#fic: the purgatory papers

[silverdune]

the purgatory papers | introduction: part one

"i’m so sorry, but, you can’t retire. not yet. not right now."

minors dni. ageless blogs dni. blank blogs dni. you'll be blocked. main masterlist character(s): gn!reader, jeong yunho tags: explicit language, banter, reader is tired, yunho's kind of a little shit, loose interpretations of heaven, hell and purgatory word count: 2.1k summary: you, an elder of purgatory, are ready to retire your position as the manifestation of a newspaper columnist, someone who got the scoop on feuds between the angels and devils of heaven and hell. however, when you go to yunho - the leader of purgatory - to explain this, he reveals he has another job for you, and a very important one at that..

a/n: so this is mainly to hold myself accountable for posting a masterlist in the first place. i know it's been two months but tbh i had next to no motivation; please enjoy anyways;

You need a break from all of this.

For the last two millennia, you had been at the forefront of capturing every feud that has happened between the angels and devils of heaven and hell, and now you’ve decided that you’ve just about had enough of all of it.

You think with such derision, and yet, it was never a terrible job, just a tedious one. Of course, there was something innately thrilling about learning of all the gossip that had cooked up between the two worlds you in purgatory had been sandwiched between, but as an elder now, it’s about time you give it up.

Elder is only a nominative term, for no one upstairs in heaven, hell or purgatory ever aged. A symbol of status above anything else, something to resemble a sort of hierarchy among the people who roamed the amorphous sectors of the world upstairs.

Ever since you had become an apprentice in purgatory, you had been working to take over from the last elder who had retired their position of newspaper columnist. How it worked was very simple: if there was any news of a potential feud brewing between an angel and devil, a dweller of purgatory would be sent down to the mortal world to.. manifest as it were. In that, sporting a glamour fashioned out of the very idea of a journalist. Someone whom a regular person in the mortal world would bypass for fear of being cornered for an interview or caught on their accomplice’s camera.

This had been your job for a while, under the wing of your no-nonsense, lukewarm-blooded boss, Jeong Yunho.

But as you reminisce on your life manifesting as a being most wouldn’t spit on in a house fire, you decide that the time is nigh to tell your boss you wish to retire.

As you descend the sprawling corridors to his understated office, you flick through a heavy-loaded notebook tucked in the crook of your right elbow. Inside are all the details of every past feud you’ve ever reported on, and it brings a flash of the weakest smile to your lips as you remember all the trials and tribulations you went through to get such information. No angel or devil really ever thanked you for it. You suppose it was hard luck on their part.

Once you reach the door to Yunho’s office, you knock three times, muscles taut at the broad but hollow sound that reverberates after each strike.

From the other side of what feels like a concrete door, Yunho’s voice rings loud and clear. “Enter.”

You push open the door with little effort and say nothing as you step into his office. Yunho’s eyes are downturned, far more interested in the paperwork before him than he is in engaging in conversation. That is until he finally looks up and sees you.

“Ah. N. I was hoping you’d stop by.”

“Oh?” you ask, airily. “Nothing bad I hope.” You take a seat on the chair opposite his and place your notebook on the desk. Lighter than most of the volumes Yunho keeps stashed away in his filing cabinets, but still hefty enough to cause a thud when set down.

“No, n- well- depends on how you define that term.”

You cock a brow and fold your arms. “I’m suspicious,” you quip. You enjoy your little back and forths with your boss. Around the eyes of the many members of purgatory you kept it strictly professional, but you’d been under Yunho’s wing enough time for him to excuse a tiny bit of banter in his office.

He scoffs a laugh that doesn’t reach his lungs before bringing out a piece of paper from beneath the wad of many. “I’ve got a job for you,” he announces flippantly. You blink, then chew the insides of your lip. No, for the love of-

Then, Yunho looks you directly in the eyes, expecting your eagerness to take another job.

You reward him with an awkwardly vacant stare.

“N,” he prompts, thinking he needs to coax you back to the room, “got another job.” He waves the paper around then puts it on top of your notebook.

“Ha..” You scratch your forehead, unable to stifle a smile and a hapless chuckle at the sight of a new task. “Y’see, um..” Trapping your tongue between your lips, you attempt to let him down gently.

Yunho clasps his hands together on the desk and frowns, puzzled. He then drops all pretence and states bluntly, “N, I hate to break it to you, but this is important.”

The exit signs disappear until you click your spine back into place and look him dead in the eyes. “There’s a reason I came to see you, actually, Yunho, and it’s um..” He hardens his gaze, a rare sight in your three millennia under his wing. You fall back in your chair and take a deep breath. “Yunho, I’ve come to tell you that I wish to retire.”

Yunho’s eyes widen, his expression changing from sharp to putty in seconds. An even rarer sight. “Wh-What?”

A genuine loss for words. So rare you never sought to bring it out of him.

You stare at one another for a while, not a single glance spared to the paperwork on the desk.

Once Yunho finally finds his resolve, he still has to repeat the word a few times so it sounds remotely real. “R-Retire? Retire? You actually want to.. retire?”

“Retire. Yes,” you say, concretely.

Yunho doesn’t miss a beat. He leans across the desk, his features shifting again, this time to profound regret. All of this is so new to you. You wish cameras worked upstairs.

“N.. I’m so sorry, but, you can’t retire. Not yet. Not right now.”

His voice is low and filled with.. guilt. Honest to God guilt.

“What do you mean?” Your head is spinning with thoughts. You look down at the paperwork Yunho had presented to you earlier and actually study it this time.

You don’t have to study long, though, for Yunho fills in the blanks running rampant in your mind.

“This job.. It’s a big one, the biggest yet, in fact.” You glance up, and he meets your eyes. There’s an emotion in there you can’t quite decipher, but it’s yet another one he’s never openly expressed before now. The lukewarm leader of purgatory had no room for strong emotions. “It’s huge because.. I’m not the one asking after you.”

You straighten up in your seat. Your face stiffens. You manage to blurt out a quiet, “Who?”

“Hell’s overseer. The High Devil. Hongjoong.”

You fall back in your seat after a few seconds. So that’s why Yunho has the perpetual look of fear and dread on his face.

“Well.. shit,” is all you can murmur. Never before has a job come through him. You’ve never even met the man, why would he want your assistance after all this time?

You ask Yunho this very question and he exhales with full dramatic effect. “This feud’s gotten under his skin a fair bit. And in the metrics of hell, a fair bit means his resolve is ash on the floor.”

Folding your arms, you chew on your tongue for a while, thinking of a response to what feels like the ultimate task. The final boss, as a percentage of mortals have been historically known to say.

For some reason you can’t explain, you feel nothing but a dormant sense of exasperation. You had your whole retirement figured out and now there’s a huge, High Devil-shaped wrench in your plans.

You wonder if you’d get away with lying about already having retired. It’s not like you in the slightest but you’ve been doing this for far too long, Yunho would understand, wouldn’t he?

His downturned smile and heavy, fixated stare say otherwise. You frown.

“Guess I got no choice, huh?”

Yunho rolls his eyes and sits back in his own chair. “If I figured you had a choice, I would actually be encouraging you to retire.”

“Gee, I’m so thankful,” you reply with half-hearted sarcasm.

Your boss looks you in the eyes, and it causes you to swallow. He leans back over the table, and it makes the single light fixture above your heads seem dimmer than it was a second ago. “N, I don’t present this news with any kind of joy or malice. I know I may have seemed surprised-” - your brows flick up; seemed is quite the understatement - “but in truth, it doesn’t come as a surprise now that I’ve had some time to think about it. I remember what your mood was like at the end of the last job; I figured if you weren’t going to retire then, you would definitely retire soon.”

It’s true. During your last job, you almost tossed all the information into a word salad. You were that disillusioned from the tedium of it all.

He continues, “But considering this feud is so serious, I told Hongjoong that I would give you the job, but made him promise that he wouldn’t ask after you again, hinting that I thought you might quit for good.”

You shift in your seat at that revelation. The idea that the two of them had a conversation that lasted longer than just a couple of words is astounding to you.

Eyeing the paperwork in front of you, you notice that it’s quite barren for a task sheet. It describes the absolute basics, and the only names on there are yours and Hongjoong’s.

“So, I assume he’s not feuding with himself.”

Yunho senses your confusion. “It’s an angel and devil, no doubt, but he didn’t want to write it down on the sheet.. He actually wants to discuss it with you in person.”

You glance up, eyes wide and completely hollow. “In.. In person?”

“Unprecedented, I know. Typically I wouldn’t go for it, but Hongjoong was adamant that he wanted to discuss this in person, so, there you go.”

No other explanation given. It feels like your brain is bleeding out of your ears. “Is.. Is that it?”

“Yep. That’s it.”

His curt reply is equal parts infuriating and daunting. There are so many questions you want to ask, but you realise you’ll have to leave them all for Hell’s overseer.

One question floats to the front, however. “So, when will I be paying Old Horns a visit?”

Yunho spares you a cursory glance but says nothing on your discreet nickname for Hongjoong, except a warning look that says, don’t let him catch you calling him that. “Tomorrow, mid-afternoon. Make it quick, then make yourself scarce. The devils will be sniffing around wondering what you’re doing.”

“But I don’t even know which devil I’m looking out for! Or angel, for that matter.”

“It’s best if you don’t make a scene of yourself at all. Give the gatewatchers this,” he fashions a card out of thin air and passes it to you, “and tell them you have express permission to visit the High Devil on urgent business.”

You inspect the red card and read the words scribbled on the front.

Issued by the High Devil. Allowance for one visit. No transfers. Terms and exclusions may apply.

“He’s a real catch, ain’t he?” you jest, earning an irreverent scoff from the man opposite. You slip it into your inside jacket pocket then fold the piece of paper. “I’ll make sure I’m not late.”

“Good- oh! By the way, you’ll have company.”

Yunho says this as your part way through standing up, believing the card to be your exit from this meeting. Knees awkwardly bent in place, you process Yunho’s words then slump back down on the seat. “Company?” you utter, disgruntled.

“Company,” he smiles dryly. “I thought it would be a good idea to start training an apprentice in the process of you getting the scoop on this feud, so, you’ll have an ex-spectre joining you.”

Ex-spectre? Odd, you think; spectres are newbies to hell who have been there less than a millennia. Your brows furrow, bewilderment sweeping your features as a million more questions flood your mind.“He’ll be here tomorrow, you can meet him after you’ve spoken with Hongjoong.”

“Right.. Am I not allowed to know this person’s name, since, y’know, I guess I’ve been swept into babysitting now.”

Yunho glares at you. “His name is Choi Jongho. He left Hell after six centuries. I’m sure he’ll explain more once you meet him.”

Ah. That explains a lot.

“I see.. So-”

“Tomorrow, N,” Yunho declares in his usual business-like demeanour. You straighten up; no messing with him when he uses that tone.

With a new, unwitting obligation to carry out another task on your back, you pick up your notebook and bid your boss a short goodbye before leaving his office when he says nothing in return.

Your spine locks against the door as you sit with your life for the next however many weeks.

One thing you know for certain: you are not looking forward to this meeting.

× silverdune (ave). do not repost. ×

[reiderwriter]

📃 Desk Duty 📃

Unit Chief Spencer Reid x Fem Reader

For the CM Kink Bingo Challenge 2024

Summary: After taking a bullet on a case, Spencer orders you to desk duty. After two months of pushing papers and his pushing you away for fear of hurting you, you've had enough.

Warnings: Established BDSM scenario, public sex, masturbation (female and male), mentions of sex toys, breaking and entering, multiple orgasms, squirting, shoe riding, slapping (ass, face, pussy), wet/dirty/messy sex, deep-throaring, face fucking, exhibitionism, risky sex, creampie, sloppy sex, pet play (puppy), Hard Dom Spencer, bratty sub reader, degradation (slut, whore, bitch used). Confessions of love at the end because I'm not a monster.

A/N: Hello, it's me, painfully single, back with another in a series of fics that I think will haunt my (wet) dreams for eternity. Thank you to @lightvixxen for requesting shoe riding all those moons ago, I am so glad we share in the same brand of brain rot. Enjoy~♡

Masterlist || Bingo Board

The first time you were shot, you were surprised it hurt so much. Of course, you knew it was going to hurt. You knew you'd eventually be shot. 

But the graze to your arm stung like a bitch, and had you whimpering on the floor of a warehouse like a small child who'd fallen off their bike for the first time. 

You'd picked yourself back up, and, luckily, the shot had avoided doing any serious damage, but you were relegated to desk duty for two months after. Just until you could prove you weren't traumatised, and there wasn't any permanent damage to your arm.

Two months of staying home while your boss gallivanted around the country, happily diving in front of bullets and jumping on bombs. Two months of staying home waiting for him to come back and rail you. 

You'd been sleeping with Spencer Reid practically since he'd become the Unit Chief, and with the announcement that there were only a few more weeks left until Emily Prentiss came back from her special task force, you were really losing time alone in the office you'd been enjoying the pleasures of one another in. 

Of course, there would still be motel rooms for you later, but soon he wouldn't have the keys to your room, making your secret trysts slightly riskier. You weren't sure you wanted everyone in the office to know just what it was the two of you were getting up to in your spare time. 

So, with your last two months of freedom relegated to desk duty, you sulked. 

Spencer was clear that he was leaving you behind so you could recuperate, but you didn't exactly expect him to go cold turkey. 

You'd been apart before, having been sent on separate inmate interviews, and you'd made do with a poorly connected video call, a dildo and your hands, getting all the inspiration you needed watching him pump his cock in his fist.  

But somehow, your injury had made him borderline chaste, and he refused to even touch you while you were still in - his words, not yours - recovery. 

It had been a month since he'd fucked you. Hell, it had been a month since you'd even seen his cock. A month since you'd had any kind of orgasm, first because your dominant hand had been out of action, and then because you'd felt so frustrated without him, you couldn't bring yourself to do it alone. 

He messaged you daily, called practically once every eight hours, and made sure you were eating and sleeping even from halfway across the country. 

But he didn't make any mention of your growing frustration, even as you tried your best to tempt him into sin. 

A month into purgatory, you'd started hinting at your own needs. Your teammates had taken a case in Atlanta, and you'd stuck behind a days drive away and heard absolutely nothing. 

You'd called, and Luke had picked up, making his presence known before you could royally screw up and beg for something to fuck. 

“H-Hi, Luke. I was just wondering how the case was going. Is there anything I can help with from the office?” You asked, stammering on the phone as you pulled your hand out from between your thighs. 

“You want to help? At 11pm at night?”

“Sure do! You know me… go-getter?” You stuttered the words, not even believing them yourself, biting your lip in anxiety and hoping that Luke would just think you were going stir crazy. 

“I'll hand you to Reid, he's been talking about some case files you might be able to help with.” 

“Thank you,” you said, breathing a sigh of relief. 

You heard the phone switch hands, and then you heard movement until the line went quieter, and Spencer's voice popped into your ear. 

“Y/N?” 

“I miss you,” you sighed before you could say anything else, fingers sliding between your thighs before you could think to stop yourself. 

“I miss you, too,” he whispered hesitantly, but you heard the smile in his voice as he answered. 

“You're working so late tonight, I'd hoped…” you trailed off, feeling your skin heat as your free hands lipped into your underwear and you touched yourself for real this time. 

“We think he's working under the same MO as the Night Stalker, like a copycat, so we're keeping to late hours. What's that sound?” 

“Nothing,” you said, giving your lie away almost immediately with a moan. 

“Are you… Y/N, are you touching yourself?” He asked, already knowing the answer. 

“I told you I missed you. It's been a month since you've touched me, someone has to do it-” 

“Stop it.” 

His words were blunt, and there was no hint of excitement in them, no telling if he was saying this so he could play a part in your unravelling. 

“What?” 

“Stop touching yourself. Y/N, you are not allowed to touch yourself.” 

“Not-? Spencer, what the fuck!” You exploded, sitting up from your comfortable position on the bed, set alight in indignance. 

“I'm the only one that gets to touch you like that, you're not allowed to cum unless I'm there,” he ground out, and just as you heard the smile in his voice earlier, you heard the frustration and arousal now. 

“Well, Spencer, if you'd have brought me along on this case instead of leaving me here, maybe you'd get a say in who gets to make me cum.” 

“Y/N, you're injured, and you haven't been cleared to fly. A doctor needs to-”

“You're a doctor. Technically. You could sign off on me. You could've had me right there in your bed tonight, but no.” 

He scoffed down the line, and you saw his face flash so vividly in your head that it pissed you off. He was hotter when he was angry. 

“Nice try. I tried that myself once, but it doesn't work. Now go to sleep and get some rest.” 

You opened your mouth to argue, but he hung up. His words lit a fire in the pit of your stomach, and you threw the phone down in frustration. 

He wasn't listening again, and you were sick of it, and you we're sick of pushing paper at a cubical when you should've been out in the field doing your actual job. You were sick of being celibate and at home alone, when you should've been in a dark corner somewhere letting your boss use your body, letting him pin you to the wall and work out his frustrations.  

