#he’s shown up for less than two minutes and done nothing important but I love him so bad

[unfortunatelyilikebnha]

MAMORU ANJOU ILY <333333

[rawwkfingers]

The Invasion of Time

If it hadn't been for the last episode, I think this would have been in the rankings of top five Classic serials for me tbh

The opening act is fantastic, full of mysterious intrigue that demands a viewer's full attention. The audience is never meant to actually believe that the Doctor is betraying Gallifrey, but that they keep the pretense up for two entire episodes works really well to draw us in

The middle two episodes, where it's finally revealed what the Doctor's plan is, are also excellent. You see the various threads sprinkled through the earlier two episodes come together and get to enjoy some good old-fashioned alien butt kicking

The depiction of the Time Lords was a lot better in this serial too. They kept the allegorical aspects of British bureaucracy but they added in portions of the previous omnipotence that made them so interesting originally. Borusa was especially a stand out character, one of my favorites

Leela was also at her absolute best here. Throughout the season, the Doctor growing to trust Leela's role as companion and skill as a fighter has been really excellently shown. He continually put more and more responsibility on her shoulders and she always excelled under the pressure, all paying off in this serial. When he exiles her, she knows it's part of a plan of his and just does what she does best, find and lead a revolutionary army. He trusts her with the Great Key and to be able to operate the Tardis on minor levels. All in all, it's such an excellent showing of her character and before the final episode, I was really confused why she's not considered one of the greats.

I even liked the penultimate episode with the Sontaran reveal. I really was expecting like, the Daleks or something not these goofballs but it worked really well and the first episode they're in adds to the menace rather than detracting from it

And then the final episode really drops the ball. On a most basic level, the episode isn't very good. 10+ minutes of the characters wandering around the Tardis, with no sense of dramatic awe about that fact either to keep us engaged. It's just a really bad, slow chase scene until the McGuffin can be built

But its even worse on thematic levels tbh. For one thing, the Doctor's ultimate plan being a supergun just feels wrong. I know that the Classic Doctor is much less of a pacifist than the New Doctor, but even with that in mind he's rarely willingly turned to a superweapon as his end plan, especially not since 3. It was an easy way out that felt very inconsistent with the character the Doctor has grown to be

Leela was done even worse though. When the Doctor gave her the Great Key, it really felt like a beautiful moment of him entrusting her with something extremely important. Then not only is there no payoff for that moment, like the Sontarans overlooking her because she's human or something, but the Doctor then just takes it from her and gives it to another person? So the emotional resonance of the previous scene is ruined and also accomplished nothing

The worst part of it all is that this was her final serial, and she was written so well until all that. AND they defaulted to the fucking "companion falls in love" trope that is already so overdone and tiresome in this show and also was so poorly foreshadowed I laughed when it was revealed. She barely interacted with the man she supposedly fell in love with after like, episode two AND he's a Time Lord??? She's a human??? If they're going to be in love you can sure as hell they wouldn't be allowed to stay on Gallifrey what??????

I'm not the type of viewer who will let a bad ending ruin what was otherwise a really great story but it is really baffling and disappointing that it did end so poorly

Season 15 in general kinda felt like this tbh overall. A lot of high moments let down by weird and bad writing decisions

Horror of Fang Rock. Doctor Who is at its best when it does horror and this was one of the best pieces of horror in the show

The Invisible Enemy. The introduction of K9 and the silliness of the Doctor and Leela shrinking make this a favorite of mine

The Invasion of Time. If it wasn't for that darn last episode this would have been number one

The Sun Makers. The comedy wasn't really my thing but I'm always down for a return to Pertwee-era-style political commentary

Image of the Fendahl. I need to rewatch this one tbh because for some reason I can remember NOTHING about it other than "I liked it"

Underworld. While I did enjoy the dynamic of the Tardis trio, the rest of the serial was really basic

[imperfectcourt]

Andreil Prompt:

Neil is an Assassin. Some day something goes very, very wrong. So the first time Andrew meets Neil, Neil has to explain to him that he accidentally poisened him and Andrew has to go to the hospital to get the antidote.

So I was really unsure about this but when I got going I got really excited about it! But I also COMPLETELY MISSED the line where it said "the first time" so this is very much not the first time they meet ;__; sorry! I hope you like it though!

Neil had never panicked on a job before. He’d never made a mistake or killed the wrong person or not killed the right person. He could kill whoever he was told to kill, he could kill however he was told to kill, and he could be whoever he was told to be in order to do it.

Killing Andrew Minyard was the worst and last mistake Neil would ever make.

Worming his way into A. Minyard’s life hadn’t been easy but it had been natural- the most honest work of his filthy, bloody life.

It had to be this way. It couldn’t look like a typical mob hit, anything abrupt and easy would look suspicious. The call had to come from inside the house, or so they say.

Neil tipped the vial into the remnants of the whiskey bottle and poured two modest glasses. It wouldn’t be pleasant for him but he’d built up enough of a tolerance to survive. Odorless, collarless, no paper trail. He’d suffer some hallucinations and maybe some minor liver damage but he’d live and after tonight he’d be free. No more Moriyama’s. No more contracts. No more death.

No more Andrew.

Neil brought one glass up to swirl, smell, sniff, and sip. A perfectly normal glass of whiskey. He brought out onto the small balcony and put them on the rickety table between two lawn chairs. Andrew picked his up and didn’t make the small cheers motion he always did as a silent thanks, didn’t drink. He’d been staring at his closed phone for the last half hour. Neil knew he would say what was wrong in time (if there was time).

“There’s something I need to tell you,” he said after several long minutes, punctuating the statement with a sip. Guess there was time, after all. Neil sat sideways on his chair so he could watch Andrew light a cigarette.

“That sounds ominous. You’re not a murderer are you?”

Andrew’s top lip curled in a small, vicious smile. “That’s a truth for a different day.”

No, it wasn’t, and Neil found himself reaching for another mouthful of whiskey. Andrew raised a brow at this, having caught on a while ago that Neil liked to draw the drink out as long as possible if it meant he didn’t have to go home yet.

“It’s nothing to form a drinking habit over, calm down.” Andrew took up his drink again and every sip he took felt like friendly fire. “You’re going to see something on the news tomorrow and I’d rather tell you myself than get pissy with me for not bringing it up sooner.”

“Secrets secrets are no fun,” Neil parroted. Andrew kicked out his socked foot to hit Neil’s heel and didn’t pull it back.

“A story will be dropping about my brother’s involvement in a gang bust tonight. Just got word that everything went well but his services had been needed on sight.” With the hand that held the cigarette, he gave his cellphone a little shake.

“You have a brother?” That hadn’t been in the assignment, but family matters were often left out for jobs like this. He couldn’t go in knowing too much and risk exposing himself.

“My twin.”

“You have a twin?”

Andrew threw back the rest of his drink and waved it at Neil’s face. “The only reason I’m telling you is because you’re going to see him parading around on t.v. with my face. We’re not that close.”

A gang bust. Big enough for national news. That couldn’t- that would mean-

“What’s his name?”

“Aaron.”

“A. Minyard. Doctor Aaron Minyard.”

Andrew froze. Looked at Neil so expressionless he might as well have been stone. “I never said he was a doctor.”

He didn’t have to. Dr. A Minyard. Fox affiliated attached to a photograph. Andrew had his PhD and his connection to Kevin Day was easy enough to find if you knew where to look. The Foxes were an elusive bunch of vigilantes but everyone had heard of Kevin Day, son of the founders of the Foxes.

Neil had never made a mistake before and killing Andrew Minyard was the biggest mistake of his life. He knocked the glass from Andrew’s hand only because Andrew let him.

“Now, right now,” he changed, grabbing Andrew by the sleeve and tugging him back inside. It only worked because Andrew let him. Andrew was always letting Neil, trusting Neil. And for what? For this?

Neil let go when he was sure Andrew would follow him and rushed to the tiny kitchen. He took the water glass by the sink and upended the entire salt shaker into it.

“Drink this right now,” he ordered Andrew.

Andrew did not take it.

“Andrew, trust me just one last time. Just this one last time trust me and drink this. Just this once. Just this one last time.” There was time. There was barely time. It had been less than a minute, there had to be time.

Neil didn’t know what he would do if Andrew didn’t drink, if Neil killed him for nothing. No matter what the outcome, no matter Andrew's decision, Neil would die either way.

Andrew took the salt water, drank the whole thing, and promptly threw up in the sink.

Neil watched, hands in his hair and tears clouding his eyes as Andrew righted himself, wiping at his mouth with the back of his wrist.

“That’ll give you time to get to the hospital. You have to go now, you’ve got time.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Andrew put his hand slowly, calmly, over Neil’s throat, “until you explain.”

He pressed him into the wall.

Neil let him.

“You were supposed to be my last one and my contract would be fulfilled,” he said.

“Explain better than that. What does this have to do with Aaron?”

“There’s no time-”

“Then make it quick.” He pressed against Neil’s throat and Neil’s hands came up instinctively to grab his arm. He stopped before making contact.

“I was born into a debt that the Moriyama’s own. I was one of their hit men. A. Minyard. Fox associate. And a picture. That was my last assignment and I could finally… I could…”

Words were getting harder. He had begun ingesting the poison before Andrew and hadn’t gotten any of it out of his system.

“You’re the only one I never…”

“Never what? Never shot like a coward? Never succeeded in killing?”

“Never wanted to.” His hands came down onto Andrew’s forearm even though he didn’t have permission. His vision was swimming around the edges and he couldn’t tell if it was because of the drug or the pressure on his trachea. “I didn’t want to kill you. H-hospital. You still need the hospital. You have time.”

“Why should I believe a single thing you say?”

“I’ve never lied to you.” It was so important for him to say that somehow the words came out with conviction. “Never lied. Andrew, you’re amazing and I love you but you need to leave right now.”

His knees gave out and for the briefest moment all of his weight was being held by the hand on his throat. Andrew lowered them both to the ground.

“What did- You idiot.” Ah, yes. He must have caught on. “You did all this to live only to fucking kill yourself? Neil. Neil… Neil!”

Neil had never panicked on a job, but he’d also never woken up in a hospital bed before. He was aware of the spike in noise before he was aware of his surroundings.

“The worst assassin in history.”

Neil groaned but didn’t yet open his eyes. His memory was just solid enough to know what he’d taken and experience told him he wasn’t ready to face the spinning world.

“Can’t say he was wrong, technically,” the same voice said.

“What kind of assassin not only chooses the wrong target but falls in love with their dumb ass?”

“This dumb ass has the same level of education as your dumb ass.”

“My dumb ass has a doctorate of medicine, not in books.”

“Literature.”

“Still dumb.”

“Sssh,” Neil breathed out, testing the waters of control and strength. He had very little of either.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the dumbest of asses.”

“Give him another hour and he might even be able to respond.”

“Now who would want that.”

The second time Neil woke up in a hospital, it was enough for him to look around and realize this was not a hospital but rather a medically furnished bedroom.

“I hate you.”

He turned his head to see Andrew slouching back in an overstuffed, wingback chair. The look on his ever-passive face was angry and Neil would take angry over dead any day.

“You made it,” he slurred. His mouth felt like cotton. “You made it,” he said again because it was right and good. “You made it.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m fine. Got a tolerance”

“Is that something they teach you in the bright sunny world of the Nest?”

Neil made a finger gun at Andrew (why?) and slowly, slowly tilted himself onto his side to see him better. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew there were things he needed to worry about, but for now he just wanted to look.

“I’m happy you’re alive.”

“I don’t care.” And he sounded like he didn’t, but that was how he always sounded. Still Andrew. Still him. Still alive. For a long, quiet while they stared at each other.

“I have to go before the Moriyama’s come looking to do clean up. This won’t be tolerated.”

“No. It won’t be. But not by the Moriyama’s.”

Andrew stood in a motion that made him look much older than he was, tired. As he came to stand over the bed, Neil couldn’t help but stare because not killing Andrew Minyard was the only right thing he had ever done.

“The Foxes completed their take down of the Moriyama’s. It’s been all over the news, which you would have seen if you hadn’t poisoned yourself.”

The… the what? Something must have shown on Neil’s face because Andrew pressed him down into the bed a split second before he’d tried to sit up. As consciousness cleared his fog, his brain began catching up enough to understand that he wasn’t understanding. The synapses were there but they weren’t connecting.

“I don’t understand,” he whispered. Andrew’s mask twitched.

“Of course you don’t, you’ve been too deep cover to keep up with what was right under your nose. The Foxes won, there are no more Ravens, and you, Nathaniel, are a free man.”

The sound of that name, his name, sent a flinch so hard through his body that it made something cramp in his stomach. Andrew watched, bored, as he curled in on himself. If he knew that name, if his cover was blown so spectacularly, then there must be an ounce of truth to it.

“I’m just… Neil. I just want to be Neil.”

“Well, Neil.” Andrew slid his hand into Neil’s hair and squeezed, not hard but enough to tilt his head back. “If you ever do something that stupid again I will kill you myself.” Something in his eyes, however passive he tried to pull off, told Neil that Andrew was not referring to his own attempted murder.

“Were you… worried about me?” That couldn’t be right.

“I don’t know, Neil.” He kept saying his name like that and Neil didn’t know what to feel about it. “My whatever of a good stretch of time nearly killed himself. How should I be feeling?”

“I nearly killed you. I only poisoned myself a little.”

“Why?”

Why? The easy answer was forensics. Two glasses. Two drinkers. One lucky to survive the ordeal. But that wasn’t all of it. As Neil stared up up at Andrew, here at the other side of it all, he could admit to himself that he was glad for the punishment.

“Because… because I was going to kill you to save my own life and I had never hated myself for anything more than that.”

“I hate you,” Andrew spat.

“As long as you’re alive to hate me it’s fine.”

“Shut up.”

“Tell me more about the take down.”

“No.”

“Is your brother a Fox? Do I have to be killed for knowing that?”

“You have to be killed because you won’t shut your mouth.”

A good stretch of time. That’s how long Neil had been worming his way to be Andrew’s whatever. And in all that time he’d never felt safer. He lifted a shaky hand and waited. It took nearly a minute before Andrew released his hair and took the hand up in his own.

He didn’t apologize for trying to kill him. He didn’t apologize for coming into his life under false pretenses. If Andrew was there now, he trusted Neil enough to understand. They could talk about it later.

“Go back to sleep,” Andrew ordered quietly.

“So I’ll shut up?” Neil whispered back. His eyes were already drifting closed.

“Sure.”

[luffles424]

Luminous

☼ Pairing: Jimin x reader 

☼ Genre: tentacle monster!Jimin, some fluff, smut, mostly just pwp

☼ Count: 9k

☼ Warnings: 18+, public sex (no ones around but they’re on the beach), tentacles (kind of a given), big dick jimin, manhandling, lots of cum, some cumplay, creampie, cum inflation/belly bulge (not a whole lot, just a small bump) unprotected sex, restraints, choking, multiple orgasms, overstimulation, tit fucking, thigh fucking, oral (m recieving), deep throating, anal, double penatration, minor nipple play, praise kink, mating cycles, slight impreg kink

☼ Summary: The Busan summer festival is your favorite event of the year. You like all the food and things to do, but your favorite part is watching the fireworks at the end of the night, gathered with friends and family. It’s fun and joyous. Except this year you’re spending it without them. So you find a secluded spot on the beach to watch alone. Except... you might not be as alone as you thought you were out here. 

☼ a/n:  This was written for Sol’s (jamaisjoons) collab event ‘The Summer Bucketlist’ and my prompt was ‘watching fireworks.’ Uhhh this idea was originally very different and then I started thinking about tentacles and now here we are 🥴🥴🥴 Hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! My ask box is always open ~ 💙💙💙💙

☼ Banner made by the absolutely amazing @jamaisjoons​ (who did such wonderful work on it and I hope the fic lives up to the beautiful banner she made me 💕💕💕)

You let out a small contented sigh as you slip your feet into the water. This is your favorite place in all of Busan, this hidden little jutty of rock just off one of the smaller, less popular beaches, more popular among locals only. You’ve spent more time than you can count out here hanging out with your friends, passing the time and using the salty sea breeze to help combat the heat of summer. You’ve been out here plenty on your own too, just like how you’re out here alone right now. 

The sun’s dipping below the horizon, the sky slowly turning an inky black. The perfect backdrop to what’s going to happen soon and the main reason you’re out here at all to begin with rather than at home. The summer festival is happening and once the sun disappears, the sky will be decorated with fireworks, and you and your friends discovered years ago that this is the best spot to watch them, unobstructed and no one around to fight for seats. 

You kick your feet idly in the water, enjoying the warmth of it as you lean back on your hands as you watch the last few rays of light slip away. You wished your friends could’ve made it though. But Namjoon was stuck in the city for work and Taehyung was out with his girlfriend at the festival. A brief feeling of sadness overcomes you because you had been planning to go with Taehyung and his girlfriend and your own boyfriend as a double date. Until he dumped you a week ago over text because he’d moved to the otherside of the country and apparently was nothing like the man you met since he didn’t even have the balls to break up in person. 

You suspect that there was a lot more than his flimsy excuse of it’s just not working and long distance is hard. It most likely has something to do with the new girl that you’ve been told about that has shown up on his socials. 

For what it’s worth, Taehyung and Namjoon both offered you company but you waved them off. Namjoon’s job opportunity is much more important and as much as you love Taehyung and his girlfriend, you didn’t particularly feel like being third wheel to their (normally adorable and heart warming) love. 

You think this is better anyway. It’s peaceful out here. The smell of salt being carried by the breeze brings a myriad of memories that all bring a smile to your face and it’s easy to forget about the hard things in this moment. It’s healing to be out here. As much as it sucked that you got dumped, you can’t be too upset. You saw the cracks forming the more he opened his mouth and talked, if he hadn’t done it, you likely would have been doing it soon anyway. You let your head fall back, letting your eyes slip closed as you simply enjoyed this. You should tell the others that you all need to make another trip out here soon. 

Plus you’d come much earlier when the sun was still high and swam some. Using the ebb and flow of the ocean to erode your worries and stress. Then you’d sprawled out on your beach towel on your rocky perch and let the sunset dry your skin before you slipped back into your shorts and tank top and allowed the peacefulness to swallow you. 

You startle slightly when there’s a loud, echoing boom and color flashes across the sky. You’d been lulled into such calmness and had almost forgotten why you were out here to begin with. You watch the sky passively, watching the occasional flash of color and shapes as the firework people warm themselves and the crowds up. You know the real show won’t start for at least another 45 minutes, knowing the tell by the fact that there’s still the faintest of traces of blue on the horizon. 

Your feet continue their idle movements in the water, until something slick brushes the bottom of your foot and you scream on instinct, quickly jerking your foot free from the water. You back up an extra foot from the edge, to the safety of the blanket that you spread across the rocks, just as an extra precaution. You’re sure that whatever touched you was probably just seaweed. Maybe a plastic bag or some other trash that someone carelessly threw into the ocean. But anything touching you in the water when the water is nothing more than an inky black expanse is enough for you to decide that’s enough soaking for the night.

Just as your heart rate is returning to normal, something slips over the edge of the rocks where you’d just been sitting. It gleams in the moonlight, silver, smooth, and shiny, as it makes a cursory probe at the edge, like it’s looking for something. It’s probably no thicker than your thumb and you deliriously wonder if octopi are even capable of coming up on dry land, let alone the reason why one might be coming up right now. Though the longer you stare at it, the more you realize that it’s far too smooth to be from an octopus, completely devoid of the telltale suckers. 

You shuffle a little further away. You really don’t want to move too quickly, not if you don’t know what it even is and if it can follow you or how fast whatever it is. But your slight movement only seems to catch it’s attention and to your growing horror, it lashes out almost faster than you can see and wraps itself firmly around your ankle. You scream again, because aside from that, there’s really very little you can do out here all alone with it on you.

Any attempts to free yourself prove futile, the slender appendage is far stronger than you would’ve expected from such a jelly-like creature. It gives its own experimental tug, one that pulls you marginally closer to the water before you once again scramble backwards. It lets you and that just serves to freak you out more.

Then, a few more tentacles appear over the edge of the rock, watering dripping and spreading out around them and then there’s a… hand? You frown as a seemingly human hand, if perhaps a little ashen looking, plants itself on the rock right alongside the tentacles. The fingers flex for a moment before something, somehow even more surprising, appears. A fairly human face, or at least up to the eyes as that’s the furthest it raises, peaks up over the edge, gaze quickly zeroing in on you. Your heart stutters in your chest as your eyes meet and its pale silver eyes gleam like its tentacles. It’s hair is wet and slicked back and, though the locks are currently water logged and a few shades darker, it’s clearly also a similar shade of silver as its tentacles and eyes. 

Another hand joins the first along the edge of the rocks and for a moment it doesn’t move at all. You stare at it, you know it’s definitely bigger than an octopus now. You don’t think you could take it. It’s dead silent aside from the gentle lapping of the waves and you’re terrified to move for fear of what it’s going to do to you. It gives the slightest of tugs on your ankle and when you don’t budge it finally lifts itself from the water. 

You try to back away again, but it’s grip keeps you in place and you let out a startled scream when another tentacle darts out to wrap itself around your other ankle. The… monster… sits on its knees at the edge for a moment after pulling itself from the water. 

It, he?, looks almost perfectly human. Skin a dimmed golden shade, frame small but packed with lean muscle… apparently well endowed in human terms. You jerk your gaze quickly away when you realize just where you're staring. Your life is on the line, now is not the time to to fucking ogle the monster and think about if he can get hard like a human and if it possibly gets bigger. You force yourself back to his face, cheekbones prominent and lips plush as he seems to be looking you over as well, though his gaze continually seems to dart behind you, brows knitting in confusion. 

His eyes appear almost human except that it doesn’t seem like he has a pupil, silver swallowing the whole of the iris. It’s slightly disconcerting. His tentacles shift behind him, drawing your attention to them finally. The ones not on you shift behind him restlessly, never seeming to settle. A thin one drapes itself on his shoulder before slithering across his skin to the other side, forming a strange sort of living necklace. It’s hard to pin down an exact number with them constantly moving, but there seems to be a lot and they seem to come in primarily two sizes, thinner ones like the one draped around his throat and wrapped around your ankles and thicker ones easily the width of 3 or 4 fingers, you try very hard not to compare their girth with what you had glimpsed between his legs. 

You’re trying to formulate a plan to get away when there’s another boom of a firework, bathing everything pink for a moment. And what you’re certainly not expecting is for the way the monster startles at the sound. The tentacles around your ankles tighten almost painfully and then before you can completely comprehend what’s going on, you’re being pulled closer to him. Once you're close enough, he’s leaning down over you and you squeeze your eyes shut, unsure of what’s about to happen but positive that it’s unlikely to be good.

But nothing happens and as the seconds stretch, you slowly peek an eye open. His face is almost directly above yours, but it’s not you that he’s looking at. Instead, he’s studiously scanning your surroundings, looking tense and on edge. When you glance at the way that he’s leaning over you, you realize that he seems to be almost… protecting you? Which only serves to confuse you more.

Deeming there to be no immediate threat, his gaze turns down to you and you freeze now that you're faced with him this close. He blinks down at you before his lips part and he makes a strange sort of clicking sound, but you’re more focused on the sharp teeth revealed when he makes noise. Definitely sharp enough to tear into you and eat his fill.

“Please don’t eat me,” you squeak out, hands coming up to cover your face.

There’s silence for a moment before a deep chuckle sounds from him. You peek between your fingers at him and there’s a smirk stretching his lips. 

“Oh, I have met your kind before.” His voice is soft and surprisingly melodious given the higher pitch the clicking was. 

You can’t help the words that slip from your lips. “My kind?”

His lips twitch and he tilts his head. “Humans. Are you not human?” He pushes himself up slightly to inspect you again. “You do not appear to be one of my kind.”

“There’s more of you?”

His gaze darts around. “A few.”

You swallow, about to speak again when another firework goes off. He startles above you and drops closer once more, body pressed firmly to yours as he glares around, trying to discover the source. 

You’d laugh at his constant startling if your throat wasn’t suddenly so dry. His chest is every bit as firm as it looked and you can feel every shift and ripple as he looks around. It’s incredibly distracting. Why did the monster have to be hot? You squeeze your eyes shut again. You should not be thinking about how it’d feel to touch the monster with your hands. Or how other parts of him would feel. 

He shifts off of you slightly. “It is safe for now.”

You blink your eyes open, frowning at him. “Safe? What are you talking about?”

His head tilts and he reminds you of a confused puppy. “Do you not hear the loud noises?”

A giggle slips out and that seems to perplex him further. “No, no. I do. It’s just… Have you not been around here before?” 

“I have always lived here.”

“Have you… been on land before?”

His brows pinch and there’s the slightest of flushes coloring his cheeks a deep blue-gray. “I come up here every year.”

“How have you not heard them before then? They’re just fireworks.” You see the streak of a new one and point to it quickly, drawing his attention to it just before it reaches its peak and explodes in a sparkling cascade of gold. “They’re for entertainment. They’re not dangerous.” You pause. “Okay they are. But not at this distance. The only people who could possibly be in danger would be the ones firing them.”

“Fire… works?” He mumbles, sitting back on his haunches as his face remains tilted towards the sky even though the phosphorus has long since burned out. “Will there be more?”

You slowly push yourself up, cautious of what he might do but his focus remains firmly upwards. “Yeah, they’ll keep shooting some singles off for a little bit longer then they’ll start the big show.”

He says nothing else and you wonder if you can use the time to slip away before you realize that he still has two tentacles wrapped around your ankles. There goes your chance for escape. At least he doesn’t seem interested in eating you. Yet.

Another firework goes and you watch his eyes widen as he follows its trajectory up until it stops in an explosion of color and sound. But you’re far more taken watching the childlike glee on his face and the way the colors gleam on his skin and tentacles. The colors add another level to his already stunning looks, making him look far more ethereal and angelic. He grins as he watches and he looks much less like a terrifying monster. Though you worry what will happen once the fireworks stop and there’s nothing to distract him. Maybe when the real show starts he’ll be so engrossed that you can slip yourself free of the tentacles and make a quick and quiet escape. 

You shake your head, looking away and up at the sky too. There’s nothing much you can do right now with their grip on you still too tight, so you might as well also watch the show. The fireworks are slowly starting to increase in frequency and he seems to squirm in excitement the closer together the pops of color come. 

“Do you have a name?” You ask suddenly, looking back over at him. Maybe you can text Namjoon or Taehyung and tell them that if you disappear to look for something with that name. Probably Taehyung. He’d be more likely to believe that you’ve been taken by a monster than Namjoon. He’d probably ask if you’ve drank or smoked anything. Get too drunk camping once and claim that bigfoot tried to kidnap you and you never get believed again. 

He doesn’t answer right away, doesn’t even seem to acknowledge that you spoke. But then his lips purse and he looks over at you for a moment. “Jimin.”

“Jimin?” He bobs his head and turns back to catch another firework going off. “My name’s Y/n.” You murmur, unsure if he’s even interested. 

It hurts a little that he didn’t seem interested in you back, but you suppose that you don’t know whatever his monster customs are. And you really shouldn’t look too deeply into why it hurts that a monster doesn’t seem interested in you. That should be a good thing. It means you have a better chance of getting away. 

There’s a long break in the fireworks and Jimin’s lips push out into an adorable pout as he turns to you with sad eyes. “Is it over?”

You laugh and shake your head. “No. It’s actually just getting ready to get started. Now it’s the big show. You thought it was good before. Just wait.”

He gives a simple nod and turns back to the sky, content to wait patiently for the rest. Silence descends on you both and you feel like you should be more worried about the tentacle monster sitting in front of you. But Jimin seems harmless enough, he certainly hasn’t tried to eat you or anything and that’s certainly got to count for something. He seems far more interested in the fireworks than in you now anyway. 

You’re just starting to relax when something cool and damp brushes the skin of your lower back. You freeze, back stiff as whatever it is tentatively touches the warm skin before slithering further up your shirt. You bite down on the urge to scream, you don’t want to startle Jimin again. Just because he was protective before, doesn’t mean that a scream coming from you would produce the same result. And before you can twist to see what is crawling up your shirt, the tentacles around your ankles slide a little further up your legs, ends timidly probing along your flesh as they go.

Another tentacle, one of the thicker ones, slides across your arm, wrapping once around your wrist and nestling the tip into your palm. The cool sensation is bizarrely familiar and it takes you only a moment to realize that whatever crawled up your shirt a moment ago is another tentacle. You’re about to speak when a thin tentacle trails up your arm to rest against your shoulder, gently tracing your jaw and neck. 

You swallow. “Um, Jimin?” All you get is a hum in response. Does he not realize what’s going on? “Jimin? What’s happening?”

Either your words or tone finally pulls his attention to you and when he sees his tentacles wrapped around you, he flushes a pretty blue. He scoots away, working to encourage them to release you, but this time of year they always have a bit more mind of their own. He makes an irritated clicking noise when they don’t move.

The one in your hand seems to respond to his sound though you’re not sure if it’s the way he wanted it to or not but it tightens around your wrist slightly before becoming… slicker?

You look at it, a weird mix of horror and maybe a little arousal. Maybe you shouldn’t have watched so much hentai when you were younger. You look back up at Jimin, at a complete loss. “Jimin?”

Jimin looks incredibly embarrassed, burying his face in his hands and making more distressed clicking noises. Probing tentacles aside, he looks adorable all flustered like this. A few of his tentacles wrap around his wrists and shoulders, patting his skin soothingly but that only seems to make him more distressed. 

The tentacle at your back has reached the tie to your bikini top beneath your shirt and is prodding at the knot with interest. You don’t know what to do to stop the distress you can practically feel coming from Jimin. The tentacle in your hand squirms slightly, drawing your attention back to it. You swallow, sneaking a quick peek at Jimin as you do the only, seemingly illogical, thing you can think of right now and you close your hand around the rowdy tentacle and squeeze. 

The result is instantaneous and certainly not what you had expected. Jimin moans. So then even if he’s not in control, he can still feel through them. Interesting to know. Jimin’s mouth hangs open for a moment before his gaze is meeting yours and you suddenly feel like maybe that was the wrong thing to do. 

There’s simmering fire in his eyes as he tries to speak as calmly and evenly as possibly. “I told you I come here once a year, correct?” You nod and he continues. “I come here to mate.”

You blink at him, mind completely blanking out. “M-mate?” You hate how high your voice sounds. 

He nods, sending a glare at the tentacles touching you. “When I saw you here, I had assumed you were one that I have spent the mating period with before.”

“Fuck, did I ruin your hookup?”

“Hookup?”

Your body heats with embarrassment. Maybe if you ask nicely, Jimin will let you go drown. “Whoever you were supposed to meet here. Did they not show up because I was here?”

He’s quick to shake his head. “I did not have plans. But sometimes if someone is near they will stop by. If they are not, I can take care of myself.”

