. He headed to the holding cells and took a nap in an empty one before training began. It was the best he had slept in days.

At 8, he returned to the training room. Jari made them redo the tests he’d given them on their first day of training. The duelling would be postponed until the following day, so they spent the extra time practising defensive spells.

Having promised to leave MC alone, Sebastian spent lunch talking to Niko. “Looks like your school friend wasn’t dead in a ditch, after all,” Niko whispered, looking rather smug.

“She stayed over at Sofia’s,” Sebastian replied in an equally quiet tone.

“Ah, she’s a unicorn,” Niko said knowingly.

Sebastian gave him a confused look.

“Is that just an American one, then?” Niko asked.

Sebastian shrugged, still befuddled.

“A unicorn,” Niko repeated as if saying the word again made its meaning any clearer. “You know…prefers witches.”

Sebastian snorted out a laugh before covering it with a cough. “Yeah, no. Definitely not,” he said decidedly.

Niko raised an eyebrow at him. “Pretty sure about that, aren’t you?” he said teasingly.

Sebastian’s cheeks heated, but he quickly replied, “Well, it was pretty clear after the whole…wrong bedroom debacle.”

Niko sniggered. “Shit, I’d forgotten that part.”

“Lucky you,” Sebastian intoned as he stabbed his fork into his chicken like it still needed killing. “It’s seared in my brain for life, I think.”

“Yeah, I bet! I mean, you two were close at that boarding school, right? You grew up together? I imagine it’d be like walking in on my sister,” Niko said with a shudder.

“Something like that,” Sebastian replied in a stilted tone. “I’m gonna clear my tray. Want me to take yours?”

“Yeah, sure,” Niko said casually, though he gave Sebastian an odd look. Like he could tell something was off.

“You’re being weird,” Niko stated as they walked to the conference room, lagging a bit behind the rest of the group. Sebastian was actively not staring at MC’s arse even though she’d ended up directly in front of him again and her hips had no less sway to them than they had the day before.

“I’m not being weird,” Sebastian asserted, painfully aware that he’d just been looking at ceiling tiles as they walked.

“You are. You have been all training,” Niko argued. He leaned in toward Sebastian and continued even quieter, “I should say since MC showed up.”

Sebastian shot him a look. “You’re imagining things.”

“I’m not,” Niko said firmly. “I haven’t heard you talk about anyone so much since you first joined our squad and wouldn’t shut up about your ex.”

Sebastian’s eyes darted to Niko before he could stop them. Niko had already been studying his face and looked like something had just clicked into place for him.

“Wait, she’s the chick you banged back in school?” Niko hissed.

 Sebastian shot him a deadly glare.

Niko continued unperturbed, “Bro, you didn’t tell me she had special magic! You focused on the wrong talents – I mean, not that her tongue didn’t sound magical, too, but…damn.”

MC whipped around looking irate, and Sebastian’s heart died in his chest. He was fucked. She glared at him like she hoped it could set him ablaze. His throat dried up, suddenly unable to produce saliva let alone words as MC slipped into the conference room with Sofia.

Jari started talking before Sebastian even made it inside. He sat at the empty seat at the back of the table. MC was up at the front by Jari. He had no hope of explaining himself for hours. He. Was. Fucked. He’d been so close to finally talking to MC. He could’ve killed Niko. Bumbling prat. Why couldn’t he have kept his bloody mouth shut?

Sebastian wanted to scream. Or vomit. Or do both simultaneously to disastrous effect. Hopefully, he would aspirate and be put out of his misery.

The training was torture. Sebastian couldn’t pay attention. He hadn’t the foggiest idea what Jari had taught them about. He just sat and sweated and panicked for hours as he tried to telepathically communicate to MC that Niko was a bellend and he had never said anything like that to him. He really should’ve studied legilimency.

The second Jari began dismissing them, Sebastian jumped to his feet and rushed to MC.

“Can we please talk about this tonight?” he begged as she glared daggers at him. “Or now, even! Niko twisted what I–”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” MC said, cutting him off as she got to her feet.

“I’m really sorry. I swear it’s not as bad as it sounds,” he said, needing her to know she was not a conquest to be bragged about. She was the love of his life.

MC scoffed as she tried to push past him. He followed after her. He needed her to hear him out.

“Can we still talk tonight?” Sebastian asked urgently as she rushed down the corridor, weaving through the crowded hallway.

“Sure,” she replied sharply before he’d even finished the question. “But don’t send a bloody search party if I decide it’s not worth my time.”

“I’ll be back at my flat within the hour,” he promised, praying to every entity he could think of that she’d be there when he got home.

She pushed the exit open and left without so much as a backward glance.

When Sebastian returned 45 minutes later, it was to an empty flat. Not just “MC was gone” empty. There were no clothes in her dresser, no toiletries in the loo, and her trunk was nowhere to be found. Sebastian started hyperventilating. What if she’d gone back to England? Was he never going to see her again? He’d missed his chance. He’d fucked up his last chance with the woman he loved because he was too proud to just beg for her forgiveness as he should’ve the moment he saw her.

Sebastian lay catatonic in his bed, utterly miserable. He didn’t know how he would finish training if she didn’t show the next day. He didn’t know how he’d live with himself having blown things with her again. He just wished he could see her. Even watching that prick fuck her in his bed would be preferable to never seeing her again.

Every pop of a car outside or click of the radiator had Sebastian half-convinced she’d come back, so when he heard a crack that seemed to come from his living room, he didn’t react, at first. It was only when Sebastian heard a deep, masculine voice that he realised he wasn’t imagining it this time.

“Gods, I’ve wanted to grab this arse all night,” the man had groaned.

The universe, it seemed, had a rather twisted sense of humour. Sebastian crept out of his room and toward the voice to find exactly what he was expecting – MC mauling some bloke. She was rutting against his lap on the sofa like some feral beast, while he groped her arse and mashed his ugly mug into her breasts like a starved infant. He looked at MC’s face reflected in the window, her expression twisted with desire and something else. Something dark.

The sight made Sebastian’s muscles burn. He wanted to storm over and rip MC off the bastard who dared touch her. But he had no right. Besides, she was clearly making a statement fucking some random bloke on his sofa. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing she could get to him so easily.

MC’s hooded eyes raised, and she locked eyes with Sebastian through the glass. He arched a brow at her as if to say, This again? Really?

She seemed startled at first, and then embarrassed as she looked down only a moment later. Her lover was too absorbed in mouthing her tits in all the wrong places to notice anything was off, let alone spot Sebastian.

The young aurori made himself comfortable against his living room wall, leaning a shoulder back on it and crossing one ankle over the other. He folded his arms over his chest, as well. Despite himself, his gaze fell down to MC’s increasingly exposed arse. He wondered what the couple would do if he just went up and grabbed her plump cheeks or pulled her hips up and took her from behind.

MC glanced over her shoulder at him, and it reminded him vividly of when she’d done so bent over his counter in nothing but the lacey green underwear he’d transfigured.

Sebastian winked at her. Thanks for the show, love.

MC manhandled her lover into a heated kiss as she grew even more fervent in her movements on his lap. The man was not to be separated from her tits for long, though, and his mouth was soon back on them. MC’s eyes closed as her head fell back. She groaned out a husky, “Oh, fuck.”

Sebastian’s cock jumped in a truly Pavlovian response to her keening. He automatically started stroking himself over his trousers to relieve the tension.

Her lashes fluttered against her cheeks as her eyes opened, and she immediately looked to Sebastian’s reflection instead of the man beneath her. He had to bite back a moan. That git might have her body, but Sebastian had her attention. Fuck, was he about to get himself off watching MC with another bloke? Surely not. He felt at least as angry as he did aroused.

Probably more as the git’s hands wandered up MC’s dress, pulling the hem up toward her waist. Sebastian’s gaze dropped to her bare arse. Only it wasn’t bare. Not totally. She was wearing a G-string. The G-string.

Sebastian saw red at the sight of the green lace caressing the top of MC’s arse. He cleared his throat loudly and relished the frightened jolts MC and her fuckboy gave.

“Could you not?” Sebastian asked drily. “That’s my favourite place to masturbate, and you’re defiling it.”

The top half of the man’s face poked out over MC’s shoulder. “Who the fuck are you?” he asked.

“Name’s Sebastian. This is my flat,” Sebastian growled back with a false smile. It was taking all of his self-control not to draw his wand. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Anton,” the man replied, an undertone of fear in his voice.

“Gods, I was so close!” MC whinged rather belatedly.

No point in whining about being interrupted now.