You should've had your lips wrapped around his cock, you should've had his hands buried in your cunt, slapping your ass, his teeth teasing your nipples, something. 

Instead, you had your phone camera and a bed, and a personal vendetta against the word 'no' coming from Spencer Reid's mouth. If he wanted you to stop touching yourself, he'd better get his ass home and make you. 

Shedding your clothes, you set up your camera and began your week long crusade. 

The first video received a response in the form of a call you let go straight to voice mail as you recorded the second one. 

He didn't call again after that, but you knew he watched each and every video you sent. 

You knew he watched the video of you fucking yourself on a wall mounted dildo in the shower. You wondered if he let him imagine it was him, taking his cock in hand in the morning as he washed and prepared himself for the day. 

You knew he watched the video of you playing with your boobs alone in the elevator at work after hours. You wondered if he was still working late when he saw that one, or if, like last time, maybe Luke had grabbed his phone first and seen it before him. . 

You knew he watched the video you shot in his apartment. It wasn't that hard to get into, knowing exactly where the spare key was hidden and letting yourself in comfortably. You let yourself dress in one of his shirts and set the camera up, pushing a bullet vibe inside yourself, and turning on the camera, playing with the hem of the shirt and the sheets below until you finally flashed the camera and him the sight of your wet cunt. 

You filmed a few videos there, fingering yourself, spreading yourself so he could see just how far you'd opened yourself up for him, sinking down on to progressively bigger silicone cocks and mumbling his name over and over again. 

You knew he watched every video, even though you'd sent ten over the space of an evening. You knew he was likely somewhere stroking his large, hot cock, wishing he was buried deep in you, but too stubborn to let you know that now. 

The day after the case ended, you knew that his return meant punishment, but you couldn't stop yourself. 

An hour before the teams expected arrival time, you excused yourself to Spencer's office. The first time he'd fucked you had been in there. He'd pushed you over his lap and slapped some sense into you, spanking you until you were a drippy mess waiting for his cock to enter you sharp and fast. 

You'd since sucked his cock under the desk more times than you could count, and the view from the window was more than familiar to you as you enjoyed being pushed up against it as he took you from behind, the both of you revelling in the fact that anyone could see you defiling the building together. 

With half an hour to spare before he returned and ended your fun and games, you mounted the arm of his couch and began rubbing yourself against it. You rocked your hips slowly back and forth against it - as horny as you were, it was still embarrassing to be so horny you'd resulted to humping pieces of furniture to meet your needs. 

You'd thought about getting drunk and finding a random dick to take home with you, but it didn't interest you half so much as fucking with Spencer Reid did. You'd never had the talk about exclusivity, but you knew just as well as he did that you were locked in. He was your boyfriend, whether he realised it or not.

And now, you simply needed his cock so badly, nothing else would do. The closest you could get was a piece of furniture he'd fucked you on before. 

You slipped your panties off quickly as your timer sounded a ten minute warning, knowing his plane would be landing any second now. You'd factored in the walk from the jet to the office, praying to the gods above that he took the initiative to get ahead on paperwork instead of going straight home. 

You rocked back and forth on the arm of the couch until his door opened narrowly and he let himself in, just as your clit rubbed the corner of the couch and you moaned out gloriously. 

“Y/N,” he hissed as he slammed the door shut. You didn't stop even as he crossed the room and grabbed your hips, instead lunging for his lips and meeting them with your own. 

Your tongue clashed with him for the first time in a lifetime, and you whimpered at how good he still felt pressed up against you. His chest was a solid shield, and your puffy nipples pushed up against it, rubbing deliciously with each grind. His hands were large, his fingers long as they clawed themselves around your hips and drew you up.

“You just can't follow orders, can you?” He asked between kisses, between breaths where you weren't sure if he'd slap you or shove his fingers down your throat. “I should fire you,” he whispered as he reluctantly pulled away. 

“But Spencer,” you said, gasping jokingly as you pawed at the front of his pants. “Who would you fuck on cases then? Who would be your controversially young fuck doll?” 

You meant it to be a joke, but the slap he delivered to your ass made you think twice as you clapped a hand over your mouth. 

His hands roughly pulled you into him again, and you were unable to rise up enough again before he hit you again. You jilted forwards with a little moan and just gave in to the sensation, pressing your face into the pillows as your hips rose. 

“You're acting like such a desperate little slut, I don't think you deserve to even lick my cock. Fuck, I don't even think you deserve to lick my shoe,” his words cut deep as you realised how angry he was, his fingers tangling in your hair he yanked you upwards. 

“Wait, please - Spencer, please, I need-” 

“Need what? You need to suck cock? You need to put yourself on display in a public place? Need everyone around you to know just what it is we do when we're alone?” With each question, he worked on bruising your ass cheeks harder, until he finally pushed you to the floor, and you sank down, automatically spreading your legs for him. 

“Pathetic. You don't deserve this cock, baby.” 

“No!” You cried out, not willing to accept that outcome at all as you panicked. “I'll do anything, please, Spencer, I'll do anything!” 

You whimpered and cried out in real frustration and fear, knowing that he absolutely would kick you out if you didn't act fast. Spencer may have been fine with you taking control some days, but this obviously wasn't one of them. You sat yourself on your knees and clasped your hands together, attempting to seem half the serious devotee and half the irresistible vixen whose chest was accentuated by the movement.

“Okay. Show me just how much of a desperate slut you are,” he said, lifting his foot from the ground and nudging it between your thighs. 

Reluctantly, you widened your stance, spreading apart just enough for him to notch his shoe against your clothed pussy. 

“Ride my shoe, Y/N. You're such a good little boot-licker. It shouldn't be a problem, right?” As if to answer your own question for you, he bobbed his knee gently, and your clit ground into the edge of his shoelaces, causing a sharp, fast burst of pleasure to spark through you. 

You still were too shocked to answer, but he smoothed your hair from your eyes as he continued to bounce his foot, and you left all of your concerns behind, slowly grinding down. 

“What a dirty little slut, I didn't think you'd actually do it.”

Wrapping your arms around his leg, you pressed your hips up and down hesitantly, looking into his eyes as your mouth dropped open in a silent moan. 

“That's it, good girl,” he said, letting his leg go still as you did all the work, shaking your hips back and forth on his shoe as you gave him pleading looks, unable to form words for the overwhelming shame and embarrassment.  

“You look like a puppy,” he blurted out, grabbing a handful of hair and pulling it back, hard, exposing your throat to him as he watched you with curious eyes. “Like one of those puppies who gets so excited to see you, she starts humping you. So fucking horny and desperate. You wouldn't even care who was in the room with us, right now, would you? You'd just keep going until yiu came.” 

You gasped as he slapped your face, tongue falling out of your mouth as he inspected his little play puppy. He smiled, as if happy with your reactions, and leant back on the sofa, releasing your hair from his grip as you continued to struggle in vain toward your orgasm. 

It was another two or three seconds before you realised he was pulling his hard cock from his pants, and another moment or two before he slid his hands back into your hair and guided your dumb, stupid, wet mouth over the top of his cock quickly. 

You let him move your head just how he liked, let him push you down almost farther than you thought you could go. You ground your bare clit down into his shoe as you deepened your breaths, relaxing your body as you took inch after inch of his cock down your throat. 

His hands were wound so tight in your hair that there wasn't space to move. You gagged, once and twice, but he held you in place still, enjoying the spit that spluttered around the base of his cock, the spasms of your contracting throat against the tip and length of his cock. You breathed deeply, ignoring the feeling of his pubic hair tickling your nose, scratching your cheek as you flattened out your tongue under his cock. You wished he would move, wished he would give you the space you needed to cum faster. 

The desperation of the last few months built up and built up, and you knew that you were close to cumming, your hips rocking out of tempo now, crashing into his foot wildly, ass shaking as you felt his shoelaces rubbing uncomfortably against your thighs. 

“God, what a pathetic little bitch, are you going to cum? Cum on my shoe, whore, show me how fucking desperate you are.” 

You felt the exact moment your body convulsed against him, you knew the exact movement that made you cum, because you felt the flood of moisture pool underneath you as you squirted all over his floor. You made a note of reminding him to replace the rug before Emily returned. 

Your whole body shook as you sat in the pool of your own cum, but he refused to let you pull away. 

“Has my little puppy made a mess? What a shame. You can't stop yet, though.” 

His grip on your face somehow became stronger, though not unpleasant, as he pulled your head up the length of his cock. You spluttered slightly, feeling the tension slip out of you as he emptied your throat. You didn't have more than a second to react before he quickly snapped your head back down over his cock, down to the base of his dick. 

“Keep up, Y/N, this is what you wanted, remember.” 

You choked on his cock, and he smiled down at you, taking your gags for nods as he proceeded to fuck your throat, deep and hard. 

“So wet and warm for me, like a perfect little pet,” he said, hips already lifting off the couch as he tried to sink deeper into you. 

You knew from experience that he'd soon grow tired of the limits of your mouth. He liked to hear you. He liked to see you drooling rather than feel it on his skin. As much as he could force his cock down your throat - and you deeply enjoyed when he did - he could get deeper if he sank into your pussy and you both knew it. 

This part was just to lube his cock up, nice and wet, until he could take you nice and quick without having to touch your pussy. He needed you nice and wet and ready for him, especially on days like today where you'd been nothing but a cock tease in need of a harsh fucking. You deserved nothing more.

As predicted, he pulled your head off his cock after a few seconds and hauled you to your feet. You tried to climb onto him, to grip his cock in your hand and just sink down where you belonged, but he stood, too, lifting you up with him. 

“Window,” he said, and you knew he must be close if he was ordering you around one word at a time. You nodded, but he kept his hands on you, moving you to the window quickly. 

You knew he'd bend you over, take you against the outdoor window, whispering in your ear that anyone outside could see you if they just looked up. Instead, this time, he moved you to the opposite side of the office. The window he pressed you against was the one overlooking your desks, the one where, should he happen to open the blinds, every member of your team would be able to look up and watch you take his dick. 

“Everyone left,” he whispered quickly as he shifted the blinds up an inch so you could see. 

You breathed a sigh of relief noting that it was as empty as he claimed, but it didn't last long as he gently pressed his cock into your cunt, finally filling you how you'd needed to be filled for the last 60 days. 

“Fuck, t-thank you, sir!” 

All thoughts about the office below faded as he lifted your leg in his hand and let it rest on the edge of the window, pushing your face against the cold glass. Your office may have been empty, but that wasn't to say that there wasn't someone working late in the other departments, a janitor happening to pass through. 

You knew, but you didn't care as you begged him to fill you up more and more. 

“Just like that, just like that, yes!!! Fuck yes, Spencer I missed this, I missed you. Missed you so much,” you moaned as your hands slipped down the glass, already fogged with condensation, your hot breath hitting the cold glass. 

“Needed this? You've been fucking yourself nightly for the last week. You didn't need this like I needed this,” he moaned, biting into your neck with a sharp kiss as you moaned loudly for him.

“Two m-months. You haven't fucked me for two months, what else was I supposed to do?” 

He groaned in your ear again, reaching a hand around you and slapping your clit as he formulated an answer. 

“Rest, you were supposed to rest,” he said, thrusts speeding up as your cunt gripped him tighter and tighter the closer you got to your second orgasm. 

He groaned and pressed your face into the glass, holding you there and screwing his eyes shut as you both chased release. 

“I didn't want to rest, I w-wanted to be by your side.” 

His head rested against your shoulder as he felt the last waves of pleasure race towards him. His hand pushed down to your clit and rubbed you, sending you right over the edge with him as he filled you with his cum. 

Neither of you could stay upright, collapsing down to the floor in a heap. Usually when he came inside you, he waited a few moments to pull out so he didn't make so much mess when he did. But in his exhaustion, in your shared bliss of finally reaching that precipice after so long, he slipped out early, as cum was still shooting from him. 

You heaped together on the floor, chests heaving as you lay on top of him, your peace only broken by a single thought. 

“We..-’ you gasped, breathing unsteady. “We need to deep clean this office before Emily comes back.” 

He looked down at you, a look so serious and shocked you wondered if he was angry. And then he laughed. Short and soft, he giggled, and you couldn't help but join in, wrapping your arms around your stomach as it began to hurt, chest heaving from the pain of all your joy. 

He sat up and gave you a hand up as well as you surveyed the damage. 

“The rug has to go,” you said, feeling hot and embarrassed as you noticed the new wet stain on the near offensive fluffy thing. 

“We should probably get some new throw pillows, too,” he remarked, and you nodded with a grimace. You made to stand up, but your legs felt weak, and you wobbled, but he was there to catch you, as he stood. 

"Maybe just a new couch," you muttered, flushed with heat as you remembered how you'd humped the arm rest not even twenty minutes ago.

He closed the blinds before moving back to the couch and sitting you down on his lap once again, such a familiar place for you to be these days.

“You….” He started, worrying g his bottom lip with his teeth. “You really missed me?” 

You startled, taken aback by the question. You thought the videos had made it clear, let alone the last half hour of intimacy. 

“I… Yes, Spencer. I missed you a lot. I always miss you.” 

“You… you do?” 

You nodded again and tucked a lock of hair behind his ear. 

“Y/N, when I am no longer your boss, in approximately a weeks time, would you possibly consider being my girlfriend?” 

For the second time in the last two minutes, the man had you floored. And perhaps a little bit angry.

“I'm not… I'm not your girlfriend now?” 

“Hmm? Oh, I-” 

“Because I already told my friends about you, and I was definitely saying the word boyfriend, but if that's not what this is, I can correc-” 

You saw the panicked look in his eye as he pulled you in for one last kiss. 

“That's what this is!” he said frantically, cutting you off when you opened your mouth with another kiss. “I thought you wouldn't think that this was- no!” He kissed you again as you tried again to speak. 

“Listen to me! I'm o-older than you, I thought I had to ask still. Do people not ask anymore?” He kissed you before you could answer. 

“Rhetorical question.”

“I love yo-” you attempted to confess, but his lips covered yours swiftly, even as his eyes opened wide when he pulled away. 

“Wait, no, say that again,” he begged, eyes weak and shiny and absolutely endearingly pathetic. 

You shook your head and sealed your lips, miming, zipping them shut and throwing away the key. 

“Y/N! Tell me again, tell me you love me again,” he said, kissing each of your cheeks. You poked his chest hard, and he kissed you once more. 

“I love you, Y/N,” he whispered, and kissed you again, trying to draw from your lips the words he had cut off earlier, losing himself in the pleasure of the moment as you sat together in the dark office, totally enamoured with one another. 

[sunflowersandsapphires]

A Hint of Lovely Oblivion

pairing: Frank Castle x fem!reader 

summary: After a week of sleeping terribly, Frank makes an effort to help you get the rest you deserve.

warnings: Swearing, fluff, caring Frank, this is not medical advice

a/n: I wrote this for my lovely bestie @madschiavelique who wanted some Frankie comfort. As someone who deals with insomnia pretty regularly, this was very cathartic! I hope you all enjoy. A huge thank you to my other bestie @gracethyomen for beta-ing and helping me plan this fic!

w/c: 4.6k

Inhaling deeply, the frigid air of the room made your nose twitch. Sliding as deep as you could into the blanket pile while maintaining your seated position, you bit your lip, shifting the pad of paper on your lap and craning your neck once again. While your duvet provided an excellent shield to lock in heat, your shoulders inevitably poked out whenever you weren’t fully horizontal, leaving your body to sit in a temperature regulation purgatory; your consciousness rumbled uneasily as the hair on the back of your neck refused to flatten, your brain torn between making you shiver or letting you sweat. The position was far from comfortable—but being awake all night made comfort an unattainable goal for you anyways.

It had been days since you’d slept through the night. You were no stranger to insomnia, you’d been cursed with it your entire life, but lately it had dug its malicious claws into your chest with the violence of a starving feral animal. Your bed, which used to be a haven of rest and relaxation, was now a space that you avoided at all costs—the wonderfully soft pillows and warm blankets mocking you as they sat untouched well into the night, fatigue never overtaking you when you needed it to. For the first few nights of your ongoing battle with sleeplessness, you’d crawl under the covers anyway, praying to any deity listening that the weight and heat of the fabric would force your eyelids to close—but it never did.

Sighing as your pencil tip snapped, you closed your eyes, letting your breath rest in your lungs for a moment before exhaling again; apparently your frustration with your own hormone production created a physical pressure on the lead of your pencil. Picking up a fresh one from your nightstand, you did your best to clean up the smear of graphite from the impact of the broken point.

Turning your attention back to the subject of your sketch, you chewed your lip to stifle a smile. Despite the thick curtains your partner had insisted on, a sliver of moonlight illuminated the massive man slumbering beside you, quietly snoring away—completely oblivious to the inspiration he'd given you. The feather-light moon beams shone through his tousled hair, creeping down over his face, which was adorably mashed against his singular pillow. Considering that he'd turned up a handful of hours ago drenched in other people's blood, it was downright ironic to be calling him “adorable” as he slept—but you couldn't shake the giddy feeling that always bubbled up when you saw his face so lax with sleep. His expression was so uncharacteristically peaceful, it never failed to make you happy.

