#huh this one is actually canon compliant that's crazy
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fangirlwriting-stories · 2 days ago
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Things We Still Have in Common
Summary: In retrospect, Ford probably should have just warned Stan about the bunker's security system.
Author's Note: My sister asked me for a Gravity Falls fanfiction for Christmas, and wanted Stan and Ford trapped in a room together for 24 hours, so I put this together!
...
After hearing from Dipper about his experience with the shapeshifter, Ford makes it a point to head down to the bunker himself to check and see that it’s still secure.  It’s not that he doesn’t trust Dipper when he said they handled it, but the cryochamber Dipper mentioned pushing him into is fairly old, and Ford would just as soon make sure it’s still functioning properly.
So, after lunch, he heads down to the bunker, with a fair amount of tools to update the chamber if need be.
It’s been quite a long time since he’s been to the bunker, even after arriving back in this dimension, so he’s not surprised to find things moved around and changed.  Dipper did mention, with a fair amount of sheepishness, that they’d moved things around in the main observatory, and done quite a bit of damage in the tunnels.  Dipper might have oversold it a bit, however, because when Ford arrives in the observatory, he doesn’t find much damage apart from moved around papers and some flipped switches that appear to be long past use anyway.  The cryochamber is visible on one of the monitors, and the shapeshifter is still frozen inside, sure enough, looking just like Dipper.  The sight is more than a little unsettling, but at least he doesn’t have to worry about the chambers being on the verge of collapse.  There’s no sign of any thawing, or dripping water, or anything that would mean he had a time crunch in checking it over, and he doesn’t need to head straight in there.
He heads instead for the control console, and checks over the readings on the cryochamber.  It seems to be in good shape for the most part, and though he’ll need to replace the temperature modulator at some point in the next ten years, he did build it to last.
Ford writes down a couple notes in the third journal, which he brought with him, and is about to head back towards the entrance, when suddenly, a new figure appears on the monitor.
For a second, Ford wonders if the shapeshifter really has escaped and he’s seeing things, because he can’t think of many other reasons for Stanley to be down here in the bunker.  He’s carrying an armful of cans of “Baron Num Nums High Flyin' Beans,” and seems to be singing to himself.
Ford groans, but presses the button on the console that overrides the disinfectant closet’s doors, and marches over to it as Stan approaches the main room, making sure his irritation is plain on his face.
“Stockin’ beans for the apocalypse, do do do do,” Stan sings as he walks through from the tunnels, eyes closed and not seeming to have noticed Ford yet.
“Stanley,” Ford says, if for no other reason than to put an end to his singing.
Stan yelps and drops nearly half the cans as he opens his eyes and looks over at Ford.  He looks down at the cans on the ground, then glares back up.
“Great.  Thanks, Ford.”
“What are you doing down here?  This place is dangerous.”
“Relax, would ya?  The thing is locked up,” he says, gesturing to the cryochamber.  “And Wendy mentioned a whole bunch of cans of beans down here, so I figured I’d add to my stash for the apocalypse.  Hey, help me pick these cans up.”
Ford rolls his eyes and makes no such movement.  “You shouldn’t have come down here without my permission,” he says.
“Oh, excuse me,” Stan says, adding a fair amount of mockery to his tone.  “I’ve been pokin’ around your creepy inventions for thirty years, Poindexter, forgive me if I don’t start asking permission now.”
“I never wanted you poking around my inventions in the first place,” Ford says coolly.
Stan sets down some of the cans so he can shift around the ones in his arms, and starts singing again.  “Ignoring my brother, do do do do, ‘cause he’s bein’ a jerk, do do do do do do…”
Ford groans and turns to walk back into the control room, figuring he might as well give Stanley a taste of his own medicine.
He grabs his notebook, and is about to start back through the security room, when he hears Stan start walking again, sounding like he’s carrying far too many cans.
Ford turns around with a sigh, because if Stan’s going to insist on bringing all of the cans back Ford might as well take some of them, just to make the jangling of the cans quieter, naturally.  But before he can offer, one of the cans balanced precariously on top of the pile slips off, and Stan doesn’t seem to notice, too busy trying to balance another one that was about to do the same thing.
“Stan,” Ford starts, but he’s too late.  The can rolls just far enough into the control room for Stan’s foot to hit it as he steps out of the disinfectant chamber.  He tumbles down towards the ground, and all of the cans in his arms go flying— right into the security room.
“Wait!” Ford yells, leaping immediately for the control panel, but it’s too late.  Dozens of cans hit dozens of the alert panels, and the security mechanism slams shut at what to it is registering as a small army.  The disinfectant chamber slams shut and locks on the other side of the room, and an alarm starts blaring overhead.
Ford groans and turns a displeased look back on Stan, who’s currently climbing up from the ground.
“Uh,” Stan says, having the decency to look sheepish.  “Whoops.”
“Fantastic,” Ford mutters, sitting down at the control panel.  He hits a couple buttons, and the alarm shuts off, at least.
“Yeah, yeah, sorry,” Stan says.  “Welp.  I’ve lost all of my beans.  You want to get us out of here so I can go home and mope in peace?”
“I can’t,” Ford says, glaring at him.  “With that many alarms, it stays up for 24 hours.”
“What?  Why?  Wouldn’t any intruders be pretty crushed pretty immediately?”
“Humans would, but they’re not what we were worried about when Fiddleford and I built the thing,” Ford snaps.  He tries a couple more switches to no avail, and sits back in his chair with a sigh.  “We’re stuck down here until it turns off.”
“Oh sure, and whose fault is that?”
Ford turns to him in bafflement.  “Yours?”
“I didn’t build a death trap for a security system.”
Ford leans forward to massage at his temples, then reaches into his bag, then pulls out the walkie talkie he’d given to Dipper in case he ran into some kind of trouble and needed to let someone know.  He presses the button.
“Dipper?  Come in, Dipper,” he says into it, and lets go.
“Great Uncle Ford!” comes Dipper’s worried voice.  “Are you okay?”
“Stanley set off the security system and we’re stuck down here for the next 24 hours,” Ford says.
“Hey, I wouldn’t have set it off if you hadn’t—”
“Will you two be alright until we get out?” Ford cuts him off.
“Yeah, I think so,” Dipper says.  “But do you need me to come there?”
“There’s nothing you could do anyway,” Ford says.  “Just hang out at the shack, alright?”
“Tell Soos to stay after,” Stan adds in.  “But I’m not paying him any extra.”
“Okay,” Dipper says.  “Let me know if you need anything.”
“I will.  Over and out,” Ford says.  Dipper doesn’t say anything else, and he drops the walkie talkie back into his bag.
“So,” Stan says, a smugness to his voice that makes Ford immediately regret his life choices.  “They should just hang out at the shack, huh?”
Ford gives Stan a confused look.  “What are you talking about?”
“That’s what you said to Dipper,” Stan says, leaning against the console.  “That they should hang out at the shack.”
Ford goes over his word choices and kicks himself.  “It is the shack until the end of the summer,” he says, trying to put “I didn’t mess up, I said exactly what I meant to say” into his voice.  “And then it will go back to being my house again.”
“Uh-huh, sure,” Stan says, because Ford has never been able to properly lie to him.
Ford rolls his eyes and turns back to his journal, scribbling “I am writing this down in order to ignore Stanley,” in small letters.
It seems to work well enough, because Stan just shrugs and goes to collect what cans of beans escaped the security system.
Ford leans back in the chair and closes the journal.  He’s not exactly thrilled at the prospect of spending twenty four hours here with Stanley.  At least neither of them are hurt, and since they’re in this room specifically, they’ll be able to tell as soon as the security system shuts off, and get out right afterwards.
Out of the corner of his vision, Ford sees Stan set five cans of beans on the ground by the door, which seems to be all that survived the crushing.  Stan gives a disappointed sigh and wanders over to one of the shelves on the other side of the room.  He starts to whistle to himself.
“Please don’t,” Ford says instantly.  “Being stuck here is going to be hard enough.”
Stan’s only response is to start to whistle louder.
Ford resists the instinct to slam his head onto the desk.
It is going to be a long 24 hours.
With every minute, Ford is regretting more not putting a clock down here.  He can always radio Dipper if he needs to know what time it is that badly, but he doesn’t want to bother the boy with something so trivial.  It’s not like knowing what time it is will make the time they’re down here lessen.  Besides, then Stan could mock him for blinking first, and Ford can’t let him win.
Eventually, he and Stan settle into activities.  Stan has begun trying to balance the beakers that were sitting on the shelves.  Ford hasn’t stopped him because he hasn’t broken any yet, and at least he’s not saying anything.  Ford is reading through his journal and making updated notes and additions, though he often doesn’t have much space to do so.  His drawings tend to take up a lot of space.
Ford would be perfectly content to do just that for the entire time they’re down there, but he also would be a fool if he doesn’t expect Stanley to ruin it at some point.
Sure enough, as Ford is going through Dipper’s entries and highlighting parts that intrigue him, Stanley speaks up.
“So, uh, did you build this place just to house your shapeshifter guy?”
Ford sighs, and doesn’t look up from the journal as he responds.
“Not at first,” he says.  “I wanted to explore Gravity Falls underground.  I had planned to expand the tunnels at first, before—” the Shapeshifter turned dangerous.  And before Bill showed up, and all but robbed Ford of everything he’d loved about Gravity Falls in the first place, made all of the anomalies he’d come here for seem like pointless wastes of time.
“Before the shifter guy happened?” Stan asks, cutting off Ford’s train of thought.
Ford sighs, making sure his exasperation is clear.  The response “Actually it was before I got shoved into another dimension,” pops into his head, but he swallows it down and nods instead.  It’s needlessly callous, and would just add more tension when they’re going to have to be here for a while yet.
“You know, if you wanted to explore Gravity Falls underground, there was a dinosaur cavern already sitting there,” Stan says.
“I read about it in Dipper’s journal,” Ford says.  “I didn’t know it existed back then.  I’ll probably make time to go there eventually.”
“Watch out for pterodactyls,” Stan deadpans.  “Glad to know I beat you to that, though.”
Ford grits his teeth and opts not to respond.
“Did you hear about how I punched it in the face?”
“Are you trying to start an argument?” Ford snaps, glaring down at him.
“It would definitely make the time go faster,” Stan says, giving Ford a grin that’s just a little too smug.
“Considering how quickly I beat you last time, no it wouldn’t,” Ford says, adapting a smug smile of his own.
Stan’s face drops into a scowl.  “Hey, you caught me off guard after I’d just run from a bunch of FBI agents through an entire town.  Gimme a break.  I bet you couldn’t beat up a bunch of zombies.”
“Please,” Ford says, rolling his eyes.  “Most of them are in an advanced state of decay.  I did physically overpower quite a few of them once.”
“Oh, please.  If you had, you’d have written it in your stupid journals,” Stan says, rolling his eyes as he looks back up at the ceiling.
Ford clenches his teeth.  “They’re not stupid,” he says, in lieu of revealing to Stanley the pages that he ripped out of the journal.  He doesn’t want to revisit those experiences anytime soon, and especially not with Stanley of all people.
Stan doesn’t reply with anything more than a grunt, before going back to picking up one of the smaller beakers and placing it on top of the one currently balanced atop all the others.  At which point, his streak ends and they topple over, several of them shattering on the ground.
“Fantastic,” Ford snaps, standing and pushing the chair back.  “I don’t have any way to clean up broken glass right now, Stanley.”
“I don’t see any other way to entertain myself here,” Stan snaps back, bending down to pick up the ones that aren’t broken and setting them back on the shelves.  “I didn’t come down here with plans to stay, I didn’t bring anything to do.”
“That’s not my fault.”
“Did I say it was?”
Ford groans in frustration and sits back down at the desk, getting back to work on the journal.
Stan doesn’t go for the beakers again, but instead goes and leans against the other wall.  He’s never been one to sit still for long, however, so Ford’s not surprised when he speaks up again before long.
“It grabbed Mabel’s pet pig, you know.”
Ford shot a confused look over his shoulder.  “What did?”
“The pterodactyl,” Stan says, crossing his arms and looking up at the ceiling in reminiscence.  “It uh, burst into the house and grabbed it right out of my hands.”
“Uh-huh, sure,” Ford says, rolling his eyes and turning back to his journal.
“What, you’re not seriously gonna write in that thing the whole time, are ya?  We’re stuck here for a while, might as well reminisce for a bit.”
“I cannot think of any circumstance that would make me want to reminisce with you,” Ford says without looking up.
“And that’s just the kind of warm fuzziness that makes you so pleasant to be around, Poindexter.”
Ford drops his pen and spins around in his chair, glaring at Stanley.  “Need I remind you it’s your fault we’re here in the first place?”
“You think maybe if you’d helped me carry a couple of those cans we wouldn’t be in this mess?” Stan shoots back, narrowing his eyes.
“It’s not my job to help you with every hare-brained scheme you come up with.”
“Yeah, heaven forbid you have to help me out with something like carrying groceries.  Oh, the indignity.”
“I came down here for something important, Stanley!” Ford snaps, which seems to be the wrong thing to say, because Stan’s gaze darkens.
“Well,” he says coldly.  “If you don’t give a shit about my thing, why the hell should I give a shit about yours?”
Ford sighs, and pinches the bridge of his nose.  “It’s fine,” he says.  “There won’t be any long-term harm done, it’s just a rather large inconvenience.  We’re just going to have to grin and bear it.”
Stan huffs, and grabs one of the cans of beans, yanking the top back until it opens.  He pulls the metal lid off and bends it until it makes a satisfactory spoon, which he uses to scoop the beans up and into his mouth.
“Beans?” he grumbles, nodding down at them.
“I think I’ll manage,” Ford says, spinning his chair back around.  “I’ve gone longer than 24 hours without food.”
Many times, actually.  Food isn’t always easy to find in every dimension out there in the multiverse, and there are quite a few instances he can think of having to go without.  He’ll make it until lunchtime tomorrow just fine.
He’s not expecting a response from Stanley in regards to that, but to his surprise, he gets one.
“It’s uh, not a skill you can just pick right back up, Poindexter.”
Ford turns and gives him a curious look.  “Excuse me?”
“Not eating for more than a day.  It’s not a skill you can just pick right back up.  You’ve had, you know, stable meals for a couple weeks now.”
Ford looks at him for a moment, not sure quite what that means.
“I know,” he says eventually.
Stan sighs, and shakes his head.  He sets his open can down, grabs three of the cans of beans off the floor and walks over to the console, then sets them down next to Ford.  “Eat ‘em when you get hungry,” he says, and walks back over to pick up his open can again.
“I mean it,” he adds when Ford doesn’t say anything.
Ford sighs but doesn’t object, then turns back to his journal.
He’ll end up eating the beans in a couple hours.
As the time drags on, the quiet gets more comfortable.  Ford gives Stan a turn in the chair eventually, since it’s the only real place to comfortably sit in there.  To his surprise, Stan quickly falls asleep leaning against the desk.
It’s probably close to night at this point, but Ford had figured they’d eventually try to sleep on the ground, since sleeping in a chair like that would be bad for their backs at this age.
To be fair, the ground probably wouldn’t be much better, but he still can’t help but notice that Stan seems far more comfortable than he should be, hunched over a desk like that.  Maybe he just never grew out of his ease with falling asleep in class?
Or maybe, Ford realizes with a start, he’s fallen asleep in a desk chair a lot these past thirty years.
Ford doesn’t want to linger on that thought for too long, so he sits down against the wall with his journal and starts sketching out plans to install a failsafe to the security system.  Best to avoid a repeat of this situation in the future, and it’s easier to work without Stan jabbering on.
He makes his way through a decent amount of the changes he’ll have to make and the overrides he’ll have to install before his focus is dragged away by Stan starting to mutter in his sleep.
Ford sighs, looking at Stan in part exasperation, part amazement.  Even when he’s asleep, Stan finds a way to break his concentration.
Ford keeps his gaze on him for a minute, trying to decide if this is more or less annoying than Stan’s periodic interruptions.  He’s thrown out of that internal debate, however, when he hears what Stan’s actually saying.
He’s muttering apologies.
Maybe he’s also done that a lot while asleep at a desk chair these past thirty years—
Ford pushes himself to his feet, walks across the room, and shakes Stan’s shoulder.
Stan jerks awake immediately, and is already swinging fists towards him.  Ford steps back, just far enough to avoid the swing of Stan’s fists.  Sometimes those multiverse instincts are very helpful.
It takes Stan a minute, but eventually he seems to shake awareness back into his head, and blinks a couple of times at Ford.
“You— ugh,” he grumbles, the tension slipping out of his posture as he rubs at his eyes.  “What the hell was that for?”
Ford doesn’t answer right away.  “You were being unintentionally vulnerable in your sleep and I didn’t want to know things you didn’t want to tell me” doesn’t feel like it will go over well.  But it’s true.  If there’s anything three decades in the multiverse has taught him, it’s that you don’t just go around sharing your secrets with anyone.  It’s dangerous.  And that’s definitely what he’s thinking about.  It’s the safety thing.  It’s definitely not just that he doesn’t want to force anything like that on Stan.
“You were talking in your sleep,” Ford says instead.  “I’m trying to work.”
“Are you kidding me?” Stan snaps, glaring at him.  “Let a man sleep, Poindexter.  It’s been a long day.”
Ford walks back over to where he’d been sitting before and sits down with his journal.
Stan huffs and puts his arms back on the control panel, then leans his head on top of his arms, shutting his eyes again.
“I have nightmares too,” Ford mutters, because he can’t help it.
Stan gives a very loud, obviously fake snore, and Ford pulls open his journal and gives up.
Stan does manage to fall asleep again, after a while, and the nightmares thankfully don’t make a recurrence.
Ford hadn’t thought that after forty years apart he would have anything in common with his brother anymore.  He wouldn’t have picked nightmares, if he had a choice.
Or food insecurity, for that matter.
In the end, Ford decides an all nighter is more appropriate.  There’s too high a chance that if he shuts his eyes right now, he’ll have a nightmare of his own.  Bill would come to pay a visit, if nothing else.  He wouldn’t miss out on a chance to show up and mock Ford for something like this.  Ford can’t be sure that Stan will pay him the same courtesy of waking him up, and Ford isn’t ready to be vulnerable either.
So instead, he finishes the plans for the security system override, turns to a new page, and sketches a drawing of what Stan probably looked like, fallen asleep at a different desk.
Purely to pass the time, of course.
Stan sleeps well into the morning, which Ford definitely doesn’t mind.  He gets one radio communication from Dipper, that it’s 7 in the morning and they have five hours left on the security system, and also that Soos is going to run the shack today.
That last part wakes Stan up.
“Absolutely not,” he says, before he’s even finished blinking the sleep out of his eyes.  “Tell him we’re opening late.”
“He can do it, Grunkle Stan!” comes Mabel’s voice.  “Besides, Dipper’s done a tour before, he can’t do worse than that!”
“Hey!”
“That is true…”
“Hey!”
“Oh, alright.  But you watch him, pumpkin.  You’ve got experience with bossing people around.”
“You got it!  Over and out!”
“Hey, I get to say—”
The radio cuts off.
Ford chuckles a little.  “So, do you think the place will still be standing when we get back?”
“Eh, I give it a 70/30 chance.  Apparently they did knock a new hole in the wall last time I let Mabel run things, but it was fixed by the time I got home.”
“You— I’m sorry?”
“Mabel and I made a bet.”
“Of course you did,” Ford sighs, though if the damage is already fixed he supposes he can’t be that upset.
Stan stands and stretches, with a couple pops in his back that sound rather painful.
“You’re up,” he says, jerking his thumb at the chair as he starts to walk around the room.
Ford gives a wave of thanks and walks over to sit down in the chair.  It definitely feels nice to sit on something cushioned instead of the cold floor.
“According to Dipper we have about five hours left, by the way,” Ford says.  Stan gives a grunt of acknowledgement.
Ford sets his journal open to the page where he drew the plans for the override, and spends the last five hours comparing his notes to the actual control console.  Stan takes an hour or so to wake up, then spends the time balancing the much less breakable bean cans in different ways.
The fact that they have less time to wait than they did yesterday certainly helps the mood of the room, but even so, by the time Dipper radios to alert them they only have an hour left, Ford can tell they’re both itching to get out of there.  Ford does his best to keep track of how much time passes in the last hour, since he doesn’t want to bother Dipper every couple minutes for an update, but the closer it gets to the time the system will shut off, the more Ford wants out of there.
“Gonna go home and make some food,” Stan mutters to himself at one point.  “And gonna have to thank Soos for watching the kids for so long.  Maybe I’ll just let him run the shack for the rest of the day, he would take that as thanks.”
“You’d just spend the day napping,” Ford says, and winces.  He’d actually been aiming more for teasing, but there’s far too much flatness to his tone for it to count.
Sure enough, Stan snaps back, “Yeah, and maybe I’ve earned it, huh?  I’ve had to put up with your ugly mug for the last 24 hours.”
“We have the same face,” Ford groans, looking up at the ceiling.
“Your point being?”
Ford grumbles and turns back to his journal, though he is most certainly out of anything interesting he could find it there.
And then, to his great relief, there’s the sound of loud clanking, and both he and Stan turn in desperate hope to see the tiles to the other room sliding back, leaving their exit from the bunker clear.
“Finally,” Stan groans, moving immediately towards the room.
“Stop,” Ford snaps, grabbing him by the arm and yanking him back.  “Don’t step on the tiles.”
Stan shoots him a dirty look.  “I know that, Poindexter,” he snaps.  “I came down here in the first place, didn’t I?”
Ford huffs, and pulls Stan back so he can slip out past him first.  He trusts himself more when it comes to avoid tripping, and he’s not going to get stuck down here again.
He hears Stan’s irritated grumbling behind him, but Ford just ignores it to turn on the radio and tell Dipper they’re on their way out.
“Awesome!” Dipper calls.  “I mean, uh, that’s good, Great Uncle Ford.  We’ll see you in just a bit!”
“See you soon, Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford!” Mabel calls, sounding thrilled at the prospect.
“See you soon,” Ford agrees, with a fond smile, though neither Mabel or Dipper could see it.
“Oh, and you don’t need to worry about food or anything, Soos made you lunch!” Mabel adds on as an afterthought.
“Yeah, alright,” Stan calls as they both head out of the security room and towards the front room, and head for the staircase.
“You want me to tell him thanks, Grunkle Stan?” Mabel asks.
Ford glances back to see Stan’s obvious distaste at the idea, but he responds, “Sure, pumpkin,” in a tone of voice that doesn’t let any of that through.  “But all of you prepare yourselves, ya hear?  I’ve got a whole day of annoying you knuckleheads to make up for.”
Mabel’s delighted giggles and Dipper’s exhausted groan both come through the radio.
“Roger that!  Over and out!” Mabel calls.
“I get to say that!  Hey, give me back the—” the radio cuts out.
Stan chuckles with a fond roll of his eyes.  Ford looks at him for another moment, then pulls his gaze away so Stan doesn’t think he’s staring.  Still, as they both start up the steps, it occurs to him that he might actually still have one more thing in common with his brother.
This one, he can’t say he minds that much.
23 notes · View notes
cuntstable · 1 year ago
Note
jolyyyyneeee for the character thingy :) 🦋💚🕸
Thank you!!!! ^_^ i love the jo and ween..….
First Impression:
Oh thank god finally a woman
Impression now:
Best written jojo protagonist. a perfect culmination of the joestar bloodline and all its struggles both in story and thematically. the perfect protagonist in general for the ideas stone ocean explores. a tragic character whos who i love deeply. but also oh thank god a woman and thank god 2 that shes silly and goofy and also a crazy ass <3
favourite moment:
i mean…… it has to be her sacrifice at the end of stocean right….. single handedly the most soul crushing devastating thing to ever happen in jojos. but also honorable mention to the time she spents in solitary/fighting survivor because aaahh…. thats the pivotal moment of character development to her…… and also second honorable mention to her fighting pucci in the space station and going jumpscare mode on his ass. made me laugh
idea for a story:
im horrible at coming up with stories LOL but i would have ofc liked to see more of the downtime she spent with foof and hermes. and also maybe more from her childhood, like was there a period when she was very very young when her father was present? and what kind of relationship did she have with her mother? the impression i always got was that they were very close so id love to have that side of her explored more… in a canon compliant way LOL
unpopular opinion:
her relationship to anasui is so nothing like at best its just kind of unfunny and at worst it makes me very uncomfortable LOL. also its not interesting at all because its so one sided, like jolyne going ”ok ask to marry me then” during the final fight was so….. huh……….. like i would like to assume it was just her trying to get anasui to fight harder and to have hope but i think its meant to be a genuine moment which i mean. well…..
favourite relationship:
MAN…….. i obviously love the relationship she has with her girlies and honestly the dynamic she had with pucci is also very funny to me (and the way the paraller each other is soooo delicious to meee) but. my favourite relationship of hers has gotta be with jotaro…… like estranged daughter and father relationship where the pain of neglect and abandonment that the daughter feels is actually focused on and not just reduced to ”daddy issues lol” is already interesting and good to see. but ultimately the fact that her getting to recontextualize that abandonment is the driving force behind her character development is what really makes it for me, like getting to know that she WAS always treasured and loved…. of course that doesnt erase the pain and grudge she carried with her but it gives her the will to fight to save her father, so that they might actually for the first time be together :’) and jotaros complex about leaving his daughter to protect her because so many people hes cared about have gotten hurt or died because of stand shit….. but in the process he becomes the thing hurting her….. aaaahhh
favourite headcanon:
gay. in love with women. thats it.
