#i might post this little guy to ao3 too tbh

[whirlpool-blogs]

whirlpool's personal MOTA fic recs!

I've actually been dying to put this together for a while now...today is as good an excuse as any! I might not know everyone's tumblrs vs ao3 names so I will NOT be offended if you tell me to correct something!! <3

the big list = going alphabetical order in my folder because YES I do download my favorites, it's like having your own little bookshelf!!

non-clegan fics:

nine mothers' sons by @reallylilyreally (truly beautiful, breathtaking, and **THE** John Brady bible for the fandom so make sure you pray to it every night)

at your heels by @reallylilyreally (this one is Ev Blakely, another really beautiful story that helps you understand just why Crosby's memoir speaks of Blakely with such love and affection)

clegan (or gale-centric, or john-centric) fics:

A Direct Solution by @sweaterkittensahoy (Gale & Marge proposition Bucky...so cute and so hot)

ain't it easy? by @stereobone (dom/sub with john as the dom but ohhh man it's so much more than just that!!!!! this fic is so full of FEELS. and it's also HOTTTT. and also the FEELSSSSS.)

all the rest of what I want with you by @london-cowboy (the level of care that went into writing this fic is insane and impeccable. down to its own internal timeline, little egan kiddos, and the ANGST. but it's all worth it, I promise!!)

back home where you're from, that's the measure of a man by wolfhalls (nice little oneshot of the bucks, I love the back-and-forth of their dialogue in this one, it really does feel like two people who know each other well)

bittersweet between my teeth by @blixabargelds (post-war adjustment...love when the two majors are a little messy and a little sad and also john calls gale the prettiest thing he ever saw so there's that <3)

bluebirds singing a song by ourdarkspirits (Marge jumps Bucky's bones. Then Gale joins. Super fun, super hot!)

Close and Yet Closer by Anonymous (LITERALLY THE MOST!!!!!! FIC OF ALL TIME!!!!!!! Gale is a little bit mean and John is a lot bit sweaty. Like all the time. it's amazing and you should read it and it WILL change your life.)

Corpse Song by birdwif (oof. john is miserable in the stalag he's scratching at the door he's gnawing his own leg off.)

deep breath baby by @defnotanarc (um FISTING. yeah. intense and delicious. side note sometimes the world isn't fair and people who are really talented and amazing at drawing are also really good WRITERS too LIKE WTF!!)

DOG DINNER by @wompire (super interesting writing style, extremely poetic and striking. hits you right in the gut.)

everything and the kitchen sink by @swifty-fox (YEAH THIS ONE WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE TOO. modern au where gale is a professional dom and john is a journalist who hornily consents to both (1) fucking around, and (2) finding out. in top ten fics of the decade in general tbh)

Freed From Desire by @feyd-meowtha (yoooooo such a fun and free and sexy fic!!! such a great writing style and such a cool remix of all the characters we know and love!)

He wears his love around his neck by kasugayamaisforlovers (Gale character study, he tries to run his little gay thoughts away which is always so fun to see)

hold me like a knife by storm_warning (tw: self-harm, this REALLY gets into John's self-destructive stalag spiral and it's super visceral and wet and heart-wrenching and written with such, such care and precision)

Hound Within the Heart by Anonymous (fairy-tale esque, gets super crazy and pushes the limits of reality but in the best ways possible)

I Don't Wanna Be Alone Tonight by @johnslittlespoon (cuddling for warmth <3 and then a little more <3 <3 so sweet and intimate!!)

I Like A Bad Boy by @nicijones (modern college AU and bucky is a fratty fuckboy type & in this fic he DOES punch a guy for Gale and it's all very hot and sweet and a delight to read)

i wish you wouldn't tell me (about your hawaiian party) by @whitetrashjj (when the fuckbuddies thing gets messyyyyyy because gale catches feelingsssssss, so delicious and meaty!!)

if that isn’t love, it’ll have to do by @irregularcollapse (ALWAYS such incredible character reads from this author, never misses. also facefucking. also FACEFUCKING <3)

i'll be seeing you by @puffanities (a quick 1.6k oneshot but still packed with some really great characterization and powerful language!! 'when the numbers of planes don’t match...')

i'll find you before the dust settles by butidontreallycare (a Westworld AU!! super cool)

in our bedroom after the war by @stereobone (one of those fics that's just like. a pillar of the community, y'know? iconic. classic. eternal.)

Into the Unknown by Melanie_Mikaelson (big win for john whump enjoyers. BIG win. like 20+ chapters of winning)

it ain't for meatball by @meyerlansky (Curt/Bucky. Curt puts the dog collar on Bucky....and it's HOTTTT arf arf i'm barking just like bucky is in this fic...)

It's Not Love, but It's Fun by @sweaterkittensahoy (Curt/Bucky, 500 words so it's short and sweet just like Curt ahahahaha, ANYWAY still such an interesting little read regardless!)

judgment by the hounds by @puffanities (PG, very visceral and tender apology after the stalag fight scene <3)

level-off maneuvers by wormringers (sweet little oneshot of the Bucks in London)

little fix by ForASecondThereWedWon (Algeria <3 <3 you just kNOW those two gay pilots were sniffing and huffing and licking each other's sweat.....this author GETS it)

love means nothing (in tennis) by @irregularcollapse (fics that make you go WEEEEEEEE!!!! every word, every physical action that these characters take is SO precise and well-written. truly like wrapping a soft bathrobe around yourself and also the bathrobe is incredibly sexy and also they're sucking each other off post-game but PRE-shower. also gale's dad!! also margie!! truly such a well crafted AU)

make you feel alive by @sig-nifier (really sweet little oneshot of gale being a little protective of john. and i am ALWAYS a sucker for the 'call off your dog' trope... and it's done perfectly here!)

meet me at the chapel by @swifty-fox (still in-progress and SUCH a creative, inventive universe!! outlaw john you will always be famous to me!!!!)

my kingdom for a kiss upon your shoulder by @swifty-fox (swift can really weave a story like no one else. so many lines that pack a punch. and in the end, they make it <3)

my type by @spaceshipkat (this one is SOOOOO well-written, I always go so crazy for the dialogue!!! such a great push-pull dynamic in this fic)

night terror by @antiquitea (hot! and sweet! and HOT! and angsty!!!!! highlights include: gale gives john a literal countdown deadline to get off)

Obligate Mutualism by bowhuntress (Gale-centric story of trying to get John through the stalag, then returning the England without Bucky, a fic very obviously written with a lot of care and love)

obsessions, and other things by @sig-nifier (the Bucks cope. really great pacing and dialogue, and I always love when fics take the care to delve into john's struggle with alcoholism as well)

of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world (he walks into mine) by @whitetrashjj (really fun parallel universe where Buck owns a bar, just a great read all-around!)

Oh, I do, do I? by @defnotanarc (DIRTY TALK, like the most delicious, incredible dirty talk you can imagine, this fic nails it!!)

One of your Girls by @soliloquy-dawn (9k oneshot and it's great all the way through, Gale is jealousssss of John fucking around, don't worry they resolve it <3, definitely captures that innocence of pre-Bremen MOTA episodes)

peacetime like a liminal space by @spaceshipkat (this one is PHENOMENAL. post-war, John goes to New York City and turns out it doesn't fill the emptiness. luckily Gale shows up. <3)

Putting Words to It by @impalachick (YEAH THIS ONE IS REALLY HOT. John is a snoop and reads Gale's letters to Marge <3)

Reunited by Flowersandthings (PG, cute & funny oneshot of the Bucks being reunited after Gale makes it over from Greenland!)

Reverie by @avonne-writes (REALLY creative, well-crafted story. Gale and John are soulmates and can visit each other's dreams since adolescence. INCREDIBLE journey and arc in this story, the stalag part is just wow. truly such a gift to the fandom!!).

Rugire by Anonymous (umm omegaverse-ish but with deer dynamics. messy. and SO good.)

SHOTGUN. by pornogirl (YEAH this one is awesome, it's not safe it's not sane but oh boy it is consensual)

Song of Songs by @swifty-fox (sweaty sex sweaty sex sweaty sex)

Spin, Sit, Roll-Over by @glumbabie (Gale is a little mean to John and it's VERY sexy of him tbh. 'DOGS DON'T TALK'???? 'YOU CAN EAT'???????? yeah. read this.)

the chimneys hardly ever fall down by @redbelles (another Gale/Marge + John, and it's HOT. it's SEXY it's awesome!!)

the hand of a good man by @stereobone (John rewrites Gale's daddy history <3)

the jacket by @dogmetaphors (REALLY great sense of dialogue and characterization even in 1.6k words, also shamelessly horny and SO yummy)

The Major’s Wife by tryingmyhandatwriting (John/Original Female Character but like. give this one a chance, I'm telling you!! I'm always soooo compelled by sex scenes that like. are actually a little bit unhappy. and this one SERVESSSSS.)

this must be the place by @blixabargelds (BIG win for Gale whumpers. broken bone and LOTS of blood and super well-written)

To be alone with you by Damn_Illusive (THIS ONE IS SO, SO SPECIAL AND CREATIVE!! freaky army experimentation gives gale and john telepathic communication. incredible separation arc while gale is in the stalag. really, really unique story that is such a staple in my mind as one of the the most incredible clegan stories ever. I think about this one A LOT!!!)

To the Moon and Back by @rambleonwaywardson (iconic astronaut AU, written with SUCH care and love, it's so obvious!! and BIG win for john whumpers. who said that -)

Tough And Sweet (Like You And Me) by @johnslittlespoon (sooo fun and creative and inventive, Bikeriders-esque!Gale and a sweeter, more innocent John. really well crafted)

trading paper dolls by ForASecondThereWedWon (Alex draws Gale pinup girl style in the stalag.....John swipes it.... super great fic!)

two slow dancers by everywordnotsaid (unrequited love, John for Gale, through their journey. I genuinely, actually sobbed for a long time at the conclusion of this fic. I am always thinking about this fic. I think it really captures something about the experience of watching the show and realizing in that hopeless, lovesick kind of way that there's no way to go back in time and save all of them. I still get teary whenever I think about this story or hear the song. It's one of those fics that's not just good, not just great, but somehow also really fucking IMPORTANT. this story MATTERS. you should absolutely read it and save it and imprint it onto your heart. I know it's imprinted onto mine.)

Un Chant d’Amour by @counting0nit (really intriguing take on the interrogation center time frame!)

unicorns, and other extinct animals by @spaceshipkat (really, really incredible reading experience. something that actually touches other aspects of my life, even now. I see planes overhead and I think about this fic. I see letters on a table and I think about this fic. just. this author GETS IT, you know? just absolutely nails every aspect of this kind of fic: post-war adjustment, the pain, the LOVE. this fic will make you FEEL it. let it happen.)

Up In Our Bedroom by @steeseman (ICONIC. really one of those pillars of the community type fics, y'know? it's funny and it's sweet and it's painful and the hot parts are HOT. clearly written with SO much care, and SO much love, and SO much precision. every single word packs a punch. absolutely one of my top reads of all time, across time, across fandoms)

When the bones are good by @aramblingjay (a really incredible post-war fic, such a beautiful, rich writing style!! isn't afraid to dig at the hard parts - john's relationship with alcohol, their nightmares from the war. stunning visuals -- the author uses setting and place and motion in such a tangible, real way. I can still see the little hideout spot in my mind's eye, even now. one of those fics that's just. such a treasure to the fandom.)

your dreams, whatever they be by @drylite (this one is super new, and it's just SUCH solid writing!)

You're A Dog (I'm Your Man) by @johnslittlespoon (one of those fics that's a pillar of the fandom for SURE!!! definitely a classic)

[quin-ns]

Fake Blood (Ethan Landry x Reader)

Word count: 5.6K

Summary: spoiler: the blood isn’t fake. alone in your apartment after your friends had been attacked, you ask ethan to stop by. he does in an unexpected way and you get more than you bargained for

Tags: (18+), friends to lovers, minor violence, knife tw, flirting, making out, virgin!ethan, virgin!reader, fingering, unprotected p in v sex, the ghostface robe stays on during sex, denial ab ethan being a murderer :) (if bad why hot?)

A/N: just watched scream 6 for the first time only a few days ago and couldn’t get this psycho out of my brain (tiktok edits didn’t help lol). timeline might be a little wonky but tbh it’s not relevant. also this follows the theory that ethan did the big apartment attack. I really wasn’t expecting this to be this long but it’s worth it yall I promise

cross-posted to ao3 • scream masterlist • main masterlist

As much as you liked Mindy, if you knew becoming friends with her would lead to you being integrated into her friend group of past and present serial killer victims, you might’ve thought about asking someone else to partner up with you for a presentation in your film studies class.

When you’d asked her, it was mostly to avoid having to accept an offer from a guy named Jason, who had always stared at you during that class and brought up the ‘Stab’ movies whenever he could (this was before you knew your friends knew him, but you still got a weird vibe from the guy).

She’d been excited to hang out with you after you two gave your presentation, and that’s how you wound up spending most days with her and her tight knit group of friends.

You were probably closest with Mindy, but you liked her brother too. For a guy named Chad, he was actually pretty chill. You got along with Tara as well, who was in a bit of a rebellious phase after being attacked and nearly killed, which you only learned about once they trusted you enough. Her older sister Sam was mostly cool too, but a bit overprotective. There was a gloomy aspect to her, but you supposed it made sense given that she was betrayed by her murderous boyfriend and now the internet peddled theories that blamed her for a series of killings in their home town of Woodsboro.

They had a tight bond, and even though you grew close with each of them, you knew you’d be an outsider. Like Tara and Sam’s roommate Quinn, Mindy’s girlfriend Anika, and Chad’s roommate Ethan. You all had shared multiple conversations about their trust issues. It must’ve been hard to even start to trust people after all that.