Sure, not sleeping sucked. You'd be plagued with jaw-cracking yawns and mild memory loss in the morning, just like yesterday and the day before that. Having the opportunity to watch Frank sleep soundly, didn't make up for the fact that you'd accidentally put orange juice in your coffee yesterday, but it made the build up of irritation much easier to bear. Which is why you'd decided to memorialize it in your sketchbook.

Studying the map of shadows on Frank's handsome face, you scratched the pencil over the thick paper, the rasping sound soothing the constant buzzing in your brain. Scrunching your nose as you tried to smooth out the sketch in front of you, you nearly jumped out of your skin when he spoke.

“Why're you up, darlin'?” His voice was rough with exhaustion. Noticing your wide eyes and ragged inhale, a large hand slid up to rest on your thigh. “Sorry, didn't mean to scare ya.”

”It's alright, Frankie. I wasn't paying attention.“ You tried to laugh, but the sound died in your throat.

His hand stroked over your leg as he waited for you to answer his question. Instead, your eyes remained trained on the book across your lap, pencil moving fluidly through the silence. Tracing a thumb over your warm skin, Frank frowned. “Ya didn't answer my question, sweetheart.”

“Hmm?” Your tone was innocent, but the way your eyes remained glued to your work was enough to tell him you had definitely heard the question.

Squeezing your thigh with a yawn, Frank tried not to groan as he dragged himself up to sit next to you. His movement finally captured your attention, your brow furrowing as you set your pencil aside. “What are you doing?”

Giving what he hoped was a nonchalant shrug, Frank slid an arm around your shoulders and pressed a kiss to your temple. ”Sittin' with my girl. That a crime now?“

Smiling despite the guilt flaring in your chest, you shoved at his solid torso feebly. ”Go back to sleep, Frankie. I'm sorry I woke you. I can—“ Shuffling in your seat, you tilted towards the edge of the mattress, fully intending to relocate to a different room so that Frank could go back to bed. Foiling your plan, Frank's arms held fast against your teetering, pulling you flush against his chest.

”Don't you dare.“ He growled, chin resting atop your crown.

”Frank! I didn't even finish my thought,“ You wriggled against his hold, your brain torn between reacting with endearment or annoyance over being imprisoned by his strength. “Let me go, you...you...butthead.” Whining at your own lackluster insult, you buried your face in Frank's neck as he chuckled.

“Fuck, sweetheart. Ain't gotta go for my throat like that.” Frank murmured smugly. You could envision his shit-eating smirk despite it being out of your line of sight.

”Shut up,“ You muttered, a tiny smile gracing your lips against your will. Your body trembled as Frank shook with rumbling laughter. Drawing you into his arms, Frank set your legs over his lap, positioning you towards the windows. The gusting heat from the vent closest to your bed ruffled the fabric covering the panes, the pale glowing rays of moonlight fluttering over your knees as the drapes shifted. It created a mesmerizing dance of light and dark, captivating you.

”Ya gonna tell me how long you've been sittin' here starin' at me or did ya wanna keep pretendin' you were asleep?” In defense of your ruthlessly persistent boyfriend, it has been said that the third time’s the charm. His tone was as delicate as his gruff voice allowed, the muscles of his jaw and throat rippling against your scalp as he spoke.

Eyes falling closed, you focused on the warmth of Frank’s body surrounding you as you willed the tears pricking your eyes to back down. Another unfortunate side effect of sleep deprivation—your emotions started to go haywire over the littlest things.

It wasn’t that you thought Frank would be angry. Well, it wasn’t the biggest anxiety on your mind, at least. It was more the fear of burdening him with your own issues at all hours when you knew a good night’s sleep was practically a miracle for him. The first night at home after a few weeks away always seemed to make it come easier, but other than that Frank rarely rested. The mere thought of forcing him to sit up with you, especially on the one night this week he’d get a full 8 hours, grabbed your guilty conscience by the throat.

Giving a halfhearted shrug, you caved. “Dunno. Slept for a few hours when we went to bed. Then I got up and...” Trailing off, you gestured to the bed in front of you, which was clearly not being used for sleep.

Frank withdrew from the embrace and your pounding heart sank. You set your jaw, waiting for the frustrated scolding…but it never came. Instead, one calloused finger landed underneath your chin, tilting it upwards as he spoke. “You been awake that long?” His eyes shone with concern, boring ferociously into yours.

Nodding miserably, you swallowed the overwhelming shame crawling up your esophagus before speaking. “I’m sorry, Frank. I tried to sleep, but I just couldn’t—“

Cutting you off with a tender kiss, Frank’s hand moved to cup your cheek. “Nothin’ to be sorry about, honey. Ya shoulda woken me up.”

Looking up at him with glossy eyes, you bit your lip, ”You deserve to sleep uninterrupted. I didn't want to be the one to take that away from you.“

Frank chewed the inside of his cheek as he was overrun with waves of adoration and sympathy for you. How he'd managed to end up with such a considerate partner, he'd never know. Especially when he didn't consistently return the gesture.

He'd come home yesterday and practically collapsed into your arms—ignoring how unsteady your balance seemed when you dragged him into the apartment, blaming it on his own weight. You'd patched him up sweetly, as you always did, and Frank hadn't thought twice about the fact that you'd had to leave the room three times to get the gauze, assuming your memory had just been shaken by his battered appearance.

Was he truly so wrapped up in his own bullshit that he hadn't noticed the sunken crescents underneath your eyes? They were so prominent now, stark sepia bruises on your otherwise even skin. It must have been days since you slept properly. Beside himself with worry, his thumb traced the indent under your left eye. ”Shit sweetheart...“

”I'm—“ You started to apologize, but it stuck in your throat when Frank shook his head.

”Hey, none of that. Don't wanna hear it, ok?” You nodded in response to his gentle command, sitting there quietly as he schemed. “Are you tired at all?”

The pitiful shake of your head seemed to make up his mind.

Unwinding from you, he raised his arms above his head in a stretch, moaning as his back popped with the movement. Your face scrunched in disapproval, making him grimace sheepishly. “Sorry, honey. Guess I was stiff from drivin' all day.” Without waiting for your response, he slid out of bed. Your brow furrowed as he strode over to the dresser, pulling a shirt over his rumpled hair.

“Get dressed, darlin'. I have an idea.” He called to you over his shoulder as he rummaged for a clean pair of pants. Sighing, you abandoned the bubble of heat surrounding you in bed and headed for the closet.

Despite your grumbles and evident confusion, the two of you were dressed and on the road before the sun even peeked over the horizon. With one hand settled in yours, Frank kept his gaze trained on the road ahead, trying not to laugh at your exasperated questioning and adorable pout. Dragging you out of the house at this hour might not have been his brightest idea—since he normally tried to remain on your good side—but hey, he’d gotten this far without you chewing his head off.

Frank could hardly be considered a morning person, but you were practically nocturnal. Leaving the house before dawn was probably high up on your list of personal hells, but staying in bed when you couldn’t sleep wasn’t a good idea. Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard Curtis’s agitated tone.

“For the last time, Frank: staying in bed will make it worse.”

Way back in the day, during his first trip home after going overseas, he’d bugged Curtis relentlessly about his own sleep issues. Maria was tired enough raising a wandering toddler and an imaginative kindergartener, she didn’t need to worry about a restless marine to boot. He’d tried every suggestion under the sun, but sleep still evaded him. Tour after tour, night after night, he’d lay beside his wife in their bed and stare at the ceiling until his alarm went off. After his family died, well…it didn’t exactly get easier to rest.

Despite scouring the internet, a few libraries, and the expanse of Curt’s brain for any possible cures, his sleeplessness persisted. It was a torture he endured for years, and an anguish he wouldn’t wish on anyone but his worst enemies.

Finding out that you also dealt with insomnia was a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, not having to explain his fickle moods and constant absence from the bedroom was a welcomed relief. On the other, seeing the symptoms of sleep deprivation in someone he cared about was an agony worse than an infected bullet wound.

He knew what you were going through all too well, which meant he was determined to try and help. Getting you out of the house was just the first step of his admittedly too-detailed plan.

His lips twitched with a smile as he spotted the building. Turning into the ragged asphalt lot behind the restaurant, he turned his attention to you.

“We’re here, darlin’.”

Raising an eyebrow at him, you remained unimpressed. “A diner?”

Letting out a bark of laughter at your obvious disdain for the activity, Frank pointed a finger at you in warning. “Hey, don’t knock it til ya try it, sweetheart.” His exaggerated stern expression broke through your apprehension, your lips turning upwards into a fond smile.

“There’s my pretty girl.” Frank pressed a kiss to your temple, heart swelling as you leaned into him. “If ya wanna go home, just say the word.”

Biting your lip, you glanced out the window at the electric blue awning extending from the glass doors. The yellow lamp lights lining the sidewalk reflected in your wide eyes as you stared. “No, we can go. I, just…can I ask you a question first?”

“Course, honey. Anythin’.”

“Why here?” Your question was soft, but genuine; your curiosity was outweighing the contempt you’d previously shown for his choice of destination.

Running a hand through his hair, he gave a one-armed shrug. “Fuck, well... ya know I’m no stranger to the whole…not sleepin’ thing. And, uh, back in the early days, when it was real bad for me, I’d come here. We– er– Maria and I, we took the kids here a couple of times. Dunno, wanted to remember the good times, I guess, and it became a sort of tradition. Thought it might help you too.”

With a stuttering inhale, you reached for his hand, stroking a finger over his knuckles as you looked up at him shyly. “Thank you for sharing it with me. I didn’t mean to be rude about it, I’m sorry.”

Squeezing your fingers, he could feel heat creeping up his face. “It’s nothin’ sweetheart. Ain’t gotta worry about that.”

Glancing back out the window for a moment, Frank could see the gears turning in your head as you turned back to him with a tiny grin.

“Lead the way?” You asked tentatively.

“For you, sweet girl? Always.” He pressed a kiss to your hand, his stubble scratching at the skin of your fingers.

Frank ushered the two of you inside and into a booth in the back of the diner. The restaurant was lacking in customers, as could be expected given the early hour. While the inky black sky was broken up with dim streetlights outside of the building, the inside was flooded with fluorescent lights--so bright that you had to shield your eyes with a limp hand for a few minutes.

Once your vision adjusted, you had to admit that the energy in the diner was quite nice. The chipped linoleum tiles that lined the floor were a gorgeous cobalt blue. Along the ceiling, large chunks of the roof had been replaced with thick panes of glass, allowing you to watch the clouds float by, the darkness of the night contrasting beautifully with the intense lighting. You and Frank were seated on a worn vinyl booth, the strips of fabric alternating between silver and black. Similar booths wrapped around the space, almost twinkling as you looked at them.

“So,” Frank pushed a mug towards you. “Whaddya think?”

“It's nice.” You murmured, pulling the warm cup closer to yourself. Somehow you'd missed him ordering himself coffee and you a tea in your distracted state.

Frank cocked his head at you, lips turned up in a smug smirk. ”’S that so?“

Smiling into your mug as you took a sip, you retorted. ”Shut up.“

The drink was warm and, thankfully, unsweetened. It's crisp flavor relaxed your shoulders as you sipped, settling your anxious stomach.

“Hope mint is a’right.” Frank spoke quietly, a blush creeping up his face as he studied his own drink.

“You remembered.” You breathed out, taking his hand in yours and squeezing it tightly as your eyes prickled with emotion.

“Course I did.” Frank huffed, draining the rest of his black coffee. You shuddered in distaste and he chuckled, rubbing a thumb over the back of your hand. “You hungry at all?”

Shrugging noncommittally, you worried your bottom lip between your teeth. Frank sighed, but didn't push further on the subject, which you were very grateful for. You'd never explicitly spoken to him about the effect your insomnia had on your eating habits, but--being the observant partner he was--he'd clearly picked up on it anyways. Once your day started with little to no sleep, it was like all of your bodily functions forgot how to...function. Hunger and thirst cues were practically impossible to read, your body and brain battling each other ferociously at every turn. Which, of course, just exhausted you further.

Scrubbing at one eye with the heel of your free hand, you grit your teeth to keep from groaning. Dwelling on how miserable you were going to feel today wouldn't solve anything, it would just worsen your mood.

”Head botherin' ya?“ Frank asked, brow folding in concern as he watched you knead at your forehead.

”No more than usual.“ You cracked a small smile, hoping that didn't sound as sad as you thought it did. “Just...frustrated with myself.”

“I feel ya, sweetheart. Not sleepin' ain't any fun. But I have some ideas, so don't you worry your pretty little head about it, ok?” Frank tangled his fingers with yours, his gaze earnest.

“You get ideas?” You scoffed, grinning when Frank rolled his eyes in return.

“Ya know what? Just for that, I ain't gonna tell ya about 'em.”

“Nooo,” You whined, taking Frank's massive hand in both of yours and pouting at him. ”I was just kidding. Please tell me.“

”Hmm, I dunno. First you insulted the diner, then my intelligence. Seems like you don't want my help, sweetheart.“  Frank withdrew from your grasp, pretending to sulk into his coffee.

Giggling at Frank’s pout, you reassured him. ”No, I do! I do!“

With a sad little shrug, Frank glanced forlornly out the window.

“Please Frankie,” Pleading with your gaze, you tried to keep a straight face.  “You're my only hope.”

Dropping his startlingly believable moping act, Frank cackled. “Ya think you're real clever, don't ya?”

Smirking into your tea, you gulped down the last remnants with a shrug. ”Maybe.“

After your countless apologies for insulting his intellect, Frank finally explained why he'd encouraged–forced–you to leave the house before sunrise. Apparently he'd heard that staying in bed while awake could perpetuate the cycle of sleep deprivation. And, though you were loath to admit it, it seemed to help.

The little excursion definitely lifted your spirits, if nothing else. You were able to admire the sunrise and mess around with Frank without your anxiety skyrocketing because of the city crowds.  It was nice, and you told him such–even at the risk of over-inflating his ego.

His next activity, however, was not as pleasant.

“Are you going to have me carry you around the apartment next?” You groused, hefting the bedframe up so that you could adjust your rapidly loosening grip on the cold metal. This much physical labor on an empty stomach and no sleep was not what you’d had in mind for a relaxing day with Frank. He, however, was insistent on moving the furniture in your room immediately upon your return home. 

“You offerin'?” Frank smirked at you, pretending to set the bed frame down. His eyes glinted with a humor you didn’t share over the current situation. 

“Fuck no.” You muttered, glaring at him until he lifted the majority of the weight once more. Frank laughed deeply. 

“Set it right over here, darlin’. We gotta move your dresser and then we’re all done.”

“You know, if you hated the layout of my room so much, you could’ve told me months ago.” Instead of waiting until I was already reaching my limit. You thought to yourself, not vocalizing that particular vulnerability. 

“And have you put me out on my ass for bein’ so forward? I’d never, sweetheart.” Frank chuckled, adjusting your bed as you collapsed against the mattress with a huff. “I’m teasin’, honey. It’s an old trick Curt told me about. All the rearrangin’ is supposed to help your brain remember how to sleep, or some shit.”

Rubbing at your forehead as the ache that had been plaguing you all day made a sudden resurgence, your limbs instinctively curled into fetal position as a small whimper escaped your lips. 

“It’s helping it remember to bother me is what it’s doing.” You grumbled, gritting your teeth as the pain ebbed and flowed. You knew the more you thought about it, the more it would torture you–but the stabbing sensation was all that your fatigued brain could focus on right now. 

Frank snorted, sitting beside you gingerly and caressing your hunched back with an open palm. “‘M sorry, sweet girl. Let me get ya some meds and you can lie here while I finish movin’ shit around.”

Your body felt like it was aimlessly floating, untethered to the Earth and hurrying to escape the pain so viciously attacking it at the moment. You were so tired. Every blink was a reminder of the heaven that had been ripped from your delicate grasp hours ago because your body couldn’t even function in the way it was designed to. Brow scrunching, you burrowed under the covers with a sigh.

“Ya better not be sleepin’ on me, honey.” Frank murmured as he stepped back into the room. 

“Course not,” You mumbled. “Would never…”

“I know you’re tired, darlin’, but ya gotta stay awake until it’s dark. Naps will just make ya feel worse, trust me.” He trailed a finger down your arm, taking your hand and placing some painkillers into it. Waiting patiently until you begrudgingly dragged yourself into a seated position, Frank smiled softly at you as you popped the pills into your mouth. Holding the glass of water out to you, the Marine squeezed your leg as you drank, tucking his chin over your head as you collapsed wearily into his side.

“The big bad Punisher takes naps? Hard to picture, Frankie.” You teased, your voice morphing into a satisfied hum as he threaded his fingers into your hair. 

Frank scoffed, kissing your crown before returning the jest. “Maybe I should take the vest off before closin’ my eyes next time.” 