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knithappens05 · 2 years ago
Text
[Fic] A Dressing Down
I don't do a lot of drawing, but I do write little stories about the AKA kids sometimes! Most of it isn't canon-compliant, just for funsies. This one I wrote after Diarmuid's player talked about him sharing sweaters with Moira on occasion, but it's some ColtxDee content for those jazzed about the Tiktok lore getting dropped. 8]b Enjoy!
I can’t figure out if she does this to be ironic or what.
It really was the stupidest thing he’d ever seen. Fuzzy, off-white, huge pom-pom flowers dropped on the front and sleeves, probably the back too. It looked like something someone would wear after losing a bet. But there Moira was, sitting across from him and chatting happily with Diarmuid about some cute video or something, looking totally unaware of how stupid she looked.
Whatever, it wasn’t like he cared what she wore.
But he did a couple days later when Diarmuid came back to the room late at night in the same stupid sweater. Colt looked up from the frustrating task of shoving all of his unfolded clothes into his dresser drawer and stopped to stare at the perfectly round abjurations dotting the front of that thing. Unmistakable, and Diarmuid was wearing it?
“Where’d you get that?”
“Huh?” It took Diarmuid a minute to figure out Colt meant the sweater, given the total lack of context clues. “Oh! Moira leant it to me. It’s cute!”
More beats passed as Colt processed this.
“Yeah.”
--
“I need to talk to you.”
Moira barely managed to scoop her homework and textbooks away in time before Colt could put his tray on top of them. She looked a little irritated.
“Hey Colt, yeah sure, have a seat, let me clear this for you.”
It didn’t register. “What’s going on with you and Diarmuid?”
Moira tilted her head and furrowed her brows. “Uh…? Nothing as far as I’m aware? Is he upset?”
“No,” Colt’s turn to look irritated that Moira wasn’t reading his mind.
“Okay, then… I have literally no idea what you’re asking me, then.”
He let out a short, loud sigh, looked away, tapped the table agitatedly, looked back. “Look I don’t care if you’re fucking, okay?”
Whatever theories Moira had been forming about what Colt was actually asking about, this was probably right at the very bottom. “Uhh…” She looked away for help—or verification she wasn’t going crazy. Colt took it as an admission of guilt.
“I don’t. Okay?”
“Colt I’m…” She was still struggling to figure out where to even start with this sudden and mysterious train wreck.
“But people are going to start noticing he’s wearing your shit, okay? So.” He shrugged as nonchalantly as he could, which ended up looking like it could have been a shoulder-check. So stop giving him your sweaters was implied, Colt was pretty certain of that.
Moira’s eyebrows flew up in sudden understanding. “Oh my god, no, Colt, he asked to borrow them! He’s not wearing my clothes because we’re like that, he asked and I said ‘yeah, I can’t wear them all at once, go ahead’!”
Colt softened just a little. “…Hm.”
“Why did you immediately think we were having sex? That’s like zero to sixty in two seconds.”
“I dunno. Boyfriend jeans or whatever.”
Moira looked like she was barely containing her incredulity. Eventually after enough stony silence from Colt and struggled parsing from Moira, she had to set the attempts to navigate Colt’s thought process aside—for her own sanity.
“No, Diarmuid and I are not… swapping clothes because we’re a couple and regularly undressing in front of one another. He saw one of my sweaters when he was over gaming with Achara, asked if he could borrow it, I was happy to let him. That’s it.”
“…I guess that makes sense.”
“You guess? What is with this interrogation? Why are you being so weird about some imagined meaning of borrowed sweaters?”
“Can you make me a sweater?”
For the second time in the span of three minutes, Moira felt like she had whiplash. “Wha--?”
“But like, a cool one. Not with all this shit you usually put on yours. Well, maybe a little of that.” One that Diarmuid might like. “But not a lot. And maybe a little small on me.”
Looking across the table at Moira now, Colt felt a strange but distinct cold front coming in from her direction as she stared back at him with all traces of confusion gone from her expression. She started putting her books in her bag without a word. Colt took this as a sign that he’d somehow fucked up.
“You want money? I could pay for it.”
“Ohh Colt Arvidsson, you couldn’t afford me even if you were still doing whatever the Hellions did.” Moira whipped a teal sharpie and hot pink post-its out of her bag, scribbled something on the top, yanked the note off and slapped it down on the table in front of Colt. “See you in class.”
Colt, frozen and awkward, watched Moira storm off and only chanced a glance at the note when she was totally out of his eyeline:
‘AMAZON.COM’
--
“Colt?” A light pounding at the door. “Can—can you open the door for me?”
At Diarmuid’s request, Colt quickly bounded across the room in three strides and opened the door to their room. Packages greeted him, Diarmuid somewhere underneath.
“Oh shit, let me help,” he started relieving Diarmuid of the parcels, stacking them in one hand easily.
“Thanks, they’re all for you I think? The people at the mailroom gave them to me to give to you, they said they’ve been there a few days. They’ve been emailing you.”
“I thought they’d just bring them here, isn’t that how mail works?”
“…No, you have to… there’s a mail room and you have to go get packages and mail there. They don’t just bring it to our dorm.”
“Huh.” So that’s what those emails were about.
“What’d you get? I was worried for a sec, but then I realized they were all pretty light.”
Colt started tearing apart the plastic pouches one by one, revealing sweater after sweater in navy, gray, black…
“O-oh…”
“Just thought I’d get some new stuff.”
“Y-yeah sure…”
Well, maybe Colt was turning over a new sartorial leaf. Far be it from Diarmuid to question it.
Just a little weird, for him especially, to get six or seven sweaters in April…
3 notes · View notes
luvnami · 4 years ago
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𝐎𝐜𝐞𝐚𝐧 | 𝐖𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐬 (here) | 𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞 | 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬
𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞 - Second part to ‘Ocean’! Hope you enjoy it :> Reblogs, comments, shares and likes are really appreciated!!
𝐁𝐞𝐭𝐚 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬 - @getousuguruwife​ @amjustagirl​ @aliteama​
𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 - Amnesia, Memory loss, Blood, Mild gore, Death, Blood loss, Corpses, Food, Manga spoilers, Pre-canon and canon compliant to a certain extent, Nightmares, Relationship Issues (lack of communication), Overthinking/Anxious Thoughts, I criticise Nanami’s choice of clothing
𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 -  Nanami Kento's life has been... Good, bad, and everything in between. He  (and many others) thinks he's mature, independent, the definition of  what a proper adult should be like. But really, the only way he's made  it this far is because you've been holding his hand the entire time. 
𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 - 5k
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Nanami decides to enter university and get a degree. He casts a life of sorcery behind and turns a blind eye to curses that peer at him curiously on the street. When you text him and ask about how life is in the city of Tokyo, he replies that it would be much better if you were here with him. You choose to ignore the meaning between the lines and tell him that he’ll do great in university; you’re sure of it!
Truth be told, his parents are more than glad to fund Nanami’s ventures and encourage him to do so. As a result, he finds himself engulfed by the world of rigorous studying. Lectures and tutorials drain his time from morning to evening, not to forget project meetings and whatever the hell ‘socialising’ means.
But campus life is invigorating. He wakes up to the smell of coffee and his roommate singing a foreign song with a catchy tune and has time to enjoy a lovely breakfast before he heads off for morning classes. Everything is done in his own time. No one rushes him to save the lives of innocent civilians, nor does the weariness of a day’s fight linger in his bones.
Quietly, gently. That is how Nanami’s time in university goes by. Writing essays on analysing market trends or a project on that sociology elective module he chose is nothing too tricky, especially when one compares it to sorcery. 
He learns to relax, unwinding in the golden hours of the evening with a Murakami paperback and a steaming cup of coffee by his side. Nanami meets new people — people who have never heard what a curse is (though he does find his witchy neighbour intriguing), people who have families at the furthest ends of the earth. Their companionship is refreshing.
You, meanwhile, earn a nice sum from working at Jujutsu Tech. You don’t work directly with curses (something which Nanami is thankful for) and enjoy your time surrounded by nature, treating the younger students with a smile and warm cup of tea. 
You and Nanami decide to move into an apartment where the commute is halfway between both schools. It’s a nice change of pace, really. You wake up next to each other in the blinding morning light, still entangled in the cheap (and slightly scratchy) duvet you got on sale. Nanami presses a kiss between your brows. You smile, your hand warm on his skin. 
“Good morning, Ken,” you croak as the sunlight frames your face.
You lean forward and place your head against his chest. Nanami’s hand strokes your shoulder lovingly as the both of you make small talk on the day’s events, then laughing when he makes a cheesy (and slightly indecent) joke about what he enjoys eating for breakfast. Your heart soars in your chest, catching the upwind and slicing through the clouds. It feels like heaven.
But the sea does not always remain calm and peaceful. Its tides rise and fall with the waxing and waning of the moon, and waves can come crashing down on boats that dare sail through its treacherous waters. 
Nanami buries the constant nightmares of Haibara under his pillow, waking up in the middle of the night with your arms around his waist. He pretends he does not see the curses that linger in the corner of his lecture theatre, nor the ones that stare back in the bathrooms. Nanami slips a pair of spectacles onto the bridge of his nose. His fellow classmates call him intelligent, quiet, but kind. 
He wants to believe that, too.
☆*: .。.
Nanami joins a hedge fund company after graduation. 
“Are you sure that’s what you want to do, Ken?” you ask over the table.
The restaurant you had booked for dinner boasts of its month-long waitlists and seasonal menus. You poke at the raw fish that sits on your plate, Nanami holding a glass of amber liquid. He watches its colour swirl under the dim light.
“The pay is good. We’ll be comfortable.”
“I don’t care about money, Ken. I’d rather you do something less stressful and be happier.”
“Let me try it out for a year or so. That can’t hurt, right?”
He smiles, you smile. 
Your hand slips into his comfortably over the table, and your eyes meet in silent understanding. You squeeze his hand.
The company changes Nanami. Some things are obvious — the way he now parts and combs his hair back with wax, the pressed suits that line your shared wardrobe, the work phone that buzzes with notifications every minute of the day. Others are more… subtle. He comes home later and later each night, occasionally staying over in the office. His alcohol consumption increases. You spend the weekends alone. 
It’s gotten to the point where you’re lucky if you eat dinner with him once a week. You’re busy with your own work, too, but you assume that Nanami would be able to come home on at least the weekends. Your mind begins to drift.
Is there a colleague who wears a skirt too short, a manager who touches his shoulder a second too long? It’s been at least four years since you and Nanami had gotten together, and you still don’t know his stance on marriage or children yet. Does he love you, or does he love his job more? 
You fall into a pit of doubt and despair. Perhaps you should have been a lesser burden on Nanami. He spent so many hours taking care of you back then, wearing himself thin between missions, that the idea of him getting tired of being a caregiver to someone who didn’t remember him at all was… possible; reality, even?
There’s nothing original about you, either. Your handwriting is the same as a girl you’ll never remember from middle school, the way you text influenced by the students you work with. Maybe you laugh too loud. Or you’re too fat, too skinny, too quiet, too noisy, too blunt, too shy, too clumsy. So what made him love you? Or was he just in love with a previous version of you that you weren’t now?
It feels like you’re staring into a mirror when you try to remember who you used to be with childhood journals and photographs. The same face, the same body, memories that don’t make sense and a head that has become a blank canvas. A parent’s child, a teacher’s student. Unable to reach past the glass.
You don’t know who you are anymore with how you’ve changed to please Nanami — a person of personalities that switches in the blink of an eye. So why does he still keep you in his rented heart that’s full of other tenants, and under the contact name ‘Dear ♡’? You place the button in a drawer amongst a mess of spare keys, bits of tissue paper and promotional pamphlets. 
It’s tiring. Nanami’s head is in the clouds as you share a parfait, and you ask him, “Kento, do you really love me?”.
“What?” he asks incredulously. “Of course I do.”
The eyebags that are on his face have been there since two weeks ago. Nanami can’t remember when the last time was when he got a proper night of sleep, and currently, he’s thinking about the new client that-
“Kento,” you interrupt. “You’re exhausted.”
You point your spoon at him for extra emphasis, the tip of it having a dollop of whipped cream. 
“Pointing your utensils around is bad manners.”
“Never knew you cared about table manners.”
“Well, now I do.”
You lick the spoon clean and eye Nanami. He returns a tired stare before his gaze falls to the side and he lets out a sigh. He almost wishes that you would stop bothering him about this and let him go back home. There are so many emails he needs to send, and he can’t sit still without checking the stock market every hour or so. 
“Do you want to break up?”
The words come easier than expected.
“Huh?! What makes you say that?”
“You seem like you want to.”
“You can’t just assume things like-”
The girls sitting by the next table fall quiet. Nanami thinks that they’re eavesdropping on your conversation; you think so too. You glance quickly at them and they pretend nothing had ever happened, hiding their looks of surprise as they shove spoonfuls of dessert into their mouths.
“Let’s go somewhere else.”
You sound irritated. Nanami pays with his card, grabbing his things as you step outside of the cafe first. 
“Slow down,” he mumbles and pockets his wallet. 
You whip around.
“You can’t just assume things like that, Kento.”
“Fine, I’m sorry.”
Staring at him, your eyes seem glazed over. Tired, maybe. Tearing up, maybe. Maybe, maybe. Many maybes. Nanami doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what’s been going on with you, actually. You seem distant, out of reach when you’re lying in the same bed as him. Is it the money; is he making enough to make you happy?
Nanami reaches out and tries to hold your hand (when was the last time he had done that?) when his phone buzzes. He retracts his hand and reaches for his back pocket, but you grab his wrist. He looks at you.
“What are you doing? Let go.”
Irritation laces his voice. 
“Don’t answer that.”
“Are you crazy? It’s from work. I have to.”
“Work this, work that! You spent the last year basically married to your office and the one time we get to go out together, you want to work?”
Your voice is sharp, slicing Nanami’s hazy conscience. He watches as it pools at his feet, a gust of fresh air tickling his skin. He relaxes his wrist and you pull your hand away. Passersby glance at you briefly before continuing their daily commute, not bothering to give you a second glance.
“Sorry,” you mumble.
“It’s okay,” Nanami replies. 
The both of you stand in the street, suddenly feeling as if you’ve drifted away from one other unknowingly. Like a boat in the ocean, Nanami rocks with the waves that splash gently on his hull. Everything is blue and vast around him. He can’t see the land. 
Nanami thinks about that girl at the bakery. The way she always cried out ‘Come back soon!’ every time he left as if he wouldn’t return a second time. And then he thinks about the clients he serves, all outfits and jewellery that easily cost half his salary. They shove money into his hands, expecting even more in return without a word of thanks. 
“Hey,” Nanami says. 
He reaches out across the waters and grasps your hand in his. You look up, eyes brimming with tears. He swipes at the corner of your eye with his thumb. Understanding washes over him and he takes a deep breath. 
“I’m sorry,” Nanami whispers sincerely.
That night, he calls Gojo when you’re safely tucked into bed. Nanami tries to ignore how the older sorcerer cackles at him and hangs up once the call is presumably over on his end. He slips under the covers as you turn over in your sleep, resting against his chest. Nanami kisses your brow. 
He gets his first night of good sleep in a long, long time. 
☆*: .。.
Nanami falls back into the rhythm of sorcery. He trains for a good month until he gets his stamina and strength back, obtaining a new weapon from the school for his missions. Gojo seems oddly delighted to see him return, laughing when Nanami’s out of breath from a workout.
“Ken,” you say, wrinkling your nose when he steps out of your shared bedroom. “You’re going to work in that?” 
Nanami adjusts the cuffs of his sleeves, staring at you. 
“Is this not appropriate?”
You observe him from head to toe. The leopard print tie, blue shirt and tan suit — you resist the urge to tell him he’s so close to looking like a pimp. Out of all the lovely suits that Nanami has, he chooses to wear this one?
“It’s a bit bright, that’s all,” you laugh. 
“I thought I would go with something eccentric. You don’t get to wear this at the office,” he remarks, striding over to the kitchen to grab your packed lunches. 
You remain quiet and fiddle with a loose thread on your own suit jacket. 
“Something the matter?”
“Oh! Nothing at all. Let’s go.”
It’s more convenient now since the both of you work at the same place. Nanami drives to Jujutsu Tech every morning and picks you up in the evenings as well. He detests how Gojo makes fun of him for it, calling him a ‘lovely husband’. It makes your cheeks warm, and you duck your head before Nanami can ask you anything about it.
Peace reigns true for a few months. The morning routine is a nice change of pace compared to Nanami’s previous job. You’re able to spend more time together, even to the point of going grocery shopping or watching a movie with takeout on Friday nights.
Nanami relaxes only a little. Compared to office work, this is probably just as bad. First of all, he has to see Gojo almost every day and have him talk his ear off. Secondly, he returns to being the balance between life and death for civilians once more. It’s not a task he enjoys. However, he harbours that the thanks he receives and the lives he saves are a good enough exchange. 
Years come and go, as do students of Jujutsu Tech. Nanami sees more dead sorcerers and exorcises more curses. You quietly type away at a laptop, filing their deaths and completing any tasks you’re given from the higher-ups. It seems that life has slowed down once more and you return to a monotonous pace. 
You wonder if your relationship with Nanami will progress any further. It’s been close to nine years and yet… nothing has developed beyond living together or the odd weekend date. That’s not to say that you don’t love Nanami. You do, honestly. He treats you well and listens to your occasional nagging to put his stacks of books away, but you want something more. You crave the thought of getting married, to be lawfully his and maybe start a family. But, contrary to belief, Nanami isn’t opposed to it when you bring the topic up over dinner one night.
“Marriage?” 
His chopsticks pick off a portion of grilled salmon and he brings it to his mouth with some rice. He chews, swallowing.
“Yeah. I mean, we’ve been together for so long, you know? So it kind of seems natural for us to do so.”
Your gut twists nervously. The steam from your miso soup rises silently in the air, wisps of white smeared out at the edges. 
“Sure.”
“Huh?”
“Sure, let’s get married.” Nanami says.
You have to physically close your mouth and your eyes are widened in shock. Your heartbeat accelerates that much faster.
“Are you serious?”
“Well, were you serious when you asked me that question?”
Heat rises to your face. 
“As you said, we’ve been together and living under the same roof for quite some time. Marriage seems like a plausible idea.”
“Then let’s-!”
“But I have one condition.”
Momentarily, your heart wavers. Nanami finishes the last drop of miso soup in his bowl and balances his chopsticks on top of the porcelain. As usual, his plate and bowls are scraped clean. 
“I’ll only get married after I stop being a sorcerer.”
Your face twists in confusion as you try to understand where Nanami is coming from. You don’t get it — didn’t being a sorcerer mean that Nanami faced death everyday and that he should be taking advantage of what time he has left? But, of course, you don’t mean to curse him into an early grave like that. Except… Except that your face visibly falls and Nanami takes notice of it.
“I’d rather not have my life entangled with curses more than it should be. Once we both earn enough money and have a nice savings account, we can retire and go do whatever we want. Besides, I’ll invest. It’ll be more than enough.”
You remain silent and stare at your half-finished dinner. Nanami reaches over the table and takes your hand in his. 
“Can you give me some more time, please?”
You don’t reply. 
☆*: .。.
“Did you hear about the new first years?”
“Mm. The one who died, right?”
“Gojo wants me to mentor him for a while.”
Nanami’s hands are positioned on the steering perfectly. His palms guide the car carefully through the steep roads that climb up to Jujutsu Tech. You flip through a checklist of things you need to do for the day.
“Will you be heading out of school?”
“Probably. There’s a scene I need to check out.”
“Stay safe, alright?”
“Of course. You too, don’t forget to have your lunch again.”
Nanami pulls into the parking lot of the school. Leaning over the clutch, he presses a kiss to your hairline. You gently peck his jaw.
“See you tonight. I might not be able to pick you up, so get Nitta to drive you.”
“See you, Ken.”
Nanami watches as you open the car door and step out. You turn back, giving him a wave and smile through the window. He returns the gesture. Once you’re out of sight, Nanami pulls out his phone as he sits in the car. He thumbs through his emails and his Adam’s apple bobs as soon as he sees the confirmation sent to him. A loose sigh worms its way out of his chest. He pushes the door open and steps out. 
The rest of the day is spent teaching Itadori Yuuji about the sanctity of being young and simpleminded. Sorcery isn’t child’s play — especially when there are lives involved. He watches as Itadori’s face crumbles at the mention of the transfigured humans. He wants to comfort him, place a hand on his shoulder and tell him that it isn’t his fault.  
They have a quick debrief of the situation with Ijichi before parting ways. Nanami shoulders his burden once more, watching as the car pulls away in the direction of Yoshino’s home. 
As night falls, Nitta drives you home. She’s chatty, serious about her job and does it well. You smile when she gushes about how lovely Nanami must be at home, and, oh! Do tell him to lighten up at work. 
You thank her when she drops you off. As you walk through the lobby of your apartment complex, you make a routine stop by the mailboxes. Junk, bills and… a box? You flip it over to see who it’s addressed to; perhaps Nanami had ordered something online. However, your name is printed neatly across the label.
The first thing you do when you get home is to open the box. It’s small, probably not more than a hand’s breadth in length. Your pen knife slices through the tape cleanly and when you push aside the flaps, you spot two velvet boxes sitting in a mess of paper filler. Your fingers tremble when you pull one of them out and open it. 
A silver ring sits in the furrow of a cushion with Nanami’s name on the inside. Your heart skips a beat and you reach into the cardboard to pull out the second ring box. This one is a little larger, with your name engraved on the interior side of the band. It must be Nanami’s, then.
It’s already well past 6p.m. as you dial his number with your lower lip between your teeth. You pace around the house, bouncing on the balls of your feet. What were these meant to be? Promise rings? Engagement rings? You hadn’t dared to slip the one with Nanami’s name engraved onto your finger just yet.
“Hello?” 
Nanami’s breathing is laboured. Your heart falls and you stop in the middle of your living room, staring ahead at nothing.
“Ken? Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. Just… just a little hurt. It’s nothing serious.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve called Ijichi to pick me up, don’t-”
“So it is serious, then!” you cry out in horror. 
“No, no. I said I’m fine. Look, did you receive the rings yet?”
“I did, but that’s not the point now. Are you safe?”
“I-”
You hear Nanami’s phone clatter to the ground and the thump of his body on the floor. 
“Kento?” you whisper.
He doesn’t reply. 
☆*: .。.
You’re seated on the floor of your shared home, an oversized pajama shirt stolen from Nanami’s closet swallowing you. Sunlight pours in through an open window at two in the afternoon and the quiet hum of vehicles outside can be vaguely heard.
Clip, clip, clip.
One hand holds a nail clipper, while the other cradles Nanami’s fingers gently. The blond watches you absentmindedly while you trim his nails. He had insisted he was perfectly capable of doing them on his own, but the glare you gave him made Nanami sink back into the sofa. 
He was hurt after a fight with Mahito — the wound on his side made him grimace whenever he stood up, and Nanami found himself relying on you more than he wished to. Thankfully, he had passed out from blood loss and pain but nothing too devastating had happened. That didn’t change how concerned you were about him, though. You try to forget how you had hailed a taxi just to rush back to Jujutsu Tech to see Nanami lying in the sickbay with a blood drenched shirt. 
Nanami thinks it’s childish. When was the last time someone had clipped his nails for him? Was it his mother? A warm breeze wrings itself through the window. You run the pad of your finger over the cut edge, feeling for any sharp portions. 
Nanami stares at the top of your head. Your fingers feel uncharacteristically soft against his own calloused ones — wielding a weapon in battle wore his palms down at the end of the day. He doesn’t particularly want to admit he likes it.
Nanami is a man of truth. He hates lying, and definitely doesn’t tolerate beating around the bush. But if he spoke as he thought, told you everything he felt about you as often as it came like the wind, how would you react? He clutches his heart in the aching hand of a budding teenager, the fears of facing a cruel world fresh in his mind. 