Out of all of the other “newcomers” as Mindy once put it, you got along with Ethan the best. He was a little quiet and sorta dorky (which your friends would tease him about a little—all friendly, of course) but he was fun to talk to. You guys liked a lot of the same stuff, including horror movies, and it didn’t hurt that he was cute.

In your opinion, with his curly dark hair and eyes to compliment, the whole “shy guy” thing was part of the appeal.

You wondered if he’d ever make a move, or if he even knew you were curious about him in that way. You wouldn’t go so far to say it was a crush for your ego’s sake, but you wouldn’t send him running off with his tail between his legs like you did with most guys.

Like that guy Jason from film class, who, just before Halloween, was killed alongside his roommate by a masked killer.

“Didn’t he have a thing for you?” Mindy asked you as you were all gathered around the TV, finding out the news together.

You were sitting crammed in a chair next to Ethan since the others had all taken up the couch space. He didn’t seem to mind, but it did unfortunately make it easy for them all to look your way and stare. You didn’t like the attention.

You were in shock at the news, especially when the anchor revealed Jason had also killed your film professor. Ethan pointed that out, saying if the guy was crazy enough to do that he might’ve even gone after you.

“Maybe the killer who killed him did you a favor,” Quinn suggested in response to Ethan.

The thought terrified you. You looked around the group. “Do you guys think he really would’ve hurt me? He seemed weird, not psycho.”

“We talked not that long ago, nothing seemed off,” Tara revealed with a grim look. “He asked if you and Sam were gonna come to the party.”

You hadn’t planned on going—what the hell would’ve happened if you had?

You exchanged a look with Sam, who seemed to have the wheels in her head turning.

You zoned back into the news as the reporter explained the mask found was a ghostface mask—like from the Stab movies. And of course, the actual Woodsboro killings.

“Pack a bag,” Sam told her sister, springing up to move around the apartment building.

Sam and Tara argued, which was a little weird to witness. You tried to sink back into the chair, while Ethan looked at you like he wanted to say something.

Hopefully it wasn’t “get out of the chair” because you didn’t think you could move.

The night ended with you going back to your little apartment alone. Your roommate was out of town and so your anxiety was on high alert.

A lot had happened that night apparently, including Sam and Tara getting attacked in a convenience store and them being questioned by the cops.

As much as you cared about them, you feared what would happen if you were with them.

That’s why the next night when you were invited over, you had been hesitant. A government paper was the perfect excuse, but you had FaceTimed with them so you all could keep an eye on each other.

You sat at your little desk, your laptop opened to work on your paper, and your phone propped up on your cup so you could talk to them hands free.

Apparently everyone was together at the apartment except Ethan, who told you he was studying in the library when you texted to ask him. You responded that you were working on a paper and that if he wanted to come over to keep you company, he could.

You’d spent some time alone with him, but not a lot when you really thought about it. It was always in the group—who were all murder suspects, according to Mindy’s movie rules.

You knew you weren’t the killer, and you had absolutely no motive. The others were still suspicious of you so that hurt a little (maybe that was another reason why you were keeping to yourself), but you did your best to understand that they weren’t just suspicious of you.

Everyone was a suspect, and no one was safe.

You felt even less safe when Mindy said she’d call you back. You didn’t know why she had to hang up so urgently, but you had a feeling it had to do with the emotional conversation Tara and Sam had been having in the background. You couldn’t make out most of it clear so you avoided mentioning it.

You sighed and checked your chat with Ethan. He hasn’t responded to your text. You were getting nervous now that you weren’t video chatting with your other friends anymore and the thought of being home alone didn’t bring you much ease.

You thought about just going over to the Carpenter’s (and Quinn’s) apartment, not wanting to bother Ethan further. Maybe he was ignoring you on purpose.

However, it was a far walk there. You didn’t feel safe making it alone at night—especially with a killer on the loose, likely targeting your friends. If you had a car, maybe, but you were a broke college student who could barely afford a place to live.

You sucked it up and double texted Ethan, this time asking if he could come over and that you were worried.

When he didn’t respond right away, you gave it a few minutes.

A little while longer passed and since you now couldn’t focus on your paper, you tried to call Mindy back. Then Tara. Then Chad. Then Sam. Then Quinn. Then Anika.

Not a single one of them answered.

You took a deep breath. Then, you went to double check that your door was locked.

You tried to call Ethan, but his phone went immediately to voicemail. It must’ve been dead or powered off.

That left no one else to call, and you felt more alone than ever.

You sat down at your desk and tried to focus.

You ended up going to your bedroom, putting on sleep clothes, and watching a comfort show under all your blankets instead, paper completely forgotten.

Your phone dinged from your bedside table and when you looked at it, you saw a message from Ethan. Only a few hours late, but he said he was on his way up.

That was sudden. You tried to not overthink being alone with Ethan too much.

A few moments later, there was a knock at your front door.

You climbed out of bed, not really caring that you were wearing sleep shorts and a baggy shirt. Your friends had seen you go to class in about the same when you had all night study sessions.

When you got to the door, you got a little nervous. But you knew it had to be Ethan, so you tried to push the anxiety aside and unlocked then opened the door.

You were met with shock and horror.

Towering over you in your doorway stood a figure in a black robe… and a ghostface mask.

You tried to slam the door, but the person caught it. You choked on a scream when they shoved their way in, holding a knife. There was a small stain of red on the metal blade and a darker, bigger mass on the robe.

Blood. Blood was red.

You scrambled back and tried to think of where to go. None of the doors in your apartment locked, not even the bathroom door.

Your heart and mind raced and suddenly you were spewing words.

“I don’t know what to say to make you not kill me, but I please don’t,” you rushed out.

The person—the killer—moved closer to you after shutting and locking your front door.

You ran, but there was really nowhere to go. The killer ran too. You tried to lure them to the bathroom and shove them in, but they dodged and had you almost within their grasp.

They didn’t slash the knife, though.

You ran for the front door, but the killer grabbed you by the arm. You were shoved back against your hallway wall and pinned. Your back slammed against the wall, but not hard. They held the knife to your throat—not too close, but it was still there and still kept you frozen.

“Are you gonna kill me?”

The words came out before you could stop them. You internally scolded yourself. That’s the kinda shit the girls who got murdered asked.

There was a laugh, and then a familiar voice.

“I’d never do that.”

By the time the killer reached for the mask and pulled it off, you still hadn’t processed your shock.

“Ethan?” you gawked up at him while he gave you a cheeky smile. He let the mask drop and the hand holding the knife fell to his side.

“You should’ve seen your face,” he said through a smile, excited eyes scanning your face for realization.

“Is this… is this a fucking prank?” you questioned, finally comprehending. “Ethan, what the fuck!?” You shoved him back by his shoulder, admittedly a little pissed. “You’re covered in blood!”

He stayed standing in front of you.

“It’s fake, I promise. It was just a joke,” he reasoned, looking a little guilty. “Y’know, cause Halloween and… alright, maybe my timing isn’t great.”

You scoffed out a laugh at that. “It’s terrible timing. There really is someone after us.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Ethan apologized with a small, apologetic smile. You stared at him, still surprised. He looked so innocent for someone that could pull off, let alone come up with, such a messed up prank.

“Is this where you’ve been? Dressing up to mess with me while there really is a killer after us?” You questioned, raising your brows and crossing your arms.

“Y’know, if there really is a killer after us, we probably shouldn’t let each other die virgins,” Ethan stated in a flirtatious way he easily could’ve played off as a joke. Maybe it was entirely a joke, but you played along in a different direction.

You scoffed. “And you’re just assuming I’m a virgin?”

He shrugged, the long fabric of his costume rustling. “I see how you are with guys. They want you, you never want them.”

“So what, I’m a tease?” you guessed, used to hearing that but a little disappointed to think it would come from him.

“No,” he clarified quickly. “But they’re just never good enough for you and you know that. Like that jerk Jason.”

You cringed a little at the mention of him, and then felt bad about that. The guy had been murdered, after all.

“Don’t say that, he’s dead.”

“So what?” Ethan asked plainly, surprising you a little. “He was a killer too. He could’ve gone after you, you should be grateful to whoever did it.”

You furrowed your brows. He was starting to sound like someone else. “Grateful?”

“It’s okay, you’re allowed to be.” Ethan’s expression as he spoke was one of reassurance. “You could’ve been next, you never know. He was one of those guys who couldn’t take a hint that he was beneath you.”

You had no idea he thought that way about you—that there were men he deemed unworthy. It was enough to distract you from the shift in his demeanor.

“And what? You’re saying you’re one of the guys who’s good enough for me?” you couldn’t help but wonder. You never thought about your dating history (or lack of) like that.

“Hell no,” he said, surprising you yet again. You were expecting a ‘yes’ with the way he was coming onto you all of the sudden, but what he said carried even more of a self-depreciating brand of charm. “But I’m hoping maybe you’ll pity the loser who’s had a hopeless crush on you for a while now and give him a chance.”

“You’re not a loser,” you said before you registered the rest of his words. When you did, you were taken aback at the confession. “But you’re not usually this… bold, Ethan.”

You wanted to ask him if something was wrong, but there was a lot wrong these past few hours.

“What can I say? I’ve been feeling more confident recently.”

You hummed, understanding that in a way.

“Maybe it’s the whole ‘we could die any second’ thing,” you ventured a guess.

He smiled to himself, like you’d just referenced an inside joke you weren’t a part of.

“Could be,” he agreed. He laughed a little and looked down at himself, then met your eyes again. “Sorry about scaring you. It was in poor taste. We both like horror movies… I don’t know, it was stupid.”

You scoffed, but you weren’t really mad anymore.

“I like horror movies, I don’t want to be in one,” you told him, eyeing the knife he held loosely in his right hand. “Is the knife real?”

“What?” Ethan asked, feigning confusion. He lifted the knife and examined it. “This knife?”

“Yeah, that knife,” you parroted back his playful tone. “You said the blood is fake, but is the knife real?”

A devious look crossed Ethan’s face. He held it to your throat slowly, holding it horizontally. You didn’t flinch, much to his pleasure. He seemed almost impressed.

“Gotta be authentic, right?” he mused, eyes flicking to your parted lips as you breathed steadily. “Can I kiss you?”

When his curious eyes looked back at yours, you couldn’t help but notice he still held the knife. The rush of excitement you felt scared you more than the fear of him letting it slip forward.

“What’s the knife for?” you asked with a surge of confidence, taunting him a little. “If I say no?”

Ethan laughed at that. He pulled it back and let it drop to the floor. It clattered against the wood, and you let out a breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding. But it wasn’t from fear—it was from anticipation. Maybe your curiosity was a little more than that after all.

“You’re safe with me,” he assured. “Promise.”

His words felt layered, but in a way you couldn’t define.

Perhaps it was his way of saying he’d protect you. Maybe it was strange, especially given his entrance, but you found yourself feeling exactly that with Ethan. Safe.

Nothing was going to hurt you, certainly not him.

“About that kiss…” you started, giving him the indication that he was looking for.

Ethan took the hint and ran with it, lips crashing into yours in the blink of an eye.

His lips were soft, but the kiss was needy and hungry. You tried to move your lips in sync with his, but he was much more dominant.

A joke that you’d never say flashed by about him practicing.

It was easy not to laugh when Ethan’s hand threaded into your hair and his tongue began to explore your mouth.

The leather glove felt strange. It made you pull back a little, which you almost couldn’t do with the way Ethan eagerly chased your swollen lips with his own.

You glanced over his costume again. It looked really legit—when did he have time to get it? Was he actually gonna wear this for Halloween? You swore you remembered him and Chad talking about some other costume he made out of cardboard for the frat party.

Before you could spiral down that path, Ethan pulled the leather gloves off quickly and cast them aside. It was like he could read your mind. Both hands went to your face, pulling you to meet him halfway in another searing kiss.

You didn’t know what was coming over you, but whatever it was was causing arousal to stir in your belly.

You figured out the answer to that pretty quickly.

It was want. You wanted Ethan.

“Is the other offer still on the table?” you uttered softly when you and Ethan had to part for air.

He grinned, unable to contain it.

“Thought there was no way in hell that would work,” Ethan admitted a little breathlessly. “Thought I never stood a chance with you, but I liked you anyway.”

Ethan had a boyish charm about him usually, but now that was combined with a streak of deviance that you finally now noticed.

You weren’t expecting to be as intrigued by it as you were.

“Give yourself a little more credit,” you told Ethan, raising your hand to cup his cheek. He leaned into your touch a little. One hand rested on your shoulder and the other fell to hold your hip, tucking under your baggy shirt and rubbing your skin beneath. “You are pretty cute.”

Ethan’s smile only grew, but when you leaned in to kiss him again his lips met yours.

He wrapped his arms around your waist and guided the two of you to the ground with your back leaning against the wall. He was in front of you, on his knees, with you in his lap.

You ran a hand through his curly hair and you guided his lips back to yours. From what he’d revealed, Ethan hadn’t had a lot of experience with girls. It was a damn shame, because the boy was a great kisser.

His hand caressed your thigh as he trailed upward. You gave him a soft sound of encouragement when his fingers found their way to the waistband of your shorts.

“Is this okay?” Ethan asked, which made you want to grab him and kiss him again.

“Yeah.”

His hand slid into your shorts and your underwear.

One finger—you guessed middle—pushed inside of you. A small gasp escaped you at the intrusion and he watched your face.

Ethan was making sure the sound wasn’t of pain, which it wasn’t, and you appreciated that.

He withdrew the digit, then pushed in again. He repeated the motion a few more times before adding his index finger.