Anton seemed equally shocked by her outburst. Before the prick could get too smug about it, Sebastian said in a firm voice, “I think you should go, Anton.”

He scampered away like the rat he was, wasting no time apparating out of the flat. MC tugged her dress back into order before sitting on the sofa, calm as you like. It made Sebastian even angrier.

“Nice lingerie,” he bit out.

“Isn’t it?” MC replied with a saccharine smile. “I mean, Anton certainly seemed to think so.”

Sebastian glared at her. His jaw tensed as he held back the venom that demanded to be unleashed on her. She was trying to rile him up. He knew she was. And he finally realised it was for show. She was just trying to push him away. But he wouldn’t let her make him lose focus. This could be his last chance to really talk to her.

“Seeing as you’re free now, how about we have that chat?” he asked, unable to mask all of the irritation in his voice.

MC scrunched her nose. “Ooh, it’s a bit late,” she said, standing up and looking down to a watch she wasn’t wearing. “I’d best turn in. We’ve got the duels in the morning. Wouldn’t want someone getting hurt.”

She’s just doing it to piss you off.

Even with the reminder, Sebastian still felt his anger swell. “Sit. Down,” he demanded.

For once, MC just listened. She immediately planted her arse back down on the cushion, looking up at him like a chastened child.

Sebastian took a calming breath as he raked a hand through his hair. “We’re going to ignore that–” Sebastian waved a hand over the scene of the crime against decency “–whole situation that just happened and have a civilised chat.”

MC crossed her arms, pouting like a schoolyard bully when the object of their teasing refuses to react. “Fine.”

She snuck her nose in the air, avoiding looking at Sebastian with a truly boggling air of defiance. As if he were the one being immature. He supposed she likely thought he was quite a juvenile twat given what she’d overheard during training. He’d be upset too if he thought MC only ever cared about his skills in bed – though, they were admittedly excellent if he said so himself.

“About what Niko said earlier,” Sebastian started, and MC rolled her eyes. “I told him about our relationship a long time ago. Way before I thought I’d ever see you again. He was ribbing me about how ‘whipped’ I seemed, and I made an offhand comment about it being your mouth that I missed. I wasn’t bragging about details. I was deflecting from emotions that I didn’t want to deal with. But I know it was stupid, I just…I’m sorry it hurt you.”

MC shifted on the couch. “You said you’d explain your behaviour over the last two weeks,” she pointed out.

“I…” Sebastian started, but the words wouldn’t come out.

He didn’t know where to begin, anyway. He’d done a lot of stupid things since she’d arrived. Saying out loud how crazy she made him was terrifying, especially when their feelings for each other were so different. And her estimation of him was rather hard to pin down – sometimes she seemed quite taken with him still, others she seemed to think he was the foulest creature she’d had the misfortune to meet.

He sighed. “It’s…complicated.”

MC scoffed, getting back to her feet and starting for the hallway, where she would no doubt disappear into her room until the following day’s training. Sebastian moved to block her path, refusing to let her slip away yet again.

“I’ll do my best,” he promised, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. He bit his lip before continuing, “But it…it would be easier if I knew why you paraded around in that lingerie on Sunday.”

That by far was the most confusing for him. By all accounts, she seemed to be trying to seduce him – quite actively. Then she just ran off the instant he responded.

MC gave him a quizzical look. “I figured if I could get you worked up enough without you being able to do anything about it, you would either change my clothes back or beg me to fix the temperature so you could get hard and have a wank. Either way, I’d get you to give me back my wardrobe.”

Sebastian’s heart sank into his stomach. It had all just been a game for her.

“Oh,” he said, and his voice was distant like it belonged to someone else. But he clung to his second-best hope, risking further devastation rather than give up on the idea that she might still be able to love him back. “What was with the reaction to my hair?”

MC looked peevishly at some spot over his shoulder. “I thought you were supposed to be explaining your actions.”

Sebastian pulled his mind from its despondent haze.

“Right. Well…” Sebastian took another deep breath, this time gathering his courage. “After what you said about me not being worth anything, I guess I just went looking for something that would make me feel like I was. With you calling me the worst mistake of your life, it…” He rolled his jaw to relieve the tension it had gained at the memory of the regrettable way he’d tried to numb his own pain. “It was similar.”

MC finally looked at him, her eyebrow raised with scepticism. “Did it work?”

Sebastian let out a bitter laugh. A dalliance with two witches he was happier to see leave than naked. Crying alone in bed after, plagued with memories of MC. A drunken encounter with a nameless woman that somehow managed to end in him being rejected by MC. Did it work, indeed.

“No,” he said definitively.

Sebastian was the one avoiding looking at her now.

MC gave him a pitying sort of look, as if she knew by some impossible means the sad truths of the events that had occurred behind his bedroom door. “For what it’s worth, I shouldn’t’ve said either of those things.”

Sebastian’s breath halted.

Worthless.

Mistake.

Those two words had weighed heavily on his soul. And she…she regretted saying them. Probably never meant them to begin with if she was taking them back now. It didn’t fully remedy the sting of them, but it eased their burden significantly. Hearing her say that might’ve been better than if she had been trying to seduce him on Sunday.

“I shouldn’t have called you a bitch,” Sebastian admitted in kind.

“Or interrupted my tryst tonight,” she replied cheekily.

Sebastian scoffed. She seemed to be joking, but he couldn’t let it stand. “You expect me to believe you were enjoying that?”

MC rolled her eyes. She puffed out her chest with indignation. “Just because you've never been with a woman who wasn't faking it doesn't mean they can't be pleased.”

That does it!

He would not let her twist their history. He had failed her in many ways, but he had always done his best to take care of her – by fighting her enemies in the forest, comforting her when she had nightmares about Fig’s death, taking over when she let her “extracurriculars” get in the way of basic functions like eating and sleeping, and especially ensuring she was satisfied in bed.

Sebastian stepped into her, forcing her back against the wall. “Don't lie to me, MC,” he growled, crowding into her space further and pinning her in place. “I know you better than you think.”

She laughed arrogantly. “You certainly seem to think so.”

It was a front, and he saw right through it this time.

“You want to know why we worked so well together? Because, at the end of the day, after you've been running around saving everyone - solving all their problems, making constant life or death decisions - you want someone else to carry the burden for you. You want them to make the decisions. And, for me, being with you was the only time I was ever truly in control. We're a perfect match, you and I.”

“Then it’s a shame you ruined it,” MC bit back, pushing his chest and forcing him off of her.

Sebastian staggered back, but MC didn’t escape to her room right away.

You ruined it, echoed in his mind.

It was true, but it wasn’t the whole story. Not at all, and definitely not where it ended. Sebastian let out a frustrated noise as he pulled his hair. “I’m trying to fix it!” he said, his voice raising significantly.

“You picked dark magic over me!” MC said, matching his tone. “And then you left us all behind like we were nothing!” Her voice cracked on the word, and a part of Sebastian’s heart cracked with it. “You don’t get to just pretend none of that happened! You can’t undo that! You can’t fix it!”

“I was trying to save Anne!” he argued. He’d never meant to hurt MC. He hadn’t wanted to leave her – or Ominis or Anne. But he couldn’t stay and just watch his sister die. “I left to find something, anything that might help her!”

“Well, that worked out splendidly, didn’t it?” MC said cruelly, throwing Anne’s death in his face like wine on a handsy cad at a bar. She was callous, letting the words flow out without remorse.

Sebastian shook with rage. He couldn’t believe she would go there. How dare she?

The air around them crackled with his magic as it fought to explode out from him. It was all he could do to contain it, lest it burst free and raze his flat or worse. His emotions were left unrestrained. “YOU DON’T THINK I REALISE IT WAS A MISTAKE?” he screamed, the words clawing his throat raw as they spewed out.

MC fell silent.

Sebastian couldn’t see her reaction as his eyes had welled with tears. They quickly began spilling down his face as he dissolved into a fit of sobs. His legs failed him, and he slid down the wall into a heap on the floor.

“I lost my last months with my sister,” he said, his voice rough and unsteady as his body continued to shake. He had never admitted the guilt he felt over it before. He had always worried that if he did, it would become too real and consume him. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

“Sebastian,” MC said softly, taking a step toward him.

“I’m–” Another sob tore from his throat. “…s-so sorry.” He had his face buried in his knees as he hugged them to himself. “I know I should’ve come back, I just–” He took a gasping breath as he fought to get the words out. “It was easier to start over. Pretend that version of me had never existed.”