Being a sorcerer means facing death on a daily basis, especially with the increase in curses with modern times. It doesn’t help that with both of you on the field, it means double the chances. Sorcerers never die without regrets.
Nanami wishes he could love you more, let you explore each crevice of his heart without fear of leaving you; being left behind one day. He doesn’t want to curse you if he dies. He doesn’t want to become a burden to you any more than he should be. 
Clip, clip, clip.
“Is it too short?” 
You glance up briefly at Nanami and brush the hair out of your eyes. He stares down at his fingers and feels them over with his thumb. He shakes his head.
“No, it’s fine.”
You nod and move on to his next hand. You’re systematical about it — trimming off most of the grown parts in three portions, then a couple tinier clips to finish the job off. A nail file sits on the ground beside you, the tiles of the floor cool against your bare legs.
“Hey, Ken?”
“Hmm?”
“I heard that there’s a new bakery opposite that popular department store. I was thinking of going to take a look later. Do you want me to get anything for you?”
“Nothing too sweet would be nice.”
“Okay.”
The living room falls back into a comfortable silence.
Clip, clip, clip.
☆*: .。.
It takes a few more weeks before Nanami is cleared by Ieri to return to regular sorcery work. He tries to rest in the downtime he has, he really does — but the itch to get up and finish Mahito off has him restless. 
At this, Gojo sends Nanami and you off to Hamamatsu on another curse investigation for a change of scenery. Gojo doesn’t want to admit it, but he had mumbled to you something about taking care of Nanami’s mental health. Maybe the beach would help? You told him he sounded like a doctor from the 20th century. You’re not one to refuse a free trip outside of Tokyo, though, so you and Nanami pack your luggage and troop off to Hamamatsu on the Shinkansen. 
“Thank you.”
Nanami’s fingers curl around the ice cream cone handed to him, the sun scorching his back. It’s too hot for this; for anything, really. He makes a mental note to give Gojo a good stare of disapproval once he returns to school. 
Why did the mission have to be on the warmest day of the year? With how the heatwave makes perspiration trickle down your back, though, the dangers of facing a possible special grade curse is the least of your worries right now.
“It’s so hot!” 
You eagerly lap at the soft serve, savouring the cold, sweet treat. Nanami wanted to take a photo of the ice cream, but- oh well, you’ve begun eating, and the horrendous heat would have probably melted it before he found a good angle, anyways. 
Protected by the shade of a shopping district, Nanami and you had agreed to find refuge for a few hours — the curse could wait till the sun began to set. Besides, it would be more likely to turn up after dark. 
“How does yours taste, Ken?” you ask and peer over at his cone.
He had gotten a cookies and cream flavoured one, despite how you egged him on to try out the local eel flavour. Nanami was not going to ruin his taste buds just like that, thank you very much.
“It’s alright,” he says, licking traces of ice cream off of his lips. “Could do with a little more cookie.”
“Wanna try mine?” 
You stick your cone into Nanami’s face. He’s greeted with your half-eaten soft serve, where your tongue has made a path of its own against the original swirl. He eyes you carefully and you offer the cone to him once more.
“That’s unhygienic.”
“Oh, come on, Ken! We’ve kissed before, sharing saliva on ice cream is nothing compared to that.”
Heat rushes to his face, though Nanami assumes a composed facade. He blames it on the weather without hesitation. Not wanting you to tease him anymore, he leans forward and nips a tiny portion of your ice cream off of the tip. 
“Yummy, isn’t it?”
“Mmm.”
“Want to try mine too?” 
The words leave his lips on reflex. Nanami wonders when he’s begun letting you try his food — when he used to be so adamant that no one could even touch its container or look in its direction (thanks to Gojo’s greedy fingers). You nod excitedly and lick off of a portion. 
“It’s good!” 
What was the first time he had said it to you? Over oden in the winter; over those disgustingly sweet slurpees you insisted on from 7 11? All those small moments that had built up culminated in Nanami’s affection and understanding towards you. The way in which you offer him a bite of your food without expecting anything in return; is that what love is like? 
“You’ve got some ice cream on your face,” Nanami says.
You instinctively use your tongue and try to clean it off. “Did I get it?”
Nanami shakes his head. “It’s on this side,” he replies, pointing a spot on his own face.
You try again, to no avail. Nanami sighs.
“What would you do without me?” he asks monotonously, using the pad of his thumb to wipe it off.
You stand there, frozen for a second when he leans in. His promise ring is cold against your cheek.
“Kento?” you whisper. 
Under the light of the shining sun, he presses his lips to yours, shielding you from warm rays and the glances of passersby with his back. You let out a muffled sound of surprise as you taste cookies and cream, your eyes fluttering shut instinctively. 
Nanami isn’t a fan of public affection. God forbid Gojo see him kissing you, really. But as he leans back and watches your half-lidded eyes stare up at him, he asks himself if you’ve ever received his own sort of love in return. 
A relationship’s all about give and take; but has he given as much as he should have? Has Nanami loved you in a way that matters? Life is a fleeting concept to all sorcerers. Should he die and leave you behind, Nanami wonders if he would pass without any regrets. Did he do enough when he tugged the covers over your shoulders when you fell asleep on the sofa, was there more he could have done even after buying you that watch you had eyeballed for the past few months?
There’s that sort of incompetence that curls up in his chest on sleepless nights, even with you tucked into his side. It makes his head spin and his heart fall into a bottomless pit. With all the eyes of juniors and students that look up to him, Nanami can’t help but wonder if he’s truly as good as everyone thinks he is. Being a sorcerer holds little problem. But what about a lover, a husband?
He couldn’t save Haibara, so how dare he think about…
“Kento,” you swallow. “Ken?”
Nanami snaps out of his daze. “Huh?”
“I dropped my ice cream,” you whisper. 
He swivels his head and spots your cone face down on the sidewalk. His own cone drips down his hand, the melting liquid staining the sleeve of his suit. For once, Nanami’s mind runs blank. 
“Kento? Are you okay?” you ask gently.
“Hey,” he murmurs. 
“Mm?”
Nanami’s careful to avoid the pool of melting ice cream as he steps closer to you, lips brushing the shell of your ear. Your breath hitches as his cologne invade your senses.
“I love you. Let’s get married.”
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forestwater87 · 4 years ago
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I'm screaming. I just realized this was the legendary Forest Water from Ao3, the creator of the fandom last names Santos and Greenwood, and I didn't know all this time?! What?! I can't actually believe it. Your stuff is legendary! I really enjoy your fanfiction, and you're a great creator. Any advice for a fanfic writer who starts to write a Gwenvid longfic? Any tips on how to become a sucessful fandom memeber? Sorry this is so long, I just really enjoy your work!
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These two happened to dovetail really nicely, so I wanted to respond to them in a single (very long) post. I’ve talked a little about getting started writing in the past, but specifically about writing Gwenvid? That’s a little different, and interesting to explore.
I think, anyway. But I always find Gwenvid interesting.
1. Thank you! 
I don’t consider myself especially famous or special -- certainly not anymore, when my updates to my flagship fic are annual at best -- so it’s a little weird that there are people looking at me like that. However, it’s also really touching and encouraging, so I’m at a loss for words. Not sure how to respond to such kind comments, so . . . you know, thanks.
2. Writing Gwenvid -- especially longfic
Here’s the thing: There isn’t a single fic I’ve written that I expected to become long. The first “Tigger & Eeyore” was supposed to be like 5 chapters and then ballooned into 14 and a sequel (which it’s now looking like is going to explode into its own sequel, so yikes). 
There’s a reason they’re called plotbunnies: they multiply like crazy. So if you have a single-shot idea or shortfic that you’re not sure will have legs, just start writing it. It might end up wrapping up rather quickly and you can move on to the next idea without it hanging over your head, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes something much larger totally organically.
Also, keep your plots kind of . . . vague? At least, in my experience I’ve found that helps. A generic idea of the world you want to build and a couple set pieces (i.e., major conflicts or story beats) gives you room to play around without pressure to make it “add up to” something. I’ve never written a fic that had a story in the first 4-5 chapters, and that’s how I like it. It’ll . . . just sort of materialize, while you’re exploring the world.
I mean, if you want to write a tightly-paced epic with a twisty, intricate plot, then you’re going to want to find an author who does that sort of thing. My stories tend to be a lot more meandering.
OH! Also get really flowery with your language. Eats up word counts like Wheaties.
Okay, but Gwenvid specifically: if you want to be mostly canon-compliant, the big thing is that we only see them in the context of this one improbably long summer. There are years of story before and after that point that we’ll never get to see, and I think it’s really interesting. (Especially the before part; I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone write a “prequel” to Camp Camp, but how fun is that idea???) When it comes to “fill in the blanks” fanfic writing, it’s really nice to have a story, relationship, and world with so many blanks. There’s a lot you can do just by writing about what they’re up to the rest of the year.
As for AUs: go nuts. Fucking go wild, you funky lil person. Groundhog Day. Ghostbusters. Lost in Translation. Movies that don’t star Bill Murray, probably. Find a straight couple and make them Gwenvid, and go goddamn bonkers with the possibilities. Find a world with Gwenvid-like characters and make them Gwenvid. The possibilities are literally endless. 
3. Fandom engagement and being a BNF
Huh. Not sure where to go with this one.
Like I said, I don’t consider myself much of a BNF (that’s “big-name fan,” for those of you who might have a life outside of tumblr) -- certainly not anymore. And honestly, becoming “popular” in this economy fandom isn’t . . . necessarily going to be super easy.
I mean, don’t get me wrong! The fandom isn’t dead by any means; people are still writing, and still being read. But if you look at the track record over time:
Average kudos counts of Forestwater’s fics by year:
2016: 574
2017: 277
2018: 79
2019: 60
2020: 50
(if you ever wondered why I had a serious emotional crisis about the quality of my writing and general popularity in 2018 and 2019, that drop should tell you a lot)
Now, some of this is certainly my fault. The most important thing when it comes to fandom success is engagement: the more you write, the more attention you’re going to get. If you can stick to a regular update schedule, you’re going to be on the front page and in the top of the tags, and people will see your stuff and be more likely to read it. And attention is self-generating, because the more kudos and hits you have, the more people are going to check out your work just to see what the big deal is. So getting laid off and deeply depressed, then not updating at a time when the fandom was already beginning a pretty steady downward trajectory anyway . . . was not my best move in terms of relevance.
And engagement doesn’t necessarily have to mean updates, by the way! (Though you should update regularly if you want the attention.) Sharing headcanons, answering asks, starting fandom drama and ship wars . . . that’s all the kind of thing that establishes you as an authority; even if people think you’re wrong, they’ll think you’re someone whose opinion is worth disagreeing with, if they see you mouthing off in the tags enough. 
I’m not confident this is a good call, but Snowqueens Icedragon didn’t get massive fandom success by not starting flame wars, is all I’m saying. 
If you have the spoons to answer questions, people will want to ask them. No one wants to talk to someone who won’t reply to them. The most popular artists and authors are always going to be the ones who interact with the fandom the most. Higher output, more attention, more praise. I’m not saying it’s fair -- in fact, it very well might not be -- but that’s the nature of the beast.
Also, play to the fandom. Camp Camp fans want to see dadvid. They want to see dan/vid. They want to see Max-centric content, and they probably want it to be angsty. They want to see self-inserts dating David. If you can give them some of that stuff (none of which is inherently bad, to be clear, nor is it inherently good; it’s just what’s popular, and tbh if you can cram it all in one fic that’d be amazing), you have the benefit of giving people exactly what they want. 
To be clear, don’t write about things that don’t inspire you; aside from it being a soul-crushing endeavor, it’s noticeable when someone’s heart just isn’t in it, and it’s even harder to keep those regular updates. But if the things you’re passionate about happen to be the things the fandom really wants to see at the moment, then you’re much closer to riding the kudos train, my friendo.
But here’s the thing: even if you do everything right, you might still get screwed.
Some of this is just due to the fact that Camp Camp is always a dead fandom in the off-seasons, and we don’t know how long this current off-season is going to last. Hell, we don’t have to look at me for this:
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This is “How to Foster an Asshole” by emiartse. It’s one of the fandom’s most popular fics, with a whopping 962 kudos. Hot damn, look at that engagement. That’s a fucking fic right there!
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This is the sequel, which has 122 kudos. Nothing to sneeze at, to be sure -- I think we’d all be delighted to have 122 kudos -- but even the general tendency of sequels to have less attention than a series debut doesn’t entirely explain such a precipitous drop. And emiartse is doing everything right! This is dadvid! And momgwen! It’s just as well-written as the first; it’s not like we suddenly experience a decrease in quality or anything. It came right on the heels of the first one ending, and the updates have been more or less like clockwork, in keeping with the previous story.
So what changed?
Well, HTFAA was first published in 2019, right on the heels of Season 4′s finale and when fandom hype was pretty high. HTAAA was published in September 2020, during this whole “world pandemic and every political disaster all at once” thing that’s got us all fucked up -- and especially, during a period where we all knew Camp Camp wasn’t coming back for the year, and maybe not ever.
It’s . . . not a great time to be a writer for Camp Camp if your goal is popularity. I mean, it’s never a great time to be a writer if your goal is popularity -- consider the tragic difference in notes between ellohcee’s gorgeous art and their equally-excellent writing just for comparison -- but it’s especially tough now. If you really want to be a huge name in the fandom, my suggestion is to travel back in time to 2016 and establish yourself as the pioneer of something (seriously, it can be anything; there was basically nothing in the fandom at that time. Every idea was a new one). 
So . . . what do we do when we can’t be popular? Maybe you don’t want to chain yourself to a strict update schedule, or write the twelve-thousandth iteration of the most popular fandom tropes, or you exist in 2021 when everything is terrible and no one cares about a web cartoon series. What happens then?
4. Do it anyway.
I know, I know -- that sounds hella cheesy. “Write because you love it, not for attention” is one of those statements that everyone rolls their eyes at, because seriously? Please. What’s even the point of sharing something you write if no one reads it?
Well . . . because you made it. Because it’s something that wouldn’t exist without you, and because even though there are such a tiny number of readers in a very small, very dead fandom -- those people still exist. And seeing what you wrote will make them happy. And if they have the spoons, they’ll let you know that you made them happy, which will make you happy.
I haven’t updated my major fic in a year -- haven’t updated any writing in several months. But what keeps me going is the excitement that my ideas bring me, and the pride I feel in watching them come to life. It’s like giving a gift to someone; I get really nervous and giddy whenever I post a sentence.
And does it suck when it feels like your present goes unappreciated? Yeah. If you write the first chapter of your awesome long-form Gwenvid fic and it gets like 5 or 3 or even zero notes, that’s a huge bummer. That hurts a lot, and it can crush your self-esteem worse than even the most vicious hate. But your fic isn’t going to just be around for the few hours or days that you’re watching the engagement. It’s going to be there, growing as you update it or just sitting happily in its tags, and someone is going to find it.
Your story is going to be someone’s favorite fic. I promise. 
And hell, let’s make it my favorite fic! 
If you post something -- you know what, even if you post something in a trope or ship I hate, or a fandom I’m not in, doesn’t even have to just be Camp Camp; times are hard right now and we gotta support each other -- send me the link in a personal message. (Don’t tag me, I won’t see it. I never see anything on this terrible, terrible site.) I’ll like it; I’ll give it kudos. I’ll probably even share it*, because we’re going through the lean times in this fandom. And we’re writers, so the lean times are extra lean; it’s the bone-and-dust times. 
*Okay, but I reserve the right to not support someone’s work that makes me very uncomfortable. I’ll share things I don’t personally stan, but I’m not gonna platform your “why Hitler was good, actually” essay disguised as a fanfic or anything. My 6 followers deserve better.
Write something that excites you, and then tell me about it. If you need help brainstorming, tell me about that too. 
I might not have the spoons to keep this up for a prolonged period of time, but I’ll do what I can and you’ll do what you can and together we’ll . . . idk, do something. I’m losing the thread of my great inspirational speech here.
Uhhhh TL;DR let’s just do the dang thing. If we fail we all fail together. Yay team!
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castielific · 4 years ago
Text
The list
AO3 Link
Tags: Supernatural, Destiel, Alternate Ending, Canon Compliant (up to 15x10), Human!Castiel, First kiss Summary: 
Once there are no more monsters, the only thing left to fight for is happiness.
Here is my take on our boys’ happy ending. I hope you’ll enjoy it. 
**************************
"I hate you", Dean grumbles into his elbows. His arms are on the table, his head buried into it as he squeezes his hands over his ears. 
"I think he’s getting better," Sam lies, hiding his grimace just in time so that Dean doesn’t see it when he raises his head to glare at him. 
Dean opens his mouth, but is cut off by a particularly shrill note that makes him feel like someone is drilling right into his tympans. Even Sam can't help but squeeze his fists in pain, crumbling the edge of the book he's trying to read. 
"'This would be good for you, Castiel'," Dean says, imitating Sam. "What about us, Sam? This doesn't feel good for us!"
"It's not so bad," Sam offers miserably. 
Yes it is. It's even worse than bad. Dean flinches in pain at every horrible noise that resounds all around the bunker as Cas continues to play - or more like, tries to play - what Dean thinks is supposed to be 'Twinkle twinkle little star' on his newly acquired violin. 
Truth is, it is all Sam's fault. Dean can't ressent him that much though, because the look on Castiel's face when they went to the music store was worth the torture they've been enduring for the last two days. 
Since God has been defeated, they've all been having a serious case of cabin fever. Heaven and Hell have closed up their doors, angels and demons alike running home with their tails between their legs. Even the common monsters have gone into hiding. Apparently the Winchesters killing God has impressed them enough that they've all decided that they better keep quiet. Of course, they're still there, but smart enough not to do anything that might attract the wrath of the hunters. Apparently, they are exceptionally good at hiding when they want to because the only case the brothers have had in the last six months had been a rogue vampire that went on a rampage. He was still young and out of control. It took three hours to take him down, the whole deal was done in less than a day, even counting the drive. 
In short, hunting has become boring. All they've had to keep them busy have been some random salt and burn, nothing exciting. The rest of the time, they've stayed cooped up in the Bunker and it didn't take long for them to go crazy. Each in their own personal way. 
For his part, Sam has gone a little too far on his healthy lifestyle penchant, to the point that it became borderline unhealthy: Running up to three hours a day and eating nothing but vegetable smoothies. It lasted two months before he realized that all it was doing was giving him diarrhea and making his shins look like basketball. So now he's taken to digitizing and translating every book in their library….which sounds as exciting as getting all your teeth pulled out, if you were to ask Dean, but at least it passes the time. 
Dean's way of coping was on the polar opposite as his brother's: he decided it was as good a time as any to learn to cook better. Dean has always loved cooking and has been having a blast since they found the bunker. For the first time of his life, he has a home and a kitchen of his own. Until now, between the Amara, the Men of Letters, and all that crap with God, he never had time to really enjoy it, limiting himself to the few recipes he already knew: burgers, steak, and breakfast food. With the hunting gig slowing down though, he had all the time in the world to try his hand at more ambitious things like roast, chili, lasagna and way too many pies. 
His personal wake up call  came when he tried to put on clothes one morning and couldn't find any pants that fitted him anymore.They hadn't had a case for three weeks, and he had to admit that he became a little too familiar with sweatpants. When confronted with the terrible truth of his every single one of his jeans being suddenly too small, he had no other choice: he spent the whole day dismantling the dryer to find out why it was shrinking all his clothes. Sam had a blast mocking him and Castiel, with his usual discretion, was quite pointedly avoiding looking at Dean's stomach during that conversation. Dean spent a long time in front of the mirror after that. He regrettably had to admit that his stomach resembled more Father Christmas's belly than David Beckham's abs at this point. He started to follow Sam's health routine the very next day. Or, tried to, at least. It didn't last long before he couldn't take the smoothie torture anymore, and decided that limiting his pie intake to two per week and doing some exercise should be enough. 
Sam and him actually came to an agreement on food after that, and while Dean would never ever drink a kale smoothie again, it actually wasn't so bad to add a little more salad to his plate. 
All in all, it was a difficult time for everyone, but especially for Castiel. 
Castiel used to be an angel with a Godly purpose, a mission grander than anything people could even imagine. Then suddenly Chuck was gone, and the angels were gone too, and he just became a puny human with no real purpose, a soldier of God with no God to serve and no war to fight. Easy to say that he quickly joined Dean in his sweatpants' aficionados club. Except where Dean was happy to indulge in a laziness that he never really had a chance to try out before, Cas soon fell into depression. Even the best pies Dean made seemed tasteless to him after a time. He was lost in a human routine that he could find no pleasure in. It came to a point where he didn't even sleep in his own bed anymore, never leaving the couch except to satisfy the most basic needs. Sadly, on most days, showers didn't seem to be considered as one of those needs. 
Once they had their breakthrough about their own miserable situations, the Winchesters decided to tackle their new mission: helping Cas. 
It was Sam who proposed that they should all write a list of things they always wanted to do, but never had time for. 
They took a trip to the Grand Canyon on the very next day, dragging a reticent Castiel along. Their road trip lasted nearly a month, because they kept getting distracted by new destinations. Sam wanted to see the Harold Washington Library, Dean wanted to go to Baltimore to go to the Dangerously Delicious Pies shop he heard about while searching for new pies recipes, and so on. 
Castiel never asked to see anything, pretending gloomily that he used to be able to go anywhere in a flap of his wings, and therefore had seen everything he ever wanted too. Dean dragged him to an amusement park anyway, because he was pretty sure the angel had never been on a rollercoaster before. Dean regretted that pretty fast when Cas became strangely fond of them, saying that it reminded him of flying. They took so many rides that Dean threw up and Sam's nose bled for nearly one hour after. 
Still, it seemed like a wake up call for Cas. He spent the rest of the drive home lost in his thoughts or scribbling a list on the back of a gas station's receipt. He even asked them to stop in Utah on the way back to see the largest bee hives in the US. They ended up buying so many types of honey that they now have a cupboard full of it in the kitchen. 
They had been back to the bunker for two days when Cas declared he wanted to learn how to play an instrument. They went to a music store, where Castiel tried on every instrument from a harmonica to a full drum set. After the obligatory harps jokes, Dean tries to entice him to buy a guitar, and learn all the best Zep songs. Cas was too polite and knew better than to criticize Dean's taste in music, so he chose the guitar. Dean wasn't oblivious to the way his friend kept lingering in front of a black violin though, so he relented and bought that instead.
He's sorely regretting it now. 
It's still totally Sam's fault though, he was the one to come up with the idea of this stupid list in the first place. 
**********************
"I've decided what I want," Castiel declares as soon as the movie's credit starts rolling about a month later. 
Sam snorts, waking up from the doze he'd fallen into. He blinks at them, wiping his eyes tiredly. 
"I said no cat, Cas," Dean reminds. Apparently, one of Cas' item on his stupid list is to get a pet.
"I don't want a cat."
"I'm allergic to animal's hair," Dean reminds him, suspicious. Last night Cas declared he wanted a Camel. A freaking camel. 
"Of course, Dean, your health comes first," Cas concedes amicably. "Although, I do wonder if you're not using this as an excuse, and would not have been amenable to adopt a pet anyway, were it not the case."
Dean scratches under his ear. "What? No. Of course, I'd want one. I love animals. Just, no snakes or anything that eats living food. I know you, and you would just end up saving all the mice or something."
"You know, they do make hairless cats and dogs," Sam pipes up, smirking when Dean sends him a side glare. 
"Those are majestic creatures, indeed, Sam, but I much prefer the softness of fur. Don't you Dean?"
"What." What kind of question is that?
"Wouldn't you like it if you could have a pet with a soft fur that didn't make you sneeze and suffer so much?"
"Huh. I guess?"
"Good," Cas concludes with a jut of his chin. "His name is Honey," Cas announces, raising the kilt that was on his lap to reveal a…
"What the hell is that thing?" Dean shouts, jumping to his feet. 
"Honey is a texel guinea pig," Cas says, cuddling the little beast to his chest. The pet starts emitting a little noise in pleasure as Castiel caresses his fur. It has long curly hair. Its head is black with a white spot on the top while the rest of its body is a mismatch of large black, white and orange spots. 
"It looks like a freaking sheep!" Dean exclaims, sending a betrayed look to his brother that is already kneeling next to Cas and petting at the small animal. 
"See, Sam, we do have a guinea pig now," Cas says proudly, making Sam chuckle at what is obviously a private joke between them. 
"We don't have anything! I'm allergic, Cas, remember? My health…," Dean finishes, faking a cough. Sam rolls his eyes while Cas squints at him. 