Ethan’s breathing grew heavy as he felt you squeeze around his fingers. He thrust and curled them inside you with rhythm. He managed to find one pretty quickly. That plus his thumb rubbing at your clit, you were falling apart in mere minutes.

Your brief orgasm rocked your whole body, leaving you clenching his fingers and quivering.

Ethan muttered things to you, but you could hardly hear over the sound of your own heart pounding in your ears.

Your head rested back against the wall as you caught your breath, still trembling from the aftershocks. Ethan withdrew his hand from between your legs and out of your shorts.

Your eyelids felt heavy, but in between slow blinks you saw him lift his fingers to his lips. You watched breathlessly as he placed them into his mouth and moaned at the taste of you.

No words would come out of your mouth, but he took rendering you speechless as a compliment.

“I’ve thought about that,” Ethan started, voice a little ragged. He was watching you, but his hand had moved off to the side. “What you’d look like… what you’d sound like… what you’d taste like.” The awe in his eyes as he spoke left you swooning.

“And?” you managed, sitting up a little straighter.

With the change in your angle, you could feel the bulge in his pants, even though the added layer of the costume he had yet to remove.

“You’re better than I ever imagined,” Ethan finished.

A scrape against the floor alarmed you. You looked to the sound and saw Ethan grabbing the knife off of the floor.

You watched as he brought it between your bodies. He first tucked it through the leg of your shorts, the cold metal sliding against your skin as it caught under your underwear as well. Then, he pointed the sharp side facing out. Finally, he sliced up through the fabric. You gasped a little as the cold air of the room hit your newly exposed skin. He did the same with the other leg, then pulled the tattered material away from your body.

You did the honors of pulling off your shirt. You didn’t have a bra underneath and you almost laughed at the way Ethan gawked at your fully naked body when you cast it aside.

“Your turn,” you told him. You were completely undressed, while he still wore the long, black disguise.

“Actually,” Ethan said a little eerily. There was something in his eyes you couldn’t quite pinpoint. “I was thinking I could leave it on?”

It was a question, there was room for you to say no. Maybe you should’ve, it was a little weird. But you weren’t really thinking about that. You were more focused on how badly you wanted Ethan to fuck you, and that clouded your brain.

“As long as you don’t put the mask back on,” you relented in a joking tone.

“You’re so fucking cool,” Ethan rushed out before slamming his lips into yours. The knife was cast aside again—you didn’t see it happen, but both of his hands were on your face.

You laughed a little against his lips, dazed and drunk on arousal. You didn’t really care about the logistics of it.

His hands moved down, but you were distracted by his lips dominating yours.

You heard the sound of his zipper being undone and he moved a little—you guessed shoving his pants down his thighs.

There was no time to look down because in a rush, Ethan was pinning you back against the wall with his body. One hand gripped your waist, holding you in place for him. The other was presumably guiding his cock to your entrance.

You gasped a little against his lips when he started to press forward while simultaneously pulling you down into his lap. The fabric of the costume draped over your thighs, blocking your view.

The stretch of his cock pushing into you was more intense than you could’ve predicted, but your whole body trembled with pleasure at the feel.

Finally, he either got too excited or lost his patience, and guided you down the rest of the way until he was fully sheathed inside of you.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Ethan cursed to himself, body straining to keep from moving. His head dropped to your shoulder, heavy breaths hitting your neck. He leaned against you, forcing you against the wall.

His cock twitched inside of you and his body tensed, trying to hold back.

You panted slightly, trying to get your breath back. You ran a hand up his back and you felt him shiver. Your hand moved up the back of his neck and into his mess of curls.

You always liked Ethan’s hair.

You gave a small, barely qualifiable tug, but it had an effect. His body jerked, causing him to move inside of you. You gasped a little, but the motion felt good.

He lifted his head to look at you. His face was a little flushed and the lust blown look in his eyes made you quiver.

“You can move,” you whispered out, not trusting your voice.

Ethan didn’t need to be told twice. He secured the arm around your waist a little tighter and he put the other hand on the wall, giving himself leverage.

The slow drag of him moving out of you made you gasp for breath. The thrust back in knocked the air out of your lungs.

He set a quick pace after that, hips slamming eagerly into yours as the pleasure and excitement overwhelmed him.

It felt good, really fucking good.

Neither of you knew exactly what you were doing, but you were sure you’d figured it out because your whole body tingled with pleasure.

You cried out his name, which only spurred him on.

In a jarring movement you could hardly track, Ethan dragged you from the wall to the floor. He put himself on top of you, never once withdrawing from inside of you.

He watched your face as he pounded into you. Ethan had more leverage this way, able to grip your hip in one hand while the other held the top half of him off of you by being planted on the floor near your head.

You wrapped your legs around his waist, which you couldn’t see because the bottom half of your body was covered by the black costume. You hardly paid any attention to that aspect. You didn’t care that he wore it, not when you were this caught up in pleasure.

(In hindsight, you should’ve).

“I’ve wanted you for so long,” Ethan breathed out, hips starting the stutter with every thrust.

The knot in your belly started to tighten as he buried himself into you over and over.

You couldn’t speak, your breathing was so labored as you reached to cling to him.

His head dropped down to your shoulder as he allowed more of his body weight to fall onto you. You found yourself enjoying the feel of him truly being on top of you.

You hardly noticed the fake blood smearing onto your bare skin. When you did, you were too gone to care.

You bucked your hips, meeting his stuttering thrusts. He was getting close to his edge and so were you. You moaned beneath him as his forceful thrusts sparked pleasure through your entire body.

“I’m close,” you managed to moan out against his ear.

“Oh, fuck,” Ethan groaned out, cock pulsing inside of you at the thought. He lifted his head enough to be able to watch your face. “Come again for me, please,” he panted out, nearly falling over the edge at the mere anticipation.

The begging was hot, and your body was already ready to give him what he wanted.

You noticed his eyes flicking down your body, seeing the red stains on your skin. That was quickly forgotten by you when your whole body began to tense and quiver. You held onto him tight as waves of ecstasy crashed over you.

You didn’t see his eyes linger.

Ethan couldn’t hold it together, not with the way your body tightened around him as your orgasm rocked you.

He collapsed on top of you, holding you against him as his forehead pressed to yours. His eyes were clenched shut as he frantically shoved his hips against yours, burying himself deep. His cock twitched, his whole body shivering as he spilled himself inside of you with a moan.

The sound of him alone was enough to prolong your pleasure as you rode it out, but the extra movement and the feeling of him filling you was an added bonus.

He kissed you hard on the lips, effectively pulling the air from your lungs.

After a moment, he found the strength to roll off of you, only to then drag you to his side.

“I can die a happy man, now,” he joked morbidly.

You shoved him a little by the shoulder like you had before, but not enough to actually make him go anywhere.

“Don’t say shit like that,” you argued weakly.

He flashed you a brief grin. “I meant it as a compliment.”

You rolled your eyes and did you best to laugh it off.

You lost track of how long it took you to move from the floor to your couch. The same thing happened between the time it took for you to get from the couch to your shower.

It was a tiny shower that couldn’t fit two people, so you rinsed off as quick as you could. You were tired, and your legs felt weak, and you knew you’d be sore in a way that would make it hard to keep calm tomorrow.

Whatever he had used for the blood, at least it washed off fast. You were able to finish up in a matter of minutes.

You threw on new pajamas and crawled into your bed, managing to tell Ethan to take however long he wanted and that he could stay over if he wanted.

You found yourself hoping he would.

You were nearly asleep when the shower shut off and Ethan finally joined you in bed. He was only in his boxers and a black t-shirt, which he must’ve been wearing under the costume robe.

A thought nagged at the back of your mind about the costume, wondering why he’d gone through all of that just to mess with you for a minute—albeit a terrifying minute. It didn’t seem like him, but then you remembered you’d only met him a few months ago.

You were so exhausted you fell asleep in his arms, not awake enough to care about all of the weird details. In fact, the only thing you could think about was how much you liked falling asleep with Ethan’s arms around you.

In the morning, you found out your friends had all been attacked.

You showed up with Ethan after the feed on your college’s chat app blew up with images of cops swarming and ambulances outside of Sam, Tara, and Quinn’s apartment.

Mindy seemed relieved to see you, but not so much when she realized Ethan was with you. Maybe she’d cleared you as a suspect in her head.

She yelled at him to stay back, accusing him of being the killer. Nobody was taking Quinn’s death well, but Mindy was especially heartbroken over Anika.

“Stay back!” Mindy yelled at Ethan, who did as she commanded.

Everyone turned on him then, even Chad. Everyone except you. They demanded his alibi.

“How do I know you’re not the killer, roomie,” Chad spit at him, amped up.

“I was with Y/N last night,” Ethan defended, holding his hands up in a small show of innocence, before you could say a word. “We were… preoccupied, alright?”

You wanted to elbow him for how he worded it, he couldn’t have been more obvious if he tried. It might’ve been on purpose, you weren’t sure.

He wasn’t close enough to do that, though, and now all eyes were on you.

“Yeah, he was with me,” you backed Ethan up.

You weren’t going to leave him hanging because it was the truth, but you knew what that implied, and so did your friends. They all shared subtle—but not unnoticeable—looks. Your face felt warm, while Ethan bit back a prideful smile.

“So you guys, um…”

“Chad, stop,” Tara scolded him before he could point out the obvious.

“Point is, we had nothing to do with this,” Ethan stated.

We?

They were suspicious of him, and now he was lumping the two of you together. There were always two killers in the movies—you began to doubt if the alibi would ease their anxiety or only spike it.

You thought back to when he had showed up to your apartment in that costume. He’d scared you, but you accepted it when he told you it was a joke that he mistakenly took too far.

It made you wonder. What if it was him?

If he wanted to hurt you, he easily could’ve. That didn’t seem to be his intention. What was? Seeing how much he could scare you? Get your heart rate up? Seeing if you wouldn’t believe him?

Or was it seeing if he could put the evidence right in front of you and have you ignore it because of a crush?

Fuck. Maybe it was some weird combination of all. Were you that gullible? Or were you overthinking it now?

Your brain struggled to come up with a conclusion.

You wanted to believe Ethan was innocent. You really, really did.

It was easier than believing you had slept with a killer. Or potentially worse, that you had feelings for one.

Ethan gave you a slight, assuring smile.

Your head told you one thing, but your heart told you another.

Maybe you shouldn’t have, but you kept your mouth shut and gave him one back.

[hillbilly---man]

A list of my works on AO3

(they're all Saiki K fics at the moment but I'll add fandom categories to this post if I ever get a new interest lol)

It doesn't fit my plans; it's something I don't understand

Published July 11, 2021

Summary: Saiki is fascinated by Satou Hiroshi, and the people around him start to see that this might be more than just a platonic curiosity.

What is this feeling called love?

[Notes: Bittersweet ending. Nobody gets together. My insistence on theming these early fics after songs is pretty embarrassing now. I'm not proud of my writing here but the story is ok. I might rewrite it someday. Not bad for my first fic since like 2003 though]

Something Changed

Published August 11, 2021

Summary: Aiura wrote a letter to her soulmate the night before they were supposed to meet.

She's predicted a lot of things... how could she have gotten this one wrong?

[Notes: Another sad ending. The format of this is almost entirely an excited letter about the future Aiura imagined that would never come to pass. Not really much of a story happening here tbh]

Won't it be strange when we're all fully grown?

Published August 28, 2021 (INCOMPLETE)

Summary: With graduation quickly approaching, the psychics of PK Academy (and Akechi) worry that they'll drift apart. Luckily, they come up with an idea.

"Let's all meet up in the year 2030!"

A lot can change in a decade.

[Notes: Kind of like a psychicker class reunion where they're all adults with jobs and everything catching up. Future chapters were going to have almost a Scooby Doo vibe (with a twist reveal at the end about Aiura's husband!) I abandoned it because I posted some art and someone called my art creepy and it made the whole fic feel bad to think about. Maybe I'll get back to it someday. It's cool to see how quickly my writing improved. I was also super proud of how well I wrote Akechi's dialogue here]

Hotel Valentine

Published September 24, 2021

Summary: Toritsuka Reita is a pretty lucky guy. He somehow managed to not get expelled from PK Academy, he graduated, and he's avoided creeping on any living girls for a few months. To celebrate, the PK Psychics paid for a one-night stay in the fanciest hotel in Tokyo so Reita can creep on the ghost girl of his dreams. Pretty lucky, right?

Too bad things aren't going his way. He's being ignored by the staff, he's bored out of his mind, and he can't find the ghost girl anywhere. Some vacation, huh?

[Notes: Spoiler: Toritsuka's a ghost stuck in a nice hotel. This is based on a concept album that most of you have never heard but hear me out! It really has nothing to do with the Cibo Matto album of the same title except that the chapters are named after the songs and there are fun Easter eggs for fans of the album. Another slightly sad ending but not too bad]

Coffee & TV

Published August 27th, 2022

Summary: The new silence in her house felt heavy on Kumi's shoulders. Everything reminded her of Kumagoro... especially her grandson Kusuo, who has been coming to visit more often than ever before.

[Notes: this is my least popular finished fic and I understand why. It's about grief and the loss of a grandparent. It's about the unique pain that a psychic would have after failing to prevent that death. There's a sad twist that TBH I think I was a little too subtle with. One of my favorites]

Friendly Fire

Published January 8, 2023

Summary: Being an adult is great until the Problems start. Good grief.

30-year-old Kusuo's psychic powers have been pretty well controlled for over a decade. Why are things starting to go haywire all of a sudden?

