#i can share knowledge such as a less terrifying way to open the cans of crescent rolls and cinnamon rolls

[70eeznutz]

every 2 weeks or so i scour the internet looking for art of six and seven (literally any art of them it doesn’t even have to be ship art as long as it’s them) and when i find some i haven’t seen before my pupils dilate and i swing the art around in my mouth like a dog toy for enrichment and it sustains me for the next 2 weeks

[zapreportsblog]

❝sully’s stick together❞

✭ pairing : Tuktirey sully x na’vi fem reader

✭ fandom : avatar the way of water

✭ summary : tuk has a nightmare and no one’s up, she’s ten now and she knows she’s suppose to be a big girl but even big girls need a shoulder to lean on

✭ authors note : this came to me at random

✭ avatar the way of water masterlist

Tuk Sully, now ten years old, lay in her bed, her small frame trembling with fear. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead as she struggled to escape the clutches of a haunting nightmare.

The echoes of distant screams and the menacing growls of creatures filled her mind, leaving her feeling helpless and alone. She glanced around her dimly lit room, searching for solace, but found only the shadows dancing on the walls.

The silence of the night was deafening, amplifying her fear and making her feel even smaller in the vastness of her surroundings. Tuk knew she was supposed to be a big girl now, capable of handling her own fears, but in that moment, she longed for the comfort of a familiar presence.

With a deep breath, Tuk summoned the courage to leave her bed, her tiny feet padding softly against the cool floor. She tiptoed through the hallway, her heart pounding in her chest, until she reached her older sister's room.

(Y/N), her trusted confidante and protector, was the one person she knew she could turn to in times of need. Tuk gently pushed open the door, revealing (Y/N) peacefully asleep in her bed.

The moonlight cast a soft glow upon her face, accentuating her serene expression. Tuk hesitated for a moment, unsure if she should disturb her sister's rest, but the weight of her fear and the need for comfort pushed her forward.

She approached (Y/N)'s bed, her small hand reaching out to gently shake her sister's shoulder. "Wake up, (Y/N)," Tuk whispered, her voice laced with vulnerability. "(Y/N), I had a nightmare, and I'm scared."

(Y/N) stirred, her eyes fluttering open, and she immediately noticed the distress etched on Tuk's face. With a tender smile, she sat up and pulled Tuk into a comforting embrace. "It's alright, little one," (Y/N) reassured, her voice filled with warmth.

“You don't have to be a big girl all the time. Sometimes, even big girls need someone to lean on." Tuk buried her face in (Y/N)'s shoulder, her tears dampening her sister's nightshirt.

She clung to (Y/N) tightly, finding solace in the familiar scent and the steady rhythm of her heartbeat. In that moment, the world outside their embrace faded away, and Tuk felt safe and protected.

(Y/N) gently stroked Tuk's hair, her voice soothing and gentle. "Tell me about your nightmare, Tuk," she encouraged. "Sometimes, sharing our fears can help make them feel less overwhelming."

Tuk sniffled, her voice quivering as she recounted the terrifying images that had plagued her sleep. With each word, the weight on her chest lessened, replaced by a sense of relief and understanding.

(Y/N) listened attentively, offering words of comfort and reassurance, reminding Tuk that she was not alone in her fears. As the night wore on, Tuk's tears subsided, replaced by a sense of calm and security.

(Y/N) held her sister close, their bond growing stronger with each passing moment. In that shared vulnerability, Tuk realized the power of sisterhood, the unwavering support and love that (Y/N) offered.

With a final kiss on Tuk's forehead, (Y/N) whispered, "You're never alone, Tuk. I'll always be here for you, no matter what." Tuk nodded, her heart filled with gratitude for her sister's presence and the comfort she had provided.

As they settled back into bed, Tuk felt a sense of peace wash over her. The nightmare still lingered in the recesses of her mind, but the knowledge that she had (Y/N) by her side gave her the strength to face whatever challenges lay ahead.

And so, as the night gave way to the dawn, Tuk drifted off to sleep once more, her dreams now filled with the warmth of sisterly love and the promise of a new day.

The morning sun cast a golden glow upon the lush landscape of Pandora, signaling the start of a new day. Tuk Sully awoke with a sense of tranquility, her nightmare now a distant memory.

As she stretched in her bed, she couldn't help but feel grateful for the comfort her older sister, (Y/N), had provided the previous night.

With a renewed sense of confidence, Tuk hopped out of bed and made her way to the kitchen, where her family gathered for breakfast.

Her parents, Jake and Neytiri, greeted her with warm smiles, unaware of the turmoil she had experienced just hours before. Tuk took her seat at the table, her eyes searching for (Y/N). As if sensing her presence, (Y/N) entered the room, her steps light and graceful. Tuk's face lit up with a smile, and she rushed to embrace her sister.

“Thank you for being there for me last night," Tuk whispered, her voice filled with gratitude.

(Y/N) returned the embrace, her eyes filled with love and understanding. "You don't have to thank me, Tuk," she replied softly. "Being there for you is what sisters do. We support and comfort each other, no matter what."

The family shared a warm breakfast together, their laughter and conversation filling the air. Tuk felt a newfound sense of closeness with (Y/N), a bond that had been strengthened by the vulnerability they had shared.

She realized that their sisterly connection was a source of strength and support, a lifeline in times of fear and uncertainty.

[traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors]

Hi, if you have any idea how to help, that's great, but if I can just talk about it, that's sufficient.

I don't hear my (what I believe are) headmates anymore since my therapy started getting serious. It is trauma therapy, but I am yet unsure if I should tell my therapist about them because she already said that she is not trained to help patients with DID.

It might sound weird but I didn't have a bad relationship with my headmates. Many people see DID as such a negative thing, but it never was for me. But I heard them not being happy (that's a nice way to phrase it) about therapy and about me talking. Tbh, it was really hard opening up to my therapist, while my head literally screamed at me to shut up and that I was in danger.

But yeah, for about 2 months or so, I didn't hear a word, and I don't feel anybody. There have always been phases with more or less contact, but 2 months is really long. Idk what to do. Should I like try to get in contact with my headmates again? Accept that that's just how it is for now? Should I even tell my therapist if I can't even swear right now that I even have headmates? I am afraid she will send me to another therapist, because the waiting lists are years long and I have a heard time trusting someone and she just sent me the right vibes but idk if another therapist would too.

Idk what to do and I feel like I failed my headmates, if that makes sense. I tried to reason and to reassure them, after each therapy session, but idk it feels as if they are so angry at me, that they just went away..

What do you think is the right thing to do?

Hey anon,

Thanks for reaching out.

It is more or less normal for dissociative barriers to increase when trauma therapy begins, especially if you have been feeling stressed, anxious, confused, angry, etc. about doing it (on a collective level).

I would suggest you stop ignoring them when they feel angry or upset or scared about sharing it. There is a reason they feel that way, and the less you seem to care about them trying to help you, the harder those barriers will become to work through.

I suggest trying to restore communication. Leave little notes, buy a journal, talk there about how you are feeling, and invite them to be open and honest with you. Don't push them away. Be someone they can trust, someone they can talk to. By your language, I assume you are the longer-term childhood host, in which case, you as an alter are who they tried to let handle daily life, who they held the trauma and the pain for so that you could function with the body, so that you could keep living. They must be terrified in having you know the trauma, and share it, and really dive into it, and are likely even more so scared because now the barriers are so high they cannot help you very well.

In regards to your therapist knowing, that is for you to decide. Trauma therapy can be incredibly beneficial, with or without knowledge of the system, but only if you are willing to put in effort to be more communicative with your system outside of therapy. Therapy, especially trauma therapy, needs to be a collective healing experience for it to work significantly well. It can absolutely be beneficial for you if done alone, but the rest of your system holds a lot of that pain, and without their involvement, they will not heal alongside you. If you are that afraid of losing therapy, I understand, but also know that having a therapist who is aware can go so far, even if they don't have any experience with DID patients. It is a road that you can walk together.

Have a good day, and I wish you the best of luck.

~Mod Night

[lets-talk-spirituality]

https://at.tumblr.com/lets-talk-spirituality/703755184537567232/rfw9at8itdad /// I agree with everything, you're right and it's okay for you to act this way!

curiously I see a lot of myself on you, i'm a teenager, i grew up in an abusive household, and I have a poor communication with my parents (they’re divorced) it's a loooong story but summing up i developed many issues and attracted toxic friendships, i'm trying my best to heal and i know how you feel when people twist your words and put pressure on you, i know because I go through this since childhood (reason why i have only two friends lol. I don't consider friend friendship without depth. To protect my energy and mental health). I'm too caring toward others and I dont want to disappoint anyone. My life is boring but at least my heart is in peace. I have emotional blockage and use this as a way to avoid becoming codependent with an abusive person, i fear i would love unconditionally anyone who gives me the love i didnt received and wished so badly my entire life. I don't like having to be strong all the time, sometimes I feel exhausted i wish i could rely on someone.

Is easy to gaslight and manipulate me (i'm not even tell a story that happened to me with a narcisist during 2021😂 now i'm laughing but at that time i wanted to yell) after i realized this, i started to develop some defense and i never open up about me to others and only share what i don't mind people knowing. I don't trust my own self and need validation but finally i'm working on it and developing confidence. Consequently these wounds - plus many issues and anxiety - made me highly empathetic and intuitive (unfortunately not on a psychic level), I would never do to other people what was done to me. We don't have to become the monster that destroyed us.

I appreciate that you haven't given up on this blog even with all the trigger and annoying people, I wouldn't handle it, honestly, i'm glad you share knowledge and don't let negativity get in your way, the process of healing from trauma is very complicated. Wishing you the best! 🌱💕

sorry for bad english

Omg. Hi! Welcome to the tribe. So glad you found the blog and me because yes. We have very similar experiences and probably relate and can understand each other very deeply. If anything I hope it makes you feel less alone and gives you hope that things can always grow and strengthen. Reading your ask made me tear up a bit, because thank you for validating me and my experience and my reactions and for truly understanding what I said. I also feel like maybe we are connecting for the reason of feeling community and that’s so nice. Thank you for sharing so much of yourself with me.

I’m adding you to the psychic bestie circle, because I was literally on the phone with my mom (also a long story, because who likes ‘em short?) about how I view loyalty and how seriously I take that and why it makes it hard for me to make friends and feel like I belong. I think trauma does this thing where you can’t take relationships lightly because so many of core your relationships are fractured and it doesn’t feel safe to have friends or other people around you can’t fully trust. It can be hard to engage with people who are more light and casual at times because it’s like they don’t really understand what it’s like. I struggle to connect a lot because I feel people don’t understand the depth of what experiences like this mean and how they shape us.

And you nailed it. I did that with my exes. I’m a lot more healed now because I rarely feel things (blessing and a curse, amiright?) for people, but part of me is so terrified to meet a healthy partner because I know so much of this will come up. Being love starved makes you primed for codependency. There’s this thing I wrote once:

“You’re going to hurt me.”

“No. I’m going to love you, and sometimes they feel the same.”

If you’ve only ever known love that hurts, healthy love hurts too, because it almost exacerbates how badly you were treated by offering a comparison. I can’t find a way to expand this feeling through words, so I hope you get what I’m saying.

And yes again! I literally wrote after talking to my mom not an hour ago “why do I always have to be the adult” I’m always the glue holding shit together, the one no one ever worries about because I always handle it. My sister is dealing finally with her trauma from all this and my mom is all I wanna be there for her and wanted to talk to me about what happened growing up honestly. And it’s like why couldn’t you offer me that when I was suicidal for the past two years (2020/2021) but you can give that to my sister (who deserves that obvi, but like I do too).

That’s the shit that kills me sometimes and I know it’s playing victim but sometimes it’s really like just because I’m smart and strong and wise and capable of holding it all together, doesn’t mean you can just neglect me. Doesn’t mean I should have to hold it all together all the time. That’s kinda what I mean about people negating my hard work. Like people I’ve encountered, generally speaking, seem to not understand my struggle because in a way I make it look bearable or something. I’m only like that because I had to bear it. There was no option. Whether I make it look easy or not, doesn’t mean it is. I could only ever rely on myself— ultimately things I’m grateful for, I’m sure you get this push and pull too between appreciating what you went through and how it grew you and also resenting it deeply because you’d rather be well adjusted.

Idk why today all my trauma is stirring around. Maybe because of therapy yesterday but it’s like all day I’ve had this energy going around. Anyway, sweet nonnie. I can tell you have an amazing and loving soul and I feel so much power from you, it’s quiet but formidable. If you ever want to chat in the DMs. I’m here for you! And your English was fucking perfect and I’m impressed AF because I can only speak English and un poquito de Espanol. Sending so much love and healing and just general joy to you! 💫⭐️☀️ Never let the dirt dim your shine. You’re golden baby and you only grow more rare with time. Mwah 💋

[residentevil4remakeforpc]

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[krahka]

2, 3, 35, 44! 😁

Was there something about the character creator that just couldn't capture your Character? Please tell us about their hair, facial hair, tattoos, piercings, disabilities, their trans or intersex body, or anything else you're comfortable sharing.

I mean obviously the githzerai thing, but that still has them looking exactly the same, except with a different set of powers and abilities. (And frankly less useful ones, Astral Knowledge is stupid handy.)

Also, 5e just straight up doesn’t have psionic classes, because otherwise Gnathe would be a Sorcerer/Psion. Still primarily a Sorcerer because they do have some inherent talent as a result of unprotected exposure to raw chaos, but they’ve also definitely honed their psionic powers to be way more involved than just being able to cast Jump or Shield once per day.

As for cosmetic stuff, eh, they’re mostly fine. I prefer the early gith designs, where they have the fucked up skull faces over the Jim Carrey’s Grinch face, but that ship sailed long ago.

Also bonus Zirseth: He needs his extensive burn scars. He's naked without them, even if the tattoos he's got on his face that say "forehead" and "nose" distract from it. It’d also be nice if he could be full drow with his mustache, but I’m fine with him being half-drow. Doesn’t make a ton of difference anyway. His parentage is irrelevant. All that matters is the blood, the voice, the dream, and the cleansing flame.

Has your Character been using their illithid powers?

Exactly once: to open Shadowheart’s pod on the nautiloid, and that’s because they didn’t know what they were doing. It just happened, felt extremely wrong, like they weren’t even themself, and then they refused to use it ever again. The fact that this modified ceromorphosis seems to be going mind first, instead of body first is terrifying to them. They’d rather it takes them all out at once, rather than make them a party to their own self-subjugation.