"I don't think you are, Dean. Honey has been on my lap all night and you haven't shown any signs of allergy. I've looked at you closely to make sure."
"Do you think he likes kale?" Sam asks, taking the little beast on his own lap as he sits on the ground. 
"I think he might, Sam. The internet says guinea pigs need to eat a lot of vegetables. Do you want us to go and try to feed him some?"
"Yes!" Sam declares, squeezing delicately the pet against his chest as he gets up. 
"But-," Dean tries to protest. 
"I bought him a little hammock that he really likes," Cas tells Sam as he gets up too. 
"But I haven't-"
"That's cute! I want to see it!" Sam says eagerly.
"My allergies…," Dean finishes lamely as he watches the two other men leave the room without a look in his direction. He scowls, staring at the beer he's still holding. He sulks for all of thirty seconds before he grumbles. "Dammit, I want to see the tiny hammock too. Guys, wait for me!"
**********************
"Oh, that's...that's a nice...tree."
"It's supposed to be Sam," Cas says with a pout, looking at his very first painting.
"Yeah no, I mean, behind him? The big woody thing?"
"That's you," Castiel pouts, looking dejected. 
Dean grimaces, inclining his head to try, and identify himself in the glob of paint on the canvas. 
"So you're not Van Gogh," Dean finally declares. "Or Mozart. The important thing is that you wanted to give it a try and you did. If you liked doing it, then that's what matters, no matter the end result," Dean tries to reassure, squeezing his friend's shoulder reassuringly. He learned his lesson when his words about Cas' lack of music skill were not so delicate, and the ex-angel ended up giving him the cold shoulder for a whole week. 
When he looks back at him, Cas has a small smile on his lips and a look so full of...of something, that Dean can feel his cheeks warming a little. Seconds pass and Cas keeps staring until Dean clears his throat, forcing himself to look back at the ugly painting.
"What's next on your list?" 
A hand pulling on his arm makes him turn back toward Castiel. Dean barely has time to react before his friend's lips brush with his. It's so fast and soft that he's left blinking in confusion, wondering if that really happened. 
"This was."
Cas is still smiling, even though Dean recognizes the worried line creased between his brows. The hunter opens his mouth, but doesn't know what to say. To say that he wasn't expecting it would be an understatement. To say that he never thought about it, a lie. To say that he regrets it…
"I liked doing it," Cas declares, nodding his head in satisfaction. "Now I want to ride a horse."
"A- a horse?"
"Unless we can still get a camel?" Cas teases, acting hopeful. He sends Dean a wink - a goddamn wink - before he grabs his painting under one arm and leaves the room. 
"Ride a...Wait. Cas! We're not getting a horse either! Cas!!" 
*************************
When Dean finds him, Castiel is sitting on the bench Dean made from the trunk of one of the trees they had to cut down to make this space into their garden. The sun hasn't set yet, but the end of september's evenings are already colder. The last flowers of the season are blooming, and the vegetables they planted in the spring are starting to wilt, only a few tomatoes popping red among the green and yellowing stems. 
Cas is bending forward, forearms resting on his legs. His eyes are closed and for a minute, Dean is worried that something happened, that he's sad or sick. He's reassured when he hears the low murmur of Cas' words, see the slight smile at the corner of his lips, the one Cas always gets when he's trying to be funny. 
His friend hasn't heard him approaching yet, so Dean waits, trying not to eavesdrop on a conversation he's not supposed to be a part of. 
Dean takes the time to check on the apple trees he planted instead. They're too young yet, too small to give any fruit, but by next year, maybe...He can't wait to bake a pie with his own apples. He rolls his eyes at the thought, that's so domestic. Yet here he is, planning on planting strawberries and raspberries, checking on the squash that is starting to grow and wondering if it'll be ready by Thanksgiving. 
Vegetables are Sam's thing. Flowers and the small hive they've built are Cas'. Dean is in charge of the fruits. 
They planted their garden over the underground garage, hidden by such a large ply of trees that there is no risk of anyone stumbling upon it by accident. They had to cut down trees, dig out every root, and plow the whole area to prepare the soil. They've spent nearly all spring and a good part of summer working to create that little bit of garden on the Bunker's roof. They've bought so many gardening tools that they're already making plans to build a shed here in the spring. 
It's nice. The bunker is feeling more and more like a home, like a place Dean could feel himself growing old in, maybe. 
They've talked about buying a house, especially Sam, but somehow they can't see themselves leaving anywhere else than in the bunker. It's their legacy, the place they were always meant to be, and they've come to love it despite all the horrors that happened there in the past. 
Maybe it will change someday. Maybe Sam will want to marry someone, to buy a more traditional place with a white picket fence where he can raise kids without fearing that they'll choose a cursed object or weapon laying around as their next toy. Dean has noticed more and more of Eileen's clothes in the laundry, more of her things left behind every time she comes to visit. He hopes it's only a matter of time before he's not surprised to see her at breakfast anymore. 
By the time he's checked on the fruit part of the garden, Cas has stopped praying and is observing him. The sun is setting, painting an orange glow behind him, and for a second it nearly looks like Cas has a hallo. 
"You told Jack about the horse riding lesson?" Dean asks as he straddles the bench to sit next to his friend. He rubs his hands against the cold, blowing into them to try and warm them up a little. 
"Maybe," Cas says with a mocking smile that makes Dean balks. 
"Oh, come on, you promise you wouldn't tell anyone about me falling on my ass!"
Cas chuckles at the memory of Dean's horse throwing him into a giant mud puddle. Dean had cursed for a whole ten minutes as he struggled to stand up but kept falling right back on his ass. It made Cas laugh so much that he'd started crying. That's a thing Cas does now, he laughs. He does it more and more, and Dean is amazed by it, every single time. 
"Technically, I didn't tell anyone anything," Cas argues with a smirk. He's not wrong. They have no idea if Jack can even hear their prayers now that he's taken charge of and close up Heaven. That doesn't stop them from regularly praying to him, especially Cas. 
"You tell Sam and I'll bury your damn guinea pig next to the tomatoes," Dean threatens. 
"No you won't," Cas says with a fond smile. 
"No, I won't," Dean admits, pouting half-heartedly. He's actually come to like the damn beast. Which no one would actually know if Honey didn't start screeching every time Dean comes near it, calling for the treat that he knows Dean will give him. It was supposed to be their little secret but Honey blew their cover more than once. Dean is still pretending he hates the little ball of fluff, on principle, even though no one is fooled anymore. 
"You were right about the horse, I hadn't realized the amount of dejection it actually produces," Cas concedes. "Also, my bottom is sore from the ride," he adds, squirming a little in his seat. 
Dean chokes a little on his saliva at the image that brings to mind. Honestly, even without the innuendo, watching Cas ride a horse, hips rising and bending over the saddle, has done quite a number on Dean's libido. If he hadn't been questioning his sexuality before, he would definitely be now. Good thing he already was. Cas kissing him has been the only thing on his mind for days now. They haven't talked about it, and Cas is acting like it didn't even happen, but Dean has barely slept since then, spending his nights thinking about Cas' lips on his, and how he might possibly maybe want to do that again. 
"Did you kiss Sam too?" he blurts out. It's not the most subtle or delicate way to bring up the subject, but apparently that's what his brain has chosen to say. Damn you, brain! 
"Why would I kiss Sam?" Cas asks, looking genuinely astounded by the question. 
"Wasn't that on your list?" Dean asks, scratching the back of his neck. 
Cas squints at him like he's the most idiotic thing he's ever seen and, well, Dean probably is. 
Dean squirms under the stare, rubbing his hands again, as much against the cold as in nervousness. The ex angel gives a long suffering sigh before he grabs Dean's wrists. He pulls on his hands until they're under his own sweater. Dean is so startled that he just looks at the bulge his hands are making over Cas' stomach with wide eyes, not daring to move his fingers. They're nestled between Cas' tee-shirt and his abdominal muscles. It's so warm under there that his skin is tingling from the temperature difference. 
"You're an idiot, Dean Winchester," Cas declares. Dean looks up, and Cas is looking at him so fondly that it makes him blush a little. 
"Yeah," he sighs. "I know."
"I must be one too, because I would very much like you to be my idiot for as long as you would have me," Cas confesses, a little shy as he draws patterns on the shape of Dean's fingers over the tissue of his sweater. 
"I'm not sure, Cas," Dean says, making the other man tense up. "Are you sure you want to be stuck with me forever?"
It takes a minute for Cas to get his meaning, brow furrows intensely before they relax in realization. 
"That was my plan all along," Cas says, his smile so wide it's showing his gums. 
And yeah, knowing Cas, it probably was. Cas would have stayed by Dean's side forever whether he was an angel or a human or even a God. Hell, Cas was ready to stay by his side when Dean was turning into a monster bearing the mark of Cain, and when he was a demon. He wanted to stay by Dean's side even when Dean was cruel and screaming at him to go. It was the irony of it all, wasn't it? It always felt like Cas was leaving him, running away for angel business or whatever, but Dean never ever doubted that he would come back. He always knew Cas would come back somehow. After all, even death could never keep Cas away for long. 
Dean slides his hands a little higher, making Cas shiver as they travel over his torso under his shirt. Dean's fingers tightens around the cloth, and pulls Cas closer, close enough that their noses are nearly touching. 
"And now it's mine too," Dean sworns,resting his forehead against the other man's. He cradles Cas' jaw, passing a thumb under one of his eyes. The stubborn angel refuses to close them, even though they're so close that he's going cross eyed. Still, he keeps looking right into Dean's green orbits and hell, that must mean Dean can't keep his eyes off Cas either
When they kiss, it's sappy and tender and sweet and everything Dean always thought he could never have. The relief he feels makes Dean wonders if it isn't everything he's been waiting for all along, without even realizing it. 
Cas is right by his side, as always, and Dean is damn well going to keep him as close as he can for as long as he possibly can. And hey, he knows the guy ruling Heaven now, so that might just be forever. 
The End. 
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listless-brainrot · 4 years ago
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jet lives au but make it jetru (pt 2)
i’m really glad that people liked the first post!! i should add that this is very canon compliant, canon divergent ofc in the sense that it’s an au, but i still wanted to have it make sense with what we’ve been given SO
let us continue
pt 1 can be found here!
-takes place during city of walls and secrets
-jet, smellerbee, and longshot get into ba sing se and talk about the firebenders, with smellerbee reminding jet they came here to change their ways, that stays the same
-along with jet going to spy on zuko and iroh in the tea shop, watching as they get hired
-when iroh throws the tea out the window and jet leaves, the tea shop door bell rings, announcing that someone else has entered
-”are you guys still looking for tea servers?”
-it’s haru! turns out he managed to spot zuko and iroh, following them to the tea shop- too bad he missed jet though
-zuko and iroh recognize him and figure that he’s just another refugee looking to start a new life, so iroh puts in a good word for him, he was nice enough back on the boat
-anyways haru works at the tea shop, he and zuko are coworkers and they get along well enough surprisingly
-haru mainly got the job to be on the lookout for jet- if he could find these two, maybe he can find jet and his friends? plus the tea shop does start getting pretty popular
-cut to later that night when jet is spying on the shop from the balcony, holding the spark rocks
-haru isn’t in the shop, he’s sweeping just around the corner, just out of jet’s line of sight
-then he rounds the corner because he Swears he hears some suspicious sounding muttering and looks up, squinting in the dim light
-”... jet??? is that you?” “haru???????”
-cue jet looking haru up and down for no other reason than to confirm that, yes, he’s wearing the tea shop apron, he works there
-”i... didn’t know you were working here,” “i’ve been working here for a little while, actually... uh... what are you doing up there,” “i’m just. hanging out.” ‘... right... anyways... do you happen to have any spark rocks??”
-jet, very obviously putting his hand behind his back: spark rocks?? i don’t know what those are haha
-haru just kind of gives him a Look, then stretches his hand out
-the spark rocks in jet’s hand suddenly shake and fly out from his grip, with jet immediately scrambling to try and get them back, but too late, they’re in haru’s hand now
-”hey! you can’t take those!” “you stole from me first- consider this karma,” “i’m being serious, i need those,” “i’ll give them right back, i promise- iroh just needs to light a fire for his tea,” “that’s exactly why i took them,” “huh? what was that?” “NOTHING-”
-haru heads back inside and gives iroh the spark rocks, when iroh asks where he got them he says “oh, just from a friend, they’re letting us borrow them,” to which iroh thanks him and remarks that there are some kind people in this city
-when haru goes back out to give jet back the rocks, he’s nowhere to be found
-great! now he’s gotta find him Again
-the rest of the episode happens as is, along with the buildup to jet and zuko’s confrontation
-smellerbee and longshot try to stop jet, but he’s made up his mind and barges in, taking matters into his own hands
-oddly enough, tonight happens to be the one night where haru Isn’t in the shop
-zuko and jet duke it out, causing a huge scene, jet trying to get zuko to firebend
-when he’s cornered and arrested by the dai li, the huge scene catches someone’s attention
-haru, who decided to check out what could possibly be going on at the shop, sees crowd and starts trying to push his way through, desperate for answers
-by the time he’s pushed to the front, jet’s been carted away
-he looks to iroh and zuko for answers, and zuko bitterly spits that jet broke in, went crazy, and started attacking
-this sets off a fire of panic in haru, who immediately asks where he went
-by the time iroh’s pointed in the direction of the cart, haru’s immediately taken off 
-as he runs, a piece of paper falls from his hand, landing in the middle of the street
-it's a warning from jet, telling him to not go to the shop tonight. there are traitors, and he intends to deal with them himself.
-to be continued....
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anotheronechicagobog · 4 years ago
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The Crackship Sails to Molly’s Natalie Manning x Stella Kidd
written by @anotheronechicagobog​
warnings: swearing, mention of homophobia, Manning isn’t Nat’s maiden name, she changed it when she got married, just saying, Helen’s kindof a bitch, canon compliant accidents, implied artificial insemination, implied/mentioned smut
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They had absolutely no idea how they ended up there. Well, that wasn’t strictly true... Molly’s and ladies’ nights. And tequila, tequila was definitely at fault here. For their hangovers and their nudity under the covers. Unfortunately, the tequila didn’t take their memories, so they knew exactly what they did. Or who they did, rather. And the answer was each other.
After Natalie’s awkward exit from Stella’s apartment above the Hermann house, Stella made quick work of the dirty dishes from their breakfast. She couldn’t help but think back to the previous night. They were so drunk, but Natalie was so hot and Stella just felt something inside her snap. It had felt like a coil, but everything that she and Nat did last night, it all just felt so right, so satisfying. She felt like she was on a high. There was no way she was going to last long without having sex with Natalie again, she could already feel herself going crazy.
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As it turned out, she wasn’t the only one feeling that way. And so, their friends with benefits relationship began. Stella was a bit nervous, she had a two-year-old son and a pretty crazy mother in law. But it felt so right. Until it felt more than right, and both women knew they were in trouble. It started with cuddling after sex and lead to watching movies in the afternoon and lingering touches and longing looks. But one rainy Sunday afternoon, they were cuddled on Natalie’s brand new GRÖNLID, and suddenly it just hit both of them. They were dating, in secret, but dating. Natalie licked her lips and looked Stella in the eye. “Will you go on a date with me?” Stella cradled her face gingerly, placing a soft kiss on her lips. “I would love to.”
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It became obvious to Helen very quickly that Natalie was seeing someone, and the thought made her stomach heavy. She knew it wasn’t fair of her to hate the idea of Natalie moving on, but she couldn’t help it. She only had one son. She only wanted one son. And he was gone.
So when Owen was picked up by someone else while Natalie was at work, months after Helen knew she had officially begun dating him, Helen lost it. Her mouth turned bitter as she drove to the hospital, fully prepared to scream at her daughter-in-law in front of her coworkers. When she got to MED she barely remembered to throw her car in park before slamming the door and marching past everyone. The people waiting, nurses, secretaries, the only one who was able to stop her was Maggie. “Helen, hi. How are you? You know you can’t be back here right?”
“I’m here to see Natalie, move.”
“Okay, no. You do not get to speak to me like that ever, much less so in my ED. Drop the attitude. Now.”
“It’s too soon, Maggie, it’s only been-”
“Four years. It has been four years Helen, I’m not going to pretend I know what you’re going through, but I know that it is absolutely no excuse for acting the way you are. You are not entitled to Natalie’s love life, and you still haven’t apologized to me. And since you’re not in an emergency medical situation and I do not feel like dealing with your BS right now, you need to leave.”
“Maggie you can’t-”
“I’ll call security.”
“Don’t interfere with something that-”
“Security, escort this woman off the premises, please and thank you.” The two security guards Maggie had summoned with a raised eyebrow ended up dragging Helen out kicking and screaming. All while Natalie watched in heartbreak. Was it really that awful that she didn’t want to be alone and empty for the rest of her life?
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Because of the incident at MED Nat and Stella decided it was time to sit Helen down and tell her that they were dating and to get over herself. Helen entered in a huff, somewhat pleased with herself that she finally got Natalie to admit she was seeing someone, but she would be lying her ass off if she said she wouldn’t give whoever this guy was shit for sneaking around with a widow. She didn’t see him though, only a Latina woman in a mustard sweater and jeans. “Alright, where is he?”
“Sit down Helen, you don’t’ get to talk to me that way.” Helen threw herself down onto the same chair she’d tossed her jacket and purse on while Natalie sat beside the woman on the light green couch. Helen felt all her rage and grief evaporate as she watched the two women intertwined hands. “I’m bisexual, Helen. So is Stella. I didn’t figure it out really until I met her. I guess a part of me always knew but I kind of ignored it, because, well, you know how people discriminate against LGBTQ people. But, she makes me so, so happy. And Owen just loves her.”
“Oh thank God.”
“Huh?”
“What?”
“Oh, I don’t care about sexualities, really. Love is love and anyone who tries to limit the love of others is a fool and a monster. Truthfully, this is a relief. I was so scared that you’d found a man to replace Jeff. You dating a woman is actually a lot more comfortable for me. I already approve.”
“While I’m glad Stella’s got your stamp of approval, you have to understand that your behaviour recently is unacceptable, right? You are not entitled to anything, and you owe both me and Maggie apologies.”
“You’re... Right. Completely right. There isn’t an excuse or a reason, not a good one anyway. I’m so sorry Natalie. Really, I am... That... That psychiatrist you work with, Dr. Charles, does he, uh, is he accepting patients? I think, I mean I’ve put it off for so long, I think it’s time that I talk to someone. About everything.”
“That sounds like a good idea, Helen, I’ll talk to him tomorrow for you.”
“Thank you. Now Stella, you’ve been very quiet during all this, I’d like to get to know you. What do you do?- Oh! And how long have you two been dating?”
“I’m a firefighter, and we’ve been dating for- eight months?”
“Around that, yeah.”
“That’s wonderful, how do you like being a firefighter?”
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After Helen apologized to everyone and started therapy, things got much calmer. She also became Stella and Natalie’s biggest supporter. Like tonight, she was always offering to babysit for date nights, and the couple took full advantage of that. They were dining out at an intimate restaurant, glad for some time with just the two of them. “So I read this story on Reddit on my break today about this guy who, completely sober, was shoving a toilet brush up his... You know, so that it looked like he had a bunny tail. You guys ever get anything crazy like that?”
“Yeah actually, we’ve got this frequent flyer for ambo who regularly gets high off his ass, draws weird, nonsensical symbols all over his body, then call to complain that he was assaulted by aliens.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah, hey, I found The Italian Job on Netflix, the one with Jason Statham. Wanna watch it when we get back?”
“Oh, absolutely. I love his movies.”
“I know right?”
“He’s like the British Ryan Reynolds.”
“Yes! Exactly!”
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TWO YEARS LATER
Stella was just finishing up with the snacks for Owen’s fifth birthday party when the Hermann Horde arrived. “Hey guys! Nat’s just about done with the decorations, but she and Owen are out back.”
“When does Helen get here?”
“She should be here in fifteen, she picked up the cake from the bakery.”
“I thought you were a pretty good baker Stella, why from a bakery?”
“I can bake many things, but a cake for forty people that looks like a shark? Nope. Not that.”
“Owen really likes the ocean, doesn’t he?” Cindy looked around at all the ocean-themed decorations, the snacks dressed up to look like different sea creatures. “He really does, can’t say I blame him though. We go to the aquarium pretty frequently, and damn these little guys are amazing and beautiful.” The placed the last of the jellyfish sugar cookies on the platter and smiled. She really felt like Owen was her son, and as far as anyone was concerned, she was. It would even be official in a couple of months when she and Nat get married. “I love seeing you happy like this Stella.”
“Thanks, Cindy. It feels good.”
“It looks good too, you’re both just so bright and sometimes I swear that Natalie’s glowing.” Stella kissed the older woman on the cheek, biting her lip to keep from revealing that Natalie was glowing, and that they’d be welcoming another member into their family in around eight months.
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TWO MONTHS LATER
Natalie and Stella were overjoyed, they were finally wife and wife, recognized by the state as a family. Hearts full and warm, they danced in slow graceful circles, the skirts of both their gowns flowing in cloud-like motions around them. “I love you.”
“I love you too. So much.” The music from the orchestra trickled to an end, parting the smiling brides. “Ready to tell them?”
“Yes. I am so excited.” Kisses were exchanged before the blushing brides made their way up to the stage with their arms around each others’ waist. “First of all, we would like to thank everyone for being here to celebrate the best day of our lives.”
“Second of all, we have an announcement to make. Nat’s three months pregnant.” Stella and Natalie placed their hands over Nat’s abdomen, smiling misty tears as they were met with cheers from all of their family and friends, no one louder than Owen.
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FIVE YEARS LATER
While working in the ED Natalie had been a witness to numerous tragedies. She’d also been through a few herself. And Maggie, wise, gentle, loving, Maggie, always knew when the worst of the worst were about to come through. She got this look on her face as she answered the head nurse phone, meaning that it was someone they all knew. After a few whispered words with Ms. Goodwin Maggie’s guilt-ridden gaze settle on Natalie. “Nat, I need you to go wait in the doctor’s lounge.”
“Maggie? What’s going on?” In the back of her mind, in the depths of her heart, Natalie knew what was wrong. But she didn’t want to be right. She wanted to be so, so wrong. “Dr. Conte,” Natalie had realized two months into her and Stella’s relationship that she still had the name she took when she married Jeff at twenty years old and decided to go back to her maiden name. “You need to go wait in the doctor’s lounge.”
“Sharon, no-”
“Incoming! Thirty-three year old female, firefighter, inside an electrical fire when the house went. Halstead, Noah, April, you’re in treatment three.” The sounds of beeps and medical jargon couldn’t be heard above the buzzing in Natalie’s ears. Choi was holding her back, trying to drag her to the doctor’s lounge, stopping her from being with her wife. And then her BP dropped and she flatlined. The instructions given could not be heard by anyone outside of the room over Natalie’s horrified, deafening, soul-shattering scream.
And then it was back. One round of epi and she was back. Natalie broke down into heaving, gut-wrenching sobs in Ethan’s arms. He was the only thing keeping her from sliding to the floor, her legs had lost all their strength.
She didn’t remember sitting down, or getting any water or food. But suddenly she feels like she’s woken up and she has a bottle of water and thermos in her hands. “Eat.” Kelly Severide is beside her with a hand on her shoulder. Sylvie is handing her a spoon. Joe is handing her tissues. “Cindy and Helen are watching Owen and Celeste, don’t worry.” She’s drunk the entire water bottle and eaten five spoonful of soup when Maggie approaches her. “Maggie don’t tell me she’s gone- oh God, please no-”
“She’s fine. They’re closing her up now, she’ll recover just fine. Come on, I’ll take you to her recovery room. And bring that thermos. You’re going to finish eating even if I have to tie you down and feed you myself.”
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“Nat?” Stella had woken up, for good this time, and was staring at the love of her life as Connor and Crockett left the room. “You scared me. So, so much.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, just be alive. Please, just stay alive.” Nat kissed her forehead and stroked her hair as all her tears just couldn’t be held back anymore. “I know you love being a firefighter, and I love it too, I will never want you to give up a job that you are so kickass at, but please, please be more careful. I’m begging you.”
“Okay... I’ll be more careful.” Stella’s coughing fit was cured by a glass of water, and the aches in her bones were cured by the gentle hugs from her son and daughter when they saw her an hour later. “I love you.” She chanted to each of them. “I love you, I love you, I love you.” And she did, until she and Natalie were in their eighties and living in Fowlerton. They were found by their neighbour who went to check on them after he didn’t see them on their porch like he did every morning. Stll. Peaceful. Tangled together. In love until their very last breaths.