[Notes: Friendly Fire my fucking beloved!! In this fic, Saiki gets essentially psychic multiple sclerosis and has to deal with some complicated emotions. I don't think it's a masterpiece or anything but it was cathartic to write and I'm in love with the versions of these characters that I wrote here. So much so that I'm writing a sequel just so I can write more of them. Also, FINALLY a happy ending!!]

Ramen Ikouze?

Published April 28, 2023

Summary: After being dragged to get ramen with Nendou every week, Kusuo starts to realize that it's not so bad after all.

[Notes: I love Nendou, he's so good. This fic is very cute and about their friendship. A couple of fun twists]

Saiki has Plans?

Published May 2, 2023

Summary: Saiki mentions having plans after school, and the overactive imaginations at PK Academy work themselves into a fuss trying to imagine what he could be doing.

[Notes: This fic follows around a bunch of Saiki's classmates as they gossip and snoop to find out what he's up to. It's my most popular fic for some reason]

A Bright Flash

Published May 13, 2023

Summary: Saiki develops an annoying new ability, and through some comedy series logic is forced to tell Teruhashi about it. She tries to be a good ally to her "newly psychic" crush.

[Notes: Teruhashi accidentally finds out about Saiki's new power and he's like "fine. I'm a psychic. But it's just this one power and nothing else."]

Heat Wave

Published June 6, 2023

Summary: There's a historic heat wave in Hidariwakibara, and some of our favorite PK Academy students end up running into each other while taking refuge from the hot weather.

A series of four standalone (but connected) stories taking place at the same time:

Aiura has a vision of disaster, and she and Nendou try to stop it

Yumehara gives Toritsuka some advice to improve his game

Akechi meets Teruhashi's brother

Saiki really wants some shaved ice from the kakigori stand where Mera is working

[Notes: The summary explains it well but also I weaved so many connections between the chapters (that are all happening at roughly the same time). It was also a lot of fun writing interactions between characters that didn't get much in canon. Also you can tell it was hot as hell when I wrote it because I definitely gave Saiki some kind of psychic heat intolerance lol]

Immunity

Published July 6, 2023

Summary: She didn't know why, but Kokomi was finally able to see the truth.

Why Saiki seemed to appear and disappear without explanation. Why it seemed like he always knew what she was planning. Why he wore those weird hairpins.

It was all so obvious now.

Saiki had psychic powers.

[Notes: The veil is lifted suddenly and all the truths that Saiki kept locked behind his mind control were revealed to Teruhashi. He and Aiura have a chat with her about it. Also this was the first fic of mine that an IRL friend read (to my knowledge) and his comment was something like "I don't know anything about your boy but he sounds autistic and gnc" and I took that as a fucking compliment! You know you've written Saiki right when people can see that shit from space]

The Disastrous Financial Situation of Saiki K

Published August 9, 2023 (IN PROGRESS)

Summary: Adjusting to his new limitations has been annoying, and now Kusuo (age 31) needs a car to get around.

Unfortunately, taking time off work has drained his savings.

How is he going to get the money for a car now?

[Notes: This is my sequel to Friendly Fire but it's a lot lighter in nature. 100-Yen-Man goes around doing stuff for Saiki's friends. There are mentions of his disability from Friendly Fire and it's plot relevant but I think you can catch on even if you didn't read the original. I haven't updated in a while but I am actively working on it!! A Yumehara and Makino chapter next and then a Toritsuka chapter after that. TBH this isn't my best work and it's pretty unpopular but I'm having fun and that's all that counts)

[asleep-in-the-keep-sideblog]

Announcement: Anniversary

Just me talking about the future of the fic :)

First off, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! Wow a whole year (plus extra) WITH (near) constant updates, that's crazy. More than I can say for my other fic... (it haunts me. I still plan to finish it but ouch). 

First things first!

I wanted to update sooner (since I've had this written for a month now) but I was also working on a one shot to post at the same time. I was making great progress but then finals came round and I got burned out. They're finished now but I'm still burned out. I'll give a brief hint about it though since I'm a little excited and just wanna talk about it. So its a Dadzawa fic that's actually happy and ends with them as a family (unlike how it was in the last chapter lol). It was supposed to cheer people up and also be practice for writing them as a family and stuff. The Danny is very different from the main fic tho. The fic was also supposed to serve as an anniversary present for all you guys too, to thank you for reading and being here. I really wanted to finish in time but it kept getting bigger as I wrote. I do hope to post it this month tho, so keep an eye out for that!

Next thing!

On AO3 it shows that the fic is now apart of a series and has a chapter count. I talked about this in the notes of a previous chapter, but I had been wanting to do that for a while now. I want to have the next part of the series out by next year. I know I have been updating monthly now, but I'm gonna try to do twice a month if I can. I'm really excited and It want it done soon! I might do 2 chapters this month or will just count the one shot if I get lazy.   

I also added the tags "full ghost Danny." Sorry to burst anyone's bubble that held on hope for Danny. Tbh the original plan was that his human half was still hiding inside him, just healing and small, but it was gonna show up in one of the chapters. The longer the fic went on, the more I started to rethink that. The human reveal, while good in the short run, would crumble some of the plot lines I had set up while also not contributing much to the rest of the plot. I am debating maybe doing a short series of "what if" where that is the case tho, just so people can get a taste. If I like it enough I might make it a full thing. Who knows. 

Final thing!

(this paragraph is referencing the support on AO3)

Guys! Guys! Guys! Guys! Guys! Guys! Guys! Guys! Guys! Guys! Guys! This fic has 2k kudos????????!!!!!!! HOLY CRAP! WTF?! 

That is so huge! Gahhhh! Man, I am always critical of my writing (I've gotten better) but wow to have that kind of support just in my face! Literally speechless. I always had the thought in the back of my mind that once the fic goes on for long enough people will start to see its flaws or get bored. That's true for some, but I keep seeing a lot of the same names again and again and I am grateful to you guys so much. That was also one of the reasons I wanted to do the one shot. I just want to keep giving you guys more content that you'll enjoy.

Thank you so much for being here, truly 💚

Good luck on finals if you got them! 

[bladesmercy]

001 for sfkr and clerith!

oomf u know me so well. thank you for letting me yap >:-)

001 | send me a ship and I will tell you:

sefikura 🐍♡☁️

when I started shipping it if I did:

there's actually a funny story to this one. > be me. > guilelessly playing kingdom hearts 2 in 2019. > "what the hell is these dudes' deal. i wonder if people ship them at all" > open ao3 thinking there might be a handful of fics > "oh there's a couple more than a few, huh" > life ruined.

my thoughts:

my favorite little guys in anything ever. they surgically removed my personality to make room for more sefikura. truly i have never loved a ship as much as this one. literal otp of all time.

What makes me happy about them:

everything? they're so funny and silly to me. extremely pathetic creatures. two absolute losers. i think of them and i always smile. i love the fact that each of them have independently made their personality revolve around each other at different points in time, it's so funny.

What makes me sad about them:

EVERYTHING. the fact they will never have a happy ending. the fact they will be enemies in every (canon) universe. the fact they are two extremely broken people who are uniquely equipped to understand each other and that won't be enough to save them.

things done in fanfic that annoys me:

tbh i'm so picky with what i like and don't like about how both these guys often end up characterized, but i also think all interpretations are valuable in their own way. i can't think of any huge annoyances, except that i have very Specific feelings/headcanons about sephiroth in crisis core era, and usually won't read things that veer too far away from that.

things I look for in fanfic:

i love any and all fics where the author makes it obvious that sephiroth is just. completely besotted. and i think cloud feeds off of that, even if he won't admit it. i'll read just about anything with these two, but i especially love stories where authors can articulate the crux of their dysfunction really well. yes, these two have have immense amounts of hate, and blood, and pain between them, but (especially on sephiroth's end) there is also an Intense desire for intimacy, of any kind. these two things juxtaposed well is just magical to me.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: 

no one. i say that as a joke but it's pretty much true. for cloud i do also ship him hardcore with aerith (somewhat against my own will XD), but outside of that i don't really multiship these two anymore. i used to be a Hardcore multishipper, and while i still appreciate things like some polyshipping (other cleriseph enjoyers where are you, i need food of that ot3 so bad), i honestly can't enjoy the thought of them being with anyone else. i miss being a multishipper, because these days pretty much every single other ship with them (outside of clerith) has become a notp for me. ;w;

My happily ever after for them:

in canon? haha. the closest i could see them in canon ffvii (and the closest i think part 3 of remake would get to giving them a 'happy' ending) is having a moment of resolution similar to what kuja and zidane get in ffix. i would be satisfied with that for canon. BUT if we're taking all the stops off, i want to see the dramatic epic pining slowburn post-AC where they eventually figure out how to lead semi-normal lives alongside each other. this is making me want to write that now....maybe that will be my next fic project.

who is the big spoon/little spoon:

there's an obvious answer here with consideration to builds and hair lengths, i think. i like to think cloud has accepted his fate to have this 7 foot tall piece of brick clinging to him like an octopus.

what is their favorite non-sexual activity:

this is another obvious one, and i'm tempted to say 'fighting', but i'm not sure that clears the bar of non-sexual for them. my second choice is that i think they would just genuinely enjoy being around each other in silence. they're both such introverts, and i like to think of them just recharging quietly with each other.

clerith ☁️♡🌎

when I started shipping it if I did:

let me preface this by saying that when remake came out in 2020, i had less than zero interest in vii's infamous love triangle. i wanted no piece of it in my heart or my home. then the game came out and cloud and aerith gripped me by the throat and violently dragged me into falling in love with them by being so damn charming and heartfelt and perfect for each other.

my thoughts:

i love these two so damn much. i really Really loved them in remake, and rebirth intensified this to a level i could Not have anticipated and is currently ruining my life. i love them. i love that they are soulmates, romantic, platonic, or something in-between. i love that their bond and chemistry is near-instantaneous, i love that cloud blooms into letting himself experience softness around her, i love that aerith finally has someone who cares about making her happy and standing by her so damn much.

What makes me happy about them:

so much. their love is so pure and tentative. their vibes to me run parallel to how i see and experience the early 20s as a queer person, essentially the second teenage-hood where you're still feeling yourself out as a person, and you have no idea what you're doing. you feel like you're missing out on a lot of the fundamental experiences that 'normal' people have already had, and i feel like both cloud and aerith mirror that emotion, thanks to the fucked up circumstances of both their lives. aerith is cloud's first real friend after nibelheim (and potentially ever, depending on how close you think he was with zack. to me, i hc cloud and zack were pretty friendly, but not especially close prior to the nibelheim incident.) and cloud is also one of aerith's first friends. they've both suffered such acute loneliness and isolation in their lives, and the fact they find healing for that in each other is so so special to me. the fact that aerith is the person most able to reach through to the person cloud Really is, even under everything he's got going on, makes me so deranged.

What makes me sad about them:

well. there is a very obvious answer. so there is definitely That. that's kind of a big deal.

things done in fanfic that annoys me:

honestly i feel like i don't have many specific fanfic annoyances in general, because if a fic annoys me i just stop reading it, and then my adhd makes me forget i read it to begin with.

things I look for in fanfic:

i really love everything with these two, i love all the cute fluff happy ever afters they don't get to have in canon, but i also love the angst and the drama and the trauma. usually i just gravitate towards any fics that i feel understands the characters well or has interesting ideas, the exact plot or type of scenario is less important to me.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: 

in my heart, cloud's endgame ship is always sephiroth. as for aerith, i'm also a Huge zerith shipper (yes i am in constant emotional pain, how did you know), but aeriseph also firmly has a place in my heart.

My happily ever after for them:

any. any of them. i want the most tooth-rotting fluffy ending for these two. (admittedly, their iconic tragedy is a part of why i love them so bad. without it, my emotional investment would be Nowhere near as high.) i've been reading a lot of wedding/alternate future fics with these two lately and they all make me ;w;

who is the big spoon/little spoon:

i genuinely think it goes both ways, but if i had to say i think cloud is doomed to be a little spoon in any lifetime.

what is their favorite non-sexual activity:

oooh tough one!! i think aerith would love teaching cloud to garden....though i'm not sure he would be any good at it. but i have faith in him to learn.