MC’s fingers ran through his hair. Like they had thousands of times. Like they always used to when he was upset. In that moment, it was like having her back. Like he wasn’t alone.

Sebastian looked up at the blurry image of her, blinking to try to clear his vision so he could memorise how she looked at him. With compassion. Or even if it were pity. Either way, caring about him – and not with the hatred her eyes had so frequently held since she’d arrived.

“I missed you,” MC said quietly as she continued to rake through his hair. “That you. This you. A new one. It doesn’t matter to me. I just…miss you.”

At her admission, Sebastian started crying again. He got to his knees and buried his face in her hip, his tears soaking into her dress. He clung to the backs of her thighs like she might disapparate at any moment. “I’ve missed you somuch!”

He had. And he needed her so badly.

Still stroking his hair, she said in a gentle, cautious voice, “I’m sorry you didn’t get to say goodbye to Anne.”

“It was my own fault,” Sebastian admitted, and the truth of it almost crushed him.

“I’m still sorry,” she said.

She combed his hair out of his face with her fingers, and he clung to her even more tightly. She was a buoy keeping him from drowning in his sins.

Sebastian swallowed a lump in his throat. “She died thinking I’d abandoned her.”

MC didn’t look at him with disappointment or disgust. Or even pity. As she pursed her lips, he saw a look of stern resolution in her face. “If you read the letter she left you, you know that isn’t true.”

Sebastian had read it. Anne assured him that she held no ill will against him for leaving. It helped, but it didn’t change the facts. “I still should’ve been there for her,” he argued. “I would’ve. I swear, I would’ve come back. I just…” His voice grew small. “I thought I had more time.”

“I know, Seb,” she said, hugging him to her legs. “We all did.”

He grabbed her waist and pulled himself slowly to his feet.

MC placed a gentle hand on his cheek, and Sebastian covered it with his own as he leaned into the warmth of it. “I don’t want to lose you again,” he croaked.

MC stared up at him with wide eyes, though whether it was from surprise or disbelief or fear, he didn’t know. But what he did know was he needed her to know he meant it.

When he cupped her face in both hands, she tilted her chin up towards his. When he leaned in to kiss her, she leaned in, too. When he kissed her, she kissed him back. He devoured her lips, drinking in all that she would give him. Her hands were already tangled in his hair. Her reactions to him – her acceptance of him – was rapidly stoking his desire.

He backed her against the wall until her shoulders smacked against it, and then he brought a hand to her throat – just resting there, not squeezing. He could feel her pulse bounding under his thumb. He pressed his body flush against hers, eliminating any space between them. She tasted faintly of firewhiskey, and he wondered fleetingly if she’d be the one to drink it or Anton had. The thought drove him feral. He kissed and nipped and licked at her bottom lip until it was red and swollen to show proof that he’d been there. That MC was his.

He nudged his thigh between her legs. She let out a deep moan without bothering to stop snogging him to let it escape. Sebastian swallowed her noise greedily. It was only a taste of what he had in store for her.

They broke for air but stayed close, panting in each other’s breaths because they couldn’t bear to be distant.

“I love you, MC,” Sebastian said with abandon before diving in again, tongue and teeth everywhere on her lips as he continued to grind his thigh against her. “I never stopped loving you.”

MC gripped his shoulders for support as she rutted against him. She didn’t say it back, but that was okay. She was there. She was with him. He would take it, even if she only wanted to use him for the night. He would gladly be hers. He already was anyway.

Sebastian lifted her onto his hips, and she linked her ankles behind him and laced her hands in his hair. He groaned as she tugged the strands, and he attacked her neck as he carried her to his room. He kicked the door shut behind them even though there was really no reason since she was his only flatmate. Maybe it was to dissuade her from darting away if she started to feel flighty.

Sebastian threw MC down sideways on the bed. She smiled as she bounced on the mattress. She’d always liked when he manhandled her a bit. Sebastian kissed her one more time before dragging her to the edge of the mattress as he got down on his knees. MC let out a surprised yelp, but her smile never faltered. Her eyes burned into his as her teeth sank into her lip, and her hips squirmed with anticipation as his hands trailed over her thighs.

He pushed her dress up over her hips, and then he was biting his lip, too, as he took in the sight of her in those damned knickers. They were damp from grinding on his thigh in the hall. He had a matching spot on his trouser leg to prove it.

Sebastian checked back in with MC before he was too far gone. She looked back at him through large pupils in her half-lidded eyes. She wanted him, and he was eager to give himself to her. He’d remind her what they’d had – what he could be with her. He would make her forget what it was like without him, ensuring she never wanted to return to that version of life.

He dragged the green lace off MC’s hips, down her legs, and tossed them away. His hands slid up from her ankles to just above her knees, ghosting over her smooth skin. He leaned forward and licked up her slit. He’d intended to keep his eyes locked on hers the whole time he ate her out – at least until her first orgasm. But when he tasted her, he couldn’t stop them rolling back as he moaned.

“Fuck, I missed you.” He said the words like a prayer of thanks.

MC was already whimpering as she gripped one hand into his hair again. Sebastian took his time warming her up, nevertheless. He alternated, tracing his tongue up one lip, then the other, and pausing to press delicate kisses against her clit in between. Nothing too aggressive, though he kept a firm grip on her thighs. She was a hazard once she got going.

Finally, Sebastian pressed his tongue into her heat, making her gasp and her cunt clench around it. He moaned in response, and it caused her hips to jolt. She’d probably have bashed his nose in if he hadn’t been holding her so tightly. A hazard. He loved it – loved how she lost control with him.

Sebastian chuckled at his needy girl. “Patience,” he said. “I’m not nearly done with you.”

He tried not to think about it, but he couldn’t totally banish the thought: If this was goodbye, he was going to make the most of it. He hoped it wasn’t, but he’d be foolish not to acknowledge the possibility. He’d already made that mistake once.

MC keened as he returned to his efforts, focusing on her clit for a bit now that she’d been sufficiently wound up. He smirked against her as he raised his eyes to see her reaction. Her brow was drawn tight and her teeth were biting hard into her bottom lip. She was aching for release.

“I’m going to make you come until you can’t see straight,” Sebastian vowed before placing an open-mouthed kiss to her clit. “Fuck you like you deserve. Like no one else can.”

He licked firmly up the centre of her cunt to coat his tongue in the taste of her. When he reached the top, he stayed, flicking up and down over her clit. When he sucked on it, she let out a keening cry.

“Fuck, Sebastian!” she moaned, and he had to press his hips into the side of the bed with how badly she had him aching. Her taste, her noises, his name on her lips. Gods. How had he survived years without her? He refused to think about having to do it again. All that existed was the two of them in that moment. No past. No future. Just the present. Just being together.

Reuniting.

MC’s hand grew painfully tight in its grip on his hair. He’d gladly let her rip it all out if he got to see her come undone. “Oh, gods! Please!” she cried. “Please, please, please!”

That’s it, love. I’ve got you.

He could tell she was close, and he was as desperate for her release as she sounded. Sweet Salazar, he wanted her to come for him.

Sebastian redoubled his efforts, holding her firmly in place lest he risk losing an eye – she’d always told him he had rather pretty ones, so he’d rather not.

She swore like a sailor as her body drew tight. The telltale spasm of her hips followed – jerky, irregular movements as pulses of pleasure wracked through her. It was an addicting sight. One Sebastian was eager to see again as he refused to let up. He worked her body to a second orgasm, gave her a brief reprieve, and then started building her toward a third. She already looked spent – poor thing was probably out of practice. Not to worry. He’d whip her back into shape.

With some teamwork between his tongue on her clit and fingers buried inside her, Sebastian brought her to a third climax, her whole body arching off the bed. When it was over, she released his hair and panted heavily as her head fell back on the mattress. He knew her muscles must be tired after he’d kept her tensed up for so long. Every inch of her skin glistened with sweat. Sebastian was tempted to lick it off her. Though, his tongue was admittedly a bit fatigued. He might have been out of practice, too. Though, he’d always been very dedicated to training – Crossed Wands, the aurori academy, running. He quite liked the idea of a new hobby – or, rather, picking an old one back up. He really, really hoped he got the chance.

She lifted her leaden head to look at him. A soft, contented smile on her face was illuminated by the dim lamplight. Sebastian swallowed thickly as emotion caught his throat at the idea of making MC content forever. Making her happy. Being the type of man she could build a life with. He stroked MC’s thighs lovingly as he pictured a thousand different futures with her.