Has your Character done anything that they regret in Act 1? (35)

Giving their left eye to Auntie Ethel in exchange for pretty much nothing. They were really eager to get the tadpole out of there, and it wasn’t so much that she was cheating them as that she literally couldn’t get it out. If she had been able to do it, the price would’ve absolutely been worth it, but since she wasn’t, yeah, the replacement she offered works worse than just not having an eye. It’s probably not cursed, right? Right?

How did the situation with the Grove, the Tieflings and the Goblins turn out for your Character?

Kagha got talked out of turning the Grove over to the Shadow Druids and the ritual was halted.

The goblins never got a chance to attack anywhere due to all their leaders dying from extremely targeted powder keg assassinations from an unknown source, and that left them too busy cleaning up the smoking craters in their camp to go on any raids.

The tieflings all cheered for this drow woman? Right, there was apparently a drow woman there, who knows what happened to her, definitely not a gith in a magical disguise. Anyway, her companions are still here, as is someone wearing her clothes, who has all their unpredictable magic powers, and they're all still heroes and can be celebrated before heading out on the now safe roads to Baldur’s Gate.

[batteredwarriorstillstanding]

I am an intuitive type...it's the way I am. By and large, I'm pleased about this. I can often make enormous decisions without putting forth anylarge amount of reflection and study...and be absolutely confident that I made the correct one, games like Chess...where it is nowhere near possible to consciously consider all of your playable, or even superficially reasonable moves are the domain of those wired in this fashion. I have innate knowledge concerning many problems that haven't yet arisen and how to deal with them....it's not especially rare to be classified as having an intuitive personality trait....roughly 30 percent of the population. There are some so strong in this action that they are designated Intuitors by the same folks who certify psychics, I think. I don't know if it is THAT strong, but is certainly reliable enough for me to often sit through long periods of impatient partners and friends, and ridicule from less friendly types, awaiting an event that I "knew" woukd transpire, but, weeks later, still hasn't. What gives me the stones to confidently tell all sudden naysayers to fuck themselves is not a confident nature or an enormous intellect...it's merely my having experienced similar feelings of similar strength in the past and knowing that the events associated with them will break in a certain direction every time.

But, first if all, I only was ever "told" or clued into the reality that she is dear to me, and I needed to do anything I could in order to facilitate her ultimate transformation....anyone here into butterflys? Profound metamorphosis affecting the homely little caterpillar on such a profound level that it emerges a beautiful (although kinda useless....just kidding.lol) butterfly 3 weeks hence...at least we hope for a butterfly....a moth is unbecoming of her. I was also given all of these suggestions early on to advance our acquaintancship....not as confident in this intuitive angle as later in life, and also fucking TERRIFIED of being simultaneously embarassed and verbally desecrated that I kept attempting to accomplish shit at a distance. It did not work. I think you are actually open to the possibility of us sharing an unexplained (thusfar) joint venture to tackle....but now it is her who insists on trying from a distance....which is disappointing, because Passive Aggressive people (not submissive. I didn't say that) are the worst. They suck. They are dishonest and can't be trusted...I was not really overcome by this a decade ago...I was just frightened. If you are at all unsure, talk to ne. In person. You will be glad you did...whatever r happens. Then I can stop doubting what is so obvious.

The "feeling" I received after meeting the woman I remained infatuated with gor eons afterward was unique in its type, but STRONGER (and more persistent, as it turns out) than any other. One of the potentially troubling aspects of this ending in a manner undesirable to me (and there are several) is that it serves as a huge loss for an inner belief system that has been with me for as long a I can remember. In addition, there were 2 periods of my life more difficult than this one (maybe only I ne, actually) it's probably not going feature many huge changes in my approach to things. Logically, it seems like a wrap...and not even I can ignore this forever.

[witchie-writings]

Oof! Didn't knew it was so much detailed, so sorry, so to cut it out more I would request an ask where the mc is godzilla's child but also Ghidorah mate? Or if not the mc is a human but surprisingly also Ghidorah soulmate so he (somehow but I don't know how) turns into a human to meet them (as mc is in high school?) choose any you want or maybe do both! Hope you can approve!

you're all cool my dude! i can definitely do where MC is godzilla's child and also ghidorah's mate, i think these hcs were pretty fun to come up with :)

King Ghidorah HCs (whose Godzilla's Daughter):

I imagine you would have to keep the knowledge of being Godzilla's child away from Ghidorah, because it's a big no-no if they find out about it.

I mean, Ichi would pick it up rather quickly. Ni and San on the other hand? San wouldn't mind in the slightest, while Ni is too busy focused on being a pain in the ass for Godzilla to really care. But if he reaaaaaally put his mind to it, he can put the whole picture together.

Before the discovery, Ichi would admire you for your bravery. It's clear you were his chosen soulmate for a reason: you were strong, confident, resilient, and so much more.

San? He just loved your personality, really. You bring light to his day even when his wings shroud the sky in a hurricane.

Ni though? It reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally took a long time to open up to you, way longer than Ichi, actually. Ni just doesn't fall for anyone; yeah, you're strong, but if you don't join in on his chaotic tendencies and schemes, he's not going to take to you as quickly. Somehow though, you balance Ni, San, and Ichi's interest, which baffles Ichi and Ni respectfully.

They all loved you, no doubts, but when they all figure out who you're the daughter too? Yeah, definitely expect some conflicting views.

Ni feels ultimately betrayed. Someone who finally shared his ideas, someone he opened his heart to, turned out to be the daughter of someone he swore an enemy? He'll want to end the relationship immediately, the trust is inevitably damaged.

Ichi was hurt as well, but less so than Ni was. Yes, he's upset that you didn't reveal who you truly were (I mean, you had good reason to, or else you would've never landed the relationship with Ghidorah in the first place), but over time, the bond can slowly repair itself.

San? Well, he's San. He doesn't mind at all, in fact, he really wants to be on better terms with Godzilla! He loves leaving a good impression on other kaiju, it's just he's usually stopped by his two brothers. So, most the time? He's damage control.

If Godzilla finds out you're with Ghidorah, oh boy, he'll be one angry king. Even if you're of age, he'll still be angry and overly protective of you; Ghidorah is his sworn enemy, and who knows what they've done to you to brainwash you and all that.

You'll have to explain to both parties that you didn't want you lineage to define who you were. Their rivalries were between them and them alone, you didn't want it to pass down to you.

Ichi and Godzilla will take a looooong while of pondering and thinking to consider about it. Ni's still emotionally hurt, so he'll be purposefully ignoring you a good chunk of the time.

You don't have to worry about San though, he'll be comforting you and be your own emotional support.

Over time I do believe Ichi and Godzilla will put aside their differences and put you first as your own person rather than someone to continue on their personal conflict. It's still begrudingly, but it's progress.

Ni will eventually speak a few words to you though... just don't expect a whole worded conversation.

You'll have to make up to Ni over thousands of years.

Other than all of that drama? Ichi will return being the silent, gift giving head. He prefers gift giving seeing as he doesn't enjoy too much physical contact, since he sees it as a sign of weakness.

Surprisingly, he loves to read! Is veeery interested in reading the book called the "Bible"; he's heard about it from a few terrified humans and how they refer to him and his brothers as a character from the Bible, the Devil.

Ni is all about the pranks and destruction, so if you aid in his schemes? You'll slowly build up that trust with him again, but you got to be careful, since it'll impact you relationship with Ichi and San.

San is just happy to do anything with you! Tea parties, playing with the humans, interacting with the said humans, etc. Anything to please his curiosity.

[storyofasub]

I was disappointed to hear that her-master does not respect safewords. it completely changed my opinion of him as a long time follower. Very sad to learn this. I hope you are ok.

Am I ok.

I know that wasn't actually meant in the way I took it, but honestly, I dunno if I am ok.

This post is going to be huge, sorry. Idc tbh, this topic needs to be (that's part of the problem).

I've avoided this entire discussion because, after I saw how people handled the last one (derision, name-calling, white privilege, either a lack of desire and/or time and/or ability of comprehension), I had predicted another blowup involving the same circles. I had gently suggested to HM that perhaps this topic is not one to open in this environment (please forgive me, HM).

One reason is this. Over the last few years, social media, in general, has descended into an extremely low-res hunting ground where almost all topics are black and white. Tumblr seems to be an even more exaggerated example of that for some reason, I speculate this has something to do with the explicit content ban that drove away a lot of moderate people, but who knows. As such, I knew this topic would not be met with the time and emotional bandwidth required to sit back and consider alternative nuances on an *extremely* delicate subject.

Here's another reason, and the main reason that maybe I'm not ok.

(As an aside, I'm a painfully private person and I find it quite difficult to open up and be vulnerable with people generally, let alone strangers on the internet, I don't share a huge amount of my personal life online, so bear with me as I struggle through this.)

I have never, in my life, had a deeper, more complete, more fulfilling, healthier, truly beautiful experience of Dominance and submission, and of personal growth, than I have with her-master. I have had many conversations where he has agonised and wrestled with whether what he might do was safe and beneficial for his girl, even when she had begged for it. And the pain I'm experiencing now is because I'm being reminded of something I have understood for a long time, and been afraid of. That his level of empathy, his level of knowledge, his understanding of psychology, and his dedication to the personal health and his love for his owned submissive.... might be something I never find to that degree in anyone else. And thinking about that fills me with so much fear and dread that I almost never vocalise it, even to him.

This is highly relevant to this conversation. Why? Because I think a 'no safeword' dynamic can ONLY EVER, ever, ever, be even remotely possible in... probably much less than one in a million relationships. Can you even imagine the amount of personal responsibility that heaps on someone? I think to basically any good Dominant person, the mere thought of that should absolutely terrify you. If it ever comes up in a casual or flippant way, it's almost definitely a horrible red flag, one that should make you question the health of your relationship.

I believe that 99.5% of the time, safewords are absolutely necessary. I believe that if ANYONE who claims to be Dominant is the one to propose not having a safeword to you, they are very very likely to either be dangerous or stupid, or worse - both.

But here's how I know that the 0.5% exist... because I'm one of the people who knows, deep in my heart, that THAT is the place where I belong. But in my life, I've probably only known 1 or 2 other women living in that space. Women who dedicated their lives to their partner in a way most of us can barely understand. And so, personally, I just don't think this conversation is relevant or healthy for most people. But... it gets a little lonely, so I understand the desire to express what's in your heart, throw out a net and see if anyone else out there understands you.

Final thought. If by some miracles and prayers, as a Dominant who might secretly desire this, you do find yourself in that unicorn of a relationship, humble yourself and before saying yes spend some time figuring out if you have reached a place in your life where you are able to accept this responsibility. And always remember this quote that should haunt you:

To that which you tame, you owe your life.

[saintshigaraki]

ONE DAY WE’LL REVEAL THE TRUTH (THAT ONE WILL DIE BEFORE HE GETS THERE)

title: youth by daughter

pairing: dabi x f!reader 

words: 1.7k

excerpt: But what is rage, you’d ask him, if not one of the many faces of grief? 

a/n: dabi my beloved (derogatory). this fic is my love letter to parentheses.

tags: angst, toxic relationships, explicit s*xual content, light choking, dabi is a bastard but he is a needy bastard 

in case you’d rather read it on ao3!

MDNI

He’s just outside the door. He hasn’t made a sound, but you know he’s there. You can feel it; in your blood, in your bones, in your marrow. 

(You’ve always been able to feel him, monstrous and cruel beneath your skin. An itch. An awful taunting itch. You’ve wanted him out since he first stuck his claws in you and buried himself deep, but he’s near impossible to shake. He won’t leave until he’s hollowed you out, until your flesh is no longer your own, until all that’s left of you is him. Until all that’s there, is what he believes there should be. 

He’s a self-important bastard like that.)

When he finally decides to open the door, he does so with a slam. It would’ve made you jump if you hadn’t been so focused on the skyline. Tracing the buildings, looking for stars you know you won’t be able to see. They get swallowed up, this deep in the city. Drowned out by light. 

(When you were a child, you didn’t quite understand how stars could vanish in the night. Weren’t they the brightest things in the universe? Burning and brilliant, even light years away? 

You understand it better now. How mankind has this nasty habit of ruining, of polluting, of blotting out things of wonder and then desperately trying to remake it in our own image.

It’s never as beautiful as what was, but it’s far too late for us to admit defeat now.)

He’s mad, burning up with fury. You can feel the heat of it, cutting straight through the heavy chill of the night air. It’s stifling, your balcony so small that he’s practically breathing down your neck with how close he is. Accompanying his presence, always, is the faint smell of burnt flesh he can never quite mask, no matter the amount of cheap aftershave he tries to drown himself in. 

He’d texted you, and you’d ignored him. For a week, you’ve ignored him and if there’s one thing Dabi hates, it’s when he gets ignored. 

He’s the one that ignores you, it should never be the other way around. 

You know that, of course. You know all his little unwritten rules. 

(Don’t ignore him is at the top of the list. Except, of course, during those nights when he thinks you’re asleep and he clings to you like a child, his tears burning where they touch your skin. Even his grief, you can’t help but think, is scorching.

On those nights, you’ve found it’s best to stay quiet. He wields his grief like rage and you’d rather not be caught in the crossfire.)

He’s waiting for you to talk, to stumble over your words, make some sort of vague attempt at an apology. It’s what you would usually do after you’ve broken one of his rules. 

But you say nothing, content to sit in the too-heavy silence. You’re tired. Of him. Of whatever it is you two have been doing. It’s the same stupid story, the same vicious cycle. A snake cursed to eat its own tail. 

He’s using you. He has been for a long while now. If you’re being perfectly honest with yourself, he most likely has been since the beginning. And God, it’s exhausting work, being used. 

Although, really, you’re not all that much better than he is. In the beginning, you were with him purely because he fascinated you. All his grief laid bare, and so vulnerable. So obvious and painful. Undeniable in its brutality. 

(Rage, he’d say, it’s righteous rage, not grief.

But what is rage, you’d ask him, if not one of the many faces of grief?) 

It didn’t take long for you to realize he’s chasing something. And it took you even less time to realize that whatever he’s after, is probably going to kill him one day. 

(You wonder if he knows he’s chasing his own death. You wonder if he’d care at all. 

He reminds you of Eve, eating the forbidden fruit. You think she’d take a bite of the apple, again and again and again if ever given the choice, even knowing the consequences. Even with intimate knowledge of the suffering to come. How could she not? How could any of us hold our fate in the palm of our hands and choose not to sink our teeth into it?)

He’s growing impatient beside you, burning up with it. If he touched you, you’re sure he’d melt your flesh straight to the hollow bone. 

But you don’t break. Just once, you want him to fall apart first. Just once, you want him desperate. 