[honeekyuu]

WHAAAAAAT i want to know the reasoning behind why kyoutani was considered for genius :0000000

HAHAHAHAHAHHA okay tbh it's because i had written him in as a side character paired with kiyoko in the tsukki series i have on ao3 (thanks for reminding me, i will post ch1 here rn!!!!!) , but at some point in the process of writing him in with kiyoko and generally in the background, i LOOOOOOWWWWKEY fell so hard in love w him

im talkin "giggling, twirling my hair, kicking my feet, considering writing a separate him/kiyoko chapter" levels of fell in love

so when i was considering "enemies to lovers!porn partners" (LMAO), i really was like oh it MUST be kyoutani, i feel in my soul he's good for that

but i had 2 criteria for choosing the character for this plotline:

he couldnt be someone whos like,,, stereotypically hot and (importantly) KNOWS hes hot/would make jokes about being hot and perfect to do porn -- so ,,, kuroo for example. or oikawa. or matsukawa. or even iwaizumi if you reaaaaally squint. or someone who you might consider fratty/fuckboi-coded in any way. bc i specifically wanted a dynamic where the guy was very attractive but (1) didnt care about his own looks in that way, and (2) wouldnt agree to do it right away, because i wanted him to be a bit difficult, and i think that, even as enemies, someone like oikawa for example might say "okay. ill do it. BUT... you have to do xyzabc for me in return." i didnt want that. i wanted a guy who would knock yn on her head and call her an idiot and say that they shouldnt do this. and i also wanted a guy who wouldnt question yn's reasons/decisions, even if he was reluctant to agree. ANDDDDD i also wanted a guy who would agree in the end not because he could get smth in return, but because he was actually a good dude who wanted to help her because he could see shes struggling

he couldnt be gullible/innocent/uncertain/inexperienced/silly/any kind of character who might not know EXACTLY what hes doing and getting into. so no kageyama, no ushijima, no aone, no bokuto, etc.

i talked through the kyoutani idea with my beta reader(s), and they were both basically like "we dont really know WHAT kyoutani's like in this respect, and hes a little innocent in some ways too" and thats why in the end we went with akaashi

because akaashi, above all else, meets all the requirements to be yn's perfect man

[pastelpousay]

UHHHM SO UH… IK I SAID I WAS GONNA MAKE A STORY ABOUT RINA AND HADES AND I DEFINITELY STILL AM

(Hadina OTP guys 😁😋/j)

I still am in the process of writing (the prologue 💀) buttttt I’m really excited to get to work on the first chapter cuz omg and I’m literally queening out in the notes app rn like damn Ik I’m cookin- but yea idk if anyone interested but you are now….😁 I’m in ur walls pookie (also pls ignore how illiterate I am)

I’m still working on Rina’s reference sheet and character info n stuff (he backstory is still in the making but it feels less foggy) I’m honestly just gonna give like a rundown of their relationship and other just honest headcanons about hades cuz why not man 🐺🎀

So basically Rina is kinda an npc I kinda want her to be that way cuz tbh she already stands out quite a bit 💀 and uhm…I’m sure we all know why (because she’s a monkey just like me 😊) I don’t want her to stand out too too much and also I don’t want her to be a Mary Sue (I don’t have a problem with mare sues tbh I love em but Rina is literally anything but that 💀) This girl is peak of loser girl, no friends, no family, no one to talk to, not even the animals 💀 like girly is a looser bro like this girl literally has the worst posture imaginable and while she does have manners she’s kinda just….like- idk 💀 she so off but I feel like Hades is lowkey into that (not so he feels better than her, maybe because he wants to spoil her and it makes him feel good to finally take care of her 😻😽 ……chat and I cooked??)

Not like “omg she’s not like other girls” more of like “wowww finally not the same carbon copy of every other person I’ve seen for once” type thing y’know that’s probably why (well that is why) he feels so drawn to her (why am I rambling about this no one but me cares 💀😭) but uhm yea!! I’ve always kinda felt that Hades has a type for people that stand out or don’t have the same plethora of thoughts as other people, and I feel like Hades would realize this about Rina after the start having more deep conversations (like about things they wanna do, wanted to do, or just things that most others might not be comfortable enough to talk about) Okay uhm……I’m done I don’t want this post to get too long Ik everyone is sick of me talking about it but I Literally don’t have anyone to ramble to 😭 but I hope y’all enjoyed 😽🎀

BTW ILL LINK THE STORY SINCE ITLL BE ON AO3 BUT IF I POST ANY DRABBLES OF THEM OR MUNDANE LITTLE HEADCANONS ITLL BE ON HERE🥳

[derpinathebrave]

Finders Keepers - IceMav SpyAu Part 5 - Caring

READ ON AO3

These chapters come out faster on AO3 just as an FYI. This took me a week to put up here. I'm sorry guys formatting a tumblr post is such a pain. Check the Masterpost pinned on my blog to read the other chapters too! (and other fics tbh)

SUMMARY: “Don’t get attached, Mitchell,” Ice said, mumbling soft enough that the kid wouldn’t hear but the words were piped through the earpiece to Mav.

Maverick gave him a look of mild disinterest before returning his attention to the kid. Just because Ice was a cold-hearted bastard, didn’t mean Maverick had to be. There was nothing wrong with being kind to a child that they had rescued from a house of traffickers. It wasn’t like he was about to adopt it…

TAGS: Tom “Iceman” Kazansky/Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, OC Child Character, Ron “Slider” Kerner, Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, Bill “Cougar” Cortell, Mike “Viper” Metcalf, Rick “Jester” Heatherly, Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood, Penny Benjamin, Rick “Hollywood Neven, Leonard "Wolfman” Wolfe, Fluff, Family Fluff, Literally found family, MavDad, IcePops, SpyAU, Very Mild Violence, Spycraft innacuracies, Mild mentions of human trafficking, Selective Mutism, No Beta we die like goose.

WORDS: 8,574

PART 1 - PART 2 - PART 3 - PART 4 - PART 5

Large, brown eyes were inches from his own. Ice startled, still half-asleep and giving a sharp exhale. He blinked, groaning with lingering sleep and scowling at Emma. She was smirking. 

“Good morning,” he said through another exhale. “Can I help you?”

“No,” she said. 

“Is there a reason you woke me?” He grumbled and rubbed his eyes with one hand.

“No.” She snickered. 

Ice hummed and rolled onto his back. After a moment he dragged Emma over with him, trapping her in his arms as she wriggled and laughed.

“Then why did you wake me?” Ice said, mock-irritation in his tone. He poked at her ribs, making her squirm and squeak. 

“I didn’t,” she protested through her laughter. 

“You did.” Ice chuckled. “If you didn’t wake me, why am I awake?”

He softened his arms, giving her space to get away if she chose to.

“You just woke up,” she said, the giggles still rolling through her.

“That doesn’t sound like me.”

She giggled again, snuggling into a comfortable place on his chest. Her small hands clutched at his top and she gave a heavy sigh. 

“You OK?” Ice asked, trying to smooth her wild hair out of his nose.

“I didn’t think you’d be here,” she whispered. 

Ice stilled, his breath escaping in a rush. He nodded slowly before giving her a tight squeeze. 

“I didn’t think I would either,” he admitted. “But Mav asked me to stay last night. And when I thought about leaving you two...” Ice heaved a sigh, lifting her as his chest rose and fell. For anyone else, Ice wasn’t sure he would have been able to get the words out. “I don’t wanna leave,” he said softly.

She nodded against him.

“If you two wake me up every morning I might leave,” Mav’s voice grumbled from the other side of the mattress. He was rolled away from them and half sprawled on his chest. 

Emma made a noise of distress, thrashing to look at Mav. 

Ice had been lucky for days. His luck had run out. Her bony little knee landed directly between his legs, pain surging through his stomach as he gave a strangled noise. 

“Fuck.” He restrained the urge to flip her off him altogether. 

Mav was there in seconds, looking alert and ready for anything. He pulled Emma away from Ice easily.

As Ice’s vision cleared a little, he found Mav was working hard to stifle laughter. Ice let out his own weak laugh around the rolling nausea-pain. Maverick’s hair was standing straight up, defying gravity, but only on one half of his head. 

“You alright?” Mav asked, voice choked with laughter. 

“Peachy,” Ice sighed. He looked at Emma. 

Her eyes were wide with fear and guilt.

“You’re alright,” Ice said. “I know it was an accident.”

Her expression didn’t shift. Ice reached out and patted her hand. 

“Did you get a fright, Em?” Mav asked, encircling her with his arms. 

She nodded. Her eyes shifted from Ice to look up at Mav. They filled with tears. 

“Woh,” Mav pulled her into his chest. “It’s OK. You’re OK.”

She gave a hiccoughing sob, clinging to Mav tightly.

A heavy air settled into the room. Ice’s heart weighed down against his stomach. This was how it would be for a while. The bright, fun energy of their morning soured in an instant. He hated that this was her life. She deserved so much more.

“D—“ The sound snuck out between sobs. 

Mav stilled, turning his head to hear her better. 

“Don’t leave,” she sobbed against him. 

“Oh, fuck,” Mav’s face scrunched tight. “Fuck, Emma, I’m so sorry. I’m not leaving. That was a stupid joke.”

Ice sighed. He added to a running list in his mind of what had the potential to set Emma off. So far it consisted of crowds, closets, and the mention of leaving. 

She was quicker to calm this time. The sobs fading after only ten minutes. Maverick held her the entire time, mumbling apologies and reassurances. The three of them were suspended in silence, sadness hanging over all of them. Ice sat up with a sigh. He leaned over and gave her a kiss on the back of the head. After a moment, he turned and took a kiss from Mav’s distracted lips too. 

It startled a laugh out of Mav, his smile returning at last. Ice smiled back and took another kiss. 

“I have to get ready for work,” he said. 

When he shifted away, he found Emma was watching with wide eyes again. There was still some fear swimming beneath the surface but he could see wonder creeping in. He gave her a wink. 

Ice dragged himself out of bed, incredibly reluctant to go to work. He stretched, feeling the other two watching him. 

“What?” He said with a grin. “Someone in this family has to make money.” 

They made matching strangled noises at his words. Ice simply smiled at them and headed for the door. Their tender expressions of hope painted into his heart.

Pain snapped against his skin. Mav blinked a little as he released the pinching hold he had on his own inner arm. He couldn’t quite believe it was real yet. Ice had stayed. Ice had said wonderful, loving things to him. Ice, no, Tom. Tom had laughed and played with Emma in bed before getting up, using the F-word and then going to make him coffee. 

He pinched his arm again. 

Emma was sitting at the bench eating cereal and watching as Tom downed the last of his coffee. Pete was leaning across from her, doing the exact same thing. 

Ice looked at them both, laughing a little and setting his coffee mug down. 

“Stop looking at me like that,” he huffed. “You’re making me feel like the bad guy.”

Mav and Emma exchanged the pleading look they were wearing before turning it back on Ice. 

“I have to go to work.” Ice laughed again. He dragged Mav into his arms and held him tight. “I’ll come back this evening.” He turned to look at Emma and then the mess of Stuff in the living room. “Besides, you two have plenty to do here today.”

“Yeah, but you could help,” Mav said, leaning back a little but not far enough to break Ice’s hold. 

“Clean up your own mess, Mitchell,” Ice teased, eyes dancing. 

Mav felt his entire face heat and redden, this might take a little getting used to. Not only the idea that Tom was so eager to touch him and hold him, but honestly, that anyone was. Pete was beginning to realise he was touch starved. It was so natural to him to hold Emma in comfort, now he understood why. He craved it just as much as he expected she did. 

Rather than fight against the current of warm affection and dig up a sassy reply; Pete leaned up and stole a kiss. Ice hummed, taking another for himself and then releasing Mav. 

He moved around the bench, kissed Emma’s hair and gave her a little squeeze. 

Emma immediately abandoned her cereal to stand on the stool and wrap her arms around Ice. He chuckled and lifted her into his arms. Mav watched closely. Yeah, they couldn’t get enough of Tom holding them. 

“I’ll see you later, Squeak. I promise,” he said. 

She looked into his eyes for a long moment. “OK.”

“Have a fun day with Mav,” Ice beamed at her. “Don’t let him burn the house down.”

“Hey!” Mav protested. 

They laughed at him and Pete let his grin break through as well. 

“OK. I’m going now,” Tom placed her back on the stool, kissing her head again. He crossed to Mav, kissed him as well and headed for the front door. 

The pair of them sighed as the door snapped closed. 

Mav sipped his coffee and skirted around the bench to lean against Emma a little. “Right,” he said, “let’s get this place all cleaned up for you to live here. OK?”

A small, reluctant smile curled at her lips. 

It was a strange drive to work for Ice. For one, it took longer than he expected. Mav lived out in suburbia, while Ice’s loft was tucked away on the edge of the CBD. The longer drive gave him more time to think about everything. 

And he tried to think about everything. He did. He would start with a breakdown of how he ended up there and what he was doing, but it devolved into just picturing Mav and Emma giving him pleading looks to stay. It seemed to replay the adorable way they had both gone blank when he called them a family. He couldn’t stop himself from reveling in the way Emma had giggled like a real kid when he tickled her. 

By the time he made it to work, his cheeks were sore from smiling but he couldn’t stop. It wasn’t until he was in the elevator that Ice managed to get his face under control. He might have had the best twelve hours ever, but that didn’t mean he could undermine his Iceman persona. He had a reputation to uphold. 

A persona that lasted the distance it took him to walk from the elevator to his shared office. Once the door was closed again, Goose and Slider took one look and gave him identical smug grins of satisfaction. Ice’s blank expression lasted about three seconds before he gave them an equally smug smile in reply. 

Slider laughed. He pulled a pack down from the racks and crossed the room to Ice.

“We have a surveillance detail today,” Sli said, passing the pack to Ice and grabbing an empty one. “Chipper and Sundown will relieve us after lunch.”

Ice’s good mood took a nosedive. 

Slider gave another laugh and dragged him back out of the office. After a short struggle, Ice doubled back and poked his head in through the door. 

“Goose,” he said. 

Goose turned, eyebrows up in a question.

“You got time later to talk about that other job?” 

The hacker’s face turned shrewd and he gave a nod. “Sure. Let me know when, yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“Good hunting,” Goose said before turning back to his computers. 

“Hack the planet.” Ice snapped the office door shut, grinning at the muffled groan from Goose. 

After a quick stop in the cafeteria to get a supply of snacks and water, Ice and Slider headed out to their assignment. Ice drove while Slider read the job report. They were off to watch another gang house, another connection to the trafficking ring they had been working against. Once enough information had been gathered on the numbers of members and their comings and goings, another team would be tasked to head in and clear it out. 

Surveillance was, in Ice’s professional and personal opinion, one of the worst jobs. Sitting in a hot car, playfully arguing with Slider over anything they could think of to pass the time, and staring at a building in the middle distance. Ice would rather have helped Mav and Emma clear out the Stuff in the living room. This was probably why they didn’t get orders until they were already clocked in for work. 

He pulled up to the curb and sighed. This was somehow worse and better than usual. The house was on the corner of an intersection. Ice and Slider were parked out the front of a sad looking strip mall, two of five spaces empty and papered over with newspapers. The other three were a bodega, a dingy looking real estate office and a massage parlour with blacked out windows. Across from the strip mall was a diner, it was markedly less dingy and seemed to be turning a relatively good trade. 