Sebastian pulled himself up and let his weight press into her as he covered her body with his, careful to make sure he wasn’t crushing her. He brushed back the hair clinging to MC’s sweaty forehead. “You’re perfect. So perfect,” he whispered reverently against her lips before capturing them in his own.

MC clawed him closer as she kissed him back. The kiss was slow and deep, but she had an urgency in her movements all the same.

“I love you,” she said breathlessly.

Sebastian pulled back, looking down at her in shock. Had she really said it? Had he imagined it?

He searched her eyes and found sincerity, vulnerability, love. Those thousand futures suddenly seemed truly possible instead of mere fantasies.

He crashed his mouth back into hers.

“Please,” she begged when they broke apart for air. The tips of her fingers traced down the buttons on the front of his shirt. “I need you.”

Sebastian was glad he was lying down, because those three words would’ve made his knees give out. They definitely made his cock throb with his own need for her. “I’m here, darling. You have me,” he promised her.

He stood up to strip his clothes off. If he’d had his wand in hand, he’d have vanished them. When he turned back to his witch, he found her lying on her stomach over the edge of the bed, feet on the ground and bare arse in the air. He groaned at the sight.

He smoothed his palm over her backside as if to say, I’ve missed you. “Gods, I’ve been thinking about fucking you like this nonstop since Sunday,” he said as he trailed his fingers up her spine, sliding her dress up higher as he went.

“I know,” MC replied with a smirk.

She’d always had a good sense about when he was particularly randy, whether from absence, stress, or her teasing. She would just know exactly what he needed.

Sebastian bent down to nip the sensitive skin of her arse, earning a moan from her. He stood up and admired the red marks as they darkened into existence, swiping a delicate thumb over them. It was like his signature on her skin. He intended to brand her with more than just lovebites, though. He had a primal urge to fill her with his seed, even if she were probably on potions that would keep it from taking. It satisfied something deep in him to leave a part of him inside of her. Anything to mark her as his. He’d brand her soul if it were possible and let her carve her name on his in return.

Gripping himself, Sebastian nudged her folds with the head of his cock. He found her hot and slick, and it made his knees weak just having contact again. He rubbed against MC, coating himself in the mixture of her arousal and his own saliva. She was soaked, and he knew he would slide in easily. He knew her walls would welcome him before gripping him tight. Gods, she was so–

“Bloody perfect,” he muttered aloud.

Sebastian lined himself up with her entrance when she began to shift her hips back toward him to entreat him inside. She moaned as he pressed in slowly. So slowly. He wanted to feel everything as her body welcomed him back. Welcomed him home. It felt overly sentimental to even think it, but it was the truth. Being with MC felt like coming home after years of wandering in an unfamiliar wilderness.

Pressing his chest down against her back, Sebastian cupped MC’s cheek as she arched back to meet him in a kiss. The word was reductive, though. It wasn’t just a kiss. It was a unification as they gave themselves over to each other, fusing into one as they joined in every possible way. MC accepted him as she accepted his tongue into her mouth with a moan. She confessed her passion and longing as she kissed him back and chased his lips as he began to right himself.

Immediately, Sebastian’s hands massaged into her round backside – pressing into the flesh he’d claimed with his teeth. They slid up to anchor on her hips as his own began to rock against her. He dragged his cock out slowly until just the tip remained nestled in her, and then thrust back inside until the front of his hips bit against the backs of hers. Until he was buried in her heat once more.

MC’s hands knotted into the sheets. A shuttering moan tore from her throat as Sebastian thrust even deeper, causing her to clench around him as he hit a spot that lit her nerves on fire. He couldn’t help but groan back at her as he aimed to hit the same spot again. She moaned again as he found it once more.

That. That was why he loved taking her from behind. There was a unique pleasure she could find when he did. A pleasure he could give her.

MC panted and whimpered as he slammed against that spot over and over. She wound the sheets tighter around her fists as he wound her body up pounding into her relentlessly. She was enraptured. She let him know how much she loved it.

“Fuck.”

“Yes!”

“Don’t stop.”

When her words failed and she could no longer keep thrusting back on him, he knew she was close. The thought of her coming with him buried inside her gave him a dangerous spike of pleasure. When her legs shook and he reached down to rub circles on her clit, her orgasm nearly triggered his own. He practically growled out the groan that erupted from him as she trembled and clenched around him. He had to still his hips and grip the mattress with the hand that hand been strumming her to force his body back from the precipice.

Sebastian usually preferred to fuck her through her high, prolonging it as much as he could. Instead, he was gritting through it so they could continue. Because once this tryst came to an end, he couldn’t be sure there would still be a “they.” She loved him, yes, but he still couldn’t shake the fear that it wouldn’t be enough. That he’d done too much for this to be a new beginning and not goodbye. Ultimately, it was the pain of that thought that allowed him to hold off.

Sebastian pulled out of MC so he could flip her onto her back, tearing her dress over her head and her bra off her chest. He scooped her up to lay her in the middle of the bed. No sooner had he set her down than he was stalking over her.

“I’m gonna pump you so full that you taste me on your tongue,” he vowed as he settled over top of her.

She smirked as she pulled him into a kiss. Her knees bracketed his hips, and her bare chest was pressed against his. With a deft tilt of his pelvis, Sebastian slid his length back into her, no longer able to tolerate their sole remaining point of separation. MC’s head fell back as he filled her, breaking their kiss, and so his lips tailed down to her neck. He brought a hand between them to massage her breast and moved to lave the other. MC’s chest pushed into his face as her back arched in pleasure. He loved it. He wanted her everywhere – wanted to be overwhelmed with her presence.

“Fuck, I love you, MC,” he said, bringing his forehead to rest against hers. He had become so caught up in her, that he’d forgotten to move entirely.

“I love you,” she replied.

That primal urge to fill her sparked up his spine and sent his muscles into action. He set a languid cadence, at first. MC met a few of his thrusts before going limp with fatigue. Her pleased moans continued, though, and so did Sebastian. He sped up his thrusts until MC’s nails were clawing down his back as she held on. Her moans had turned to whimpers, though they were still cries of pleasure.

Sebastian could feel his climax building as he fucked MC frantically. But it wasn’t just fucking. It was more for him. And he needed to know it was for her, too.

“Tell me…tell me there’s no one else,” he demanded breathlessly. “No one who fucks you like this.”

“Gods, no! No one,” she swore followed by a loud moan as he pounded harder into her. “Fuck, Sebastian.”

Just him. No one else. Not the poncy blond who marked her neck or fucking Anton groping her ass. Only him. Just like it was only her.

“This…cunt…is mine!” he growled between panting breaths. “No one else gets to have you!”

“Just you,” MC vowed. “Gods, I missed you. Please, Sebastian. Please!”

He bit into the curve where her neck met her shoulder as his hips sped up even more. She was keening as he released inside her with a groan. From being so close earlier, there was a blinding pressure behind his eyes as he finally climaxed.

Sebastian couldn’t help but think if he came with enough force, or depth, or volume, maybe it would overcome that contraceptive potion. And then she would keep being his, while they took care of someone who was theirs. It was horrible, he knew, but the hope was there as his hips kept pumping his seed deeper into her.

He just couldn’t bear the thought of the end with her. Sebastian recaptured her lips, and he was desperate and sloppy as their mouths melded together. MC’s hands tangled in his hair, and she seemed as unwilling as he was to let the kiss end.

Maybe she dreaded them ending, too, he thought. Maybe she also wanted forever.

When they broke apart, they were both panting wildly. Sebastian smiled down at MC, drinking in the affection in her eyes as she looked up at him. He pressed a quick kiss to her lips before rolling off of her to let her breathe. He lay on his side and pulled her so they were chest-to-chest again. He wrapped his arms protectively around her waist but was careful to keep them loose enough not to impede her still-heaving lungs.

Sebastian closed his eyes as he pressed a lingering kiss to the top of MC’s head.

“Fuck,” she breathed out, sounding spent. A small, satisfied smile played on her lips.

“Yeah,” Sebastian replied fondly as he looked down at her. He could stare at her for hours, even as knackered as he was.

“I forgot how horrendously persistent you are,” she teased.

Sebastian laughed. “I was going to make you ride my face before I took you, but then you displayed your arse so perfectly for me. I could hardly resist.”

MC rolled her eyes, but her smile grew. “Fucking course you were.”

Sebastian kissed her, not hesitating to slide his tongue into her mouth. “You love it,” he asserted.

But behind the banter was a question: Do you love me like you used to? Equally important: Will you let me love you?

She glared at him, but there was no malice in her eyes.