You giggled, burying your face into his neck. His warm flesh felt wonderful on your pounding head, soothing the pain behind your eyes with each measured breath. “Do you cuddle your guns like teddy bears?” The question was overtly ridiculous, but Frank loved you enough to entertain it anyway. 

“Course. What else would I do with ‘em?” He asked coyly. 

Looking up at him, the corners of your lips lifted as he pressed a line of gentle kisses down your nose until he reached your lips. 

“If I turn on the TV, are ya gonna pass out on top of me?” He murmured, his stubble scratching your face as he spoke. 

“Wouldn't dream of it, love.” You smiled, pressing a kiss to his sturdy jawline before he stood up to grab the remote. 

If someone would’ve told you a year ago that your next boyfriend could make a bad insomnia week feel tolerable, you never would’ve believed them. But here you were—lying on your stomach completely topless as Frank massaged a lightly scented lotion into your back—feeling pretty comfortable with the whole arrangement. 

After you’d failed to stay awake during the movie you’d picked out, Frank had carted you around town on various errands: picking up groceries, going to the bookstore, and even taking a quick walk around the park to feed the ducks, which he knew you loved. Your body still ached, and your mood still waned, but overall, it was a good day. And all the credit belonged to your incredible partner. 

Groaning appreciatively, it felt like you were melting into the mattress as Frank tenderly stretched your taught muscles, unraveling the knots of stress that had been building up all week. 

Chuckling, Frank pressed a tiny kiss to your bare shoulder. “Glad it feels good, sweetheart.” 

“No, it’s awful,” You lied. “You clearly need more practice..” 

Frank snorted, “Noted. How’re ya feelin’?” 

“Tired.” You sighed, rolling over as Frank handed you one of his tees to sleep in. 

“I bet. We’re on the last leg, sweetheart, almost there.” Frank’s large hands eagerly wrapped around you as you nestled into his side. Cupping your face with one palm, the fingers of his other hand threaded into your hair, detangling it carefully and brushing it off of your face. 

Biting your lip in frustration, and to keep from sighing again, you nodded. Attempting an understanding smile, you poked him in the chest. “I know. Thanks for putting up with my cranky self today.”

“Sweetheart, you can be snappy with me as much as ya want if it means you’ll sleep through the night.” Frank smirked, squishing your cheek as your eyes suddenly blurred with tears. 

“I love you.” You whispered, going limp in his hold as he settled against the pillows. 

“I love you too, darlin’. So much.” Resting your foreheads together, he kissed you delicately and your lashes fluttered. 

“Frankie?” You looked up at him with your practiced ‘doe eyes’ expression that he could never resist.

“Yah?” He raised an eyebrow skeptically.

“Can you read to me?” Batting your lashes, you watched with satisfaction as Frank’s expression softened, your eyes taking in the exact moment he caved to your whims. 

Straightening his posture stoically, he reached over to grab your new book from the nightstand with an exasperated huff. “Oh, I see. This was all a scheme of yours to get me to read to ya? ‘S that it?”

“No…” You giggled, nuzzling into him as he cracked the novel open.

“Sure, sure. You’ll be hearin’ from my lawyer, sweetheart. Think ya owe me compensation.” He winked at you, eyes lingering on your face.

“Honey, before ya drift off, jus’...” Sighing, he stroked a thumb over your cheek. “Just know, if all this doesn’t work, cause it ain’t a cure all, ya know–”

Laying your hand over his, you gave him an encouraging look. He inhaled sharply, thinking about how he wanted to phrase the sentiment. 

“I want you to sleep, darlin’, ya know I do. But if it doesn’t happen tonight, we can always try again, ok?”

Startled by the affection in his tone and his beautiful promise, your face went slack as you nodded. Eyes flitting over your gaze, he nodded curtly once he decided you understood. Returning his attention to the book in his hands, he cleared his throat before beginning to read. His rumbling velvet tone soothed you, your eyes falling closed almost immediately. Here, in the safety of Frank’s arms, surrounded by his beautiful voice and reassured by his adorable promise, you finally felt at peace. Though you knew sleep might continue to evade you, the anxiety you’d felt about your insomnia didn’t feel quite as all-consuming tonight. Whatever happened, Frank would be there. And, for now, that was enough.

Thanks for reading!!

[stillfrownyclownlol]

MORE HEADCANONS THIS TIME FOR WRITING RAH :0 sorry not sorry for harassing the tags

Ashlyn: She like...found Spiderman fanfiction on accident when she was like...11...so...i mean...she tried that a few times... but like besides that she's not really a big reader or writer, poetry is kinda confusing to her. Her grade in English isn't very high aaaaa

Aiden: constantly in WIP purgatory, he doesn't have the attention to finish things he writes. He's dabbled in poetry but he thinks he's bad at it. He's written poetry for Ash too (which she doesn't really get but keeps anyways). He prolly had an OC phase and has tried drawing comics before but he's abandoned them all help-

Ben: He's been writing A LOT since the accident, mostly poetry and song lyrics to get his feelings out. He has a 50+ chapter Danny Phantom canon divergence fic on fanfiction.net that had a decent following when he suddenly stopped posting (the phantom dimension hit lol)

Tyler: he has no idea what fanfiction is and he's not that interested in writing anyways LMAO. He really hates having to do essays for English class or poetry assignments, he doesn't know how to put his feelings to paper at all- lord help him

Taylor: she likes writing!! Especially short stories for class :) she's tried to convince Tyler to write smth with her which is...50/50 chance of smth decent haha. She reads a lot of fanfiction and writes for fandoms she likes, but mostly one shots, she's not really good at planning out long fics

Logan: Logan writes poetry (kinda emo) and short stories, mostly science fiction stuff. He really likes reading and has consumed a lot of different authors styles so his writing is very eloquent. He's come across fanfic before but he's not really into it. Maybe he wrote some Star Trek fanfiction once tho...

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Walking on Sunshine 3

Sister series to Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows

Warnings: non/dubcon, antisocial behaviour, and other dark elements. My username actually says you never asked for any of this.

Characters: God The Bounty Hunter x reader

My warnings are not exhaustive but be aware this is a dark fic and may include potentially triggering topics. Please use your common sense when consuming content. I am not responsible for your decisions.

As usual, I would appreciate any and all feedback. I’m happy to once more go on this adventure with all of you! Thank you in advance for your comments and for reblogging.

You stare at the muffin, pondering it as if it holds the meaning of life. Where did it come from? Who could know of your secret longing? Or could it be a lucky guess?

Surely, it isn’t your prospective friend from the break room. Too fast, despite your hopes. You really can’t figure who would do this. As far as you know, you’re more of a name on a roster than an actual person in this office. That grumpy goth guy made that clear on your first day when he ran diagnostics on your machine.

You huff. Do you let temptation take over? A muffin, that’s a nice gesture, but it could also be a trap. Maybe your seat neighbour is trying to poison you for all your squeaking. The cinnamon makes your mouth water and you put the crumbly dessert back in the bag.

You put it in the corner of your desk and try to ignore it. There it is, taunting you with its deliciousness. You really should have eaten something. Now your stomach is growling at you angrily.

You sip your hot chocolate to suppress the cravings. You click and tap keys and zone out as you go through the usual corporate monotony. You feel like a robot just going through the motions. The same thing over and over.

You sit up and rub your eyes, leaning back so your chair squeaks, so high it hurts your ears. Ugh, curse this chair. But don’t really, it’s cursed enough.

Your neighbour mutters and makes a noise as if to mimic your chair. You whisper an apology. You drop your hands and a dark shape above the wall of your cubicle catches your attention. Your eyes round as they meet two others, vibrantly blue but dark at the same time.

It’s that man again. He just sits there, watching you. He peels the wrapper away from a muffin and pinches away a piece of the top. He’s expressionless as he puts it between his lips. He lets his fingers drag slightly as he seals his mouth and chews, still watching you.

Your mouth falls open and you look at the paper bag then back to him. His brows twitch just a little. Oh, wow. That’s strange. Who is this man and why is he so quiet and mysterious? You wheel your chair out slowly, careful not to make too much noise. You stand but hit the desk with your hip, jolting your cubicle and the next.

“I swear…” the slither rolls from your neighbours tight throat.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” you look over as your neighbour hunches down but doesn’t acknowledge you further. Maybe you could be relocated.

You look up and the man is gone. What? How? He’s like a ghost. Are you imagining him? Are you cracking from this office purgatory and blacking out to buy sweet desserts? What’s real and what’s not? That’s a question better left to Descartes.

You sit back down and reach for your cup. There’s nothing that can be cured with sugary goodness. And there’s some things that can’t be forgotten, like that muffin and its sinister aura.

🌞

The muffin stays in its habitat. You let the sugar crumble fester, fighting not to let the cinnamon tempt you to err. Your work is made even more tedious by the paper bag sat not far from your mouse. Tear up the planks! It is the beating of his hideous heart!

Not exactly a Poe horror, only a muffin. You sigh as you log out for the day, packing up slowly as you ponder the weight of a single baked good. Your desk neighbour is gone swiftly, striding off with another mutter. They can’t even be happy about quitting time.

You pull your jacket on and sling your bag on your shoulder. One last look at the paper bag. You don’t have the heart to dump it in the bin. It’s a problem for tomorrow, another line on the list.

You take the stairs like you always do. The elevator is too crowded for you. It lurches terribly and gives you vertigo. Besides, you sit at a desk all day, you need to stretch your legs.

You get to the bottom floor and pop your earbuds in. Time to finish the saga of the tragic marriage. Your walk home isn’t far. It’s depressingly close. It feels like your entire life revolves around the soulless office building.

You tuck your hands into your pocket and dip your chin down. The narrator’s voice fills your ears, blocking out the impatient honking of rush hour and the noise of pedestrians shuffling by. You stop at the light, waiting for it to change.

A figure comes up next to you. You inch away, giving them space. They get closer. You stare ahead of you, your neck hot as the shadow hovers over you. The light changes but before you can set across the street, a paper bag greets you and has you stepping back.

You gasp and reach for your earbuds, turning to face the man as he holds out the paper bag. It’s him! The office ghost. He’s real!

“Oh, uh, it was… you?” You eke out as he says nothing. “Um…” you look back to the bag, almost crosseyed for how close he holds it. “That’s so kind of you but I don’t know if I should.”

He blinks and his brow ripples. He looks at the paper bag quizzically then at you. You flinch as he steps closer, reaching for you. You’re frozen in shock as he takes your wrist and turns your hand up. He places the bag firmly against your palm. You close your fingers around the bottom of the bag so it crinkles.

He lets you go, a curt nod before he brushes by you, leaving you speechless and confused as he marches down the perpendicular lane. You turn to watch his broad shoulders stalk down the pavement, oblivious to those who sidle out of his way. You adjust your grasp on the muffin as your mind races.

The mystery of the muffin is cracked but a million more questions flurry in your head. You don't even know his name.

[laundrybiscuits]

This is the start to a wholly unasked-for sequel to wait for the season that I’ve been poking at for some time. It’s definitely even weirder than that already-kind-of-weird fic, so maybe give it a miss if you’re looking for the standard fare. Steve isn’t even mentioned in this snippet. I'll post something more normal soon, I promise.

From the living end of memory, the past seems inevitable.

You had to go through that terrible thing so that you could become the type of person who would survive that later, more terrible thing that most likely occurred in a thematically resonant way—and with a little determined creativity, the thematic resonances start popping up all over the place. 

So then you arrive on the other side of the terrible thing, the second terrible thing, with your memories all worn smooth like rocks that have been jostling around in a pocket for years. They fit together now, no inconvenient angles or edges anymore. It’s all one continuous shape, the shape of how things happened, and you tell yourself that there was no other way for your story to go.

It was always going to happen this way. 

It was always going to be the concrete; the buzzing overhead lights; the placid, thoughtful voice saying “Let’s see if we can get it to wear some clothes, why don’t we?”

Embarrassingly enough, that’s the first thing Eddie remembers from his new life. He’s seen clips of the grainy footage from the months before that, but when he tries to remember lurching around and sinking his teeth into some disgusting raw slab of meat, it’s like a black hole. His mind doesn’t even want to get near the edges. He feels irrationally like if he thinks too hard about it, his mind will decide that actually, sentience isn’t such a hot shit idea after all, and he’ll tip right back down and down and down. 

———

Wayne’s old now, and it makes Eddie uncomfortable in a way he doesn’t really want to look at too hard. 

Wayne had never been young, exactly; Eddie doesn’t remember a whole lot from back when he first went to stay with Wayne, just a lot of promises that it was temporary, promises that stopped coming after a while. But what he does remember looks a hell of a lot like Wayne when Eddie was nineteen or twenty: wrinkles, bald spot always hidden under some ballcap or other, grumbling I’m an old man but Eddie never truly believing it because somehow, over the years, he’d got to believing that Wayne would always be there. Fucking stupid! So so fucking stupid from Eddie, who on paper looks like someone who should know better. 

Now Wayne’s actually old. Now he moves so slow, Eddie gets impatient just watching him through the lit-up window, doing the washing-up and puttering around the kitchen with stooped shoulders.

It’s easier on him if I don’t, thinks Eddie, but he already knows he’s lying as he thinks it. Or rather, he’s lying in a very specific way: it’s easier for Eddie if he pretends Wayne is dead, but probably not so much the other way around. 

That makes him a pretty terrible person, he guesses, but then again—not exactly a person anymore. He doesn’t know how much that matters. 

It would hurt him, thinks Eddie, tentatively, and that might actually be a little bit true. It’s just not as true as the other truth: that Eddie wants to keep Wayne locked in the box marked BEFORE because it’s too difficult to even think about explaining. That if Wayne’s back in his life, Eddie has to reckon with him as someone who will just continue to get older every single day until one day Wayne is as old as he will ever be.

It’s easier if he doesn’t. Doesn’t he deserve an easier life? Didn’t he go through purgatory? Hasn’t he paid and paid and paid? He should get whatever he wants, he should rip through the skin of the Earth to sink his teeth into the candy flesh, chew it up—

So yeah, he’s a monster in more ways than one. 

———

There’s BEFORE and there’s AFTER, but really that’s just a narrative device. Really there are a lot of before-afters. 

There was before-after Eddie woke up; that’s the big one, maybe. Then there’s before-after Eddie is Eddie again and could think in words like a human. Like a person. Then there’s before-after it becomes scorchingly, irreversibly clear that Eddie is neither human nor person. 

And of course, there’s the before-after Eddie finds himself outside in government-issued sweatpants and a plain blue t-shirt, looking up at the gibbous moon for the first time in his new not-quite-life, and feels absolutely nothing about it.

It hits him later, kind of. He doesn’t even try to get somewhere safe (for whom?) to bunk that first night, just curls up in the nearest Greyhound terminal and felt sorry for himself, performatively. It seems like the thing to do. Woe is Eddie, friendless nightmare beast, freakier than anyone’d ever guessed he could be, and not in a fun way. 

He hadn’t even—

Back before, like before he’d even died in the first place, he probably would’ve taken it harder. Hah. Harder. 

But it hadn’t even occurred to him to reach into his own stringless scrubs and make baby Jesus cry, not for a long time. When it had, he’d felt oddly proud, as if that was proof that he's not some mindless beast at his core. That's probably not quite right, though. He thinks about it some more and decides it doesn't mean anything after all.

And then when dawn hits the Greyhound terminal, he belatedly realizes that shit, maybe he should’ve been thinking more about what vampires can and can’t do, traditionally, and he’s a little worried about burning to a crisp but it’s already too late, so he just rolls under the bench with the last of his consciousness and hopes like hell he looks too dangerous to mess with. 

Somehow he’s okay; somehow the cops aren’t even called. This is by way of being an inference, given that once the sun is out for real, Eddie is for all intents and purposes no longer a participant in goings-on. But he wakes up in the orange light of the sunset and everything seems to be the way he left it, maybe a handful more Burger King wrappers and fresher eau de urine gathering in the corners. The slim roll of go-away-please cash is still in his white cotton briefs. He’s not in a drunk tank and nobody’s prodding him. Nobody’s even around. Cautiously, he wonders if it’s another freaky power they just never thought to check for. 

He doesn’t feel much like testing it, and also it’s actually really fucking uncomfortable to be crammed underneath a bench like he is, so he crawls out and starts trying to pull together some kind of life.

———

“Eddie,” the labcoat says, while he’s still staring up at the night sky for the first time in almost a decade.

Yeah, that whole thing where he walked outside and looked up at the moon wasn’t actually that romantic. They didn’t exactly let him waltz out into the wide world with a bindle on his shoulder; they decontaminated him, made him sign a bunch of stuff, and had this labcoat in sensible shoes slip him a shifty fifty in exchange for promising to come back on a regular basis for “check-ups” that they both know aren’t for Eddie’s benefit. They pretend otherwise, because it’s nicer that way.

“What,” says Eddie. “I’m just saying, I dunno how the economy works nowadays, but I’m guessing fifty bucks isn’t gonna get me too far.”