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Text
Echos of Something Long Forgotten
AO3
Yeah, I can write canon compliant things. Wild, I know.
Magnus should be in bed. It's three am, and he's got a long day of training tomorrow, but- He has nightmares a lot. Always about Julia. Most of the time, they're about what happened, Kalen, and such, but sometimes they're... something else. It's not that he can't remember the dream so much as parts. Scenery, people, and words, usually. 
He's had The dream since before Governer Kalen. Hell, Steven (his father in law, not the fish) took him to a dream specialist for it. Ze had said it was a sign of PTSD, but Magnus had never experienced anything like it in his waking life. 
In the dream, something descends from the sky. When Magnus tries to remember what, all he can think of is static. Dream Magnus knows what it is, though. His friend grabs his hand (Another piece of static. He can't think of his name or face. Magnus is pretty sure it starts with a B,) and they run towards some more static people. The captain tells them the game plan. Which is also mostly incomprehensible, but Dream Magnus gets it. And then they break off.
Magnus runs into the Hammer and Tongs. He's yelling for Steven and Julia, and he hears Steven scream. There are more people- no. not people. They're a part of the thing in the sky. He gets into the room just soon enough to watch the static monsters kill Julia. Even as she dies, she keeps hacking her ax at it. Sometimes Magnus wonders if she died fighting in real life, too.
The dream was marginally easier when he still had Julia. He'd wake up screaming for her every time. She never got frustrated, though, even when they were fighting. She'd kiss the scar above his eye, and they'd go downstairs and heat up some lavender tea. That's what he was doing now. He never did lose the habit of stocking up on lavender tea. It wouldn't be as good as Julia made it, but it would do.
Magnus was sure he'd be alone. Yet, here Taako was kneading dough way too hard.
"Taako? Is everything okay?" Magnus asks blearily.
Taako jumps and aims the Umbrastaff at Magnus, relaxing when he sees who it is. "Shit, Maggy! Thought you were one of those crystal monsters!" When Taako doesn't answer the question, Magnus raises an eyebrow. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just couldn't sleep."
"Yeah, same. Had a nightmare." Magnus says. He's trying to imply that Taako can tell him what's wrong.
"What about? Dogs falling off the moon?" Taako asks, making clear that he doesn't want to say why he's up.
"No, actually. About my wife. And what happened," Magnus is kinda lying, but he doesn't really want to get into it, and he doubts Taako would either.
"Fuck, sorry, dude." From anyone else, that would seem apathetic. But Magnus likes to think he knows Taako well enough to know that's not true.
"Yeah, just making some tea. Speaking of what are you making?"
"Oh, just basic sourdough. Don't have 'nuff energy for anything too fancy."
Magnus would love to tell Taako he's sure it will be delicious. He is. Those macaroons Taako made last month for Candlenights? Amazing. But Magnus knows that any mention of actually eating anything he makes will make whatever wrong worse. 
Those macaroons were the only thing of Taako's Magnus has ever seen anyone eat in the half-year he's known him. It's not like Taako doesn't cook. He does, all the time. But when he's done, he always just throws it away.
Instead, Magnus stays quiet. The two putter around the kitchen, making their respective coping foods, in silence until they hear a loud banging coming from Merle's room.
Magnus, you guessed it, rushes in. Well, actually. He knocks politely on the door and asks, "Everything okay?" He doesn't get a response, so he says, "Okay. I'm gonna come in now." and opens the door.
Magnus doesn't think he's ever seen Merle cry. Well, there was that time last month when Magnus cut his arm off, but even then, he barely shed a tear. Now, Merle was sitting at his desk, sobbing so hard that it shook. It looks like that banging Magnus heard was Merle's Xtreme Teen Bible! falling off of the desk.
Merle looked up at Magnus sadly and sighed, "Oh no, Mags. You don't need to see me like-" His thought was interrupted by another loud sob, and he gave up on trying to speak.
"Okay," Magnus starts carefully. "I'm gonna carry you over to the couch. Nod if that's okay." Merle nods, so Magnus gently lifts and walks slowly over to the couch. 
By the time he has Merle comfortably seated, Taako comes over with a rag that smells like lavender. (Magnus privately wonders if Taako just dumped his tea on a rag.) He puts the rag around Merle's neck and holds his hands.
"Okay, now tell me what happened," Taako says.
"I had a nightmare. I w- I'm sorry, I can't," Merle whispers the last part as if he thinks if he's quiet enough, the tears won't try to interrupt him.
"That's okay. You're gonna have trouble. Just keep trying." Taako says as he rubs circles into Merle's palm.
Merle takes a deep breath and continues, "I was playing chess with a man. I can't think of his face, but I'm pretty sure I knew him. J-J." He slumps over as he tries to think of the name.
"Don't worry, Merle. Just keep going." Magnus says.
"Okay... He kept- he kept asking me about my kids. And I kept trying to change the subject, but he just kept asking and- I can't explain it, but I just knew he was going to hurt them."
"Is there more?" Taako asks. Merle shakes his head. "Okay, now take slow, deep breaths. In for 7, hold for 4, out for 8."
After a few cycles, Merle looks like he feels a lot better, and he asks, "Now, where the hell did you learn that, Taako?"
Taako closes his eyes tight like he has a headache, and Magnus puts a hand on his shoulder. "It's not worth it. Just let the question slide past."
The trio sit in quiet for a moment before Taako finally asks, "Magnus, did your nightmare have static in it?" Magnus nods. "Mine too..." Taako says thoughtfully. After a moment, he lets out a loud groan and gets up. "There's something there! It's right there, but I. Can't. See. It. And it's driving me crazy!"
"Just let it pass. Do you wanna talk about what it's about?" Taako opens his mouth to speak and instead starts gagging. "Okay, me first. A big cloud of static comes down from the sky. There are seven of us. We all seem to know what's going on. We're trying to stop it. I go to the shop- Oh boy. One second," Fantasy Jesus, why is Magnus's mouth so dry. His heart was pounding, but he could work through that. "I go to the shop my father in law and I owned, and I can hear him screaming from the backroom. The last thing I see before I wake up is Julia hacking at a static monster, refusing to die. The worst part is these dreams started before they even died."
It takes a moment to realize why nobody's speaking. Merle's drinking a glass of water- good he was crying. He's probably dehydrated.- But Taako's writing furiously into a notebook. Magnus laughs. He looks just like- Taako gives him a weird look, and Magnus shrugs in return.
"Can you speak, bud?" Merle asks.
Taako sighs, "Yeah, I think it'll be okay. Wasn't sure, though, hence the notebook. Okay... Fantasy Mary Berry, this is like group therapy or something! So. I poisoned a whole town."
"Gosh, Taako, that sounds terrible. I'm so sor-" Taako interrupts Magnus with a sharp, bitter laugh.
"That wasn't the nightmare. It actually happened. An accident, obvi, but I'm still wanted. Glamour Springs, forty people died."
"Shit."
"Yeah. 'Shit' indeed. The point is that's why I don't really cook for anyone anymore. In my dream, I'm making something for someone... It's so weird. I want to say she's my sister, but I'm an only child. But, yeah. My 'sister' eats it. Thirty garlic clove chicken, because my brain hates me. It poisons her, and I sit there watching her die in front of me, unable to do anything but pray it doesn't hurt too much. I can't even figure out what I did to mess up the recipe so bad."
There's silence for a moment. Magnus doesn't really know how to proceed, and he's willing to bet the others feel the same. After a second, Merle speaks. "Wow. What a fucked up group we are, huh?"
Magnus laughs, "Yeah, that's one way of putting it, old man!"
Eventually, the conversation becomes less weighted and the silence more comfortable. It's nice. Knowing that there were other anomalies like Magnus. People who cried for people and places they didn't know that didn't exist, probably. Even so, Magnus can't shake how familiar all of this feels. Talking with Taako and Merle like this. It feels like he's done it a thousand times. But he guesses that's just another thought he has to let slip through the cracks. For now, he'll just goof off with the first friends he's made since the fall of Raven's Roost. Yeah. That sounds nice.
_____
Lucretia hoped that they would be asleep. She'd woken up with nightmares again, just like she had for the past 112 years, just like they all had. This was the day the Hunger took their home from them, after all.
She just wants to check on them, make sure they were still there. Not dead like her nightmares. They aren't. She hears Taako laughing from behind the door, and for a moment, all she wants to do is barge into that room and tell them about the latest book she read.
That's what they used to do on this day. When everything was too much like what they'd lost. Magnus would always try to get through it alone, but the Captian made sure nobody went through it alone. 
The twins would bake cookies, elderflower macaroons, Lucretia's favorite, and try to teach Barry how to make hot cocoa. They never could figure out if him drinking the one with milk in it was better or worse. Taako swore it was a sin to drink hot cocoa made with water, but Lup didn't want him to hurt his stomach.
Merle would listen to Lucretia rambling on about whatever book she'd just read. They had to stock up on them because she went through them so quickly. Taako would interject her retelling with comments and jokes. Whenever she read a particularly heteronormative one, he'd start interjecting ways the scene could've gone but didn't. It was like a party. It was a little too somber, but that just made it a shitty party.
It had been twelve years since their last shitty party. Lucretia wanted so bad to just walk in there and be like they used to. Taako, making fun of Barry and Lup. Merle, trying to get Davenport to dance with him. Much to the dismay of everyone else in the room.  Magnus, parading Lucretia around on his shoulders as she ranted about how overrated Fantasy Shakespeare was. 
But Lup and Barry are gone. Davenport's a husk. Magnus, Merle, and Taako, while they may not seem too different to the outside eye, are broken. And it's all Lucretia's fault. She tries to tell herself that she had no choice. Once the Hunger was stopped, they could go back to that. She really should be going, actually. But she's been all alone for twelve years. So she leans against the door of her brothers who don't remember her. She'll just listen for a little bit longer.
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umbraastaff · 6 years ago
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I’ve just been thinking--it’s about time I make a proper index for my TAZ fics, huh? Also contains: mini-series, ficlets, goof posts, and lyric comics.
(All of the fics are rated G, or T at most for McElroy-appropriate language.)
FICS
I Saw Seven Bounties | Canon Compliant, Enemies to Friends, Complete | Mostly lighthearted, episodic recounting of Kravitz and Barry’s rivalry throughout those first twelve years on Faerun. 24K. -->Extras: Lich Eyes, Fantasy Starbucks, Alt POV for Chapter 1 & Chapter 5, Sorry
They Say Fire Took Phandalin | Small-town supernatural/sorta-haunted-house AU |  Fresh out of grad school, Barry Bluejeans takes a job and a house in the rural nowhere-town of Phandalin. And it’s not like he thought fitting in would be a walk in the park, but the people there all act really weird, and it’s almost like they’re expecting something of him, too. 11K/~20K.
What Can’t Be Done Alone (Detective Squad) | Canon Divergent, Found Family, Fluff | AU where the voidfish works a little better, and Angus never finds the Bureau. Instead, he finds a strange lich in a cave, and he most certainly continues to work this case and not gradually get adopted instead. 18K/~22K. -->Extras: Drangus AU Oneshot
If I Wanted to be Funny I’d Name This Fic “The Time Belt” | Futuristic sci-fi AU feat. time travel | Taako meets the only people in years who recognize the Institute’s name. Known time criminal Barry Bluejeans continues to evade law enforcement. 2K/??.
Overgrowth / Undercurrent | Roleswap AU, Johnchurch, Pining, Twoshot, Happy ending optional | Overgrowth is a oneshot that follows John, the Starblaster’s chief diplomat, through a series of parleys with Merle, the center of the plane-consuming mass of plants that’s been chasing his crew. Undercurrent is a sequel about their post-canon reunion. 4K + 6K. --> Extras: PLAYLIST by @merle-casts-zone-of-truth
Davenport Remembers | Post-canon, Oneshot | Davenport meets with his crew members to try to reconcile his anger with Lucretia, or to decide whether he should. 1.5K.
MINI-SERIES
AU Where Taako is a Lich - Pretty much what it says on the tin here, folks!
Baritz (ask series) - A fusion of Barry and Kravitz, who took over my blog and answered asks for a while. (He originated in the Gallows/S&S lyric comic.)
Good Adventures (Good Omens crossover) - The Antichrist’s wishes summon the wrong boatful of aliens. Thankfully, it seems they’re apocalypse experts. [with plot-ideas help from @avijohann​.]
Omen Zone (Good Omens crossover 2) - Barry is a demon. Kravitz is an angel. Kravitz probably won’t ever admit that they’re friends.
Pokémon: Century Version (Pokémon crossover) - Stolen Century AU where they’re all pokémon trainers. Faerun spin-off: Double Trouble
Till Death, Don’t Let’s Start - Barry fucks up. Kravitz is present.
Very Normal Blog Posts (ask series) - In which Garfield is not at all dangerous, and I am perfectly fine. <alt: chronological link - desktop only>
COMICS & ART
Gallows/Steady and Stronger (Double lyric comic) - Canon-divergent AU where, as the world is ending, Barry gives up to Kravitz. [Image description version]
[Lyric Comics] - Other, shorter lyric comics based on single verses of songs.
Dear Scientist’s Log (series) - Illustrated ship logs from Barry J. Bluejeans.
Movie Madness (Comic) - Barry obsesses over the unforgivable.
Palette Prompts (Arts) - Art from art meme prompts.
Pregananant (goof comic) - You know the one.
REAPER (Comic) - Baritz fuses with Lup.
These Jeans? (Animatic) - Barry advertises jeans.
They’re Both Tessa Thompson (Comic) - Lucretia has a nightmare. Barry reassures her.
War (Goof comic) - prompt: "taakitz with CAT”
What’s bigger than this? - The Red Robe.
FICLETS
Back Soon - Kravitz leaves a note with unfortunate wording.
Bodyswap: Barry & Davenport - During Wonderland.
Casual - AU where the red robe talks like a normal person.
Command - Barry misuses his magic.
Davenport - There’s something unsettling about that butler.
Hangin’ Out - Lup and Magnus.
Harvest - Roleswap AU: Barry is the Hunger.
Healing Necromancy - Merle tries to teach Barry some tricks.
Hope - Barry knows she’s still out there.
How Long? - Taako is frustrated.
In Pieces - The staff.
Liches Forget Too - AU.
Lucretia Forgets - In which there was a mistake with the voidfish ichor.
Lup’s Robe - Gifts from Taako.
Mourning Glories - The flowers in Merle’s beard.
New Years - Celebrations and fears.
Parole - Barry and Kravitz bonding hours.
Phone a Friend - Baritz (the fusion from Gallows/S&S) meets Angus.
Raising the Dead - Barry has to use his crew members’ corpses. [sequel]
Robbie...? - Magnus breaks into the brig immediately after Petals to the Metal.
Second Apocalypse - Based on that one party liveshow. What was the rest of the crew doing, again?
3 Sentence Fics - Pairing + AU prompts.
Smartstone - Lup gets stuck in a Stone of Far Speech, instead.
Stir Crazy - Barry waiting for a new body to grow. Thoughts of Lucretia.
Writing Things Down - In case you forget (again).
You Remember - Taako remembers.
PROMINENT GOOFS
Barry’s Dead - But he’s fine! Calm down!
Character Development - Joke’s on you, DM!
Crystal Kingdom - An absolutely bonkers arc.
Dealer - Merle pun.
Decapitate Me - for making this post
Don’t Care - Taako during the finale. [bonus]
Epilogue - Bracer struggles. [bonus: 1, 2]
Explain the Hunger (Good Omens crossover) - Magnus explains the hunger to Aziraphale and Crowley. They react in varying ways. [with cursed art contributions from @avijohann and @mspainttaz]
Fifteen Dollars - Plus interest. [Bonus]
Fullmetal Kingdom - They’re the same, right?
Gender - And lack of roles.
Gnomes Don’t Exist - They’re all aliens, actually.
Hot Diggity Shit - Been a while.
Icon Confusion - The saga of people thinking my icon is a carrot. [chrono link - desktop only]
Incomprehensible Denim - Jeff Angel’s illegal pants.
In Case it Changes Anything - Taako, Kravitz, and lies.
Irresponsible Teens - Magnus and Lucretia get into trouble.
I Saw Seven Nerds - That’s the post.
Gogurt - Taako’s crimes.
Learning to Drive - i.e. Barry & Davenport Bonding(?) Hours.
Live Shows - The general mood.
Lucretia’s Efforts - A proper meme? On my TAZ blog?
Lup Said No Thanks - That time Magnus was in a tree.
Magnus’ Death - So many close calls.
Nearest Middle-Aged Woman - Clint’s characters’ friends.
Necromancy? - You must be mistaken!
Ned’s Aliases - The Truth.
Pirate Debt - Davenport during that one liveshow.
Punch Squad - SQUAD!
Reaper Cloak - Thoughts.
Relic Names - She probably changed them.
Responsible Necromancy - Good and bad ideas.
Resume - It’s not like they thought it would be relevant.
Schools of Magic - And the Sash was what, again?
Self Care - Respect the dead, please.
Server Shenaniganry (art) - TAAKO THE CAT, NO!
Soulmate AU - Where your soulmate’s greatest enemy is on your wrist. [alt]
Stern’s Truth - You Know.
Taako’s Last Name - Taako’s last name.
Team Composition - The post where everyone wants to argue with me about what qualifies as a wizard.
Third Option - Taako saves the day.
You’re Laughing - End of Suffering Game.
THEORIES/MECHANICS/THOUGHTS
Aloof - Holes Taako refuses to fill.
Barry’s Lucky Possessee - Graphic novel theory hopes & dreams.
Catpiling - Stolen Century thought.
Davenport’s Deaths - Sucks when you always wake up driving.
Death Leaves a Mark - Stolen Century AU concept.
Everyone Else - Some people didn’t get perfect endings.
Fantasy Nonsense - lore about the word “fantasy,” as in “Jesus Fantasy Christ.”
Fragments - Magnus’ memory.
Forgiveness - Old post about the crew’s thoughts on Lucretia’s actions.
Forgot to Erase - Lucretia’s errors.
FULL TIMELINE POST - the Balance timeline.
Gauntlet - (disproven!) Theory about the final relic, from before it was confirmed in the show.
Gnome Nicknames - Thoughts on Cap’nport.
High School AU - Some old headcanons.
Home World Names - The pattern in surnames (or lack thereof) on the IPRE’s homeworld.
Hour - This isn’t a thought so much as an Actual Thing That Magnus Said before the time loops had started, which is absurd.
Idiots in Love - The IPRE’s collective braincell was lost for all of Legato. [2]
Liches, Alone - Being stuck as raw emotion for an awfully long time.
Losing Julia - And subsequent developments.
Love - What was remembered and forgotten.
Love Without Fear - Thoughts on bonds during the Stolen Century.
Memory - Barry actually shouldn’t have remembered anything.
Nickname - Memory of Lup.
Paladin Barry Theory - Converging evidence on Barry’s multiclassing.
Paradox AU - blueprint for 8th, 9th, 10th, etc. Bird AU of your choice(s). (Extra)
Phylactery Mechanics - How liches differ.
Produce Flame - Mechanics of John killing Merle.
Recklessness - THB’s actions recontextualized.
Relic Schools of Magic - They don’t have them!!!
Relicswap AU - Where all the birds get swapped out.
Seven Birds as Gods - Ask-prompt thoughts.
Staring at the Sun - The birds and their light sensitivity.
Story, Song, & Sorcery - Effects on the young population.
Sword Tornado - Magnus Mechanics. [bonus: Time Warlock]
The Good Place AU - A series of crossover thoughts.
Tree Climbing - Davenport shenanigans.
Unique Magic Types - [and combo styles]
What Killed Maureen - hint: it wasn’t Fisher.
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lokisasylum · 5 years ago
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New year, new earthquakes, new art and fics
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First off, HAPPY NEW YEAR to all my mutuals cause I forgot to say it two days ago.
SO! We're officially in the big 2020, huh.
Pretty crazy.
I still remember when I entered Middle School in 1999 and graduated exactly in June 20, 2001. My Class' Name was "Millennium Dreamers" (you cringed? So did I back then, but not as much as I cringed after graduating Highschool in 2004 with our class name being some hybrid between English/Korean: "Dragons of Jie Hye" whatever the fuck that meant LOL. ).
And here we are, two to three days into 2020....and the whole world is pretty much falling apart from what I've seen trending on twitter >_>...
Also there's been an abnormal amount of seismic action where I live for the past.... weeks? Month? Alot of people are freaking out cause we already had a 5.1 and all the others that followed had maintained a 4.8, 4.9, 3.1 magnitude so far. The activity is usually more active and noticeable in the North or the island, but for some reason it is now in the South.. So yeah... just something to worry about since earthquakes aren't like hurricanes. You can't just predict where it'll hit and how strong they'll be WEEKS before they even start to form. It's more like winning the lottery... except that you actually loose each time...
But anyway!
New Art!
Currently working on two pieces; one is a jikook pic inspired by RENT (the movie) and another is a re-color of one of the inktobers.
There's also potential for a vmin one in there somewhere.
Fics!
Currently still working on:
Forever, You Said - Chapter 7 and 8 (yes, you hoes get an additional chapter)
Lunatic High - Chapter 17 (FINALE)
I had mentioned before that due to technical difficulties with my computer since early November or so, Updates to these two fics was horribly delayed when they got deleted in the middle of the chaos. But as promised I'm working on both each day during any opportunity I get (when I'm not tending to house chores or job hunting).
Waiting for you [Namjin oneshot]
  - Now this Namjin oneshot has been fucking me up lately because of the possible unexpected turn of events it could take. So many different things could happen and so many possible outcomes as well. Some happy, some VERY sad so I haven't decided yet.
But just as I have been working on ongoing fics I've also been coming up with new ideas that I hope to develop further into actual fics/oneshots. Like those Police/Mafia AU or oneshots I've been meaning to write (Red Cold River, The Last and Back To Blue Side).
Blind Love, which is a vmin centered fic (haven't decided if it'll be a LONG oneshot or multi-chap).
Bulletproof Heart/Bulletproof Angel, is a recent idea but also semi-vmin centered and canon compliant (meaning that the boys are still Idols on this one). Its really based on a dream I had with them so I pretty much have the whole skeleton and plot written down.
I know there's like ...5 more ideas somewhere but my mind's failing me right now due to exhaustion so if i remember tomorrow I'll write them down.
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seenashwrite · 5 years ago
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It
Word Count: 3K Category: One-shot; Behind-the-scenes canon-compliant; Humor; Friendship-Turns-To-More; On-the-case Rating: Teen & Up Character(s): Dean, Sam, Reader/Female OC, Cas [ever-so-briefly*** ] Pairing(s): Dean x Reader Warnings: None Author’s Note(s): *This is a re-post, minus tags and links, in an effort to make it show in searches; more post-story Overall Summary: Dean, you thing-breaking dumbass, this is why we can’t have *nice* things.... Okay, but really:  A fellow hunter finally finds it, the answer to solving a case she never quite put to rest; enter Dean and his penchant for picking up, dropping, and breaking things. 
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“I broke it.”
Dean immediately made some sort of slightly cringy face that I’m guessing he thought came off as adorable, then Sam looked over his shoulder at me with the same routine, albeit nervously.
I couldn’t say what expression my face had taken on, but Castiel was staring at me like I was either going to vomit or combust.
“It was an accident,” Sam tried. 
And failed - I was seething.
“I can’t kill you, I know, ‘cause that never seems to take,” I said to Dean. “But I sure as hell can beat the tar out of you.”
Dean narrowed his eyes a bit at me, and I knew he was trying to judge if I was serious.
I was serious.
Several moments of near-painful silence went by, which Dean, naturally, broke.
“It was… look, this thing on the side… here… and the… is… it wasn’t my… then my hand, so… see?"
"Uh-huh,” I said, crossing my arms.
“I’m going to go. I think I should check on the bunker,” Castiel said to me as he backed up, sticking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the door.
“Uh-huh,” I repeated, only seeing him out of the corner of my eye, as I was still focused on my target.
Dean frowned. “Nice, Cas, thanks a lot.”
“You’re most welcome,” Castiel replied, then promptly zipped away.
I was proud of him. That was some absolutely-on-purpose, right-back-atcha sarcasm. I was also glad he had 86′ed himself, one less thing to stand in between me and laying down that aforementioned ass-whooping.
Dean rolled his eyes, then warily brought them back to mine. Sam sighed and leaned over in his chair, getting a better look at the pieces scattered around Dean’s feet. He reached out.
“Nope! Don’t. You. Dare,” I said.
Well, possibly yelled. Could’ve been a shout. Either way he jumped back, held up his hands briefly as if I were going to arrest him.
“What is your problem?” Dean snapped.