“I think we should move down to the next street,” Slider said, eyes narrowed behind his dark glasses. “It’s too conspicuous to be sitting in a car outside a diner.”

Ice nodded, he looked at the strip mall for another moment. Something was tickling his intuition. 

“Sli,” he said slowly, “what’s your read on that?” 

He tilted his head toward the real estate office. Slider turned. A fresh frown appeared on his face as he looked from one end to the other. 

“Mm.” It was not a positive noise. “Let’s get into position and we can check it out later.”

Ice gave a nod.

With the pair of them dressed for the day, Mav and Emma sat down in the lounge and started to sort through the piles of Stuff. She was enthusiastic, hunting through the bags and boxes and bringing what she deemed most interesting to Mav first. 

Beyond the carburettor kit, she found a set of attachments for his pneumatic wrench, a missing set of socket wrenches he had since replaced and a book of paint samples for the Valiant. 

“You into cars, kiddo?” Mav asked as she pulled over the bag of old car magazines.

She gave him a shrug but her face was burning with interest. 

“No one ever teach you this stuff?” He guessed and leafed through the magazine on top. He stopped on a page with a shining blue Plymouth Valiant. “This is what is in the garage.” He showed her. 

She leaned over his shoulder, standing behind him and resting most of her weight on his shoulders. 

“You can help me fix it, if you want,” Mav said, turning to smile up at her. “I think you’ll help me stay on track.”

She gave a cheeky grin. 

“But first, we gotta finish all this. So let’s take the air gun stuff, the carb kit and the socket set to the garage. You can have the magazines if you want ‘em.”

His heart swelled as she gave him a tight hug and grabbed the bag of magazines from his lap. They were spirited away to her room without a second glance. Mav took the other things into the garage, a slight spring in his step. 

Their day passed easily. As they sorted through stuff, Emma eventually losing interest and pulling out a magazine to browse on a nearby armchair, Mav nattered away at her. He told her the story of most of the things he unearthed. He told her the most child-friendly stories he could about working with Ice. 

He didn’t mention her parents again. Maverick knew that the conversation had to happen. It would be the hardest conversation of both their lives when it did. So he delayed. 

He told himself that Emma would do better if Ice was there when he broke the news. He told himself that dead was dead and it didn’t matter when she found out. He told himself that the stupid bastards had given her up anyway and their memory deserved no honour. 

They were all smoke-screens for his real reason though. He didn’t want to. He wanted her to have one day of being happy and just a kid. He wanted to pretend that he was her dad and nothing bad had ever happened to either of them. 

If only.

“I fucking hate surveillance,” Slider sighed, taking a long drink from a water bottle. They had been there for two hours, watching absolutely nothing happen.

“I know.” Ice shot him a look of exasperated affection. “I know because you tell me every time we do this.”

“I’m just keeping you informed, Ice,” Slider said with a grin. “How was the kid last night? She deal with you leaving OK?”

Ice gave a reflexive sniff and focused extra hard on watching the house, willing someone to come or go so he could change the subject. Slider’s eyes burned into the side of his head. 

“What is that?” Slider said, voice almost cautious. “Why are you avoiding answering me?”

It wasn’t that Ice didn’t want to tell Slider what had happened, he just wasn’t sure he was ready for the reaction it was going to elicit. He rubbed at the back of his neck, clearing his throat.

“No,” Slider gave a dark chuckle. “Oh, you stayed didn’t you? You’re completely gone for this kid too, aren’t you?”

“Well,” Ice cracked a smile. “You met her. She’s cute.”

“Yeah, she’s cute I guess.” He gave a shrug. “How are you going with having to see Maverick all the time?”

Ice jutted his chin out, lips pushing out as he fought against a smile. He lost, giving a wide grin and turning to see Slider’s reaction. 

“Damn,” Slider huffed, somewhat amused but with a note of irritation. “I bet Goose it would take longer than that.”

“What?” He frowned.

“Wait, did you kiss him?” Slider clarified. 

Ice’s grin returned full force.

“Shit,” Slider laughed. “I mean, good for you. But you cost me a twenty.”

“Why the fuck are you two betting on my love life?” Ice shook his head and returned to watching the house. 

“Because we’ve been watching the two of you circle each other for, oh, about eighteen months now.” Slider shifted in his seat and took another long drink. “Goose said it would be within the week. I said you’re both so fuckin stupid it would still take at least two.”

Ice opened his mouth to give an argument but found he didn’t have one. He snapped his jaw shut once more. Slider gave a low laugh. 

“I’m going to head back up to that real estate place,” Ice changed the subject quickly. “You good here?”

Slider laughed harder. “Sure, man, I’m good.”

Ice climbed out of the car, gave Slider the finger, and headed off back up the street toward the strip mall.

He tried to prod the small ember of irritation into an actual emotion but it didn’t work. Sure, it was annoying that his best friend had bet he would be too stupid to kiss his co-worker, but kissing said co-worker really made up for that. The same irrepressible happiness welled up inside him once more. 

The real estate office was even more rundown now that Ice was close to it. He wandered past the windows, pretending to stop and look at their listings. More and more ticks of suspicion fired off in his brain. 

The listings were all faded, as though they hadn’t been shifted from the window in weeks. There was a thick coat of dust on the fake plant he could see by the front desk. The receptionist watched him, her head down but eyes flicking up to him as though she were trying to hide it. 

Ice sauntered on by, the picture of someone that hadn’t seen anything that caught his eye in the window and was merely a bored shopper. He headed for the bodega without looking back. It was mostly just to cover his behaviour but as Ice stepped into the store, he couldn’t stop himself from smiling. 

There was a display of stuffed animals by the counter. Near the top, about the size of a toddler, was a pink and blue monkey. He had it in his hands and at the register before he could stop himself. With that and a pack of gum, he headed back down to the car and Slider.

Mav and Emma finished sorting through the Stuff shortly after lunch. There was a new pile of things in the garage to be dropped off a charity shop. Maverick planned to con Ice into doing it for him. What he really wanted to do was convince Ice to let him drive his i30 but he also tried to be a little realistic in life. 

With that done, Mav cleaned out the display cabinet in the dining room. Emma sat at the table working away at one of her puzzle books as he showed her each trinket and explained them. She watched with fascination, handling each thing he passed her with reverence and care. 

“You know, Em,” Mav said after he finished placing the vintage 303 rifle back on the bottom shelf having detached the bayonet once more. “I was thinking about your room.”

She looked at him with her “I’m listening” face. 

“We should paint it, don’t you think?” Mav leaned onto the back of a chair and looked down at her. “I always wanted to be able to paint my room. But I never had a room that was mine. So let’s paint yours.”

“Why?” She said, her head tilted a little and the marker in her hand poised above the page. 

“Why…” Mav replayed his own words back hunting for where she had got hung up. “Why didn’t I have a room that was mine?” He tested.

She gave a sharp nod. 

Shit. Mav licked his lips and gave a short sigh. He walked right into that one. 

Maverick pulled the chair he was leaning on out from the table and sat down. Emma was watching him warily. He set his elbows on the table and shifted toward her a little.

“When I was 3, my dad died,” Mav started. 

Her face pinched. He took her hand in his. 

“It’s OK. I’m OK, honey.” 

Emma’s expression didn’t change. Mav forged on, knowing she wanted to hear it. He would have in her position. 

“He flew planes for the Navy. He died fighting in a stupid war. Not long after that, maybe a year, my mum died too.” Pete braced himself, watching as Emma’s eyes grew wet but tears didn’t fall. “I didn’t have anyone else that could take care of me. So I was put into foster care.”

She stood and rounded the table, climbing into his lap and holding him tight around the middle. It was a sad sweetness. Mav wrapped his arms around her and set his chin on her hair. 

“I grew up in things called group homes, which a lot of people call orphanages,” he continued softly. “I shared a room my whole life. And I didn’t ever really have somewhere that was just for me.”

They sat in silence for a while. Old memories were buzzing around Mav’s head like beetles, noisy but too quick to catch. 

“It’s important to me that you have somewhere that is just yours,” he said. “I want you to have somewhere that you belong.”

“I belong with you,” Emma said, voice thick. 

“You do, Em.” Mav kissed her head. “You always will, OK?”

The afternoon ticked by as they sat together. Mav felt something between them had shifted. There was now a tether between their hearts. No matter what happened, they would always have this. It was a heady thing, so be so firmly rooted with another soul after a lifetime spent adrift. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, but they didn’t fall. He simply sat and held her, and she held him. 

All the snacks were gone. They were on their last bottle of water. The heat of the day had passed over to their relief. Slider was taking a short nap in his seat, his bulky frame scrunched up on the reclined car seat as best he could. 

Ice watched. 

It was exhausting to sit and do nothing but concentrate on all the nothing happening. If he could have passed the time with something other than staring at a house no one had gone in or out of all day, he wouldn’t feel so tired. Forcing his brain to carry on beyond the initial “there’s nothing there” message it sent him was tough. 

The monkey toy sat on the backseat, watching with him. Ice had gone through a roller-coaster of emotions over it. He loved it, Emma needed a stuffed toy. He thought it was the stupidest thing he had ever done, she was ten what if she hated it? He decided it was the thought that counted and he couldn’t imagine her being ungrateful. He wondered if it was too much or too soon. He wondered if her parents had ever done something like that for her. 

Ice sighed. He knew the address of her old house. He had memorised it instantly. He doubted he would ever forget it. It was in a poor neighbourhood, in the rough part to boot. He had been through there a few months ago, near the beginning of this trafficking case. An excellently horrible idea struck him. 

Slider’s phone rang, startling him into movement. Ice snorted a laugh as Slider’s knees crashed into the dashboard. He grumbled and pulled his phone from his pocket.

“Hello?” He answered, still frowning. “You’re a real prick, Chip.”

Ice laughed again, his eyes ranged up and down the street until he found the other pair in their Agency car. Sundown gave him a friendly wave and Ice raised a hand in greeting back. He started the car as Slider debriefed Chipper over the phone. They were finished for the day. 

Back at the Agency they debriefed quickly. Ice hammered out his report, adding the suspicious real estate place with a request to have it further investigated in the future. Slider unpacked their bags and wrote his own report out, laboriously tapping the keys. 

Goose was long gone. They had no idea where he would be, the man ran his own hours a lot of the time. Ice stared at his empty desk and felt a pang of jealousy. Goose often ducked out to watch one of Bradley’s baseball games or some event his school was putting on. 

One day soon they would have to discuss school with Emma. They would have to find a place that was both secure and friendly. What grade was a 10 year old in anyway? He was going to have to do some research. 

As he turned back to his own computer to do just that, his eyes slid over Mav’s empty desk. All his belongings were still there, he hadn’t cleaned it out or anything, but it felt weirdly empty. Ice realised there was a trickling sadness in his chest. It was going to be so weird not having him here all the time. 

“Finished!” Slider crowed and clapped his hands together. 

“Finally, I swear you’re the slowest typist I’ve ever met.” Ice stood. 

Slider gave him a perplexed frown. “Uh, touched that you stayed with me through that trial, Ice, but, what are you still here for?”

“We’re going to The Flats,” Ice said. He could have framed it as a favour. He could have made it a request. But this was Slider, they were old friends, old veterans. Slider had been a green beret. Ice had been a SEAL. They had met on a mission that technically never happened in a place that they definitely never were. 

It had been serendipity that Ice had been recruited into the Agency the same year that Slider was losing his passion for the special forces. They had met for a beer and catch up and on the following Monday morning Slider had been brought into the Agency alongside Ice. 

“The Flats?” Slider frowned harder as he stood. “That’s all the way across town.”

“I know, so we should get there just after dark,” Ice said, twirling his keys around his fingers. 

“You’re buying me dinner,” Slider said, voice resigned as he grabbed his own stuff and headed for the door. 

“Alright, but I’m not going to fuck you after.” Ice smirked as they headed into the hall.

“How about some inappropriate touching?” Slider carried on the joke. 

“Not even a goodnight kiss,” Ice said, barely holding down his laughter.

“Bit frigid, aren’t ya?”

“Well, they don’t call me Iceman for no reason.” 

After pouring over the book of car paint samples for hours, Emma had selected a metallic green the colour of new growth. Mav approved heartily, hoping they could get something at the hardware store that was metallic. 

Watching her decide had been very informative to Mav as well. He, himself, would have just flipped pages and picked whatever stood out to him the most, maybe flipping back and forth to be sure. Emma took a pad of paper and a pencil, meticulously writing out the name and page number of each of her potentials to be compared and culled down to a list of final colours. From there, he watched with amusement as she took the book into the bedroom and held each colour against each wall. He could see her brain working. He could suddenly understand how the codes he’d given her had pulled out of her shell so quickly. 

While Mav was making dinner, he realised they would have to find her something to stimulate that part of her. He wondered if there was a program he could put her into. He would have to do some research.

Emma gave a squawk as Mav stepped back onto her toes. She had been hovering around him in the kitchen, holding onto his shirt hem as he worked.

“Sorry, kiddo,” he sighed. “If you give me some space, I won’t step on you so much.” 

She gave him a powerful frown and held tighter. 

“Right.” He sighed again. “Well, let’s try this then.”

He took her hand and set it on his waist instead of clinging to his shirt. Her little fingers curled into him. 

“Now,” he leaned toward her and then away. “You can feel where I’m going and you can move with me.”

She smiled and stepped in to press herself against him, still holding his middle. Mav chuckled and pressed against her in reply. 

“Where’s Ice?” She asked, her voice small but clear enough. 