(He’s always been so good at making you desperate, with a hand around your neck, just tight enough to leave you gasping for air, your back to his chest and his staples drawing blood, as he pounds into you so hard all you could do is dig your nails into his arm. 

His lips are right by your ear, you’re mine, he says. You’re mine. You’re mine. You’re mine. 

And God, with his cock hitting all the right spots in your cunt you’d believe it. You’d believe anything he’d said to you as long he just kept going. 

Say it, he hisses, say you’re mine. 

You don’t answer him right away, mostly because you can’t, not with the way he’s fucking you. You can’t catch your breath enough to form a sound, you can’t get your bearings enough to collect a single thought that isn’t Dabi Dabi Dabi. 

Annoyed at your lack of answer, he brings a searing thumb down to your overstimulated clit. You keen, arching, desperately trying to get away from the sensation that at this point is more pain than pleasure. 

Say it, he says again, there’s a strange sort of edge to it. Looking back you think it might’ve been desperation. Say it. 

When he presses down just a little harder, you finally crack. 

Yours, you gasp. I’m yours. Yours. Yours. Yours. 

He laughs, so deep in his chest that you feel it in your own. 

It echoes in your head for weeks afterward.)

“What,” he grounds out, low and furious, “the fuck.” 

It’s not a question. 

You turn towards him, at last. Though you can hardly see him, surrounded by shadows. There are glints of his piercings in the polluted light, a gleaming flash as he runs his tongue along with his teeth. But it’s his eyes that you lock on. Bright and a brilliant blue. Glowing and monstrous in the dark. 

(You’re reminded, once again, of the stars. Burning and burning and burning.)

With no preamble, you say, “I think I love you.” 

The air around you quiets. Like the city itself is holding it’s breath. 

It’s not a sweet confession under the moonlight. In the week since you came to the realization, it’s already started to fester, to rot straight through your bones. 

It’s a curse more than anything. You love a man whose chasing his own death. You love a ghost. Or, you suppose, a ghost in the making. 

Before you can say anything else (though really, what else is there to say) he cuts in sharply, meanly, “No, you don’t.” 

You can’t help but tilt your head at that. You don’t really know what to say. You don’t know if you’re supposed to say anything. His lips are pulled back, teeth bared, he’s gleaming and sharp, pulled so taught with tension you wonder how he’s even breathing. He reminds you, vividly, of a cornered animal. A scared one. Though he’s trying to mask it with annoyance, with a type of anger that toes the line of fury. 

He’s always doing that. Masking his fear with rage. Masking his grief with rage. Hiding any part of himself that might be perceived as weak, as soft, as vulnerable, under the guise of rage. 

You can’t imagine that it’s anything less than exhausting. 

Though you have to admit, you didn’t expect this response. You didn’t expect fear. You thought he’d be unbearably smug about it. Proud of himself for finally sinking his teeth into your heart. Ready to chew you up and spit you back out. You were ready for him to move on. 

You didn’t expect him to deny it. 

(He could be right, though you doubt he is.

You wonder what it means to love, you wonder how you’re supposed to love. You wonder if you can only love someone if you’ve seen the cruelest parts of them first. 

You suppose if that’s the case, then he might be right. 

You’ve never actually been able to force yourself to look up what exactly he’s wanted for. What exactly it is he’s done. 

Mostly because you’re afraid that even if you knew every last gory detail, it wouldn’t be enough to make you walk away. And how would you be able to look at yourself in the mirror, after that? Knowing exactly who you let share your bed? who cried scorching hot tears into your shoulder? 

Ignorance is bliss, they say. In your case, it could very well be your only hope for salvation.

But, you don’t really think there’s a set way a person is supposed to love. It’s what makes it so terrifying. It’s an unknown. And it’s so hard to not fear the unknown.)

“Dabi-” you start. 

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he spits out. Eyes flashing, his hands stuffed in his pockets. 

You want to laugh at the absurdity of it all, of him trying to tell you what you do and do not feel, but you think he’d turn you to ashes for the slight. His pride has always been so easily shaken.  

“Dabi-” you try again. 

But he’s two steps ahead of you. He always is. 

He’s already turned around, hiding his face from view, opening the door. And you don’t stop him. You don’t see why you should. 

You can’t shake him from the path he’s on. You don’t think anyone can, really. 

Grief is all he has, it’s all he’s let himself have. It’s fundamental to him now. It’s all he is. And you’re sure he believes whatever he’s chasing is going to fill the hollow void it’s made of him. 

It won’t. You’re sure of that, at least, because even if he does succeed, what will he be left with then? 

You don’t say any of that to him, because you’re not his fucking therapist. And because you’re not so sure he wouldn’t kill you for it. 

It’s anticlimactic, watching him disappear into your darkened apartment. 

But all you can think about when you hear the click of the front door closing behind him is how honest his fear was, almost childlike. Remnants of a poor, grief-stricken boy. 

What a monster it’s made of him. 

a/n part two:

thinking about adrianne kalfopoulou’s ‘grief will keep you reaching back / for what is not there.’ 

i could not tell you why this took me over two weeks to write. i had a lot of fun with it though. dabi my beloved. go to therapy please. also i know dabi can’t cry but....let me have this.

[xaharadesert]

Shifter MC - Headcanon Pt 5

Asra Alnazar x MC

A/N: part 5/6 for @tasteofgummies! Asra is my all time fav, but he’s also the one I mischaracterize the most :) I’m blinded by my adoration of him, so let me know if there’s anything that needs changing (don’t worry, I won’t be offended)! Also, please let me know if there are any spelling or grammar mistakes! Requests are open :)

Also, I don’t know if I ever made this clear, but when MC has to go back to their original reality, they take a “journey” alone away from their LI.

Spoilers!!! I can’t really get more specific than that, but it’s some pretty big stuff!!! So! Spoilers!

TW: angst, crying, guilt

💙Asra💙

So obviously Asra is the quickest to catch on that there’s something you don’t want him knowing

You can’t simply share a heart and keep major secrets from one another (well, he can, but he has a better comprehension of the specifics of your connection)

He tries not to pry, as he knows that you feel anxious when he asks about where you disappear to on your journeys

A part of him feels like he doesn’t deserve to know, after he did the same to you for so long

He feels upset when you leave without explanation, but mostly upset at himself, as he feels that any lack of trust you might have could be his own fault

He lied to you for so long, how could it not be?

Possibly the most terrifying part of you taking these journeys alone is the fact that at some point he seems to lose his connection to you

The first time it happened, he had what felt like an unending panic attack until you returned

When you spend so much time being aware of your other half, and being careful to ensure that it’s happy and safe, suddenly feeling as though it’s no longer there at all is absolutely horrifying

He had no way of knowing what happened to you, whether there was a flaw in the magic, or if you had died

From then on, while he would never stop you from going on a journey alone (as much as he would like to), he asks for a thousand reassurances before you go

It never really stops being scary, but he struggles with his own complicated feelings on the matter

Could he really ask you to stop, when he had so often left you at the shop with no way of knowing whether he himself was safe, or even alive?

His guilt would keep him complacent

But eventually, it would become too much

After a journey of yours took longer than usual (and longer than promised; you were usually punctual in your return), his panic had risen to the point that he could no longer contain his emotions

It was less an argument, and more Asra pouring his heart out all at once, tears streaming down his face as he begged you not to leave again

You’d have to be heartless to deny him the truth, but fortunately you had his own heart in your chest, so there would be no way to lie

You could try to comfort him in other ways, but with the knowledge that your trips were mandatory, he wouldn’t truly feel okay with it

So, really, your only option was to tell him everything

As he listened, he became less and less upset

Magic was something he could understand, and what you told him made perfect sense

It was reassuring to know that you took these trips and temporarily severed your connection because you had to, not because you wanted to leave him you were in some sort of danger

By the end, he would almost be laughing

It seemed funny to him that you felt the need to keep this from him; he was someone who regularly traveled through his dreams to different dimensions, why wouldn’t you tell him you had done the same?

He couldn’t describe the joy he felt knowing that you were as dedicated to him as he was to you— you had traveled across realities to be with him, and he knew that if he could, he would do the same

Although he’s upset to know that he can’t join you in your reality, he hopes you know that it’s okay to have your own adventures, because no matter how far you go, he’ll always be waiting for you to return

He likes to hear about your world the way you see it; he’s not interested in the logic of it all, he wants to know what your favourite places are, your favourite foods, your favourite hobbies

He’s seems to be delighted by everything you’re delighted by; your enthusiasm is infectious

Similarly, he agrees with you almost every time you complain about something in your reality that irks you (like capitalism, which Asra doesn’t really understand, as economics really isn’t his strong suit, but will agree with you is evil)

He’s also sad to hear about anything causing you personal trouble in your reality

He likes taking care of you, knowing that if something’s wrong, he can fix it— being the source of your happiness and comfort is one of his greatest pleasures in life— so knowing that there are things that he can’t help with breaks his heart a little

Of course, he’ll still do what he can

He can make your favourite drink, and your favourite foods

He can cuddle you, or distract you, for as long as you’d like

And he will always, always makes sure you know that he loves you more than life itself

For as long as you’ll allow him, he’ll be your home, your heart, and the one who loves you best

[brywrites]

Gifted

Spencer Reid x Reader. Summary: All his life Spencer Reid has been told he’s gifted. And all his life he’s wondered what the point was of those gifts that felt like curses. Until her.

--------

Though he holds so many memories in his mind, Spencer Reid isn’t quite sure who the first person to call him “gifted” was. It was probably his mother, he thinks. Certainly not his father, who thought he was strange. Perhaps a teacher, or maybe even his Aunt Ethel. All he’s certain of is that he’s lost track of the number of times people have praised the so-called gifts he possesses. His eidetic memory, his autodidactism, his absurdly high IQ. His mind, they say, is a gift. But it’s felt more like a curse for most of his life.

Those same things that helped him skip grades and earn the praise of adults brought him years of bullying taunts and miserable adolescent trauma. They isolated him from his peers. His companions were library books and stories and mathematic proofs – nothing with a beating heart. They plagued his nightmares, for his mother had been brilliant too and what had that done for her? And those gifts came with a tremendous burden of pressure, they demanded use in a powerful way. Reid was always terrified he’d fail to live up to that impossible potential, proving himself unworthy of such great and terrible gifts.

By the time he’s thirty-six, he wonders why he was ever given such gifts in the first place. Clearly he’s squandered them, spent them on chasing monsters he thought might be human. They turned out to be hydras – for each one they catch, two more take its place. He’s let his mind waste away on drugs, on grief. In shacks and in prison and in grudges he just can’t let go of. He’s saved lives, he knows, but his team do that same thing without the gifts he’s been cursed with. What’s the point of him? Of any of the talents or tricks he possesses?

And it’s that question on his mind as he walks into a Virginia library to interview a witness to the latest in a string of serial arsons. Her name tag says Y/N. She’s clearly nervous, a little shaken, but she manages a smile when a child runs up to interrupt and ask her how to find The Magic Tree House books. And when she turns back to look at Reid, that smile still lingers – her eyes so bright it catches him off guard. She takes him back to the area of the library that was burned to talk about the crime scene, and she off-handedly asks if he has a favorite.

And when he says, “Oh I could never choose just one favorite. I love books too much for that,” that smile returns, unexpectedly bright.

“A man after my own heart,” she says. “Tell me a few then.” 

So he rattles off a handful, hoping at least one of them will keep that light in her eyes. They do. “Bradbury is one of my favorites, too. I just love Dandelion Wine. Sorry, I probably should focus on the fire. I try to distract myself when I feel stressed, and well, remembering what happened that night doesn’t exactly help with my anxiety.”

“It’s okay,” he tells her. “I tend to ramble when I’m nervous. Or excited. Really, I think I just talk a lot.” Another smile, one that crinkles the corners of her eyes. Over the course of the investigation, the BAU has to ask her to come to the station twice. By chance, Reid finds himself interviewing her both times, and both times he finds himself rambling a little more than he means to – because he finds himself inexplicably a little nervous and a little excited in her presence. It’s that smile, the one that lingers long in his mind after she leaves each time.

There’s something about her, about the light she seems to carry, that draws him in. That compels him to say yes when he shows up at the library to inform her they’ve caught the unsub and she asks, “Could I buy you a cup of coffee to show my appreciation? If that’s not too much, of course.”

“I think that would be perfect,” he says. And as they sit at the café across the street with lattes in oversized mugs, he’s never been so grateful for his vast knowledge of literature. Each title is a start into a new conversation with her, and they swap stories about stories – the ones they have lived and the ones they have loved. When she disappointedly announces her break is over, she adds, “But maybe we could do this again sometime?”

“Yes,” he says. “Please.”

“How should I get in touch with you if you’re not showing up at the library to interrogate me, Dr. Reid?” she teases.

He hastily withdraws his cell phone from his pocket and offers it to her. She begins to type in her number. “You, um, you can call me Spencer,” he tells her.

She grins at him and something in his chest shifts at the sight. “I’ll definitely call you soon, Spencer.” He’s never liked the sound of his own name more. And he thanks that eidetic memory of his for allowing him to replay it again and again in his mind until he can see her next.

.

They get coffee again the first chance he gets. And then again. When she asks how he has time to read so much and he tells her about how his mind works – about his memory and speed-reading and quantified intelligence, all the things that have been called gifts – she thinks for a moment before saying, “That must be lonely.”

The relief he feels at her understanding is immense. “It is sometimes,” he admits. “But it’s felt less so lately.” They go to a park together. Then out to dinner. By the time he realizes he’s falling, he’s forgotten what it feels like to be on solid ground. Fortunately, he isn’t the only one at the mercy of gravity. She feels it too. And when she laughs at his joke as he walks her home from dinner, he just can’t help himself. He leans in and cups her cheek to pull her to him, pressing his lips to her still-smiling lips. The taste of wine still on her tongue. And though he doesn’t drink anymore, the sensation of her is enough to make him feel utterly intoxicated.

Slowly, his life fills up with her. His sabbatical arrives with the perfect timing to allow him evenings and weekends with her. He picks her up after work. She meets him for breakfast. He takes her to the planetarium. She falls asleep on his couch. He tells her it won’t always be this way and she assures him that’s okay. But it gives him the chance to build the foundation their relationship needs. It’s in that time that he begins to catalogue her smiles in his memory. The dazzling ones she sends his way when she spots him at a coffee shop. The soft, shaky ones she wears after a long kiss. The coy ones that twist the corner of her mouth when she’s teasing him. The nervous one that slowly grows when she meets his team for the first time – not as a witness, but as his girlfriend. A title she declares like a badge of honor. He holds each smile in his mind, picture perfect thanks to that eidetic memory. When a case has been particularly tough or he’s away for longer than he’d like, he flips through them in his mind, trying to remember the cause of each one, trying to hold on to that light until he can hold her in his arms again.