He laughed again, because even though it wasn’t an answer, it felt like old times. For the moment, that was enough. “You’re so bleeding stubborn,” he chided light-heartedly.

“And you’re a bloody menace,” she replied tartly.

“But I’m your menace,” he retorted.

MC smiled at that, and it made his heart sing. He felt some of the tension leave his body. She was there with him. She wanted to be with him. Wanted him to be hers.

“All right. Time for some sleep, love,” Sebastian said, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “We’ve got a big rematch in the morning. I mean the duel, of course, although…”

He gave her a cheeky smile.

“No,” MC said firmly. “Knowing you, we’d end up missing the whole morning of training.”

“Yeah, fair enough,” he replied with a chuckle.

He summoned his wand and then conjured some blankets over them so they didn’t have to move. With another swish of his wand, he turned the lights out.

“Good night, MC,” he said as he gathered her back to his chest.

“Good night,” she replied, settling in against him.

Sebastian awoke to MC stirring. She’d turned over – or maybe she’d done that during the night – and her back was to him now. He snuggled against her, his arms tightening around her middle and his face burying in her neck. “Morning, love,” he mumbled happily.

“Morning,” MC replied stiltedly.

He chuckled at her pinched voice. “Don’t worry. I’m not trying to start anything,” he promised, shifting his hips back so his morning wood wasn’t pressing so aggressively into her backside. “I’m just happy to see you.”

MC laughed as she turned in his arms. “Good. I’m going to need weeks to recover from last night.”

Sebastian rolled his eyes and grinned at her. “I give it two days.”

“Unfortunately for you, I’ll be back in England by then,” MC teased back.

Sebastian’s teeth worried his lip as he mustered up his courage.

“About that,” he said nervously, looking down at her arm as he traced shapes onto it with the tips of his fingers. “I was going to ask if you’d stay for the weekend. I mean, I know you have to go back to work on Monday, but I thought maybe you could stay until Sunday.”

He looked up at her hopefully once he’d gotten the words out.

“Oh,” MC said, clearly surprised. “Well, my portkey is scheduled for this evening…”

“You could put in a request for a time change. I could fill out the form for you,” he offered, hoping he was being helpful and not demanding. He didn’t want her to feel forced into staying, but he wanted to make it as easy for her as possible. “But you don’t have to decide right now. The transport office is right next to Aurori Headquarters. I could pop by at lunch.”

“Yeah, I’ll let you know,” she said resolutely.

Sebastian smiled. “Good. And I could come visit you over the long weekend next week. We can figure it out from there.”

He hoped he didn’t sound presumptuous inviting himself over for Christmas, but he thought it would be worse not to suggest spending it with her. That, and he really, really wanted to be with her for the holidays. All of them, really. But especially Christmas. They’d spent it in Feldcroft together sixth and seventh years, and they were some of the happiest memories of his life.

“Yeah, that sounds great,” MC said to Sebastian’s relief.

They got up, Sebastian dressed, and he made breakfast while MC showered. They ate together, and he couldn’t stop staring at her. He was in disbelief that things had taken such a turn for the better. Really, he shouldn’t have believed it. He should’ve known it was too good to be true. But he wanted it so badly that he ignored the cracks in her smile and the distance in her stare. He didn’t even realise something was wrong when he beat her in their duel. He didn’t even notice the tension in her voice when she told him on the way to lunch that she’d delayed her portkey. So, he believed her. Like he shouldn’t have.

It wasn’t until too late that reality struck him. They went out for drinks with the group after training, and everything was fine – until it wasn’t. He kept his arm around the back of MC’s chair, and she leaned into him like she wanted to be there. She giggled when he whispered in her ear as if she liked it. It was an innocuous question that finally broke her.

“Do you want to go out to dinner tonight, or shall I order takeaway?” he asked.

He would offer to cook, but he wanted to be able to focus on her. He had lots of plans for after dinner. Not those sorts of plans – he always gave her time to recover after particularly…strenuous sessions. If they hadn’t needed to be up so early, he would’ve done more to help her recover yesterday. As it was, he was set on getting her in a hot bath that night. As she soaked, he’d heal any bruises he’d left the night before – or during the duel. He’d massage her hands, relaxing the muscles that’d been stressed as she grabbed onto his hair and his sheets for hours. He’d give her tender kisses and gentle touches and maybe still caress her breasts a bit, since – all in all – he hadn’t given them much attention the night before.

“I…Um…” MC stammered, suddenly looking nervous.

Sebastian’s brow furrowed in concern as she trailed off and her eyes darted away.

“I can’t do this,” she blurted out, a bereft look on her face.

“What?” Sebastia asked, taken aback. Panic seized his chest as she pushed out her chair.

MC shot to her feet. “I need to go.”

Sebastian rushed to stand up, as well. “Okay. I’ll take you back.”

Was she feeling ill? An asinine thought about morning sickness flitted through his mind before he regained sense. Things didn’t work that fast, and he refused to entertain the idea of anyone else siring her children. It was probably the cafeteria food or fatigue from training.

“No!” MC said quickly. Then, in a milder tone, she added, “I…I’m going home. I can’t do this–” She gestured between them. “–with you. Not again.”

Sebastian was left dumbfounded as MC grabbed her cloak and sprinted out of the pub. It took him several seconds to process her words. Then, without so much as a glance back at the audience currently gaping at them, he took off after her. He burst through the pub’s door to find MC rummaging in her cloak pockets.

She pulled out a stubby pencil with a sort of triumph, and Sebastian knew what it was without needing to ask. Her face fell as she looked at him.

Time almost felt suspended as she stood on the snowy pavement, just staring at him. But fresh snow was falling, collecting in her hair and on her shoulders. Her breath curled in the air in front of her rosy face. It’d be quite a pretty picture – a quintessential holiday scene – if it didn’t make Sebastian’s stomach drop as his veins filled with the chill of the snow around them.

He fixed his gaze on the pencil. The portkey.

“It doesn’t leave until Sunday,” he stated, as if saying the words could make them true.

She almost looked apologetic as she said, “I never changed it.”

But he had already known it. Too late, admittedly, but still before she’d gotten the words out. He couldn’t blame her for not wanting to give him another chance. He’d already had more than was fair. But why pretend she was going to? Why let him hope and dream and make plans? Why sleep with him in the first place? Why give him a taste of everything he wanted to rip it away again? Just–

“Why?” Sebastian asked, his voice cracking – unable to manage the single word.

Her bottom lip quivered as her face twisted with grief. “I’m sorry. I…I just–”

And then she was gone. Her breath faded from the air. The puff of snow that had kicked up as the portkey whisked her away settled back to the ground. Only footprints remained, and even those were slowly being filled in by the falling snow.

The pub door opened, and Sebastian didn’t even turn until he heard Sofia’s voice ask, “Where did she go?”

He blinked back tears and swallowed thickly before replying, “Home.”

Next chapter.

[prophecydungeon]

i'm watching rvb11 again so here's a running list of everything i love about this season

contact, my beloved

a nice recap intro for anyone who is new (why...) or got lost in the sauce during 9/10!

"i'm a cyborg, you wanna bow down to me?"

grif's bit about them always holding their weapons never fails to land for me

the way that tension is built throughout this season is so good. SO fucking good. this season is all the lighthearted BGC-ness that the show had been missing for a chunk of seasons and the way that the "something's not right here" gradually grows and grows is so fucking good.

specifically, we see locus for the first time at 31:10 (i'm watching the complete one on yt) listening to wash's mayday. at 34:30 sarge uses a sniper to scope out what the reds are doing; at 46:58 we see the blues through a sniper's scope again shortly before grif and sarge bust into the blues' conversation, and then sarge hops out of the warthog without a sniper rifle on him. it's not till 53:10 that we see locus again up on the cliffside.

d: can i get a heck yeah? s: hell no. d: close enough!

the dead body as the camera pans around the refueling station... chef kiss. what an introduction to locus.

felix's intro isn't as juicy as locus's but i love the way it comes right on the heels of locus murdering a dude over wanting to tell people about the crash -- of course someone else might have found out!

the way that wash is framed so ominously when he's fixing caboose's helmet is so great too; the cracked screens on the wall mimicking the room we first see him in in 6. fantastic.

felix's massively dramatic pearl-clutchy oscar-winning introduction to the reds getting utterly wasted on the two lopezes is SO GOOD especially in light of how hard he stroked his ego over his good acting