The image of Jimin splayed out on the rocks by himself, tentacles sliding across his skin, wrapped around his cock, drawing more of those noises from him shoots straight to your core. Your pussy clenches around nothing and your hand accidentally tightens around Jimin’s tentacle again, drawing a gasp from him. 

“I apologize for not warning you sooner. The fireworks distracted me but it appears that it did not distract them.” He gestures to his tentacles. “Give me a moment and I should be able to free you so you can leave.”

His eyes slip closed and your gaze drags over him, startling slightly when you realize he’s started to grow hard too. You feel crazy that the first thing you think is how badly you want to touch. 

This is such a bad idea, but before you can stop yourself or second guess, you’re speaking. “What if... you didn’t though?”

Jimin freezes, but the tentacles seem to grow more restless at your words. Another thick one stretches the distance between you both to rest against your thigh, slicking your skin wherever it touches.

“You do not know what you are saying.” He grits out.

The tentacle in your hand squirms and you give it a small squeeze, maintaining eye contact with Jimin as you do so you get to fully enjoy the shudder that ripples through him. “I um, think I have a pretty good idea what I’m saying.”

He shakes his head, hair falling over his eyes. You didn’t think it would be so hard to convince a tentacle monster that you wanted him to fuck you. This was by far the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. For all you know, he could eat his partner afterwards. If you live past this encounter, no one would ever let you live it down. If they even believed you. Your gaze drops involuntarily back to his cock and you find that he's fully hard now. And it’s almost a little intimidating how big he is, longer and thicker than anything you’ve ever taken before. You don’t think your fingers would be able to wrap around the girth. But any apprehensions you think you’d feel normally are nowhere to be seen, all you feel is overwhelming want. You want to try to fit him, to feel the burn as he stretches you out. You want to taste and you want him to absolutely ruin you. 

Unsure of any other way to convince him that you do want this, you switch tactics. If you can’t convince him with words, you’ll just have to show him what you want. You release the tentacle in your hand, though it keeps itself wrapped around your wrist, and move to remove your shirt. Seeming to know your plan, or maybe just through a stroke of luck, the tentacle that has been exploring your bikini top seems to have discovered how to undo the ties and as your top hits the ground beside you, your top slips to your lap.

His eyes dip to the scrap of fabric in your lap before they trace slowly back up, expression worryingly blank. You belatedly realize that this might not even be a good signal to him that you do want this. You don’t know what others of his kind look like, if any of them look anything like you. For the most part, he looks human enough, you’d think that maybe this was enough, that maybe this is at least sort of familiar to him. You feel suddenly self conscious, this was such a dumb idea. You really shouldn’t let the horny brain lead. You’re just about to cross your arms to cover yourself when the tentacle that had been on your thigh slithers up your stomach to sit between your breasts. 

You glance at Jimin and his eyes seem darker, jaw clenched tight. His tentacles seem to grow more agitated behind him and the ones around your ankles tighten to tug you closer, both to your surprise and apparently also Jimin’s. He flushes, staring down at you with wide eyes as your thighs come to rest against his. 

The tentacle on your chest squirms and Jimin’s gaze drops to watch. Your gaze drops too, intending to look at the tentacle currently writhing around on your chest and smearing slick there but you only make it halfway. Because Jimin is now fully hard, thick cock curving up towards his belly and the sight of it has you enraptured. He looked big when he was still soft, but now fully hard, or at least what you assume is fully hard, he looks positively massive. The skin of his cock is the same muted tan of the rest of him, the tip almost blue-gray, close to the color his cheeks turned but deeper in color, and it’s leaking more silvery looking fluid. You wonder if it’s the same thing that is leaking from his tentacles. 

Jimin shudders and it takes only a moment for you to realize that the reason is because a thin tentacle has wrapped itself around the base of his cock. It makes you want to touch too. So tentatively, you reach out, gaze flicking between his cock and his face to gauge his reaction and giving him more than enough time to pull away. 

He watches your fingers brush against the tip, dragging a smear of slick further down the shaft but he makes no move to stop you. He lets out a shaky exhale and, emboldened by the noise, you wrap your fingers around him. Or you at least try your best to because his girth keeps your fingers from meeting. 

Jimin makes a rumbling noise and then there are two more tentacles massaging at your thighs, working their way up until they meet the edge of your shorts. They only probe along the fabric for a moment before slipping beneath and continuing their exploration towards the apex of your thighs. They trace the edge of your bikini bottoms before one of them presses against your pussy through the thin fabric. 

You gasp and Jimin’s gaze is back on your face, attention wholly focused on you as his tentacles press again, but this time with a little more pressure. One happens to brush past your clit and you jolt, a moan slipping from your lips and the tentacles seem desperate to recreate that reaction as they narrow their focus to your clit. 

Jimin groans again and his hands come up to cup your cheeks, his tentacles all stilling for a moment. He waits until you look up at him. “Are you sure? It will be harder to stop once we start. Are you positive you can handle it? I do not mind spending the time alone.”

It’s sweet how concerned he is about you. But now that he’s started, all you can think about is being fucked by him while his tentacles play with every inch of you. You squirm back slightly and he seems to take that as rejection, if the flash of disappointment you catch on his face is anything to go by. You quickly undo your shorts, tugging them down your legs, assisted by his tentacles once they reach your ankles. 

He swallows and you watch as the tentacles from your ankles relocate to your thighs to keep you spread wide as the two that had been in your pants resume their work on your clit, now free of the hindrance of cloth. You bring your slick fingers to your mouth and keep eye contact as you lick them clean. It’s salty like the sea, but rather than the bitterness of cum, his has a hint of sweetness to it. It’s slightly addictive.

He stares at you for a moment and then he’s making another clicking noise and the tentacle that had been around your wrist unwraps itself and slips between your legs to join the other two already there, though it bypasses your clit to circle your dripping hole instead. 

“Needy.” He coos, though you’re not sure if it’s directed at you or his tentacles. Maybe both. 

He shuffles in close again, seemingly content to just watch his tentacles play with you. You whine, you like the feel of his tentacles, but you want him to touch with his hands and lips too. You want more. Maybe the needy was directed at you after all. He glances up at your noise, watching the way your mouth drops open as his tentacle finally wriggles it’s way into your pussy. It’s firmer than you expected from touching it, but still much more malleable than a cock would be. But it’s softer nature allows it greater freedom to explore your walls as it moves slowly in and out of you, certainly a different experience for you but you definitely can’t find it in you to hate it when it can reach all the right spots inside of you easily.

You reach out, grabbing the first part of Jimin you can grab, his arm, and tug him insistently down on top of you. He complies easily, seemingly curious as to what you want. You wonder if he’s ever kissed a partner before, if that’s something that his kind does. You hesitate and Jimin immediately notices, head tilting in curiosity. 

“What is wrong?”

You’re gasping before you can formulate your question, the tentacle inside you having quickly found your g-spot and is now making sure to rub it with every thrust, sending waves of pleasure rippling through your body. Jimin’s head dips down and his nose rubs against yours. 

“Are you okay? I have never been with a human and so I am unsure of what might hurt or bring pleasure. Please tell me if they are hurting you.”

He looks so sweet and it makes your heart stutter a little. You tilt your head, capturing his plush lips in a kiss. They’re warmer than you expected, giving the cooler temperature of his tentacles. It takes him a moment of inaction before he seems to catch on to how to kiss back. He makes a small noise when your tongue brushes his lips but he easily parts them for you. His sharp teeth skim your lip and it leaves you gasping into his mouth. He seems pleased with the response and he trails his lips across your jaw and down your neck. 

“You did not answer my question.” He murmurs, teeth gently teasing the skin of your neck, mindful of their sharpness. 

His tentacles are driving you mad, bringing you so close to your orgasm but seeming to know exactly when to slow back down to draw it out even longer. “What… question?” You gasp out.

“Are you okay?”

You’d scoff if the tentacles around your clit hadn’t started circling in tandem, winding the coil in your belly tighter. “So… so okay… Fuck, Jimin, are you sure you’ve never been with a human before?”

He pulls away from your neck enough to look down at you, a pleased smile stretching his lips. “I have not. Am I doing good?”

You nod enthusiastically, hands tangling in his hair to pull him back in for a messy kiss. He makes a pleased sort of clicking noise in the back of his throat and his tentacles speed up. And this time when your orgasm draws near his tentacles keep their speed rather than slowing again and you cum, back arching off the blanket as your pussy convulses around the tentacle. His tentacles continue their ministrations and Jimin pulls away to stare down at where his tentacle disappears inside you with wide eyed wonder. 

He groans as he watches with rapt attention. “Does it do this every time?”

You squirm, oversensitivity quickly setting in as his tentacles refuse to let up. The borderline painful feeling robs you of words to tell him to slow down and give you just a moment to breath. The tentacle inside of you swells and then everything grows a little slicker as Jimin chokes on a gasp. You struggle to reach out to grasp any one of the tentacles, to just lessen the sensations ravaging your pussy just a little, but before you can even make contact, another tentacle is wrapping around both wrists and dragging them above your head. 

“J-Jimin, please…”

Jimin pays you no mind, tentacles working faster under his focused gaze and it doesn't take long for you to be thrown into a second orgasm, though it feels almost like the first one never ended. You cry out, much too loud even if the beach is seemingly deserted right now. You shudder as your orgasm crests and Jimin’s tentacle seems to stiffen inside you before you feel suddenly wetter and stickier and full. The tentacle slips out of you after a few weaker thrusts and a small gush of thick liquid follows and the tentacle suddenly seems much less enthusiastic than its counterparts. Fuck, did that mean…?

“Jimin,” you whine, waiting until he finally tears his gaze away from your dripping pussy. “Do… do your tentacles cum too?”

His head tilts in confusion. “Come?” He thinks for a moment before realization seems to overcome him. “Ah. Do you mean do my tentacles also release?”

Embarrassment creeps over you. Something so clinical shouldn’t have you aching to be filled again when you just came twice and apparently already filled. You nod shyly. 

“Yes. They also release. It is to give the best chance of a successful mating.”

You swallow, eyeing the tentacles behind him wearily. “Do they all have to?”

He shakes his head, a hint of amusement dancing in his eyes. “They do not. Only the big ones release. And from those, they do not all release every mating.”

You feel equal parts relieved and disappointed, though you know that you should probably question your disappointment. But you’ve already come this far, no reason to start questioning your potentially bad decisions now. 

He tilts his head. “Does it bother you? They do not need to do it near you if it makes you uncomfortable.”

You choke, unsure how to respond for a moment. This whole situation should really terrify and appall you. But you only find yourself growing hotter at the idea of being used by his tentacles and covered in their cum. You chew your lip before giving a small nod. 

His eyes trace over your face before he seems to light up and he leans down to press a kiss to your lips. “Does the thought of that arouse you, sweet? I must admit, most of my previous partners were less than enthused about that aspect of mating.”

You groan, wanting nothing more than to bury your face in your hands in shame but Jimin’s tentacles keep your hands studiously bound above your head. Even his own kind didn’t like it. Why were you so weird? He giggles, leaning down to brush your nose with his own. His face is set with a kind smile, but his eyes still dance with mirth and lust. 

“I find it very arousing that you like it so much. Tell me what you are thinking about, sweet.”

To punctuate his words, another tentacle slips between your legs, rubbing along your sticky slit. You moan and Jimin’s eyes shine with fire. “I… was thinking about you fucking me and filling me up and leaving me all messy.”

He smirks. “I can do that, sweet. Just ask.”

“Jimin, please, fuck me… Fuck, ruin me…”

Jimin’s grin turns positively feral, sharp teeth on display. And for a moment, fear ripples through you as Jimin looks truly like a monster for the first time since he’s surfaced. But then his tentacles shift around him, eager for their chance to touch. Jimin shoos the thick tentacle away from your pussy, the ones around your thighs assisting him in situating you how he wants. He runs the tips of his cock through the mess left there by his tentacle and a pleased chirp leaves him. 

“You are already so full. Do you think you can take more?” He purrs.

You nod and his cock presses against your entrance. He presses just the tip in and he stretches your pussy more than the tentacle did. You gasp, breath robbed from you as the stretch borders on too much. But Jimin seems to sense it and pauses with just the tip inside, allowing you all the time to adjust to his massive cock. 

Jimin’s hands skim up your thighs, the tentacles resting passively on your clit once again coming to life and the jolt of pleasure has you squirming on Jimin’s cock. His hands rest on your hips, gripping them with bruising strength to keep you from moving. You whimper at the casual display of strength, at the way that he seems to not even be trying to hold you still while his tentacles slowly circle your clit to get you to relax. 

Two other tentacles slip up your body, pressing against your breasts and kneading at the flesh experimentally. The sensation is different, while the tentacles don’t have the surface area the way a hand does, they are capable of moving in ways a hand simply can’t. They grope at the flesh, exploring and testing the limits. One brushes past your nipple, causing you to gasp and suddenly both are on the pebbled buds, playing with them to draw even more noises from you. Their motions mimic the motions on your clit and pleasure sparks across your body once again. 

The tentacles shift slightly, long bodies draping down the sides of your breasts and then they press the mounds inwards, forcing the flesh together around the tentacle still resting on your sternum. Jimin grunts at the sudden pressure around his tentacle and your gaze drops to watch with fascination as the tentacle starts to thrust into the tight space, silvery tip gleaming with each press through. 

Your pussy clenches at the thought of it slipping a little further up and into your mouth, of tasting that salty, sweet slick from the source. A high pitched noise sounds in Jimin’s throat as his hips stutter forward at the feeling of your pussy tightening around him and you moan as he slips a little further into you, stretching you just a little more. Now though, the stretch makes you ache for more, the burn finally passed with the aid of the tentacles playing with your clit and nipples and slowly pulling your pleasure back to the surface. 

You really need him to be completely inside of you and when you dig your heels into his ass to try to get him to move, he seems hesitant. His tentacles, however, seem more than thrilled at the idea and more than happy to help you in your pursuit. The ones around your thighs tighten and pull you closer, until Jimin is buried to the hilt in the clutch of your pussy. The noise is filthy, the mess from his tentacle spilling out around his cock to smear on your thighs and drip down your ass. 

Jimin goes rigid when he’s fully inside you, eyes trained on where you’re joined. He seems transfixed by the sight of your cunt swallowing down every inch he has. Your whine has his head snapping up to look at your face, drinking in the way you’re moaning. The tentacle between your breasts slips a little further up, tip bumping your chin once before it’s shifting to your lips. Your tongue darts out, swiping through the salty fluid. Jimin shudders, hips flexing where they press into you and you let your mouth fall open for his tentacle to slip in. 

Your tongue swirls around the tip and it squirms, pushing in further than you expect and causing you to gag. It pulls itself from your mouth with a pop and you frown at it’s loss before shifting your gaze to Jimin, who seems to be glaring at the tentacle like it did something wrong. 

“Jimin?” When he looks at you, you give him an amused smile. “It’s okay. It just takes me a minute.”

His head tilts but the tentacle makes its way tentatively back to your mouth, hovering until you open again for it to slip back in. It goes a lot slower this time, keeping its thrusts shallow. You hum encouragingly, tongue pressing and massaging the underside as it moves and the tentacle slides a little deeper. You gag only slightly this time, much more prepared now, and after a few thrusts you grow used to the intrusion and it can slip just a little bit more down your throat. 

Jimin watches for a moment before groaning and then he’s pulling his cock out until just the tip remains before slamming back in. You moan around his tentacle, noise muffled as it delves further down your throat. It stays there for a moment and the lack of oxygen has your head start to spin. Your hands twitch where they’re still bound above your head, but before the real need for oxygen comes and you have to try to alert Jimin that you need to breathe, the tentacle is pulling out, switching to shallow thrusts while you get a quick break to breathe. The sudden rush of oxygen has you feeling nearly euphoric and you can only hope that the tentacle does it again. When you whine around it, it pushes back into your throat and the rest of the whine is muffled by it’s girth. 

Jimin’s fingers flex against your hips as he watches and feels how much of his tentacle slips into the waiting warmth of your mouth and with a moan he starts fucking into your pussy with a quick pace. Your hands grab at the tentacle binding you, needing something, anything, to ground yourself as Jimin fucks you senseless. You feel wholly overwhelmed at the way his cock fills you, the way the tentacles swirl around your clit, your nipples and breasts, at the way the one in your mouth begins to stiffen up. 

The tentacles shift on your breasts, kneading the soft flesh once again before pinching at your nipples. You moan around the tentacle in your mouth and it gives a shudder before flooding your mouth and throat. You choke slightly, jerking your head slightly at the sheer volume being released into your mouth, far more than you can handle. Spit and cum drip from the corners of your mouth as you struggle to swallow and the tentacle pulls itself from your mouth before it's finished, painting the lower half of your face even more in its silvery essence. Jimin’s eyes gleam at the sight, seeming to become even more frantic with his thrusts. 

“J-jimin…” You whine, voice rough from use. You’re not entirely sure what you’d finish that statement with.

“You are doing so well.” He coos and the praise has your mind going fuzzy. “You look so pretty like this.”

He reaches up, sliding a hand through the mess on your cheeks before letting his hand drag the mess back down your body, leaving a shiny trail down your throat, in the valley between your breasts and across your stomach. He slams in particularly hard and you cry out, voice echoing across the empty beach and ocean, much too loud but you no longer care.

Jimin glows golden, the light haloing him and your fucked out mind is sluggish to make sense of the sudden color change. Then you remember why you were out here to begin with and you make the connection just as the resounding boom of the firework follows just after the shower of color. The fireworks show must be finally starting because the next second Jimin is bathed in blue, then pink.

But as quick as your attention was taken by the colorful shadows splashed across Jimin’s beautiful face, it’s taken back as he shifts suddenly, hands leaving your hips to push your thighs together as he continues to fuck you. Your calves come to rest on one shoulder and Jimin uses the new position to fuck you even harder. 

Something slick drags along the crease where your thighs are pressed together and a second later a tentacle is pushing into the tight space. Your skin tingles where it presses into your skin and with every thrust it makes through the tight press of your thighs, it bumps the tentacles on your clit. Jimin presses a kiss to your leg and you feel the breath leave him as his tentacle speeds up and he hisses.

The sensations are nearly overwhelming, to the point that you almost miss the new slim tentacle kneading the flesh of your ass. It delivers a pinch to the skin that leaves you gasping and you’re much more aware of it as it runs along the seam of your ass. You squirm, or at least attempt to, because between the tentacles restraining you and Jimin’s firm grip on your thighs, you’re left nearly immobile as you get fucked. The tentacle slips a little further up, gathering some slick before it’s dipping back down to prod at the tight ring of muscle of your hole. 

You shudder and if you could move, you’d press down onto the tentacle, force it to fill you because you need it as much as you need Jimin’s cock in you. “Fuck, please, don’t tease…”

Jimin’s face is set in concentration and you don’t think he heard you, except a second later the tentacle breaches your ass. You moan, glad that it was a smaller one to start. It thrusts tentatively, growing bolder as your noises raise in pitch and then a second slim tentacle is joining, slipping past the tight ring of muscle to thrust in counterpoint to the first. 

Jimin’s thrusts slow, his head tilting back as he pants. He looks like a sculpture, so beautiful that it aches a little. Something that people should look at and marvel over. A moan slips past his lips as the tentacles in your ass speed up a little, taking some time to also shift apart and spread you open even more. 

“You… are endless…” Jimin breaths out. It sounds reverent. 

The tentacles slip from you and you have no time to mourn the loss before they’re being replaced by one of the thicker tentacles. The stretch hurts a little, but with so many other things happening to your body at the same time, you’re quickly distracted from the ache. The tentacle stills anyway, allowing you time to adjust to its thick girth. 

“You are so full of surprises.” He says, head dropping forward once more to let his gaze rake over your shuddering figure.

The tentacle in your ass thrusts in response to Jimin’s words and when you don’t indicate any pain, both pull out and thrust roughly back in. The tentacle between your thighs and in your ass thrust opposite Jimin, keeping you full and stimulated when Jimin pulls out. 

“Please… Jimin please, fill me up, you said you would…” You feel slightly delirious with need, every thrust of his tentacle adds extra pressure to your clit and you feel so close to cumming, teetering on the edge. 

Jimin gives you no verbal response, only that of him pressing your thighs together a little harder. A few more thrusts of the tentacle between your thighs has you clamping down on Jimin’s cock and the one in your ass as you cum, body shuddering as the tentacles and Jimin continue to thrust. You squeeze your eyes shut, vision nearly whiting out entirely as your orgasm slams into you. The tentacle between your thighs lasts only a handful more thrusts before its stiffening and releasing, splattering your chest, belly, and thighs in the silver cum. It gives a few weak final spurts before slipping back through your thighs as Jimin parts them once more. 

His cock twitches as his gaze falls over you messy form, the normally silvery liquid lighting up in splashes of color with every new explosion that happens above you both. He’s never seen a more beautiful sight. One of his hands lands on your thigh as the other bats his tentacles away from your clit, an action that you're grateful for for only a moment because he quickly replaces them with his fingers. You arch and cry out, jerking your hands with enough force that you seem to startle the binding tentacle and it releases you. Your hands wrap around his wrist, tugging futilely at it to get him to let up. 

You moan his name desperately, trying to squirm away from the sensation as his tentacles keep you held close as he continues to fuck you through your overstimulation. 

“Can you do that for me one more time? You feel so good when you do that, sweet.”

You whimper. You want to say no, that it hurts a little and that you really don’t think you’re capable of another orgasm. But the pout he wears stops you and you find yourself nodding without even thinking about how you’re going to get past the too much feeling currently overwhelming your body. 

Jimin gives you another feral grin, eyes roving over your figure as his fingers work quick circles around your clit. For no experience with a human, he’s an incredibly fast learner. He seems to know your body better than your ex had and the two of you had been together for almost 2 years. 

The tentacles on your breasts move to collect some of the slick covering you, smearing it around your nipples as the pinch and play with them, the slick adding a new layer of feeling to the actions. 

“Come on, sweet.” Jimin purrs as his cock seems to swell ever more and the tentacle in your ass starts to stiffen. 

Another rough thrust and a few twists of his fingers and you’re cumming again with a cry of his name. Your pussy and ass convulses around him and Jimin lets out a series of clicks and chirps as he finally cums, flooding your pussy and ass with more silvery slick. There seems to be a never ending stream from his cock and after a few moments, pressure on your lower stomach makes you look down, groaning at the sight of your slightly distended belly.

Jimin makes a contented noise, rubbing gently over the swell. “You would look so beautiful swollen with my children.”

His cock gives another twitch and a feeble last spurt of cum and Jimin and his tentacles seem to deflate. His chin presses to his chest as he takes in slow, deep breaths. The tentacles all slowly slip from your body and you mourn the slight warmth you lose. Another few moments pass and then Jimin is gingerly pulling his cock from your abuse pussy and gazing over your whole body with almost reverence. 

You feel too exhausted to do much more, but you can feel his cum dripping from you, forming a puddle beneath your ass. At least you're next to the ocean for easy clean up. If you had the energy to do that. Maybe in 5 minutes… Or an hour. You can’t even feel your legs right now. You’re pretty sure you’d just drown.

Jimin stretches out beside you, arm coming to wrap around your middle, seemingly unbothered by the fact that it lands in a mess. You blearily realize that his tentacles seem much smaller now too. His head tilts and you realize that he’s watching the fireworks again. Like he didn’t just fuck you within an inch of your life and leave you ruined for anyone who comes after him. 

You watch in silence for a while, endeared by Jimin’s ohs and ahs as he discovers new types of fireworks, the different shapes and effects that can happen. 

“Jimin.” You call softly. His nose brushes your shoulder in response. “Will… Nevermind. It’s stupid.”

Jimin pushes himself up enough so that he can look down at you, frown marring his pretty face. “What is it?”

You fidget, suddenly hating that you’re naked and still covered in him. You glance over at the water.

“Do you wish to go in, sweet?”

It’s an easy out and you don’t feel strong enough to ask the real question yet, so you give him a simple nod. He grins, scooping you up and gracefully sliding you both into the water, arm wrapped tight around your middle to keep you afloat. 

Colors flash around you as you stare into Jimin’s eyes, every color reflected there as well. Before you can second guess yourself, you lean forward and press a kiss to his lips. He lets out a surprised noise and then giggles when you pull away. 

“Do you wish to go again?”

Embarrassment fills you and you shake your head. “No. Um…” You take a deep breath. You can do this. “Will I see you again?”

Jimin’s face is unreadable for a painful stretch of time, though you’re sure it’s only a few seconds before he’s grinning. “I find myself quite taken by humans. I could certainly use a guide.”

You grin back, pecking him again. “First lesson, when humans like someone and want to spend time with them and go on dates, they give them kisses.”

He hums, giving you a kiss of his own, just a little deeper than yours. “I think I quite like kisses.” Then he grins and it’s full of mischief. “I think fireworks are my favorite though.”

You snort, prodding him with a finger. “You sure it’s the fireworks you like?”

He makes a thoughtful noise before nodding. “They make you luminous, sweet.”

[early2000smovieimagines]

Meeting and Dating George Weasley

(Not my gif)(Requested by anonymous)

- You and George first meet when you’re both attending Hogwarts. Him and Fred are obviously pretty popular so you probably know about him before he knows about you. 

- As most couples in school do, you met because you were placed in the same class and wound up sitting pretty close to each other. This class also just so happened to only contain one Weasley in it; something I’m sure happened quite a lot with the trouble the twins always started. 

- Since he doesn’t have his twin, he’s a bit more focused on the classroom itself and eager to find himself the oh so important class buddy. While he was sitting at his desk, bored out of his mind, his eyes fell on you for the first time and he immediately perked up. He found his buddy. 

- Both of the Weasley twins are quite social; or at least not scared of social interaction, so he has no problem coming up to you and introducing himself. He’s eager to make you his friend and get closer to you, and since he’s funny, sweet, charismatic and much, much more, you’re more than happy to accept his friendship. 

- George sort of has a crush on your for a while before he asks you out; which Fred obviously rags on him for. And his crush on you only worsens as time passes and everyone he knows starts to catch on to his affections, hinting at him needing to ask you out. 

 - You were invited to the burrow at least once and his Mom even gave him a knowing look, telling him he should get a move on and saying “sure you don’t” when he shyly insisted that he didn’t know what she was talking about. 

- Although it takes him a bit of time, he does manage to ask you out with little problem. 

- George has always been a bit affectionate with you so when he took your hand in both of his and started toying with your fingers as you were doing something, you really didn’t pay it any mind. 

“Y/n?”

“Hmm?”

“Would you like to go out sometime, love?” 

- You froze for a second, not expecting to hear those words leaving his mouth, and his heart raced as he awaited your response. You looked over at him to see if he was joking or not and gave him a genuine smile as you were met with his sincere face. 

“I would love that George.” He smiled and pressed his lips to the back of your hand. 

- The two of you have sort of already done everything you could together; in regards to going to places at Hogsmeade and stuff like that, so you really don’t have a very extravagant first date. You both just walk around the more wooded areas of Hogwarts, talking, teasing, and nudging each others shoulders. 

- You share your first kiss that same day; he just couldn’t help himself. He was walking backwards in front of you for a while before he stopped, forcing you to stop as well. He took your face in his hands, looking into your eyes for a moment before slowly leaning in, giving you time to pull away if you wanted to.

 - Your lips met in a soft, somewhat chaste kiss and you both smiled at each other after pulling away. He kissed your forehead before wrapping his arm around you and continuing your walk.

- And just like that, everything in George’s life seems to fall perfectly into place. You’re his and he couldn’t be happier.

- Lots of Pda. He’ll usually keep his affection sorta innocent when you’re in the public eye, the idea of getting heated when one of his siblings can see is a bit awkward to him and he’s just more of a reserved person in general. The absolute most you’ll get is a makeout at a party, other than that, he’s just tooth achingly sweet. 

- He loves giving you affection but he especially loves you giving him affection. He had to share his mother and father with six siblings growing up so having one person; especially one that he loves so much, giving him their undivided and loving attention is like a dream.

- Handholding and hand kisses. He likes taking your hand and pressing a kiss to the back of it before he laces your fingers together.

- Getting pulled into his side whenever you’re standing next to him. He’ll wrap an arm around your waist and keep you close to him, finding comfort in you being all nestled into him.

- Cheek and forehead kisses.

- Having kisses pressed all over your face before he catches your lips in his. 

- Sweet and slow kisses. He likes keeping your lips on his for as long as he can. He also likes holding your face in his hands whenever he kisses you, lovingly brushing his thumb against your cheek bone as the two of you pull away. 

- You holding his face in your hands? Godlike.

- He loves when you straddle his lap as you’re snogging; nothing beats it in his eyes. 

- Sometimes, he’ll lean down and rest both his arms on your shoulder, his chin laying against his forearms/hands and there’s just something about it that never fails to fluster you; at least a little bit. It’s probably the close proximity and the fact that he brushes kisses along the back of your neck absentmindedly. 

- Princess, darling, love, etc. He adores giving you pet names. And you giving him them? He didn’t think he could love you more but he stood corrected the first time you called him one. 

- He likes spooning as much as the next boy but there’s just something about resting his head on your chest or borderline sleeping on top of you with his head in the crook of your neck that he finds so comforting. 

- Waking up next to you is one of the best feelings in the world to him. His eyes slowly opening to see the sunlight streaming on your face, hearing your soft breathing, having those snuggly, soft spoken conversations. He lives for it. 

- Him reading to you. It melted his heart the first time you cuddled up to him, asking what he was reading and saying that it sounded nice, admitting happily that you’d like to hear some when he asked if you would.

- George is used to being the one who explains things so if you have a question, he usually has the answer; and he always gives it to you with minimal teasing.

- If you ever give him a gift, just know that it will be worn, displayed or shown off with pride. He’ll always give you a kiss and an adorable thank you, showing it the upmost love as though it’s the best thing he owns. 

- He likes to rag on you for it but he secretly loves when you ask him to reach things for you. 

- Competitions and bets for kisses.

- Cheering him on at Quidditch games. Its quite funny to see how aggressive your typically sweet and fairly docile boyfriend can be whenever he’s out on the field.

- Showing him different muggle things. He’s a particular fan of Saturday morning cartoons. 

- Going to Zonkos. You’re always dragged there whenever you go to Hogsmeade, well, there’s less dragging and more relenting on your part after he gives you puppy dog eyes. 

- Going to Madam Puddifoots. He definitely feels a bit out of place but he doesn’t mind too much, he thinks it’s sort of sweet and finds the sight of you in the shop to be quite cute.

- Sneaking around the school using the marauder's map and just his impressive memory of the castles layout. You swear that he must have the entire school memorized. 

- Helping him and Fred with pranks.

- Getting to hear all about his new product and prank ideas.