“I’m not sure, baby,” Mav sighed. He glanced at the clock. “He shouldn’t be too much longer. But.” Mav set his spatula down and crouched down to talk to her properly. “Ice isn’t very used to us yet, he might have forgotten to let us know he won’t be here for dinner. He might have gotten called away to do something for work. But, Em, that doesn’t mean he isn’t coming back. And it doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to be here, OK?”

Her expressions shifted like a kaleidoscope. Anger, fear, hope, fear, sadness, mistrust, fear, doubt, and finally sadness again. 

She opened her mouth to speak and nothing emerged. It only darkened her expression further. 

“Get your pad,” Mav encouraged her. “I’ll come with you if you lead me.”

The two of them crossed to the coffee table where she had left her notes on wall colours. Emma deigned to let them back in the kitchen as she scratched away at a code for Mav to decipher. He was serving them both when she tore the page off and held it out. 

It took him a little while. She had randomised a number square again. They sat side by side and Mav pulled the message out of the number-jumble. 

What if Ice doesn’t come home? What if I did something that made him not come back? I hurt him this morning. I woke him up. 

Mav abandoned his untouched food entirely in favour of pulling Emma into his lap and cuddling her. Clutching at his shirt, she hid her face in his chest beneath his chin. 

“Ice wasn’t upset with you about that stuff.” Mav rocked them gently side to side. “He’s not the type of person to be upset about stuff like that. He’ll come back. He promised, remember. Ice doesn’t break his promises.”

She shuddered a little but no sobs arrived.

“Besides,” Mav brightened a little. “Let’s call him and see where he is. He’s definitely finished at the Agency now.”

Mav juggled his hold on her until he could lift her and fetch his phone from the other end of the bench. When he sat back down, her face had appeared once more and she was looking with interest at his phone. 

Mav made a mental note to change his passcode more regularly these days.

The sun was well below the horizon by the time Ice and Slider rolled through The Flats. Even without the dark the place would have been ominous. There were no lawns only wild tangles of weeds. Almost every house had a boarded up window in the front. A cluster of young men in baggy clothing stood in a cluster out the front of an unpainted building, they watched in silence as they drove by. 

“I think I might keep the engine running while you go inside,” Slider observed in a mild voice. 

Ice turned into Emma’s old street, his teeth gritted as he made a noise in agreement. They had come in his i30N, and while he had shifted the settings to be quieter, it was still a sports car in a ghetto. He had no choice, this was impossible to justify to Viper and therefore Ice wasn’t going to be given an Agency car. 

“I won’t be too long,” Ice said. He parked a few houses down from the address and sat for a moment. Slider’s eyes were searching the dark as well. There were almost no streetlights left shining, only the residual light of the distant city and the moon let them see anything at all. 

“Have fun,” Slider grinned in a predatory way.

Ice leaned over and pulled his thigh holster, and the Walther he kept in it, out of the glovebox. With it strapped on, the weapon loaded and secured in an obvious place, Ice got of of the car. 

It was a warm evening, no hint of a breeze. Somewhere in the distance throbbing bass was playing. Ice walked to the house. It was in a state of mild dilapidation. Compared to the one three doors down that appeared to have had an entire wall removed and covered with plyboard, it wasn’t too bad. The porch was missing a step, there was a duct taped hole in the front window and the paint was probably as old as the house. Yellow police tape had been tacked onto the door but there was no sign of any actual law enforcement. 

He pushed in through the gate in the picket fence, nose twitching in irritation as it squealed loud in the dark. Resisting the innate urge to glance around and check behind him, Ice hopped up onto the porch. 

After checking the doorknob, he crouched down into the shadow and picked the lock. It was disturbingly slack. Ice suspected it had been picked more than once. Barely a breath later he was ducking under the police tape and stepping through the door. It was a mess but surprisingly homey. 

He was standing in a living room, a saggy moth-eaten couch taking most of the space. A blanket was rucked up on one end and a rickety-looking end table had an empty soda can and a battered romance novel on it. The television was so huge it probably cost more than the rest of the furniture in the room. Ice walked through the space slowly, eyes taking in the details. There was a painting of flowers in a vase over the couch but no family pictures to be seen. There was a grisly stain on the bare floorboards by the door to the kitchen. He stepped over it.

The kitchen was homey again, a vase in the middle of a small, battered table held the remnants of flowers. The cabinets were painted a bright colour that Ice suspected was a yellow or green. He stopped, staring at the scribbly drawings on the fridge. They had loved her once. They had loved her enough to take her creations and display them. His heart began a slow burning ache. It was so much easier when he thought they were neglectful. 

He moved through to the hall, stepping over another bloodstain as he exited the kitchen. The first room was obviously Emma’s parents’. He glanced in long enough to see an unmade bed, a mess of clothes spilling from a chest of drawers and a closet that had clearly been emptied by the detectives. 

The next room was the one he had been looking for. Emma’s space was smaller but neater too. A chest of drawers with scratch marks down one side was pushed against a wall. She had a stack of books on her bedside table, a slightly stained bedspread with stars and moons across it, and a threadbare rug on the floor. There was a low bookshelf with an assortment of picture books, toys and small novels. The walls were decorated with scribbles that progressed to actual drawing the higher they got. 

Ice bent to examine one a little closer, doing his best to ignore the embering pain in his chest. It was a fish, inked straight onto the drywall, simplistic but obvious. Beside it was a stick figure holding a rod with a line and hook. He crossed to the bedside table, picking up the pile of books. The Hobbit, Black Beauty, The Light in the Window; A Nellie Mason Mystery, and The Floating Admiral. Ice couldn’t help but smile. All of the books were battered, clearly either second-hand or well loved. He set them back down. There was no sign of any stuffed toy that could be loved. Ice even went so far as to draw the covers back on the bed and check beneath the pillow. 

The last thing he did was check the chest of drawers. He paused to grin at the collection of nicknacks she had scattered across the top; a broken seashell, a rock with googly eyes, what appeared to be a tarot card, a tin brooch with the setting missing. Her clothes had been folded away neatly, each in a little pile. Ice wasn’t too sure what he was looking for as he opened each level. He just felt like he needed to know where she came from, that she had existed outside of the depressing little room she had been shackled in. 

He pushed the drawers closed again and took another long look around the room. The drawings made him smile a little. That was a habit she would have to break, there was no way he and Mav were going to let her draw on the walls. 

Ice collected the stack of books from the bedside table and headed for the door. He was lost in the idea of bringing the books back to Emma when he stepped back into the living room and propped. 

Three of the men from the street corner appeared to be waiting for him, their expressions unfriendly. Ice stifled a sigh. The books were piled into his right hand, like a rookie. 

“Boys,” Ice said, tone mocking. 

“The fuck are you?” The one near the front, his hair as blond as Ice’s and likely more natural. 

“Just the local librarian.” Ice shifted his feet to a better position. 

“The fuck are you doing in here?” This one was short, broader and wearing a cap backward. Ice would have laughed at him except that three against one wasn’t a laughing matter. 

“Look, I’m not here for trouble. I came to collect something. I’m leaving,” Ice said, he gripped the stack of books tighter with his hand, gesturing with them at the men. His left, he dropped to his side. 

“You aren’t going anywhere.” They shifted in too-coordinated movements to block the door fully. “Either you’re part of Nile Street, and we’re going to fuck you up. Or your stealing from Oz’s house, and we’re going to fuck you up.”

Ice grimaced internally. He didn’t particularly feel like killing and maiming three men in an active crime scene. For one, he didn’t want to risk getting blood on Emma’s books. For another, they were pests, not really worth his time and skills. He took a slow breath in, tilted his head and looked from one to the other slowly. 

“Can I have a third option?” He asked. 

“What?”

Before they had the word out properly, Ice was already dashing back through the kitchen and down the hall. 

Shouts and curses followed him. 

He wasn’t above running away. Especially when the alternative was needless violence. 

There was no back door, Ice was already aware of that fact, but the window in Emma’s room was probably big enough for him to get through in one go. He shoved into the room. Scooping up the rock with googly eyes, he hurled it through the window. 

Ice dove on through after it. Luck was at least a little on his side as he managed to avoid cutting himself on the glass at all. 

Luck quickly abandoned him as a gunshot sounded.

He ducked reflexively.  With a muttered, “fucking hell” Ice bolted for the street. The low picket fence cut it off. 

Another gunshot sounded. Woodchips exploded off the corner of the house. 

Ice flinched away. The books slipped in his hand. He lost his footing a moment. He tucked the books against his chest, breathing hard in relief. Stumbling a few steps before recovering his pace again, Ice hurtled down across the front lawn. 

Ice vaulted the fence, whipping his legs up and over without losing stride.

A cluster of gangers were waiting by the gate. A more shouts went up. Ice was already sprinting down the dark road, lungs working hard. 

Gunfire followed him. 

“For fucks sake!” Ice cried, astounded at their enthusiasm to shoot him. 

His beloved car appeared, screeching out of the side-street Slider had found and pulling to a quick stop. Ice hopped the hood as the driver’s window rolled down. Slider let off a few warning shots with his pistol. 

Heart hammering and lungs burning, Ice threw himself into the passenger seat.  

“Go,” he said in the same instant that Slider stomped on the accelerator. 

The engine growled and they tore off down the street. A few more gunshots followed them. Ice’s wing mirror caught a lucky shot and shattered. 

“Son of a bitch,” he groaned between gasping breaths. “That’s going to be such a pain the ass to fix.”

Slider gave a laugh and shook his head. He looked at Ice and gave a deep frown. 

“You’re bleeding on the upholstry,” he said. 

“What?” Now that Slider had mentioned it, a stinging pain was throbbing in his head with each beat of his heart. Ice flipped the visor down, examining himself in the mirror. His face was a bloody mess. “Ah, dammit.” 

With a handful of tissues from the console, Ice tried to clean up the mess. There was a inch long graze at the edge of his hairline above the temple. He examined the books as he waited for the bleeding to stop. Of all of them, he managed to only bleed on The Floating Admiral, and it was only a single spot near the corner of the front cover. He set the books on the backseat with the toy monkey. A heavy sigh punched out of him. 

As Slider opened his mouth to speak, Ice’s phone rang. With a frown, Ice pulled it from his pocket. 

His stomach dropped. His heart picked up speed like he was still running. 

Maverick was calling. 

“Hello?” Ice’s voice came through the phone and Emma leaned toward it. 

"Hey,” Mav said, stroking her back a little. “We were just wondering how you’re going. You are coming back tonight, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course,” Ice sounded almost breathless. Mav couldn’t pick if it was relief but he suspected it was. Ice had made dumb comments about not belonging with them before. 

“Good.” Mav looked at their bowls of food growing steadily cold on the bench. “Should we wait to eat with you?”

“Uh.” There was a rumble in the background that sounded like Slider. 

Maverick frowned again. His intuition twanging. 

“You mind if Slider comes for dinner?” Ice said. 

Yeah, Ice had some explaining to do.

With a look of confirmation at Emma and her curt nod in reply, Mav gave a short sigh. “Sure, there’s enough for him too.” He shook his head and smiled. “How far away are you?”

There was another mumble of Slider’s voice. This time they heard Ice reply with “Just this once,” before speaking to them once more, “About 40 minutes?”

“OK. 40 minutes,” Mav repeated, bemused. 

“OK. See you soon.” 

The call cut.

Emma and Pete sat staring at the phone for a prolonged moment. He looked down at her again, finding her wearing the same frown he could feel on his own face. 

“That was weird, right?” He mused.

“Weird,” Emma said, voice a whisper. 

He gave her a squeeze. “You OK with Slider coming here, kiddo?”

She nodded slowly. Her mouth opened and after a second her voice pushed out. “He’s nice.”

Mav grinned a wicked grin. “He’s OK.”

She looked up at him, concerned. Mav winked. 

“OK, let’s put this food in the oven and see what we can get up to for 40 minutes before they get here.” Mav set her back on her feet. To his great surprise, she let him go. He pressed a kiss to her head anyway. 

Their 40 minutes was spent in the garage. Emma had towed Mav out there as soon as he had finished putting the dinner on to warm. He let her climb on his bikes, holding them steady as she clambered up. He explained all the switches and levers for her, her eyes bright with excitement as he did. 

“I’ll work on Ice, kiddo,” Mav smiled as she scooted half onto the fuel tank to grip the handlebars of the vintage Bonneville. “You’re old enough to ride with me. As long as we get you a helmet and jacket.”

“Can I learn how to ride?” She asked, hope ringing in her voice. 

His breath caught, his chest constricting with a sudden wave of affection for her. Mav cleared his throat, smiling through the flooding emotion. 

“Of course,” he said. “We just need to get you something smaller to start on. Something you can touch the ground on.” He nodded to where here feet were dangling by the engine, a good distance from the floor. 

“Can we go get gear tomorrow?” Emma pushed and pulled the handlebars, barely turning the wheel. 

“You want to go out to shop tomorrow?” Mav said, surprise thick in his tone. 

She gave a shrug, suddenly unsure. Maverick wanted to punch himself. He pressed that obvious lesson into his brain for next time.

“Aw, kiddo, I didn’t mean it like that.” He swung himself onto the bike behind her with the intent of comfort. It was pure reflex to place his hands over hers on the grips and set his heel on the kickstart. “We can go and get gear tomorrow,” he said. 

After a beat, Mav shrugged a little. As she watched, half-turned from her perch on the fuel tank, he went through the motions to start the bike. The engine rumbled to life. Emma let out a peal of giggles. 

A week ago, if you had asked, he would have listed his favourite sound to be the engine of his 1975 Triumph Bonneville. Two days ago that had been surpassed by Emma’s pure giggle. Listening to Emma giggle with glee as he revved the engine, Mav decided he had found Nirvana. 