My jaw dropped. “You. You, with the constant touching things and handling things and us having to watch you like you’re a four-year-old!” I snapped right back.
He glared, and I started pacing around, gesturing with my arms and hands, and I probably looked like a raving lunatic but I felt like I was dealing with a lunatic, so he deserved a little crazy dished back at him.
“I honestly don’t get it - I really don’t. Consider me boggled. With the knife spinning and the gun flipping like you’re in some movie, and then the behind-the-back shots, and the sliding over to some nasty or away from some creeper, like you’re on a damn baseball team, all those moves, and I just - how can one man have that level of coordination and still manage to fumble everything else? Huh? Can either of you tell me that?”
“You know, you’re being a real—”
“I don’t know how Sam survived childhood, with all the dropping him on his head you must’ve done, but hey - maybe by some stroke of luck you activated a hidden part of his brain and that’s how he ended up a genius.”
Sam grinned. “Thanks!”
“Oh, shut up,” Dean told him.
“The hours… the days…. the weeks… months… all wasted,” I went on. “There’s not another one. It’s one of a kind. Nothing else like it. You have single-handedly screwed me.”
Sam stood and walked over. I’d quit pacing, but my arms were still up and out. I brought my hands to either side of my head. I was muttering random sounds, essentially growling at no one in particular. Sam hesitated briefly, but then took me by the wrists and gently lowered my arms, sliding his hands down to hold mine, giving them a few good squeezes as he spoke.
“Listen, lemme just… if I can just move all of it to the table, get a real good look at the damage, maybe there’s something that can be done to fix it.”
“Sure, super glue should do the trick,” Dean said dryly. He was still hanging out on the side of the bed. I had to give him credit, though - he was holding onto what was left of it like it already had been coated in super glue, not making the first move to touch the rest.
I made myself inhale and exhale a deep breath before responding. “I appreciate that. I do. I wish you would let me do the moving. ‘K?”  
Sam nodded. “Okay. And we’ll go pick up some dinner, let you have some space, that sound good?”
“Good. Yeah.”
“What can we bring you?”
I almost said a time machine so we could all go back ten minutes, so I wouldn’t have left it with Dean, and so he wouldn’t have picked it up in the first place. But I didn’t - Sam didn’t deserve to be treated that way. His brother on the other hand…
Dean stood.
“Don’t move!” I exclaimed, pulling my hands from Sam’s and rushing away from him, dropping to my knees near Dean’s feet.
“I can step over—”
“Put— put it down on the bed, and please, just— please take it slow.”
He did so, but then I felt him staring at me as I surveyed the mess around us. I looked up, and I admit, the anger was fading and the panic was starting to set in. He must’ve seen it because his expression got a bit softer and there was actually a little sympathy in his eyes.
He glanced away for a second, then back. “I’m sorry, okay?”
“I know.”
“If I thought it would slip out of my hands, I would have—”
“Stop, will ya?” My head had already dropped again, as I gingerly picked up one of the larger pieces that was directly in his path. I leaned up briefly to set it on the bed, away from the edge, then back down I went. I grabbed the back of his calf, scooted myself to the side, then prompted him to lift. “Step clean over these smaller pieces, alright?”
I raised my free hand so he could steady himself. He responded with a firm grip and allowing me to guide the leg til his foot was planted, then we repeated the action with no problem on his opposite side. I let out a huge sigh of relief - so did he.
“We’ll be back in no time,” Sam told me, and I heard Dean fishing his keys from his pocket, but I was focused and didn’t acknowledge them. The door closed without any of us saying another word. And that was when the tears finally came to my eyes.
Here was the thing: the Winchester brothers had helped me over the last few hurdles in my quest to find it. I was more grateful than they’d ever know. I needed it to put a long-time cold case of mine officially to rest, and I couldn’t figure it out on my own, which had pissed me off to no end, but not getting the assist just wasn’t an option.
Sam had labored for countless hours over piles of clues and hints and other nonsense that had been tripping me up for years. Dean had been a champ out in the field, often checking leads on his own when their cases took them near some place that held promise, clocking who knows how many miles. We’d hung out socially a few times when they were in my neck of the woods, I’d spoken with Sam at least every-other-week, texted with Dean just as frequently, and well…
I considered us friends. Good friends. Maybe my only friends. MaybeI was their only friend, too.
And I thought about that, all of those things, as I stood over the table, staring down at what we’d worked so hard to find. Nothing was cracked or chipped, thin motel carpeting be damned. None of the pieces were tiny or crumbled, the smallest of them still taking up my entire palm.
It almost seemed… it shouldn’t have, really… it hadn’t felt like it…
Yet there were things about it I hadn’t noticed before, all these intricate details. Diagonal grooves on the piece Dean had managed to keep in his hands, along with oddly-shaped spaces that almost looked like they tunneled. I studied the smaller pieces - similar grooves. And on the sides that had faced internally, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, now that tears weren’t clouding my vision.
I was just starting to smile when the door opened.
“Hey that’s good to see,” Sam said. He was carrying our drinks and headed straight to the dresser - he knew better than to set them on the table with it.
“What’s good to see?” Dean asked. His arms were full of bags stacked atop a small box, so he kicked the door shut behind him.
I don’t know what came over me, but I rushed him, and the poor klutz would’ve likely dropped his cargo had I not pressed in so far as I put my hands on either side of his head and pulled his face in close, planting a quick kiss on his lips.
It was a toss-up, what I saw on his face - horror or surprise - when I pulled away and wide eyes stared back at me, but I couldn’t have cared less.
“Oh you beautiful man,” I told him, now smiling so much my cheeks hurt.
He blinked a few times, still startled. “I got you cupcakes.”
“What?” I asked.
“What?” he asked right back.
“What?” Sam chimed in. “I mean, what happened, why are you—”
I went to turn from Dean, but he wobbled, so I thought better of it. I grabbed the bags, leaving him with just the box. I mean, priorities and all, but I wanted those cupcakes. I answered Sam as I made my way to the dresser.
“He dropped it, but he didn’t break it - looks like it was supposed to come apart.”
“What?!” Sam exclaimed.
“We need to all stop saying ‘what’,” Dean said, and in a gruff tone, so I glanced over at him.
He met my eye, then immediately turned his back to me and started sorting out the food. I frowned slightly, but I didn’t have time to figure him out. I walked back over to the table where Sam was standing, taking a good look at it.
“I liked the compliment and all - but you are the genius,” Sam told me, throwing an arm around my shoulders. “Did you see, on these, how on the inside they’ve got—”
“Yup! Think those might twist and turn and snuggle up all nice and cozy into these gaps?”
Sam grinned, pulled me into a huge hug, held so tight I almost gasped. “I’m really happy for you,” he said, and heaven help me, wrapped those never-ending arms even tighter.
Dean cleared his throat. Loudly. Twice.
Sam let go and I chuckled as his stomach growled. Loudly. Twice.
“Let’s dig in,” I announced, heading over to the spread Dean had laid out.
“You don’t wanna—”
“Nah. It’ll still be there when we’re ready.”
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Dean was on his bed and I was on Sam’s, both of us propped against the headboards, a handful of cupcake wrappers tossed on the bedside table between us.
Sam didn’t join in on dessert, instead making a beeline for the table, and was currently in a chair, hunched over, working on the puzzle. He’d made good headway - I’d barely set in to my second cupcake when he’d already gotten three pieces back in place. In their new places, that is - because that was the key to my little mystery. It wasn’t supposed to stay the same.
“It’s looking good,” I told him. And it was - it was turning into a completely different shape, but one that seemed much more sturdy. Dean had noticed immediately.
“It’ll stand up now, on its own, instead of being wonky on bottom, won’t it?” he asked.
“Looks like,” Sam replied. “There’s still something that needs to go over here, to keep it steady, I think.”
“You sure you don’t want me to take over?” I asked.
Sam looked up, shot me a little wink, then shook his head. “No way. This is the fun part.”
“You’re the boss.” Then I looked at Dean, who had just killed off the rest of what had to have been his fourth cupcake, adding the wrapper to the pile. “For someone in a love affair with pie…”
“Pie understands me.”
“You know, at first I thought that was going to keep us from being friends.”
“Hmm?”
“My cake preference.”
“We all have our faults.”
“Truer words,” I replied with a laugh. I pushed myself off the headboard, made my way to a sitting position on the side of the bed, grabbed my boots and started putting them back on.
“What’re you doing?”
“Well, if Sam’s not gonna let me help, least I can do is make a beer run.”
“That’ll be great, thanks,” Sam said.
Dean watched in silence as I laced up, then grabbed my jacket off of the chair Sam wasn’t in. He waited til I’d almost had my hand on the doorknob before he got up, told me to wait a minute, he’d come with me. Then I heard his keys jingle.
“I’ll drive.”
“My car’s here,” I reminded him.
Dean all but shoved me aside when he reached for the handle, pulling the door open even though I was still partially blocking the way. I gave him a look.
“Well?” he asked.
I looked pointedly at his arm. He moved back so I could pass, and out into the parking lot we went. We were nearing the Impala’s driver side, but I waited to go around, instead turning so fast Dean stopped just short of running into me. The odd vibe that had been hanging over us for months had to come to an end.
“I’m sorry I was such a bitch earlier, I really am.”
“You had every right to be. Anyway, I tend to have that effect on women.”
I glanced down. The last quarter of his jeans and most of his boots were coated in a thin layer of dried mud, leftover from what he’d brushed off before getting into the car. I knew there must’ve been plenty of bruising on his arms and legs, too.
My mind went back to earlier that night, all the work he’d done to retrieve it from the abandoned, mostly caved-in mine out in the middle of nowhere. Sam was too big to fit through what little of an opening was left, and he’d physically held me back, fussing with me about the danger of a full-on collapse, when next thing we knew, we were alone. Dean had climbed down and started making his way inside while our backs were turned.    
I looked back up to find him staring at me, not making a move to go around me or rush me, remind me that the beer was out there all alone, waiting on us, needing a good, loving home, and I added that to the list of oddities.
“Still. I shouldn’t have. Being that close to something that… I’ve just been looking for it so long, to think it was right there and in one second…”
Dean nodded. “We’re good.”
I nodded as well, but didn’t budge. “I believe you. So can we… can we stop being weird?”
“Who’s weird?”
I gave him another look.
He gave one in return.
I let out a little huff.
The side of his mouth quirked up ever-so-slightly.
“It’s been… tense,” I pointed out. “Not just you making with the clumsy and all. I mean the past couple times we’ve been around each other. Then over this whole trip, we’ve been… Listen, I know what a basket case I’ve turned into, as we got closer to it, and I wanna make sure it hasn’t wrecked our friend—”
Dean planted his lips on mine just as abruptly as I’d done to him earlier. Only this was different. He’d shut his eyes. And he lingered.
He pulled away for a fraction of a second, I suppose to see how I’d react, and I didn’t give it much thought before I leaned in and kissed him right back.
It wasn’t what I would’ve expected. I’d seen him kissing other women. There was always this urgency to those kisses, like he was trying to speed through it to reach a finish line, to hurry and get it out of the way.
This, though… this was a slow burn, then just as slowly, his hands were creeping around my waist and slipping under my jacket, pulling me in, and I found myself following suit.
“See? Here you go again, with the touching…” I mumbled into his mouth.
“….and the handling….”
“….all the moves….”
He stilled, stopped another kiss before it really even started, though he didn’t move away. “But am I fumbling it?”
“Oh, this is a horrible idea,” I replied, my lips still brushing against his.
“Huge mistake,” he agreed, eyes shining.
We were kidding, sure, but there was truth behind it, and that was something we both damn well realized. And I realized I was probably the one who had to play the grown-up, so I let my hands fall away from him, stepped back. Not by much, though.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Liiiike….”
“Like you do at the chicks in the diners and the bars. That bartender last time we were all together -  the look.”
“And it’s how I’m looking at you, huh?”
“Mmm-hmm. It happened when you knew all you’d have to do was snap your fingers at her. Just like all of ‘em, when you’d know… ooooh.”
He hadn’t stepped into the space I’d created, just leaned, dropped his head to my neck, started planting barely-there kisses, and at that moment had landed on a nice spot just behind my ear.
“When I’d know what?” he asked, lazily kissing his way back around, under my jaw, then higher, to my cheek.
“Know you’d… how… it’d be a sure thing… that you were… you know… gonna get it.”
Dean brought his head around to look at me, and one of his patented, pleased-with-himself smirks was planted firmly on his face. “Well - I did get it.”
“Horrible idea and horrible jokes, I’m loving this whole thing we’ve got going.”
He dropped the smirk, turning it into something with a touch of sincerity. Something a breath away from being serious, and I didn’t quite know how to feel about it. About any of it.
“Not what I meant,” he said.
I drifted closer; he closed what little distance remained.
“That right?” I asked, and I couldn’t help it - it came out as a whisper.
And he whispered into my ear once he’d pulled me into his arms.
“Yeah, I got it. I’ve got it for you.”  
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Want more stories? My Master Post is linked in my profile, and it tells you about getting on the Tag List, too! If for whatever reason it gives you trouble, don’t hesitate to send an Ask and I’ll link you.
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Author’s Note #2: Several folks asked what “it” was, and so I made a post explaining - you can find that link on the original story post, via my master list.
Like I say - this is a repost leaving off links purposefully, so that’s why you’re not directed to it so if you don’t feel like looking but want to know the “secret”, just shoot me an ask and I’ll link you.
Author’s Note #3: In case you wondered, this was written for a challenge involving taking inspiration from outtakes of the show. And the ***ever so briefly on Cas was because the challenge runner doesn’t like him but I snuck him in just long enough tee-hee-hee
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aij-writes · 5 years ago
Text
Quarter Past Wrong, Pt 2
Rating: Teen, Swearing, Mild Fantasy Violence, Romance
Pairing: Ignyx (Ignis/Nyx)
Summary: Ignis is superhuman...if he is human.  Nyx is pretty sure he’s a vampire.  Case in point...
Warnings: So…going by Japanese standards, even a 17 year old isn’t at the age of majority, so by Insomnia standards, Ignis is still a little young for the 26 year old Nyx.  In Galahd, and his heart, it wouldn’t matter.  Age range is nine years because I accidentally bump up Ignis’s age to three years older than Noctis (instead of 2 ½ of canon) and Gladio a year older than Ignis.  Also, I have a headcanon I’m carrying over that Dragoon is a race and Ignis is a Dragoon.  If I ever write an explanation to this I’ll link it.
Other Tags: Canon compliant, Brotherhood Era, Best friends Gladio & Ignis, Slow burn?, pining, OCs with no development for plot purposes, gratuitous workout and training scenes
For @ffxvignyxzine using all the prompts on day 2 “Meet me after dark”, Rain, Is he a vampire or am I imagining it
Second part of a multi-part fic trying to tie it all together
“Is he a vampire or am I imagining it?” Nyx asked, leaning back against the bleachers.
“Huh?” Crowe asked before throwing her fist up and cheering.  “Come on!” she yelled.
“He’s talking about the bureaucrat again,” Luche complained, leaning back from the next bench down.  He groaned, slapping money into Pelna’s hand.  “Shove it,” he complained.
Crowe continued to watch her team trounce Luche’s in rollerball.  Finally, though, she glanced at where Nyx was staring.  “Dude...don’t be weird,” she complained.
“I’m just saying,” Nyx said, insistent and on the edge of unloading.  “The kid’s not human.”
“He’s a Dragoon.  You know they say the same about you Galahdians,” Tredd offered.
Nyx kicked him hard, sending him crashing into Axis.  He leaned forward, chin in his hand balancing his elbow on his knee and watching the much nicer box seats where the prince watched.  Galahdians didn’t officially have to sit in the low stands, but they just typically did.  along with all the others that coun’t afford better tickets on their salary.  There was no use bothering to mingle with the rest of Insomnia.  They preferred them out of sight, out of mind.  As a Dragoon, Ignis might have had the same issue, the son of refugees himself.  Of course, he’d been handpicked by the king to see to his son, but Ignis faced enough discrimination that Nyx couldn’t help but sympathized.
“I mean...what does that even mean?” Crowe asked.  “Are you calling him a daemon?”  She laughed, taking the box of popcorn from Nyx and munching on a handful.
“I mean, sure, it sounds crazy but like--”
“Fangs?  He’s got fangs for biting the heads off anyone that looks at the Prince the wrong way,” Luche pointed out.
Nyx rolled his eyes.  “Okay, okay, forget it.”
“Maybe you should,” Crowe said, straining up.  “You know...no one finds stalking romantic, Ulric.”
“I’m not...and I don’t...!”  Nyx finally let his cool demeanor crack.  “It’s not like that!”
“Sure, of course not,” Luche agreed.  “He’s a teenager.  Nyx isn’t looking to break Insomnia law.”
“Forget the age of majority, Luche,” Crowe pointed out.  “The kids practically royal court.”
“I’m not trying to date anyone let alone him, Astrals!” Nyx said tensely.  “I wouldn’t date a vampire anyway!”
Tredd snickered.  “Interested in guys, Hero?”
Nyx rolled his eyes.  “All I’m interested in is figuring out if Scientia is a vampire.  That’s it.”
“Here,” Crowe said, having been on her phone.  She mailed him a list.  “Checklist.  Go do your stalking and find out before you go completely stark raving mad, alright?”  She motioned her head.  “The Crown finds out they’ve got a creature of the night tucking the prince in, they’ll give you another medal, right?”
Nyx rolled his eyes.  Still, he couldn’t help but look over the list.
---
Pale Skin/Aversion to Sunlight
Nyx was walking down the hall, talking to Gladiolus Amicitia.  Over the years, he’d gotten to know the Shield’s son as a pretty cool guy.  He’d even been invited over for a few meals at the manor and sat in on one of Gladio’s tattoo sessions when he went to get the line down his own right index.  Gladio tended to be easygoing, but honest, and just as fun and without caring he wasn’t native.  His sister liked to ask him questions, even if she never asked anything important.  Which, to be honest, he sort of liked.  It was rough with the only thing anyone wanted to ask him was about fighting.  Even Gladio’s father balanced a line between respectful and boyish enthusiasm.
Right now, Gladio was talking about a movie adaptation of some novel, complaining about the casting and merging of characters.  Nyx followed along, having read the book but not having gotten around to seeing it.  The set pieces sounded cool, but it didn’t sound enough to save a movie on a book he’d actually enjoyed.  They were headed to lunch together, as Nyx had had to pull guard duty at the gates and missed his friends’s break and Gladio just liked to rotate his options.
As they went to turn into the cafeteria though, they nearly ran right into the prince.  Fourteen and every bit as sullen as the age demanded, Noctis huffed, stepping back and looking away.  His shadow cleared his throat and Noctis rolled his eyes.  “Yeah...sorry...”
Gladio raised his eyebrows, before asking Ignis, over Noctis’s head and silently, He alright?
Ignis gave Gladio a sympathetic look.  Father, he mouthed back.
Nyx guessed that meant something about the king.  Before he could get too worried about King Regis, though, Noctis huffed and kicked his shoe against the floor.
“Since Dad’s too busy, can I just go back to my room?”
Ignis frowned, fingers nervously worrying over his cuff.  Gently and proddingly, he said, “Noctis, wouldn’t you like to sample the changed menu?  There’s a new burger I think has merits and--”
Noctis let out a tortured noise.  He frowned as Gladio snorted and rolled his eyes.  “Oh yeah, sure, and then everyone can whisper and point and go Oh look, it’s the prince.  I put up with that enough at school, Ignis, thanks.”
Ignis sighed, pushing his glasses up.  “Your Highness...”
Gladio threw an arm around Noctis’s shoulders.  “Come on.  You two can join me and the Hero.  That way, if anyone’s staring, you can tell yourself it’s in awe of braids and muscles.”  He eyed Ignis.  “And those ridiculous bags under your mom’s eyes.”  He put a hand on Ignis’s shoulder, holding him there.  “Astrals, Iggy, you stay up all night cleaning up after His Bratiness again?”
Ignis squirmed.  “Honestly, Gladio!”  He frowned.  Like the kid didn’t have enough criticisms getting through his teenage years.  His acne was finally under control.  Though his skin was much smoother and soft now, he was all the more paler for it.  For a moment there, Ignis had quite a time.  He dressed like a little business man, had glasses, an overbite, acne, and carried a briefcase everywhere.  At seventeen, he was finally growing into his looks having started to do things with his hair and put together slightly more stylish versions of the blazer-dress pants-collared shirt that was his uniform.  Still, he had a wan look.  He looked like he carried the fate of the entire kingdom on his shoulders.
“I’ll grab us a table,” Nyx offered.  “You’re still buying, right?” he asked Gladio, punching him on the shoulder  “Get me an orange juice with a deluxe burger and onion rings.”
Noctis made a gagging noise.  “Orange juice at lunch?” he said to Nyx.  He looked around the cafeteria then settled his eyes outside.  “Can’t we go eat outside?”
Nyx looked at Ignis, almost holding his breath in expectation.  It was dumb but--
Ignis gave Noctis a patient, apologetic smile.  “It’s really more comfortable in here, right?”
“In the gardens, no one will know I’m there,” Noctis tried to and failed not to whine.
“And I won’t know anyone’s sneaking up on you,” Gladio said, crossing his arms.
“You’re supposed to be ready for sneak attacks,” Noctis pointed out.  “Warp boy’s got us, right?”
Nyx glanced at Ignis.  “It’s really nice out.  Even pencil pushers have to get sunlight sometimes, right?”
Ignis sighed.  “I’m afraid it’s a tad windy and I’d hope to finish going over your homework so I might have an evening to myself, Your Highness.  Do you mind if we stay inside?”
In the end, Noctis assented.
Mind Control
“Oh...hey,” Nyx said.  He was leaving the library, book tucked under his arm.
Ignis pursed his lips in that displeased way he had.  “Yes,” he said.  “I need to--”
“They’re closed,” Nyx said, jutting a thumb back.  “Just got kicked out myself.”  He grinned, leaning on the door.  “Not so quick now, huh?”
Ignis frowned at Nyx, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Hey, come on, no need to pout.  I’m sure you’ll be up early enough that you only have to wait a few hours, right?”  Nyx tried to nudge Ignis on the arm, but he didn’t even respond.
Nyx wasn’t even sure how, but in less than a moment, the door was unlocked and opened.  A single hand reached out with a book.  Ignis reached behind Nyx and took it.  He nodded his head at it.  He didn’t even look at Nyx as he rotated on his heel and marched back the way he came.
Arithmomania
“Anyone ever tell you that you have an attitude problem?” Nyx asked Ignis.  He was doing pull ups near where another Crownsguard was working Ignis through stretches.  Ignis looked like he was in extreme pain or simply concentrating, but he clearly ground his teeth too much.
Ignis put a finger out to flip him off.  That was with him being flipped and having his leg extended.
Nyx tried to laugh and regulate his breathing but he ended up releasing his grip.  He fell onto the mats below.  He grabbed his towel and wiped down his face.  “Wow, Scientia...you’re too much.”  He stooped down next to Ignis’s head, watching him.  “Careful Novitas doesn’t rip something.”  With his worst impression of Ignis’s Dragoon accent, he teased, “The Kingdom would fall without our favorite high-stressed gov’nor doing everything for everyone.”
“Let me...do you a favor,” Ignis said with a surprising amount of breath control.
Nyx grinned.  “Oh yeah?  You want to come over and set my pants on fire?”  Last week in training, Ignis had missed a mark and set Luche’s pants on fire.  Though Nyx had to admit it was awesome, he hadn’t let Ignis live it down.
Ignis’s face was already flushed but now he was glaring.  The way he clenched his teeth, though, it made his lips pouty and his narrowed eyes behind glasses gave him a sultry look.  Nyx tried not to notice that the guy was hotter than Ifirit’s sigh.
“No,” Ignis grunted.  “The favor is, I won’t punch you for gawking.”
Nyx grinned at him with a wide, toothy smile.  “Who’s staring?  I’m wondering if you’re almost done being stretched like taffy.  I wanted the mats for crunches and squats.”
Ignis groaned, tapping out.  “Enough, Nov!” he gasped.
“Getting limber, aren’t you?” the grinning blonde asked.  He eased Ignis’s leg down.  “One more?”  He ran his hand up and down Ignis’s back along the spine.  “Help you cool down?”
“Might put the fire out,” Ignis agreed, still giving Nyx a glare that only made him hotter.  “No, you can use the mats all around me, though.”
He tried not to think about it.  In Galahd and the rest of Lucis, it might not have been so odd to find a seventeen-year-old attractive.  In Insomnia, it was one more disconcerting thing the refugees left around them where the age of majority was twenty.  Never mind the fact Ignis clearly never thought of anything other than work and training to be better at work.  He knew he was the Prince’s future adviser, but there was enough evidence that Ignis did nearly everything for the teen and was still counted on for other things.  He overheard complaining about him speaking up at council meetings he was merely meant to take notes at and, they had the insistence of saying, the King actually discussing with the Head of Urban Development as serious advice!