"you're going to want to sit down for this story, it's about 20 hours long and i only enjoy telling it in five-minute intervals" is one of my all-time favorite jokes in this entire series and i manage to always forget it's from this season

wash's apology to caboose for not being there for him (or tucker) is one of my favorite wash moments in this whole arc, if not my favorite. it's such a lovely and touching moment, and it also makes me all the more furious that epsilon a) came back at all and b) was a horrific dick to tucker in particular

felix and locus snapping at each other is, again, all the funnier When You Know because felix is so transparently enjoying "riling up" locus and locus's "shut up and be glad i missed your head" is so transparently genuine

g: holy shit, did you see that? c: NO! WHAT HAPPENED? PLEASE DESCRIBE IT TO ME.

the fucking orange juice gag

💛 aggressive, paranoid, and a little melodramatic 💛

the ongoing gag of everyone thinking they had someone to do with the crash is also so fucking good

"no, i'm a freelancer. NO, I MEAN, I'M A MERCENARY-"

again, When You Know: the implication that felix murdered the three people he came to the crash site with! delicious!

caboose's radio breaking in the middle of his speech is SO funny

"man, you are just cryptic"

ugh! ugh! the reconstruction theme coming back when wash changes his armor! gets me every time!

and with donut's line i'm immediately reminded of how fandom apparently chewed itself to pieces over thinking that wash is black/gold not steel/gold lol

(H4 wasn't kind to simmons either but w/e)

dos.0 attacking and felix immediately going "this isn't right" is, yet again, so transparent in hindsight

this is also a very fun and well-done machinima battle

rocket hog my beloved

pan across the canyon my beloved

reconstruction theme again! my beloved!

tucker's reaction to finding out that wash, sarge, and donut didn't make it is also so good. his character arc on chorus is Just So Good.

and so is kimball's intro with felix -- especially in how she exerts authority over him immediately ("you're not getting paid the full amount") and we see over time just how much felix has worked to make sure that she thinks that's what their relationship is

man. kimball. my beloved.

"you just need to try."

in conclusion: still my fave season of the chorus arc, probably

[isnt-it-pretty]

I rewrote the conversation with Collei in my eleazar!cyno fic because it didn't fit, but I decided I'd post it here as an outtake!

Wow, it's 2,287 words. That's like a short one-shot in itself. Oh well, here! You can see which sections I took verbatim, which I rewrote, and which I cut entirely. It has a very different vibe than the one I eventually went with.

Let me know if you're interested in seeing more cut sections and outtakes. They're often not as long as complete ar this one, but I saved them all.

Also sorry for the spacing tumblr likes adding an additional one and I wasn't sure whether getting rid of them made it harder to read since it's so long. Let me know if it's harder this way and I'll fix it.

You can read the fic in its entirety here!

Chapter 5, last scene, Collei & Cyno's discussion:

“Master Cyno?” Collei asked. 

He looked up from his seat by the window to find her hovering in the doorway, looking unsure of herself. 

“Collei,” he greeted, uncurling himself to face her more easily. “What is it?”

He hadn’t seen a lot of Collei outside of his physical therapy, especially not without Tighnari at her side. Cyno suspected it was difficult for her to see him like this. Her memories of their time in Mondstadt had always been a challenge for their relationship, but it was probably worse now. He was frail where he used to be strong, and even weeks of recovery had barely helped that (much to his growing frustration).

Collei hesitated. “Oh, um, well, I was wondering if- no, wait,” she stopped herself and took a deep breath, straightening her back before she continued. “You and I are going to play TCG. I have a deck for you and everything. It was a gift from a matra named Nayab?” She said it like a question, even though it clearly wasn’t supposed to be. “Um. Mahamatra Taj brought it.”

That was the first Cyno had heard of such a gift. He raised an eyebrow at Collei’s forwardness and silently noted to himself to look into why Nayab was sending him TCG decks. 

She flushed beneath his gaze and looked away, fidgeting.

“Miss Lisa told me not to ask you if you wanted to do something, but just to tell you we’re doing it. She said you’d refuse if you aren’t feeling well, even if it’s something you usually like, and, um, Kaveh agreed when I mentioned it.”

Ah, so Lisa put her up to this. That wasn’t surprising—it sounded just like something she would do. Part of Cyno wanted to feel irritated at Lisa’s—and apparently Kaveh’s—intervention, but he knew she meant well, even if he didn’t want to admit that she was right. It was a lesson from their shared Akademiya years, when Cyno had avoided things because he felt too stressed to enjoy them, or hadn’t thought he deserved the break. He thought he’d moved on from that habit, but maybe Cyno wasn’t so far removed from his youth as he’d believed. 

Genius Invokation was never something he’d ignored before. It was the only hobby he really had, but as Cyno’s health had waned, so too had his desire to play. He just didn’t have the energy or time. All of his once well-loved decks were probably still sitting on a dust covered shelf in his apartment. 

He didn’t really want to play now, either. Maybe it was because he was tired, or the way his hands ached, or that he simply wanted to stew alone as he thought of his mistakes. TGC represented something from before to him, although Cyno wasn’t yet sure what that meant. 

Collei was still waiting for his response, shifting anxiously as she did, and Cyno couldn’t deny her this. He couldn’t deny her anything, really. 

“Okay,” he said, and she gave him a hesitant smile. 

Standing hurt. It was something he had taken for granted before his illness. His muscles were still weak and it would take months for him to be able to walk unsupported, if he would ever be able to again—it was something he tried not to think about, fear curling deep within his chest at the thought of his abilities changing so drastically. At least he was strong enough for crutches now. They were made from slender wood that reached his forearm, partially wrapping around it in a cuff. A leather wrapped handle at hand height allowed him to grip them comfortably. It wasn’t perfect—Cyno’s arms were weak and even more prone to fatigue than his legs—but it worked well enough for short distances and was easier to use than the alternatives. Gandharva Ville wasn’t known for its accessibility. 

Collei didn’t offer to help as he hobbled his way toward the table. He was grateful for it. Cyno wasn’t a particularly prideful individual, but he wasn’t sure he could bear that from the child he had saved. It was bad enough when he had to rely on Kaveh or Tighnari for such simple things. 

He sat at the table and leaned his crutches against a nearby chair, relieved to be off his feet. Collei watched hesitantly, likely feeling somewhat awkward, before she finally joined him. 

The deck boxes were well made from beautiful wood and leather. Collei handed him both of them to pick between, and Cyno glanced through each deck. 

They were competitive and synergistic, which was exactly the play style he enjoyed. Somebody had spent a lot of time and money on these.

“You said this was a gift from Nayab?” Cyno asked, looking up at her.

Collei bit her lip and nodded. “He gave them to Mahamatra Taj for you. I think a few of the other matra helped too?” 

Cyno’s hands were gentle, almost reverent, as he looked through the cards again. An emotion he couldn’t name welled up in his chest.

It shouldn’t have been surprising. Cyno had played hundreds of games with his matra to pass the time on long missions or after working hours. It was one of the few ways his subordinates could convince him to go out with them. Nayab, in particular, had spent months trying to convince him to play during the worst of his sickness. And yet, to know that they had paid such close attention to his favourite cards that they could imitate a deck he would create showed a level of care he hadn’t thought possible from anybody but his closest friends.

“I hope you one day realize how truly cared about you are, Cyno,” Taj had said. 

Shaking himself from his reverie, he picked the more complicated of the decks and gave the other to Collei. She always preferred the more straightforward tactics, but she had been branching out the last time they had played, several months prior.

There was a routine to TCG, and despite the time that had passed, Cyno fell into it with ease. He felt himself relaxing as they played.

Draw, roll, play cards, attack, pass turn.

He was never one to make conversation during games, but even he could feel the tension growing between them. It felt like the moment before a wave’s crash, when the water pulled back with the tide before rushing forward to slam against rocks and stone. 

Cyno cleared his throat. 

“How are you doing?” he asked, hoping to break the tension that felt like cracking ice. “Have you lessons been going well?”

“They’ve been fine,” Collei said. “The other Forest Watchers have been helping for the last few weeks, since Master Tighnari has been busy.” She kept her attention on her cards. 

Right. Tighnari had been with him, so Collei would have had to get her instruction elsewhere. 

He wondered if she’d felt hopeless for those long weeks, when her illness progressed as his did—albeit not as severely. Did she even want to continue her education knowing how little time she’d had left? Did her goals change now that there wasn’t a death sentence hanging over her head? Collei was so young. She’d never had the opportunity for dreams without the reality of her Eleazar shattering the image, no matter how carefully constructed. Cyno was lucky that way. His illness appeared in adulthood, although he wondered if he would have done anything different if his condition had been more similar to Collei’s. He suspected his decisions in life would have remained that same. 