The labcoat pushes gold-framed glasses up her nose. “You understand that we did not have to do this at all, right?” She doesn’t sound—she’s not being mean, or even condescending. She’s just telling him so he understands. “You do not legally exist.”

That’s all she says, but Eddie knows what she means. He also knows that this money’s coming with strings, and he wants to get the absolute most he can out of this while he still has something they want. 

“Okay, but—”

The labcoat rolls her fucking eyes and reaches into her own fucking pleated slacks and pulls out her own fucking wallet, counting out two twenties and a ten gone soft around the corners. She probably gets paid real good. There’s a picture of a kid in the wallet, maybe five or six years old; it looks like a school photo with that weird cloudy blue-grey background. The kid looks happy. He’s grinning. His name is probably Chris or Lionel or Jacob. He’s probably in some kind of youth T-ball league where he mostly sits in the outfield and eats grass. He’ll probably get into a good college someday, maybe on a baseball scholarship after he gets really good at T-ball after all and hits the winning home run for his high school varsity team. It will be a whole different millennium and he will never, ever know that the Psych 101 class he’s skipping to dry-hump his English-major girlfriend was paid for by the three and a half years his mommy spent administering heavy-duty sedatives to Eddie so they could run all their little tests without Eddie getting bitey.

“Thanks,” says Eddie, because he’s got manners. He’s still got manners.

“We’ll see you in a month,” the labcoat says.

[geraldthellama]

Bowuigi Corpse Bride AU Lore Post

So I said I would probably make this and while I thought about making this into a fanfic and making ya'll read that, I decided that I need to commit to the other three (two and a half?) Mario fanfic ideas I have. So if anyone wants to make a full blown fic or whatever with this AU, feel free (but tag me ofc because I've got to see it).

(This will not be short, just a quick warning that this is a commitment).

This AU is very loosely based off the actual movie. Instead of them being in the underworld, they're just in a haunted house that Boo lost to Bowser in a game of poker, and instead of being a corpse (as the name suggests), Luigi is just a slightly annoying boo. Him and Polterpup are the only ones that inhabit the mansion, and, with the house completely abandoned, it's probably going to stay that way.

In this world, ghosts only stay after some massive traumatic death. Problem is, Luigi has no recollection of how he died, he just knows he hit his head and a little while later awoke, a ghost that's unable to be seen, heard, and is completely alone as a newly-deceased. Aside from the yipping ghost dog at his feet (Luigi has always been afraid of both ghosts and dogs).

As a ghost, Luigi originally spawns (spawns?) into this world with little ghostly abilities. Living beings can't see or hear him and he doesn't have the power to manipulate objects or people in any way. He is essentially a specter, watching the lives of other people for years until, eventually, it's abandoned, and the Peasley family mansion (one of many, that is) is gambled away to King Boo.

But, King Boos already got his own slew of creepy haunted mansions, and, frankly, this one is haunted by a ghost he can't stand. A ghost that hasn't been able to speak to someone for around a decade. A chatty ghost that hasn't been able to speak to someone for over a decade. He's not exactly torn up about parting with it.

Bowser, the poor thing, is on attempt...

Attempt... 2 hundred... something.

(at least 4 proposals a year, for around 20 years... that's...)

Let's just say, Peach does and has not wanted Bowser for a long ass time, and it really doesn't help his self esteem that he's still being thwarted by a plumber that's old enough to be his dad and uses a cane. He really can't understand what Peach sees in him, especially considering she still looks like a youthful 20/30-something into her 60s. Frankly, it's unfair. He's got money, kids (some really awesome ones too), power, looks (he thinks so at least), and isn't 3 pudding cups away from dementia.

What he hasn't got, until right now at least, is an awesome mansion, specially built for human(oid) creatures. Maybe she just didn't like gothic castle architecture? Maybe, as Boo suggests, he just has to get her scared enough to fall into his arms for safety. He's got this all planned out.

Boo did not specify that the "ghostly inhabitants" of this mansion were a hyperactive ghost dog and naive plumber. He didn't think it was important information at the time.

So, when Bowser is plotting and practice-proposes (does he really need more practice?) to the striking blue eyes of a, surprisingly, human painting, the last thing he expects is to be met with a ghoulish grin.

Barely ghoulish, because, god, the thing is bright. The smile and the bio-(bio?)-luminescent energy it's attached to. For a ghost who's wearing bloodied bandages and has been dead for 30 lonely years, he's surprisingly optimistic.

"Really?! And you're not even a boo!" :D

He's very optimistic, in fact, because he's willing to believe that this complete stranger might just be his ticket out of this wall-papered purgatory. He died meeting up with his forbidden love, after all, so it must be a sign. He does not hesitate to shove that ring on his finger, even if his new fiance looks hesitant (he might be naive enough to go with it, but he's not blind). He's convinced the two will make it work.

Luigi is... very tired of looking at the same things everyday. Now, he can attach to his new fiance, who's only slightly hesitant to engage with him, (and is not bad looking at all, in Luigi's opinion). Together, the two can actually have a life together. Luigi was only 25 when he died, and he was far too shy then to do any adventuring. The most rebellious thing the man had ever done was sneak out.

Man, look where that ended him.

For Luigi, this is his opportunity to live the life he wasted was robbed of.

And the guys got kids! How awesome is that?

Bowser is not liking the new pets at his side. One never stops yipping and yapping and one is a dog. Luigi is... fine. From a distance. The problem is that they physically can't get any. As long as Luigi is attached to him, consider them hand cuffed. This stupid, green boo is crimping his style, and any game he had with Peach is virtually ruined when he's got his "fiance" clinging to his side like he's the best thing since breathing air.

At least Luigi appreciates his kids. The ghost obviously has some taste (of course he does, he chose him for pete's sake), and Junior and the rest seem to like the ghoul enough... Even if Junior isn't completely sure that Luigi is a ghoul. Both Luigi and Junior agree that boos are scary.

Maybe, after some hard self-reflection (with Luigi close and present, of course), and some growing emotional intimacy and openness, Bowser begins to kind of, perhaps tolerate Luigi. Just a little. Just enough to find his stupid quirks endearing and just enough to start to think that maybe he's always been too good for Peach, anyway. Maybe he should be with someone who appreciates him and loves his family. It's not like her and Mario had ever had kids in their relationship, and her not wanting kids is kind of a deal breaker.

Bowser's newfound attention on Luigi is driving everyone else nuts, though. Boos barely seen the man since his unfortunate run in with the green leach and no one else at their poker table is any good. At this rate, Boos not even satisfied winning Peasley's riches off him anymore. Occasionally, a guy just wants to lose, y'know? Boo hates only one thing more than Peasley whining about the consequences of his gambling addiction, and that's boredom. He misses when the Koopa King spent all his time plotting against the old-ass plumber. At least then he showed his face at their meetings.

And when Boo finally brings up his grievances, because he deserves to rant, Peasley seems... nervous. Boo loves nervousness.

"There's a... human boo... in the mansion I gave you..?"

"One, you didn't give it to me, you lost, fair and square. Two, yeah, and he's just about the chattiest thing I've ever met. All dressed up in a white suit, the pretentious-"

At that, Peasley turns about as pale as a ghost. Well, if that were possible, considering he's a legume. Suddenly, he's got some important things he has to do somewhere else.

This poker table is looking weak.

When Peasley asks Bowser to meet at the mansion, Bowser warns he can't come alone. It's a stretch to get the green ghost to go back with him, and as much as Bowser wants to tell him "you're coming with me, whether you like it or not", he can't bring himself to say it. Instead, he convinces Luigi that it's a quick stay. Essentially, a welfare visit on the old house and a quick meeting with an old friend. Luigi's narrowly convinced.

Stepping back onto that porch brings back a lot of old memories for the human. Few of them anything good in retrospect.

But he does want to see his painting again. He always did cherish that painting. He's sure Bowser will too, right?

Is that painting a good memory for Bowser? He wonders.

It was all those years ago that a young Peasley gifted him that painting. Like him, he had been optimistic and in love. Even if his rich, snobby parents weren't a fan of the human, they had an entire life ahead of them. Peasley had made him a beautiful painting. It was the one part of the house Luigi felt was his. A good memory.

He never expected to be greeted by the same image he had all those years ago. Peasley, now older, stood in front of the painting. His face now wasn't proud or love-struck or whatever expression he had had then (Luigi can barely remember Peasley's face until just now), he looked somber. It was a rare occasion that Luigi wasn't green, and his teal glow seemed to throw Bowser off.

And divert Peasley's attention away from the miserable painting and over to the ghost, who was nervously twiddling his thumbs with a sympathetic look in his eyes.

It's not long before Bowser realizes that this meeting was never about him, and he feels more awkward than anything else...

Except that Polterpup has been on edge since the moment he saw the bean (now) king. Has he ever seen the dog not wag it's tail at someone?

Immediately, the older man apologizes. Things were never meant to end up how they did. He tried his best to help when he could.

Luigi's not angry, how could he be? Luigi's fall was an accident.

Peasley says he didn't know Luigi had stuck around, and if he had, he thinks he would have done things differently. He would have at least had the place cleaned instead of just letting it rot.

(So Peasley abandon the mansion? The perfectly good mansion for no reason, leaving Luigi alone.)

And, of course, Peasley's sorry for not telling Mario or his parents about what happened to him.

(HUH?)

He insisted that he waited for hours with Luigi, hoping he'd recover with enough gauze. The man told him it was a lost cause. If he could have saved him, he would have.

Hours?

"I was unconscious for hours?"

It came out as barely a whisper.

"I stayed almost the entire night. As long as I could."

Bowser didn't know boos could turn so many colors, especially that quickly. Bowser didn't think Luigi even had it in him to be anything less than smiley, especially completely enraged.

Luigi had never been more angry in his life (death).

Even Peasley's insistence that "You don't understand what they'd have done to me if they'd known I went against their wishes!" fell on deaf ears.

When Luigi's aura finally finished raving, Peasley had backed away from the now red ghost. Again, Luigi recognized the position they were in;

One of them backing up, away from the painting and towards the basement stairs. How could Peasley forget that door never closed all the way? It had only been the exact thing that killed Luigi 30 years ago. The exact thing that, of course, Peasley hadn't fixed.

Luigi swears he didn't push him, even in that state. Bowser believes him, only because the still angry and unaware Luigi yelled angrily down the stairs: "You better not die here, because I'll make your death hell!"

If they both hadn't just watched Peasley fucking die, Bowser would have kinda been into it.

It took Luigi a second to realize that even if his own fall had been an unlucky hit, Peasley wasn't 25 anymore. And he wasn't responding. His red hue didn't last long, especially when Polterpup no longer seems threatened (and Bowser notices that the bean king no longer seems to be breathing).

"What did I do?"

Bowser suggests fleeing the crime scene, which normally isn't his move, but he'd rather not be tied to the murder of a fellow royal. Luigi shakes his head.

This is his fault. And as angry as he still is at Peasley, he can't flee what he's done. Not in a right conscience. Not like what Peasley did to him. Luigi suffered enough sitting in that mansion alone for 30 years, and, as much as revenge tastes sweet, a small part of him still cares. Had he lived, Peasley and him would have had a life after all.

But he hadn't lived, did he.

Bowser can't remember a time ever seeing Luigi's color look quite as dull as it did then.

Playing with his engagement ring, Luigi thinks back on the part of the man he loved. Peasley never did buy him the ring, like he had hoped. Luigi remembers getting himself all excited over the possibility of a scenic proposal as they walked through the flower garden of the mansion. He had gifted him a painting. Which was almost as good.

He couldn't even count how many times he had stood and looked at that painting, thinking:

Was it worth it?

An apprehensive smile comes onto his face. A nostalgic smile. A somber one.

Doesn't really matter, does it? He'd never know if it was worth it in the end. This was how it ended up. Luigi had always believed that fate is what had brought him and Peasley together, considering everything else had lined them up for failure. Fate was what brought him here. What kept him here.

Who is he to drag down others?

He returns Bowser's ring.

"I'm sorry."

Bowser never deserved to have him weigh him down.

"I wasted my life chasing after a family I never got, and then spent my death doing the exact same thing."

Bowser awkwardly matches Luigi's bitter laugh.

"I lived my life, be it a short one, but you deserve to live yours."

Luigi pats the ring on his hand.

"I hope she likes it." He smiles. He means it. Peach sounds wonderful.

Tears prick Bowser's eyes, and all because...

He never did tell Luigi about him and Peach, did he? He can't help but laugh. Tears streaming down his face kinda laugh. The laugh you only get once a year kind of laugh.

"You spent, what? Maybe five non-consecutive years chasing after a family? Try twenty!"

Luigi's eyebrow goes up. This is supposed to be a super emotional goodbye and this goobers laughing? On about his conquest to marry Peach (who, apparently, is already married) and make his picturesque life. Luigi can't help but laugh, because it's so stupid that Bowser's laughing about this right now.

"Her and her stupid, human, mustachioed husband Mario have been kicking my ass for decades. I promise you, boo, you weren't ever getting in the way of anything."

Mario?!

"Mario?" (!)

"You heard of him?"

The excitement in Luigi's eyes (and aura) is obvious.

"My brother's name is Mario!"

With a look of determination, Bowser promises he'll tell Luigi the story of all his and Mario's exploits if he does him two favors.

Leaves this, frankly, ugly and decrepit mansion with him. Because this story needs atmosphere.

Puts the ring back on his finger. Because how else is everybody going to know they're engaged?

Luigi gives a grin.

He looks down the stairs. What about doing his due-diligence?

"I promise you, boo, if fate brought you and Peasley together, and pushed you down those stairs, and brought us together, and then pushed him down the stairs, fate is on your side."

Luigi's lips are still pursed.

"And it's almost sunrise," Bowser points out.

"So?"

"Well, we've waited almost all night, seems like a fair amount of time to me. It's obviously a lost cause."

At that, Luigi begins laughing. Not quite Bowser's guttural, teary laugh, but certainly a cackle. Enough to turn his aura back to a vibrant green, just like before. Enough to make him hunch over and take some (not really) much needed gulps of air.

When the laughing dies down to a hurt giggle, Bowser assures him that:

"You didn't kill him, Weeg."

No. I guess he didn't, did he?

Looking down the stairs one last time, (his death completely bloodless, the lucky bastard), Luigi's brows furrow for a second and he twiddles his thumbs.

If Luigi's learned one thing from being a condemned ghost, it's that you should take every chance you get.

The bottom of the stairs don't look so intimidating now.

"I...

I forgive you."

Maybe that is all Peasley deserves.

Luigi deserves to have another chance. And maybe Peasley does too, maybe he'll find one in the next lucky winner of poker. Someones gotta replace his spot at the table.

Bowser shares that he certainly deserves a mother to his children, and he's already got a quality candidate who's proved he's got what it takes. ("One who cooks, cleans, can't call in sick, die, and is pretty good looking! I hit the jackpot!")

Maybe, at the very least, Luigi deserves to see his brother one last time.

And maybe a few more times after that, for good measure.

Anyways so the original plan was just to have either Luigi and Bowser straight up immediately abandon the crime scene (not really crime scene) or have Luigi sit in the mansion forever and live out a miserable existence.

But I couldn't do that to my boys now could I. (But Peasley still gets abandoned because screw Peasley I hate that little bean man /j).

This wasn't meant to turn out in the format it did but, y'know, it did. Just know this isn't brief but also isn't comprehensive. I might (big emphasis on might) make a shorter headcanon post on this, but we'll see.

I hope you enjoyed. And sorry for the length, I am not known and will never be known for being concise.

[prismaticpichu]

Hi! I'm sorry if I was bothering you, so umm can you make Seph Zack, like Seph has a diary, Zack is sick, Seph takes care of him, add angst, Protective Sephiroth, Zack needs a hug, angst with a happy ending, please? also, take your time, it's okay, I will be patient. ❤️♥️🫂

Awwww! You’re never a bother, friendo 💖 Plz don’t ever worry about that!!! 💕

Oooh!! I love a good angsty/protective sickfic!!! Thooo, admittedly, I already have a Zack sickfic that covers those points pretty well called Priorities ❤️:,3

The diary idea tho??? I LOVE <33333 💙💙💙 Have another slash fic! :,333

18+ Zack!!

~

ZackSeph ~ Diary Discovery

The rhythmic sound of a pen gliding against paper was what stirred Zack awake that night, blue eyes fluttering open from their purgatorial state between slumber and consciousness, their sleepy Mako glow sparkling with a hint of mischief as he spotted Sephiroth scrawling something in what looked to be a little black notebook.

The sight was just too precious to be confusing.

"...Takin' notes, pal?"

The warrior’s shoulders went slightly stiff against the polished arch of the headboard, clearly not expecting his partner to be awake, the vague coral on his cheeks visible even through the glossy threads of mercury. "Yes..." he assured in a totally-believable grunt, reflexively snapping the notebook shut. "Jotting data, researching. Nothing more. Go back to sleep."

Seph was a man of many things, Zack had come to learn over the span of their blossoming relationship. He was ethereal beautifully (inside and out), adoringly kind, bafflingly intelligent in both booksmarts and the art of wielding a blade… Gaia, was he a man of so, so many things.