.

He surprises her with flowers on her birthday. “You remembered?” she gasps, her eyes wide. “And these – these are my favorite. How did you know?”

“I could never forget,” he laughs, but she stares down at the bouquet and clutches them to her chest.

“I don’t make a big deal about my birthday, so people don’t usually remember,” she says quietly. “And nobody’s ever gotten me flowers before. Thank you, Spencer.” A pause, and then, “I love you.”

He grins from ear to ear. Forget the sound of his name, those three words are the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard. “I love you, too.” It’s a first for both of them. And one week later comes another first – witnessing her panic attacks for the first time. She’s shaking too hard to tell him what she needs, so he tries to do what would help him. He sits down next to her on his living room rug and wraps her in his arms. He rests his head on her shoulder and murmurs the words to her favorite poem. She seems to breathe a little easier and so he recites another one she loves, and another until her breathing finally steadies and she unclenches her fists to wrap her arms around his neck, burying her face in his sweater.

Suddenly it doesn’t feel like such a curse to remember everything he reads when it means he can give her the words she loves when she needs them most.

The first time they sleep together is only the second time he’s been intimate with someone and he feels more awkward than he wishes he was. But he commits himself to studying, to remembering what she likes and what she doesn’t, and the next time he proves to be the quickest of learners when he succeeds at making her come within a matter of minutes. He discovers a new smile of hers, one of dreamy bliss and kiss-swollen lips. He loves it. He loves her, adores every single part of her she’s shared with him and every piece yet to be found. And to his continued surprise and delight, she loves him just as much.

He tries every day to be worthy of that love. He makes time for her. He goes to meet her friends and he shakes their hands even though he hates touching people, even though she insists, “You don’t have to. They won’t mind.” He does it because she’s the only person in the world whose touch he actually craves.

When she swoons over a dress Penelope has shown her on Instagram, he makes a note of it. She’s utterly enamored by it by her smile falls upon checking the price tag. It’s far out of her budget. So the next week when he’s out on a case in Atlantic City, he swings by one of the few casinos that doesn’t have his picture framed on the wall of their security office. He wins more than the cost of the dress in an hour and leaves before anyone can get suspicious. The dress arrives at his apartment the same day he gets home, and he invites her over to surprise her with it. When she opens the box, her eyes go wide.

“Spencer, this is… this can’t be. It’s… do you know how expensive this is?” Y/N asks.

Bashfully, he replies, “Now might be a good time to mention I’m banned from casinos in almost every state for my card counting abilities.” It’s well worth the little effort he expended to see the way her face lights up at the sight of it. And though he’s never been a gambling man, when he sees her wearing it for the first time he considers trying his luck a little more often.

At times he worries he’s doing too much, but how could it ever be when the way she loves him has been so much more than enough? For the first time in his life, he feels like maybe he’s enough. When she says, “I love you,” he believes it. When she says, “I’ll be back,” he trusts her. He’s given another person more of his heart than he ever has before, and for once he’s not afraid of it breaking. She doesn’t mind the strange hours he works or heaviness he sometimes carries with him. When he wakes up from a nightmare, she holds him close and keeps him grounded. He sends postcards from each city he visits and she makes his favorite food when he comes home and home is suddenly a place they share. She moves into his apartment and it feels like it was never complete without her there.

.

Not long after, there is a case in Boston. Their terrifyingly intelligent unsub taunts Reid as he leaves the interrogation room. “Judge me all you want, Dr. Reid. But I’ve used my mind to change the world. You’ve done nothing with yours.” The words haunt him on the flight home. He sits on the back of the plane lost in thought. What has he done? Sure he’s saved lives, but could he have done more? Could someone else have used those gifts he’s been burdened with in a way that was better? Why does he have any of these talents? Why has he acquired any of these skills?

His phone chimes. A text from her. Brought home a new book from the library I think you’ll love! Can’t wait to see you, dearest. And it hits him.

It’s her. All along it’s been her.

The answer echoes in his head as he races home to her. Everything in his life has led him to her, has let him be the person she needs. He can memorize all her favorite songs and poems to recite for her when her anxiety gets the best of her. He can remember every date that matters to her and everything she adores. He can read her favorite books overnight to talk about them with her in the morning. He can profile from her body language and her microexpressions when she’s having a bad day and needs him to be there for her, even when she’s too afraid to ask for what she needs. When she asks absurd questions out of the blue, he can give her actual answers with the useless encyclopedia of knowledge he’s obtained over the years. When she needs a distraction his rambling finally proves useful. It’s all for her.

She’s the reason his mind doesn’t feel like a curse anymore. How could he ever think of it with disdain when it’s the reason he can picture every smile she’s ever let him see? When he can catalogue every wonderful word from her lips, every inch of her skin, every action that drives her wild.

Reid can’t seem to open the door to their apartment fast enough. When he finally steps inside, she’s sitting on the couch. She turns away from the book in her lap to smile at him. “Welcome back,” she says. Then, tilting her head, “Is everything okay?”

An unshakeable grin spreads across his face and he knows he must look like a madman right now as he crosses the living to sit beside her. “Everything’s perfect. I just… I had this epiphany. All the things I hate about myself, you love. And all the things I can do let me love you better. It just feels like everything – everything has led me to you. Even the bad things, I mean, being in prison forced me to take sabbaticals and if I hadn’t we wouldn’t have had that time together early on and maybe we wouldn’t have worked and I don’t believe in fate,” he says, taking a breath. “But I can’t help but feel like for the first time, I’m right where I’m supposed to be. With you. Like that’s where I was meant to be all along. And I… I just thought you should know.”

His long-winded rambling is rewarded with one of his favorite smiles from her – one that makes her eyes soft and puts sunsets to shame. The kind she wears when she is incandescently happy. Her fingers lace through his and they are a perfect fit in his big hands. “There is nowhere else I’d rather be,” she says, leaning in to kiss him.

All his life, Spencer Reid has been told he is gifted. But this time, he thinks it might actually be true. He holds the greatest gift the universe has ever granted him in his arms and knows that no part of him is a curse if he is loved by her.

[thechekhov]

Hey, I've seen some of your answers to various asks, I feel like your method of explanation is great, you get to the point but still give important details. LI should get to the point too now tho: I have a problem with being consistent in my uploads. I am a major procrastinator. If I set a date for myself, I'll ignore it, if people make me hold accountable for it, I procrastinate drawing the piece and when I do I get super burnt out and even if I do have art, I don't post it for no reason. I feel like posting is such a hard thing to do when when I do it it's really easy, a couple clicks. Have you got any tips for me and people like me (if there are any) to be more consistent?

I'd love to help, but I also feel like the best person to know what you need is - you. I'm merely a silly little stranger on the internet, and I have very few ideas about what makes you tick.

But on that subject - I think finding out what makes you tick is important.

Being somewhat of a functional adult myself, I've realized early on that over half of adulthood is a carrot-and-stick game of careful psychological manipulation and emotional babysitting. Specifically, of you, by you, for you.

I, personally, discovered that deep inside myself is a child who thrives on dramatic reveals and LOVES people's reactions when I unveil my plots. I think this probably stems from having too many attractive villains in my childhood cartoons. Either way, it has now led me to baiting myself with never revealing any of my storyline plots until the very end, because the Big Reveal is what motivates me to keep working. I keep secrets because I know this is what fuels me in being productive.

If you have no idea what any of that means, I recommend reading this post, it might help.

Anyway, what I'm getting at here is - in order to solve your issues with your posting dilemma, I think you inevitably have to do some self-introspection and approach this like a character study. Like you're psychoanalyzing yourself.

You say that there's no reason for your procrastination, but I know there MUST be. Our brain is a complex Rube Goldberg machine, and the cause and effect are often not as simple to determine - but they always exist.

For example, in procrastination, often the issue is not laziness, it's fear. It's the knowledge that whatever we DO produce will inevitably be judged. Posting, specifically, opens us up to that sort of vulnerability. When the art is in our folder, no one can see it, and that threat to our person isn't there - no one will comment on it, no one will message us mean things about it. It's safe.

But as soon as you post it - it's out there. It's open to criticism, and you make pieces of yourself that you put in your art more or less public. Hesitating to do so is natural.

Posting has become such a common part of our lives. Thanks to the internet, we share EVERYTHING about ourselves. Thousands of tidbits of personal information that goes out to thousands of strangers we will never meet. We have been trained to accept it as a part of our reality, but when you think about it, it's terrifying.

Humans did not evolve to be social on such a scale. We did not evolve to be an ant performing for an anthill. We're creatures naturally inclined to deal with much smaller, tightly-knit communities where we can control the things we show to others.

The internet is not our natural habitat.

And maybe... maybe for you, that isn't it. Maybe that's not the root of your procrastination.

But something is. And I think the only way to figure it out is to ask yourself, and listen really hard! It'll be a whisper, but it'll be there. :)

[gryffindors-weasley]

It’s Always Been You

Young!Sirius Black x Reader

Summary: Your first kiss with Sirius.

Word Count: 1.9k

Warnings: fluff, mentions of smoking, kissing

Prompt: “I couldn’t get you out of my mind.”

A/N: This is my fic for bestie elle’s @sunrisefairy 2k writing challenge. Ilysm congratulations bestie you deserve the world <3

That moment. It was that moment that you knew something was missing, rather someone. Things didn’t feel quite so bright or quite so full of energy, the room didn’t feel quite the same. It was void of the liveliness only one person in particular could bring. Maybe it’s just because he’s your best friend and you’re his, maybe it’s just because you can’t be found more than a few feet from each other almost all the time. Maybe, you weren’t quite sure. But it wasn’t hard to figure out that Sirius had wandered off elsewhere.

It was a small get-together, close family and closer friends, all joined together in celebration for James and Lily’s wedding a few days out. The small Potter residence had bustled with jovial energy, one radiating the kind of love that keeps a smile on your face and a warmth in your heart. The record player had been sounding in the background to the lighthearted conversation, leaving open the opportunity for James to get people up and dancing. But you knew better than to believe James even needed music to be able to do that. He was captivating and chaotic, the kind of energy that lit up any room.

But it wasn’t hard to realize the very absence of the one you’d spent the entire evening thinking about, the one who’d had you on his mind just as much as you did.

It wasn’t long before you excused yourself and wandered through the kitchen, knowing just where he’d be without second thought. You twisted the brass knob to the door, the metal cool to the touch as you pulled it open. The music carried, loud enough to filter outside, muffled and upbeat in contrast to the quiet of the evening.

What had grabbed your attention first was the ever distinct smell of smoke, most telling to who it was you’d been looking for. It brought your gaze to the mess of raven hair you longed to see since the moment you saw he’d gone missing, Sirius sat comfortably on the hood of Mr. Potter’s car as a cigarette rested loosely between his lips. A pair of brightly colored sunglasses pushed his hair back as they sat atop his head, his knee bent as his foot rested pressed to the very edge of the car’s hood.

The softest of smiles pulled at your lips at the sight of him, head tilted as you made your way over.

His hair is a mess from what you can see, without a doubt from the amount of times he runs his hands through it. But the moment you suggested a haircut as a mere joke, he was adamant that that was never going to happen much to your delight.

“I knew you’d run off to be broody by yourself,” you jest, your words having him turn his head as a smile pulls at his lips. “And you left me to fend for myself.”

“Or maybe I just knew you’d come find me,” he says, flashing you a smile before he takes another puff of his cigarette, dropping it to the ground and stomping on it with the tip of his tattered old converse.

“Is that so?” You inquire, watching as his lips quirk up in a smile.

“Yeah, it is.” You roll your eyes, earning yourself a nudge with his shoe. “Did you miss me?”

You shake your head then, nudging him back as you purse your lips to stifle back your grin. You did. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I believe that’s all I know how to be,” he says, smiling as he tips his head back and closes his eyes, the shoulder length tresses of his hair falling back and dangling freely as the breeze sifts through it.

“That just might be the truest thing you’ve ever said,” you tease, and he peeks an eye open at you as his smile disappears in favor of a frown that was nothing but for show.

“Harsh coming from the most ridiculous person I know,” he counters, his smile returning as he braces himself for the feel of your swat on his shoulder.

“Maybe I’ll just go back inside,” you say with a teasing smile, one he sees immediately when he opens his eyes to meet your gaze. “From the sounds of it James is bound to start dancing any minute now.”

It was true. The moment any ABBA song comes on, any place and any time, that is more than an open invitation for James Potter to take full advantage. Anyone and everyone in the vicinity will bear witness to just any kind of dance he’s got up his sleeve, lighting the room up with his presence.

But you didn’t want to go back inside, not really. Straying too far from him meant you were only bound to wander back—it’s just how the two of you were. Even if the party and the source of entertainment had been just feet away in a sweet little home full of people that’d become important in your life, you felt you had what you needed right here.

In a backyard of slightly overgrown grass with sprouts of wildflowers and the heat of the summer evening that was less than desirable, it didn’t matter. He had what he needed too.

“Dance with me?” He asks, simple as his brow raised and the corner of his mouth quirks up.

The question had you frozen in place for a moment, but only just that. You spin around once to hide the giddiness of your smile, a small bit awkward as you try your hardest to stave off the happiness bursting within you in that moment. But it didn’t matter. You could be as stoic as ever and Sirius could read you like a book, that much was certain. But still, you put the effort in anyway.

“Why do I feel like you’ve been dying to ask me that?” You say, trying desperately to take the attention off of you as you grabbed his outstretched hand.

“Maybe I have,” he shrugs, tugging you closer as your laughter rings out, cheerful and sweet.

He can’t help but chuckle to himself when you stumble and step on his toes, because every time you’ve ever danced with him, you’d do that very thing without fail. He can’t bring himself to mind it, not with the way it has you grinning the way you do and it’s all because of him.

He doesn’t know how that’s quite possible, to be the source of your happiness. You’re wonderful and warm, the embodiment of sunshine and all the good the world has to offer. He feels he’s forever the opposite of that, like the sun and the moon, yet somehow it’s him that has you seemingly at your happiest, and he can’t help the confused bliss that sweeps over him at that knowledge. He’s an open book with you, but he finds himself keeping that one little thing he cherishes to himself.

“Just why is it that you came out here?” You ask, tugging at the ends of his hair in lighthearted fun as your arms wrapped around his neck.