- He’s sorta used to just going along with Fred's plans so he tends to be fine with whatever you want to do. He may teasingly whine and complain but he never really has an issue with any of it.

- Fred third wheeling or going on double dates with you guys, though it isn’t really third wheeling when it’s Fred; he’s just as involved in your relationship as you are. 

- Visiting the burrow and writing each other letters during your breaks. Molly absolutely loves you and welcomes you with open arms. She always finds something to invite you to.

- Helping out at the shop once they buy it. The two of you make goo goo eyes at each other from across the store and Fred teasingly pretends to gag whenever he makes eye contact with one of you afterwards.

- He somewhat fusses over you; especially when you’re out in the elements. He’ll pull your jacket collar closer to your neck, put your hat and scarf on for you, etc. He has this cute need to take care of you.

- Fred teasing the two of you; or just George when the two of them are alone. You’re pretty used to it by now but he does occasionally manage to somewhat fluster you.

- Him whispering little comments to you; especially when he’s bored. You’ll have to stifle more than a few laughs during class.

- He’s always able to make you laugh and he absolutely lives for it. It doesn’t matter if your laugh is the ugliest thing in the world, it’s still music to his ears. 

- He hates when you worry over him; though he does like the fact that you care about him enough to do so, so he’ll usually try and joke around to make you relax and feel better.

- Assuring him that you don’t mind his holiness. He’ll pretend that it doesn’t bother him but you know that it does so you take special care in reminding him that it doesn’t matter to you.  

- George has always sort of felt like the lesser twin so it means a lot to him whenever you reassure him that you only love; and have only ever loved, him. He could have proposed to you right then and there when you first said so.  

- He understands you better than anyone else. If you’re going through something, he’s right there with you, comforting you and trying his best to help. 

- We’ve got ourselves a jealous boy right here. Since George is a bit insecure, he definitely has a habit of getting jealous over you. He tries to reason with himself that it’s not his place to interrupt or ask you about the guys you’re around but sometimes he just can’t help it.

- He’s definitely a bit overprotective of you, almost in a maternal/paternal way at times. He’ll almost kill himself a dozen times for the sake of a prank but the minute you do something remotely risky, he’s trying to stop you like he’s your parent.

- Whenever anything upsetting or scary happens, he’s the first person to ask if you’re okay. He sticks by your side and watches out for you like his life depends on it.

- George is a lover, not a fighter. The two of you rarely have fights but when you do, they’re more so just arguments that may or may not get a bit heated; depending on the subject matter. 

- George has always been good at smoothing things over and understanding other peoples point of views so your arguments never last very long. You rarely ever not resolve an argument before you leave each others sides, unless you really need to leave for something, but when that happens you’re usually over it by the time you reunite again. 

- Lots of I love you’s and all kinds of them at that. He’ll say them sincerely, he’ll say them playfully, he’ll jokingly sing them; whatever comes to mind or fits the mood. He just loves to say I love you. 

- He may lose an ear but he doesn’t intend on losing you anytime soon. He knew you were the one the moment he laid eyes on you and he never ceases to be amazed by you. 

[thestarsoutofyourwindow]

To Survive this Pain, Part 1 - 11th Doctor x Reader

A/n: I'm not dead, I promise! I've just been struggling to finish off fics. If this seems slightly rushed it's because I just needed to finish something. It's exam season (it's extra-long now due to a certain virus), but they're over in a few weeks. I've been trying to stretch into writing for different Doctors, and in my new formats, but good old Eleven is easiest to write. Inbox is still open :)

Word Count: 2596

Summary: After the "death" of Amy and Rory, the Doctor is devastated. After deciding to isolate himself on a cloud, he leaves you with the Paternoster Gang till Strax informs you the Doctor wants to see you.

Warnings: Angst, Cold Doctor, Doctor is slightly ooc due to guilt, mild self-inflicted Injury, Bouts of Rage.

I should try to post part two as soon as possible.

This is my first ever Full Story (GIF isn't mine).

Your shoes splashed through puddles on the cobblestone road, on your way down to the park of which you knew he would be.

You hadn't heard from him in a short while now, but Jenny and Vastra frequently advising you to pay him a visit had been getting to you. That's why, when Strax brought you the news that the Doctor wanted to see you, you leapt at the opportunity.

You were worried, you'll admit. It was clear as day that losing Amy and Rory had him tearing himself to pieces. It was only a matter of time before he sent you off, too. Before he abandoned you.

Weaving around the quiet Victorian streets, the sun still yet to grace the sky, you had arrived at the park. Looking around the odd trees that decorated the perimeter, you picked out the tree that you knew had the elusive ladder directly above it. You stepped over the beds of wilting flowers that lined the pathways into the overgrown grass.

After completing the feat of reaching the ladders, consisting of either jumping or using your umbrella handle, you had successfully pulled the ladder down far enough to climb onto.

Making your way up the ice-cold rungs, you take a moment to consider why the Doctor called for you in the first place.

It made little sense to you. After all, the Doctor had been avoiding you for the better part of two months now; what had changed?

The Doctor planning on taking you home became all the more likely in your mind as you began to climb the spiral staircase, shivering as the late-autumn air nipped at your skin. Winter was slowly breaking through the remaining life.

If you weren't so hung up on adjusting to the less-than-ideal state of Victorian England, you would've had more time to worry about the Doctor. However, he was so hung up with his own issues, and you with yours, that he only crossed your mind when you were settling down for the night.

Of course, it hurt that you too. Never seeing Amy and Rory again. You did your best to hold onto the fact that they lived a happy life together.

A life that you knew could never have. You wish you could say goodbye to them, but you chose to carry the loss with you.

You were exhausted, it was safe to say. Spending your days helping out the Paternoster Gang with new cases that come in was certainly frustrating, especially when you had to avoid so much. Milk, green dyes, dodgy stairs, aliens and gas leaks. Nothing was safe in Victorian times.

Not that you didn't enjoy the company, mind you. Jenny always provided conversation, and paired with Vastra, there were plenty of investigations to be had. You just missed them all, sometimes.

The Doctor had become such a vital figure in your life that it didn't seem right for him to not be there. When you had both lost Donna, you were there for each other, and even then, he was a wreck. You had spent those first two months together, and you had never felt closer to someone before. At first, you couldn't admit it to yourself, but after six years, you knew that was when you started falling for him.

There was so much you didn't understand about him, yet so much he had begun to explain. You had seen and done so much together, places that surprised and scared the both of you. In distant worlds and ancient times, there lay so many memories that you had forgotten. Just another thing consumed by time.

A simple flip through your diaries would confirm that through all that, you admired him: mattering not which of his faces. You had accepted from the start that he was an unobtainable desire, no matter how you looked at it.

He was old, alien and a danger-magnet. Many considered the Doctor to be a God.

It upset you to know that the Doctor could never love you, not in the way you love him. Not in the way that he had shown you what love could be, what it should be. But that was what you had to expect from the Doctor.

You assumed that consistently losing those he loved must hurt immensely. You also imagine losing someone he could spend the rest of his lives with would leave another unfixable hole in his heart.

So it made sense to you that the Doctor would never willingly fall for a human. Your short life-spans and weak bodies meant that so much as a single bullet could rob you of your life.

The thought of what a state he must've been in at that very moment was disturbing, to say the least. You had seen the Doctor angry before, and it was not an easy sight.

His heart held so much pain, so much guilt.

After what felt like a good three minutes, you stepped off the staircase. Your shoes now emerged in a cloud, which could somehow keep you from plummeting into the streets below. You felt surprisingly light, almost like you were standing in a pit of feathers, yet some odd force kept you from losing your balance. Plucking your key out of your pocket, you press your hand against the door of the TARDIS. You unlock the door, pulling the key from the lock and stepping into the Console room.

You called out for him. After listening for a moment, you concluded that the Doctor must've been elsewhere.

The TARDIS was a glum sight. Most of the orange lights were dimmed: if functioning at all. A few even had fist-holes in them. There were what looked like hundreds of books cluttering the console, all of varying topics: The Time War, Time Lord Psychology, the History of the Universe, Earth History, Greatest War Losses. Some had bookmarks; others he had clearly tabbed.

Paper littered the glass flooring, each scribbled in several handwritings. They all clearly varied in ages and sizes, some a muddy brown, others a vivid white. Quite a lot were in small clusters of pages, as though they were ripped from a book. You picked up one of the sheets to inspect closer, and your heart nearly broke.

Each page had a sort of date in the corner, which you quickly realised must've been an approximation of the Doctor's age at the time. They were diary entries, ripped out and thrown in what you assumed to be a fit of rage.

The Doctors' tweed jacket had slipped off the console and onto the floor. The contents of his pockets spilt out onto the floor.

You leant to pick it up, grimacing at just how much he was carrying around. Throwing the jacket over the railing, you avoided stepping on any more pieces of paper.

"Tidy some of this, will you?" You addressed the TARDIS, a hand on the edge of the controls, "I'll go talk to him, where is he?" The TARDIS clicked and hummed in response, showing you a blueprint on the monitor, "The Library? Okay then."

Darting out of the Console Room, you attempt to discover the library as soon as possible. You vaguely remembered the three places the library is most likely to crop up. You went from there. Fortunately for you, you didn't have to go far before the library appeared.

You had always felt as though the library was too empty. Four stories of shelves filled with books, all visible from the ground floor, the rows of shelves created a sort of maze of titles and colours. The Doctor must've owned every single book in the galaxy, judging by the sheer size. Not to mention the several dozen or so empty seats. The library could easily hold thousands of people at once, yet there is rarely ever so much as a whisper.

You had a fair clue as to why the Doctor would be hiding away in there.

There the Doctor was, turned away from the door, in an intricately decorated armchair. You could just about make out the top of his head. You loomed behind him awkwardly, unsure or not if he was aware of your presence.

"Doctor?" You faltered. His head perked up slightly, and the Doctor strained out a hum. He stood up, his arms tiredly hanging at his sides after he stretched. It checked out with your fit of rage theory. The Doctor walked up to you, and you only then noticed how fraught he was.

His expression was tired, eyes sunken and lips pressed into a thin line. His shirt was unkempt: the sleeves were torn slightly. It also appeared burnt or covered in dust. His hands were covered in dust too.

However, you noticed that his right hand had quite a few cuts and gashes, which all seeped out orange-tinted blood.

His greenish-brown eyes search yours for a moment as a tear rolls down his cheek. He inhales deeply, nodding to himself.

"Look, I..." The Doctor paused, again glancing over into your eyes, "I'm sorry- I can't, I can't do this," He took in a trembling gasp for air, "I don't want to, but I can't keep doing this. I'm sick of it. I can't keep losing people. I'm so sick of saving the universe." Unsure of what to you, you reach a hand out to the Doctors. He puts a hand on top of yours, keeping the other, bloodier fist at his side. You brush your thumb over his knuckles, his hand hot against yours. The Doctor continues, "Everyone, everyone who travels with me leaves, or dies, and I'm always alone again. Alone and in pain. I can't keep doing this..."

Smiling sadly, you nod, "I understand," You looked back up at the Doctor, "If you called me here to convince me to go home-"

"Take you home?" The Doctor's voice cracked, "I could never. That'd be just as bad as losing you. I need you."

Oh, the Doctor have his way of making you feel important at the worst moments. Your insides bubbled giddily, but you refused to show it. Instead, you ignored it to the best of your ability; what he was saying was important.

Your attention had fallen back down to his hand, and it looked considerably worse than you initially thought. Pieces of glass dug into his knuckles, the skin seeming gnarled by the force of the oncoming storm, "Doctor, your hand,"

"It's fine." The Doctor seethed, staring numbly at you, "I'm not human, it's not going to kill me."

You wanted to protest. However, given the Doctor's already fragile temperament, you weren't going to push it. Instead, after an instant of silence, you asked a simple question, "How have you been, then?"

The Doctor blinked, giving an answer careful thought. He had an earnest grimace as he finally spoke, "Furious."

"I can see, that" You hum, putting equal thought into how you should approach your response, "What do you think you're going to do, now?"

"Stay here. I'm not getting involved anymore." The Doctor spat, pulling his hand away from yours, turning to sit down, "I don't want to care."

"That's fair enough." You reassure. You didn't like the sound of the Doctor retiring too much, but you respected his choice. If he didn't want to save the world, he doesn't have to. You hoped that, in his chosen conditions, he would heal.

You vowed to yourself at that moment that you'd do everything you could to help him. Starting with his physical injuries.

You heard the armchair squeak softly as the Doctor flopped back against it, picking up a book from the coffee table and beginning to read. You headed back over to the door and grabbed the small medkit from the bracket on the wall. You paced back to the Doctor, pulling a pouffe from a few feet away to sit on. The Doctor glared daggers at you, exhaling sharply and holding his arm out in your general direction. You thanked him meekly, beginning to remove the sharp, reinforced glass shards from his knuckles.

If you were new to travelling with the Doctor, you thought that seeing this might hurt you more. However, six years of travelling was more than enough for the two of you to be used to this sort of treatment. He never seemed to care much about his physical health, more about yours. That often ended up in you worrying about the Doctor, not that you minded. You supposed it worked out, as you both fussed over each other. If the Doctor's previous face saw how he was acting, you were sure he'd have a fit. Not that he mattered, as he was still a part of the man in front of you.

You could tell by the downtrodden way he pretended to read his book, staring a hole through it, that something was bothering him.

"Are you scared of me?" The Doctor halted, voice brittle. He had taken note of how delicate you were and had drawn it up to a fear that the Doctor would lash out at you.

"No," You shushed, focusing on removing the glass from his hands.

"You don't sound sure,"

"I am." You reassured bluntly, "I'm just being careful. I don't want to hurt you more."

"I'm not hurt! You don't need to fuss over me,"

You lifted your eyebrows slightly, "There's nothing wrong with feeling, Doctor. As you said yourself, feelings enhance life." The Doctor exhaled petulantly, eyes back on his book. "But not even you can be in pain forever."

"What is my alternative?" The Doctor strangled out, "I forget? I do something selfish?"

You grimace as you remove the last small shard from his pinky. You take out a clean cloth and some water, dampening the rag as you speak, "You're forced to survive this pain, this guilt, but you will grow from it. You make mistakes so that you learn from them."

You gently clear the blood from his hands and start to apply mild pressure to the deeper wounds. The two of you continued in silence, the Doctor only occasionally removing his hand to turn the page.

He was such a different person to the goofball front you were used to. He was melancholic. However, you would see a small amount of your Doctor bubbling to the surface. He would occasionally chuckle at the book he was reading or draw circles on your palm as you held his hand still. It provided you with enough comfort to know that you weren't wasting your time.

You finished up your last-minute medical care with a bandage around his hand. You closed the medkit.

"Alright, I'm just going to go restock this, then I'll go tidy up the paper in the console room,"

"Oh- right that... Must've been a mess. I'm sorry,"

"It's okay." You smiled pleasantly, "Come find me if you need me, okay? I won't be far,"

The Doctor caught your hand in his, just as you were about to leave, he tugged at your arm. You leant down, and the Doctor pressed a short kiss to your cheek. You countered with a kiss of your own on the middle of his forehead. Just like you used to, back with his previous incarnation.

As you wandered off, you were oblivious as to what that gesture meant. Was it a thank you? Another apology? Was it even platonic?

From behind you, you swore that he said something you thought you'd never hear the Doctor say.

[skellebonez]

Writing prompt 78: it’s night in and pigsy has had a hard day at work so Tang planned a small dinner to help him relax. Plus some romantic words.

I had a MIGHTY NEED for some FreeNoodles fluff and your request helped me deliver that so well!

If I had three wishes, I’d spend all of them to make you smile.

Tang glared at the steamer basket and willed it to work faster. To steam better. To make the food he was preparing taste perfect! Unfortunately for Tang he was a human through and through and had little to no say in the matters of whether or not steam cooked through dumplings once they were in the basket and out of his direct eyesight.

... Unless he- no! No he remembered the last time he tried to mess with a recipe! As long as he used a recipe the first time he had no real issues, but it was when he tried to deviant from one the first time that he always had problems. Like last time.

Pigsy was finding bits of exploded fruit for a week.

It would have turned out really good, if he hadn’t turned the stove on too high and used too much oil.

But that wouldn't happen tonight! Not if he managed to follow all the directions and take everything to the table when he was certain it was all ready.

His husband had already tried to enter the kitchen multiple times, insisting that Tang didn’t need to take on all of dinner on his own (”I can help, I’m not that tired” and all that). But the scholar would not let him do that, not tonight.

Pigsy’s Noodles had been horrifically busy that day due to a power outage on a large portion on the other side of the city that hit not only residential areas but also a few other popular restaurants. Everything had been fixed soon enough, but the usual lunch rush was even worse than usual and lasted almost into the early dinner orders. Anyone that wanted food had to either eat things they didn’t have to cook or order out, and low and behold most people thought ordering out was the far superior option.

Which meant that Pigsy was cooking literally all day. Normally he would have a short break, time to let broth simmer and relax for a conversation or to even read a news article or two. Maybe watch something on the TV while he cooked.

But not this day. He never had the chance to even sit down, not over the 5 hour period with no power.

And then the dinner rush hit, not as bad as the excessive lunch rush but just as hectic as always, and until nearly closing both he and MK were going and going and going. At least MK had the chance to sit in his tuk-tuk, resting his feet even a little bit while he was under the same stress as his boss.

Poor Pigsy didn’t even have the chance to sit on one of his own stools until well into the night.

It was by MK’s own insistence that Pigsy head home for the day and let the young man finish closing up on the shop. It wouldn't have been the first time he had done it, and with his own apartment above the store he would have a much faster and easier time getting home as opposed to the 15 minute walk that was ahead of Pigsy and Tang.

And as a testament to just how exhausted he was, Pigsy took that offer with only a little hesitation. Far less hesitation than letting Tang cook their dinner for the two of them, in fact.

Once they arrived home Tang took the initiative, guiding his husband to their couch and immediately setting to work on showing him exactly what he had been teaching himself in secret.

Tang knew that cooking was so important to Pigsy. It was one of the main ways he showed how much he cared for others, how he bonded with MK over the years by teaching MK his secret recipes, how he had shown Tang how welcome he was in his home when Tang had to leave his old home years ago. How he showed Tang how much he wanted him to stay, despite how much he played up that being a “freeloader” was aggravating him (it was a little game they played in actuality, Pigsy never once actually banning him from the store or from getting more food despite the amount that Tang ate free of charge).

And Tang wanted to return that show of affection tonight.

He supposed that was one of the ways he showed affection as well, not only the act of showing how much he enjoyed something others gave him but trying to learn what he could to be included in the future.

And teasing. So much teasing.

Pigsy returned that himself.

The dinging of the timer on the counter startled Tang from his musings and he jumped up in excitement. Finally, everything was finished!

It took a little willpower on his part not to rush through getting the food set out and not burn his hands, but Tang managed it anyway.

Tang was still learning to cook properly, years of quick meals and living alone and being busy with both his education and later scholarly pursuits making his past endeavors lackluster to most people. But he was a fast learner and he started out knowing how to cook most of the basics by heart.

What laid before him on the table was simple, probably very simple to a lot of people... but impressive by his standards. Large perfectly fluffy bowls of rice, a small bowl each of a seafood soup, stir fried vegetables, and dim sum. And all his practice had paid off for those, they looked almost as good as the ones he would by from the street vendors!

He took a moment to just. Look at what he had made. Take in his accomplishments. Be happy with his progress and excited for what Pigsy would think. He didn’t have to wait very long.

“That smells amazing,” Pigsy said from the entry to the kitchen, tired smile etched on his face as he made his way to the table. “It looks just as good too. You really didn’t have to do this yourself, Tang, but I gotta admit I appreciate being able to get excited for someone else’s food again.”

Tang smiled wide, chuckling a bit at the statement. “Well, with how busy you were today you deserve to relax.”

Pigsy hummed in agreement as he sat down, smiling up at Tang in a little confusion as he moved up to stand beside him instead of joining him across the table.

Tang leaned down, taking Pigsy’s chin in his hand and lifting his head up to guide his lips into meeting his own on a soft kiss. He couldn’t help but smile into it, pulling away with a snort of a chuckle and a blush on his face.

“Even after being married all this time you still laugh like that when we kiss,” Pigsy said with a goofy smile of his own, face flushing darker.

“And you still blush like that every time,” Tang replied, sitting across from him with a wider smile. “I’ll never get tired of seeing that.”

“Damn we are sappy,” Pigsy said with a chuckle, shaking his head and smiling wide.

“And you know we both love it!”

The two laughed, digging into their meal with gusto and excitement. And it was amazing. Tang wouldn’t put it on the same level as Pigsy’s, to him nothing would ever match his husband’s cooking, but the soft smiles and the way the other closed his eyes and let the bites he took linger as he seemed to savor the flavors.

And everything was the best at this moment to Tang. Better than it had been in a long while. Just sitting there, enjoying a simple but well made meal with his beloved. Watching him enjoy cooking that wasn’t his own and looking so content and happy and smiling in a way that just made him look so... amazing.

“You know that movie MK had us watch the other day?” He asked suddenly, drawing Pigsy’s attention to him. “The animated musical one?”

“Yeah?”

“If I had three wishes I’d spend all of them to make you smile.”

Pigsy looked at him for a moment before he chuckled, blush taking over his face once again as he buried half of his face into one of his hands.

“Sappy dork.”

“You love me.”

“Yeah... I do love you, Tang.”

“I love you too, Pigsy.”

[punkpresentmic]

Traitor Aizawa AU Pt. 4 — 1, 2, 3

cw for implied sexual content, but nothing that warrants a mature rating

Hizashi digs back into his husband’s case, & it's clear investigators still don’t particularly WANT him to—partially for distrust, partially for the still-secret letters, he's sure. But he does what he can to show them that he wants this mess cleaned up. They reluctantly give him what they have to chew on: not much—a vague lead, an unreliable source. It puts Hizashi no closer to the letters or why they were taken.

The investigators only keep an eye on him until they get bored &/or annoyed, judging him airheaded or harmless. Once he’s away from prying eyes, he sets off on his own; Hizashi is already in deep with less-than-legal activities lately. He sneaks into their evidence archives.

The letters aren’t there.

Hizashi skips out of the police station before he’s discovered sticking his nose where it shouldn’t be. He has to get back to school anyway. After teaching English & having a shitty, lonely lunch, an idea occurs to him. If it was Nezu who suggested the letters be taken… would Nezu have kept the letters?

So Hizashi sets out about a new kind of heist. Nezu is in a meeting & the principal’s office is locked, but Hizashi as a tenured faculty member has access to anywhere in UA. Of course it’ll record that he entered, but that’s not Hizashi’s concern right now. He goes through every file in Nezu’s cabinet. Nothing. His heart sinks. Then he notices Nezu’s desk drawer has a simple lock on it. As a last ditch effort, he picks it with a bobby pin. There’s a bowl of candy inside. It’s the only idea he has left to pick it up & see if there’s anything underneath &.... Sure enough, just like in a bad movie the drawer has a false bottom. Under it, there’s a neat stack of letters bound with a rubber band.

They’ve all been opened.

Hizashi immediately seeks out the one marked with his name, tugs it out, skims it. It’s everything Shouta said it was. It ends with I love you. The script is shaky. Hizashi’s heart is in his throat. Oh, Shou…

Nezu coughs; Hizashi nearly jumps out of his skin. “You know,” Nezu says, “a locked drawer in a secure area might also be reasonably assumed to be alarmed.”

Hizashi meets his eyes, lets the letter fall to the desk. “Care to explain what these are?”

Nezu is impossible to read. “They are exactly what they appear to be: letters left behind by Aizawa Shouta, confiscated at the time of their discovery.”

“He left me a letter,” Hizashi repeats, careful to reign in his voice as he shakes his head. “He left his students letters. We all thought he left without even saying goodbye.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Nezu notes, tone even and gentle. “You are aware he left a clear & concise description of his crimes. I do believe that’s going to be important to remember going forward.”

Hizashi grinds his teeth at that. “Why wasn’t I made aware of this?”

Nezu backs down with a sigh. He climbs into his desk chair, Hizashi moving to stand on the other side of the desk. Nezu gazes sadly down at the pile of letters. “There were two main factors we had to consider. Firstly, at the earliest stages of the investigation, it was unclear if you or any of the students had secret involvement—the letters could have held nefarious communications.” Nezu took a breath. “We no longer believe that after thorough analysis. Though perhaps this should not come as a surprise—if there was anything we knew about our Eraserhead, it was his steadfast aversion to extraneous details or wasting time.”

Hizashi’s heart throbs painfully in his chest.

“As for the second reason: the emotional & psychological impact that these letters could have on our community. Our hero students with their steadfast trust in their instructor were particularly vulnerable. & you, Yamada, are not an exception to a similar emotional vulnerability. In the interest of damage control, in doing my best to hold the UA community together & keep it from further collapse, the letters were confiscated promptly & without notification of their existence.”

Hizashi’s fingernails dig into his palm, fists clenched to stop his hands shaking. “I’m an adult. & a pro. I don’t need the same protection as 15 year-olds. We’re talking about my husband. I think I’m entitled to some transparency.”

“I never said you weren’t,” Nezu placates. “But I wanted you to receive this information once we had a better understanding of the situation. & once you had emotionally stabilized from what I’m sure is an unforgivable betrayal.”

‘Unforgivable.’ That wording was purposeful, Hizashi knew. It almost begged him to dispute it.

Hizashi spread his hands. “So you don’t think I’m emotionally stable? & you let me keep watching over the next generation?” His laugh was intended to be dry at most, but it comes out nearly hysterical.

Nezu sighs again. “Yamada, you were hurting. & you refused the counselling we recommended. You chose to work through your pain. We were not going to deny you that.”

“Principal, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m not really buying that you’d have shown me these letters even if I had gone to counselling.”

Nezu hummed. “What do you know about Eraserhead’s motivations, Yamada?”

He forces a smile through gritted teeth. He shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says, almost sunny. “Beyond the fact that he has them.”

“Indeed. I’d hoped you & this community would have time to heal. & I’d hoped in the meantime the investigation could provide further insight into why this happened. The rhetoric with which these letters were written is not something that can be overlooked.”

“I thought you said there weren’t any secret messages.”

“Codes & clandestine communications, no. Ulterior motives & further lies & attempted manipulation, on the other hand…” Nezu meets his eyes. “There’s a level of cunning with which these crimes were committed right under our noses, a level of plotting that got past even me. You must understand I am only trying to do what I can to protect my students & staff from any further harm or puppeteering at the hands of villains.”

Hizashi has to look away. He monitors his breathing, lets his head hang when it doesn’t come back under his control. Fists and teeth and heart clenched against all of this. Too much. It’s too much.

There’s a paw on his arm, then. “I’m sorry, Yamada. This was not an action intended to be harmful. You’re hurting. Of course you are. But you are also strong & intelligent. Meet with a counsellor. Talk to someone. Kayama is worried for you; that much is clear. There are people who care & want to help you through this. Please, Yamada. Don’t shoulder this alone.”

Hizashi does try seeing the counsellor. He leaves within fifteen minutes.

The next time Shouta arrives, as he said he would, he’s still absolutely ragged. But it doesn’t seem like he’s gotten worse. Aside from the smell. Hizashi has him take a shower. Shouta stepping into the room towel-drying his unruly hair in Hizashi’s fluffy robe is somewhere between endearing & heartbreaking. Hizashi pats the spot on the bed beside him. Shouta sits.

He tries asking again about the why, about the what caused you to do this. Again, Shouta can’t talk about it. Maybe soon, Shouta says noncommittally.

Hizashi relays the story about finding the letters, about reading his, about the confrontation with Nezu. Shouta looks concerned. Hizashi shakes his head, reiterates that he doesn’t quite have it in him to believe that Shouta is a villain here. But he can’t believe this blindly after all that’s happened. He needs information. Because this doesn’t make sense for the man he knows. Shouta nods. “I know.”

“Then why can’t you give me something to work with here?” Hizashi whispers, & they’re close.

“Two reasons,” Shouta breathes between them. “The first being that it would put me in danger of not being able to do what I need to do.” Then he gives Hizashi a small, shitty smile. “& the second is that if I tell you, you might try to come with me.”

Hizashi hums, drinking this in. “If I did, maybe you’d have someone to make sure you had your eye drops.”

It startles a snort out of Shouta, & his husband laughing in his bed is the most beautiful thing he’s seen in months, & Hizashi knows he’s already too far gone, & Hizashi doesn't hesitate when he kisses him this time.

They sink deeply into it immediately. It’s been so long. Too long. Hizashi makes a move to take it further—it’s been too long—& Shouta pulls back to start on the ‘I haven’t proven myself to you, I’ve done nothing to deserve your trust, etc etc’ spiel. Hizashi wants none of it. & frankly he’s a little sick of people making decisions ‘for his own good.’

& he sure as hell isn’t going to let his husband get away without knowing that he’s wanted here, that he’s missed, desired too. Hizashi tells him as much.

Ultimately they fall together easily, if not guiltlessly. There’s a heaviness between them even as they press desperately close, a weight to their actions. It’s a certain relief—this shared knowledge that they’re still them, or at least willing to try. ‘Deserved’ or not, to Hizashi it’s like catching a glimpse of the Sun after days trapped underground—too bright to look at directly, yet simultaneously the most sublime relief.

Hizashi is naked in Shouta’s lap, Shouta’s face buried in his chest. When Hizashi comes down from basking in the afterglow, it’s to realize that Shouta isn’t just trembling under him. Shouta's eyes are too dry these days to make actual tears, but the shuddering & quiet, hiccupping sobs are unmistakable.

Hizashi shushes him gently, kisses his eyes, whispers about not straining them more, about how he’s got him, how he’s here, how he’s not going away, how he loves him. How they’re going to get through this together. Hizashi lays them down, holding him near, stroking his hair. This time, it’s Shouta who falls asleep in his arms.

He’s still gone by morning.

(pt. 5)

[niksixx]

Plus One

FINALLY!!! After a few months’ hiatus, I am proud to announce the ending of Plus One. It has been a pleasure writing this for you. Please enjoy part 7, and don’t forget to leave feedback. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pia’s POV

I take one look at Josh and Jackie, and I can feel the love on every level. It’s the kind of love that can make you shake with envy and question whether everyone can find it.

And when they kiss for the first time as husband and wife, the church erupts into applause from the guests, hoots and hollers from the wedding party. There’s a few tears sliding down the apples of my cheeks and before I can flick them away with my finger, I feel the gentle touch and warmth from Nikki’s finger brushing away the salty tears. He gives me a small smile before turning his attention back to the bride and groom.

He hasn’t spoken much to me today despite being my plus one to my own cousin’s wedding. I question whether he’s just in a mood, knowing I haven't done anything to cause this distance between us. It’s Josh and Jackie’s day after all. I don’t want to be preoccupied with my own drama, if that’s even what you could call it.