He felt a hollow pang in his chest at the thought.

Cyno cleared his throat. “Are you planning on staying in Gandharva Ville?” he asked. 

Collei played a card. Her brows furrowed. 

“Why wouldn’t I?” she asked.

“I just thought maybe there was something else you’d want to do now that your Eleazar is cured.”

She dealt three damage to his active character. 

“Gandharva Ville is my home. I wouldn’t leave it just because of that. I want to become a Forest Watcher and a medic. Only Master Tighnari can teach me those things.” Her voice was steady, but there was a hint of something else in it. 

They both rolled for the start of the turn.

Cyno played two cards and passed to her. The tension seemed to grow with each moment. 

“Collei,” he said the next time it was his turn. He kept his gaze on his cards so that he wouldn’t have to face her. “It’s okay if you’re uncomfortable around me. You don’t have to force yourself.”

He motioned for her to take her turn, and Collei slammed a card onto the table. 

“I’m not uncomfortable around you,” she snapped with uncharacteristic anger. Or, rather, uncharacteristic of her for the last few years. It was closer to the fury she held when they’d first met. 

She took a deep breath, visibly calming herself. “I’m hurt and I’m angry.”

Oh. 

“Collei-” he began, unsure of what to say, but she cut him off. 

“How could you?” she asked, some of the fury returning to her voice. “You told me to trust people, to let them in, to trust you, and then you lied for years! I understand not telling me, but how could you keep it a secret from Master Tighnari? I thought you loved him.”

“I do-”

“I thought you were dead when I first found him crying on the floor,” she sounded choked. “He was holding one of your shirts and I thought- but no, you were just dying from an illness you hid despite knowing it’s something I had too!” 

Her words were quiet when she spoke next, as if all the fight had fled her. “I couldn’t travel to see you,” she whispered. “I had to wait here for Lisa’s letters because Tighnari was too devastated to write. You would have died and I wouldn’t have even had the chance to say goodbye.”

She tightened her hands into fists, staring down at the cards in front of her. Cyno knew she wasn’t crying—Collei refused to allow that if she could help it—but she was close to it. 

He reached across the table to lay a hand over one of her fists, a steady ache between his ribs from knowing just how much he had affected her. It was naïve to think otherwise, and yet... 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Collei, I'm so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen.”

“Then why?” she asked in that same meek voice. It reminded Cyno of Mondstadt, of the little girl so desperate for somebody to trust, somebody to care for her. 

He squeezed her fist. 

“I can’t tell you,” he said. “I don’t really know myself. All of my thoughts were just excuses.”

Collei clenched her jaw, her shoulders trembling as she stared down at the table. “That’s cruel,” she said.

Guilt curdled in Cyno’s stomach like soured milk. “I know, and I’m sorry I can’t do better.”

Archons, how he wished he could do better; wished he could mend all of his broken relationships. This was the last thing he’d ever wanted to happen. 

“Collei, I- if you want-” he cleared his throat. “I know you’re closer with Tighnari than me, but if you want comfort…” He raised one arm, a silent signal he would hug her if she wanted. 

Perhaps Collei had grown more than he thought she did, because Cyno didn’t expect her to take him up on it. To his surprise, though, Collei pushed herself out of her chair and quickly rounded the small table. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders tightly, hiding her face in his shoulder like she would if he was Tighnari.

The chair creaked beneath their combined weight, but held. Cyno was thankful—he didn’t think he could keep himself up otherwise, let alone Collei. 

It was awkward at first. Despite his offer, Cyno still wasn’t sure what to do. Lisa had hugged him before she left, and it was common for Kaveh to, but Tighnari was too careful when touching Cyno now. 

Cyno took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. He wrapped his arms around Collei and felt her soften into him. She sniffled against his shirt and hiccuped a quiet cry, her hands twisting in the fabric at his back. Cyno held her closer and rested his cheek against her hair. It smelled of the same Sumeru rose shampoo that all the Forest Watchers used—that Tighnari used. 

His eyes burned as the fabric beneath Collei’s face dampened with her tears. He supposed this has been a long time coming for her. Maybe for both of them. 

She really had her whole life ahead of her now, and Cyno realized with an ache that he was so glad he would get to see it. 

“I’m sorry,” he said again, whispering into the wisps of her green hair. 

Collei tightened her hold on him before pulling away. Cyno already missed her warmth. 

“I forgive you,” she said, sniffling. Her eyes were red rimmed and puffy to match the damp section of his shirt. “You’re too important not to.”

Cyno breathed deeply, trying to brush away the pain in his chest from her words. It didn’t ease. 

He reached out and took her hand, squeezing it. 

“You’re important to me too,” he said. 

She wiped her eyes on a sleeve and sniffled again. Her expression almost made Cyno laugh.

“I hate crying,” she said. “It’s disgusting, and now my face hurts.”

Cyno did laugh at that, the sound barely a breath, but Collei heard it. 

She smiled at him and squeezed the hand he still held back.

For now, it was enough.

[save-the-spiral]

Ouroboros

Content Warnings for child abuse, cycles of abuse, child neglect, manipulation, possession, blood, grief, implied (magical) ableism, implied suicide.

General Maliswap moments. This is not kind to Malistaire or Sylvia. The narrator(s) are not the most reliable sort, you understand, but they aren't pulling it from nothing in this AU.

It's very... ruminating on your shitty childhood kinda thing. I really advise that if you have shit parents and stuff that you take this slow and check in with yourself. It's a long one and a doozy. Ended up just kinda Writing it and not stopping after the first line.

(buy me coffee?) (Maliswap AU Masterpost))

You don't know when you stopped being your mother's child.

There has to have been a tipping point, somewhere between your birth and now. Something you did wrong that evicted you from your place in your mother's heart.

It's a lie you tell yourself, to give undeserved logic to your parents' neglect.

Your father is not innocent in this. But you don't speak ill of the dead. Only think it.

You can't even remember when they truly stopped seeing a child when they looked at you. You've given away so much that your perception of time is warped, without memories to anchor itself to.

It had to have been something you did. Parents don't wake up one day and decide to stop loving their children, you tell yourself.

When you were so very small, the kind of small where you still clung to your uncle's leg as he stomped around, making you giggle madly and cling harder, one of the petnames your parents used was 'little wizard'.

After you woke in your mother's infirmary, after coughing up blood and choking on smoke from casting a firecat under your godmother's instruction, your parents only called you by name.

Weeks later, after the confirmation that you would never cast magic without causing harm to yourself, they never looked you in the eye.

Sometimes you would overhear them talking to each other. Never arguing, they were the kind of couple that never really argued. But they would talk for hours, trying to make sense of what each of them thought, why they thought that way, and how to compromise.

Whenever they spoke of you it was always 'your child' this, 'the child' that. Never even your name. You couldn't even pretend it didn't hurt.

Even in those long conversations, there was no solution to the problem you were. Even if they spoke for hours about magical theory and whatever else, it didn't change that they saw you as a problem to fix instead of the child they birthed and were supposed to raise.

It was when you were becoming a teenager that you started acting out. Door slamming, mug throwing, screaming arguments. You were so angry at the world, at everything, but especially at the two people who dared to act like your existence was your own fault, like they didn't create you and then leave you to rot the moment you weren't what they wanted.

One of the memories you still cling to, one of the few you have left, is the end of a tense family dinner. You can't remember what pushed you to do it, but you had stabbed your steak knife into the kitchen table and stood up, chair falling back with a clatter onto the tile floor.

Your father's face had reverted into the stoic mien he maintained with his students, then quickly morphed to show his resignation, as if he knew you could do nothing but disappoint.

Your mother stared down at her meal, shoulders tense, knuckles white as she gripped her fork and knife.

Fucking look at me, you had screamed. Look me in the fucking eye and tell me you give a damn about my future.

After that you never really went back to living in that house. You were an unwanted guest in your own home. Even though they had given you no reason to, you jumped at every loud noise, at approaching footsteps.

That's the only thing you'll grant them. They never laid a hand on you. Sometimes you wish they had. Then you could've given a name to this. You would've known it was wrong long, long before that psychology class you took in university.

Some part of you misses them still. Or the idea of them. The concept of them.

They could've been such good parents. You know this. You've seen your mother in her infirmary, how deeply she can care for someone she's never met. A kind of genuine love for someone purely because they are a person and deserve it.