You watch the smile on his lips widen, beaming and bright as he looks away for a moment. He was dangerously close to making a fool out of himself and he knew it, but it didn’t seem to matter. He was a fool, but he wanted to be your fool. To be in love, to feel so certain about something, to feel so strongly was something utterly terrifying and thrilling all the same. To be so sure that you were the very person he was in love with was something he knew with all the certainty in the world even if he knew there was a chance things could go wrong.

But in that moment, he didn’t care for most anything else other than the way you were looking at him like he was the best thing in the strange little world you share.

“I couldn’t get you out of my mind.”

Your lips parted and your eyes widened a fraction, something followed shortly by a smile and then a laugh, soft and sweet and something that sent a whirlwind of emotions to spin around in his mind.

“I reveal this kind of top secret information, and you laugh at me?” He scoffs in faux offense, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards as he rolls his eyes with a grin reserved just for you.

“Because, Sirius Black, do you wish to know why I am laughing?” You ask, snagging the shades from the top of his head and sitting them on the bridge of your nose.

“Yes, Y/n. Do enlighten me, love,” he says, amused curiosity in his every word.

You could feel your cheeks burn in that moment under the fondness of his gaze, the tips of his fingers tracing across your skin and over the curve of your ear. A million and one thoughts are racing through your mind faster than your heart has been beating in your chest, the opportunity having presented itself for you to say just how you feel for him. He was all ears to the words that would tumble from your lips, whatever they may be. You just have to say them.

His hand fell to slide down your arm and settle within your own hand, his grip calloused and warm as you stand seemingly frozen in time. Your heart had been doing somersaults and your stomach twisted with excitement and nervousness from the words sitting heavy on your tongue. The bout of cheery laughter streaming outside from the house bought you a few seconds time to stand there just a little bit longer, but it was just that, a few seconds.

“Because, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

His smile brightens, his own laugh falling from his lips as he pushes the obnoxiously orange sunglasses up from your eyes to rest on the top of your head, his forehead resting on yours.

“Sirius, I pour my heart out to you, and you laugh at me?” You jest softly, mimicking his earlier reaction.

The quiet of his laughter fans warmly across your lips, your nose bumping his with the sheer closeness of the proximity you shared. Relief settled over your heart and your stomach ran wild with butterflies, your lips mere centimeters apart as your smiles remained as tender as they’d always been towards one another, as sweet as they’d always been.

Your lips brushed over his, electrifying and faint all in one, the simplest of touches with the most profound of meanings nonetheless.

“Does this mean you love me?” He whispers, softer than soft as traces of his vulnerability seep in, his eyes fluttering closed.

“Yeah,” you whisper, feeling his smile brush against your lips. “It does.”

You tip your head back lightly and lean on your toes, closing the remaining bit of space that was left as you kissed him. His lips tasted of smoke and the cherry cola he’d been drinking on, his hand was warm as it pressed lightly to your cheek, and you were positive he felt the heat radiating from your skin but he hadn’t said anything of it. Too caught up in the bliss soaring through him.

The arm that rested around your waist had tightened its hold, his hand dropping from your face to accompany it as he kissed you just a few moments longer. The squeeze of his arms around you had you stumbling back some, the shades falling from your head and your laughter pressing into his lips.

In that moment he feels he’s come to a certain realization. It’s always been you.

—

Tags: @nancybycrs @amourtentiaa @snitches-at-dawn @dracosathenaeum @harrysweasleys @awritingtree @writeroutoftime @medalloway-blog @vicouscirce @mon4907

[snackhobi]

pairing: jungkook x reader / word count: 7.4k / genre: pacific rim au with brief smut (NSFW, 18+)

summary: there are no secrets in the drift. if jungkook were to see the mess inside your head and heart, laid utterly bare, he’d turn away from you.

warnings: sexually explicit content (briefly), unprotected sex (please be safe when you have sex) / reference to injuries but nothing graphic, giant robots powered by love punching big alien monsters

a/n: this is a birthday gift for the amazing @yeojaa​. happy birthday, erin. this is completely self serving and is stuffed full with inside references that I hope you’ll enjoy. I wrote this in two days and it kicked my ass because I did so much reading and researching that turned out to not even come up in the story 👁👄👁 you know when I said I was studying? I lied. I was writing HAHAHAH ily I hope you like it hhhh (this is unbeta’ed so please forgive any mistakes it’s 1:30am as I’m scheduling this) (also summaries are so hard, I’m sorry)

Jeon Jungkook really is the perfect posterboy for a Jaeger pilot.

Broad across the shoulders and trim at the waist, all sharp punches and hard muscle, resilient and tough, with a face that’s the perfect balance of angles and softness; the cut of his jaw easing up and into his pretty mouth, the line of his brows subdued by his warm eyes—he’s a Goddamn vision, raw masculinity overlaid on rich veins of boyishness, glittering stratum that sparkle and shine even under the harsh lights of the Shatterdome. 

He pouts when he thinks and his hair hangs a little in his big, big eyes and he has dimples that appear when he grins, teeth poking out onto his pretty pink lips, like someone took a rabbit and turned it into a man and packed on pounds of muscle alongside. Undeniably powerful and strong, but youthful and sweet, too.

Alongside Kim Taehyung—arresting and beautiful and somehow affable and approachable, all at the same time—they’re exactly what South Korea needs right now, propelling the country’s new look for their renewed assault against the kaiju. They’re the lucky new Rangers who’ve claimed ownership of the only Mark-5 that their homeland has produced, Bulletproof Striker, a fucking gorgeous Jaeger bristling with the latest and greatest technology that the world has produced.

But that doesn’t mean they’re the best that South Korea has to offer.

Cypher Zero is smaller, lighter, older, but she’s fierce. Just like her pilots. You and Yoongi might not be the burning beacons of hope that Jungkook and Taehyung are, polished and buffed to a squeaky shine, but you don’t need to be. You’re vicious and victorious and show no signs of stopping. The kaiju kills painted on your Mark-4’s shoulder are evidence enough of that, notches for each monster taken down, spray painted in one tiny corner of the huge swathe of burnished metal plating, the red edges of her midnight skin.

Bulletproof Striker is almost untouched, deployed just once since her recent launch, flawless exterior so at odds with Cypher Zero’s battered facade. Cypher’s beautiful, of course, but bears the history of your skirmishes, inside and out: scuffed paintwork, dented metal, rust dripping down from the ladder rungs dotted across her, melting into the obsidian of her hull. 

Jungkook and Taehyung move in a way that’s practiced, disciplined motions of combat that their Jaeger echoes in turn. Her mechanical movements reflect those of the men inside her head, skilled and superb. Stunning. But you and Yoongi? You fight dirty, violent and rough; messy bar room brawls; shattered glass and clawing hands in beer soaked backrooms, tinged sulphur yellow under dirty lightbulbs; two kids who fought against a world that was against them. 

(Two damaged people coming together in the Drift to make something even stronger than the sum of your parts.)

(Two damaged people who survived the rough hands of the Jaeger Academy, trying to take them, push them, shape them, break them.)

(Life isn’t kind. You’d learned that young, surrounded in the splintered remnants of your childhood home, the facade of family and happiness already gone, long long long ago, leaving you aching and lonely and cold. The prospect of fighting thousands of tons of alien hatred, lifting out of the depths of the uncaring, dark sea? At least you can see the kaiju coming. Broken households and loneliness? A little harder to lay your hands on.)

(But out of everything you lost, you’d gained one thing—Min Yoongi, another quiet, damaged thing, but with the biggest depths of warmth and love underneath that hard surface; your best friend, your brother-in-arms, growing alongside you, with you. Damaged kids turned bitter teenagers turned razor-edged adults, outcasts in solitude, but together. Not alone.)

(The deeper the bond, the better you fight. Falling into the Drift with Yoongi had been easy, years of tangled connection bleeding into the images that flashed across your brain. The same memories from different angles, overlaid with different emotions, undercurrents eddying under the surface that caught both of you and swept you up in its flow; the same mind, bridged by hundreds of tons of metal and technology and firepower underneath you, linked together in the silence of the Drift.)

There’s reverence, in the way these two new pilots look at you both, reverence and awe and respect alike: older Rangers, more experienced, history written across the worn edges of your Drivesuits, the paint flaking away from your battle armour, scuffs and scrapes on the once unblemished veneer; knowledge etched into the feline slant of Yoongi’s eyes, the turn of your shoulders and hips. 

You know Jungkook’s track record. You know of the endless months of assessment and sparring and psych evals and Drift tests and simulation drops that every successful Ranger has to go through, and Jungkook had trumped them all, stood atop them like a conqueror surveying his hard-won lands—gifted, talented, some even said God-touched. And yet for all this indomitable talent and skill, there’s still humility at his core, a willingness to defer with respect.

That deference is obvious whenever he sees you. Jungkook’s dark eyes will touch your own, for a moment, dark and deep and bright—and then his gaze will skitter away, cockiness and bravado dissolving into something submissive, yielding. (Shy.) You’ve watched him orbit you, the younger ranger caught in your gravity, always nearby—the Shatterdome is only so big, for its magnitude and sprawling corridors—but never broaching that final gap, that little step, into Cypher Zero’s space, Yoongi’s space, your space. Keeping himself at arm’s length.

South Korea’s golden boy, less afraid of the Kaiju than he is of his sunbaenim.

Jungkook and Taehyung are both beautiful. But you and Yoongi are less so, unapproachable in ways that the younger pilots aren’t, private and prickly, like grasping a patch of stinging nettles with bare hands, stinging and burning.

As if Jungkook isn’t terrifying and gorgeous in his own ways. As if he doesn’t shine brighter than the sun himself. Taehyung moves through the world with a thoughtless, charismatic ease that Jungkook doesn’t share—but he’s still magnetic, bold and brilliant, monstrously skilled at everything he puts his mind to, training again and again and again to get it right, get it right, get it right. 

To get it perfect. 

But there’s no level of perfectionism that can surmount the twisted, unpredictable nature of the kaiju belched forth from the breach. No matter how good you are, how strong or fast, how smart or seasoned, sometimes you still get caught in that hurricane, even in a Jaeger.

It doesn’t matter how many engines are packed into each muscle strand. It doesn’t matter how fast the pistons and levers and gears shift and move. It doesn’t matter that the pilots in her cockpit are impeccable and incredible. Under the cloak of deepest night and pouring rain, blanketed in darkness and water from the heavens above and the sea below, movement is impossible to track—and when Steelbrute rises from the waves, no one sees the kaiju coming.

Bulletproof Striker takes the hit. Jungkook and Taehyung fight back but they’re blindsided and overwhelmed, and their Jaeger falls to her knees in the churn of the Pacific Ocean, salt water crashing over her in choppy waves as Steelbrute’s merciless maw gapes wide open.

Cypher Zero is 250ft tall and weighs 1410 tons. You and Yoongi are tiny specks of organic matter in a fearsome behemoth of titanium and tungsten and graphene and circuitry, commanders of a weapon that’s the same size as a skyscraper—and yet you wouldn’t think that for how fast you move. Zero hesitation. No verbal communication. Cypher’s legs cut through endless waves and gain momentum with each crashing step that slams into the seafloor before you leap forward in a flurry of motion and Drift powered fury. 

Your motions in the Conn-Pod are ragged and incensed, your arms and legs moving in sync with Yoongi, with Cypher Zero, a snarl ripping out of your co-pilot’s usually quiet mouth as the kaiju lurches underneath you. The world narrows down to this: throwing yourself into the fray, jagged knuckles edged with plasma pummelled into Steelbrute’s skin in a scuffle that’s vicious, aggressive, until Bulletproof Striker regains her footing.

The sun is rising, grey and cold on the horizon when Steelbrute finally sinks into the sea, toxic blood flooding the water with neon blue. When you step out of the cockpit, Yoongi’s fringe is matted with sweat, and you can feel all the places the circuitry suit sticks to your skin—piloting a Jaeger is mentally and physically exhausting, every muscle and organ and bone working overtime for endless hours as you fight tooth and nail. Without the helmets in the way, there’s nothing stopping you bumping your foreheads together, heedless of the sweat slicked there; Yoongi’s hand rests at the back of your head, a familiar cradle.

“All good,” you say. Yoongi lets out a quiet bark of a laugh, rough and exhausted.

“I want a nap,” he says, like he always does, even if you’re a long way away from that, still fully suited and due to speak to the Marshalls. There are so, so many things separating you from the bliss of sleep.

One thing that’s not part of the normal routine, though, is the other pilots catching you, demanding your recognition, respectful (Taehyung) but insistent (Jungkook). You know that Yoongi doesn’t like attention or hero-worship, but there’s nothing except gratitude, here, bent heads and words of thanks. You’d saved their lives, after all. Saved their Jaeger from being torn apart, pain screaming through their own bodies of flesh and bone, connected to their metal monster. Of course they’re grateful.

You dismiss it with a hard cut of your hand.

“It’s nothing,” you say. 

You’re speaking the words you know are in Yoongi’s head—years of friendship and shared Drifts leaving his thought processes wide open to you—although you know you’re sharper than he is, harsher than he is, even, for all that he looks like the cold one from the outside. Long lashes and silken hair don’t translate to something soft and feminine and pretty, and you’re all ragged edges and rough parts, bleeding into the delivery of your words. Yoongi rounds the words in his mouth and places them into the world with a rumble of quiet strength that belies his past, but you? Your tongue is cutting and terse and drips with distrust, even when you don’t mean it to, staring at these two boys, Jungkook’s eyes so brown and large when he stares back at you.

The truth is that you care about humanity, of course. You care about humanity and you care about the millions of people in the cities that line the coasts and further inland, and you care about your fellow pilots, skilled but soft-hearted as they are. You’re stronger. You have to be. That’s what Yoongi is, that’s what you are: fighters. You fight dirty because you fight to win, not to protect yourselves. You’ll fight and you’ll die for this, for them, even if there’s no friendship there. Not yet. You’re still too distant, for all that you’d thrown yourself in the line of fire to rip the kaiju from the younger Rangers. 

And when Jungkook levels a look at you, there’s a flicker of something. A spark. All the glittering of his warm eyes comes together like the cascading sparks of molten fire that fall when metal is cut through— his eyes score through you, down down down, right to your core, underneath all the armour you’ve laid about yourself throughout your life. Your heart stutters. You’ve been watching Jeon Jungkook, and he’s all cocky Ranger bravado, or innocent brown eyes and shy, curving smiles, and yet. 

And yet. You know he sees this soft part of you, somehow. Past the thorns and sharp leaves, past the hard husk, into the rich, bursting sweetness inside, oozing red gems of pomegranate that yield so easily to the fingers and mouth.