But a good liar was not among them.

His expression softening into a doting smirk, Zack shifted further on his side. “Yeah? I don’t think so…” He pawed sleepily at his best friend. “Watcha really doin’?”

Sephiroth didn’t even bother swatting him away, merely lowering his head in aversion. “Go back to sleep.”

“Aww, Seph…” Zack snuggled closer to his friend’s side, his tone mellowing, realizing as the groggy mist lifted from his mind that Seph was likely afraid of tease and criticism. “It’s just me, bud. I’d never judge you. Never…” And he nuzzled into his partner’s neck for emphasis. “I promise…”

The soothing assurance was enough to soothe Seph’s muscles, at least to the point where he was comfortable enough relaxing into Zack’s touch. He leaned down to press his temple against the black-haired SOLDIER’s, noses gently rubbing, strands of silver spilling across their connected bridges like laces of silky moonlight against the night.

“…I know.”

Zack’s lips melted into a loving, tranquil smile, mischief turning to twinkle in the sapphire stars. “Then show meee… I’m curious!”

Gentle chuckles rippling against from the man’s lips, Seph’s amusement was accompanied by a playful yet resigned sigh, sheets and linens rustling as both SOLDIERs pulled back from the intimate closeness, emerald eyes gazing back down at the notebook while Zack waited in good-hearted anticipation for it to be handed over.

“…Alright…” Sephiroth continued to quietly chuckle, but the genuine embarrassment created an obvious underbelly to his voice. “…You mustn’t laugh, though.”

There came that affectionate smirk again. “I mustn’t?’”

“No. You mustn’t.” But a small smirk was budding on Sephiroth’s own lips as he handed over the notebook to eager hands, immediately lowering his head, gushing silver bangs doing their job to veil his flustered, pinkish expression.

“…Can I read it aloud?” Zack smiled over the charcoal cover, wanting to ensure that Seph was still comfortable.

“Mmph. Go ahead.”

…Was he crazy, or did it suddenly seem like Seph wanted him to read it?

Satisfied either way, Zack’s eyes glimmered with playfulness, glancing down at the small black treasure chest as he opened it up, cleared his throat, and began reading aloud.

“…Dear Diary…” Annnnd tZack’s face bloomed with a smile before reaching the first sentence, shooting his partner the messy grin. “Aww man… it’s a diary?!”

“…Perhaps.”

“Aww, Seph…” Zack’s heart was nothing short of swelling as he glanced back down at the immaculate handwriting, continuing to read the entry.

“I wanted to purchase this journal because there are some thoughts that turn incessantly around in my mind, and yet I don’t have the proper experience to express them. I have always been more adept with expressing myself with writing—“

Zack canted his head as the paragraph abruptly came to a stop, starting anew on the following line.

“I love him so much…” he continued to read, a velvet throb in his heart. “Zack. Zack Fair. My lieutenant, my paramour… my very best friend. Never in my life had I met someone who treats me with the kindness that Zack does; never has anyone seen me the way Zack does, so human and unafraid… Never has anyone loved me the way he does. Hojo had always played the broken record that I was unlovable, a tool… why would mother ever love me? But Zack does. Zack has always loved me. And I think he… And I pray to Gaia that he always will.”

By the time Zack was done reading, pearls of mist had formed in the oceanic eyes, lowering the journal to gaze hazily at his beloved partner. The throb in his heart had stopped completely—frozen in place, having come to a gradual stop the further he read along, swallowing slightly to keep the watery choke inside.

Gaia…

“Are… all the entrees like this?” Zack asked, gingerly.

Seph was fully facing him now, the emerald eyes more vulnerable than Zack had ever seen them, green fire so delicately small yet true. “…More or less,” he admitted, soft expression softening into a smile. “That was only the first one I wrote. There’s perhaps about twenty more entrees in a similar vein.”

His chest practically numb, Zack glanced back down at the journal, rapidly flipping through the pages to find over a dozen more entrees in similar length—catching the familiar script of his name, catching all the loving adjectives that accompanied it, catching all the anecdotes and places and experiences shared between them…

And the mist turned into a gentle rainfall.

“Gaia, Seph…” he dropped the journal, strong arms enveloping his friend in an overwhelmed embrace, the unspoken words written into his heart pulsing with every velvet beat. “You didn’t say it would destroy me.”

“…Heh,” Sephiroth grunted, the smile still lingering as he buried his head in the feathery raven nest. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have been so insistent.”

“You kidding?” Zack wiped the tears from his eyes. “I… I don’t even know what to say.”

“Heh… I can empathize.”

Sapphires blinked, their color rich with understanding, buried deep in the smooth terrain of his partner’s neck.

“Did you… did you never feel comfortable saying it?”

“Mmn.” Seph’s voice was muffled by his hair. “Saying what?”

“You know…” Zack’s own voice grew small, innocent. “…’I love you?’”

The swath of silence that passed was meaningful, ephemeral.

“I was… heh,” Sephiroth murmured after a few moments, the honesty drawn from his soul, cocooned in so much warmth and solace that Shame could never penetrate it. “Afraid.”

“…Afraid?” Zack repeated, tender.

“Mmn…” came his earnest nod in reply, even more muffled, the warrior’s voice slightly subdued by the truth. “Because… because what if the feelings were not reciprocated?” And he closed his eyes, burying even deeper, quickly amending himself.

“Or, should I say… to the degree that I feel.”

There was silence, raw and real. Raw and real and long. Zack took several beats to fully digest his friend’s words, emotions conflicted, the rivers in his eyes momentarily ceasing to flow. Had he… had really never said it? Said it clearly? Even if their relationship was new, still being explored…

And the words came flooding all at once.

“Bud…” Zack pulled his friend down onto the pillow, burrowing his head into his friend’s cheeks, lips pressed against angelic skin. “I love you so much… So frigging much. So, so, so frigging much. Don’t ever worry about it not being mutual… ‘kay? I love you more than anything on this planet. More than anything… That kindness, that mind, that heart… all of it, bud. I love all of it. All of you.” He burrowed deeper into his cheek, eyes creaking open to face the watering green, their faces only inches apart.

And I pray to Gaia that…

“And I always, always will.”

…Magical, really, the way he could feel Sephiroth melt into his arms, the beautiful silver shape fitting against his body so perfectly, the harmonious song of their heartbeats pulsing together as one. “I… I love you too…” Seph wrote the words against his ear in a doting murmur, faint but unhesitant, the thudding sound of a pen falling to the carpet as he pulled him closer against his chest.

And Zack melted right into it. “…You more,” he murmured blissfully.

“Hmph. I don’t think that’s possible.”

“Yeah…?”

“‘Yeah’ indeed.”

“Nope. It’s just not possible.”

“Mnm. I suppose you didn’t see my January twelfth entry then.” Sephiroth’s eyes fell fluttered shut with a long, tranquil sigh. “My numerical list of things I love about Zack Fair.”

“Oh my Gaia… you did not.”

“Oh, I did. And I can recount them all from memory.”

“Don’t you dare.”

The angelic laughter rang warn and rich against his ears, the gentle vibrations rumbling against his beating heart, the closed pages of the notebook opening in front of Zack one beautiful chuckle at a time.

“Mmmn. Number ten…”

[foolishbuilders]

Random QSMP Fic Recs

Somehow, Sundown by Coby_Thinks

"Don’t- Fit, don’t try,” Bad wheezed from the ground. “When he’s like this, it's-” “Oh, when I’m ‘like this’ what?” Foolish knew he was probably just being honest, seeing as Bad had seen him like this a good many times. Hell, Bad had driven him to this point, pulled him back, joined him in it… but he still turned to glare down at the demon. “What, Bad? I’m unreasonable? I’m- what, fucking dangerous?” They both knew that the last one was very true, and Fit seemed to sense it. Rated T, 4.6k words, Totem of Death Foolish

precious things (that time forgot) by Coby_Thinks

The word ‘immortal’ had some common misconceptions about it, sometimes confused with ‘eternal’ or ‘invincible’. No, that’s not how it was. Foolish knew that better than almost anyone Rated T, 23.6k, Fooligetta

just yesterday i could've gone far away (today it rains again) by justlukahere

Pac is running through the forest when a jolt of pain makes him fall to the ground or; on the run from the red pack, Pac steps into a trap Rated T, 1.7k, purgatory teams and werewolves

lightning strike by bonesandthebees

Although some of the tension in the woman’s shoulders loosened, she continued to keep the gun pointing at Cellbit. “How do I know you’re actually their parents? People are fucked up these days. Especially when it comes to kids.” So Tallulah and Richarlyson were here. They were here, and they were probably right through the door to her left. But despite how badly Phil wanted to run past the woman to grab his daughter, he knew that right now, that would end with a bullet to the back. “Let us see them,” Cellbit argued. “Then you can see.” “But you could be trying to intimidate them. How do I know you haven’t, I don’t know, kidnapped them or something?” The woman questioned. “They’re our kids! Why would we lie?” Etoiles asked. “Because you took them into a fucking horde!” Rated T, 10k, zombie apocalypse

the best laid plans are half baked by sparklesandjazzhands

Wordlessly, Cellbit hands over a piece of paper with the rough sketches he had drawn early that morning. Charcoal letters across the top proclaim “FUCK THE BEAR!” in a messy scrawl. They match the dozens of scribbled-out pages littering the ground beneath his feet. Foolish reads the title without comment and holds the page up to his face for closer inspection. “Huh,” he mutters eventually. m Rated T, 1.7k, post purgatory au

I Hate You Too by foolich

“So.. you guys.. dated?” Jaiden carefully inquires. “No – “ “ – Yes.” Their heads swing towards each other. Bad was the one who said yes, and Foolish, is the one who rushed to deny. Foolish takes the leap to properly explain, like it’d soften his fall from grace, “We kissed for like two seconds.” “There is absolutely nothing between us.” Bad adds. “I do not feel anything towards Foolish.” Foolish pauses, his expression crumpling, “For some reason I feel like I should be offended by that.” Unrated, 2k, foolhalo/landduo shenanigans

[silverdune]

the purgatory papers | c.sn, k.ys

"what if the line between nirvana and misery were the mortal world's best newspaper columnist?"

minors dni. ageless blogs dni. blank blogs dni. you'll be blocked. genre: supernatural, psychological thriller, drama character(s): gn!reader, choi san, kang yeosang, jeong yunho, kim hongjoong, park seonghwa, jung wooyoung, choi jongho, song mingi; (ft. other kpop artists (tba)) tags: loose interpretations of heaven/hell/purgatory, explicit language, hostility, rivalry, vague concept of time (mostly set in a very distant future), banter; (additional tags specified in each individual part); total word count: tbd summary: you are one the elders of purgatory, the liminal space between heaven and hell, run by the no-nonsense leader, yunho. under his wing, you've spent three millennia manifesting as a newspaper columnist in the mortal world in order to get the scoop on rivalries between the angels and devils of heaven and hell. your energy now spent, you're ready to retire this position, until yunho pulls you back at the behest of hell's overseer, hongjoong. with a tighter deadline and hongjoong breathing down yours and yunho's necks, you begrudgingly accept your final job. you think you know it all by now, but what awaits is a fire, the likes of which you've never seen before: one stoked in spite of the highest degree. a/n: this idea came to me as i was writing 1978, and i didn't realise i was fully invested in this idea until i started planning it. this series is essentially made up of one introductory chapter and two multi-chapter stories (both of which won't be very long). if you'd like to be added to a taglist, please reply or send me an ask. if you're a minor or your blog has no indication of age, you won't be added.

× masterlist under the cut ×

introduction - part one | part two lies on the lips of a devil - coming soon (tba) truth on the tongue of an angel - coming soon (tba)

× silverdune (ave). do not repost. ×

[intotheseas]

20 Questions for fic writers!

Thank you for the tag, @writing-intheundercroft!! (Btw I cannot wait to start your Seb AU series and the Stardew stuff.)

How many works do you have on AO3? - Four! Though one is taken from my longfic, so technically three I guess? Still a baby writer and started in Feb, so I'm building works up haha

2. What's your total AO3 word count? - 98,474

3. What fandoms do you write for? - Stardew Valley right now! Tossing around some ideas for Life is Strange but idk.

4. Top five fics by kudos? - 1. This Modern Love, 2. Heartbeats, 3. We Played Hide and Seek in Waterfalls, and 4. Hoppipolla

5. Do you respond to comments? - ALWAYS. If someone takes the time out of their day to comment on my stuff I want to respond with equal enthusiasm. I can't express how motivating they are.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? - I don't do angsty endings, only angsty middles hehe. With that in mind, Do You Realize??.....

7. What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? - Probably This Modern Love? They all have happy endings honestly.

8. Do you get hate on fics? - Not that I know of!

9. Do you write smut? - Everything I've written has smut lol.

10. Craziest crossover? - Not really a crossover person tbh!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? - Not that I know of!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? - Nope!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? - No, though with the right person it sounds like it'd be fun!

14. All time favorite ship - I'm biased lol, my OC Sage and Sebastian <3

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? - I have WIPs that are sitting in Google Drive purgatory but have every intention of finishing them. I don't allow myself to start something if I don't think I can finish.

16. What are your writing strengths? - From what I've been told - immersive writing, bringing readers into the story, good at emotional scenes, and descriptive writing? Idk how true it all is.

17. Thoughts on dialogue in another language? - The only other language I speak conversationally is Spanish (and that's being generous.) I'd hate to butcher a beautiful language so it's not something I'd do, but I'm not against others doing it.

18. First fandom you wrote in? - -cough-naruto-cough- (I was fourteen and wrote it on old notebook paper, ageing myself here lol)

19. Favorite fic you've written? - Toss up between Heartbeats and We Played Hide and Seek in Waterfalls. I LOVE writing with beautiful descriptions and lovely full emotions and I think those two are my best so far.

20. There was no 20th question, so I'm making one up! Tips for newbie writers? - Get! Writing! Seriously, pick up a pen or a phone or a laptop and just get going. You're gonna figure it out as you go along. Over time you'll identify your weaknesses, and when you do, study up!

shit I forgot to tag people fucking hell lol OPEN TAG please tag me if you answer I'd love to see your answers!!

[calaisreno]

Point of View in Fiction: Some Observations

I did a poll on point of view in fanfiction a while ago. The results didn't surprise me; I knew that some people just don't read 1st person stories, and most people don’t care about POV. I was more interested in the reasons people gave for their preference.

It's a personal thing, how someone tells you a story, and if you don't like the narrative voice, you will associate it with other things. Readers don’t often think about voice, but it is one of the most important ways a story draws you in, or sends you to the back button. I suspect it's narrative voice that is affecting some readers more than POV.

I’ve never hit the back button on any fic because of the POV. I have hit that button because of format, paragraphing, and a few other issues. I’m an English teacher who taught creative writing for many of those years. Now I don’t read things that feel like student writing-- simply because I can’t enjoy reading something if it feels like I should be grading it. If there are spelling errors or common grammar mistakes that I see over and over in student work, I don’t read it. It might be a good story, but I can't put myself in the right headspace to appreciate it because it feels like work.

Judging from the replies to the poll, some people associate first person POV with bad writing, but there are many other things that flag a story as badly written. And a badly written story isn’t necessarily a bad story. (Barbara Woodhouse assured us that there are no bad dogs; this may be true for stories as well, but choice is an individual matter. There are some breeds I would not choose as a companion.)

I was given the task of teaching creative writing because the admin in charge of the schedule at my school needed another English elective and I had a hole in my schedule. I was an avid reader and had written a lot of original fiction at that point, and thought having students write poems and stories might be a nice change from essays and book reports. My feelings about it were not relevant. Nobody cared whether I was qualified; it was either Creative Writing or Study Hall (i.e. Purgatory) for me. I did not hesitate.

The reality: I loved it and hated it.

Many of my young writers were reluctant, having been placed in my class to fill a hole in their schedules; they did not enjoy writing in the least. A hundred words was an accomplishment for some of them; if they could break this barrier, they got smiley faces and exclamation points. Others were wildly enthusiastic, producing pages of badly spelled and punctuated narrative, a chaotic jumble of scene and dialogue with random flashes of brilliance.

Grading a story is not like grading an essay. The fledgling writers who are serious need to know that spelling, punctuation, and grammar matter: it’s the suit you put on for the interview so you get the job. The ones who dislike writing need encouragement to see that it doesn't have to be punishment. It can be play.

A few observations from my years working with student writers:

Inexperienced fiction writers tend to use POV 1st person more often. Most of these writers are also enthusiastic readers. First person POV helps them find the camera eye focus they realize fiction needs. However fantastic, the story they write is their story, intimate and personal, and 1st person feels most comfortable to them. They need encouragement and a few friendly suggestions, not a paper bloodied by my red pen. In writing process, first drafts are allowed to be horrible.

The non-readers in my class were the most reluctant writers; they often failed to understand POV and wrote from an outsider third-person POV which ended up being more of a summary than a story. My job was to show them how to pull scenes out of the summary. People talking, doing things.