The reception hall gleams with silver, white, and gold for their Christmas wedding, and it looks like something out of a Hallmark movie. Cocktail hour, luckily, isn’t as awkward as I’d imagined it would be. I took the time to introduce Nikki to my distant relatives and close family, and he managed to charm each person he met. Whether his hand was entwined with mine or lightly resting on the small of my back, he sold our relationship, especially to Aunt Rita, who made Nikki promise her a dance.

We made small conversation at dinner, not as much as I would have liked. There was definitely something going on with Nikki, and I vowed to get to the bottom of it before the night ended. Even with his hand resting on my inner thigh under the table, I wasn’t satisfied.

After dancing with Aunt Rita, Nikki had found me and guided me to the dance floor. With his hands linked around my waist, my own entwined around his neck, we slowly swayed to the song. I should have kept my mouth shut and enjoyed the feeling of being safely tucked in Nikki’s arms, but the words came out before they’d registered in my brain.

“Are we okay?”

I wasn’t surprised by the confusion on his face. It was clear he didn’t want me to know something was wrong, so the confusion was quickly replaced by a look of neutrality. “Is there a reason we shouldn’t be?”

For some reason, I can’t look him in the eye. “Something is off with you, Nikki. You’ve barely spoken to me today. Actually, forget today. The past few months have been more awkward between us than anything I can remember, starting after Janielle’s party. So, I’m asking you, are we okay?”

“Pia--.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“Pia,” Nikki says firmly, fingers digging into my back to grab my attention. His eyes bore into mine, and for only a split second my breath is caught in my throat. “Not now. Please.”

My jaw ticks angrily, and with as much subtlety as I can master, I break away from Nikki’s hold and excuse myself from the reception. Frustrated tears cloud my vision as I quickly race outside the reception venue into the dark night.

“Pia.” Heavy footsteps chase after me.

I bite my tongue and keep walking, not willing myself to answer him.

“Pia!”

“Fuck you!”

It stuns us both. Nikki retracts, mouth pressed together in a hard, thin line. My chest heaves with every strangled breath, and I will myself not to let the tears fall. There’s no chance I’ll let Nikki see me weak.

“What is your problem?” Nikki suddenly asks defensively.

“My problem?” I spit, crossing my arms. I look like a child, feel like a child, but hell if I’m not the angriest I’ve been in a long time. “My problem is that I don’t know what your problem is. For months, you’ve barely said a word to me. And then I confront you about it, and you have the nerve to try and shut me up?”

His jaw ticks, mirroring my anger. “I have a lot to say, but I don’t know where to start and I don’t want to do this here.” He grabs my hand and pulls me with him. I want to protest, but I’m finally getting some type of answer from him, so it’s best I keep my mouth shut.

The walk feels like forever, but when I finally glance up from my shoes, my brows furrow. We’re right smack in the middle of the garden behind the reception hall. It’s brightly lit and quiet with the exception of the soft drops from the fountain. It’s an oddly romantic setting for a somewhat hostile situation.

And he hasn’t let go of my hand yet. In fact, his grasp seems to have gotten tighter. Not that I mind. It’s the first genuine gesture he’s shown in weeks.

“Nikki, what are we doing here? I want to go inside.”

“Not yet,” he says softly, eyes dodging my gaze. “Just...not yet. I have so much going on inside my head right now, and there’s no starting point. Just scrambled thoughts that don’t make any damn sense to me.”

I sigh, pursing my lips together. “Then start with the most important thought.”

No hesitation, just honesty. “I’m in love with you.”

My spine straightens. Blood rushes to my cheeks, my ears, all the while my brain fails to process the words. “I--You...what?”

He laughs a little, dropping his hand from mine. It’s not followed by anything else, just silence. He stares at me instead, hoping I’ll say something, or do something, but the only thing I can do is channel all my pent up feelings into strength, and before either one of us realizes it, Nikki flies backward into the fountain.

I’m dazed myself, looking from one outstretched arm to the other as Nikki resurfaces from the icy water. He stands, teetering a bit, before flicking his hair from his eyes. “Part of me thinks I deserve that.” There’s a wicked gleam in his eyes. “And the other part thinks you’re entirely too dry.”

The cold water sloshes over me as I’m pulled into the fountain. I flail my arms wildly when I’m met with the cool December air, and I manage to push myself to a stand. Fists balled, I use my knuckles to wipe my eyes, no doubt resembling a drenched raccoon. “I could kill you!”

“You started it!” Nikki retorts, throwing his arms in the air. It’s the truth, so I say nothing back. All I can do is stare, and when I stare long enough, a smile breaks through. And a laugh falls from Nikki’s grin, and soon we’re laughing at each other, laughing at this fucked up situation we’ve found ourselves in.

And when the energy between us settles into calmness, I speak. “I remember the moment when I first knew I was in love with you.” Nikki’s eyes narrow, daring me to go on. “Junior year. When I first started making my own lipstick. You sat with me for hours and let me try them on you.”

The corners of his lips tilt slightly at the memory. “The purple one stained my mouth for days.”

I cringe. “Yeah, not my best formula. Sorry about that.”

Nikki laughs, and then it’s silent all over again. I tug my lip between my teeth anxiously. I wait and wait and wait for him to say something. Minutes later when I turn to step out of the fountain, I hear a strangled voice. “We should have been together from the start.”

“You never gave me a chance, Nikki.” I say, hurt. “And to this day, I don’t understand why. What did Charlotte, Viv, and Amanda have that I didn’t? What is so wrong with me that I wasn’t worthy of your love?”

He closes the space between us, chest just inches from mine as his hands cup my cheeks. “There has never been a damn thing wrong with you. I never thought I was worthy of you, so I settled for less. We come from two different worlds P, and I’ve always known you deserve everything good in this life, but I don’t know if I am capable of being the man that gives it to you.”

I reach out to hold his cheeks instinctively. He relaxes under my touch, but he can’t look at me. “It doesn’t hurt to try, right?”

“I wouldn’t know where to start,” he answers defeatedly.

“Well, you’ve been doing a damn good job over the last few months with the exception of ignoring me for the last few weeks,” I chuckle, hoping to lighten the mood. I bite my lip nervously. “I know the fake dating was fake to you. But...it was real for me.”

“It was fake at first,” Nikki says truthfully, hands coming up to his face to cover mine. “And then when I started falling, shit I fell hard. And the only way I knew how to deal with it, was run, hide, and try to ignore what I felt. But I can’t do that anymore. I am in love with you, Pia Jane. I am so in love with every piece of you. And maybe if you’re up for it,” he nudges my nose with his, “We can try again. For real this time.”

We’re still in the fountain, standing in chilly knee deep water in the cold December air, but I can’t feel a thing except the warmth that comes from my heart that is so full of love.  

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “The Final Word”

Well, we made it to the finale, everyone, and if you're reading this it seems you've survived the watching of it too. Barely. To say that some questionable choices were made across these 20 minutes is... an understatement.

But before we delve into the episode, I want you to cast your mind back to November 7th, 2020. A horrible year that heralded a horrible RWBY volume. There, coming off the shaky writing of Volume 7, I posed a number of questions and concerns that the show needed to tackle, with the promise that we would return to these expectations in four months time. Now, here we are! Let's refresh everyone's memory, yeah?

Taken directly from that recap, what RWBY promised us, through various teasers and Q&As, included:

Emphasis on Ruby’s leadership and how Summer’s death has impacted her

Insight into Ren and Nora’s flaws

May Merigold will supposedly have a larger part

More information about The Long Memory (Ozpin’s cane)

Theme of the volume is that you can respect someone but that doesn’t necessarily mean you agree with them

Very short timeline (supposedly just two days)

Yang in particular is very suspicious and distrustful

And you know what? They did all this. In the spirit of being fair and honest to this show, RWBY succeeded in delivering on everything they promised... it was just our foolishness that expected that these ideas would be delivered well. Ruby's leadership took center stage in the form of her hiding for multiple episodes and then others telling her she's still The Best before the plot dropped a solution into her lap... one she could have used at any point prior to this. Summer's death certainly has an impact, though it's an impact born of a crazy reveal that Summer likely isn't dead, but turned into a horrifying grimm monster. Ren and Nora both delve into their flaws, but heaven forbid either grow from that reflection. Ren learns that if he pushes past his primary flaw of keeping his emotions buried and actually expresses his doubts for once, he'll be yelled at and ignored until he admits how wrong he was. The "real" flaw is being a bad friend, with "bad friend" equaling "Not agreeing with Ruby 100%." Meanwhile, Nora considers that maybe she shouldn't rush in recklessly and hit things with her hammer... which is why she rushes in recklessly, hits something with her hammer, gets grievously injured, and is told that this is just who she truly is. No growth there, not unless we count her sudden desire to figure out who she is without Ren... but that exploration hasn't started yet. Too bad she wasn't the teammate separated at the end of the volume!

Meanwhile, May did indeed have a larger role to play, one I quite liked, it's just that this role — like all the others — inevitably circled back to realizing how wonderful Ruby is. May challenges Ruby to make a decision, but instead of being the catalyst for Ruby's growth, May becomes another forgotten side character who does a sudden about-turn regarding her perspective, leaving the group with the contradictory message that Ruby is actually doing her best, she's just a kid, no need to try any harder... everyone who claimed otherwise up until now was mistaken. May is another Cordovin. She's another Qrow. She's another Maria.

Fun fact: we don't even know if Maria is alive right now. That's how little she means to the show!

Actually, wait... anyone remember this nonsense from Volume 7? 

I was too lazy to change the date.

Moving on, Ozpin's cane turned out to be a stakes obliterating bomb that came out of nowhere, makes no sense logistically — how do battles store energy that only hurts grimm? — yet nevertheless seems to have killed Hazel? It's a disaster of unanswered questions. Similar to the disaster of our two day timeline when, I'm fairly sure, we've had an unnatural number of sunrises and sunsets. I'll have to take a look back at the volume as a whole now that it's complete to be sure of that though. As for our themes... did we really explore the idea of respecting someone even if you disagree with them? Because Ironwood wasn't shown any respect. Ren wasn't shown respect. I think the closest we got was Oscar calmly validating Yang's worry about getting buddy-buddy with Emerald, but the whole point there was that Yang was wrong. She wasn't wrong, but that's what the text would have you believe. She is indeed "very suspicious and distrustful," but that's hardly unjustified in these circumstances. I'm still boggling at the fact that it took the group three volumes for forgive Ozpin, even while he was actively working to assist them, yet I-helped-destroy-Beacon-and-tried-to-kill-everyone-you-love Emerald is the group's new BFF after she... ran away with Oscar? She didn't save him, she just went along for the ride. At the very least we might have gotten a scene where Penny was like, "Hey, why are you all laughing with the woman who just tried to kill my dad?"

But oh yeah, the story doesn't remember Pietro exists either. His daughter is DEAD and he hasn't been on screen since Episode Five, let alone there when she passes.

I had my own list going in, including such expectations as "Ozpin bb you got done dirty please acknowledge this" and "Queer baiting, queer baiting… you’re on thin ice at this point, RWBY. Just skate on over to the queer snack bar before you fall straight into the lake." Obviously these needs were not met.

So what, given this mess of expectations, did we end up with?

Our finale — for some reason — breaks the one word title trend with "The Final Word." It's an expression that refers to the final word in an argument or a discussion, the idea of winning by making a last, devastating point. It can also refer to making the final decision on something, which is the best way I'm able to apply the title to this episode (outside of any “final” comparisons). Penny's death is certainly all about choice and making some kind of decision... but on the whole, this title doesn't feel like it fits well. Not like "Worthy" or "Creation" or "Risk." The two latter titles had obvious connections to the episode in question through dialogue and plot, while the former was a deliberate callback to Watts' speech. "The Final Word" feels... less obvious in what it’s trying to say.

That's a minor nitpick though. Let's get into the meat of the episode.

We open on the grimm whale still disappearing, which is weird. I get that it's massively bigger than any other grimm we've seen, but they all turned to dust near instantaneously and it's been, what? At least an hour since Oscar blew it up? Likely longer when we factor in their walk back to the manor, the fight with Ironwood, fixing Penny, and this entire evacuation. It certainly makes for a nice visual, but like so many details in RWBY, it raises unnecessary questions along the way.

The important bit though is that amidst the whale carcass a blob of evil is swirling about. Salem, obviously. 

She’s not reforming in time to actually do anything though, don't worry.

Instead, we cut to the Ironwood vs. Winter fight and there's at least some dialogue this time. Ironwood yells that he's sacrificed everything to keep Remnant safe. Winter yells back that he actually sacrificed everyone else. Obviously, Ironwood should be called out for things like, you know, his unprompted murders, but instead they have Winter listing stuff that she was never shown to have a problem with before. The embargo? "Squeezed Mantle until it broke?" She, as Ironwood's second hand, understood and supported both the decision to close the border and the need to collect resources for a plan designed to take out Salem. I hate that no only did she turn without an ounce of hesitation or grief, but now they're having her act as if Ironwood forced these decisions on everyone, rather than everyone supporting him through them. We all remember Volume 7 when Ruby pressured him to finish Amity, right? And in trust RWBY fashion, most of these words are meaningless. Mantle "broke"? What does that mean? The class disparity did not come about through Ironwood: that's been in the works for generations. The lack of resources made things harder, yes, but when they were reclaimed by Robyn nothing improved. Watts is the one who turned off the heat and Salem attacked Atlas, leaving Mantle alone. Now, all the citizens have escaped through magical portals. So how is Mantle "broken" exactly? More importantly, why is Winter upset over this vague, nonsensical dilemma when she could be yelling about Ironwood wanting to bomb Mantle?

Again: this woman watched Ironwood shoot the councilman, shrugged, and continued to believe in him up until she realized his bomb threat was real. That was one of the main reasons why I thought the councilman might be alive, with Ironwood only shooting a warning shot past him. Because this is how you react to a good person unexpectedly killing someone else

whereas this is what we got from Winter and Harriet.

Hell, Weiss has more of a reaction to Yang telling Ruby things aren't super great right now.

So either Ironwood didn't do something that bad, thereby justifying these tame reactions (unlikely, given where his character ended up), or we should believe based on the animation that everyone was super chill with him killing an unarmed civilian. Which is then directly contradicted when they're like, "You're going to shoot Marrow? Bomb a city?? How could you do such horrible things??? 😲" Friends, buddies, fictional pals... you already watched him murder a dude.

The point is, there's a lot for Winter to be upset about, but she's not upset about that. There's a lot that Winter herself believed in, but the writing has forgotten that. This entire arc went off the rails a volume ago.

Also, why is Ironwood fighting with that giant gun? This is his final battle, presumably ever, and he's wielding this awkward, sluggish weapon we saw him randomly pick up two episodes ago? Let him use his regular guns! Give us a fantastic battle like he had with Watts! Instead, RWBY's final showdown consists of him using this no-name weapon as a unwieldy club in some of the most boring choreography we've seen to date. It doesn't help that this fight needs to share time with three others. Instead of an epic showdown, we're given glimpses of the battle before continually cutting away from it. 

During that first cut we return to the Team RWBY battle where Penny, doing her best to stay out of Cinder's reach, is whisked away on Weiss' wasp.

Too bad she didn't do that for Yang...

Jaune and Nora watch this horror unfold until Jaune says, "Priority one!" and they split. Except... what is priority one exactly? Helping the civilians? I guess, because they don't enter the fight until the very end of it, when everyone else seems to have made it to Vacuo. And you know what, I like that. For once it feels like the group — or at least the B Team — is acting like huntsmen, putting the needs of the people over their own, personal desires. I'm sure Nora wants to help the group after Yang's (presumed) demise and that Jaune would like nothing more than to get his hands on Cinder, but they put those grievances aside to do the work they signed up for. Good job!

My only real gripe is that we don't really see this struggling in the animation, I'm just assuming it's there. In particular, there's a moment when Jaune sends Nora through the portal for reinforcements — not knowing they can't return — and they seem a little too jovial when, by this point, three friends have died.

There's letting your cast be supportive, and then there's having them ignore that three teammates have perished in an abyss. It really doesn't help to sell the idea that Yang, Ruby, and Blake are in any danger here.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Penny tells Weiss that since Cinder is really just after the Maiden powers, she can buy the rest of the group time to escape. Weiss, obviously, isn't fond of this idea... and then the both of them are blasted off the wasp by Cinder's fire. Which they deserve, frankly. They're just having this casual conversation about sacrifice while in the middle of a battle. Did they somehow forget that Cinder can fly too?

Note that multiple attacks from Cinder, another blast, and a hard landing on the pathway gives their auras a knock, but doesn't break them. The primary defense for Yang's aura shattering in a single, simple hit was that everyone is exhausted and running on little to no power... yet here the rest of the cast is, tanking multiple hits as we've come to expect. There is no explanation for Yang's defeat except that the writers chose to ignore the rules of their world for a dramatic death scene... even though that drama was erased a week later as half our team falls into the void too.

We'll get to that though. For now, Cinder corrects Penny's belief with "I want it all" and proceeds to try to finish them off, only for Blake to arrive, having made her choice from last episode about who to help. It's a legitimately nice attack, but I happened to pause at the bEST MOMENT

Anyway.

We leave that fight to return to Qrow and Harriet who have, off screen, started an entirely different battle. What I mean is, last we saw Qrow had broken through the windshield of the airship, roughly pinned Harriet, and was taunting her about getting the fight she wanted. Now, suddenly, he's going “You’re making a mistake, Harriet, what happened to Clover—” as if he's been trying to talk her down this whole time. It's jarring, especially when we consider that Qrow had a volume long "kill Ironwood" arc that was dropped because... Robyn reminded him that murder is bad? RWBY feels like a storytelling pinball machine. Characters bounce from one personality to the next, one perspective and another, round and round until you don't know where they'll end up.

Harriet screams for Qrow to just shut up already and honestly? Same. I love Qrow, he's one of my favorites, but I can't deny that he's been done dirty like so many others since Volume 6. I love who Qrow was, not the mess RWBY has created the last few years.

Time to delve back into fic after recapping!

Sadly though, this strange dialogue wasn't the only "wtf" moment. Harriet is still trying to drop the bomb — which is its own mess of confusing motivations — when Vine and Elm show up on Harriet's ship. Elm begs Harriet not to do this "because you’re our friend!”

Am I glad that they finally acknowledged that the Ace Ops have always been friends? Sure, but why did we spend two volumes claiming otherwise? They were friends, a fantastic team, then Harriet announces that's a lie and we get a bunch of "Team RWBY is superior because they're actually friends" messages. Except this entire time we're still watching the Ace Ops be kind and playful with one another. But they're not friends, the story says. Not friends as they fight these battles. Not friends as they grieve for Clover. Definitely not friends as they react in horror at Ironwood nearly shooting Marrow. No, there's nothing there... until Elm claims there is! Then Harriet reacts in shock. I have friends?

Except Elm was labeled the one "just following orders" by Yang. Elm is the one who shook off Vine after the whale exploded. This isn't the story of one character, Harriet, thinking she was alone and then realizing that people do care for her, this is a story that, seemingly at random, had this group being BFFs or acting like they hated each other — and at each point the visuals are contradicted by the story's message. When they act like friends, we're told they're not friends. When they don't act like friends, we're told they really have been this whole time. I mean, do any of them even care that Marrow teamed up with Qrow and Robyn to take them out five minutes ago? All three were going along with Ironwood's scheme until they were physically stopped, but now Elm is convinced this is a bad decision she needs to talk Harriet down from with the power of friendship?

None of these characters are characters, they're just slapped together reactions based on whatever the plot needs. Who is Elm? I've got no clue. Her personality changes every episode.

Also, love that Qrow moves to stop the bomb from dropping and Harriet screams at him to "Get out of the way!" rather than just... attacking him? She even throws her hands out like she's having a temper tantrum. This feels like schoolyard bickering, not a life or death struggle.

Even though, you know, the audience is aware that the people of Mantle have already been evacuated and Qrow's group is aware that Atlas is falling on top of Mantle as they speak, so... why does the bomb matter? It's going to, what? Destroy the city thirty seconds before Atlas does? Oh no, the horror.

Things then, if you can believe it, get even worse. The bomb is still about to drop, so instead of doing anything to stop it — I mean seriously, we know it takes four people to shoulder the bomb's weight, but you're telling me Qrow and a reformed Harriet can't snag it in a pinch? — Qrow sits there, looks at Clover's pin... and the bomb careens towards the side of the airship instead, stopping.

Because I guess Qrow has good luck now? Or always did and somehow never noticed it? Or his semblance evolved?? Again, we don't know, but it's a bad moment any way you slice it, imo. Qrow has always been defined as the guy with a bad luck semblance and, much like Penny's android struggles, the allure was in watching him overcome those challenges, not having the show erase the challenge entirely. Especially when we don't even understand how it was erased. Qrow just... stops drinking, stops caring for Ironwood, stops wanting to kill Ironwood, stops causing bad luck, I guess. RWBY takes major character traits and flips them off like a light switch, leaving the audience with no emotional tether. We didn't watch Qrow overcome his drinking, or realize he can't bear to kill Ironwood, or discover a way to live life with the horrible hand he was dealt, he just blinks one day and those things are gone. Why? No one is sure. Not even the writers, I'd wager, because otherwise they would have written explanations into the text.

Many in the fandom insist that any basic information provided by the story amounts to "hand holding" when in fact there is a massive difference between the sort of unnecessary exposition that bogs down a tale, and having facts enough for the audience in its entirety to be on the same page about what is actually happening. For example, recently someone argued strongly that the "Penny is human" take is incorrect because Penny isn't human, she has an inhuman body made entirely of aura... yet where in the world does this exist in the story? Ambrosius may have been unsure about what Penny would be prior to removing her robotic parts, but that ambiguity is gone once her body forms, the equivalent of worrying about that gun only for a flag with 'BANG' to appear instead of a bullet. Worrying about something doesn't mean that something actually occurred. Penny appears human, expresses human sentiments, and then, this episode, dies as a human. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck and succumbs to the mortal peril that all ducks face... it's probably a duck. As I said in a recent ask, I implore the fandom to stop writing RWBY's scripts for them. Or rather, do so in some amazing fanfics. Don't do it on critical posts as a means of insisting that your revision is canon.

So Qrow has good luck now, maybe, but this character change doesn't amount to anything because Watts remotely starts the bomb's countdown.

At least he’s entertaining and competent. We had that for a time. 

Back to the main battle, Neo is kicking Ruby's ass. Why? Because there's no consistency in power levels in this show. The ancient woman who hasn't fought in decades dances circles around Neo, highlighting how weak she supposedly is, yet now Neo dances circles around our main character. None of us should expect fights to follow the logic of the world, only what drama the plot wants to stir up. Ruby is eventually knocked down from a hard hit — yet her aura's intact! — and is saved at the last second by Weiss tossing Neo into one of the portals. 

Far more of a problem than the power leveling is that Ruby gives no indication here that Neo just murdered her sister. Again, that's what the characters are meant to believe, yet Ruby is as stoic as she would be fighting a bunch of White Fang grunts. If you showed this scene to a RWBY fan on its own and asked, "What do you think happened prior to this?" the answer would be, "Uh... nothing? Ruby is just fighting Neo like she did on the airship in Volume 3." Nothing about this scene — from dialogue to animation — sells the idea that Ruby just lost the person most important to her in the world.

When we do finally mention Yang, it's Weiss who goes, “Come on, we have to do this for Yang” and the delivery is... meh. Honestly, I normally don't pay much attention to the voice acting, but I had a problem with most of Weiss' lines this episode. The "Leave her alone!" during this fight and later a "Get back!" as she attacks Cinder both fell really flat for me. Given the devastation and charged emotion that's supposed to be here, we can't give her anything better than generic cries that, again, she’d throw at any grunt? In that later scene the animation absolutely helps sell Weiss' distress, but the dialogue is common and the delivery has no emotional punch, leaving it feeling like Yang is just hanging out in Vacuo and they promised they'd beat the baddies before catching up with her. No one but Blake is acting like Yang died.

In fact, we see more emotion from Ruby when Weiss shoves her back, taking the brunt of Cinder's blast.

Weiss' aura breaks, not that that's a danger or anything. Everyone falls before they're injured, Winter gets the Maiden powers, Ren barely has to fight. Losing aura in this show used to be a moment of peril, where just last volume Winter was bruised, bleeding, and now needs an assistive device because she had to continue a battle with no aura. Now it's a joke. Aura breaks left and right across the volume with no repercussions attached to that.

We see a bit of the Blake and Penny vs. Cinder fight where Cinder blasts Blake off the edge. Penny rushes after her because at least one character remembered that they can fly.

Ruby, meanwhile, remembers that she can fly when it benefits her. After getting hit down onto a lower level and watching Crescent Rose plummet, she taunts Neo into an attack with a move that's actually quite good. I like the confidence with which Ruby riles her up and I like the strategy of darting behind Neo to knock her off the path instead. “Whatever you wanted, I hope it was worth it."

The only thing I don't like is that this speed and ingenuity had to disappear to justify Yang falling.

Cinder breaks Ruby's aura from behind though, sending her over too and grabbing onto Neo's leg. In an obvious moment born of the trope, it looks as if Cinder is reaching to help Neo, only for her to snag the Relic instead. “You should have never threatened me," she tells Neo and to Ruby: "you should have never been born.” 

Love that they erased all that cool growth from last episode! And by "love" I mean "hate." As I said last recap, I'm not going to pretend that Cinder's character isn't riddled with problems, but realizing she was stronger by teaming up with Neo and Watts was one of the best things they've ever done for her. It made Cinder dangerous again and showed Watts' speech having a clear impact. It also made her more entertaining, creating a new dynamic among the three villains. Now though, Cinder is just... Cinder. The same boring, stupid Cinder we've had since Volume 4. She betrays Neo and then later betrays Watts.

So Cinder kicks Neo and Ruby both over the edge because why would we want to make her interesting? Neo falls, but Ruby has friends there to catch her! Unlike Yang. Jk. Weiss’ aura is gone and Blake actually tried both times, so major kudos for her. Using momentum supplied by Penny, she snags Ruby and hooks her weapon into one of the pathways... only for Cinder to cut the ribbon. Both plummet and once again Penny has a more believable reaction to all this, just like she did last week

Speaking of reactions, does anyone else find it weird that Cinder finally succeeded in killing Ruby and... doesn’t seem to care? 

No? Just me? 

At least we get that good animation with Weiss I was talking about before, even if the dialogue is lacking. I love that she snagged Blake's weapon and uses it to try and take out Cinder, shaking the whole time. Those are some great details. 

Back to the bomb, Qrow is trying to escape, but Harriet says there isn't enough time to get out of the blast range. "I've killed us all." Vine has the solution though, using his semblance to wrap up the airship, thus containing the blast when it goes off. His final words are to reassure Elm that he can give his life, "if it means saving all of my friends." Just in case you missed the part about the Ace Ops being super close this whole time. Even though they also weren’t. Trying to eat your cake too, RWBY? 

Frankly, I didn't feel much of anything during this scene, not when Vine made the sacrifice, nor when Elm and Harriet look on sadly while Robyn pilots them away (that's her contribution this episode). 

All I can say is, good on RWBY for not killing one of the three dark skinned characters, or just murdering the Ace Ops as a whole. What the story is going to do with them though, who knows.

Jaune and Nora have that ‘You can do it!’ moment after three of their friends have presumably been killed. I swear, about 80% of Jaune's scenes do not work tonally and oh boy, things only get worse from here.

First though, I like his entrance. He slams into the fight against Cinder and lines up with Penny and Weiss, who is still dual-wielding her and Blake's weapons. That's an epic shot.  

It looks as if they stand a decent chance against Cinder — Weiss' lost aura notwithstanding — except then Cinder's arm starts going crazy and she gleefully announces that Salem has returned.

Working on a time limit now, Cinder unleashes a volley of attacks that Penny steps in to protect the other two from. It's here that Cinder grabs hold with her grimm arm.

It's here that Penny dies. Again.

For the third time.

Friends, I am tired. This moment honestly deserves the most epic of rants, but that, in turn, requires energy. Energy? In this economy? Ha! That's hilarious. Taking this seriously though, the problem here can — as usual — be boiled down to a single question: What was the point?

Penny died in a horrible attack that shook the cast and audience both to their core.

That emotional impact was erased through her resurrection.

The resurrection did not create a new emotional impact for our heroes to grapple with.

Penny is given the Maiden powers, solidifying the fact that she's always been a "real girl."

That lesson was erased when the story decided to make her human for unexplained reasons (because no, she never needed to be human to survive the virus).

Penny then dies, passing the power to Winter... who was set to get the power in the first place.

We have, once again, come full circle. You can take Penny out of the story and nothing changes. Does Ruby lose any lessons or emotional growth? No. Does anyone survive who would have otherwise died? No. Does her getting the powers lead to someone unexpected snagging them upon her death? No. Penny's existence was filler. She was put in the story to take up time and, that done, was removed from the story once again. It's a choice that wouldn't be half as horrible if that filler hadn't done so much damage along the way.

First is the obvious: that Penny didn't deserve this. As a character, she didn't deserve to be brought back just to be killed off again, seemingly without narrative purpose, serving only to draw in viewers who RT knew loved the character. Second, keeping her in the story led to her entire arc unraveling. Initially, Penny died as an android in the world's eyes, but those who actually knew her — Ruby and Pietro — mourned the girl she really was. Now we have this horrible message that being a machine isn't real enough, so she has to die as a human being. It's a disservice to her character and, as an allegory for many minorities, downright insulting to the audience. Third, this offensive 'better to die as a human than live as a robot' message is wrapped up in the claim that Penny finally gets to choose something — “Let me choose this one thing. Trust me” — but she already did that when she chose to take the Maiden powers. We already had the better written version of this last volume!

And the fourth issue...well.  

Fourth and fifth are the real kickers. Fourth is that Penny's death was an assisted suicide. She explicitly asks Jaune to kill her so she can ensure she's thinking of the right person when she passes (never mind that her thoughts would probably be on Jaune while this is happening) and that's... pretty horrible. Look, I'm no purist. I like a great deal of dark, gritty stories whose plot exists to make us uncomfortable. That's a valuable emotion that fiction can generate. The problem is not that RWBY is tackling a sensitive topic, but that they aren’t tackling it well. Yes, they put in a content warning and (from what I've heard) a suicide helpline as well, but providing the already necessary resources is not the same thing as writing that kind of scene with respect and care. All of the above tells us that, no matter what RT may have intended, that respect and care weren't communicated to the audience. Like Yang, they didn't even bother to keep Penny's death within the rules of their world. Jaune is right there ready to heal her and Penny says no, there's supposedly not time.

Um... since when?