(He’s temerarious and modest and wickedly perceptive too, it seems.)

“That was our kill,” he says suddenly. Taehyung—the voice piece of the two, the one who’s been smiling and speaking, easy and slow—goes still at his side.

“What?” Yoongi’s eyes pierce through him, but Jungkook keeps his focus on you.

“Steelbrute. Our kill. It was a hit from our rockets that took him out,” Jungkook says, eyes still glinting with that sparkling shine. Slicing through you with an explosion of light. “Not your blades.”

Silence steals over you, for a breath. It’s never truly silent in the Shatterdome, an iron fortress that never sleeps, but for a second, there’s quiet. It wraps around you. Tight. Almost deafening.

But then you break that silence.

You laugh. 

You laugh at the cheeky grin that pulls at Jungkook’s lips, the boyish lift to his face.  You laugh at his shamelessness, the sudden 180 from his earlier fear. You laugh at the way he’s diluted this astonishing, formidable thing—humanity coming together to destroy alien predators that threaten the planet—into a competition.

“You’re a menace, Jeon Jungkook,” you say.

Stinging nettles you might be, but if you’re grabbed hard and fast by confident hands, you don’t wound. Jeon Jungkook defers to respect, avoids confrontation, bows his head and quiets his mouth, but he knows, now, that he can do this. That he can push you like this, and you’ll let him, sway against it, let yourself be pushed.

Yoongi slides you a glance out the corner of his eyes, a light touch, a tacit agreement to an unspoken question.

“You can have it. Steelbrute’s yours.” There’s the smallest curl to your lips as you speak for you both. There’s something weirdly easy and familiar to this, to this interaction, even if you’ve barely exchanged words before now, giving this triumph to the other pilots hand over fist.

(Giving it to Jungkook on a platter.)

You can see the flare of triumph in Jungkook’s eyes. You know it’s not for the notch of their first kill, one they can add to their Jaeger. It’s for something far harder to achieve, something far more ephemeral: digging down and past your cool veneer and lifting out a smile, spreading it across your lips like warm butter, liquid gold.

And he keeps making you smile. 

Jeon Jungkook, you find, is a force of nature, relentless, an ocean. Sometimes he’s soft, loving waves of glittering blue that crash on pearly white beaches, playful and bright. Sometimes, he’s intense, the crashing waves of a storm tossed sea, powerful and unstoppable. Always, he’s striking, even when he’s not trying—even more so because of it, moving without thought or uncertainty, a silence settling over your thoughts whenever you see him like this. See him in this raw state, so unafraid where before he’d curbed his tongue and bent his head in front of you. Now, he’s just himself, without filter.

Taehyung is there too, of course. Both pilots join your small, fiercely private circle, not just a path from you to Yoongi any more. They become intertwining lines, a pattern that’s drawn between the four of you, pilots, friends. And you learn, that for all that you’d thought that Taehyung was the dominant one outside of their Jaeger, social and extroverted and unabashed, Jungkook isn’t quiet. Not when he’s comfortable.

(Not, now, when he’s with you.)

He’s a myriad of things, endlessly deep, so different from you, from Yoongi, but—the truth of it settles inside you, your joints, the marrow of your bones, the blood that pulses forth from your heart each time it beats in your chest, liquid life running through you. 

Drift compatibility.

Not that it matters. You already have a partner. You’re never going to open yourself up to anyone that isn’t Yoongi, who’s seen every part of you already. There’d been no fear about letting Yoongi see inside your brain, your heart, the raw, bleeding parts of you—because he’d already known them. Just like you’d known his. Yoongi stands to your right, inside the Conn-Pod and out, a driving force, even in his silence. 

But Jungkook is softer, sweeter, for all his raw power and skill, respect engraved into his every motion, even when he’s teasing and making you laugh. Even when he ignores the social guidelines that he should follow, does follow for others, everyone except you. 

And you don’t mind. You don’t bite out insults at him when he slides into the quiet hollow you’ve scraped out, a small space with just enough room for the people you keep in your heart. You’re still barbed and spiked, warding away unwanted attention, but for Jungkook, the claws retract. 

You’re still you, of course. Jungkook calls you mean, says that you bully him, even as he’s flopped across your bunk, eating your rations, shovelling coveted popcorn into his mouth. He might pout and sigh and cry oppression, but you’re soft on him and he knows it. That quiet hollow in your heart is a little larger, now, a little louder. Jungkook is brazen in his claim of this space, spreading each of his limbs wide as he fits himself into every part of it. He doesn’t know every piece of your past, and you don’t plan to let him see all the messy parts bundled in your chest, but. But he’s still there.

And you let him stay. You make a home for him inside you and let him take the key. He might tilt his head and goad you, might pretend there’s a genuine challenge in the set of his jaw, but you know it’s all tempered with admiration, veneration. Friendship.

(And where he clearly respects you, you admire him in turn. You’re reminded of your differences every second he moves and breathes and just exists in front of you, but you don’t have to be similar to someone to realise just how incredible they are.)

(But though you’re different, there are similarities. You’re not a mirrored image, a reflection, like you are with Yoongi. Instead, you’re a line drawn between two separate places, an isohel, sun lighting up your world for the same sweep of the clock even for how far apart you are. Sharing that same, tenuous thing, for all your contrasting parts.)

(This thing that’s growing, held in your hands. This soft, gentle thing, shimmering, frail, unfurling slowly but undeniably. Tinged with happiness, disbelief. Disbelief that you’ve found this, that you can see Jungkook across the echoing cavern of the Shatterdome’s main hall, so far in the distance, barely visible at the foot of his Jaeger—and something will settle in your chest. Featherlight, iridescent. Something comforting.)

When you fight the kaiju, now, it’s with a deeper reserve of desperation. Taehyung and Jungkook aren’t just fellow pilots, dongsaeng that you’re obliged to look after: they’re your friends, something more than that too, part of the rare handful of people in the world who understand, this overwhelming pressure to fight and win and protect the things you love. The people you love. They understand what it’s like to step into someone else’s head, to be connected to that person on a level that’s unfathomable, anchored in a depth of love that’s endless. You’re their aegis, now, their shield.

(Jungkook’s shield.)

Maybe that’s what’s to blame. Maybe that’s why you’re so sloppy, this time. Maybe that’s why you throw yourselves in the way of the blow that was meant for Bulletproof Striker. Maybe that’s why Ojousan shreds Cypher Zero’s chest apart, her head, why Yoongi is almost ripped from you, his fear and pain screaming through your neural connection. You feel everything he feels and more beside, your heart hammering in your throat as you scream, Jaeger’s arm swinging up and around in tandem with your own motions as you try to rip the kaiju away, anything to protect Yoongi, so scared of losing him, always always always, scared of being left alone.

But you’re not alone. 

Bulletproof Striker lifts up like an avenging angel. Her horns roar a challenge, an echoing battle cry as the younger pilots move in. Heavier and stronger, keeping her balance even in the turbulence of a fight, she takes the hits, gives back her own, sends the kaiju down into the crashing waves, waits for it to rise. But the monster is crafty and quick and even as you’re lifting your left arm—Yoongi’s hurt, so hurt, you know this, feel this, but he moves with you to ready the plasma cannon buried in the mechanics of your Jaeger’s hand, even if he’s keening with pain—you watch as the other pilots, too, fall victim to the clawed tail of the kaiju, screeching through layers of alloys and across their Conn-Pod.

Terror strikes through every part of you and morphs into hate. You hate the kaiju, hate your own weakness, hate the pain that’s been saved from being written into your own body while Yoongi screams and sobs even though he still fights. Your motions are anguished and desperate as you battle to overcome this beast that’s almost taken away everything that matters to you—and Cypher Zero, Yoongi, as damaged and hurt as they are, come through. (Like they always do, for you, always.)

And somehow, despite everything, for all the self-hatred and pain and fear, you pull through. You pull through. Damaged and hurt but alive.

Barely.

Barely alive. 

(One hand gives, the other takes away.)

It takes hours for them to pick Yoongi’s Drivesuit from his body, crumpled around him from Ojousan’s claws, cutting into the soft flesh of his body, body ruined further by the fighting he’d been forced into despite his injuries; so many of Taehyung’s bones are shattered, and when you finally see him awake and with his eyes open, there are burst blood vessels that cast red across the usually warm expression, his friendly eyes.

You should be grateful that they’re alive. You should be on your hands and knees, weeping, benedictions dripping from your graceless mouth as you thank whatever merciless God above decided to turn their gaze on you and grant you this leniency. So many pilots have died and will continue to die, you know this, but somehow your partners are still alive.

And you are grateful. You are. But there’s bitterness on your tongue, twisted across your palate, sour and acrid and filling you with its taste. You’d been foolish and reckless and you’d almost lost the things you cared about most, even if you’d destroyed the kaiju, torn it apart and left its fluorescent indigo blood to corrode the ocean. 

That’s what’s important, isn’t it. Saving humanity. One person, two people, four people—you’re the tiniest cogs in a whirring engine of billions. Unimportant. Just a spinning part that keeps the machine going.

When you’re not with Yoongi or Taehyung, an unmoving presence from their hospital beds, a hovering gargoyle carved from stone, you’re with Jungkook. Always, always, always. Somehow you’d both escaped without the injuries inflicted on your partners—you’d manage to break your little finger, and Jungkook had a black eye and a twisted ankle, and the both of you had mottles of bruises cast across your skin, pulled muscles, an ache carved into your bones, but that was it. That was it. It was almost laughable, how unscathed you are.

You hate it.

(It should have been you.)

Your legs—unbroken, unharmed—hang over steel scaffolding, motionless as you watch the tiny specks of people scuttling across the catwalks that criss-cross Cypher Zero’s body. You can see under her skin, damage peeling back all the layers of metal that should be holding her together. Endless showers of sparks fall and scatter as she’s stitched back together. Your beautiful girl is so damaged, so disfigured.

(You’d caught Yoongi as he’d fallen from the harness, listened to the horrible noises that had torn out of his lips as he’d dripped blood and pain over your shaking hands.)

The bland food you’d scraped off your dinner tray settles fitfully in your stomach, still one second, nausea bubbling up your throat the next. 

It’s one of the rare times you’ve been alone, since… since everything. You’ve been taking comfort in Jungkook’s presence, unwavering and understated, needing someone there when staring at Yoongi’s battered face proved too much. Even with his own upheaval Jungkook’s been there, at your side, always close. Eyes locked on you and taking everything in, the tired set to your face, the expression that tugs down your lips, and still, he stays.

But he’d disappeared after you’d eaten, a peculiar look on his face—you know him well enough now to recognise that look, that it means he’s got something in his head, some plan he means to unfold. It’s the first time you’ve seen it since Taehyung had been pulled out of the Conn-Pod. It’s some semblance of normality, an expression of something other than pale-faced dread and bone-shivering guilt. 

(You feel it too, that survivor’s guilt. Taehyung and Yoongi will recover but it’ll take time and so much suffering and you wish you could take that from them, heft that burden onto your own shoulders.)

(You know Jungkook feels the same.)

(You see it written in the tense lines of his body. Hear it unspoken in the words he shares with you. The bruises on his skin melt from red to purple to blue to yellow, but even if his body heals, his brain and heart bear the scars of helplessness.)

Jungkook reappears, finds you at the heavy steel door that leads into your room, rusted and worn but silent as it swings open in front of you. His eyes are wide and he’s breathless, like he’s been running, chest heaving as he sucks in air through his parted lips, a flash of teeth and tongue as he smiles.

Despite everything, you smile back. Helpless for that smile, always, happier now for the sight of it, for how little you’ve seen it. You want to see that smile every day. You don’t want him to worry for anything. You want him to feel the same way you do, when you see him: that quiet, maybe selfish thought that things are okay. 

Maybe he does. (His eyes are so warm.) He presses something into your hands, something soft and round like a well-practised secret, and then he’s gone. You can tell by the gait of his stride that he’s going back to Taehyung, giving you a moment of lonely reprieve to wash the grime and dirt off your useless body before you follow in his footsteps, stationed at Yoongi’s side.

The door swings shut behind you.

You lift your hand.

It’s an orange.

It’s a small, overripe thing, hard nub of the stem falling away from the skin with only the lightest brush of your fingers. You stare at the fruit, its brightness cutting through the muted sepia tones of your surroundings, a point of colour in an otherwise dull room.

You haven’t seen an orange in months. Rationing is tough on everyone, even Jaeger pilots. You’d mentioned in passing, so long ago, an old habit of yours. Before something else floated above it, more important and interesting, you’d made a fleeting statement that had flitted across the surface of the conversation: you liked eating oranges in the shower. Liked that nice, cool citrus sweetness in your mouth while the rest of your body was caught in the fall of warm water.

It’s such a small, tiny thing. Just the briefest lament—there are more important things than the fact you can’t have shower oranges any more, after all—and you’d forgotten you’d even mentioned it.

But Jungkook hadn’t.

It’s almost syrupy sweet, this orange. You savour each slice, pressing them between your teeth, feeling the rush of juice burst forth through the pith and skin, and it’s so good you could cry. 

You do cry.

Your mouth is full of orange and your eyes are full of tears and your head is full of—of—something, something so all encompassing that it overwhelms you, water cascading down the aching planes of your body as you crumple inwards. Jungkook had protected you with the overwhelming power of Bulletproof Striker, and he’s protecting you now, soft and considerate and kind, vulnerable and human. Stripped of tons of metal and technology, Jungkook wears his beating heart on his sleeve and is none the weaker for it. 

This seemingly small thing means so much, so so so much. You understand him, and he understands you too, knows that this gesture is indicative of support and care and nurturing, a tiny fragment of peace he can offer you in the tumult of everything out of your control. 

A tiny fragment of peace that’s part of a greater whole, all the things that Jungkook gives to you.

When the Marshalls gather you and tell you the plan going forwards, you’re unsurprised. 

It makes sense, of course. Four pilots down to two still leaves a pair, and Bulletproof Striker is nearly functional even if Cypher Zero will stay out of commission while she’s rebuilt. Simple maths. One Jaeger, two pilots. You and Jungkook.

You’re scared.

You know you’re Drift compatible. Every fight in the Kwoon Combat Room is evidence enough of that. A dialogue, each challenge is meant to be a dialogue to show physical compatibility, and it is: there’s perfect sync in how you each move to strike, even if your motions are so different, muscles burning and breaths coming faster each time you attack, parry, strike, block. It’s not about winning or losing. It’s a conversation, one that you and Jungkook fall into without thought.