We all start somewhere.

Publishers note that first submissions are often written in first person. It is not that they reject these stories because of that; the stories have other amateur flaws and the POV is just a flag for other issues. First person is not bad, it’s just harder for new writers to pull off well.

Several novels I’ve recently read use first person narrator to good effect: Piranesi comes to mind, The Rule of Four, and Moriarty. The Left Hand of Darkness is a story I can’t even imagine in third person-- and it has two narrators! The original Sherlock Holmes stories (all but a couple) are written in first person, with Doctor Watson narrating.

There are choices even within a first person narrative. The main character doesn’t have to narrate. Watson isn’t the main character in ACD’s stories, Holmes is. Watson is an involved/interested observer (a common use of first person); he stands in for the reader, seeing the mystery unfold, not understanding what all the clues mean until— surprise!— Holmes reveals the solution. I have read mysteries where the first person narrator turns out to be the murderer; the shock value of this fades if you use it every time, but it’s effective on some stories. First person is not bad, if chosen for a good reason.

And third person has its own set of problems. The multiple “he” and “his” that need clarification. The accidental wandering out of limited point of view into semi-omniscience. Even a close, third-person limited narrative provides some distance from the viewpoint character.

Second person is rare and considered gimmicky. I wrote a story in second POV once; the only comment from my most admiring reader: NO. Just, NO. Since that horror, I’ve used first person with second person address in a couple stories (Blessings and The Story of Us, if you’re curious). It’s not a choice I’d often make, but sometimes it’s the right one.

Several of my favourite fanfics use the first person brilliantly. (Pointing to ivyblossom’s The Progress of Sherlock Holmes and The Quiet Man.) When reading, I generally don’t notice point of view unless I think about it; if the narrative flows, the choice obviously works. I don't read much in other fandoms, but think that the Sherlock fandom has a lot of really talented and experienced writers, better than many published stories I’ve read.

I use first person in some of my stories, usually because I’ve found a narrative voice I like. I’ve also rewritten stories after the first draft, changing POV (first to third, or third to first) because I thought it would work better. My feeling is that neither is better in general; in a specific story it should be a deliberate choice, not an accidental one. It’s one of many things to think about when writing a narrative. Voice is one of the most important.

My conclusions:

Reading for pleasure means that the best story is the one you love. It’s a personal choice, not a debate.

Writing well develops over time, as a product of many things. If you’re writing for pleasure, not pay, you should write what you love. Do not change your story because of what a poll says.

If you’re unsure or unhappy about what you’ve written, find a beta reader. Ask them questions. Pay them in adoration. Return the favour; it’s a great way to learn.

Polls are useful only for provoking thought. My thanks to all who participated!

[hyprfixate]

hold on tight ↝ [L.F.] :: part one

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ summary: you're unhappy. you're almost certain that there isn't anything in this world that can make you happier, and you're right. what you don't account for, however, is something otherworldly flipping your life on its head. or, should you say someone

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ pairing: lee felix x (she/her) reader

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ word count: 3.3k

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ tags: angst, non idol au, fantasy au kind of, felix is an angel literally and figuratively, mentions of suicidal thoughts without going into detail, reader is depressed, she/her pronouns used for the reader, slowburn, strangers to lovers, putting angst again bc thats how much angst there is.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ author’s note: i wanted to post the whole fic at once but college + adhd + eds = no writing time :(. so here’s part one! i hope you guys enjoy it <3

(ignore formatting mistakes i beg </3)

-

You open your eyes to find yourself, of all places, in an elevator.

You’re not exactly sure where you expected to be, but an elevator was definitely not in the realm of possibilities.

“Um… hello?”

As expected, no one answers you.

The elevator is moving, though, and it dings with each floor that it passes. Your eyes nearly bulge from your head when you see there are 4,000 floors this elevator can go to, and you’re only on the fourth at the moment. With a sigh, you slump against the wall and prepare for the long ride ahead of you.

“Great,” you mumble to yourself. “Just another place to be stuck in.”

Your pessimism is one of your worst qualities, you think. While there is very little about you that you would deem “good”, your pessimism seemed to be the overarching issue, not only for you but for those around you.

The dinging of the elevator grows bleary, and as you pull up to the 10th floor, the ding sounds more like the low groan of a dying man. The doors part slowly, and you come face to face with what looks like a waiting room.

Is this some kind of joke?

A plaque on the wall reads “Purgatory”, and just under that plaque is a plentiful head of sandy brown hair. The owner of the head looks up with a grin, and you’re nearly mesmerized by his beauty. Perfectly sculpted features on the most symmetrical face you’ve ever seen, with freckles littering his face and cheeks like flecks of gold in the sand. To add to his otherworldly good looks, his body is outlined in a pale gold, flickering like the flame of a candle. Your eyes roam his body for identification, but the name tag on his shirt is too far for you to read. You continue to hold his gaze as the grin on his face falters.

“Um. Hi?”

Collecting himself, he clears his throat, shuffling with papers on his desk. “Hi,” he manages out. “My name is Felix, welcome to purgatory. Can I get your name please?”

Your name comes out in a voice just above a whisper, and he hurriedly types it into his computer. The room is silent while you wait,and you notice he’s purposefully avoiding your gaze. The awkward energy in the room comes to its peak when after a moment, his thick eyebrows mesh together in confusion.

“Sorry, could you repeat your name for me? I may have misheard you.”

You nod, repeating and even taking the time to spell it out, letter by letter. Felix’s face is still scrunched in confusion as he mutters the letters back to himself under his breath. Moments pass, and the confused look does not leave his face.

“Do you… have another name by chance? A birth name?”

“No,” you say carefully. “I’m not adopted or anything.”

“That’s.. weird,” he mutters. “Your name isn’t coming up in the system for some reason.”

Your breath catches in your throat. “What do you mean?”

Felix reaches over to the front of the desk, grabbing the phone off of the receiver and holding it between his ear and shoulder. “Everyone gets a death report,” he explains as he punches in some numbers. “It details which part of the building you go to, how long you have to stay in this department, the people you left behind— all the technical stuff. For some reason yours isn’t coming up.”

He holds up one finger as the person on the other line answers, turning away and talking in harsh whispers.

There’s a feeling of anxiety brewing in your stomach as he talks, and you feel like you could throw up.

Felix’s conversation wraps up quickly, with a satisfying clack once he puts the phone back on the receiver. “Guy will be down in a second,” he says. The soft smile is back on his face as he gestures to a plastic chair nearby. “Please, have a seat.”

You nod wordlessly as you make your way to the decrepit looking chair. There’s a sneaking suspicion in your brain as to why your report won't come up, and you hope to all powers above that you’re wrong.

You take a few deep breaths, trying to calm your pounding heart as you wait for Guy to come down here and explain what’s going on. From the corner of your eye you see Felix sneaking glances at you, scribbling furiously in a notebook as he does. The glow around his body is growing brighter, almost blinding you. You’re about to mention it when the ding of the elevator catches your attention.

Both of you turn your attention to the entrance of the office, watching as a couple walks in, hand and hand. They smell like fire and burning rubber, and judging from the bright red mark across the girl’s throat, a car accident did them in. Felix sneaks one more glance at you before putting away his pen and turning back on his customer-service smile, asking the couple the same questions he asked you a moment before.

Unsurprisingly, their reports show up as expected. Felix prints them out and says comforting words to the couple, sliding a box of tissues to them when the girl starts to weep. He points them in the direction of a grand staircase before wishing them well. As they disappear up the stairs, you notice a pair of feet coming in the opposite direction.

“Oh! There’s Guy. He’ll sort this all out.” Felix’s customer service grin is back on his face, but you notice apprehension and questioning in his eyes.

Guy steps into the room, and you’re immediately overwhelmed by his presence. He’s absolutely massive, and his face glows so bright you can barely make out his features. All you see are his eyebrows, mouth, and nose. He rests the file folder he was holding on the front desk, leaning forward with ease.

“Hey,” he says. “You called, Lixie?”

The brunette nods, gesturing in your direction and introducing you. “Uh, she came in earlier, I took her name, but nothing came up. I think something’s wrong with the computer.”

“That’s… interesting.” Guy turns towards you, eyebrows raised. “Hey there. Can I get your name?”

You tell him your name, spelling it out for him the same way you did for Felix. He nods quietly and opens the file folder, flipping through documents quickly. The anxious pit in your stomach grows with each passing second, and it’s taking everything in you not to throw up right then and there.

He reaches the end of the folder, confusion appearing on his otherwise blank face. He leans over the counter and turns the computer monitor towards himself, typing in your name and clicking around several times.

“See,” Felix says, his large eyes peering up at Guy. “Nothing.”

Guy stands up to his full height, placing his hands on his hips and sighing. He shakes his head and lets out a huff of air that sounds almost like a laugh. Felix’s big brown eyes never leave his face, even when Guy picks up his manilla folder and tilts his head in the direction of the staircase.

“You two, please follow me.”

-

It’s obvious from the way his eyes go wide and sparkly that Felix has never been in Guy’s office before. He bubbles with childlike curiosity as he looks at the books on the shelves, taking time to read their titles and inspect their binding while Guy scours through his desk for– well, you’re not sure what he’s looking for. You assume it’s important though, as he’s mumbling to himself as he searches (you swear you hear a few expletives come from his mouth as he does). After a minute or two, he produces a much older looking manilla folder. This one is stained with who-knows-what, and it’s covered in dust particles and stray pen scribbles. He tosses the folder onto his desk with an exasperated sigh.

Seemingly only now remembering that you two are there, Guy gestures to the loveseat next to his desk. “Sorry! Please, take a seat.”

The two of you shuffle over silently. Felix sits at the edge of the couch, hugging a throw pillow to his chest.

You tuck your hands between your knees, seeking warmth and comfort. You’re tired and extremely confused– for the most part. Though you’re almost certain why you’re here, you still have a lot of questions about what the front desk worker, Felix, has to do with any of this.

Guy looks over at the two of you, and you can see his lips are curled into a small, soft smile. “There is really no easy way for me to explain this,” he starts. He reaches a hand up, and you assume he’s running it through his hair. “I guess I’ll start from the end and go backwards. You two can’t stay here.”

Your eyebrow quips upwards, but Felix makes a face that looks like he’s just been kicked out onto the street. You suppose that really is the case.

The brunet next to you stutters and his voice shakes. He’s confused, rightfully so, but you keep your eyes pinned to the floor in front of you. Guy simply holds up a hand and pleads with Felix to let him finish.

“Felix,” he continues. “Have you ever noticed that you’re surrounded by a–”

“Gold outline?”

They finish their sentences at the same time, and Guy nods. “It’s a rare phenomenon. Extremely rare. I’m sure before today you’ve never seen anyone else with one.”

Your attention peaks at that, and you glance up. You’re about to ask who else has one, when you catch sight of yourself in the reflection of the window behind Guy’s desk. You look the same way you remember, but you’re surrounded by bright, flickering gold light. It shines around you like sparklers on the fourth of July, the same way you noticed Felix’s did when you were downstairs in the lobby.

Felix meets your gaze in the window and nods. “What does it mean?”

“Well… For you–” Guy’s attention shifts to your direction, “- for you it’s a sign that you’re here before your time. You shouldn’t be here yet. You shouldn’t be dead yet.”

The anxious pit in your stomach widens and swallows you whole.

You barely register Guy’s explanation to Felix of what he means. Panic engulfs your senses and you’re trying your hardest to hold it together. You don’t want to cry in the afterlife (betweenlife?), you did enough of that when you were fully living.

Of course, you think. Of course you’re here before you need to be. That would just be your luck right? Despite the months it took to gather the courage to take that final plunge into darkness, you’ve still somehow made a mistake– one that seems to take more than just a quick fix.

You notice, through your spiraling thoughts, that the voices around you have stopped talking. You lookup and notice Felix’s eyes are on you. His expression reads pity, and you scowl, annoyed by the thoughts you think are running through his mind. You turn your attention back to Guy, and you’re grateful that you can’t make out his eyes.

“Are you alright?”

You nod. “Sorry. I must have zoned out.”

Guy nods slightly, knowingly, but he chooses to continue with his speech rather than to dwell on it. You dig your nails into the palm of your hand and force yourself to keep focused. Felix swallows thickly and decides to turn his attention away from you.

“Where was I?” He rubs his hands together in thought, clapping softly when he gets back on track. “Right. Now, while that might be the case for her and for other people, you glow for a different reason, Felix. Almost the opposite, actually.”

It’s Felix’s turn to look confused and anxious. He rubs his hands against his thighs. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

Guy slides the dusty old folder to the edge of his desk as an invitation for Felix to take it. He reaches over for it, and with wide eyes he notices his name stamped on the top right corner.

“You’re very special, Felix,” Guy continues. “Everyone who works here was alive at some point, except for you. You’re what we call a wandering spirit.”

You glance over at Felix, who’s brown eyes are vacant as he peels through the file. “What… what does that mean?”

“It means that you have a purpose, a very specific purpose on Earth, but your spirit was born before its time. That’s why you’ve been here for so long. Your job here at purgatory was busy work, just a time passer until the day you’re needed on Earth. And it seems like that day is today.”

Guy lets out a long, watery breath. “Felix Lee, I would like to formally introduce you to your guardian angel assignment.”

“Guardian angel?”

You blink curiously. “I’m confused.”

“Well. His job is to watch over you, protect you, keep you out of harm’s way.”

“I get that,” you mumble. “But why does all of that matter if…”

You trail off in the middle of your sentence. Realization rears its ugly head like an unwanted pimple, and you freeze on the spot.

Guy doesn’t even get the first letter of your name out of his mouth before you’re disagreeing, anger and fear taking over your actions like a wounded stray animal. You’ve managed to propel yourself halfway across the room before you even realize what’s going on.

“I’m not going back,” you cry, anxious hands wringing together feverishly. You avoid Felix’s gaze, trying to keep your focus on the massive man seated behind the desk. His mostly featureless face looks surprised at your outburst.

“Wait, what? What’s going on?” Felix quips. His big brown eyes shift between you and Guy as though he’s watching a ping-pong match.

Guy sighs. “Felix, your assignment is to go to Earth and watch over her. Make sure that she doesn’t…”

“Doesn’t… what?”

“Kill myself,” you deadpan. He whips his head in your direction. “You’re coming to Earth to make sure I don’t kill myself.”

Said “guardian angel” drops the folder in his hands, sheets of paper fluttering down to the floor. His ears are beginning to grow red, and he mumbles apologies as he makes quick work of gathering what’s fallen to the floor. When he sits up again, he looks directly at you. His eyes are wide and his lips have flattened into a thin line. Felix stares holes into your face, a myriad of questions swimming in the back of his mind. He opens his mouth as if he wants to say something, but he closes it again.

“I’m sorry,” Guy says. You can’t tell who he’s talking to. “I know this is sudden, I know that this isn’t what you, either of you, expected or even wanted.” His gaze settles on you before he continues. “But you don’t belong here. Not yet. There’s so much more for you to learn about and discover.”

You shake your head furiously. “No.” Your voice comes out stronger than it feels. “No, I can’t go back. I don’t want to.”

There’s sympathy on Guy’s face, but he isn’t wavering. “I’m sorry.”

Felix has remained silent, staring at the ground in front of him with an alarming amount of focus. His hands are clasped together over the folder in his lap, but his leg is bouncing at an incredible speed. For a moment, you imagine the panic going through his mind: he’s being forced to leave the only home he’s ever known to play babysitter to someone who doesn’t even want to be alive. His problems take a back seat in your mind as you mull over that last part.

Someone who doesn’t even want to be alive.

Guy is speaking again, this time to Felix. You can’t find it in you to listen, or even pretend to be listening. Your mind is swimming with thoughts, memories of your life and everything that led up to this moment. You’re shaking, knees wobbly and trembling as you realize that you’re once again destined to be stuck in a situation you don’t want to be in. Your eyes dart around the room and you begin looking for an out; a window, an air vent— if it came to it you’d close your eyes and pretend that you weren’t even there.

Guy stands up and begins walking in your direction. You inch closer and closer to the corner, only for him to walk right past you. You notice that there’s a small, unassuming door in the wall behind you.

“There’s really no time for any more questions,” he murmurs. “I have to get you two back to Earth where you belong.”

“Wait…”

Felix’s voice is hoarse with trepidation. He’s still staring at the ground, body slightly trembling as he gathers up all his fleeting thoughts in attempts to make a coherent sentence. “I don’t… I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.”

“Everything you need is in that folder, Felix.” Guy’s booming voice has an edge of softness to it, the kind of fondness only achievable by a parent. “I know you can do this. Both of you. Everything is going to be okay.”

Guy reaches a massive hand towards the doorknob. He’s shaking a bit himself, and you imagine he’s feeling nervous about sending Felix away from the only home he’s ever known. From what you’ve gathered, Felix is the only one who’s been here as long as he has. He must feel like a son to Guy, and now he has to watch his son leave the safety of their home for the first time.