Jaune's aura boost is instantaneous. The second he amplifies aura is the same second the healing starts and their talk could have been spent saving Penny. There was certainly time to save Weiss in Volume 5. To have a character go, 'Nah, it's too late' when the solution is right there is the ultimate cop-out. Suddenly announcing that the solution will no longer work For Reasons is not a legitimate limitation and it's made doubly insulting that RT didn't simply use the limitations already available to them. Jaune has been running low on aura since the whale. He then expended a great deal of aura boosting Penny to keep the virus in check. Every other ally has had their aura broken in this fight so, there. That's your solution. Have Jaune take a few hard hits from Cinder, his aura breaks, and then when Penny is mortally wounded he no longer has a semblance to heal her. It's that easy! Yet instead they had Penny reject help so that she could ask to die. That's what's offensive here.

Finally, reason number five... why is this moment given to Jaune? That's another easy solution: Jaune has gone through the portal and can't get back to heal Penny. There. Done. But logistics aside, this scene should have gone to any other character. Who is Jaune to Penny? Or Penny to Jaune? No one! They don't have a relationship. I get that the writers didn't want any of the girls at her side because then it would be hard to justify Penny not passing the power to them (which I get: making one team member a Maiden changes the show drastically), but you know who should be there instead of Jaune?

Pietro.

Pietro, who built Penny as a weapon and who was never given the chance to apologize for that. Pietro, who told Ruby he could only rebuild her once more, setting up an expectation that he'd sacrifice himself for his daughter (despite the complicated racial issues that would bring up). Pietro, who watched Penny plummet and has no idea what happened to her, let alone that she's been made into a human girl. Pietro should have been at her side, saying goodbye to his child and helping her complete her last wish.

And it would be so very easy to pull off. All it takes is a single line where Penny remembers that her father exists, asking Ruby to ensure a portal opens up in Amity. There's a quick reunion along the pathways before Cinder attacks. We hear a cry of despair as Penny falls and she looks, seeing her father racing towards her, though she thought he'd already made it out. There, you’re done. We open ourselves up to a lot of attacks whenever we say, "Why didn't RWBY just do ____?" because those who vehemently defend the writing like to go, "Oh, you think you could write RWBY better?" and no, I don't. I struggle with long-form storytelling and massive casts. I don't think I could do justice to the sort of show RWBY wants to be, but I do think I'm a decent enough writer to spot when there are major problems like this. The question of "Why doesn't Penny remember that her beloved dad exists?" and "Why, out of that massive cast, is Jaune the one to do this deed?" are both things that a newbie writer can spot, and a sometimes okay writer can figure out how to fix them both simultaneously. A good writer will start thinking about themes — what might it mean for Pietro to kill the creation he made? — and a great writer will find a way to pull that off without having that insulting, discomforting feeling pop up. At this point, our RWBY crew feels less like new writers making mistakes (because they're not new, not at all), but rather just writers who haven't bothered to learn from their mistakes after eight years. That's a lot harder to watch.

Because putting Jaune here doesn't just mess with RWBY's internal rules (not using his semblance) and it's not just useless in terms of Penny's development (she doesn't know him outside of "dude who boosted my aura for an hour"), but it also falls back into a pattern I thought RWBY had finally broken from: making Jaune the story's emotional center. This is not the JAUNE show. It's the RWBY show. Yet here, once again, we have Jaune in the spotlight. Why, after a whole volume of Ruby avoiding making decisions, does Jaune finally make the hard call? Why, after a scene where Penny asked Ruby to kill her, does Jaune do that deed? Why, after a divisive arc where all the grief for Pyrrha went to Jaune, is Jaune now set to shoulder the grief of Penny? At least Jaune had a relationship with Pyrrha, even if Nora and Ren did too. Yet with Penny he seems to be there solely because the writers can't bear to keep him out of that center spot for long. All of Team JNOR make it through to Vacuo... except Jaune. Jaune falls into the abyss too because, if the show goes this route, we apparently can’t have a volume just about Team RWBY, the main characters. The main characters are separated from the rest of the team and it's Jaune, not Oscar and Ozpin with a connection to the lore, not Nora or Ren whose development now hinges on them learning who they are without the other, it's Jaune who follows the title characters into a new dimension. 

The issue is not whether Jaune deserves to grieve over the truly traumatic thing he just did now that he’s done it. He obviously does. The issue is the writers setting up a scenario where Jaune is situated to do that emotional work in the first place. 

I like Jaune as a character. I don't like how the writing uses him as a character. RWBY is built on the idea that these four girls are the heroes of this tale, not the expected blond, blue-eyed, sword wielding guy we’ve seen in so many other stories. So why does that guy get the most important scene of the finale? Yes, Jaune had much less screen time this volume than he did in the past, that’s a good thing given the number of important characters RWBY has to balance, but that hasn't erased the problem of him being given significant moments that should be going to title characters. Does Ruby’s team rescue Oscar and take on Salem? No, Jaune's team does. Does Ruby's team save Penny? No, Jaune's semblance keeps her grounded and then holds the virus off. Not everything is a problem — we've also got good choices like having Ruby defeat the Hound and Ruby's team take on Cinder for the majority of the fight — but that doesn't erase that Penny’s death wasn’t something Jaune should have been a part of. Not unless he was going to heal her. Doing better than they have in the past doesn't mean that RT isn't still slipping when it comes to giving him undeserved focus.

They took one of the most controversial characters, controversial because of how much emotional focus he's gotten in the past, and had him help a fan favorite commit suicide while he cried about it, showing more emotion for a near stranger than our title character showed for her sister. This is a character who, up until two or three episodes ago, had no connection to the victim and still has no reason to thematically be the one committing this act. That is why the fandom goes, “The crew loves Jaune and does everything they can to put him in the center of the action.” Ruby, as main character and Penny’s first friend, is the obvious choice here. Pietro, as Penny's father, would be a good choice too. Hell, Nora is a better option given their moment in the Schnee manor this volume. Or Winter given their moments in Volume 7! Have her escape Ironwood, find Penny, receive the powers, and then finish him off. Literally anyone would be better than Jaune, not because Jaune is a bad character, but because Jaune has no emotional stakes here and putting him in a position where he could heal Penny but doesn’t is massively stupid. No one should be surprised that a lot of the fandom is upset about this. It was one hell of a reach to give him this moment and, since Jaune's problem has always been getting too much screen time and emotional nuance compared to our main cast, it's no wonder this act brought up a lot of bad memories. RT fell back into an old pattern after two volumes of improvement and they did so at the worst possible time. 

The tl;dr is that Penny's third death is a writing travesty, just like her second. I shouldn't be surprised, given that this is the same volume that tortured a kid and the only thing they did with it was have him blindly trust his torturer... yet I find myself surprised nonetheless. Because Penny had such potential as an android Maiden and, as much as I personally hated it, potential as a former android learning to be human too. But why explore any of that when you can kill her off instead? Again.

As a final, far smaller note about this scene, we have the continuing problem of what purpose Cinder's arm is serving. If everyone recalls, its threat comes primarily from the fact that she can "siphon off" power from other Maidens.

She did it to Penny during the Amity battle and now she does it again, a great deal of green energy absorbed into Cinder. So what's left to give to Winter? Why doesn't Cinder become noticeably stronger with each successful theft? Like so much else in RWBY, we're told it exists without actually seeing the impact of that. Winter isn't a weaker Maiden for having lost power and Cinder isn't a stronger Maiden for having snagged it. It's just.. there, hanging out and looking vaguely menacing, I guess.

Outside of this unnatural not-transfer, we get to see how the power normally passes as Penny meets with Winter in some in-between place. It's a soft, heartfelt scene... with the exception that Winter says, “You were always the real Maiden at heart. I was just the machine. Just following orders."

I don't know how any viewer can doubt that RT now believes machinery = evil. Penny's machine body is magicked away so she can be a real-real girl. Yang announces that the arm she worked hard to make a part of herself is just "extra." The man with half a metal body is made this volume's villain and losing his second arm is, by the authors' own admission, a symbol of his lost humanity. Mercury with two metal legs remains a bad guy while Emerald and Hazel are hastily redeemed. Tyrian with his cybernetic tail is the most devoted crazy of the bunch. Maria, blind and in need of assistive lenses, is so forgotten by the story she was left in the tundra nine episode ago and won't be mentioned again until next volume (if then). Pietro, the guy in the wheelchair, is forgotten too, despite it being his daughter who dies on screen.

Now Winter, also bearing an assistive device, says that she's the real "machine" here and tells Penny, now human, that she was always the "real Maiden." I don't know what happened to make RT do a 180 lately, but the disability rep is no longer what it was.

Penny reassures Winter that she'll always be a part of her and then passes on, for good this time.

The rest of the episode feels lackluster, if I'm being honest. Images of Cinder beating Weiss are intercut with Ironwood beating Winter, getting her to a point where her aura breaks. 

But then the powers appear and, as we'd expect, she easily turns the tide. 

Gorgeous animation there. 

But RT once again rewrites earlier scenes by having Ironwood claim that the "destiny" he chose for Winter has finally arrived — isn't that Cinder's MO? — and Winter shoots back that he chose nothing, this was a "gift." Except, it was never about destiny or orders? This was why Weiss' anger in Volume 7 was ridiculous. She acted like Ironwood forced Winter to accept the powers and Winter told her point blank she chose this. Ironwood didn't decide anything, he offered and Winter chose... kind of like how Penny is choosing now. I hate how nearly all of Ironwood's character has been ignored or, during times like this, outright lied about to make him seem super duper evil. He tried to bomb a city! You don't need to make him seem evil anymore, that job is done! Like their sudden change regarding disability, RT now seems to be allergic to nuance. Heaven forbid Ironwood be allowed to have valid points like he did in Volume 3. No, if you've got an antagonist every single thing they've ever said must be twisted into a display of their evilness.

Unless you're Hazel, who Oscar trusts for #reasons. Unless you're Emerald, who the group immediately embraces. Unless you're Cinder, who gets to cry on a rooftop and secures the trust of her allies long enough to betray them again.

But Ironwood? Nah, screw that guy.

Salt aside, the fight is pretty boring. Winter literally just throws up a wall of ice and Ironwood's blast rebounds, taking him out.

Winter flies through the portal and we return to Jaune. His sword is broken by Cinder, so weapons should be quite the problem in Volume 9. 

There's a bit of sword vs. sword Maiden battling — this episode really pulled heavily from both Volume 3 and 5's finales — before Cinder gets smart again and attacks Weiss, currently trying to escape with Jaune. Weiss goes right off the edge and Winter isn't able to reach her in time. That's the entirety of Team RWBY, lost to the magical void.

Kudos to Winter's VA and the writing here though. This feels like an appropriate reaction to losing a sister. Screaming, sobbing, falling to her knees and beating the floor... Ruby, take notes.

A roar sounds through all the portals though, the sort of roar a pissed off witch might give. Jaune convinces Winter they need to leave Cinder behind, but before they can escape Cinder... makes a new wish?

Look, it works on all the major fronts. Cinder has the staff, check. We've basically established that Ambrosius can make an unlimited number of things per era, check. We know the previous thing disappears when a new wish is made, check. My only question is the timing. In all honesty, I'll have to re-watch the scene to be sure, but at the time it felt like the portals began disappearing almost the second Cinder left. Did she really have time to summon Ambrosius, deal with his explanatory nonsense, and get him to make a new wish without any fiddly concerns? Sure, fire is just fire, but it still felt like way too much happening too fast off screen.

Either way, the portals are gone and Winter makes it through in time, but Jaune does not. He falls through the void along with Team RWBY. And Neo.

Neo is the only addition I'm looking forward to here.

We get a few shots of our other characters as Winter arrives, saving the day by taking her grief out on the grimm. So glad something came of Ren breaking his aura again! Maybe they'll be more fighting at the beginning of Volume 9? If we see any of this group outside of 9's finale. My worst fear right now is that we'll spend an entire season away from the main action — remember how I said it would be stupid for Team RWBY to go on a side adventure while Salem is attacking the world? — and when they return there will have been some major time skip. Salem has destroyed most of Remnant, only pockets of survivors remain, it's all dark and dystopian... and oh look, every bit of character development happened off screen. How did Nora discover who she is without Ren? She did it while Team RWBY was gone. That merge we've been teasing for five years? That happened while you were gone too and, btw, Ozpin has ceased to exist. So sad, right? Not that anyone will actually mourn. Just take comfort in the fact that his last line was an "Oh no" about Ambrosius and his last major scene was apologizing for how the group treated him. Emerald's redemption? Off screen. Winter's grief? Off screen. Any and every one of these challenging beats to tackle can be waved away with, "We went through that arc while you were lost in the magical realm. Just get to know our new, improved selves now!"

Please, oh writing gods, don't let that happen.

Though I do worry because my last prediction came true.

But we all knew we’d end up here. My current theory? The portal should still be open at the vault. Winter will fight Ironwood, escape through it, and it will close right before he escapes too. He’ll fall with Atlas and everyone will act as if it’s some beautiful, poetic justice for him to perish with the city. 

Ironwood didn't make a break for the portal — too busy being unconscious — but we got everything else. Winter left him, he falls with Atlas, and this is some poetic justice, I guess. Really, it's just an undignified death. I'd hoped for a sympathetic kill, something that showed the characters still cared about him even if they knew Ironwood had to be stopped. Baring that, I'd hoped for an epic battle that took him out with style. Instead, no one even bothers to kill him. Ironwood is now beneath the entire cast, not even worth finishing off. Winter casually tosses his blast back at him and leaves. Cinder throws out a "that's checkmate" and leaves. I don't think Salem even looks at him. Ironwood (presumably) dies with no one and nothing, just a casualty of the city Team RWBY made fall. And I say "presumably" because the audience isn't even given the satisfaction of being sure he's passed on. Like Hazel, Ironwood's death is this weird, ambiguous moment that, based on the other character reactions, isn’t meant to be ambiguous. Is he dead? Most likely. Is it possible, based on what we've seen, that he'll pop up two volumes later like

Yes and, memes aside, that sucks. I don't want to be wondering for the next couple years if Ironwood survived and if they'll bring him back just to drag his character through the mud again. Move on.

But no, we don't even get that.

I've spoken at great deal about Ironwood both in these recaps and on my blog more generally. Last week, I said I'd covered it all and there was no need to rehash it all again. I stand by that, so let me just conclude this travesty with a final note: if your bad guy's final moment is using the last of his strength to point a gun at the actual villain of this story, and you don't realize the problem of how this image contrasts everything else the story has insisted about his character? … I just don't know what to do with that.

Oh, actually, final-final note: Ironwood’s semblance is officially a Schrodinger's semblance. It is both canonical and noncanonical simultaneously. Wooo. 

Cinder tells Salem she used her wish to "add more flames to the first of Atlas" and we cut to Watts, trapped in a roaring fire, unsuccessfully trying to break his way out. Wow, I hate that too! Next to Tyrian, Watts was our last remaining, entertaining villain. He carried a lot of the last two volumes and, I had hoped, was going to add some bright spots to the coming volumes as well. Apparently not.

Just another waste.

In addition to this casual, second murder of her ally, Cinder successfully convinces Salem that Neo killed Ruby and Ruby used the Lamp's last question, but she's back in her good graces since she snagged the Relics anyway. “You’ve done well, Cinder. Our work here is done" and they leave, blasting off like a less cool Team Rocket as Atlas plummets into Mantle.

Let's spend a second to tally things up then, shall we? What happens if Ruby, instead of throwing a moral fit, says, "You're right and we never should have lied to you, or betrayed you. But we want to help now. You get the Relics and the Maiden to safety in Atlas, if you can, we'll defend the people of Mantle"?

Well, they can still tell the world about Salem and call for help, much more easily now since Ironwood would likely just give them the code rather than them needing to spend an episode stealing it.

The Staff at least may not have ended up in Salem's hands and the group could have actually focused on getting the Lamp back (also solved if they'd been smart and just put it in the vault to begin with).

Mantle would still have been safe because Salem was never interested in Mantle to begin with.

Atlas wouldn't have fallen.

Ironwood wouldn't have died.

Penny wouldn't have died.

Even Vine wouldn't have died!

Our heroes unambiguously made the situation worse. Rather than banding together with their allies to fight the real enemy, Salem, they pushed until they made enemies of Ironwood and the Ace Ops both. Then they asked for help — which a pinch of logic said would never arrive — and twiddled their thumbs waiting for it. When it was clear none would come they...did nothing. They sat around, upset that the people were in danger, but not willing to do anything about it. It's only when one of their own, Penny, is threatened that they kick into high gear, hitting on a solution that they could have posed to Ironwood from the very start if no one liked the fly away plan. Yet instead of taking a few minutes to brainstorm other ideas — doing anything other than denouncing Ironwood to the rest of the group and attacking the Ace Ops — they spent two days sitting around, fixing minor messes they’d helped to create, then rushed through the portal plan, messing up the wish and stranding an entire kingdom in a sandstorm, with only Winter now to protect them from grimm.

Fantastically done, team. 

The villains won, yes, but not because the villains were smart and compelling. Watts' hack on Penny and the heat petered out to nothing and Salem... well, she sat around for the whole volume, expending energy only to torture Oscar and try to (unsuccessfully) stop some escapees. Neo and, miraculously, Cinder did the most damage, but only in the final hour, with this "damage" being that our characters fall into a void that we now know looks remarkably like a paradise! Everything bad that happened was a result of our heroes being stupid and stubborn. That's a compelling story to tell... but RT isn't trying to tell it. Our heroes caused so much damage, yet that damage goes unacknowledged — or worse, ignored into silence like with Ren — and everything else is waved away with the magic wand the series claims isn't there. The cold doesn't kill anyone. Oscar has no problems walking off the torture. Nora hops back out of bed. Ruby one-shots the Hound. The civilians lost to the void must have survived too. The entire kingdom successfully makes it to Vacuo... unless you count the massive army we never saw making use of the portals, but who cares about them, right?

The villains won, there was indeed something resembling consequences, but none of it was emotionally satisfying. Not even when the series tries so hard to insist that emotion is there.

Qrow watches Atlas fall, mouthing Ruby and Yang's names, but it's too little, too late. Where was this care for his nieces when he was obsessed with killing Ironwood? When did they care about him? Was it when Ruby shrugged at his arrest, when neither cared that he was missing, or when they were designing an escape plan that didn't include putting a portal where Qrow could reach? RWBY markets itself around the found family-ness of its cast, but they're done a poor job in recent volumes (not others) of convincing me that most of these characters care for one another. We went from Ruby denouncing all adults, to Ruby pulling an Ozpin with Ironwood, to Ruby watching blandly as her sister falls to her presumed death. This is my hero? This is the simple soul we're supposed to rally behind? Ruby doesn't feel like a character who cares about other people anymore and, given that she leads the charge, neither do most of her friends. Or, when that emotion appears, it's jarring and undeserved. Jaune cries over Penny's death? That's tonally and characteristically backwards.

This volume was the culmination of so many mistakes over the past two years. No, Covid couldn't have made things any easier for the crew — the fact that they got a volume out at all is amazing — but the pandemic isn't to blame for the problems in the story. These seeds have existed since Volume 5, with some (like Jaune) going back even farther. I don't think we're ever going to get that flawed, but emotionally fulfilling RWBY back. The show has dug too deep and unless it somehow manages to create a clean slate — those time travel ideas get more and more alluring! — there's nothing they can do but keep on digging. At this point, I can only hope that the series does wrap up within the next two volumes, rather than dragging RWBY to a Supernatural-esque length.

Our final shot of the episode proper feels fitting for what this volume has been. Atlas and Mantle flood rather than exploding, something that makes a certain amount of sense, sure, but definitely wasn't what I was expecting. And after all these shocking images — Penny dying, the grimm attacking, our main characters disappearing in a puff of gold dust — we end it all with bits of random debris. It's strange and underwhelming. Out of everything you could have done with the options you had, you choose to do this?

Of course, RWBY always has an after-credits scene (RIP Raven's, still amounting to nothing). Here, the sounds of water return to show us a beach. Crescent Rose imbedded in the sand, mirroring its classic pose in the snow.  

There's a tree. It's a very different kind of tree from what we saw in Volume 6, but the height and shape is nevertheless reminiscent of Light's domain.

A tree of life, anyone? After all, the group has fallen into a dimension created by a Relic, the gift of Light himself. It certainly seems as if RWBY is heading towards another encounter with the Gods, though what that will look like and how narratively satisfying it will be remains to be seen.

As for our bingo board, RWBY certainly pulled its weight! Only three squares got gold stars: Watts and Jacques didn't manage another team up because both are dead, Oscar didn't apologize for getting shot because he was too busy being tortured, and Qrow didn't drink likely because he didn't have access to any alcohol across the whole volume. Can't say that's a stellar result. The final image is something to behold though lol.

What a mess.

And on that less than exciting note... we’re done. This has been the volume of desertion, with a large number of fans telling me that they will no longer watch RWBY, but baring something entirely unexpected in my future, I'll be back next volume, for whatever that's worth. It never ceases to amaze me that even one person would give these nonsense recaps the time of day, so in all seriousness: thank you for reading. You rock.

Now go forth and fill the hiatus with great RWBY content!

✌️

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales Comics: Spies Like Us and Dime after Dime or Weblena: The Preschool Days (Lena Retrospective) (Comissioned by WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to Shadow Into Light, My Lena Retrospective, which fittingly has now come to Women’s History Month! I sadly do not have anything besides this arc prepared for the month. This month is pretty packed for me with two shows a week to cover, as while there’s only two weeks of Ducktales left final space starts up right after to take it’s spot, two arcs to cover, and two time specific movie reviews: animal crossing the movie and the 1990 TMNT film. I will try to get more than the currently planned top 12 superheroines list out there... but this month is very tight as is, so if I do not I deeply apologize.

Now that’s out of the way, it’s appropriate we start Women’s history month on some likely lesser known parts of Lena’s history, with some comics stories focusing on our faviorite emo lesbian duck and her 87 counterpart. Before I get started on that though Kev my patreon pointed out something intresting a few weeks back i’ve been forgetting to get to and since we’re looking into Minima, I felt this was the perfect time to do so: Lena’s Concept art. 

There’s quite a few things to gleam from this. For starters as pointed out in the reddit thread I got the image as a whole from this was made in 2015, meaning Lena was one of the first new characters designed for the series and was part of it from the VERY early stages, as evidenced by the fact that despite clearly having their new personalities established, Beakly and Webby still had the old designs. 

The other notable change is that her first design was way more like both Magica nad Minima, a bit more modern, but clearly far more obvious who she was related to. She also had all black feathers making the shadow twist a bit more obvious and was likely done away with both to avoid giving that twist away, the same reason for the fake lestrange name, and to avoid accidently black coding her, as while Lena being black would’ve been intersting, it also would’ve invited a firestorm of controversy given that their one black character in season 1.. woul’dve started off as a homeless, manipulative antagonist, and none of that would play well nor was it something the progressive crew of this show couldn’t spot from a mile away.  And even this early on they have an almost final design ready, simply changing the shirt to fit her personality more, and her hair to be pink because it honestly looked better She also had green eyes throughout, but for whatever reason they phased them out. That part I don’t quite get as they look nice but probably they were hard to translate to the reboot style once they settled on their own. Her purple eyeshadow and haircut though have stuck since and were good calls. 

One last VERY obvious note.. Webby was gay for Lena from minute one. While Dana helped it is now VERY obvious they gay coded this relationship from the design phase, and the crew was entirely aware the whole time and I gave them less credit than I should have. They clearly had this in mind, and it’s very likely ONLY subtext because Disney, while making more and more progress, is very reluctant to have queer characters as Owl House was a struggle and since they have a tighter leash on properites based on the sensational 6, that means Frank knew they had the same odds of making Webby or Della queer in anything but subtext that a pig has of suviving in a slaughterhouse. I bring this up because I fear the series getting accused of queerbaiting somewhere down the road instead of doing what they could with a bad hand and hoping they could make the show as gay as they could. Penny is as out as they posisbly could get her, and Violet and Lena’s dad’s got a full apperance, if no speaking role that made it obvious beyond a shadow of a doubt their gay and did it in a plot important episode. So they did their best and I want them to get credit for that. 

But while this is all intresting stuff, join me under the cut for the meat of today’s review as I dig into Lena’s only apperance in the tie-in comic that was never punished here, and the only apperance of her protoype Minima.

Spies Like Us:  As I mentioned this comic was never published here which is doubly weird to me because of how I knew this story existed. Since I follow comics weekly and buy trades reguarly, I read the solicits companies put out eveyr month to see what new series are coming, what the ones i’m currently reading are doing, and what trades are coming out. That sort of thing, and it’s something I love. I know their basically adds.. but their well put together adds that really pull you into the books you like. The big two and the indies are all very good at it and sometimes i’ts the only way to know a comic is coming if the company dosen’t make a press release for it ahead of time. 

So naturally given there are several comics I follow at idw, paticuarlly the TMNT comics, I read those solicits and found they were going to do an issue with Webby and Lena becoming spies, and was excited about it. I ended up forgetting about it and never really followed the Ducktales comic as it came out, and upon reading an issue or two recently, one for another comission by kev as one story, happy happy valley, was particularly terrible. For those who haven’t read the story or my review, it involved the family getting stranded on an island where their forced to partake in activites and smile..that somehow turned into an aseop about Louie wanting to be rich. It ended with this

Yes.. really. That actually happened. But even with this, I fully planned to cover the issue when I covered Lena, and brought it up to Kev when he commissioned the retrospective. He gave me the discord equilvent of a blank stare and had never heard of it. I soon found out why: the story was replaced as, and fair play to disney, it spoiled Beakly’s past from the agent 23 episode which wasn’t going to air in time.  What dosen’t work is they never reprinted the story in The US.. didn’t put it in a future issue and just swap it’s place didn’t put it in the nothing. And the story was fully complete as we’ll see, with a cover and everything so they had no excuse whatsoever to NEVER use it, even with what happened to Lena in the season finale, this clearly took place before that and it was weird to just shelve it because of that. But thankfully when a bunch of the stories were reprinted overseas, this and another one, also webby centric got published overseas. But not in english.

Lucky for me, I was able to find an english translation of an english story which you can read RIGHT HERE. It was translated by @neopuff and I thank them for it as without them this review would not be possible and want to give them all the credit. So was it worth all their hard work translating it? Well let’s take a look. 

We begin at the Manor where Lena is skulking around suspiciously.. though it turns out she and Webby are just playing hide and seek. Though Lena accuses cheating. The dialouge here is pretty flat though that’s not Neopuff’s fault at all. As I can attest from reading other stories a lot of the early IDW comics are just this flat in dialoguge no matter the writer as they were likely given character descriptions and basic info about the show they likely had written up for merchandising and Frank and Co were given no involvement and likely weren’t made avaliable to consult on the comics to help them be a bit more fleshed out. It’s very obvious to me Disney just tried to get these pumped out so they’d have a series in stores to tie in without carring about qualities and given Scrooge debuted in comics, their lack of care toward that side of things in general, but especially in the first american published original duck comics in a while, bothers me a lot. It’s inexcusable. 

That being said the story isn’t half bad nor is the setup as the two hear a beeping and find it’s Beakly’s phone going off with a mysterious message from Q, Webby thinks she’s been reactivated, and is encouraged by Lena to go look after her while she stays along. While Webby says in response

It just feels grossly out of character for both. Lena is far more subtle about manipulation as shown five minutes ago and Webby blindly trusts her. Because she has a massive crush on her and is naïve about how the world works. It just seems very odd of her to get suspicious as she never does on screen, and again it comes off as Disney having barely given the writers any materials on them when i’m sure Frank or Matt would’ve been happy to write up a thing for them to help outside of the usual press materials they were given. 

Though hte last line isn’t all that out of character and has an obvious answer as within a jumpcut Launchpad’s taking them to London and is told to blend in.. which he does with an australian flag and accent.. good gag. 

So our heroines do some heroic breaking and entering and look for the package, but soon find while hiding it’s already in transit.. and had obvious bows on int. Whoops. Our heroes trie the old follow tha tcar bit and refreshingly, it dosen’t pan out as the guy stops and tells them to get out. A nice twist. Unable to follow, our heroes instead find launchpad lost, as his map is upside down

So Lena dares him if he can follow that plane, a nice bit of character for both. I will give Joe credit. While the dialouge’s a bit flat and there was that out of character moment.. for the most part he does nail the actual character down and does use it decently enough. He’s just not given enough page room or actual details to work  with is all. 

So while our heroes follow they end up having to crash as they run out of fuel.. lucky their with the expert but end up near home where the package is delivered to. Turns out this wasn’t a spy thing, this was just a thing with her aunt. That’s fine and a nice gag.. it’s just ruined by just sorta.. ending. Lena leaves disapointed and Beakly scolds webby for “playing spy” and she’s sad. That’s it that’s how it ends. Which dosen’t fit the characters, as while Beakly would defintely scold her, it just dosen’t FIT that she’d be that tearse or not appricate the effort or give her an actual lecture and it feels like Joe had no idea how to end this after the gag and just.. ended it. 

Final Thoughts for Spies Likes Us: This was okay.  It is a bit of a disappointment as for the only story not available.. i’ts just okay and not really above an average Ducktales comics story, with some nice character bits but feeling a bit weak overall, as do at least the first half of the idw comics. I haven’t read the later stuff to see if it got better. It’s worth a read if you like Webby and Lena as characters and it’s not BAD, it’s just not anything impressive and is a simple hyjinks filled misunderstanding story. 

Dime After Dime:

So now  we go back a bit to the original. I didn’t do these in chronological order because frankly, Dime after Dime is the better story of the two and the bigger one at that, so I have more to work with here. But the original also had comics and honestly from the few i’ve read much BETTER comics. I chalk this up to two things: The Ducktales 87 comics seem to have come out AFTER the series was already a hit, and since Ducktales is pretty close to the original uncle scrooge comics minus it’s own tweaks here and there, it’s easy enough to just write the stories like you would a regular uncle scrooge story, just with Webby and Launchpad added, whereas the idw writers were staffed with writing for all new versions of the characters with noticable differences without much to go on.  It’s why to me with tie in comics you have two options: Wait long enough so you can put your story inbtween the episodes like the Steven Universe and Regular Show comics did or just make your own continuity entirely like the Adventure Time Comics and the Archie TMNT Adventures series did. The ONLY time i’ve seen a comic work like this is the Bravest Warriors comic, which had a talented writer and fit well enough in the margins until it sadly ended.. and honestly is BETTER in some cases than the series. I might get to it someday. The point is this comic shows why you need to have a deft hand adapting something instead of just falling your arms about and hoping it’ll work. 

So today’s comic was part of some Disney Series called cartoon tales, which clearly repackaged comic stories from wherever, and put them together. I don’t know much about it and the only other issue avaliable collects the disney adventures adaptation of “Just Us Justice Ducks”, which I might cover at some point. This book does have two other stories which i’d be happy to do on comission or on my own at some point, one involving gladstone the other gizmoduck, but for now, i’m just sticking to the title story and the reason you all came here. 