Not it wasn’t so much Nyx shouldn’t find Scientia hot.  It was that he did and he knew it didn’t matter.  Fellow refugee or not, there was already murmurs of King Regis granting peerage to Ignis.  Then he wouldn’t just be an unofficial member of the royal court, he’d be a lord and there’d be an official House of Scientia.  Nyx knew that anyone that close to the royals was already too high-strung to be interested in grabbing coffee--though Ignis seemed to live of the stuff even at his age.  He’d never risk his standing for a nearly decade-older Rat who didn’t even particularly want anything.  Nyx just thought he was nice to look at.  And maybe a vampire.
As Novitas wrapped an arm around Ignis from behind, Nyx situated himself where he might watch in the mirrors if he chose to.  Between push ups, he did.  Novitas had Ignis drapped over his arm.  Ignis was bent almost double over it, hands sliding down his own legs as Novitas used his other hand to push Ignis down further.  No one should bend that easily.  No one should have Ignis in such a pliable position if he wasn’t going to do something about it.  With Novitas’s serious look, though, he clearly only had the boring workout in mind.
Ignis clearly needed to prove himself even if it was only to himself.  He was like a chocobo in a rainstorm; letting water roll of his back.  No amount of underestimation had ever caused him embarrassment.  But the impossible standards he set himself kept being held up despite how much more he stacked onto himself.
Nyx ended his last set as Ignis ended his actual cool down stretches.  He’d already thanked Novitas and they’d parted sometime before.  Libertus had ended his time on the weights, talking about his day’s best.  As he asked Nyx how much he’d done, they headed to the lockers room, Ignis trailing behind.
“I dunno...I just do ’em til I’m done.”
Ignis rattled off the numbers of pull ups, push ups, crunches, and squats Nyx had done.  He looked at their surprised faces.  “Counting habit.  When I’m working out, I’m trying not to think about anything.  Counting helps.”
---
Invitation Only
“Hey Nyx?” Gladiolus called, catching up to him.  “You good?”
Nyx rubbed his shoulder.  He had bandages over it.  A spell had gone wrong on the field last week and burst from his flesh.  He had electric burns down to the muscle.  He offered a grin.  “Sure, why not?”
“His Highness,” he said, always careful to be proper when not talking to Ignis or Noctis, “nearly gave himself frostbite a year or so ago.  No reason to act tough.”
Nyx shrugged with one shoulder.  “Who’s acting?”  He cuffed Gladio on the head.  “You ever stop growing?”
“If not up then out,” Gladio said, smirking as he flexed.  He was in a tanktop and the steadily filling in lines rippled like a bird’s plumage might actually in the wind.  He looked like he wanted to say something after that, but Nyx let him stew on his thoughts as he kept walking towards his neighborhood.  He actually wondered how long until Gladio refused to go further.
“So...you having a few people over for drinks and watch the Founder’s Day thing?”
“Yeah,” Nyx said.  “You wanna come?”
“Can Iggy come?”
Nyx raised his eyebrows.  “Uh, sure...why not....though, I can’t imagine he’d miss the real thing.”
Gladio shook his head.  “The Prince has finals and is going to stay in all night and prep.  Ignis is hoping he’ll see to himself and I want to give him a chance to be distracted from worrying he won’t.”
Nyx nodded.  “Well, my apartment isn’t going to compare to the Amicitia manor.  Or the Citidal apartments.”
“Ignis isn’t stuck up, you know.  You could give him a chance.”
“I’m not mean to him,” Nyx said with an incredulous look on his face.  “Boy, you really are protective of him, you know.  He probably doesn’t like all that big brother posturing, you know.”
“Sure, I know,” Gladio agreed.  “Except I’m always there to remind him to live a little.  It’d be nice if someone wanted to include him without wanting something from him.”
“I mean, he can come.  It’s no biggie.”  Nyx couldn’t quite say he didn’t want anything from Ignis.  To see the guy smile might be asking too much, though.
“Well, sure, if I tell him, he’ll never come.  Maybe you could invite him.  Let him know he’s welcome.”
Nyx frowned at that, but nodded.  “Sure...I’ll tell him about it.”
---
Aversion to Garlic
“What are you doing?” Ignis demanded.
Nyx looked up.  “You looked tired.  I made us coffee.”
“...what did you put in the coffee?” he asked in a careful tone.  There was some amusement there, though.
“Uh...well, it’s Ebony beans, water, chocolate flakes, honey, and...oh, yeah, I guess that’s...”  Nyx eyed Ignis carefully.  He’d been caught in the kitchens making himself a sandwich after bullshit guard duty released him way too early in the morning and caught Ignis baking.  He slid the mug over, perversely curious.  “You like to try new things?”
“Of course,” Ignis said, frowning.  “One should always look to expand their horizons.”
“Alright, well, you ever put anything in your coffee?  I know I’ve seen you only take it black from the can.”  Ignis raised his eyebrows at this, as if surprised Nyx was keeping tabs.  Or maybe it that there was any other way to have it.  Or the avoidance of answering directly.  Nyx grinned.  “So I made it how I had it back home.  You know...where I’m from.”
“In Galahd?” Ignis asked softly, picking up the mug and looking at it.  “I thought I saw spices go in.”
“Yeah...salt, pepper...garlic paste stirred in.”  Nyx smiled sheepishly.  “It’s better that way.”
“You can’t put garlic in coffee.”
“I think you’ll find I have.”  He picked up his mug, knocking it against Ignis’s.  “Drink up.”
Ignis stared into it.  “No.”
“Well, I’ll admit, a fresh clove it better.  But one sip isn’t going to kill you.”
Ignis sighed.  “I mean, I’m watching you drink it, but I swear you’re just playing a prank on me.  Maybe there’s no garlic in yours.”
Nyx snickered.  He took Ignis by the wrist, bringing his mug up and tipping a bit into mouth.  “Mmm...like Daddy used to drink.”  He released Ignis’s wrist, but used his fingers to tip the mug towards him.  “One sip,” he urged in a soft, teasing voice.  “Be brave, Crownsguard.”
Ignis looked at the mug, before meeting Nyx’s eyes.  He let him raise it to his lips, but put his other hand on Nyx’s.  He took a slow sip, still watching Nyx intently.
“Good?”
“Maybe not my taste but understandably good for others,” Ignis agreed softly.  He stepped back a bit, putting the distance and raising his voice to a normal tone, “I think I’ll take it plain from now on, but once can’t hurt.”  He smirked at bit at Nyx.  “I still think it’s some elaborate punishment game you’re just immune to.”
“No one’s immune to garlic, Ignis.  Enjoy it.”  Nyx turned from Ignis.  “It’s good for you.  How’s it any different from your quest to sneak veggies into the notoriously picky prince’s dessert?”
“Fair enough,” Ignis conceded easily.
“You must be poisoned.  You didn’t even argue.”  Nyx came back, putting the back of his hand to Ignis’s forehead.  “Is that a fever?  You’re burning up.”
Ignis rolled his eyes.  “Like I haven’t heard jokes on my name my whole life.  Imagine if you knew my middle name.”
“Middle?” Nyx asked.
Ignis looked embarrassed, at least for him.  He turned his head a bit even if he kept his eyes on Nyx unabashedly.  “Well, it’s a Dragoon thing.  We have a family, a personal, and a middle.  I wouldn’t be ashamed of it, but it’s dumb.”
Nyx grinned, leaning in.  “You’re full of secrets, aren’t you?”
“I don’t doubt it, Mr. Ulric.”  Ignis smirked a little.  “I don’t let many people too close.  Too close to me is too close to the prince.”
“You’re faithful,” Nyx pointed out.
“It’s love, Nyx.  I love my country and I love my job.”  Ignis looked up at the older man.  “I love Noctis, too.”  He bit his lip at the casual use of his name, but he was already that far in.  “I’ve taken care of him for so long, how could I not?”
“Yeah...” Nyx agreed.  “I know what you mean.”  He didn’t elaborate to Ignis, but his thoughts were to his sister.  “But you know that time isn’t all love is.”
“Of course not,” Ignis said with a huff.  “If the prince didn’t deserve my love, he wouldn’t have it, only my duty and follow through.”
“Still seems like it’s hard to earn those,” Nyx said.  “You think there’d ever be another person as lucky?”
Ignis smirked into his coffee.  “Sure.”  He let the casual assurance hang as he eyed Nyx with his teasing green guys.  “My best friend Gladiolus.”
Nyx nodded.  “Fair enough.”  He reached over, tapping Ignis’s chin up.  “Anyone would be a fool to try to stretch you any thinner.”  He gazed at him before moving on.
“That’s you, Ulric,” Ignis said, setting his mug down.  He flipped the timer on the oven off at four seconds and peered inside.  “Always issuing a challenge.”
“Name a time I ever do that,” Nyx demanded, only to frown.  “Alright, alright...”
Ignis huffed, pulling the pastries out.  He used the mitts to fan the steam rising off them.  “Everything you do around me is a challenge.  Even coffee.”
“Well...maybe you’re looking at it wrong.”
“I often don’t,” Ignis said carelessly.  “I tend to have an accurate idea of others’ motives and strategies.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”  Nyx sipped at his coffee.  “I must be that annoying know-it-all you think me as.”
Ignis raised his eyebrows.  “Or you find pushing me around is the best way to get me where you want me.”
Nyx startled, coughing around a bad swallow.  He set the mug down, watching Ignis’s back.  He took a careful step forward, sliding in next to him.  “You always seem to like things a bit direct so as to get it over and done with.”
“Hmmm...that would be a mostly accurate summery,” Ignis said, sprinkling powdered sugar over the pastries.
“Maybe I’m tired of you being over and done with people.  Me or otherwise.”
“You?” Ignis asked, having the slightest look of surprised as he realized Nyx was closer.  Right next to him with the heat off his body warmer than the pastries.  He shifted, turning to look up at him.  “And what more would you want from me?” he asked, no blush or nervous tremble.  Just honest, direct curiosity.
Nyx couldn’t help but look at those lips.  “For you to engage with people for the pure pleasure of their company.”
Ignis blinked at him, before breaking the moment by moving away without a word.  He pulled a linen-lined basket towards him and began to load the pastries in to bring up to Noct.  “I would have to find their company pleasurable, don’t you think?”
Nyx scowled.  “Right,” he said a bit abruptly.  He went to pick up his plate, ready to retreat.  “Unlike a Rat with too many opinions.”
Ignis let out an annoyed hum.  He lifted a pastry that had broken apart.  He took a knife to it, cutting it evenly in half.  He tipped it onto Nyx’s plate.  “I may be efficient, Mr. Ulric but I’m not boring.”  He gave Nyx his own challenging look.  “You want to order me around, make sure it keeps my interest.  Trade for the coffee.”
“I don’t want anything from you,” Nyx said irritably, turning to catch the hurt look cross Ignis’s face before it was as quickly schooled into a challenging look himself.  He winced at that, before taking a bite.  “Pretty good,” he mumbled around the crumbles and silky filling.  It had a warm, nutty flavor.
“Probably not good enough for His Highness but I try,” Ignis said, shrugging.  “Well...if you don’t want anything more, I guess I better leave for someone who always needs me to get him up and going in the morning.”
Nyx watched him leave, gap-mouthed.  Okay...never mind what he wanted.  What did Ignis want?
---
Bloodlust
“I’ll kill him.”
“Sure Iggy.”
“No, I will,” he snapped.  “Slowly, too.  I’ve been working on interrogation techniques with the Marshal.  I’ve found plenty of places to put a knife that’ll bleed good but not kill or maim.  Enough of those, though...”
“Well...that’ll come in handy,” Gladiolus marveled.  “How come he never has anything useful for me?  All I got was this amazing physique.”
“You did that yourself, you swole-head.”
Nyx kept walking, not wanting to know who’d get Ignis that worked up over anything.
---
Animal Familiar
Nyx burst into laughter.  Ignis shot him a look from across the hall they were passing in.  Nyx shrugged, gesturing behind him.
Noctis had stopped in his walk, standing in the light of the high window.  He had none of his usual teenage scowl.  He just blinked sleepily, smiling faintly.  He looked a bit puffed in the warmth of the sunlight.
“Your cat’s distracted,” he said with a grin, gone before Ignis could throw another withering look at him.
---
Water Barrier
Nyx had his hand over Ignis’s on his kukri’s handle.  “I want you to feel it pass from my hand to my blade,” he instructed.
They were nearly back to front, past the usual training time, but Ignis had finally asked for something.  He was having difficulty with lightning spells and issued his own challenge to Nyx he made it look so easy.  Ignis still had problems with aim and release and the erratic electricity was the worst.  Just today, upon issuing the command, Drautos had taken a tiny bolt to his knee.  He’d limped out of there after carrying practice on as normal, wincing and using Luche and Libtertus’s help to walk as he couldn’t feel his leg.
“Come on, Scientia,” Nyx urged.  “This is the only area I’ve seen where your power outstrips your finesse.  You don’t have to be the strongest on the field.  But there’s so many people around, you run the risk of getting your guys.  No amount of battle formations is going to prevent friendly fire.”
“This fire isn’t feeling so friendly,” Ignis muttered darkly.
“You need to let failures happen,” Nyx coaxed.  “Doing it right the first time means you fall into bad habits.  Like confusing trying with succeeding.”
“You are really arrogant, you know that?” Ignis shot out.
“We’re not sparring, let alone trading barbs.  I’m here instead of showering and getting a beer.  I think I’m being fucking gracious and you’re the arrogant one,” Nyx snapped.
Ignis startled.  With that, a bolt shot out, hitting one of the stone pillars.  He looked back at Nyx.  He pulled his hand from Nyx’s, using the other, uncharged one to push his glasses up.  “My apologies.”
“I don’t want ’em,” Nyx assured him.  “Just focus.”
Ignis looked around the training yard.  It was just him and Nyx.  “Of course,” he assured him.  “I let my frustrations get the best of me.”
“The best of you is better than that,” Nyx couldn’t help but say.
“You know me so well?” Ignis inquired.
“Uh...well, I know the standards you hold for yourself...they’re not easy.”  Nyx shifted a little so it was less like Ignis was in his arms.  He took his fist, placing it at the center of Ignis’s gravity above his navel.  The teen had started to shoot up in height.  Already tall, he was squeezing a few more inches out of what was left of puberty.  Nyx started to wonder if he’d end up towering like his best friend.  At seventeen, Ignis was nearly Nyx’s full height.
He swallowed, trying to ignore his thoughts of how neither would strain into a kiss.  At least physically.  The emotional, societal burden was insurmountable he decided.  Had to conclude and be done with.  This attraction was getting out of hand and it was so one-sided he’d started to consider his friends were right.  He was stalking the damn kid.
“F-feel right here,” Nyx said, only the slightest waver in his voice.  Ignis stiffened at it, but relaxed as Nyx went on, “I want you to be a storm.  Gather, pull, twist and turn in place.  Build it up.  Draw from every bit but keep it here.  Then...”  His hand went from fist to open palm, cupping the taut muscles of the Dragoon and dragging his hand up over his chest.  “Direct it,” he ordered quietly, “only a little.  You hold that storm in place,” he said, other fist going back to the spot.
He now had both arms around Ignis.  Nyx was pressed against him, their different body types fitting together well.  He kept his head turned slightly, chin barely resting against the back of Ignis’s shoulder.  His open palm continued to run, curving with Ignis’s defined curves.  “You are bringing forth one bolt,” he reminded him.  “You aren’t separating it, though.”  He gently ground his fist in a little.  “Connected to your storm, but seeking grounding.  You are connected.  Your aim is to find the easiest root from your storm to your target.”  His hand ran over Ignis’s pectoral, fingers trailing a little high to touch the exposed skin of Ignis’s collarbone for a moment, but moving on.
His hand continued its path.  From Ignis’s shoulder to arm, down, down, slow and direct.  Nyx shifted, pressing as close as he could, breath its own heat cloud against Ignis’s ear.  His hand turned, running over the inside of Ignis’s wrist before the final rest, wrists pressed together.  Ignis still had Nyx’s kukri closed in his his hand.
“Release,” Nyx guided, directly yet soft.
Ignis released a single blast that as quickly webbed out and enveloped the pillar, turning it into a beacon.  Both had to shut their eyes, but Ignis held strong as he overwhelmed it with his entire charge.  Behind eyelids, they could see it get brighter still before plunging them into darkness.
Ignis was breathing heavily, obviously worn out.  Both kept their eyes shut, but Ignis shifted in Nyx’s arms.  He handed him back his knife and turned, his own hand drawing over Nyx’s chest.  He was quicker with his movements and it came to rest in the crook of Nyx’s neck.
Nyx felt charged lips near his.  His hand gripped at fabric, holding Ignis close to him but not moving closer.
A crash of thunder startled them apart.
Ignis gasped and Nyx yelped.  But it was a real storm.  The exposed air of the training grounds let in the storm above and rain started to fall on them.
Ignis dove for cover, but it was harder to tell if it was from the rain or the man that stood in it, watching him go.
---
Fangs
“There are eyes everywhere, Scientia,” Nyx murmured, holding an impassive look.  He had guard duty for a delegation of scholars that wanted to discuss crystal magic.  They mostly wanted to implore the king again to ask him was it wise to let the Rats steal pieces.  That the Kingsglaive would be the guard was by design.
Ignis wasn’t looking at him.  But he was wondering close to Nyx.  He’d been asked to the meeting personally by the king and had stood up, impassioned in his argument that the Kingsglaive was not only necessary, but in favor of King Regis’s duty to his people.  The scholars had argued back that first and foremost, the King had to duty to the crystal itself.  The heart of their star resided in it and needed to be protected above any people.
Drautos and Leonis, rarely on the same page of anything, had taken their time to both argue.  The Marshal had pointed out His Majesty must protect his lineage to continue protecting the crystal.  Both Ignis and King Regis had shared a mutual look of distress at summing up Prince Noctis’s purpose as a progenitor for more servants to the crystal but neither had voiced it.
Drautos had merely spat out there wouldn’t be a crystal to protect if Nifleheim was allowed to snuff the lands out.  “There’s hardly a star, let alone its heart, if there’s no people to stand upon it and receive its blessing, right?”
The meeting wasn’t futile but it was frustrating.  No one walked away happy.
But Ignis wasn’t walking away.
Nyx had put a healthy space between him and Ignis.  As in always several floors away if possible, as he’d started to make himself unavailable.  Ignis hadn’t acted as if he’d noticed, but he now shot Nyx a questioning look over his glasses.  Nyx merely stood at attention, eyes gazing past him.
Pushing them up, Ignis gathered up his papers and put them in his briefcase.  He pulled on his tie, loosening it a bit.  He walked past Nyx without another word.
Only once the meeting room was empty did he finally relax his stance.  And look at the tiny paper pressed into his hand.
Meet me after dark.
Nyx wasn’t sure where or why or should or even could.  He didn’t know where Ignis went when he wasn’t working.  He certainly didn’t know what he wanted.  Not really.  The almost kiss, if that’s what it was going to be, had worn him out.  He hadn’t even thought about it.  It was too much to consider so he hadn’t.  He just avoided it and avoided Ignis.  Now he was summoning him.  Where?  Who knows.  When?  Dark was relative.  He was in the dark now.  Why?  To be threatened and yelled at?  To be grabbed and kissed?  To be lectured about propriety and laws and how a royal retainer and a soldier with nine years difference and from two completely different backgrounds were not meant to have so many run-ins?  Should he go and assure him it was a moment they’d both read wrong?  Could he really face those wide, searching eyes and listen to the berating from those pouty, full lips?
He went home.  He went home and changed and fed himself, and even got some of the chores he’d let slide.  He distracted himself.  Then he groomed himself, checking his braids and washing his face.  He dabbed on cologne and changed his shirt.  He frowned at his reflection.  He stopped dawdling and caught the train back to the Citidal.
He walked towards it with purposeful steps even if his mind was blank of any strategy.  He stopped short, though, seeing that Ignis always had a plan.
The rain had continued to fall for the last week.  Nyx had shrugged on a raincoat with a hood, but Ignis stood in his partial suit under an umbrella.  He was off to the side, at the foot of the steps.  He turned this way and that, looking like he was trying not to look so obviously looking.  But Nyx stared.
He was too much.  Too cute in his obviousness.  Too young in his unabashed forwardness.  Too out of his league in his poise and elegance even under duress.  He was too much of a bad idea.
Nyx approached, boots splashing in the rain.  Ignis still hadn’t noticed him even if he made no attempts at stealth.  But his mouth wasn’t working right, so he didn’t call out.  Nyx reached Ignis.  Ignis looked up at him, surprised and unable to force his expression to something neutral.  Nyx didn’t even pause, reaching Ignis, closing a hand around Ignis’s back, and pulling them close together under the umbrella.  It was a tight squeeze.  Ignis continued to look at Nyx, not hiding his thoughts so well.  He was wanting.  Nyx wanted it back.
They met into the kiss, neither making the first move.  Ignis’s freehand went to tangle into Nyx’s hair, stroking at braids and petting down to his nape.  They opened their mouths to each other.  They kissed until breaking apart.
Nyx was hugging Ignis, though, so they didn’t move more than their faces.  Ignis ran his hand over Nyx’s scruffy beard.  His expression was thoughtful, soft, still wanting but only more now instead of unchecked yearning.  Nyx watched Ignis with something akin to hope as his fingers traced patterns across Ignis’s shoulders.
Nyx closed his eyes for a long moment as he sucked in a stuttered breath.  Can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, never ran through his head.  Ignis’s next kiss only tasted like yes.
They made out in the rain, not sure where this was going and what they’d have to do to keep it.  But Nyx did have the presence of mind to run his tongue over Ignis’s teeth.  Just to check.
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allthecoolboysaredead · 7 years ago
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Larry Ezekiel Goodman Bio + Tags + Headcanons
Name: Larry Ezekiel Goodman Nicknames: Darkheart, Larebear Age: 21; Can Change Birthday: February 27th Sign: Pisces Gender: Cis Male Pronouns: He/Him Sexuality: Homosexual Homoromantic Polygamous; Nonsexual unless introduced to sex by outside source (then highly sexual) Hair: Naturally Brown, dyes tips blue Eyes: Dodger Blue Skin: Pale White Height: 5′0″ Weight: 110 lbs Faceclaim: Gerhard Freidl Piercings: Horizontal Brow Piercings (Left Side), Angel Bites, Labret, Both Ears Gauged (Size 0g) Tattoos: None Scars: Nothing real noticeable
Alignment: Lawful Good Religion: Raised Roman Catholic, Aetheist Allegiance: South Park Vampire Society, Mike Makowski, Ryan Ellis
Family: Zachary Fetter (Father, Alive, Out Of The Picture); Mariah Goodman (Mother, Alive); Martin “Big M” Goodman (Uncle, Alive); Mary Goodman (Grandmother, Deceased); Ezekiel Goodman (Grandfather, Alive)
Pets: Lestat (White German Shepherd)
Personality: Adaptable, anxious, artistic, attention-seeking, caring, compassionate, compliant, desires an escape of reality, emotionally intelligent, empathetic, extroverted, forgiving, friendly, generous, gentle, gullible, impulsive, intuitive, loyal, overly trusting, passive, patient, protective, prudish, responsible, self deprecating, selfless, sensitive, shy, submissive, sullen, tolerant, worrisome
Likes: Sleeping, music, romance, visual media, swimming, the spiritual side of vampirism, comaraderie, his friends, clamato juice, deviled egg potato salad, sweets, animals, helping others, rainy/snowy weather
Dislikes: Confrontation, cruelty of any kind, thinking too much, being criticized, know-it-alls, being taken advantage of, being left out, touching fish, Swedish meatballs, bitter things, plain water, hot weather
Can Do: Drive, make telephone calls, organize events, drop everything when a friend needs him, offer advice, play instruments (Cello, piano, clarinet, a little bit of violin, kazoo), write fiction
Can’t Do: Actually kill things, relax easily, cook, math, abandon his friends, most magic, handle confrontation, get too warm, resist singing to songs he likes/knows
Mental Health Diagnosis:
PTSD: Larry was treated rather poorly up until he started school, often locked out of his mother’s room at night and left with nobody to help him through things but his uncle. His uncle was and still is a drunk piggybacking off of his mother’s paychecks, and Larry suffered a lot of physical and sexual abuse from him. To this day he dislikes being alone with the man.