And he would be the perfect partner. That much isn’t in doubt. Loyal and open and strong, honourable and brave and kind—and you know him, have grown to learn so much about this golden boy, this bright, brilliant boy. He’s fucking indomitable and anyone would be lucky to find themselves in the same Jaeger as Jeon Jungkook.

But there are no secrets in the Drift. 

To let someone in, you have to trust them. And you do, you do trust Jungkook, probably far more than makes sense, some unspoken thing between you burning like a wildfire. But while you trust him, confident in his strength and his heart, you trust yourself less.

You’ll be flayed open, naked and defenceless. He’ll see right to the core of you, every dirty corner of your crumpled soul, every shameful part of your foundations, uneven brickwork layered into your shaky temperament; strong one second, weak the next. He’ll see that you’re hard inside, too, biting and acidic right down to your shrivelled heart. This nascent thing that you’ve been building with Jungkook, been keeping safe in the cradle of your careful hands, will sputter out and die.

“Baby.”

Yoongi’s voice is comforting, a familiar rumble that rolls through your ears as you rest your head in his lap.

“And I mean that you’re literally being a baby,” he continues, and you curl your lip back from your teeth in a small snarl, menacing.

Yoongi just continues to thread his hands through your hair.

You’ve Drifted with Yoongi often and long enough to know how every thread of thought unspools in that skull of his. You know he has every confidence in the unshakeable pillar of your soul. He’s a brother to you, a connection that thrums deep in your veins even without the intimacy of the Drift, and the love you hold for him is undying and true.

But whatever you have with Jungkook is so timorous in the face of that.

“It’s different.” Yoongi looks down at the twist of your face. You know his thoughts and he knows yours too, your face and heart an open book to him. “But different isn’t bad.”

You keep your mouth shut, keep the words swallowed down in your throat, shoved down to the pit of your stomach. Keep it secret. Keep it safe.

“Baby,” he says again, softer, lower. This time, you know it’s an endearment. 

At the end of the day, no matter what fear grips cold and endless at your insides, you’ll do it. You’ll Drift with Jungkook. You’ll throw everything you have into the pyre, watch it burn and turn to ash, if it means you can keep everyone safe. To save Yoongi, Taehyung, Jungkook—you’ll open yourself up to the mortifying ordeal of opening up, laying yourself bare. You have to.

It’s chaotic, anyway. The day that your practice Drift is scheduled is the day the next kaiju rises out of the breach, that dreaded rift between our world and theirs, because why would you be allowed to breathe, even for a second?

It’s a scramble into the cockpit. There’s no time for trial runs or test Drifts. You fly or you fall. Everyone’s in a state of orderly upheaval as you’re suited up and left to stride forwards into a Conn-Pod that isn’t yours, in a Jaeger that isn’t yours.

(Left to stride forwards to stand next to someone who isn’t yours.)

Your Drivesuit is grey. Jungkook’s is white. There’s a subtle hologramatic sheen laid across the planes of his armour, leaving him a multicoloured vision that shines out under the flicker of the cockpit’s endless tiny buttons and lights. Your own suit is a matte, gunmetal with accents of burning scarlet, far more battered and worn. Dark and wild in the face of Jungkook’s radiance. He’s the perfect answer to the kaiju invasion. You, though, feel like an interloper in a space that wasn’t designed for you, this circle room that’s been home to Jungkook and his true, real partner. 

But he’s looking at you like there’s no one else he’d rather have by his side. 

He doesn’t care that everything about this moment just cements how he’s too good for you in every conceivable way, elevated above you. Doesn’t care that you’re just a temporary stop gap. There’s trepidation, of course, skittering nerves that dance across his face for this first Drift, surrounded by all the commotion that’s swallowing the world up outside the cockpit. But there’s also that fire in his eyes, one you’ve learned to expect: Jungkook is a wildfire and will surmount any obstacle in a blaze of white-hot light.

And he wants you along for the ride.

(Burns bright for it.)

“You ready?” He asks, and the tiny tremor in his words takes you off guard even as it soothes a balm over the rash of apprehension that prickles across your skin.

(Because he’s nervous, too.)

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” you answer, truly.

His eyes crinkle into a smile, crescents of happiness as his lip peels back from his teeth. It should be jarring, seeing his sweet bunny smile in the pit of a Jaeger, so at odds with the military polycarbonate that girds his body with protection, the masculine edges of his face—but it’s not. The world is just a backdrop to Jeon Jungkook, dropping away as you fall into his eyes, twinkling stars of brightness and warmth that hold you safe, even now.

Peace and contentment steals over you. You’re almost shocked by it, the way your own face softens into a smile, the rising beat of your heart. Every ragged messy edge in you is smoothed over by Jungkook’s presence and you glow for him.

When the Conn-Pod drops, there’s the familiar weightlessness, the sway of your body in the harness as you fall. Anticipation roils through you as Bulletproof Striker’s head locks into place, whirring mechanisms securing you to nearly 2000 tons of metal, so much heavier than your own Jaeger. You’ve taken Jungkook’s usual place and he’s taken Taehyung’s, the right hemisphere, the dominant pilot, familiar with this machine in a way you’re not.

Not yet, at least.

“We’ve got this.”

Jungkook’s voice cuts through the noise, the AI talking at you, a narration of events you’ve long grown used to. You turn your head to look at him. He’s already looking at you, intent and sincere. Like always.

“Yeah,” you say. “Yeah, we have.”

There’s no point being afraid. In a few seconds, Jungkook will be in your head, washing over every part of you—and you’ll be in his, pressing your ethereal touch into every facet that comes together to make Jeon Jungkook who he is.

Seconds pass. There’s a little hitch in his breath, a stiffness to his limbs, and he shuts his eyes. You breathe in deep, deep, deep, sucking in a harsh breath into your greedy lungs—

—the timer hits zero—

—and then the Drift slams into you all at once, all encompassing and consuming, threading your minds together.

(Drifting with Yoongi is easy, the familiarity of coming home after so much time away.)

(But this?)

(This is throwing yourself into a cold lake on a hot summer’s day, bracing and refreshing and breath-stealing all at once, shocking life into every one of your limbs, so sharp and fast you’re scared you might drown before you breach the surface, water holding onto you and not letting you go. This is driving reckless and fast down empty roads, watching the world pass you in a blur, laughing in delight at the pleasure of it all. This is scaling a cliffside with nothing but your own hands and determination, digging your fingers into the unyielding rock, pulling yourself up-up-up, never letting yourself fall.)

(This is having Jungkook beside you. This is having Jungkook diving into the lake with all the grace of an Olympian before he rises to the surface, tosses his hair carelessly out of his face, and spits a mouthful of water at you with laughter in his eyes. This is having Jungkook behind the driver’s wheel, shifting gears without thought, looking away from the road to watch the way your hair dances in the wind. This is having Jungkook climbing beside you, waiting for you at the top, holding a hand out to pull you up and over so you can sprawl out beside him, exhausted and exuberant at the top of this mountain, basking in the sun with Jungkook just a hair’s breadth away from you.)

(He takes one look at you. He takes one look at all the dark of your memories, the cascading mess of your insides, the hidden things that are open to him in the Drift, cut open and peeled back for his gaze—and he doesn’t look away.)

(He sees everything, past skin and muscle and bone and nerves, even deeper, right into your heart—)

(—all the torrents that eddy the deep waters of your soul—)

(—and he doesn’t look away.)

(He doesn’t look away.)

(Can’t look away.)

(Doesn’t want to.)

(Never wants to.)

(Jeon Jungkook takes one look at you, your whole being, and he knows you.)

(And he doesn’t want you any less.)

It’s just a second, a flicker, a breath, this first connection in this Drift, falling into each other. But it’s also a lifetime, two lifetimes, four lifetimes; your memories, Jungkook’s memories, Yoongi’s memories in yours, Taehyung’s memories in Jungkook’s. Layers and layers and years and years piled over one another, a tumbling sprawl—but it’s easy. It’s easy, so easy, Jungkook seeing you, you seeing him, everything he is, everything you are, everything you are to each other, with each other, for each other. The important things. The things you need to know to navigate this together, in sync even before now, reading each other to a level neither had even realised.

And when you’ve killed the kaiju. When you’ve walked Bulletproof Striker back to shore, brought her back to the Shatterdome, back home, it doesn’t end. You lift out of the Drift, step out of your Drivesuits, as different as they are (as different as you are), and it doesn’t end. 

Jungkook’s eyes linger, as heavy as a physical touch, and even as congratulations for a successful drop are bandied about you, he doesn’t leave your side. He keeps his hand against yours—not intertwined, but brushing, the curl of his fingers against your own. Touching. You’re not the protector here. He’s protecting you, in a way that doesn’t leave you feeling inferior or weak. You feel soft and warm and small and safe, pulled inexorably towards him, supported, buoyed up, and you don’t feel selfish for it.

Because he wants this.

He wants to be your comfort and your support.

He doesn’t want it to end.

(You don’t want it to end.)

And when you finally break away from those crowds, released from the shackles of responsibility and expectation—when you’re finally left alone, the two of you with each other, there’s no hesitation when you come together.

He lays you out beneath him and has you sobbing, back arching into the pleasure he draws out of your body, playing you like a maestro. Because he knows you, after all. He knows exactly how to trail his lips across your skin, your neck and stomach and thighs, painting marks across your body like it’s his personal canvas. He knows exactly how to have you twisting underneath him, how to pull those pretty sounds from your lips, fucking you with his fingers and his tongue until you’re a shaking mess. He kisses you sweet, merciless, letting you claw at his skin as you beg for more, more more more, wanting it, needing it, wanting him, needing him.

And you know he’ll give it to you. He’ll give himself to you, give you everything you ask for. You know how he wants to see you fall apart and you know how to move your body to have him gritting his teeth and staring in awe. You know how desperate he is to worship you, to show you his adoration and reverence, and you open up for him, unfurl like a flower, dripping nectar. When he finally presses into you, hot and long and thick, it’s so good you could cry. You draw him in-in-in, into your body and arms and heart, pressing your lips to the sweat at his brow, the taste of skin and salt and Jungkook bursting across your tongue.

There’s no Drift here, no curl of memories and unspoken thoughts between you. It’s physical and human, the crash of your bodies against each other, skin on skin, the thrust of his cock pressing into the dripping folds of your cunt. It’s the other half of that connection, the final piece, this thing you have with Jungkook, this perfect balance you have with him. It sears itself across your body and into your soul: it’s pleasure and passion and devotion carved into each touch of your lips and fingers, each roll of your hips, each time Jungkook makes you cum, gasping for him.

When he’s finally come apart inside you, spilling into your willing heat as you shake beneath him, arms and legs wrapped around his body as you pull him as close as you can, unwilling to let go—it still doesn’t end. You’re so wrapped up in Jungkook, in his arms, his heart, and you know he won’t let you go, either. He presses his lips against yours, chases those kisses, quiet and chaste to open-mouthed and dirty as the mood takes you, and then Jungkook rolls over you again, a spark in his eyes as he decides he’s still hungry for you.

You know, now, that all that time ago, when you carved that space for him into your chest, he’d done the same for you. He’d laid his heart at your feet and waited there, kneeling, for you to accept it, patient and willing. Staring at you with all the deep love you never thought you deserved, never thought you’d receive. But here he is. Here he is, love burning in his dark brown eyes. Eyes that have seen all the damaged, aching parts of you and love you anyway.

“I’m yours.”

Jungkook shines so bright at your words, a supernova of joy. His smile is so wide and his gaze is so soft, for you, for you, for you.

“Everything I am is for you,” he murmurs, letting the words curl into the air, settle across your skin, sink deep inside your chest. Your eyes flutter shut as you feel this touch of him inside you, wrapped around your heart.

And when you lift your hands, he comes so easily. He presses his cheek into the curve of your fingers, lets you hold him, lets you cup those lovely cheeks in your palms.

“I love you,” he says.

Right now, in this instant, there’s nothing but him. No kaiju, no Jaegers, no crumbling world, nothing. There’s only him, and you, together.

“I love you too,” you reply—and when you smile, gentle and tender, Jungkook falls in love all over again.

Burns bright for you.

[aminiatureworld]

Small Secrets II

Characters: Childe, Kaeya, Ningguang, gn!reader

Word Count: 3.717

Warnings: Swearing

Premise: It’s not that you wanted to keep it a secret from your loved one. It was simply that old habits are hard to break. But now people are talking, and it seems easier to go one as before.

In which the reader can transform into an animal.

Author’s Note: Had to do a surprising amount of research for this one.

Childe

Perhaps it was a cruel joke on Fate’s part that you were able to turn into a penguin. If so no one else was laughing.

It’d been jarring the first time it’d happened, an accident of stress. After that first incident you’d figured you’d never transform again, at least not willingly. Who wanted to be a greasy, flightless bird anyways? That had been your opinion, and you hadn’t intended on changing it. Until you learned how to swim.

Perhaps it was another joke, that you should become so enamored with the gliding that penguins could do when they finally waddled their way off land. The nearly soundless plunge as you dove beneath the water, not having to worry about running out of air as you sped along the lake nearby your Snezhnayan village. It was as if being trapped in a little pocket of paradise, one which you’d grown to love.

At first you didn’t really consider the repercussions of being involved with Childe in regards to your expeditions to the sea. So wrapped up had you been in the question of his Harbinger status that by the time you realized you might have a problem it was too late to think up any sort of plan. Of course, the days in which Childe was gone you could swim, could even find refuge in those frigid waters. But when he was there it was like walking on eggshells as you found yourself torn between your desire to swim and your need to keep your secret.

It didn’t help that winter was ending. Though Snezhnaya could be bitterly cold in the winter, and though your village was often considered next to inhospitable in the winter, the summertime brought with it a heat that made swimming near unbearable in your oiled feathers. After all, penguins only lived in the most southern part of Teyvat.

It was a beautiful day, the afternoon that you finally broke. The temperatures had plummeted during the night before, and those you shivered as you made your way to the stony beach that was your usual takeoff spot, you felt yourself brimming with anticipation, the prospect of a long overdue swim lying in front of you.

You thought of Childe only once, as you shinnied down the craggy slope that led to the beach. He’d said that there was a Fatui meeting going on at the town inn, and though it was sure to be dull and irritating there was truly no way to escape it. You sympathized with Childe, understanding the difficulties in sitting still for two hours, trying o act as if you weren’t aching to be somewhere else, but secretly you thought the meeting a blessing in disguise. Using the pretense of the Guild being somewhat slow – the Adventurer’s Guild in Snezhnaya was somewhat disorganized due to Fatui competition – you claimed the need for a trek in the snow, holding off Childe’s ill hidden words of worry with the knowledge that you’d lived here longer than he had. You felt little regret, knowing that you’d lied to him. After all you’d been drilled to keep this a secret since the moment you were made aware of it. And as much as you loved Childe, that would never change.