So we open with Magica gazing into her crystal ball from her Mt. Vesuvies base saying that Scrooge will never know what hit him I know exactly what and who wiil hit him thank you very much. 

Scrooge is seeing Webby off to her first day of day camp, getting all teary eyed which is touching. Beakly apparently goes with her as the story never SAYS Sshe does but she’s not also not around when the story moves on, as Launchpad says it looks like rain. Scrooge dismisses him, though Launchpad turns out to be right. Scrooge had good reason for once though, instead of just being a dick good on you comic for making me not want to punch him in the face, trust me that is a high bar to clear with the scrooge comics, as the weather was fine just a minute ago. Naturally it was Magica All Along! Nothing scrooge can do now that eveyrthing has gone wrong! Her entrance though is sadly not a catchy earwormy tune, but .. this confusing line

I think your thinking of Gladstone. And he’s still single so.. have at that but no Scrooge is the one who values hard work over anything else and brags about THAT or being rich. I .. I don’t get this line and frankly I don’t want to. Even in stories where the dime is supernaturally lucky and the source of his wealth he dosen’t boast about it because he’s not stupid and dosen’t want everyone knowing how to bankrupt him instantly. This line will baffle me until I die, presumably, given my life’s tragetctory, after reviewing an episode of mighty ducks and slipping on some a jerky wrapper. 

Scrooge asks what she wants... 

No this isn’t that kind of story sadly. Her plan is to.. zap the bin with lightning and take the dime. Really just went with your first draft didn’t you magica? But as stupid as this plan is Scrooge has prepared for it. He installed a lightning rod on the bin to save on power, and to power his new super soaker traps. So all Magica did was save him money. She flies off and nothing is acomplished. 

So we get back to Webby at the Teenie Weenie Day Camp.. and just so you don’t think that was a terrible joke on my part...

My theory for how this name got approved at all is the editor KNEW how that sounded and just wanted to see if Disney would actually print a comic with the phrase Teenie Weenie without getting what it means in slang or how hilariously inapproriate it is to namme a children’s camp after it. 

Your probably wondering who that grown woman calling Webby a dweeb is. Well story wise, she’s SUPPOSED to be another kid at the camp around Webby’s age. In practice, she looks like THIS in closeup

So it looks and plays like a 30 year old woman snuck into the day camp and no one’s noticed she’s not actually a children. Or their just humoring her because she had a week to live. I don’t know. I do know she doesn’t get to judge on names. 

Snippy Von Glitz, proof rich people really do hate their kids and this this comic is trying personally to give me material. Snippy is your average alpha bitch, taking a chair from Minma and being obnoxious and classist and all that jazz. Minima gets hers back by making the chair bouncy then returning it to normal so Snippy gets in trouble when she makes up things about the chair, with the lady in charge getting ready to call her Dad. You cannot convince me that her “Dad” is just what she calls her husband, this is how they both get off, and that the lady at the preschool only tolerates it because they pay her a lot and so far the kids haven’t noticed Snippy is 30. Webby likes minima finding her name pretty, proving that the ho yay is alive no matter the webby and magica relative, and Minma returns the favor by saving her from a block. 

Minma is reluctant to make an actual friend, finding they aren’t worth anything and given most of the kids here apparently pick on her and her aunt is well.. Magica, it’s understandable why she’d be so cold. But Webby presses on and says something from Scrooge about friends. Which given Ducktales scrooge has none goes weird but it gets Minma to find out she knows and lives with Scrooge, so she cons webby into taking the dime for show and tell, showing that she can manipulate them with her powers, and that he won’t notice it’s missing, getting her with “I thought you wanted to be friends” 

So let’s pause for a second and compare and contrast the two: Both are the niece, or at least sorta in Lena’s case, of Magica, both manipulate webby, and both are her first real friend: The 87 boys are little monsters and I don’t consider them friends or even brothers, while the 2017 ones are just that: brothers. Their her siblings in all but blood, not friends and have hteir own long complicated history. 

But otherwise the two are vastly different. Lena is a far more complex character as she’s been abused her whole life, is a rebel because Magica hardly gave her agency, and while she starts wooing webby out of self interest it’s clear even as far as the first episode she cares. Lena would gladly be part of the world if she could and this whole scheme is to gain that choice. 

Minma is still sympathetic but very different: She walls herself off because the other kids laugh and mock her for being herself and lashes out at them.. not unreasonably mind , but still feeling she needs no one else.. but as we’ll learn later she’s only helping Magica to finally feel accepted, to get all the fancy clothes and stuff that will make her popular instead of that grown woman masquerading as a kid for disturbing reasons. Minma is at her heart just a hurt kid desperate to fit in. And while Lena shares the desire for a place to belong.. it’s at it’s core much sadder. Lena.. wants a family. Someone to love her and to care about her and actually look after her. Minma has that she just wants to be loved. it’s similar but very diffrent and I can see why Lena evolved into what she did, as Frank and Matt ended up going in a far darker but ultimately more interesting direction. Minima is not a bad character at all though and without her I don’t think we would’ve had Lena, but at the end of the day the 87verse is just not that complicated, so the reboot needed something more and that more evolved into who we have now. 

Both kids excitedly talk about their new friends, with their respective guardians being distracted. Scrooge is distracted by the fact his car is a bit bumpy and Launchpad offers to fix it up for free with some parts from a buddy, which given the sentence “This won’t cost you anything” makes him erect, Scrooge agrees. Magica meanwhile, whose watching Minima while her mom is away which raises a LOT of questions we don’t have time for like who she is, is she’s poes wife or does Magica have other siblings... it’s a lot of questions we’re never going to get answers to. 

The next day Webby got the dime easy as Scrooge was distracted. so Minima swaps them while she’s distracted. But while swiping it was easy, which to be fair Webby is likely approved in his security so it woudln’t match her.. or the story just needed to progress. You make the call. 

Magica does the logical thing and goes and get sthe dime and the story ends there.. and i’m shitting you, she of course brags to scrooge, reveals minima as her spy, and offers to RACE him for it shortly after he realizes he has a fake.

The only major flaw in this story is Magica’s overconfdience, which isn’t BAD persay, but here has gotten to dumbass proportions. She just can’t plan for anything and a CHILD has a better plan than her that only dosen’t work for reasons we’ll get to. And that plan is almost ruined by Magica taunting scrooge!

So a race is on but Launchpad has transformed Scrooge’s old Model T into this

Damn that’s cool. Scrooge of course dosen’t like it, but honestly you get what you paid for. Oh that’s right you paid nothing for something you NEED to use every day for transportation. 

At  the rickity thickity bridge, Steve Buschemi’s worst roll and her minion ask Webby to roll with them and Minima mistakes this for betrayal planning to soak them all.. only for Webby to DEFEND HER, pointing out minma’s her friend, how she dresses is fine and she loves her no matter what.. the last part’s implied. The 30-year old asshole and her minon leave Webby and Minma is genuinely touched, as no one’s done that for her before. She put up so many walls... she didn’t realize someone could ACTUALLY care about her, so obessed with thinking she had to be like that soccer mom in preschoolers clothing, she just had to be herself: kinda werid but in that fun adams family way. Webby says she knows Minma would do the same.. so while she prepares to let’s get back to the race. Magica realizes Launchpad’s roadster is actually gaining and spreads some tacks, but Scrooge counters with some money.. because of course he has a lot of money in the trunk. But Magica takes out the bridge and while scrooge awesomely JUMPS IT... he’s still too late. 

As you probably guess though, Minima had a change of heart, and gave Webby the real dime back, and Scrooge confirms it. Minima TRIES to tell Magica, and Magica is horrified her niece is a goody goody “I”ll never hear the end of it at my astral aerobics class”.. I.. I want to see that. Let’s raise those spirit ladies and kick kick that soul, doge that shadow king punch them in the soul. Yes! Now eat it eat it and absorb it’s power!

We end on a button joke as Webby apologizes for taking the dime., Scrooge accepts it and Webby tells them magica learned to carpet and they gulp for some reason. 

Final Thoughts on Dime after Dime: This story was decent. It has problems, some jokes don’t land and Magica is made horribly incompetent, but minima’s character arc is endearing, and Webby herself is precious as always and her winning Minima over feels genuine. And Scrooge is in prime adoring uncle mode with her and i’ts just so cute. And the roadster race is pretty awesome to watch honestly. It’s an exceptional and enjoyable tie in story.. and not the last ducktales 87 story we’ll be covering here. Wink wonk. 

Next Time: Things get DARK as Lena and Webby head into the depths of Scrooge’s hidden bin and Lena heads into the depths of her own soul. 

Tommorow: Woo-Ooo mofos as we go back to the very beginning of the reboot! A family restored, a lost city to explore, and a glomgold rises! Be here or be square. 

[alexjcrowley]

Hi! This fanfiction is based on an idea by @idrilearfalas , she wrote the entire concept and the iconic/important lines you'll find in this fanfiction, check out her blog, she is great.

The Pompeii mission, Mobius thought it would have been an easy one. Everybody knows what should happen in Pompeii and it's usually all natural. You just have to make sure someone dies- eh, sorry Plinius- and someone lives.

It's an easy mission, normally, but not when you have to handle a certain norse God of Mischief. One who likes to throw a tantrum on every other occasion.

It's usually nothing more than bantering, playful and witty at its best, sharp and bitter at its worst, but it's something Mobius can handle. He can even enjoy it, when he makes a stupid joke and Loki tells him how stupid it is and they both chuckle. Loki has to learn something new about being a TVA agent and most of the times he makes a fool of himself before getting the thing right, so Mobius can tease him a little and Loki will respond sharp as ever, but with a sort of...endearing note in his stubborness.

Those are good days, days Mobius comes back to his apartment with a smile and when he closes his eyes he can still hear the God's laughter at whatever funny thing happened that day, or replay the moment when they looked into eachothers' eyes and they suddenly understood what to do with the mission, with a single glance.

Today was not a good day. He didn't know the reason. Maybe Loki woke up on the wrong side of the bed, maybe Mobius accidentally made an unpleasant comment, but the norse God started their mission with a pout you could see on the face of a child when they don't get the Christmas present they wanted.

"Oh well" Mobius had thought. Oh well, it's just another bad day, a day in which he had to watch his mouth, because you don't want to deal with an angered God. The general mood was low, the Minutemen looked already tired before the mission had even started and Mobius knew from the moment he passed through the portal he wanted to come back home as soon as possible.

But this wasn't an ordinary bad day. Mobius was prepared to deal with a bit of coldness, with a lack of enthusiasm from everybody, what he wasn't ready to deal with- he didn't want to deal with Loki acting like an asshole.

"And that's it? Really?"

"What did you expect me to say, exactly? You brought me here, you told me I was living a delusion and you gave me no choice other than being your hound. I apologise if I can't think of you as one of my dear friends."

"One of your dear friends? Who would the others be? Just curious, because I have seen your entire life and there is not one person, except maybe Thor, you actually build this strong and trusting relationship with-"

"Wonderful, so why did you expect you'd be the first one I'd decide to grant the gift of my friendship to? I am not even your colleague, I am subjected to this stupid organisation and to you in particular. We are not friends, we forcibly work together and that's it."

Mobius and Loki had been speed walking during the entire discussion, but Loki stopped for a moment.

"You can't fool me, I know very well I am not anything more than your ticket to the Variant. I'll be damned before I put my trust in you, we both know, after all of this has come to an end, nothing will be between me and that resetting stick."

You see, on an ordinary bad day, this would have never happened. On an ordinary bad day, Mobius wouldn't have seen all of his efforts to build a decent relationship with Loki shattered. Was he used to a suspicious Loki? Yes. To a Loki who said that trust is for dogs and children? Also yes. He had been used to that Loki since he first opened up his file. But he had also started being used to Loki's rare moments when he opened up, to his hidden heroic side which desperately seemed to call for attention, to his awkward, genuine reaction when he was showed any form of affection. Mobius had seen Loki spitting his "trust nobody" one liners with less and less convinction everyday, and then they were only mumbled comments to keep up a façade, and then they had become whispers, and then eyes rolls, to the point that Mobius had thought Loki had started warming up on poeple- warming up on him. But he was wrong. Just because Loki didn't voice his dissent, it didn't mean it wasn't there.

It didn't mean he saw Mobius as more than just enemy, even after everything they had been through, even after Mobius took on himself the risk of whatever would have happened to Loki and because of Loki, even after the trust he had shown him, even after the laughters and the lunches and the jokes and the stolen glances- now, look at who was the delusioned one.

Did this upset Mobius? Absolutely. But it also fired him up. Frustration, anger, embarrassment, Mobius erupted with a fiercety matching the volcano explosion just minutes ago.

"Do you really think I would just let them reset you?"

Although shorter than the God, Mobius stood up in front of him looking him in the eyes.

"After all I have done to keep you alive, after all we have been through, do you believe I'd just abandon you to your de-"

"What else would you do? Keep me with you, as your 'friend'? What, you took pity on me and were planning to give me a desk so I can spend the rest of my eternity working for the same people who robbed me of my future?"

"Now stop it, you two, the passage is open, we need to leave" said Hunter B-15, but Loki and Mobius didn't seem to have any intention of listening to her, so she just signed at the rest of the group.

"Come on, hop through it, they'll come when they're ready" she ordered. She waited for the Minutemen to go through the passage, she looked once again at Loki and Mobius and she shook her head, following her collogues back to the TVA. She closed the passage, aware that Mobius could have opened another when he wanted to.

"Just because you are a selfish, uncaring bastard it doesn't mean we all have to be. Is it so difficult for you to accept some people care about you? Like your mother or your brothe-"

"Don't you dare talking about them, you know nothing about them-"

"I literally know everything about them-"

"And stop pretending you care about me or trust me, I am the God of Illusions, I know all your stupid tricks, I used them before-"

Loki and Mobius were shouting very loud, they barely heard the footsetps of someone approaching. A Variant, not the Loki Variant, another one, an enemy of the TVA, probably.

Mobius noticed them in the corner of the eye and turned around fast enough.

Loki was not minimally done with the discussion, but if Mobius was looking away from him, something must have happened.

Loki has been in battles. Battles on Asgards are usually more "traditional" than what you see on Midgard. Sure, they can use magic, but it's mostly swords and axes and arrows and, sometimes, good old-fashioned punches. When he had been on Midgard, Loki had learned war had incredibly evolved. The glorified Midgardian technology changed the face of battles. He had seen a few of the new weapons, nothing that impressive, incomparable to magic. But he remembered them very well, he knew he was not a good idea to underestimate them. So he remembered the sound of a bullet. It was loud, violent, fast. It lasted a few seconds, and then there was silence. If you aim right, your enemy is not just wounded, he's already dead.

They both turned to see the Variant pulling out a gun, and then Loki heard it.

The sound of a bullet.

He shoved Mobius away, before the agent could do anything about it. Mobius heard the sound of a bullet as well, he heard Loki moan in pain and he knew he hadn't been fast enough. But he made up for it pulling out his gun as well, shooting the Variant right in the chest, it only took one bullet to kill him.

Mobius was suddenly grabbed by the arm by a bleeding Loki, who was trying to stand up in vain.

Mobius kneeled next to him, holding him and putting his head on his lap.

Blood. So much blood. The bullet hit the stomach. A normal bullet? You take him to the hospital and chances are he'll be fine. A bullet like that, with a venom release? Kills you in a matter of minutes.

'He is not going to survive' a voice declared in Mobius's head.

He had seen scenes like this too many times to ignore the truth, even if he was desperately trying to. So many missions ending up with corpses, Mobius had witnessed so many deaths like this. It was useless to try and save them, the most merciful act was to immediately reset them to spare them the pain.

But not with Loki. Mobius had already started pressing on the wound, trying to stop the blood.

Useless, all of this was useless.

Loki was uttering verses more than words, normally at this point he would have neen already unconscoius, but the whole being a God must have come with some sort of enhanched healing capacity.

"I am not...ugh, not surviving this?"

"No, no, you are, I just have to take you through the passage-"

"I am...the God of...lies, I know one when I heard...one" Loki coughed.

No, no, no, one thing was seeing Loki dies in a stupid video, another was to witness him dying between his arms, Mobius thought. He couldn't bear this.

Loki looked so scared. He didn't even have the strenght to talk to pretend he was fine with this, he accepted this death. He just looked pained and frightened. He tried to tighten his grip around Mobius's arm, but he couldn't, he was loosing too much blood too fast.

"He looks so young, God, he looks so young" was all Mobius could think. He had seen Loki die, he had seen him a hero, a son of Odin, a troubled man with a controversial life, but this Loki, he was too young. He was just learning what his life could amd couldn't be, he still hadn't make up with Thor or heard his father tell him that he loved him. There was an entire future for him ready to be rewritten, he couldn't die in that moment, he couldn't die on him.

"Aren't you...you tired of watching...me die..."

"You are not dying, Loki, we just have to press on the wound for bit longer, enough for it to stop bleeding, then I'll take you through the passage and-"

"It's always...so pathetic..." Loki coughed again "of a scene..."

Mobius looked around him for another piece of cloth to press on the wound. He had already sacrificed his jacket, but, in absence of anything else, he ripped part of the sleeve of his shirt and pressed it on Loki's stomach. The white cotton was soon impregnated by dark red blood.

"At least...both times...I died for someone I-"

Loki coughed again, exhaling his last breath.

Mobius stopped pressing on the wound. He stared at Loki's corpse in a silent horror.

His body wasn't cold yet, the blood was still flowing, but he was dead. Loki was dead.

Mobius conceided himself a few seconds to fully realize there was nothing left to do. He wanted to scream, but his mouth didn't emit any sound.

His hands still rested on the wound, wet woth blood.

"It should have been you, is that what you're thinking, isn't it?"

Mobius reluctantly teared his gaze off Loki's corpse, to meet the eyes of another God Mischief, one alive and on the run.

Towering over Mobius with his dark cloak, the Dangerous Variant casted a shadow on the two TVA agents. He then kneeled beside Loki's corpse.

Mobius looked at him is disbelief.

"Why are you here?" was all Mobius managed to say.

Why are you here now? Where were you five minutes ago, when Loki was still alive, when you could have done something? How are looking at your own corpse- they were, after all, the same person- without any anger, or surprise or shock?

Mobius wasn't scared of the Dangerous Variant, on the contrary. Although TVA insisted on branding him as this big enemy, he had on several occasions helped him and Loki out, even saved them from some very bad situations. He had never constituted a threat for him or Loki. Sure, he was a mass murderer, but that was kind of a Loki characteristic in general.

"Okay, here's the deal" said the Variant, without looking away from the dead body "You use your...your- ah, what's its name, the- the remote to go back in time, I'll take his place and it's happy ending for everyone. Except for me" he mumbled "but that was mever in the plans, wasn't it" he smiled bitterly, pushing a lock of the dead Loki's hair away from his face.

"What?" Mobius exclaimed.

"Just do as I say" the Variant kept looking down at the corpse "You turn back time, I take the bullet, you two live, I die. It's easy, Mobius."

"How the hell should this be easy?" Mobius shouted, prey to grief and confusion "Why would you do that? What's- what's the meaning of this?"

The Variant had been willing to lend a hand in moments of need, but he was no suicidal.

Finally, the Variant pried his eyes away from his other self and looked at Mobius.

"You asked me once why I was doing what I was doing, remember?" he began.

Mobius slowly nodded.

“Killing TVA officers, trying to destroy the system" the Variant continued "It was just... revenge. Against the TVA. For taking away the thing I cared the most about."

He then looked Mobius in the eye, with a strange intensity, some sort of regret.

"...I was that Loki"

He looked once again at the corpse.

"Then they killed you." he paused.

Mobius didn't say a word, but he kept looking at the Variant astonished.

"And I decided it was time to stray from my written path again. Because nothing else mattered anymore, except making them pay for what they did and making sure what happened to you in my past... did not happen in your present."

The Variant idly run a bony finger over his other's self pale cheek. He then raised his eyes at Mobius.

"I will take his place because he still has you" he then declared "and he still has time to accept" he made a small gesture with his hand, encompassing his dead alter ego and Mobius "whatever you’ve got going on."

Mobius looked at the Variant ever so bewildered, but the Variant simply closed his eyes for a few seconds, looking for the right words.

"He still has time to tell you...all the things I never said." 

The Dangerous Variant was on his knees, teary eyes and a lump in his throat, but he then stood up and cleared his stance. Despire the shaken voice, he proclaimed with all the courage he seemed to own: "I am Loki of Asgard and I am burdened with glorious purpose." He screamed that to no one in particular, or maybe just to himself.

Mobius had been shocked into silence until that moment. Still looking at the Variant, he stood up too, hesitated for a moment then extends his hand to Dangerous Variant. The other one looked at it for a moment, and then firmly grasped it, shaking it.

Mobius was still very confused over what has just happened- what was going to happen.

"Are you sure?" he asked "You...would die. For good. I- I don't think there's a way everybody can get out safe from this- even if you consider time travel and-"

"I know. That's why I am doing it. So that you two get to live, you still has reasons to do it." the Variant said, no hesitation.

"I was right, you know," Mobius said, still reluctant to leave Loki's hand- the moment he did, the Variant would have to die. It was still hard for him to sentence someone to death. But his lips curled into an almost amused smile, even though with a note of sadeness "You're not a villain."

The Variant snorted- oh, Allfather, he had missed Moby's antics- and rolled his eyes, then looked at Mobius again, trying to hide his amusement. You had to have a sense of humour to live his life, Loki thought, there weren't many moments to laugh in his existence, he had to learn to appreciate rare moments like those, when fate graced him with the last sight of the love of his life.

"Turn back the clock, Mobius."

After a slow nod, his hand still in Variant Loki's, Mobius did as he was said.

***

Two days later those events, ut was a good day. In the previous two days, the TVA had finally declared that one of his most wanted Variants was not a problem anymore. Mobius simply stated he had "been cared about", with a hint of sadness nobody cared for. Loki had been quite shocked to witness his death, he had tried to do something for him, but Mobius had looked at him the way he rarely did- with resignation. Nothing left to do. He had offered Loki to spend some time together after the whole thing, to buy him a drink if he needed, to simply listen to him or leave him alone, if he wanted to. It wasn't easy to be a spectator of their own death.

Loki had recovered quicker than Mobius would have thought. Sure, you could still see Loki lost in his train of thoughts when he was left on his own, but he had seen himself die once, he could handle twice.

"Paperwork. To distract you. As a treat." Mobius put on his desk a stack of papers the size of an encyclopedia.

Loki frowned: "And you call this a treat?"

"Well, you can always go help Casey cataloguing the infinity stones, if you like it best" Mobius chuckles.

Loki mindlessly started playing with the Tesseract on his desk- yes, they let him keep it. After all, it was no more than a glowing blue lamp at the TVA.

"Mh, whatever" Loki sighed, picking up a paper, still glaring at Mobius.

"Oh, you have to file these for the end of the day, which gives you around...hmm, something between one and four hours in earth time, I don't remember now. Good luck." Mobius added before starting to walk away.

An irritated "what" that was probably heard in the entire pocket reality of the TVA made him stopped in place. Mobius couldn't help but smile, but he didn't turn around.

"You must be joking! This is- this is unacceptable! What is even supposed to mean between one and four hours? I may have king ambitions but you are the real tyrant!" Loki shouted.

"Oh, Loki" said Mobius, finally turning to face the God "This is very flattering, but I am no more than a mere bureaucrat."

"Yes, and the worst kind." the other replied. He then looked around him, noticing that everybody has stopped whatever they were doing to listen to his shoutings. With a faint flush on his face, Loki sat back in his chair, just after glancing at the whole room and snarling a "What are you looking at?"

He then looked back at Mobius, sighing a "I hate you so much".

Mobius simply smiles.

"Sure you do, kitten."

I am sorry for the spelling mistakes, I tend to make a lot of them and also I am not a native english speaker, so I hope I everything I wrote makes sense.

[refriedweeb]

LOVE ME WHEN YOUR WRISTS ARE BOUND (18+ SMUT)

A/N: I’ve had a feral-ish predator/prey smut idea roaming around in my head for the past couple of weeks now and I finally figured out a premise for it to exist on which has lead to this sinful post.

Prompt: You’re Pro-Hero Prisma, the name speaking for itself as your quirk is being able to turn yourself and others around you invisible just by touching them. Hawks, your on again off again fling that is far too arrogant for your liking, is sent off to go to a training retreat where you’re there. An old age game of hero and villain tag goes underway...but what happens when the stakes are raised?

word count: 4,957

warnings: rough sex, feral sex, sex.

Your hands smooth back any flyaway hairs that might have come out of your slicked back ponytail. When dressed in your pro-hero costume, you try to remain as sleek as possible. It makes being able to turn yourself invisible far easier when there isn’t as much for you to focus on turning invisible. You’d been in the pro-hero game for a few years now, having your own fair share of rescues and criminal takedowns that has quickly procured you in the top ten heroes. While the listing isn’t as important to you as managing to do the job you’d dreamt of doing since you were a little girl, it is a nice ego booster to know that the public thinks so highly of you. Being able to help people, to bring peace to a troubled community, had done a lot for your confidence and journey of self-love, and you’re in a place of your life where you feel content with things in your personal life the way they are.

When the commission had told you that you would be heading to a resort with a handful of other heroes to get some training out of the way, you were stoked. It wasn’t as much of a vacation as much as it was a chance to reconnect with some pro-heroes and old friends that you didn’t get to see half as often as you would have liked given the demanding nature of your job. You’d packed your bag for the week long course and had jetted off to the foliaged location that kept the exact location of the hero training grounds a secret from any prying criminal eyes. And just as imagined, you got to see plenty of your old friends who were assigned to different distracts of work that you hadn’t since your days at UA. 

And then...

“Well, well, well.” There was that infamous drawl that could send shivers down your spine when it was right at your ear. A voice that was so silken and rough around the edges at the same time just earring it sent a spark down your spine no matter how annoying the owner of it was. Son of a bitch. Or in this case, a hawk. “I see they’re just letting any old talent in the resort now.” And as arrogant as ever.

You turned around, your bag bumped against your hip. Hawks somehow managed to look as smug as he ever had, being none too subtle about the way that his body swept over your frame until he was looking you in the eyes. Damn those honey glazed eyes that had always managed to suck out the air in your lungs. But that wasn’t a temptation you were going to give into right now. The last thing Keigo Takami needed was a boost in his ego. You did the same, looking him up and down while you crossed your arms under your bust. “Look who it is, a lost chicken.” Your tone was drenched heavily in sarcasm, not one to have ever backed down from Keigo’s taunting and arrogant status. In response, Keigo stuck his tongue against the corner of his mouth, letting loose a dry chuckle. “You should go back to the city before a fox makes you lunch.”

“So hostile, kid,” Keigo murmured, coming to stand close to you. Close enough that his thigh bumped the edge of your bag and you were glad for that bit of buffer. It’d never been easy to have him close to you. “I’m just here for a little bit of fun.” His eyes dipped over you once more, the sun rising and setting in how he did. Damn him. Finally settling over your lips, Keigo smirked. “Among anything else worthwhile I might find.”

Hawks pushed past you, his shoulder brushing past you. While you’d been able to keep your cool at hearing his voice after months passing since the last time you’d seen one another, the physical contact between you stole a breath from you the moment the electricity crackled from the curve of your arm. You turned after Keigo, mouth hung open, expression narrowed at the audacity of this man.

Damn him. Damn him and everything that he was.

That interaction had been two days ago, and thankfully nothing had happened with Hawks. You were each given your own room to settle in for the next week, and you were living in the lap of luxury. Mount Lady was on the resort with you and you’d been spending most of the group training exercises with her. Strengthening your quirks, decreasing the weaknesses that came with overuse. It was similar to the ones you’d went on as a kid with UA, though this one was far more intense and there was less leniency with messing up as there was when you were still a student. But you didn’t mind. It drove you to be better, to refocus your purpose on why this was your calling. You felt good about the progress you made, the blinding spots and lights that came with overuse of your quirk fading quicker than they had in the past. 

And, much to your determination not to give him the damn satisfaction, you’d only been mildly distracted by the bird man who knew how to drive you up a wall. It was hard not to watch him speeding through the air, the way he moved so graceful. Hawks had always been impressive even before he’d become a pain in the ass. His frame was lean, not exactly the type of body that you saw unless it was on a power quirk. But there was hidden strength in muscles that were hardly shown due to the jacket he wore as part of his costume. He was a show off, of course, but it was hard to ignore moving art in the sky.

Today was a different day in the training course, and as the group of pro-heroes lined up outside of a deep foliaged area, you had a twisting sensation in your stomach. This wasn’t going to just be a group training idea, there was something special about this one. And for some reason...your eyes went to Hawks. He was talking to Masaki Mizushima, otherwise known as Manual, when his eyes flickered to you. There was that dangerous curve of a closed-mouth smile that had your eyes snapping away. You chided yourself for even looking.

“Alright heroes,” your attention turned back to the instructor leading your training exercise today. “Today we’re doing capture and releases. You’ll be teamed up with a hero that has a quirk meant to makes yours difficult, and vice versa.” Your eyes widened, that sensation in your gut twisting. Son of a bitch. “This is to help adapt you to situations you’ll be in as pro-heroes where you’re not always the best suited quirk to take on your opponent’s.” The instructor’s voice faded away. This was some sort of karmic punishment for something that you’d done in a past life, you just knew it. You knew who the opposite of your quirk in that line up was, and it’d been the one person that you’d been trying to avoid all week. You listened as the instructor went down who was paired with who, and what role they’d be taking in the touch and go. You were grimacing, knowing what was coming.

“Prisma and Hawks, you’ll be teamed up. Prisma can turn herself invisible and will challenge Hawks to use his vision to the best advantage to spot her through the foliage. Hawks, you’ll be the Hero.” you gave a small groan. “Prisma, you’ll be the villain.” You turned to look at Keigo, letting out a sharp exhale through your nose to see that it was now he who was watching you, that smug expression larger than what it’d been several minutes ago. There was a waggle of his brows as he pushed his goggles over his nose and slapped his headphones on. If you were playing the role of villain through this exercise, it’d only make sense for the character if you killed him, right? Right?

You walked over towards the section of foliage you were assigned for your specific training exercise, Hawks watching you like a starved man as you swaggered over. One of his favorite parts of your body had always been your hips, curved and full, what your mother and grandmother had always stereotyped as ‘birthing hips’. He’d never been able to get enough of it, hands digging in at any given moment the two of you were together. There’d even been a point in time where he’d bit your ass because he’d been unable to help himself. Keigo Takami was a man who knew what he liked and had no problem showing it, and considering that your hero costume was as skin tight as it could possibly be due to your quirk, he was practically drooling. Frankly, you wouldn’t be surprised if he had some part in this.