Dependant Personality Disorder: Larry will pour himself into other things in order to escape his actual reality. Because of this, he takes on the brunt of handling most Vampire Society affairs, including but not limited to booking events and venues, securing timetables and even setting up the occasional bake sale. The busier he can stay, the happier he is.
Physical Health Diagnosis:
Flat Feet: Larry has to wear special inserts in his shoes because his feet have no arches in them. It occasionally makes running hard.
Fears: Being forgotten, aliens, being eaten alive, earthquakes
Positive Traits: Loyal, trustworthy, tolerant
Negative Traits: Self-deprecating, anxious, worrisome
Quirks: Listens to such a wide variety of music it’s hard to pinpoint his tastes; Likes peanut butter and cheese sandwiches; Has an interest in all occult/supernatural things but vampires are his number 1
Tends To: Busy himself to the point of forgetting himself; Become nonverbal during conflict; Cling to his dog when scared
History: The timing couldn’t have been worse for Larry to have been a shine in his parents’ eyes. Zach Fetter was content to be the guy Mariah Goodman’s parents couldn’t stand, and she was content to know she was breaking rules, until Larry came into the picture. The minute it turned from rebellion into the possibility of a family, all parties tried to run. Mariah, sadly, was a little stuck. She couldn’t get an abortion, and had to temporarily move back in with her parents until Larry was born. He spent the beginning of his life mostly with his grandparents, while his mother got back on her feet with a job.
When he was three, his uncle was released from prison and his mother moved out of her parents’ house to move in with her brother. The initial idea was for him to get a job and help out, but something always got in the way. He spent a lot of time babysitting Larry, who began to behave differently. Quiet, more sullen, he flinched a lot in the presence of his uncle and refused to talk about it. By kindergarten, he was reluctant to do much on his own, and immediately clung to an older kid by the name of Mike Makowski.
They became fast friends, and Larry was ever loyal to any of Mike’s causes, even if he was a year younger than him. When they became the South Park Vampire Society in fourth grade (fifth for Mike), Larry was a dutiful second in command that spent as much time as he could with his friends. They were all a very close-knit group, and even as they grew and everyone else changed, Larry didn’t see a whole lot of it.
He let himself be so enveloped in his work for his friends, in spending time with them and helping them with problems, that he never thought of much else. Most things that regular teenage boys did escaped him, barring his schoolwork, and he was always probably the least sexual of the vampire kids. Not to say that he didn’t like people that way, or that he didn’t have the thoughts on occasion, but he was always so tired when he got home, and it took a lot to get him to open up about things like that.
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Tags List - Personal
Not A Ghost Nor A Demon (Larry) This Is What I Do I Spit On You (Larry’s IC Posts) Stripes Are Always In (Larry’s Closet) A Vampire’s Lair (Larry’s Stuff) I’ve Got A Notion (Larry’s Desires) Fake Fangs And Clamato Juice (Larry’s Aesthetic) The Vampire Lestat (Lestat Tag) Like Fog Lights In The Rain (Larry’s Music) Things Are Different When You’re Dead (Larry Musings) Here It’s December Every Day (Larry Headcanons)
Tags List - With X - Canon
We Are But Shepherding Wolves (Larry And Allison Mertz)
The Different Need Us As Well (Larry And Amanda Harrison)
Please No Grieving (Larry And Annie Barlett)
Blondes Have More Fun (Larry And Bebe Stevens)
I Don’t Know Him (Larry And Billy Harris)
Sister In Darkness (Larry And Bloodrayne)
Where Oh Where Has He Gone? (Larry And Bradley Biggle)
It’s The First Day Of The Rest Of Your Life (Larry And Butters Stotch)
I Don’t Like Dirt (Larry And Christophe “The Mole” DeLorne)
He’s Cool Enough To Hang Out With Us (Larry And Clyde Donovan)
If He Had Wheels He’d Be A Wagon (Larry And Craig Tucker)
Party Till It’s 666 In The Morning (Larry And Damien Thorn)
Nothing Is Ever Perfect (Larry And David Harrison)
He Rode Cthulhu Like A Pony! (Larry And Eric Cartman)
A Sweet Kid (Larry And Filmore Anderson)
Sharp And Scathing With Shipping Included (Larry And Firkle Smith)
The More The Merrier (Larry And Flora)
Brothers In Vampirism (Larry And Gangsta Vamp)
It’s Not Right To Tell Someone They’re Wrong (Larry And Gary Harrison)
What’s Up Drunkie? (Larry And Gregory)
She Wears A Dress Like A Body Bag Every Day (Larry And Heidi Turner)
Fire Bad! (Larry And Henriette Biggle)
Under Our Wings You Could Flourish (Larry And Ike Broflovski)
Don’t Let The Losers Win (Larry And Jennifer Harrison)Could She Be One Of Us? (Larry And Jenny)
Humor Is The Lifeblood Of Society (Larry And Jimmy Valmer)
One Of Us (Larry And Karen McCormick)
Why Does He Hate Us So Much? (Larry And Kenny McCormick)
Help Yourself To Guns And Ammo (Larry And Kevin McCormick)
Millennials Against Canada (Larry And Kyle Broflovski)
Everyone Is Welcome (Larry And Leslie Meyers)
I Believe (Larry And Mark Harrison)
Anywhere But Scottsdale (Larry And Michael)
They Worry You With All The Talk Of How You’re Not Their Kind (Larry And Mike Makowski
A Little Extra Help (Larry And Mimsy)
Always Scheming (Larry And Nathan)
The Sun It Withers In Comparison (Larry And Nichole Daniels)
Ugh You Spit On Me Larry (Larry And Pete)
He’s Not Like The Others (Larry And Quaid)
Leader Of The Pack (Larry And Red Tucker)
We’re Cool Huh? (Larry And Ryan Ellis)
Not Everyone Is On Our Level (Larry And Sally Bands)
You Poor Guy (Larry And Scott Tenorman)
Dogs Are Life (Larry And Stan Marsh)
Fanastic Wounds (Larry And Timmy Burch)
Is He On The List? (Larry And Token Black)
Tally Marks (Larry And Trent Boyett)
Too Young To Drink Caffeine (Larry And Tweek Tweak)
Class President (Larry And Wendy Testaburger)
Tags List - With X - OC
For What It’s Worth (With Hershy) - @brokenxdelinquentsx
It Was An Honest Mistake (With Nikolai Robins) - @sub-nikolai
Tags List - With X - Crossover
Daddy Daddy Get Me Out Of Here I’m Underground (With Jareth)
A Little Crazy Is OK As Long As Nobody Says Any Dirty Words (With Jerome Valeska)
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Verses - In-World
Second Best Friend Ever (Larry’s Elementary Verse)
It didn’t take long for Larry to be swept up in Mike Makowski. Someone that was so confident and cool actually paying him attention was the biggest, nicest thing anyone had ever done for him. He would have followed Mike to the ends of the Earth and back, and usually helped retrieve him from Scottsdale, at least by tattling to his parents.
Growing Into Oneself (Larry’s Middle School Verse)
In middle school, being the vice president and treasurer of the Vampire Society became his life. He would make sure that everyone had their tickets for dances and things, that everyone was going to parties or zoo excursions. Mike’s birthdays became a big-ticket item and he did a lot of work with Mike’s stepdad to get the parties to be just right for his best friend.
Workaholic (Larry’s High School Verse)
In high school, Larry got a job as a clerk at the Photo Dojo. If he wasn’t doing that or school work, he was almost always with his friends doing something. If they weren’t together, he was planning things, or taking dictation from Mike. He spent as little time at home as he could leading up to his 18th birthday, and after it he tried to spend even less time there.
We Are The Fortunate All The Time (Larry’s College Verse)
The second Larry graduated high school, he was already out the door. The soonest he could get to his college life and away from his family, the better. Sure, he missed his friends, but they all talked on group chats and Discord, so things were still close. Living outside of Colorado was odd for him, however, hard to really put into place. Outside of his friend group, which apparently sheltered him a lot, he didn’t know how to function.
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AU Verses
I Can’t Wait To Show You My Love (Larry’s ABO AU)
Born a male Omega, Larry was always looked down upon by his mother, and his uncle saw him as a target. His grandparents took him in when he started to smell too much like his uncle, and have full custody of him. He lives with them in Middle Park, but still goes to school and hangs out with his friends in South Park.
His Only Fault Was His Trust (Demon!Larry AU)
Larry had never been much of a bad person. In fact, his only real flaw was that he trusted others so thoroughly that whatever they said or told him to do made him dangerous. A loyal friend, he became a majordomo to the royal family of hell when he died.
Creatures Of The Deep (Mer!Larry AU)
Larry is a Demasoni Cichlid, one of the least aggressive of his species. He tries to be a kind of vegetarian, but his species cannot survive without meat for long. He eats fish more than anything, though he goes into a frenzy on occasion. When he’s on land, he loses his ability to speak.
Apprenticed (Larry’s Repo! The Genetic Opera AU)
It started off innocently enough; Larry had been hoping to get some good, interesting work for his stories. Vampires were still a hit, even if it was more organ-themed now-a-days. But working as an apprentice to a Graverobber wasn’t always the easier thing to deal with, especially when squeamish.
Warn Your Warmth To Turn Away (Vampire!Larry AU)
It made sense, at some point, for Larry to obsess over vampires to the point of following ‘real’ ones. When he’d left South Park for college, he never once thought he’d find anyone that fit his aesthetic. Here he was, though, in a club called The Den, a bartender that didn’t realize just what he was getting himself into. Three days into his employment, he found out the dirty underbelly of the city operated there, and that most of them were not human. To keep him from running, he was slowly being poisoned, turned into a vampire that could still provide blood to others until the night of his full shift. Which just so happened to be his twenty-second birthday.
I Don’t Want To Be Team Jacob (Werewolf!Larry AU)
Larry had always loved dogs. He had enjoyed seeing wolves in the forest, thinking of them as vampiric familiars. The one time he stepped over his boundaries and pet an unfamiliar dog, though, turned out to be the worst night of his life. Trying to hide his new side from his friends and relatives was proving to be too hard, to boot.
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Shipping
None At This Time
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Open Starters
None At This Time
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Headcanon Posts
* ( positive personality   traits!
Physical Traits Of Your Muse
Detailed Profile Tag
Bold Your Muse’s Aesthetic (Spooky Edition)
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Faceclaim - Gerhard Freidl
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Art By Me
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Pets
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Lestat is Larry’s loyal White German Shepherd. The pair are mostly inseparable, and he will take Lestat with him to occasional Vampire Society meetings. Lestat protects Larry from his uncle, who is the only person that Lestat doesn’t like.
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yallreddieforthis · 7 years ago
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I Can’t Believe It’s Not Richie
Fandom: It (2017)
Pairing: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Rating: T (for language)
Words: 2.7k
Pre-relationship. Movie canon-compliant but not book. Also posted on AO3
The Greater Fool Series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 4.5 (NSFW) | Part 5
It seems impossible that a person can be both that shitty and the shit at the same time but like...it’s Richie. And since Richie doesn’t give a single fuck about following any kind of rules, Eddie guesses the ones that govern Eddie’s emotions don’t apply to him either. Greaaaat.
Sometimes Eddie can't believe it's Richie.
Maybe even most of the time, like when everything out of his mouth is your mom and my wang and it's just words, it's not even funny, and Eddie can only tune him out or try to talk over him. Richie cannot shut the fuck up for one goddamn second. And it's not even like Eddie can pin it to anything specific—like, oh, Richie talks more when he's angry or nervous or excited—because he does it when he's every one of those things and any other thing besides. The tone may change—the subject matter even—but the talking. Never. Stops.
Eddie doesn’t really consider himself a beacon of cultural knowledge, but he does own a TV. So he at least has a vague idea of what a British person might sound like, which is more than he can say for Richie. Richie also owns a TV, and yet his British Guy impression is so god-awful that Eddie has to assume he’s basing it on someone’s description of a fever dream they once had about a London street urchin from the eighteen hundreds. This only applies to the actual words though, not the pronunciation—which is pretty much indistinguishable from just Richie being Richie—and that’s across the board for all the voices, not just the British Guy. For someone who loves imitating other people as much as Richie does, it’s unbelievable how remarkably all his Guys sound like they’re from Derry, Maine. Because shouting out mangled phrases he half-remembers from the time he watched Mary Poppins six years ago—in the most American voice imaginable—is still somehow Richie’s interpretation of a British accent.
That isn’t even the worst part of The Voices though. The worst part is that Richie seems to have a sixth sense that alerts him to the exact moment at which it would most infuriate Eddie for him to do one, and invariably it’s as if a little light goes off in the least-developed part of his brain that says Time To Be Italian! (or Southern, or German—he has a constantly expanding, but not noticeably improving, repertoire) and it’s like he just has to do it right then. Sometimes it makes Eddie want to scream at him. Sometimes Eddie does scream at him. But screaming makes no difference; Eddie knows perfectly well that Richie will absolutely do it again the second the urge strikes him, no matter how inappropriate the timing or what Eddie does in reaction.
He's fucking gross too. Not necessarily grosser than the rest of them, but he certainly subscribes to the teenage boy brand of hygiene that dictates that he only really has to shower when Eddie finally shoves him away with a you smell like a sweaty nutsack. Of course then Richie inches closer and it's all how would you know, huh? and Eddie has to be like because I have nuts too, dipshit, and if you never wash them you'll—
And then all his warnings about bacteria and fungal infections are drowned out in the your mom and my wang and vague, half-heard rumors Richie repeats about people from school that Eddie knows aren't true, and he's pretty sure Richie doesn't even believe himself. Fuck him and his terrible, nasty-ass jokes.
Some days he thinks Richie purposely doesn't shower specifically so that he can torment Eddie with his unbearable boy stank. Or how he'll like, step in dog shit and just sort of shrug and wipe the sole of his shoe in the grass and then keep going with whatever he was doing like he's not literally tracking shit everywhere. If Eddie were to step in dog shit—which he wouldn't because he watches where he's going like a sane person—it would bring his entire day to a screeching halt. He gets that he's in the minority when it comes to these kinds of things, but he doesn't get why.
And then Richie has the audacity to suggest that Eddie's just as bad as the rest of them—when he says things like you’re convinced your shit doesn't stink, or it’s the smell of your own breath wafting back in your face—like he thinks Eddie is kind of gross too. Which shouldn't bother him, but it does. Somewhere very, very deep down in his gut he has a nagging suspicion as to why that might possibly be, but he's hell-bent on ignoring it at least until the inevitable destruction of the planet Earth, if not even longer. And that’s going like...pretty well for him. Reasonably well. Maybe a little less well than it used to be, but he's almost fourteen now and he thinks he should probably have a solid handle on the whole thing within the next couple of years.
But even if Richie wasn't either of those things—annoying, disgusting—there's nothing really exceptional that he is. It's not like he's a genius; the gigantic, goofy glasses make him look smarter than he actually is, and he gives as few shits about school as he does about anything else. Eddie is sure that Mrs. Tozier has never been to a parent-teacher conference where she didn’t hear the phrase if he only applied himself, and he’s equally sure that every one of the teachers who said it knew that they were wasting their breath. If Mrs. Tozier—or anyone else—stood even the slightest chance of motivating Richie to care about pre-algebra, there would have been upward mobility in his GPA long before now. Eddie has to assume he does at least some homework—if for no other reason than because he hasn’t been held back yet—but as far as he can tell, Richie bent over a textbook at home is a sight as yet unwitnessed by mankind.
Richie’s not athletic either—by any definition of the word—at least not until they decide to make Competitive Talking an Olympic sport. He’s really good on his bike, but that’s a skill he developed out of practicality because the alternative is being stuck walking all over Derry, and it’s not like being able to ride a bike is something to brag about because even Eddie can do that. But Richie’s not a fast runner. He can’t do a push-up unless it’s the kind that only count as push-ups when girls do them, knees on the ground. He can’t even throw a spitball into a trash can from three feet away (his performance in the Rock War against Bowers and his goons was a crazy, adrenaline-fueled exception)—and like, okay, the bad aim can probably be chalked up to his horrendous eyesight, but even beyond that there’s this general, overall lack of coordination. Eddie has what amounts to a universal pass that effectively excuses him from participating in PE for his entire school career, so he’s never been physically present for what goes down on the yard, but he can pretty much piece it together from the scrapes and bruises all over Richie’s arms and legs. It doesn’t matter what unit they’re on—dodgeball, baseball, soccer, tetherball—Richie plays only one position: target.
He doesn’t fare any better in the kind of extracurriculars that teachers and parents care about, like music. Richie is an aggressively bad singer—a fact Eddie is forcibly reminded of every time anyone has a birthday because Richie always makes a point of sandwiching Eddie between himself and someone who won’t run away (usually the birthday kid’s mom) while he belts out an eardrum-shattering rendition of Happy Birthday at the top of his lungs. Richie seems to interpret birthday party invitations as personal challenges for him to sing louder and worse, challenges he has so far risen to spectacularly on every occasion. The song gets longer each time too, because he never forgets to include Frankenstein on channel nine and the big fat lady on channel eighty and whatever new, ruder verses he’s scrounged up out of nowhere between the last birthday party and this one. Richie’s singing is actually one of the most obnoxious things about him, in Eddie’s opinion, which is really saying something.
He is so unrestrainedly, deliberately awful that Eddie could honestly imagine some idiot adult who doesn’t know Richie listening to him screech the chorus of Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go over and over in Eddie’s ear (the newest sabotage tactic he’s been deploying at the arcade to try to make Eddie lose at Street Fighter) and thinking wow, maybe that kid actually has a beautiful singing voice but doesn’t want anyone to know because he’s worried people will make fun of him. They would be wrong, of course, because even when he’s not actively trying to suck, Richie can’t sing for shit. Eddie doesn’t have to know anything about music to be able to tell that Richie’s real singing voice—the one he almost never uses—is flat and off-key. And forget about instruments because whenever someone makes the mistake of letting him get his hands on one, he immediately tries to shove it down his pants—or worse, Eddie’s pants—and pretend it’s a wang.
There’s art—and Eddie has noticed that being a really good artist can absolve someone of the sin of sucking at everything else. Bill, for example, is talented enough with watercolor pencils that if he drew people’s attention to his sketches, he could probably get away with not knowing how to write a half-decent thesis statement or multiply fractions (even though Bill does know how to do those things) because people would just affix the tortured artist label to him and stop giving him shit about the stutter. And Richie actually draws a lot—probably as much as Bill if it’s purely a question of quantity over quality—it’s just that the only things he seems to be interested in drawing are dicks, and the places he chooses to draw them are all technically the property of the Derry Public School District. Also, his fine motor skills are at least as bad as his gross ones, because his handwriting looks the way his singing voice sounds, and the dicks he draws make Eddie question if Richie has ever even looked in his own pants before.
And yet, despite all of the incontrovertible evidence that Richie is actually a walking disaster, there are other times that Eddie can't believe it’s not Richie to everyone else. Or even like anyone else.
It could be argued that it’s almost inevitable due to the sheer volume of jokes he tells, but every so often Richie will get one absolutely, unassailably right. His timing, his word choice—the heavens open, the planets align, and suddenly everybody around him is laughing so hard they can't breathe, Eddie included. His eyes usually end up watering when it happens, but he squints through them to look at Richie because in those moments, Richie glows like nothing else. He tries to act like it isn’t a big deal that everyone is pissing themselves from whateverthefuck he just blurted out of his incessantly flapping mouth hole, but Eddie can tell how thrilled he is when people actually find him funny. It's happening more and more often nowadays, enough so that Eddie sometimes wonders if maybe Richie is wasting his time at school after all. And who needs sports or music or art anyway?
And he could be a whole lot worse about Eddie’s germ thing if he wanted to be, like how some people give him hell about the pills and the inhaler and the hand washing. Richie doesn’t have detergent hands but he sure as shit will mouth off to anybody who gives Eddie a hard time about his. He can’t say Richie doesn’t at least try to look out for him, in his own weird way. Or Bill, or Stan, or Mike, or any of them. It causes more trouble than it’s worth more often than not, especially because Richie doesn’t have any discernable muscle with which to back up his shit-talking, so it probably would honestly be better if he would just like...not. But Eddie can’t really help appreciating it all the same.
But the hardest thing to ignore about Richie—and Eddie wouldn’t admit this to anyone, even under threat of death by clown—is that his memories of what Richie did for him over the summer have become a kind of personal, private shield against fear. They all try to avoid thinking about It as much as they reasonably can (which isn’t much; it’s not like you just go and forget about the time you and all your friends climbed down a haunted well so you could almost get eaten by a demon clown in the sewers), but Eddie’s positive he isn’t the only one who lies awake at night when the sound of his own pounding heartbeat is making him too nauseous to sleep.
The lights are off because it’s almost worse when they’re on. Maybe if he can’t see It coming, it’ll just eat him real fast and get it over with before he even knows what hit him. Still, he doesn’t want to die—instantly is preferable to slowly, but even better is not at all. So he’s developed a set of dozens of little rules for himself to follow—like no turning over, no breathing too deeply, no limbs outside the covers, no long, slow blinks (quick ones are okay; otherwise it’s eyes all the way closed or all the way open). Realistically he knows that not a single one of these rules means jack shit to anyone outside his own brain, but somehow no-ing himself into what amounts to a vegetative state eventually bores him to sleep. Okay, usually it does. More like occasionally. Actually it’s only worked like twice, but whatever. He’ll take what he can get at this point.
Sometimes Eddie thinks he has it worse than anyone else. Well, maybe not worse than Bill. But the rest of them—he isn’t sure if any of them can really understand exactly how fucking useless he felt down in that god-forsaken lair with his arm in a cast. Bill and Beverly were awesome, Mike was like a goddamn soldier, Stan was great after he’d finished crying and even Ben, who Eddie basically thinks of as the most inoffensive kid on the planet, was tough as balls. And Eddie felt like a worthless piece of shit. He hates his arm for being broken, and he hates his nightmares for always including the broken arm. It’s coming at him—just him—and his arm is hanging limply and there’s not a goddamn thing he can do—
And that’s where Richie comes in. Only when he thinks about Richie bitching Bill out for getting them all into this shit situation while inching toward the mountain of broken toys, Richie grabbing a baseball bat and saying now I’m going to have to kill this fucking clown...only then does the terror that surrounds him all through the night start to ease up.
And then he thinks a little further back about when he fell through the floor and broke his arm in the first place, about how all his friends were crowding him and freaking the fuck out, and Richie just looked at his arm and said he was going to set the break and snapped his bone back into place while Eddie shrieked at him to do not fucking touch me. Just like, grabbed his arm where it was dangling the wrong way and fucking did it.
Sometimes… Sometimes Eddie is positive that if It were to show up in his house on any given night, Richie would immediately come crashing through his bedroom window, swinging a baseball bat. Because somehow Richie would know if It returned, would know It was coming for Eddie, would show up in time. He’d show up and keep his shit together while Eddie couldn’t. He’d probably sometimes miss with the bat, but Eddie kind of suspects that it wouldn’t matter. Richie would stand between Eddie and It and just sort of suck all the scary out of the room with his endless, pointless trash-talking. And when Eddie thinks about it that way, it’s like you know what? Screw John McClane; Richie Tozier is Eddie’s hero.
And then Richie sticks his sweaty armpit in Eddie’s face and goddamn it Eddie can’t believe it’s Richie.
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pain-somnia · 7 years ago
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Here it comes! 💀👻💒✨🐣🚽.
thanks for the ask!
💀 Favorite character who died?although there are a lot of characters I liked that died I think the one that affected me the most was Shirley Fenette from Code Geass: Lelouch of Rebellion. I actually quit watching after her death but I should have continued considering her death made Lelouch batshit crazy instead of just crazy.
👻 Dead character you denied that died in canon and revive in fanfics reading or writing them?LMAO literally every Uchiha that died. Literally all but my canon compliant fics and a single one-shot have them alive and kicking.
💒 What was the first pairing you ever shipped?I’m not sure which couple was the first I actively shipped but it was probably InuKag because it was the first pairing I actually got into an argument about with someone because they shipped Inuyasha and Kikyo.
✨ Which was your first manga/anime?Sailor Moon. It was my mom’s favorite and she use to do my hair up just like Usagi’s and she and all of her friends would call me Sailor Moon.
🐣 Who’s your favorite character now?It’s always gonna be Sasuke Uchiha but my fave from Wotakoi that I’m currently watching is probably Kou Sakuragi even though I adore all of the characters. She’s so cute I can’t wait until she shows up in the anime~
🚽 Which manga/anime sucked so bad you never picked it up again?huh...I wouldn’t say it sucked but I dropped Let’s Lagoon. It just didn’t grab my attention. Also Prison School...not my thing lol
ask me some manga/anime asks please :)
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