The door in the wall opens, and a bright light floods your senses. You squint from the corner you’re huddled in. There are tears streaming down your face, and it is taking every ounce of your control not to begin screaming and throwing yourself around on the floor. Guy turns around, motioning for you and Felix to come to the door.

“This passageway will take you back in time by a few days,” he says. “From there, it’s all in your hands.”

He looks over at you, calling your name softly. “It’s okay,” he says. “You can do this. You can go back. You won’t be alone.”

Against your better judgement, you look over at Felix, whose freckled face is also littered with tears. His big, brown eyes are still downcast, but sensing your gaze he glances up and gives you the smallest smile. He scrubs his cheeks with the back of his hand before he reaches out to you. “We can do it,” he whispers.

There’s desperation in his voice the next time he speaks. “Please. Let me do this.”

Only hesitating slightly, you uncurl yourself from the corner of the room and take a step towards Felix. He closes the gap between you two, slipping his long, slender fingers in your grasp. He gives your hand a squeeze, then looks up at Guy. They stare at each other for a moment before Guy steps out of the way, allowing space for you and Felix to walk through the door.

Felix takes the first step, letting the hand connected to yours stay behind him. Your feet feel heavy, but you allow yourself to get pulled a bit. With one final watery sigh, you follow him into the white light. It swallows both of you whole, and you feel both weightless and weighed down at the same time. Felix’s hand seems to disappear from your grasp, and before you can fully register it, you feel yourself falling from a great height.

[zuppizup]

Hiiii I just finished the first two chapters of Fuel the Pyre! I'm super excited for it, it's very well done!

I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about your writing process. How do you outline? What kinds of things need to be in an outline in order for you to visualize the story? Do you outline the entire story, one chapter, or just one scene at a time?

Thank you for your time!

Hello! Thanks so much for your kind words! I’m so happy you’re liking the fic so far.

This is a super fun ask. Not sure how coherent or helpful my response will be, but I’ll give it a try. 😆

So, stories like Purgatory, Fuel the Pyre or my WIP dark magic AU, always start out as a bunch of questions.

What if Ezran hadn’t interrupted Callum and Rayla in Viren’s study…

Could a human/elf halfling do primal magic? Can all of them or just a few? What would control that?

What would the world be like if dark magic actually was controlled and regulated.

I usually don’t start out planning a fic when I ponder questions like this, it’s usually just my mind wandering. For me, while I love big, wonderful, imaginative worlds (like the world of The Dragon Prince) what I’m really more interested in is how these things affect individuals. I actually tend to visualise the story before I outline. In fact, I often visualise far beyond where I think I’ll finish the story. (I say where I think I’ll finish because both my current long fics are now firmly in the “after the end of the planned fic” territory)

So, in Fuel the Pyre, for example, I imagine there’s a lot of unknowns for the people involved. Halflings would be pretty new on the scene, all things considered, so the characters themselves wouldn’t have the answer to these questions, which felt like a great excuse to add tension and drama.

Once an idea has got me and I can imagine how that conflict is going to affect the characters, the general outline tends to sort of write itself. I am a planner, so I by the time I start putting pen to paper (so to speak), I’ll usually have a beginning, a rough middle and an end. There will be plot points, tangents, twists and sometimes side stories that I haven’t figured out, but I’ll have a plan for the general flow of the story.

From there, I’ll come up with a pretty messy draft. So, I just sort of go wild in a document. Usually, when I’ve decided I want to write a longer fic, it’s because certain scenes just play on repeat in my head, so I’ll indulge myself and write those out. Then I’ll go back and make rough chapter/arc notes, which usually leads into some other fun scenes I get inspired to write, and slowly, piece by piece, I sort of string the fic together like that.

I used to outline more linearly, starting at the first chapter and working from there, but I found I’d get stuck on transition scenes (the bane of my writing life) and then avoid the fic. (If I put my fingers in my ears and sing very loudly, the transition scene can’t hurt me). I find letting myself write the scenes I’m excited for makes me much more productive. They usually give me ideas for other fun (I use the term loosely, I generally mean “angsty”) scenes and I essentially build my story like that. I do like adding foreshadowing and twists, which is made a lot easier by writing like this too.

In Purgatory, for example, I tried to drop a lot of subtle hints about Callum and his slowly building arcanum connection. It’s so fun when people pick up on that stuff, but I also don’t want it to look like I just pulled a twist or a revelation out of my rear. Nowadays, I do prefer to write the bulk of a story before posting, which this method obviously works better for.

Often, when I start a fic, the beginning and the ending are the most defined parts of the story and the middle is the area that requires the most work, but by stringing the various elements together, I sort of “discover” new conflicts and fun elements to explore, which (hopefully) makes for a richer, more entertaining story.

So, not sure if that was what you’re looking for, but if you could describe the stream of consciousness that is how I write, a process, this is mine. 😅

[sl0thonaga]

CH.2 - SYMPATHY FOR A DEAD MAN

Even in death, you will be encased and confined to this place of nightmares. In bleeding, evil metal. The minerals that feed on my bones will feed unto more bloodshed, not peace.

Will you be able to rest here, Shin? Peacefully, and eternally?

His eyes claw deep into Midori's face as he haunts his every step through the facility.

Never. NEVER.

I'll never forget you, even if I'm dead.

Won't you show sympathy for a dying man's body?

Chapter 2 of my Ghost!Shin YTTD Fic: MOMENTO MORI is out!

Words: 5,263 Characters: Hiyori Sou | Tsukimi Shin, Original Hiyori Sou | Midori, Meister (Kimi ga Shine) Relationships: Hiyori Sou | Tsukimi Shin/Original Hiyori Sou | Midori [for this specific chapter] Additional Tags: Kanna Lives | Sou Dies Route (Kimi ga Shine), Grief/Mourning, Ghosts, Trauma, Acceptance, Haunting, Mild Gore, Kugie and Shin are Ghosts, Possessive Behavior, Unhealthy Relationships, Character Study, Obsessive Behavior, Fluff and Angst, Edgar Allan Poe References, Introspection

Within the ever-humming, luminescent monitor room, it seems a piece of scrap paper has been inserted roughly into the edge of a familiar book. With an ominous breath of wind, the page falls out.

"I wonder when Hiyori will come back..."

.

.

.

.

.

ASU-NARO

▇▇CONFIDENTIAL▇▇

Shi▇n DIARY ▇▇ :Compiled and Logged by DR. H▅▅▆▅▅ S▅▅U

Ah, broken is the collar red! The spirit flown forever!

Let the bell toll!--a weakling soul floats on the Stygian river;

And, Man of Green, hast thou no tear?--weep now or lie in sin!

See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, thy Shin!

Come! let the burial rite be read--the funeral song be sung!--

An anthem for the pitiful dead that ever died so young--

A dirge for him the doubly dead in that he died so young.

"Wretches! ye loved him for his mind and hated him for his lies,

"And when he fell in feeble binds, ye blessed him --that he died!

"How shall the ritual, then, be read?--the requiem how be sung

"By you--by yours, the evil eye,--by yours, the slanderous tongue

"That did to death the innocent that died, and died so young?"

Through discourse and disclosure; but rave not your composure! Let his corpse belong

Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel so wrong!

The sweet Shin hath "gone before kin," along Joy, that flew beside

Leaving thee wild for the dear child whose death thy should have decide-

For him, the fair and innocent, that now so lowly lies,

The life upon his cyan hair but not within his eyes--

The life still there, upon his hair--the death upon his eyes.

"Avaunt! Tonight my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise,

"But waft that red scarf on Shin's flight as a Pæan of old days!

"Let no bell toll!--lest his sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth,

"Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the damnéd Earth.

"To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven--

"From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven--

"From grief and groan, to purgatory alone, towards the gates of Heaven."

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.

.

.

▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃

A slow march of thinning blood and coarse rubble, clacking against smooth-leather dress shoes. Through barren hallways, the steady sludge of bloody teal. The remnants of the sheep, throwing himself into the lion's den to protect the herd.

A green-haired man steps with a macabré elegance, dragging something. Dragging someone. His red scarf sways in the encroaching darkness as a trail of rouge follows behind him.

Up a long flight of stairs, through walls thick with wire, to a cold, silver casket. Glum and static. The perfect place for unfulfilled desires to dissipate.

The green-tailed silhouette, his polished flow broken up by an uncanny rigidity of his joints, halts mechanically in front of the coffin's silver sheen.

The dim room is accompanied by nothing but the dripping din of muddy, stained crimson. The man that holds his pale, fragile wrists doesn't even breathe.

Dull, doll-like jade pupils stare into the empty, bottomless casket. His uncanny gaze shifts towards the bloodied beanie on his beloved's head, beaten with grit and dirt.

Sigh...

The man effortlessly picks up the corpse in his arms, already feeling lighter than when he still had life in him, and carefully drapes the body across the coffin's dark interior.

And slowly, he wakes.

It's true when they say death deprives you of all other things. He once imagined he would wake up, screaming, wanting to scream, perhaps in rage, perhaps in agony, like waking up from a nightmare.

But as he rises once more, all he feels is his numbness. As if all the emotions have left him, buried along with the shell of his mortality, in the gaps of void within the coffin.

The shell of Shin Tsukimi.

.

I'm dead.

Shin Tsukimi sees himself, the same grassy strands of cyan hair on his head. Thin like silk thread, ruffled by his beanie.

Dead. He's dead. Dead? Dead. Dead.

The notion passes through him. Like mercury slides over his tongue every time he says it. He is but a wisp, and only regret tugs at him now.

The searing pain on his neck has left him, and he finds himself as translucent as a ghost. He stares past his hands, vision gluing onto the marks on his body's neck, the symbol of his final resistance. Finally, the first shreds of humanity come back to him as an injustice, a feeling that follows him to purgatory.

Sadness.

He wishes he could cry. Can he cry now? Is he deprived of that too? Maybe he is, but when tries to, it just feels like his spirit is only wallowing and weighing heavier.

I..I wanted to live too...

This...is worthless...all so worthless...

Why has he been left on earth? And here, of all places? This dingy, hellhole.

Shin, now a ghost, can't help but mourn himself. How could he not? Even though he sacrificed himself for the one girl who in turn, selflessly cared for him, A life lost is still a life lost. He lays beside the silver walls of the coffin, curling his translucent knees towards his face as he laments to the floor.

What now...what now...

He's so helpless. When will his spirit wither away? Will it do so along with his body?

It echoes through his soul. Gloomy, so gloomy..

His gloominess is startled by the abrupt clack of polished leather soles. Sharp and familiar; a sound he feared, yet one he would still run to. A sound that makes him jolt up on instinct. And when he does, an immediately recognisable face greets him, merely inches away from his own.

H...

..Hiyori...!

Another part of his life comes back to him, hits him like a cold breeze against his neck. This man was his life. The hairs on his head rise, pupils dilated as he starts sweating, cold and sticky like wax against his even more transparent skin.

Isn't he dead? Why is it as if his heart is racing, still pounding horridly at the sight of him?

Why, even after death, do you still cling onto your abuser?

Those wide, jade eyes don't seem to feel Shin's presence though, merely kneeling forward behind where Shin sat to promptly place a picture frame against his coffin.

He's...he's not smiling like usual, as he remembers him. He looks...somber.

Shin ponders, rather bitterly. Why?

Hiyori’s eyes, although shadowed by the dim backdrop, glows with an eerie stagnancy, downlooking the face framed behind glass.

The face of what used to be reveals itself in yellow backlight; innocent and pure, Shin Tsukimi.

No. No.

Slowly, Hiyori stands up, his neon head bleaching the dark canopy like poison. His face is plastered with a frown, wordless. Dormant.

It was these moments that used to make Shin sweat down to his neck. His indifference was more terrifying than his madness.

But now it was that same face, implanted, injected? – None of it feels real– with a sense of despondence. Confusing. Awful. Simply awful.

There is a slight downturn in the way his pupils eye the coffin. There is a crease where he presses his bottom lip into his jaw.

Shin’s wispy figure swivels around Hiyori's brown dress shoes, to peer at a peculiar piece of paper fallen beside his picture.

His ghastly eyes bore and sink into the words engraved fresh in ink.

..He can't be..

'Sou Hiyori, 21, of R▅D▅CTED, Japan, expired March XXth XXXX. Shin Tsukimi, Son of XXXX and XXXX Tsukimi, expired on March XXth in ASU-NARO's 3rd Floor Rubble Room Facility, after succumbing to mortal injuries in resisting the security systems, to give one last hope to Sara Chidouin and the remaining participants of the Death Game. Tsukimi worked as a job-hopper prior to the Death Game. He also loved computers, soft things, collecting, warm soups and cozy clothing. He displayed a self-sacrificial naiveté and beaming smile that charmed his dear friend. He is survived by his mother, father and little sister, Kanna Kizuchi, who he willingly exchanged his life and identity for in the Main Game to protect her. It is a shame he died without knowing their blood connection. He will be resented but remembered by friends, and greatly missed by family. And me. Me too.’

"Pity...such a pity.." The first murmurs draw out under the green-haired man's breath, sending chills down Shin's spine as it pierces through the unnervingly long silence.

Shin jerks up from his position and freezes there, soul growing colder by the second.

He could never get used to it. But then once upon a time, he did. Why. Why now? And why here?

Full Chapter on AO3..

[cg edits by me] [note: it is romantic soushin, but it is for the sake of exploring the characters as an unhealthy relationship. IT DOES NOT MEAN I CONDONE ABUSIVE DYNAMICS IN REAL LIFE.]

[glygriffe]

Rec list of April

In April, I read a lot more Stranger Things stories than usual, and they were all good! So I made a section just for this fandom in my recommendations, like for Supernatural. As usual, the fanfics I read were on the shorter side, mostly one-shots.

If you read any of those fics before (or because of this post) feel free to tell me what you liked about them!

I also finished reading American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. It took me 8 weeks to finish it! I swear not so long ago a could have finished a book that size in a week... But on the bright side, I'm reading paper books again (I missed that a lot).

Supernatural writings

Apple of My Eye: A series set in season 13 with a setup during The French Mistake by@bamby0304 (Dean x Reader)

Being Human: just a little slice of life where Castiel remembers that Dean is human by @thoughtslikeaminefield (No pairing)

Letting Go Holding On: They’ve been doing that for years, but which way it dies depends on something not so simple. An atmospheric story by @thatfangirl42 (Dean x Reader)

Part-time soulmate: angst about an impossible relationship from Dean’s POV by @princessmisery666 (Dean x OFC)

Weekend at Rufus: A sort of coming-of-age story where we follow Jo on a journey towards hope and family by @lesbianjoannaharvelle (Jo, Bobby x Rufus)

Tricks are for kids: The Winchester brothers on the road, between seasons 2 and 3, playing games, eating Frootloops. A short carefree fic by Vehemently on AO3. (No pairing)

Chasing Feathers: A missing piece from Faith 1x12 by @faithdeans where Dean ruminates on his life (implied Destiel)

Pure: a smutty ficlet by @deanwinchesterswitch set in Purgatory. (Dean x female!Reader)

Untitled archangel drabble: Ok, it could technically be any Lucifer and Micheal, but the inclusion of Gabriel makes it SO Supernatural-esque! A piece of writing by @archangstels (No pairing)

Gimme Shelter: A migraine-driven one-shot full of domestic fluff by jumpfallflysoar on AO3 (Dean x Castiel)

Paternity Test: After all is said and done, Lucifer yearns to be a father by @quietwingsinthesky (Lucifer, Gabriel)

To the wonder of all things: A wonderful mid-size fic by Purple_starflower (@hauntedpearl) A small exploration of Castiel's story, his relationship with humanity, and most of all, love. (Castiel x Dean)

Prompt request: just à Drabble full of fluff! By @lipstickandwhiskey (Dean x Reader)

Contained: A WIP by @posingasme where Sam begins his career at the "CDC" and his first subject of study is something he’s never seen before. (Sam x Castiel)

Other writings

A soldier’s little girl: a sweet piece by @atomwritez showing the tender side of Ben (Soldier Boy x Reader & baby girl)

A fairytale-like robber at sea (well, on a lake) short story by @thestuffedalligator

Only You (a Lucifer Drabble): a sweet and fluffy piece from Chloe's POV by @idabbleincrazy (Lucifer x Chloe)

Stranger Things writings

Cardinal: A story of healing and hope in the aftermath of Stranger Things 4, a journey of discovery... nudged along by Murray. By @metalhoops / Astra_Wards on A03, (Eddie x Steve)

Untitled Steddie Drabble: The Stranger Things' Hellfire Club corraled Steve the join their game. He might not be a big D&D fan but he seems to know what he is doing... A cute story by @steveshairychest (Steve x Eddie)

Untitled Stranger Things ficlet: it made me laugh, it made me cry, it made my heart swell thrice its size. "It's Dustin who saves Eddie." By @loveinhawkins (Dustin, Eddie, Steve)

First conversation - another untitled fic by @loveinhawkins. Where Steve encounters Eddie at the library: two gentle souls connecting. (Steve, Eddie)