“Shut up.” Is all you need to say before Keigo chuckles, zipping his mouth shut with his fingers and tossing the key. You know it’s not something that’ll last for long, but it’ll give you enough time to get over the blush you feel at your cheeks and ears.

“Prisma, Hawks. The objective of this training exercise is to exploit your weakness and strengthen it. Hawks, your weakness is that you can fly high up with great speed, but rely on your feathers too much. You’ll be challenged to look with your eyes on something you can’t see. Prisma, your weakness is that the longer you stay invisible, the worse your eyesight gets until you can’t see. You’ll have to focus on using your quirk intermittently with staying out of Hawks’ line of vision from the sky. You have until nightfall to either, as the villain escape, or as the hero apprehend the villain.”

You tip two fingers against your forehead in a lazy salute, sighing as you center yourself on what you’re about to do. Like hell you want to be caught by Hawks, dedicating your focus to avoid getting caught. You want to win, you want to work on straightening the limitation you have on your ability so you can help serve better. The two of you are stood at the entrance to your training area, a thick forest with trees of varying height that are either going to work to your advantage or disadvantage depending on how Hawks uses them. Speaking of the devil...

As your instructor walks away, Keigo comes to stand behind you, leaning forward just enough that he’s not touching you, but you can hear his voice in your ear. That same sarcastic drawl, dripping in arrogance like he’s already won. “How about we raise the stakes, kid?” Your stomach drops lower to the spot between your hips, and your back goes rod straight. “How about if I catch you before you make an escape, I get to fuck you where I find you.”

Your breath caught as the shivers raced up and down your spine. The feeling of Keigo’s fingers whispering against your hips almost enough to make your knees buckle. If there wasn’t a worse person that you could have been paired up with. It had to be the on again off person that you fucked. Your eyes rolled to the sky, taking in a deep breath. “Because you know...” he continued, breath hot against your ear. “I’ve always been a fan of catching prey when they’re on the run.” Your heart is hammering in your throat and you’re sure he can hear it. It’s hard to remember what it is to breathe in that moment, and you almost lean back into his body because, after all, old habits die hard. 

“Who says you’re going to catch me?” you ask, turning your head so that you can catch his eye over your shoulder. That feeling hits deep in your belly once more once you see the narrowed slit of his pupil. Usually round, you know this look on Keigo. It’s predator, it’s hunter, it’s Hawks. And you know in that moment you’re going to be fighting more than one enemy in that simulation. It wasn’t just your weakness with your quirk that you were working against. It was your weakness with Keigo Takami as well.

“Because, kid,” Keigo’s eyes drop to your mouth. “I don’t lose.”

Damn.

“Well, Hawks,” you turn to him, taking slow and measured steps back into the foliage that was going to either aid you or ruin you. You made sure to lean into your hip heavily, swaying back and forth that had Hawks’ attention almost immediately. “Catch me if you can.”

And with that, the two of you split your separate ways. Hero and villain. Hawks shot into the sky in a flurry of red wings, and you coated yourself in invisibility as you ran into the foliage, careful not to step too heavily as you darted under the trees. Looking up, it was near impossible to spot Hawks speeding through the sky, dipping down and flying up as he looked for any sight of your impressions on the ground. Your terrain was an uphill one, and soon enough your trek uphill had left you out of breath. You dipped under a tree, letting your invisibility fall as you became visible to the outside world. Except, of course, you were not foolish enough. Keigo’s words in your head were still settled deep within your belly, but you weren’t about to lose just yet. You shed your boots, setting them at the base of a tree before you took coverage in a tree that you climbed. With your eyes turned towards the sky, it’s only a matter of time before Keigo’s wings come into focus, beelining straight for the boots. 

He extended a gloved hand as if to grab for the boots and snatch you out, only to stop short and skid along the ground as he realized there was nothing attached to them. “Clever, kid.” He called out, doing a quick swipe around. Luckily, you’d cloaked yourself once more before he’d spotted the tree you were in. That would have been game over, though watching the sweat that clung to his forehead...didn’t seem too bad. You pinched yourself, reminding yourself that you were a villain and it was your objective to get out. “You’re somewhere here, aren’t you?”

But that didn't mean that you couldn’t have a little fun...right? Slowly, carefully, you lowered yourself from the branches you’d been hiding away, wincing at the slight rustle of ground gave in when you hit. Hawks whipped around again, eyes wide, pupils narrowed. “Come on songbird, let me hear you sing.” That static ripped through your belly again, and you took measured steps closer to him. You bent over, cloaking a rock once more before chucking it off on the other side of you that hit a tree. Hawks spun around again, a couple of small red feathers shooting out from his wings to try and pin what he thought was you against a tree. It took everything not to laugh in that moment, looking at how focused he was. 

You were doing your best to ignore the feral look in his eyes. How windswept his hair was from his flying. How you knew what Keigo was like when he wanted to win at something. And to see how determined he was when you were the prize. You squeezed your thighs together, rolling your lower lip between your teeth. “What’s the matter, Keigo?” you asked, doing your best to throw off your voice from your current location, slowly edging up the steep incline. “I thought you wanted to fuck me.”

Hawks shot out from where he’d been, coming for where you’d been only seconds before. You took off running up the hill, ignoring the pain searing through your thighs at just how much you underestimated the sleepiness of the climb. Still, you pushed through it, your vision starting to dizzy as you ran. How long had you and Hawks been at this? It didn’t feel incredibly long, but then again the sun was in a much different positioning than when you’d started, and the sky was starting to turn shades of purple. Almost nightfall. Had the other pro-heroes finished their courses already? Maybe it hadn’t been the wisest decision to take off your boots, either, as you came in contact with a patch of wet mud. Your footing slipped, and with it your invisibility cloaking. A gasp hit you as you saw your hand clear as day, and in that moment you knew you were down for. In a last ditch attempt to redeem yourself, you cloaked back up but the sharp yank to the right as one of Hawks’ feathers tore through your hero costume. 

A yelp escaped from your throat as you found yourself pinned to a tree at the nape of the neck, leaving you dangling from the trunk of the tree. With the gig finally up, you dropped your invisibility as you folded your hands under your chest. On one hand, you were pissed you’d been unable to outlast Keigo. On the other hand...you’d been taunting him just moments ago and knew what that did to him. The sound of rustling feathers came and Hawks sauntered around the tree, looking at you with that same infuriating expression from the beginning of the exercise. 

“So close too, kid. So close.” He teased, running his tongue over his canine tooth. Keigo came to rest his hips against yours, your mouth dropping open at the presence of him there. It’d been so long since it’d been like between you two, but how could you forget that? “And you would have won, too, except you just had to go on teasing me like that. You know what your teasing does to me, kid. Damn near maddening.” he pulled off his glove with his teeth, coming to grip your jaw. “So damn mad.”

Your eyes widened as he dug his hands into your chin, holding you so tight that you couldn’t look either way. Only at him. Your throat was tight as you swallowed, Keigo continuing on as he pulled your hands apart, using a spare feather to pin your wrists to the bark above you by the fabric of your costume. Keigo, despite his earlier disposition, is serious now. And you know how in trouble you are. You can see it in that narrowed slit of his eyes, the color of the sun burning there. “Can’t let that go, songbird. I’ve gotta remind you not to fuck with me.” He leaned in, the hand that wasn’t gripping your jaw in an iron lock trailing down the curve of your side, coming to thumb the space between your thighs that you’d been ignoring ever since he whispered into your ear down at the base of the mountain. “Gonna have to remind you of that,” Keigo murmured, eyes lowering as he leaned in over you. You could feel the length of him against your thigh, instinctively angling it out so you could feel him closer to your core.

“Keigo-” you gasped as he rolled his hips in against you. “Keigo what if we get caught?” Though by the feeling of his presence, you didn’t know if you’d mind that much if you got your itch scratched. 

“And what about it?” he breathed. His thumb slipped over you again, causing you to shudder. “You really think I give a damn who sees me fucking you? Claiming you like the little slut for me you are?” You squirmed against the hand he kept between your thighs, letting out a harsh exhale. “Already so needy for me. I’m starting to think you lost on purpose, kid.”

You opened your eyes, glaring at him. “I lost because I slipped.”

Hawks chuckled, giving a shrug. “If that’s what you wanna say there, kid. All I know is I won...and now I’m claiming my prize.” The static runs straight from your brain to your core, and you let out a whine. Keigo hummed, reaching up behind your back and leaving you with cool air against the heat that had been growing between your thighs as he undid the back of your uniform. “What a fuckin’ prize, huh, kid? I get to ruin this body all over again.”

The feather that had been pinning your wrists together removes itself, reforming to Hawks’ wings as he yanked you around, pressing your face in against the bark. It burned, but it was the furthest thing from your mind as Hawks pushed down the skin tight fabric of your pro-hero costume, his hands finding their way under the fabric and rolling it further and further down until it was just beneath your ass. 

You yelped as the sound of a smack sounded through the air, the stinging sensation hitting your backside seconds later. He’d just landed a sharp slap across your ass and you were about to make another comment when another came again, causing you to squirm. “This is what you get for teasin’ me, kid.” he said, and you were able to catch the way that Hawks was leaned back, his eyes dragging down the length of your exposed back and skin. The leather of his gloved hand struck again, causing you to whine. Keigo’s eyes flashed to look up at you, the look there positively feral. You can feel the heat starting to seep through your legs, and that has Hawks’ attention in a matter of seconds. “So filthy, aren’t you? You like it when I slap you on the ass. You want to be punished for being such a filthy little slut,” the slap came again and your groaning, attempting to push your backside in against his hips. “So fuckin’ eager, kid.”

Keigo places his hands on your hips, pulling you back against his hips so you can feel how hard he’s gotten in the time he’s caught you. This is the whole thing. The chase is what excites him and the most and what better example of his highest fantasy is there then getting to chase you through foliage like the bird of prey that he is? And true to his word, he’s going to fuck you as his victory claim. You grind your backside his, angling yourself so that you can feel the full length of him slipping between you. You groan, your head falling back against your shoulders as Keigo realizes this, pushing up into you.

“I wanna hear you beg, kid. Swallow that fuckin’” a sharp slap comes across your behind again. “Cocky attitude you had earlier.” He slaps your backside again, and you can’t fight the moan that escapes you. “Your mind kid, I’m always gonna fuckin’” another slap. “Win.”

At this point you can feel the wetness between your thighs, and your squirming as he rocks his hips back and forth as if he’s already fucking you. “Keigo-” you whine pushing your hands against the tree so you can be flush with his hips. “Please.”

“Please, what?” You hear the sound of his belt coming undone, the buckle slumping.

“Keigo,” you breathe, only to feel that sharp leather across your backside that causes you to cry out.

“Please, what?” he repeats. His voice is hardened as the cock between his legs. The zipper of his pants sounds, and you can feel the rawness of him against your lips. He’s teasing you. He wants you to beg. To ask nicely. “Beg for it, songbird.”

“Please fuck me,” you gasp just as he pushes himself up and down the length of your lips again. 

Keigo’s hands find their way to your hips again, fingertips digging in as he lines himself up. “Since you asked so fuckin’ nicely...” 

You hold your breath in anticipation. Keigo’s wings puff out on either side of you, providing little coverage for what he’s about to do to you. You catch yourself admiring the beautiful red color of them before he’s slamming his hips in against yours, throwing you forward at the shock and power behind it. The sound of Keigo’s groan behind you turns your knees to putty, almost enough to cause your legs to give out from underneath you. “Ahh, fuck, there it is.” he groans, slowly pulling himself to the edge of his length before slamming back into you with the same intensity. You lurch forward again, hands pressing into the tree in front of you to keep from ramming in against it. “Feel so fuckin’ good, kid.” He fucks into you again, your head dropping to your shoulders once more. Eyes shut, you don’t see Keigo reach out with that gloved hand, and hook two fingers against the side of your mouth. 

The sound of skin slapping against skin starts to fill the area between you along with the sounds of Keigo’s breathlessness and the small whines falling from your mouth. Despite his erratic breathing, he’s kept a good pace, your inner thighs positively soaked from what he’s done to you. He’s entranced by the way your skin bounces and moves each time he comes slamming back into you, filling you up with every ounce of his cock. “You like that, songbird, you like how fuckin’” slap “Good I feel inside of you?”

You struggle to answer him, your head wrenched back at an angle with Keigo’s leather wrapped fingers pulling out your cheek. Your legs are shaking, and it’s everything you can do to keep your muscles from collapsing underneath you as he fucks into you, creating a mess of your insides. Finally, you moan as a response, reaching an arm back just to be able to touch him in some respect. Keigo, not the complete asshole, leans forward so that you can grab onto the front of his jacket. The hand he’d been using to steady himself against your hips slips down to your front, massaging at your clit. This sends you into a spasm, wrestling against the overstimulation that your body was currently being sent through, desperately whining as he continues to tap, circle, and stimulate your clit meanwhile continuing the fluid motion of fucking in and out of you.

Keigo’s got the advantage here too, and seeing you struggle against getting him to lay off before you come, only sends him into more of a fury. His thrusts become faster, more erratic. They starting hurting as they hit into you, causing you to moan in pain and pleasure each time. You’re squeezing your legs together, clenching down around him as he fucks in and out of you. Your high is close, and your knees start to falter under you as it does. “K-Kei-” you’re unable to get his name out as another wave of pleasure rolls through you, threatening to push you over the bridge right there as Keigo starts to fuck you even faster, the wetness on your thighs crawling down further.

“You gonna cum, songbird? You gonna cum around this fuckin’ cock just like you always do?” The whine pushes through you as he yanks on your cheek. “Go on then, sing for me, you’re my fuckin’ songbird.”

And with the permission granted, you unravel around his finger and his cock, your legs spasming as you cry out, your inner thighs becoming even wetter than before. Your moan is none too quiet as it rips through you, your back arching as the shivers run up and down your spine once more as you ride out your orgasm. You’re panting, breathless, dripped in sweat, but Keigo isn’t done. “What a good fuckin’ slut, (Y/N).”

You moan as he returns both ands to your hips, spreading you further as he quickens his pace once more. “Gonna fill you up so good, so fuckin’ much.” You whimper as he buries himself in you, his thrusts sloppy and hurried now. He’s close now, and in order to help him reach his own orgasm, you lean back, body flush against his. “Fuck yeah, ah, fuck yeah.” he’s panting in your ear now, his face buried in the crook of your neck. Once you reach back and feel the space under his jacket and shirt where feather meets wing, it’s game over. 

“I’m gonna cum, fuck, I'm gonna cum,” his voice is gravely, pained as he loses the last of his momentum. The sound of your moans mingle together as he does just that, spilling himself inside of you. His drip joins the slow race down your thighs, and with one final thrust, empties the rest of himself in the folds of your heaven. 

The two of you remain there in silence for a period of time before he pulls out of you, leaving a mess between your lips. You’re immediately on your knees, unable to support yourself anymore from what he’d just done to your insides. Your breathing is still labored, as if you’d just run up and down the mountain without break. Your legs are spent, still riding out the tidal wave that was your orgasm. Behind you, you hear Keigo zipping up his pants, adjusting the buckle.

He looks as spent as you feel, and he pulls his glove on with his teeth as you lock eyes. That feral look is still there, and you doubt you’re done with one another for the night. You sure as hell don’t think you are. “What’s wrong, kid?” Keigo leans over, landing a gloved slap to your ass. “Get up, gotta go tell the instructor what a good hero I was in apprehending such a bad, bad villain.” 

[violet-knox]

Hi! Could u write an adult!Snape x reader where the reader is the new nurse of hogwarts and the start to like each other until one day they finally kiss?🙏😣💕 I hope u can write it, if not I understand ❤️

Love’s Chariot

Pairing: Severus Snape x Female Reader

Summary: You’re assigned to help Severus with the Mandarake Restorative Potion and feel nervous about how it will go. 

Word Count: 3668

A chill ran down spine as you entered the dungeons, rather nervous about the task Madam Pomfrey had assigned you. You’d barely spoken two words to the Potion’s Master since you started at Hogwarts a month ago, feeling flushed every time he came within six feet of you. It was hard to say why you felt such intense fear around him. Intimidation, admiration, lust. But it didn’t matter. Knowing the reason didn’t change your reality and it certainly wasn’t going to help you now that you’d been assigned to assist him in the brewing of the Mandrake Restorative Draught. 

You’d spent every hour of the last few days pondering over why you you’d been assigned such a task when you knew Professor Snape didn’t need you. He’d been doing quite fine these past few weeks on his own with the occasional help of Professor Sprout and Madam Pomfrey. There was no reason for you to be there and you wondered if he felt the same. He didn’t seem to like you much, at least that was the impression you got when you sat next to him at breakfast one morning. He’d stayed silent, his hair covering his face the entire hour before he got up to leave early, claiming he had to prepare for class. You’d never felt so awkward, so minute, so unimportant in your life. He was a golden chariot compared to you: a newcomer, blissfully oblivious to the hefty responsibilities of a Hogwarts staff member. There was no logical reason for your assignment, that was much clear. All you could do was try and get through it without looking like a buffoon.

You stared at the door before you, your legs frozen in place, too scared to enter his classroom, too loyal to walk away. You wanted nothing more than to run off, to simply continue admiring him from a far but you had duties to fulfill, patience to treat and so you stayed. You looked up at the rustic large door, the only boundary between you and the Master of the dungeon just as intimidating as him. Reluctantly, you knocked on the door. The sound you made barely audible to you but you hoped it was enough for him to hear because you couldn’t bear the thought of having to knock again as you weren’t sure you could knock any louder. 

Seconds went by like hours and before long, you found yourself knocking again, slightly louder this time only to restart your delayed timer. Taking a step back, you tried to convince yourself that you’d done your part. You’d shown up, knocked on the door and he didn’t answer but that wasn’t the whole truth. You didn’t want him to hear you and so you tried to cheat your way out of making your presence known. One more try, you told yourself. Knock properly once and get it over with and so you did. Knock, knock, knoc-.

The door swung open and you found yourself caught stiff, like a deer in the headlights, staring into the face of the man you’d been too afraid to be around. You hadn’t been this close to him since you sat next to him during breakfast, every feature on his face more prominent than it was before. He was taller than you thought he was, the distance you’d been putting between you and him blurring your view of him.

“Have you been standing out here long?” His deep stern voice enchanted you, your mind blanking as you stared up at him. He sounded bored, like the task at hand was simple enough for a child to complete and his expression told you he too had not been looking forward to your lending hand.

“N-no,” you stumbled over your own lie as you shrunk in your place, hoping the floor would swallow you whole. You were made alarmingly aware of your flushed face and the fact that you’d been holding your breath when you spoke. This was worse than breakfast, worse than what you imagined. Much much worse.

“You should have knocked,” he said simply. His tone gave nothing away. You couldn’t tell how he felt, if he was annoyed, frustrated, angry or if he felt the same awkward spark that had ignited the day you laid eyes on one another, refusing to be put out no matter how hard you tried. The Potion’s Master turned on his heels and walked back into his classroom, leaving you to grasp at the overwhelming sense of uncertainty created between you both. 

Stepping inside, you turned back and closed the door, the creaking of your slow movement echoing inside his classroom. It’s funny how a classroom changed so minimally yet felt so drastically different with the rotation of all the professors who’ve occupied it in the past. When Slughorn taught you in this class, you’d never felt the cold of the dungeon air. The layout of the room hadn’t changed, yet with Professor Snape it somehow felt more important, like his mere presence demanded those who step foot in the class show respect for the delicate art of potion making.  

“I presume you’re aware of the duties you’re to attend to this evening,” he spoke as he set up his workstation around the giant cauldron bubbling in the middle of one of the tables. He was ready to begin working and apparently assumed you would be too. 

“N-no Professor,” you said, stepping forward, addressing him professionally so as to not offend him further. You’d been here less than ten seconds and already you were disappointing him, you didn’t want to make it worse by speaking out of term. “Madam Pomfrey only informed me I’d be assisting you.”

Severus sighed in frustration. Not only was he force to spend time with you, to socialize with the person he’d felt too flustered to be around this past month, but Madam Pomfrey had also decided it was imperative for him to waste his time directing you when he should be working on the potion that was to save all those petrified victims filling up her infirmary. It had taken so long for those Mandrakes to grow, his focus these past few months split between stressing over whatever was causing the petrifications and modifying the Mandrake Restorative Draught to cure those who’d fallen victim. And then Dumbledore had to go and hire two more nurses to aid Madam Pomfrey during these ‘troubling times’ as he put it, and he suddenly found his focus shifting to you instead of his work. 

You were so kind, so willing to help, always in uniform, ready to work even when you were off duty. He’d taken every excuse he could get just to watch you from afar. Refilling the Potions cupboard in the hospital wing himself twice every week, taking extra long to take inventory of what Potions they were running low on. He listened to you and hung on your every word, your smile in his peripheral instantly brightening up his day. Always from afar, always at a safe distance away from you where he could do you no harm. You were pure, innocent, untouched by the evils of this world and he couldn’t bear threatening to take that bliss away from you. 

This was risky, brewing with you. He thought of requesting the other nurse when he heard you’d be joining him but he knew how hurt you’d feel to be passed over like that and, if he was to be honest with himself, he didn’t want the other nurse. He wanted you. He wanted to get to know you, to converse with you as you both worked together but he was afraid of what might happen if you did. Would you find him repulsive if he got too close? Would you ask to be transferred out if he dare speak a word of the curse that fell upon him? The one that pushed Lily away, ultimately killing her, the one that gifted him the negligent childhood he’d endured, the one that was responsible for his current status as an ex-Death Eater with no friends and a need to repent. 

None of that mattered now. You were here and all he could do was hope this Potion would brew faster than expected so that he could resume keeping himself away from you. The quicker he gave you the instructions you needed, the less time you would be forced to spend with him and the safer you would be. 

“Professor Sprout has left all the Mandrake roots here,” he began, pointing at the endless crates that sat on the table next to the one where he’d set up his cauldron. “And I need you to extract their cores so I can use the xylem for the potion.”

Severus watched as you immediately nodded your head and made your way to the cutting board and knife he’d set on the table for you to use. You picked up the knife and extracted one of the roots from the crates, looking back at him before you began. He pulled his gaze away from you the moment your head turned towards him, but you’d still managed to catch a glimpse of his face before his hair flew in front of it. Heat rose to your cheeks and you wondered if he’d truly been staring at you or if his intimidating presence had just gone to your head. You worried he was staring to make sure you wouldn’t mess up your task, but you hoped he’d glanced your way for another reason. 

Holding the knife away from you, you began to peel the Mandrake root, each root taking longer than the last to peel but you continued on, letting the silence of the room engulf you. The longer you worked in his presence, the more you wished he’d say something but every time you’d look over in his direction, he would seem so concentrated and the last thing you wanted was to distract him from such important work. Still your eyes ventured to him more often than you’d like but you couldn’t help your admiration. His fingers so elegantly measuring out each ingredient like it was second nature and he looked so relaxed, so… perfect. 

“It would be much easier if you simply chopped them.” You were so lost in your thoughts you hadn’t realized he’d walked over to you. You jumped back when you saw how close he was to you, dropping the root you had in your hand, gasping as you pulled back. “I’m sorry.”

The Professor took a step back, a mixture of disappointment and guilt written on his face. You giggled at how silly it was of you to be frightened by him. Afterall, you knew he’d been in the room with you, there was no reason for you to be taken back by him like that. “I didn’t hear you approach, you startled me. If you know of a more efficient way to extract the root, perhaps you could teach me.”

You offered him the knife in your hand, rather hoping he’d help make this entire tedious process a little faster. His hand reached up and you felt his fingers grazing your palm as he took the knife from you. Your heart leaped out of your chest as your eyes locked for what felt like a millennium. You’d heard many of the students speak rather harshly of their Potion’s Professor, many claiming his eyes were dead and cold, but you disagreed. They were sad yes, but they were warm. They held the weight of the world yet were inviting to those who knew where to look. 

Severus broke the silence as he cleared his throat and looked back at the table to pick up the root that had fallen from your hand. He felt rather infatuated by you. He’d never felt like this before, so speechless, unable to think or speak in your presence. His mind was always blank, always vulnerable when he got too close to you, but it felt good, like a weight was lifted, like for once, he was allowed to breath. 

“Just cut down the middle of the root like so,” Severus said as he kept his eyes on the Mandrake root, trying to pretend like you weren’t there, like he was just teaching a class rather than the one person he wanted to know more about, to grow close to. “Then simply peel away the outside.”

You watched as he extracted the core with ease, astounded by the fact it had taken no more than ten seconds when you’d spent ten minutes peeling away at just one root. 

“Wow!” You exclaimed without realizing just how exaggerated your praise sounded. But you couldn’t help it, you were appreciative, happy to learn from someone as talented as he was. “That’s much quicker than what I was doing. Thanks, Professor.”

“Severus,” he quickly corrected you without a second thought. He hated hearing you speak to him as if you were just another coworker, like you saw him as nothing more than the school’s Potion’s Master, simply there to help keep the infirmary stocked with Potions. “Y-you can call me Severus.”

You smiled in content; he was comfortable with you. At least, comfortable enough to let you use his real name, his given name. All that fear you’d felt, the anxious feeling you had about working with him melted away, replaced with the need to know him, to speak with him, to touch him.

“Then you can call me (Y/N),” you reciprocated, holding out your hand for him to hand you back the knife. You held eye contact with him as you felt the handle of the knife slip into your palm, the tips of his fingers grazing against your skin once again. You gripped the knife when he let go but your eyes didn’t leave his until he reached around you to hand you another Mandrake root. He watched you duplicate his method; cutting the root down the middle and then peeling away the outside, popping the core out and placing it in the bowl he’d provided you.

“I’ve heard that you’ve sought to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts,” you spoke as you continued cutting when you felt him step back, wanting this moment to last. You spoke the first thing that came to mind, hoping the rumours you’d heard were true, hoping this topic was one he didn’t mind speaking about. “You’d make a much better Defense Professor than Lockhart.”

“Calling that man a Professor is an insult to the school,” Severus said as he went to grab a second knife to cut with you. “He’s a worse teacher than he was a student.”

“How do you know?” You asked curiously, wondering why he spoke as if he had first-hand experience with his time as a student. Lockhart was a few years younger than both of you, neither of you could possibly remember his Hogwarts days.

“I taught him.” Your jaw dropped and your attention was pulled back to him. You paused a moment before you spoke.

“No, you didn’t!” You dropped the knife in your hand and turned to face him completely, one hand over your mouth suppressing your laughter which instead came out as a giggle.

“I unfortunately did,” he smiled at you, abandoning the task at hand to share this moment with you. He watched as you laughed, and he could have sworn this was the happiest he’d ever seen you. You looked even more majestic with such a wide smile on your face and it made him appreciate you all the more.

“I cannot believe you taught that man,” you said, taking a step forward, placing a hand on his arm. You were too caught up in the moment to realize how close you’d gotten to him, that the musky smell filling the air around you didn’t belong to the potion but to him instead. “Did he learn nothing from you?”

Severus felt a heavy weight on his chest as he let his eyes roam the features of your face. What he’d give to hold you in his arms, hug you, run his fingers through your hair, kiss you. Kiss you. Kiss you. Love you. He was very much infatuated with you, much more than he’d apparently cared to admit. 

“It very much seems to be the case. If he hadn’t taken his O.W.Ls with Slughorn, I never would have accepted him into my N.E.W.T class in the first place. But as it so happened, Dumbledore said I could not raise the grade requirement unless the students had taken their O.W.Ls with me.”

You giggle, your admiration for the man ever growing as he spoke of his standards. “You know, I’ve worked in this industry a little over a decade and I don’t think I’ve ever seen Potions of such high quality like yours.”

Severus lowered his head, his smile static as he blushed from your compliment. He could hardly believe you’d thought of his work in such a way, that you’d worked at St. Mungo’s and still thought his Potions were better, that you’d given him enough attention to notice his work in the first place. He’d always imagined you saw him as the man who provided you with your tools and no more, he never would have thought you admired him. 

You looked up at him and watched his face attentively. You loved how flushed he got from such a simple compliment and wondered what he would look like if he knew how you truly felt about him. It was odd how you tried to pretend like your feelings of admiration were strictly professional yet in this moment, standing in front of him, inches away, you knew it was more than that. Love, connection, happiness. That is what you felt and what you were sure he felt as well.

“I-umm,” Severus croaked over the empty words in his mind. He wanted to say something, to feel more comfortable with you again, but he found himself back in a place of awkwardness, too scared to say a word to you. He did not want to push you away, to ruin the progress he felt he made today and anything he could think of saying he knew would not end well. 

You sensed his hesitation and wondered for a moment if you’d done something wrong, but when you looked back into his eyes, you realized it wasn’t anger or annoyance that kept him from speaking. He was nervous, like a schoolboy confronting his crush. You smiled and let out a sigh of relief, taking a step closer as you placed your hands on his arms, slowly moving them up to rest on his bicep. Your movement had caught his attention as his eyes met yours, need reflected within them. You were inches away, your beating hearts reaching out for one another, begging you to step closer. 

Without a second thought, you surged forward and pressed your lips to his. You felt your heart leap out of your chest as you let out every emotion you felt for him into this kiss. You’d been so focused on yourself, you hadn’t noticed his lips weren’t moving with yours. Feeling rather embarrassed, you jolted back, averting your eyes in panic. What had you just done? Had you really just ruined any sort of professional relationship you could have had with him with a splurge in the moment kiss?

“I-I’m sorry,” you spoke quickly, your hands shaking as you feared for what he might do. Your career over if he were to complain to your superiors, have you transferred to a different department in the medical division of the Wizarding World, or worse, have you fired. No one would hire you again. No one would want you. “I didn’t mean-”

Your panicked thoughts were instantly washed away as his lips met yours once again, passion spilling over from him and back into you. You hummed from the shock in delight, throwing your arms around him as you pressed yourself into him, kissing him back eagerly as you indulge yourself in his touch. 

Severus had taken a leap of faith, a step towards happiness, knowing now what he wanted and what you wished for was one in the same. He hadn’t imagined the emotions flowing between you, the spark growing into a flame this past month because you’d felt it too. By some miracle, you reciprocate his feelings, and he had no idea why but, in this moment, he didn’t care. He enjoyed the feeling of your body against his, his hands sliding down your sides, one making its way into your hair as the other kept you in place. He wanted to freeze time, to stay like this forever in bliss with you. 

“That was…” You’d tried to speak when you parted, your lips still so close to his, but the words were lost on you like they were him. He wouldn’t dare take his eyes off you lest it break the spell. He took this moment instead to memorize your face, taking in every detail he’d never gotten to see before and when he’d found his heart beginning to ache, he pressed his lips back against yours like you were his oxygen. 