Maybe she thinks she loves you, but it's not... it just isn't love. It's something else rebranded, something where she sees the idea of a child she could love, instead of you. She acts like a mother, only because that is what she should do. She doesn't mother you, though. Merely is the adult woman in the house, and you the child. Surely that means she is your mother.

And your father, well he would've never been the traditional idea of a father. Stern, maybe, but not a disciplinarian. He was always awkward, disconnected from emotion because of his own upbringing. Something he could've changed. A cycle he could have broken and yet failed to, not even recognizing his own childhood as bad, let alone seeing the similarities to your own. That kind of realization would have hurt him deeply. He never realized. He never looked at you and saw more than the facts. He knew you weren't the child he wanted. You weren't going to become his protege, nor your mother's.

Both of your parents' lives were just so deeply infused with magic there was little they knew besides that. What could a person do without it? All they had known was magic and academia, and encouraging a child to study what they could never truly know seemed cruel.

Forcing a child to live their life around what they can never have seemed so cruel. Even without a better option, the guilt ate at both of them, and they pushed off conversations with their child, explanations to make sense of their distance.

They fail utterly at being parents. They are good people. They are great professors. But the failure to care for and raise their child forever stains their legacy, and the person who was supposed to be that legacy.

You are little more than a human-shaped husk that carries all of the worst of your parents. Your mother's temper. Your father's disconnection with emotion. You can't look people in the eye and tell them the truth, just like they did to you.

Cycles unbroken, and all that.

You are the sum of their union given form, and the world, the Spiral, is all the worst for it. You are just another catastrophe, little more than a natural disaster given sentience, and even then you played the coward and ran away to a place where your parents' names meant nothing.

You were nothing, there. Not the disappointment, not the professors' child, not even the strange freak who nearly blew up their hand casting simple children's magic. You were just a random young adult in a city that was uncaring, its stars so distant above the towering skyscrapers.

It felt like home, more than that house your father died in ever did.

Anonymity is the only true balm to the raw wound of being so utterly ignored from those who were supposed to love you.

Being no one in a city of unimportant people. Being nothing and only becoming something through your own hard work, that was where you found your passion. It took years, maybe. You can't remember how long you spent in that cityworld. It felt like the best time of your life. It is where the memories you had cherished most had resided.

Before you forfeited them all to me, of course. Now there is precious little of that world you remember. The feeling of stepping in an oily puddle remains. The soft slap of a rogue newspaper hitting you in the face after it had flown on the breeze, causing you to splutter and laugh. The bone deep cold of winter as you shivered alone in your tiny flat, bundled in extra blankets that a friend (you can't remember their face, their name, not anymore.) had taught you how to knit.

I let you keep those memories. They are not happy ones, but at least content. Sometimes I pity you, really, for such simple things to give you such feelings.

Sometimes I resent you for it. Don't worry though, darling. That's merely a result of one of our many trades. Your temper is short, but vast in potential. I gave you so much power in trade for it, and I cherish it, even if at times it turns inwards towards its original owner.

Sometimes I do pause and wonder at the memories you gave to me. I examine every little interaction with your parents and try to find the thing that could've been fixed. Something that you could've done to make them love you.

I'm so sorry dear, but even I, in all my eons of wisdom and expertise, cannot find such a thing.

Their problem was with the fundamental aspects of your being.

You could not handle magic the same way one cannot ingest poison. The nature of it broke down your body. There is no pool of magic inside you to draw from, and so it pulled at your muscles, your bones. It thinned the walls of organs and caused vital processes to stutter and choke on themselves.

This is just who and how you are. It isn't a problem to be fixed. And yet your parents begged to differ, and that is when they lost their only child.

I almost wish I could twist the knife. I almost wish I could tell you that you did something out of selfishness, that somewhere along the way you were a bad child, and deserved it.

Instead I must rub salt into the wound and tell you that there is nothing that you could've done except ruin yourself further, martyr yourself upon the altar of their stubbornness. Bleed out under their feet so they can mourn you and say there was nothing they could have done to fix you.

I don't want to lie to you. If you had died young, casting magic and trying to be what they wanted, they would've loved you. They would've wept at your grave. They would've torn the Spiral asunder for you, remake the universe to ensure you could live still.

You stopped being your mother's child when you listened to their warnings, I suppose. When you didn't slaughter yourself, bleating your last words when you were so young you didn't understand death.

I can't be your parent. I... am little more than a parasite. In my youth, if you could call the beginning of my existence such a thing, I was many things, as one is when they can shift their very nature as they breathe.

I was monster, beast, thing. I am not what one could call a parent. All understanding of such bonds are stolen from my previous victims and hosts, until the final one locked me in that damned book.

Until you freed me, gave me such hospitality, of course. I understand it now more than ever, and can say with certainty I am not your parent. I am a protector, of this body and what little of your consciousness is left in it. I am a creature of spite, if only from the circumstance of our meeting, and your mother's 'ignorance' of it.

But I also know, that in no world are those two deserving of calling you their child.

You were so much better than that. You had such potential. I suppose I was given that potential as well in our exchanges. But still, it came from you. It was something created and carried by you, and I cherish it.

I suppose I cherish you as well. It's long since been past the time where I could have shed your body, rebirthed myself and wreaked havoc, cause a cacophony to over take the Song Of Creation if I felt like it.

I suppose I have grown sentimental. I'll stay here a while yet.

I won't let you go like they did.

[tharizdun-03]

Okay, so I liked my overall time with Nijigasaki. It's a generally cute time. It looks quite good (even if the production seems to have been tight so the general animation is sometimes stiff when it doesn't need to be more), and the music video style for the solo performances is something I'll dearly miss if it doesn't carry over into future series.

But I have two main problems with Nijigasaki:

1) It's not goofy enough

2) Too many characters so we don't get sufficient character work

The first thing is more so just a personal preference. Yes, maybe Chika jumping into the ocean and Riko rushing after her because she thinks she's committing suicide, but then it turns out that she was just taking a dip to clear her head and then all the girls have a big gay moment in the water as Chika cries, is a *bit* much. (love that moment tho)

I think for the drama, the more subdued approach sometimes works. Yes, instead of the above moment, the characters in Nijigasaki just talk things out. I like that. Not necessarily at the expense of the other approach, but it's a nice change.

But, it doesn't led itself to the comedy well, and I mainly enjoy Love Live as a sitcom. The characters in Nijigasaki, because they take a more subdued approach, are also just too bland. They're too normal. What is the weirdest quirk in Nijigasaki? Well, Shizuku was scared that people wouldn't like her when she was young because she liked old movies (something that is NEVER brought up again btw. a consistent issue). Compared to Yohane, who falls out of trees and then calls herself a fallen angel, so there's a legitimate reason to be worried that people won't like her lol. Like, the Nijigasaki girls are all too saccharine, they're too smoothed over, they're too boring.

The second thing is that we just have too many characters. Most of season 1 is spent about introducing each girl, one episode each, that we don't get the chance to actually build a group dynamic and individual episodes. Granted, the second season does try to fix this by making units, and I overall think it does improve things, but not everything.

The new girls, for example, get their one episode but don't have much of a build-up. Even with Lanzhu and Mia having struggles that should work, it often just makes me go "i guess that makes sense" rather than actually make me feel something.

Maybe Lanzhu's whole deal of pushing people away would've hit if we actually got more than barely a few actually significant conversations between her and the cast, and some interesting dynamics. Maybe we should've gotten more from Shirioko than just her one episode.

Is it the gayest Love live so far? Eh... Like, sure, it definitely has the gayest MOMENTS, but because of the lack of character work, we don't actually have as gay RELATIONSHIPS compared to Sunshine.

Think about someone like Rina (who should have the face board on way more often, so much missed comedic potential). Who do we ship her with? Ai (who is so flat as a character btw)? We barely get screentime with the two and they don't have much of a dynamic at all. And now Rina is holding hands with Mia and everything?

Or one episode, we get ship bait for Kasumi and Kanata. Does Kanata have any sort of relationship with anyone in the cast really? We haven't developed it. And Kasumin could have more stuff with Shizuku but we barely get anything. There are too many characters. We don't have clearly defined ships.

Why don't we have clearly defined ships? Is that all I'm looking for in this show? Gay stuff? No, but it points to the larger issue. It's because the character work is too vague, too fluid, too underworked. To the point that we don't actually have strong enough bonds between the characters.

Anyway, it's still a fun series. It is by no means close to the best Love Live has to offer for me but it's still a good Love Live series and I enjoyed my time with it. Hope the music video style continues somehow in Superstar. And Kasumin is still best girl.