You stumbled a bit in your mad dash to the little cavern which shielded you as you transformed. You’d tried directly transforming in water once, but having pressure almost destroy your lungs was something you weren’t excited to repeat. So instead, you waddled about the icy gravel, silently cursing your speed. You could never get used to how slow penguins were on land, nor could you understand how once you hit the ocean you could speed along faster than any human might.

The water was clear and cool, the icy shock dulled by the layers around you. It was interesting to see the lake in this manner, eyes suddenly unclouded by passing sand and debris. You swam along lazily, staying in the middle layer of the lake. Though you knew that you were going up for breath more than was really necessary, you were feeling surprisingly lazy, and diving to the bottom felt like too much effort.

The sudden pull of your body upwards caused a shriek to escape you. Thrashing about wildly you attempted to dive deeper, mind suddenly clouded by confusion and panic. A voice was calling out to you from above, but you made no effort to comprehend it, too focused on keeping in the sanctuary of the water. Though you knew that you’d swum in the opposite direct of the village, the possibility of being discovered by a human, for your captor was surely a human, was no less terrifying.

As you broke the water you felt like your heart had seized up in your throat, if that was even possible for a penguin. Whirling around this way and that you pulled desperately for the water, for the place you’d be able to outswim this intruder. Your brain registered the familiar clothing of the person holding onto you, and your horror both eased and multiplied as their voice sang through the air.

“Woah there buddy. Calm down!”

You ceased your movements for a second, brain somewhat stalling. Partner. You’d just been dragged out of the water by your partner. If you hadn’t been a bird you would’ve certainly started screaming, or at least asking Childe what the fuck he was thinking skipping the meeting for this.

“There you go.” Childe’s voice was soft and soothing, using a tone that you knew was reserved only for nightmares, injuries, and emotional distress. “It’s alright, it’s alright buddy. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. It’s not normal for penguins to be this far north you know. Besides the villagers have been calling you some sort of malevolent spirit and let me tell you, being harpooned isn’t very fun.”

Ruffling your feathers, you let out a squawk of indignancy, the idea that you’d actually get caught appalling. Childe just let out a laugh in return.

“I know, I know. No appreciation for the natural world. But that’s what it’s like in a village like this, insulated and unquestioning. You’re not the only one who’s suspicious; but let me tell you it’s better to be suspicious and free then stuck in the same place.” He let out a small sigh. “Even when our freedom comes at a price.”

You stared at him for a moment, taking in the soft sadness that radiated off the man you’d fallen in love with. Though a small piece of you felt pity, pity for the life Childe had been forced to live, the rest of you felt a melancholy sort of empathy, and in the center of that a kernel of trust. Childe’s words spoke to you, his status as an anomaly amidst the people who couldn’t understand the yearning to get away. Perhaps it would’ve been better if Childe was more content, staider, perhaps things would’ve been easier. Yet would you have fallen in love with that version of Childe? Would you feel as you did now?

Waddling towards solid ground, not trusting the large pieces of ice which bordered the lake, you closed your eyes. Immediately your form changed, your other self now shed like a second skin. Keeping your back turned away from Childe you stared at the snowy forest.

“You’re not the only one who feels trapped sometimes. I’m sorry that this village isn’t kind to you.”

“Oh the people are nice enough.” There was a wavering sort of humor in Childe’s voice, though you couldn’t tell if it was from shock or sadness.

“Still, I’m sorry. I realize that being here is stifling. Thank you, for visiting because of me.”

“Always.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.”

“We all have our secrets.”

“Still. I’m sorry.”

You felt the damp press of a coat against your back, warm breath tickling the back of your neck as Childe let out a small sigh. Leaning backwards you closed your eyes. For a moment there was no sound but the gentle lapping off waves, as snow floated down onto your heads.

“Hey, you don’t expect me to keep this secret free of charge do you.” The mischief had returned to Childe’s voice.

“What’s your price then, Mr. Penguin Catcher.”

“Sparring every day for two weeks.”

“… I think I’m going to go back into the water now.”

“Don’t you dare!”

Your laughs entwined as you raced away from Childe, filling the cold winter air with silent warmth.

 Kaeya

“I swear to fucking Barbatos if you don’t open.”

You kicked the door of your apartment, the muffled clunk doing little to sooth your raw nerves. Stupid, how could you’ve have been so stupid? You knew that Kaeya was working late, you knew that you were going to have to remember your keys. So how did you get here then, standing on the outside while your key was resting safe on your nightstand? How had you still managed to forget?

“You know darling sometimes your too reliant on me.” Kaeya had told you one day, voice singsong with amusement. “One day you’ll forget your head on your shoulders. At the very least you shouldn’t expect me to always unlock the door for you.”

Well sorry you couldn’t see into the future. Groaning you slid down the side of your door, face planted firmly in your arms. You needed to get inside somehow. You weren’t about to prove Kaeya right, not now. You would get in if it was the last thing you do. Lifting your head up you closed your eyes in thought. The two of your were sharing an apartment on the third floor, one of the perks being a mini balcony for flower boxes, not that you ever actually put flowers in there. You always kept that window unlocked in the summer, and though it pushed out you were sure you might be able to open it.

Scurrying back down the stairs and into the back alley of the building you glanced around you. Thankfully there was no one in sight. Praying that your pack wouldn’t be stolen off the hallway floor you sighed softly, letting a soft grin cross your face as your vision shifted to that of a cat.

Thankfully the building was made both of wood and stone, or you never would’ve been able to make it. The climb was perilous however, in your mind if not in real life. The world was so much larger around you, and though being light and having four legs to land on would certainly be an asset, minimal injuries was not something you wanted to bet on. Reaching up towards the final beam you hoisted yourself up onto the flower box, giddy with triumph as you went to paw at the window handle.

Your paws slid off the golden substance as if they were coated in oil. Letting out a hiss of frustration you tried again, letting your claws protract. Unfortunately, the handle still refused to move, as your paws slid off the shiny metal. Shit. Turning around agitatedly you let out a yowl of protest. You were stuck, you were absolutely stuck. What were you going to do now? Getting up was one thing, getting down Unfortunately, another entirely. Nor could you revert here, besides the flowerbox being somewhat small you didn’t want to test the weight of the plank that served as your impromptu floor. So what could you do?

“What’re you doing here?” A familiar voice quieted the shrieks which you were emitting, as the fur on your body stood up. Slowly the window began to open, as a familiar face peered down at you, smirk as brilliant as usual. “Don’t you want to come in?”

Though a part of you suddenly thought that being stuck three stories above ground was a lovely prospect, you leapt through the window, landing on the dresser before hitting the ground. Though you wanted to make a run for it the door was closed, and you cursed Kaeya for his forethought.

“Are you going to tell me what you were doing so far up off the ground?” Kaeya knelt down beside you.

Even if I could do you think I’d tell you why? You let out a mewl, eyes narrowing as Childe let out a chuckle.

“Fair enough, but really it’s quite impressive. You must be one determined cat. Here.” Scooping you up Kaeya let out a quiet sort of laugh. “Let’s get you some milk.”

You stood on the kitchen floor, staring silently at the bowl that had been placed in front of you, wondering if cats also thought about having their meals placed where humans had just been walking.

“What, not your style?” Kaeya cocked his head.

He’d been surprisingly nonchalant about the whole debacle, perhaps spurred on by your own lack of reaction. It was still disarming, almost as much as the smirk that refused to leave his face. What in Teyvat could he possibly be thinking, was a cat stuck on a balcony that funny to your cavalry captain?

“Come now, you’ve got to drink a little bit at least. It must be awful exhausting to climb up a building.”

Still you made no move.

“Or do you make it a point not to eat in cat form, darling.”

“How did you know?!” You sputtered, transforming back immediately.

Kaeya let out a burst of laughter. Clutching his stomach he rocked back and forth on his feet, wheezing as the moment continued, laughing so hard no sound came from his mouth.

“It’s not very funny!”

“What do you mean, of course it’s funny!” Kaeya managed to get out, gasping wildly. “I can’t believe you got locked out and decided to scale the building.”

“What else could I do? Wait, no, first, how did you even know it was me?!”

“Ah yes because you would normally leave your belongings in the middle of the hallway. Come on darling, that wasn’t the smartest move you’ve ever made. Besides there have been rumors about a ghost cat prowling Mondstadt and as the Favonius Cavalry Captain, well you couldn’t expect me to just let these questions go unanswered!”

“How long have you known.”

“About a month.”

You groaned, turning around and face planting into the bed. How could you’ve have been so careless? Underestimating Kaeya was a mistake that many made, but you’d thought that you’d managed to catch up to your partner in terms of stealth.

“It’s alright darling, the embarrassment will wear off in an hour.”

“I just can’t believe I’ve been so reckless.”

“Hey, you’ve been very good at hiding this.” Kaeya ruffled your hair gently and you turned to look up at him. His smirk was gone, and instead there was a soft smile painting his lips. “I just know you.”

You hummed softly smile as Kaeya continued to card his fingers through your hair. Suddenly the whole ordeal was weighing on you, and you felt the familiar tendrils of sleep wash over you.

“You should get some rest.” Kaeya kissed your forehead gently. “It’s been a long day.”

“Kaeya.” You murmured.

“Hmm?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

His voice was warm and full of care, guiding you softly to sleep.

 Ningguang

You never meant to get stuck in a storm. You’d never meant to go crying to the nearest place you could call a sanctuary. Most of all, you’d never meant to reveal your secret to her.

The wind whipped around you, throwing you this way and that. You let out a sort of screech, mind blank with terror as you went spinning through the sky, finding it impossible to right yourself in the air. There was no sign of the beautiful clear sky that had dawned this morning; clouds blanketed your vision, dark underbellies a silent warning as pelting rain fell in waves, made even more painful by the gusts of wind that accompanied it. The familiar clap of thunder boomed, seeming to rattle in your bones as you continued to struggle to find shelter. Spying a familiar building you could practically hear your groan of relief. Swooping down you prayed that this would go alright.

One of the things that Ningguang had told you she loved most about the Jade Chamber was the view.

“It’s so bright up there, you look out the windows and there’s nothing but sky, sky and the land of Rex Lapis. It’s a beautiful sight, I hope to one day see it again.”

You were grateful for her affinity for windows now, using their familiar landmark as a landing spot. Clinging onto the wall you began desperately pecking at the window, squawking and crying as the storm picked up again, desperate for the sanctuary of your partner’s office.

“What is a raven doing outside?” The sotto voice of your love one filled the air.

Opening the window Ningguang said nothing as you flew in, landing on the chair you usually sat in. There was a faint struggle as the wind whipped through the open window, but eventually a faint click could be heard and Ningguang returned to the center of the room. Staring down curiously at you she tilted her head.

“I didn’t think that ravens flew down from the forests, especially during a storm. Perhaps then you’re a messenger from the adepti?”

“N–” you squawked, knowing that you surely sounded strangled. Even after years of transformation you could never get used to the switch between voice box and syrinx. It was as if you’d never learned to speak from the beginning.

“Poor dear, are you tired from your journey? I’m not sure what ravens drink, water I presume.”

Walking over to the corner Ningguang poured some water out of a pitcher onto a saucer. You drank gratefully when she returned, reminding yourself to tell her that normally ravens had to consume both water and salts. Having finished the little ritual, you tried once more.

“N…” still your words weren’t coming. You wanted to say something important, to explain your circumstances. Still you found you could say nothing. As if reading your frustration Ningguang stroked your beak, touch gentle and comforting despite your avian state.

“Poor thing, have you been wounded?”

You looked up at your partner, taking in the smile on her face. You’d gotten better at reading her, reading this woman who people whispered was too proud, too cutthroat, without emotion and without empathy. How stupid those people were. You could see it in her eyes, see the worry. You were a stranger to her, and unlucky raven; and yet she worried for you.

“Ningguang.” You finally got out, tripping backwards slightly at the twisted sound of your own voice. Ningguang stared at you, no less surprised.

“You know my name. Then you must be from the adepti. Has something happened?”

“Ningguang!” You let out one more time, dancing up and down the arm of the chair you were perched on.”

“Is there something that must be done?”

“Ning–”

You stopped, shaking yourself. This was getting nowhere. What was even the point of hiding it at this point? You knew the fears that swirled inside you, knew the fear that had been instilled in you. Don’t tell anyone, don’t let them know. Normal people, they’ll never be able to understand, they’re too afraid, too proud, too lacking in empathy. And yet you knew that wasn’t true, at least that it wasn’t true of Ningguang. Sighing you hopped down on the floor. A few feathers floated out of your hair as you faced your partner.

“My dearest!”

“I’m sorry for the surprise.”

“Think nothing of it. I hope you are not injured.”

Hurrying over to you Ningguang picked up your arms, turning them around as she examined them. Giggling slightly, you shook your head.

“I’m fine my love, really. Only a little shaken.”

“I don’t understand what you were doing, flying out in the storm. The recklessness, I cannot believe you would do such a thing.”

“Sorry, I was being stupid; I didn’t think that the rain would be that bad.”

“I am only glad that you managed to make your way here. If not, well I would not appreciate having my partner felled by a storm.”

“Yeah…”

“Well,” Ningguang planted a few light kisses over the bridge of your nose, “I hope that you will learn, and that we do not have to repeat this performance. Honestly, to think I thought you an emissary of the adepti; I was almost worried this storm was an unnatural one. Morax knows the last thing Liyue needs or can afford is another god rising from the depths.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, if you truly are then you can help me with this paperwork. There appears to be some confusion in terms of the chain of ore production, I believe someone might be skimming from the top.”

In a moment she’d reverted back to her calm and collected self, but you could feel the unsaid words in the air. I will not ask you about your ability. I will trust you to tell me in your own time. It was a comforting message and as you sat down you wondered at how considered the woman you loved truly was.

“It looks like it will be a cool night.” Ningguang smiled up at the sky. The clouds had cleared and the moon shone a silvery light on the once more bustling city.

“Thank the gods. It’s been so hot recently.”

“Indeed.” Ningguang pressed a kiss to your cheek.

You gave her a short kiss back, fingers entwined with hers. The storm had been terrifying, as had the moments after, the moments when you felt you had too much to say and nothing at all. The moments when you had no control.

And yet Ningguang had given you the gift of time, time and patience. One day you would tell her about your abilities, about the blessing, or perhaps the curse, you’d been given at birth. You knew that when that day came you wouldn’t have to worry. So, for now you simply walked home together, hands entwined, both content in the silence of trust.