You smiled against him, happily kissing back, thinking about your future with him, about the happiness you were going to build with him. You’d only spoken twice before, kissed him three times yet you were planning a whole life together in your imagination. This was right, he was right for you. It felt like everything had suddenly clicked into place. You weren’t meant to work at Hogwarts to help with the petrification, you were here to meet him. You were together now, whole, complete. You found each other in the sea of darkness that surrounded your lives and together you’d swim to shore. Together you would live. Together you’d be happy. 

 @dracos-mudblood @darkthought15 @severuslovebot @mitchiesdungeon @bush-viper-cutie @raven-hopeflyte @wanderingtrails @sleepysnapesnake @fluffymadamina

[nervousladytraveler]

The Alibi

Inspired by the kiss prompt: A + B are in an argument, then they stop, just stare at each other, and then crash their lips together, because, like i said... fuck this shit Ross and Demelza

Requested by the lovely @veryflowerobservation

---

“God damn it, Demelza! I told you not to follow me tonight!”

For the last eight miles, Ross had been looking over his shoulder while Demelza drove. No one was behind them on the dark road, and it was most likely they’d been unseen, yet he continued to anxiously watch. There was nothing that would quiet the churning adrenaline that came from such a close call.

“Well it's a good thing I did follow you, otherwise…” Demelza snapped back at him.

“Otherwise what?!” He cut her off before she continued in what sounded like another self-righteous justification. Her words rang empty to him--she’d acted impulsively and it was just dumb luck that she hadn’t made things worse.

“You seriously ask me that?”

“Demelza, I would have sorted it instead of both of us being in danger!”

“No, Ross. In case you didn't notice I just saved your skin before you had anythin’ to sort. And you can’t just sort a thing like this with the police, by the way. Not even you. But now that’s a moot point and no one is in danger. Of gettin’ hurt or bein’ arrested--precisely because I came.“

Without any warning, Demelza took a sharp left at the Blowinghouse Turn bus stop, then minutes later turned right on the B3284 towards Truro. This whole time she’d kept the tiny Kia Forte steady at 30 mph, a frustratingly slow pace that further agitated Ross--and she was well aware that it would, no doubt. But she was right in her refusal to drive any faster. The last thing they needed now was trouble for speeding.

“Why didn’t you stay on the…” he started but stopped once he caught the acid look she flashed him. “You seem to know what you’re doing,” he mumbled.

“Yes, Ross. Yes, I do.”

To their relief, the road ahead remained empty. Then again people didn't really tend to be out driving at 2AM on a Tuesday unless they had urgent business. Or shady business.

“So was this all your plan all along--that you’d come out tonight and spy on me?” he asked.

“Spy? You’re not very good at keepin’ secrets, you know,” she sputtered. “Besides, you already told me what you were up to, just not when or where…”

“For good reason! Because I didn’t want you involved. But you told me that you’d stay home--you lied to me!” Ross’s dark voice filled the little car.

“Lyin’? You’re really speakin’ to me about lyin’?” Her laugh, bitter and sarcastic, met his anger head on.

Demelza Carne had worked for Ross Poldark for years now--since she was a teenager really-- first as an all around office assistant and recently as his bookkeeper. And she’d shown him time and again that she wasn't cowed by his moods. She was one of the few people in his life who wasn’t. She was also one of the few people in his life who hadn’t abandoned him once his business prospects began to fail. He shouldn’t have expected anything different from her tonight.

“But no, Ross, I hadn’t planned on interferin’ with your business. I do have a life of my own you know...“

“Demelza--wait--are you claiming I lied to you?”

“When you omit somethin’ on purpose, that’s also a lie,” she said calmly, then a moment later her agitation boiled up again. “Jesus, Ross! What were you thinkin’?! Comin out here on your own to meet those smugglers? You didn't think it was a set up?”

Smugglers. It rankled him that she insisted on calling Trencrom and his men smugglers as though this were some 18th century French scheme or an Enid Blyton novel, rather than a simple business arrangement.

But no matter what term Ross preferred, tonight proved it remained a dangerous business. And while the charge of “improper importation of goods chargeable with a duty which has not been paid” certainly sounded less exciting than smuggling, it still carried a severe penalty.

Tonight would have been Ross’s third transaction with Robert Trencrom, a local businessman who had approached him last summer with a proposition. It seemed that from time to time Trencrom and his associates had in their possession certain goods acquired through less than proper channels. What Trencrom needed was an unassuming place to store these goods until such a time when they could be distributed without suspicion. Nampara, Ross’s derelict farm, might provide the perfect cover since there were so many unused outbuildings, several that still had solid walls and intact roofs. It had been decades since the farm produced anything that needed storing, so why not let the space to others whilst Ross made a little cash on the side?

The past two times it had been Belgian cigarettes--not massive quantities but enough that the whole endeavour still carried a risk. Yet Ross’s involvement had been truly minimal, just as Trencrom had assured him. In fact, Ross had not even been home when the goods were delivered. Trencrom’s men had tucked the plastic barrels behind some rusting mowing machines, and Ross was only made aware that the goods had been removed some weeks later when an envelope of cash was left for him in his car.

And since these were cash transactions, Ross considered hiding them altogether from Demelza, who minded his books for him. But in the end, he explained in vague details what he had done and asked her not to question him further. Clearly she hadn’t approved but she said nothing.

It wasn’t drugs or weapons--or people--so it could be worse, he’d told himself. And as soon as he just got a little more out of debt, he’d cut ties with the lot.

When Ross didn’t hear from Trencrom all winter, he’d assumed the connection had faded and sighed in relief. He’d miss the income but not the entanglement.

Then a few weeks into May, Trencrom reached out again.

This time Ross was to be more involved and actually take delivery of the cargo himself. Naturally there would be considerable compensation--a figure Ross didn’t think he could refuse considering his current financial status. Trencrom hinted he’d been worried about the loyalty of such a big crew and so for this job he wanted to keep his circle small. He’d instructed Ross to meet them at the Rugby Football Club carpark just after midnight.

In the hours leading up to the hand off, Ross was determined to pass a quiet evening at home. So when his friend Dwight stopped by unannounced for a drink and a game of cards, he’d welcomed the diversion. He was also relieved that Demelza, who lived in one of the tiny cottages adjacent to the main house, seemed to deliberately be giving him a wide berth that day. She knew about the “business” Ross had later, but having already made her objections clear, there was nothing left to say on the matter. Normally she would have stayed--she liked Dwight Enys and the two of them playfully teased Ross as only true friends could. But tonight she left Ross with Dwight and went home early.

It was around 11PM that Ross received another call--the exchange point had apparently changed. He was now to meet Trencrom’s men at the airfield at 1:30 and he was to come on foot--without his car. The barrels were already loaded in a van so there was no need to remove them to another vehicle.That last detail did seem odd to him at the time. But once Ross had left for the appointment, he found it was a mild night, and figured he’d park at the beach and enjoy the walk to the airfield.

He was still almost a mile away when the familiar black Kia pulled up next to him. His every muscle tightened and he could hear the blood pounding in his ears.

“Demelza,” he’d hissed. “Get out of here!’

“Get in the car now, Ross,” she’d said simply.

“Look, Demelza, I know you don’t approve of this...” There was something in her eyes that made him take notice. Like an animal being hunted, she was on high alert.

“Get in,” she’d said again. “It’s a trap.”

“What?!” he’d asked, shaking his head in disbelief but still he climbed into the car without waiting for a satisfactory explanation.

“Seatbelt,” was all she’d said. He could hear the tension in her voice but she concentrated on the road ahead of her and didn’t even offer him a glance. “There,” she said finally and bid him to look to the right.

She drove on without slowing down so it was only a flash to him, still the chilling sight registered in his brain. Just beyond the tall hedges at the entrance to the airfield were three police cars, and two others that looked unmarked, all waiting in a circle with their headlamps off.

Demelza had been right--it had been a trap. And one he would have literally walked right into had she not shown up when she did.

It was doubtful that Trencrom was the one cooperating with the cops--it must have been one of the others in his crew. So Trencrom did have good reason to want to draw his circle closer. Ross wondered if he’d actually known there was a rat amongst them or just suspected it.

Ross knew he should be grateful for Demelza’s timely rescue but he couldn’t help resenting that she’d been right. She may have had a right to be so smug, but he didn't have to enjoy listening to her rub it in.

“I knew this would happen…” she muttered and drove on.

“Oh, you most certainly did not,” he growled. “No one did.”

“No one?” she laughed. “Well let’s see, Ross...the cops knew and someone else most certainly knew--whoever grassed on you, that is…”

“I would have thought, knowing you as I do, that you’d understand why I had no choice…”

“No choice? What sort of bullshit is that, Ross? Have you run round in your head how that really sounds? You know that's not an actual legal defense?”

“I mean I needed the money. I have a mortgage payment due and…”

“Yes, I am aware of that, Ross. Knowin’ me as you think you do, you should have talked this over with me. I’m your bookkeeper, for fuck’s sake.”

He didn’t want to think about what he should have done and whether he’d pushed her away as she claimed. He had good reason not to involve her--he’d wanted to avoid just such an argument with her.

And he also wanted to protect her.

“Turn left up here then pull over at the top of the hill and let me drive,” Ross grumbled as she rolled into the sleeping town.

“You’re most certainly not drivin’ my car!” she huffed but nonetheless turned as he had directed and pulled into the car park at the back of the Star and Garter Inn.

It was a clever move. They hadn’t spoken it but they both knew their friend Jinny Martin would be working the desk tonight. Perhaps she could get them a room and they could wait it out there until morning.

Demelza switched off the headlamps and then after a moment’s hesitation, the engine as well.

Ross heard her take in a sharp breath--more like a hiss--and waited for the tempest to continue.

“Well, yes,” he said just a beat before she opened her mouth to speak. “When the pick-up location changed last minute, I might have seen it was a set up.” It wasn't an apology but he hoped he could buy himself some time before her next eruption. “But I never imagined anyone involved in this arrangement would ever inform on me…”

“Oh Ross! I would have guessed it, and am surprised it didn't happen sooner. Honour amongst thieves and all that.”

“They aren’t--we aren’t--thieves.”

“Ok, not thieves per se but it’s still criminal activity to take delivery of smuggled cargo. Ross, you think you’re such a great judge of character but that lot...they’re greedy bastards and they just aren't your friends.”

“And you are?”

She stared at him, wide eyed and open-mouthed, unbelieving that he’d actually questioned her loyalty when she’d just saved him from a possible seven year prison sentence.

“Demelza, that came out wrong,” he said. Again it wasn’t an apology. At least not in its tone.

“Everythin’ you say comes out wrong, Ross. Or do you actually mean to be such an absolute arsehole?”

“Can’t you just admit that you could have put yourself in danger back there? With both Trencrom’s crew and the cops?” He put his hand on her arm and was surprised at how strong her muscles felt as she gripped the steering wheel. Instinctively he pulled away.

“Can’t you just admit how stubborn and stupid you can be?” Usually so bright and reassuring, her voice was hoarse from such rough use tonight.

“I’m stubborn?” he asked.

“No one saw me, Ross. And the important thing is that the police didn't see you. So you’re safe.”

“Well…”

“I suppose even if the cops had your name as someone possibly involved, since they didn't actually catch you doin’ any illegal activity, they can’t arrest you. Besides I’m your allibi for this evenin’. We can stay here overnight in case they’re watchin’ the house, and I’ll take you back to to pick up your car in the mornin’.“

“Wait! What if there’s CCTV here?” Ross felt a renewed jolt of panic tear through him.

“All the cameras are on the front of the building and the side where the guests park. This section is for employees.” She pointed to the few other cars around them. Older, tatty, bought second hand on the cheap but still at a cost as they most likely required constant maintenance. These were the cars of service workers--night clerks, cleaners, cooks. He recognised Jinny’s old Skoda with it’s Leicester City FC sticker on the rear. That car had been in the Martin family for almost two decades now and somehow, through mechanical expertise or through sheer will, her resourceful father had managed to keep it running. No one would bother these cars with the shiny new BMWs and Audis on the other side of the hotel.

“What about traffic cameras? Back along the road?” Ross asked, not sure if he was being cautious or paranoid.

“Maybe, but Ross, there’s no law against bein’ out with a woman.”

“Who happened to pick me up on the side of the road in the middle of the night…”

“Well, let’s assume we had to meet up in the cover of dark to avoid gossip since you’re my boss...and because of your jealous girlfriend.”

“Demelza, you know I don’t have a girlfriend,” he grumbled. “This is ridiculous…”

“I know that, but the police wouldn’t. A clandestine affair--a fake one of course--is a perfect cover for sketchy behaviour. But if you’d prefer I not be your alibi…”

“This isn’t a game!” he snapped again. He couldn’t stand that she’d laughed just now. Then a thought hit him and he had to ask. “How did you even know where I was going? That I’d be heading from the beach towards the airfield on foot?”

“Dr. Enys told me.”

“What? This just gets more unbelievable! Dwight knew this was top secret--why the hell did he tell you?”

“Top secret but still you told him?” she snorted. “Well, I’m glad you did, I suppose. He couldn’t follow you himself--he’d a call from one of his ‘patients’, which I think was actually code for Caroline wanted him to come round’--so he thought I might be able to stop you. At least he has some faith in me.”

“Oh come on, this isn’t about what I think of you…”

“Isn’t it though? You clearly don’t trust me and you don’t think I can handle myself and you think I’m silly.”

“Silly?”

“Oh sorry--ridiculous was the word you just used. Anyway Dwight was wary of the whole arrangement and thought it stank to high heaven.”

“Why didn’t he tell me that himself?!”

“He said he did--did you actually listen? And before you get angry at him, you should thank your lucky stars that he was still at Nampara when Trencrom sent word of the ‘new’ meetin’ point...”

“It wasn’t Trencrom who rang me,” he corrected her. “It was Charlie who told me the meet up was moved to the airfield.”

“Charlie Kempthorne? That tosser? Are you shitting me? And you didn’t think it was suspicious that Charlie would be privy to some secret revised plan and you wouldn’t?” she scoffed. “But really, Ross, you should be fucking grateful to have Dwight as a mate. He’s a real friend, you know.”

“I never said he wasn't.”

“No, you just said I wasn't,” she snorted.

“Oh come on, Demelza. You know I didn't mean that. What are you going on about?”

“In case it isn’t clear, Ross,” she hissed, “I am still so angry at you.” She spoke through clenched teeth. “That you got involved with those weasels in the first place, that you shut me out, that you almost...”

“It’s none of your business!” he shouted. “Why are you being this way?”

“Okay, it’s not my business and I’m not your friend, just some stupid girl who works for you and is used to clearin’ up your messes--and who knows she’ll be out of that job if--no, sorry--when you get nicked. Fuck this shit. And fuck you, Ross!” Without looking at him, she stepped out of the car and slammed the door.

Ross immediately followed her, afraid that she’d keep shouting and wake the hotel. She stopped in her tracks a few yards away and stood silently. It might have been the first time in nearly thirty minutes that she’d stopped yelling at him. Ross leaned against the still-warm bonnet of the car and exhaled.

Perhaps she’d known what she was doing, parking the car in a farthest corner of the lot, under a broken street lamp. They were completely hidden in shadow, still Ross could make out her face--her narrowed, feral eyes, her gnashing teeth that gleamed in the faint moonlight. For a moment he thought she might bite him.

He cautiously took a step forward then paused to read her posture.

The chill in the air--and in the words they’d just thrown at each other--was causing her shoulders to shake. He noticed she was wearing a blue jumper just a shade darker than her brilliant eyes. The sleeves were too long, and she’d had to repeatedly push them up, but they wouldn't cooperate and now hung past her fingertips.

It was his, he then realised, the old one he usually left hanging on the peg by the front door.

He almost asked her what she was wearing--or rather why she was wearing it--but instead, aware that he’d been moved and not all sure of the reason, he did something else. He made two broad strides towards her.

Startled, she looked up at him. Her shining eyes lit the night.

“Yes, like you said...fuck this shit…” he laughed and put his hand on her elbow, pulling her towards him. He expected resistance, but he found none.

It was only a moment that they just stared at each other but it felt eternal, and then at some unspoken signal, they crashed together.

It was an untidy and urgent kiss--almost violent in its clumsiness had it not been fueled by such sincere desperation. Then, as they both found their breath, their arms found each other. A great weight had been lifted--one that neither Ross nor Demelza even realised they were shouldering until that moment.

He wove his hands through her hair and kissed her again. This time their lips worked together, carried by the flood of surging desire and long-sought release.

“Demelza, I’m so sorry I got you in this.” His voice was low but soft. Now his hands framed her face, afraid she might slip away like sand through his fingers.

“Ross, I was just so scared for you.”

He could hear the tears she was trying to hold back and understood why she’d been so angry with him. He’d been such a spectacular idiot, and in more ways than one.

“Me too. When you turned up, Demelza...my blood ran cold at the thought that I'd lured you into danger. I would never let anyone hurt you…” He ran the backs of his fingers gently down her cheek then kissed her pulsing temple.

“I couldn't leave you Ross, I just couldn't,” she cried into his neck.

“Thank you for caring for me even though I don’t deserve it. Come, you’re shivering. Let's go inside. We can talk more…” But instead of letting her go, he pressed her closer until he was certain he could feel her heart beating against his.

“I don't want to talk anymore,” she sniffled.

“Me neither. I just want to touch you and know you are safe.”

“Will you, Ross?”

Good god, I’ll never let you go, he thought.

“And can you trust me?” When she looked up at him, the hunted, defensive animal was gone. Now she was raw, vulnerable. She was softly opening herself to him, and doing so completely.

Ross understood what would happen next, what was happening now. He felt it in his gut and knew things would never be the same.

“Of course I do,” he whispered. “More than anyone.”

The darkness of the night--their secret accomplice--wrapped herself protectively around them.

Demelza lifted her face towards him and Ross kissed her once more.

[something-tofightfor]

Christmas in July #5: Just One Thing I Need

Pairing: Ezra x Female Reader (’Starlight’ / NSFW Alphabet Ezra and Reader)

Word Count: 2,748

Rating: Slight NSFW; It’s kinda smutty. Language. Sexual content. Mentions of canon-typical violence and events that took place during the movie. Ezra’s remaining hand and his mouth deserve warnings of their own. 

I am SO SAD to not include this entire gif within the post, but this screenshot still gets the point across. Thank you for this request, @cannedsoupsucks - I need to get back to Ezra and this Reader at some point VERY SOON because they’ve been waiting patiently ... so here’s a glimpse. Had to include a little bit of angst, becuase it’s so close to when Ezra returned from the Green ... but it’s still decidedly fluffy... and kinda sorta smutty, too. For a minute. 

Lifting his mouth from where it had been previously - the patch of skin just above your hip that drove you wild - Ezra’s voice filled the room. “Do you realize, Starlight, that this is the first Christmas I’ve been on the Ephrate with just you since -” “Since the first year we were together.” You interrupted him, your mumbled words ending with a sharp intake of breath as he lowered his lips again, a damp trail left behind as he moved them. “Ezra, you … I’m not stupid. Kevva, what are you doing?” You knew exactly what the man was doing; he was trying to distract you, to keep you from getting out of bed and leaving him alone in the chilly morning air. “Ezra.” With a quiet laugh, you used both hands to reach for his head, the man’s cheek pressed against your bare stomach, breath fanning out over the dampened, exposed skin. “Come on, look at me.” 

He did, turning over so that he was laying on his back, dark eyes finding yours in the mid-morning light as his head turned to the side again. “I’m looking at you, just as you requested.” He raised an eyebrow and you were happy to see that his cheeks were fuller than they had been only a few months earlier, his eyes bright and warm again. He’s getting there. “Was there something that you wanted to discuss?” “When’s Cee coming back?” You ran your fingers through his hair, head cocked to one side. “I know it was supposed to be before Christmas, but …” But that storm’s headed in, and … “She won’t be here until after, will she?” “She will not.” Ezra only sounded slightly disappointed, sadness briefly flashing in his eyes before he spoke again. “There’s no time to switch her transport, nor are there earlier tickets available to do so. With this snowstorm, it’s safer for her to say at school, with her friends until the second half of her holiday break commences.” That’s what I thought. “She’s going to spend Christmas with Dyna and her family, right?” Ezra nodded, the rasp of his beard against your skin making you shiver. He knows he’s doing that, too. “Good.” Ezra reached out with his hand, fingers closing around your elbow and squeezing. “As much as I love having her here, Ezra … I…” Trailing off, you bit your lip and looked away. I’m being selfish. I … she’s just a kid, and she’s important to him, which means she’s important to me, too. 

“I understand, Starlight.” With only a little difficulty, Ezra lifted himself into a sitting position, his hold on you tightening and your arm helping to stabilize him as he rose. “You can say it.” “It’s been too many holidays apart, Ezra. Too many birthdays and Christmases and Harvests and New Turns. For both of us. I want to celebrate things with her - with both of you, but …” You shrugged. “Right now, for this Christmas? The first one back? I’m happy it’s just the two of us.” “She’ll celebrate with Dyna and Aric and their parents. She’ll get to see real snow for the first time, since they’re out in the flats.” You nodded, eyes still on the man. “You and I will spend the day together, and when we pick her up from the docking station?” He leaned closer, sliding his legs over the sheets and moving up so that he was closer to your face. “We’ll have a second Christmas a few days late, with Cee.” 

“Does that make me a terrible person, though?” Frowning, you reached out, fingertips finding and moving over the silvery scar on his cheek. “She’s just a kid, and it’s Christmas.” He said your name, lowering his face toward yours and pressing a kiss to your lips, the action much gentler than you were used to from him. No, it’s much gentler than it was before. Now … this is normal. 

“Think of it this way.” Rubbing the tip of your nose with his, you felt him smile. “A half turn ago, she was on the Green with Damon. Had those unfortunate circumstances not occurred, she likely wouldn’t be celebrating one Christmas, and if she did? It wouldn’t be anything like either of the ones she’ll have with us.” He brushed your hair away from your face with his large hand, staring into your eyes. “Now? She’ll get two days to spend with those she cares about. Two days of feeling safe and warm and happy, with no expectations placed upon her except that she enjoy them.” 

It still astounded you - the way he’d come to care about the girl so quickly, despite everything that had occurred since they’d met. You knew that he felt guilty about inadvertently causing Damon’s death, but Ezra spent his days trying to make up for that - with himself and with the girl, and she’d long since forgiven him. And he’ll forgive himself, too. Eventually.  “You’re right.” Sighing, you gave him a lopsided smile. “You’re always right, Ezra.” “I am far from always right, Starlight.” He kissed you again, this one more heated than the first, lips insistently pressed to yours. “We both know that.” You reached for him, mindful of the end of his arm, hidden beneath the short sleeve of the dark shirt he wore, and made contact with his side, fingers pressed to his ribs - which weren’t as prominent anymore. “But if you’re being selfish, I must confess that I am selfish, too.” What? “You’re not the only one that counted those missed holidays. With each one that passed, I also marked them into the volume of my life, though it was in very different ways than you.” 

He’d had very little with him when he and Cee finally fled the Green on the stolen rock jumper, but one of the things that he’d managed to conceal safely in his suit along with a modest stash of aurelac was a small journal, pages covered front to back in Ezra’s tiny, neat handwriting. It was one of the first things he’d shown to you when you were reunited, and so you knew what he was referring to. He kept track of the days he’d spent on the desolate moon in there - circling the important ones, making notes about others that held significance in shorthand that only he understood. Because he wanted to remember, even when it was hopeless. “We did what we could, Ezra.” 

You could feel him beginning to withdraw, his thoughts turning back to the extended period of time on the Green, and so you chose not to let him, placing the hand that wasn’t on his side on his cheek to turn his head back toward you. Look at me, Ezra. You’re here. “We did.” He smiled then, warmth returning to his eyes and his expression coming back to life. “The same way we will now, when my feet and heart are firmly back upon the Ephrate’s surface.” Ezra stared at you for a few seconds without speaking, and you waited, knowing that he had more to say. He always does. “Now. We should get dressed and go to get that tree you promised me before the snow hits here.” 

--- 

You had to go to three different locations and it took a few hours, but you and Ezra finally found the perfect tree for your living room, a kind man helping Ezra carry it to your vehicle and the two of them lashing it to the top. You could tell that he was frustrated - before, you and Ezra would have handled it yourself, the man doing most of the knot-tying and heavy lifting, but with only one arm, there were new limitations that he was still getting used to. And, you thought as you both settled into your seats to go home, he’s going to need all of his strength to help me carry it inside. 

That was less of a struggle than you imagined it to be, with Ezra holding onto the trunk end and you using both hands to stabilize the needled top as you carried it up the few steps and through your front door. Once it was securely in the stand - and only leaning slightly to one side, the two of you stood back to admire your work, Ezra using his arm to pull you back and into his chest, fingers wrapped around the front of your shoulder. “It may be hubris on my part, but I … believe that we did well, Starlight.” You laughed at that, the silhouette of the tree in front of the window making you feel giddy. 

“It’s not. It looks damn good, Ezra.” He kissed the side of your head, rocking slightly back and forth. “I’ll dig the lights out later tonight, and then the ornaments tomorrow. We’ll have it done in no time.” He’d never helped you decorate for the holiday before, but in the weeks he’d spent recovering from his injuries on the Green in your house, the two of you had agreed to hold nothing back while moving forward, sharing every experience possible. Christmas is no different. “Plenty of time to wrap the presents and get them under there before Cee gets home.”

His arm tightened around you at that, Ezra pulling you even closer. “In the spirit of Christmas, there’s something else I need to admit to you.” He spoke quietly, murmuring into your ear. “Cee being delayed is … fortuitous.” Is it? How? He urged you to turn and face him, and when you did, you were met with the full strength of Ezra’s gaze, the man unblinking as he watched you. “It gives me the only gift I truly want.” 

“W… what do you want, Ezra?” You felt heat creeping through your body at the way he was staring at you. Though you’d craved it while he was gone, you were still getting used to the intensity of Ezra’s full attention, to the way him watching you as if he could see inside of you still made you feel the same way it had when you’d first met him in your lecture hall. I thought he’d want to spend this holiday with her … with all three of us together, but he … this seems like … he wants something else. 

“You.” He leaned in, lips tracing over your temple and then down, his hand following the same path on the other side of your face. “All I want this Christmas is you, and for the two of us to have a chance to -” You kissed him hard as an interruption, both hands coming up to the sides of his face to keep him from moving, but Ezra wasn’t going anywhere. And he won’t again. “You like hearing that, don’t you?” You could tell that he was smiling as he spoke, but all you could do was nod, both eyes closed as you leaned your forehead against his. I do. “Incredible.” He kissed you again, your lower lip fit perfectly between both of his. “I’ve rendered you speechless, Starlight, with a simple -” “Ezra.” You breathed out his name, relief flooding your body again at the fact that he felt the same as you - that as much as he wanted Cee to have normal holidays, he was just as thankful as you were to have more time together, just the two of you. There was plenty of time to talk - to continue rehashing the years you’d spent apart, the months you’d worried about him, the things that he’d endured during his trip. Now’s not the time. Now isn’t… “Up, Ezra.” Taking a half step back, you moved both hands to the hem of his shirt, taking the fabric between both hands. “Lift your arms up.” 

It had taken the man over a month to show you the extent of his injuries; not only the healing wound on the arm he’d had amputated, but the scarring on his chest, along with the other marks on his body that hadn’t been there the last time you’d seen him. But they’re a part of him now, and he has to… understand that I want to see them. “What are you … we have a tree to…” But you could hear in his voice that he didn’t want you to stop, one arm raised high above his head and the other extended upward as far as it would go to match.

“The tree can wait.” You pulled the long-sleeved shirt off, letting it drop to the floor with a quiet thunk as the knotted sleeve hit. “There’s a snowstorm coming, right? That means we’re gonna be stuck for a while.” He grinned, the expression genuine, and you let your gaze roam over his exposed skin before you met his eyes again. “I just wanted you back too, Ezra.” You nodded once. “And now I’ve got you.” Without warning, you dropped to your knees, looking up at him. “It’s the best gift I could have asked for. So I’m going to make it count. All of it.” 

“Starlight, I…” But he didn’t stop you, even as your hands undid the button on his pants followed by the zipper. More often than not since he’d been back in your life, you’d been the one to initiate intimacy, but you didn’t mind. Not with him. Ezra’s fingers wrapped around your chin, his thumb tracing over your lower lip. Yeah? Silently questioning him with a smirk and a raised eyebrow, you felt the seconds tick by, hearing the quiet but constant tick-tick-tick as the ice pellets began to hit the windows. It starts. “What are you waiting for?” His voice was thick with desire, but he didn’t look away, even as your hand found the slit in the front of his underwear, fingers wrapping around him and tugging his length free. 

From the moment that you wrapped your lips around the tip, you knew that you had him; Ezra’s eyes snapping shut and his mouth flying open, a string of words reaching your ears that you’d never grow tired of hearing him say. There was no need for him to be quiet, and so he wasn’t, the hand dropping from your chin to your shoulder, bracing himself on your body. When you finally pulled back to take a deep breath, you glanced up, noticing that Ezra had fallen silent. “What?” Clearing your throat, you swallowed, slowly stroking him with one hand. “Got real quiet, Ezra. Do you want me to stop?” “No, I want to get back into that Kevva-damned bed with you right now, Starlight.” He rasped the words out, voice thick and slightly hoarse. “Get up.” You loved that you could do that to him, loved hearing the change in his voice, the drop as he told you what he wanted and needed from you. “We’ll finish this there, where I can fulfil my obligation and show you thoroughly just how much I appreciate being alone with you.” 

Pulling your hand away from him, you held both of them up, palms facing out as you rose to your feet, taking a step back. “I’m an obligation to you now, Ezra?” But you were joking and he knew it, even as he bent down to remove his pants one leg at a time after tucking himself back behind the fabric of his underwear, though it did little to hide his excitement from you. It never did. He groaned as he straightened up, standing in front of you wearing only the one article of clothing, lean body on full display. Oh, I missed you, Ezra. “I don’t mean it like that.”  

“I know.” He took a step toward you, forcing you backward, and even though there was no malice in his posture or expression, Ezra stayed silent until you reached the doorway of the bedroom, his eyes landing on the window and causing you to turn away from him to look. “It’s really coming down, isn’t it?” In the minutes that you’d spent on your knees in front of him, the ice had changed to snow, fat flakes swirling outside of the window. “Good.” He stepped behind you, arm snaking around your waist and his palm sliding beneath your shirt and up, settling just beneath the bottom of your bra as he held you close again. “Looks like I’ll have to ensure that you’re well taken care of until it lets up.”

---

Ezra (Prospect) Tag List: (Add yourself HERE)

@the-blind-assassin-12 @jynrumbly @cannedsoupsucks @misguidedandbeguiled @raspberrymama @missminkylove @gracie7209 @iamskyereads @jupiters--moonxx @spideysimpossiblegirl @pretty-brown-eyess @csigeoblue @bport76​ @krissology​