Mav clicked the garage door to open, letting some fresh air wash in to the space. Emma looked up at him hopeful. 

“No,” Mav said, shaking his head with a laugh. “Ice is going to be here any second, if he catches me with you on this bike anywhere but right here, he’s going to murder me. And then you’d only have him, and he can’t ride.”

“Please, please, please can we get a helmet tomorrow?” She pleaded. 

“Yes, honey, I promise.” 

As though they had summoned him, Ice’s car rolled down the street and pulled into the drive. Emma gave an excited bounce and waved. 

With a quiet chuckle, Mav turned the bike off and helped Emma down to the ground. She raced over to the car.

Her shrill scream stabbed into Maverick’s gut. 

He was by her side in a moment, heart pounding as he searched for the danger. 

Ice climbed out of the car with a grimace. His face was a bloody mess. 

Any emotion that Pete felt about seeing Tom with one half of his face smeared with dried blood was swamped by his concern for Emma.

She was sobbing, backing into Mav’s legs and scrabbling at him frantically. He lifted her, holding her tight as she looked from Ice to pressing her face into Mav and then back again. 

“Shh, I got you,” Mav soothed. He could understand her reaction perfectly. He couldn’t stop glaring at Ice and the poorly cleaned bloodstains on his face. 

“Em,” Ice said, voice calm and clear as it always was. “Emma, I’m OK. It looks worse than it is, honey.”

She dared to look at him again, gave a wailing sob and hid her face back in Mav’s neck. 

Tom grimaced. He approached them, moving slow and careful. 

“I’m OK. It’s just a little graze,” he said, eyes flicking from Mav to Emma rapidly. 

Vaguely, Mav realised Slider was leaning against the car watching them. But his eyes wouldn’t shift from Ice. 

“What happened?” Mav asked, closing the distance between them. He couldn’t help it, he needed to make sure Tom was real and whole. “You’re late, you’re covered in blood and Slider was driving your car.”

Slider gave a chuckle but stayed quiet otherwise. 

“We made a little detour on the way home.” Ice gave a beleaguered sigh. “I encountered some people that… were a little enthusiastic about self-defence.”

His eyes screamed at Pete to let it go. With his own eyes narrowed in accusation, he dropped it. Emma was still sobbing into his neck quietly. 

“I’m OK, Squeak,” Ice said, voice soft now. “Truly. Look at me.”

She shook her head. 

“Emma, look at me.” This time it was a command. 

Her face turned, staying pressed into Mav’s chest but moving enough to see Ice a little. He stepped around into her line of sight. She flinched. 

“Look at me, Em. I know, it looks scary. I look hurt. But just take a deep breath, and look.” Tom turned his head this way and that. He poked at his own face, smiling a little. He tilted his head down so she could see the cut was relatively small. “I’m really OK. I would have stopped to get cleaned up but I was already late to see you.”

Emma shook her head but the fits of sobbing had stopped. She turned to hide again. 

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Ice sighed. He kissed the back of her head. “Let’s go in so I can make myself presentable and we can finally eat.”

Tom started to move but Pete captured him with a hand. He was given a questioning expression before Pete leaned in and kissed him lightly on the lips, staying away from the small smear of blood on the left side.

There was a quiet “oh” as Tom realised and kissed Pete back, firmer. 

“Now we can go in,” Pete said. “Come on, Sli, come and have some food.”

“Fucking finally,” Slider groaned and pushed off the car. “Nice place, Mitchell. Didn’t pick you for a suburbia dad. Thought you probably lived under a bridge, like a troll.”

“You’re a fucking troll,” Maverick laughed. “Get inside before I change my mind.” 

[myersesque]

Hey!!

So I saw your HC about everyone in Mumbattan knowing its Pavitr who's spiderman, and my friend and I were planning to write a fic based on it :) I just wanted to check with you to make sure you're fine with that, we'll credit you and your idea in the ao3 notes, ofc

And if that's okay, I also had a few clarifications- If everyone knows that Pav is Spidey, wouldn't his relations be in a little bit more danger than normal? Or would you like us to figure that part out?

hihihi omg !!! u guys are absolutely allowed to do that, i'm so flattered!!! (and my ao3 is winged_reaperz, if you wanna tag me there too ;D /nf)

to be honest - i didn't really think of the specifics when i made that post. tbh it was inspired by a daredevil fic i read a few years back (there were a few iirc, but i was thinking specifically of "last to know" by whitchry9) where all of hell's kitchen knew matt was daredevil but all worked to cover it up bc they didn't want him to get in trouble, but w the additional layer that Pavitr Is A Child and therefore people would be even MORE inclined to cover for him. as such i didn't really think about the specifics, and i don't really mind what direction you take it in?

that being said, if you want my personal opinion of how i would do it (which you ABSOLUTELY DO NOT HAVE TO ABIDE BY, please write whatever speaks to you the most, i would LOVE to see different interpretations of this concept): villains knowing your identity is always going to put the people near you in danger. even then, depending on the villain, some of them might not know - like, someone who just moved there and hasn't seen spiderman in action before, or something - but that's really up to you. i think it could be a double edged sword - gayatri is in more danger of getting kidnapped or gwen stacy'd generally endangered due to her connection to pavitr, but her dad may be a little more willing to look the other way on their relationship if he knows pav is the one saving her - or maybe the opposite! maybe he'd be even MORE protective of her if he knows pav is inadvertently the reason she's in so much danger!

i really don't know - there are so many directions you could go in and i think all of them would be really fun :] so really, just have fun with it! write whatever you like the best! disregard me entirely if you want - it's not my fic, yknow, it's yours :]

thank u for asking (i wouldn't have minded if you didn't, but it's sweet of you to ask) n i look forward to reading it :D

[linzerj]

20 Questions for Writers

I was tagged by @sinvulkt for this 20 Questions for Writers ask game!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

On AO3... i only have 12 currently. (On FFN however... I have 67 lol)

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

107,857

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Primarily Marvel nowadays, specifically Doctor Strange (MCU)! But I've also consistently written for Danny Phantom, and also delved into Pokemon, Teen Titans, TMNT, Warriors Cats and Twilight back in the day... its a lot lol.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Golden Gate's Heroes - a Venom and Ant-Man/MCU crossover from before NWH/Venom 2. It has 2,238 kudos as of posting!

Displaced Phantom - a DP and MCU crossover, 577 kudos

Stars Will Light the Way - What If...? Strange Supreme met America Chavez? The longest fic I've posted lol, 476 kudos

alive - an introspective look at Mewtwo, assuming the one from Detectice Pikachu is the same as the one from Pokémon: The First Movie, 420 kudos

through the multiverse - connected drabbles following the Guardians of the Multiverse from the first season of What If...? 329 kudos

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try to! Sometimes I might not see it or forget to reply if I don't reply right away lol, but I love engagement on my fics and I always want to make sure I thank everyone for reading!

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Uh. Hmm. I actually... don't know? Maybe one of my post-Infinity War pre-Endgame Doctor Strange fanfics, like Eidetic or death is an old friend? Just because they end with Infinity War and that was tbh a kinda angsty ending...  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Probably has to be Stars Will Light the Way, tbh. Most of my fics are fairly "happy" tbh but so many are oneshots and anthologies, that this seems like the best pick.

8. Do you get hate on your fic?

I've gotten maybe one "hate" comment, just telling me my pacing was too slow for their liking or something like that lol. But generally, my audience has been very nice!

9. Do you write smut?

Nope!

10. Do you write crossovers?

OH YEAH!! A good chunk of my old fanfics on FFN were crossovers lol. Actually my first several fics were all crossovers I'm pretty sure. I love a good crossover...

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I am aware of... and don't get any ideas folks!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Um... no, I don't think so!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

Nope!

14. What‘s your all-time favourite ship?

Uhhhh.... hmmm.... its hard to say. I am very much a multishipper - I'll ship one guy with quite a few other characters if the dynamic could even conceivably work. But I also tend to prefer gen-fic or found family fics too...? But um. Uh. All-time favorite ship is probably Eddie/Venom. I will not elaborate further.

15. What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Gosh ok it's this Blue Beetle fic, with Jaime from the Young Justice cartoon swapping places with Jaime from the movie. I just... idk how I want to end it so it's been sitting on my laptop, mostly untouched since like. September or October of 2023. Whoops...

16. What’s your writing strengths?

Idk lol, um... getting into the heads of the characters I write?? I've been told that I can capture certain characters really well, at least.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

17. What’s your writing weaknesses?

Fight scenes can be a little tough for me to write... but also. I procrastinate on writing sometimes, and i'm terrible at planning fics out fully before i start them... so if I don't write scenes and ideas down, they're gone, and then I don't know what to write for my fic, and then the fic never gets finished 🙃

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Eh, depends on the language - I took enough Spanish to be able to pull it off, I think, and I also have a few coworkers who speak Spanish fluently who will make sure I'm doing it right if/when I use it. Other than that, I'm not sure if I trust Google Translate enough to write dialogue in any other language...

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Omg... apparently... it was a crossover between Danny Phantom and Warriors (the books about the cats)... I figured it would be Danny Phantom but that. That is hilarious to me. I really was a Warriors Cats kid....

20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

It's gotta be Stars Will Light the Way. Idk man, it just... it may not be as popular as Golden Gate's Heroes, but it's currently the longest fic I've ever written and published and FINISHED, and im so proud of that. The fact that even 400+ people liked it enough to give it a kudos... I wrote that fic for me, so to know others liked it too means the world to me.

I know you're supposed to tag people for these things, but. I always feel like I'm bothering people when I do. Even though some of my mutuals, I know y'all write fic... so if you see this and want to go for it, any of my mutuals or followers, go for it, consider yourself tagged!

[prtfrmhrtbrn]

im ill and incapable of real genuine human thought so im just going to talk about one of my favourite drafts that im working on and its this

-regulus & evan fake dating, ft aromantic regulus, endgame rosewater qpp AND endgame rosekiller.

-yeah im hitting evan with the polyamory beam. ITS CALLED PROJECTING!!

anyway its one of my favourite things in my google docs. some fun facts about it:

•barty & evan BOTH already like each other. evan also knows barty likes him back but thinks hes too much of a coward to say anything and his first thought is “okay, i’ll fake date somebody about this”

•oh and also regulus is just like “i mean alright i guess”

•regulus tells barty immediately. hes like “honest to god get your shit together” and barty is like “literally why would you do this” and regulus is like “i thought it would be funny”:

•you guys are all ALWAYS forgetting that if sirius pretty much raised regulus HES GOING TO ACT LIKE A TWAT SOMETIMES i love regulus being an absolute menace

•qpr. thats all i need to say. as a member of a qpr it is one of my all time favourite relationships in my life and i think not enough people write them. i ALSO think not enough people write aro characters as capable of emotion!! 90% of the time (in my experience!!) theyre just aro because the author couldnt think of a pairing for them and they felt bad. so anyway i changed that for this fic. and also in like… 3 other fics in my drafts. i love being in a qpr im in a qpr hey did i mention im in a qpr this post goes out to my beloved partner even though they will never see it

•sirius. sirius. sirius. i dont know WHAT it is about the black brothers but every single time i write ANY fic with either of them in they end up talking to each other. i cant stop them. im just writing and they say “we want to reconcile” and i say “that wasnt one of my plot points…?” but its too late! theyre already talking!

•regulus being SUPREMELY confused when he realises he likes evan <3 with the focus on the fact that he can still like him without it being romantic!! he has no idea what a qpr is but he’ll get there

•regulus GOES TO SIRIUS FOR HELP!! and sirius is like “ok i will help you” and regulus is like “what why” and sirius is like “do you want help or not tbh”

•but also regulus is like “ok so i have a fake boyfriend” and sirius is like “you fucking what”:

•the segment with sirius features a LOT of complaints from regulus (that part is his pov! it changes throughout between barty, reg & evan though) about the red of the gryffindor dorms. he is so upset by them:

•barty immediately notices when regulus accidentally catches feelings. hes like “…you thought this would be funny but it went like normal fake dating didnt it” and regulus gives him a very sad looking nod and says “i wont stop you dating him i still dont know what it is” and barty is like “getting over evan is too much work and id know, if he wants us both he can bloody well just have us both”

•spoiler alert for the fact that he does <3

-anyway. not much of this is written but i just wanted to talk about it! my dear best friend and the platonic loml is anti reg/evan (she could never get me) so… tumblr has to hear about it instead!

-oh also my fake dating experience is based in a little too much truth about my life (i did it) (its how i got with my partner) so! you know. you can trust the authenticity?

-thats all. i needed to get this out of my SYSTEM but it might end up on ao3 <3 anyways if youre a rosewater-er my ao3 is SUCH a safe place for you. my marauders pseud is hellenistic & my main is apartfromheartburn (but dont go there because its all anime fics i wrote 3 years ago) so my marauders fics can as such be found under hellenistic (apartfromheartburn). id link them but also i have a headache that will kill me if i stare at my phone acreen any longer so! thats not happening. end of this post! bye bye <3

[leatherbookmark]

i have been tagged! by @lansplaining, @thatswhatsushesaid and @aeide-thea, thank you! the templates are a tiny bit different but i'm just gonna smush them together ( ‵▽′)👍

last song: this post took me a LONG time lol, so shatter by dreamcatcher when i started, to be by your side by nick cave (i know it from the bird movie) approximately in the middle and suga's interlude by halsey and, well, suga right now as i'm finishing it.

favourite color: yellow! warm tones in particular. i was very into red (not pink!!! not pink!!!) as a kid, then blue and purple and, gasp, pink, but at some point i realized i'm drawn to warm yellow objects because they just feel so happy. so. 💛

currently watching: this one youtuber does yearly videos on their favourite and least favourite kpop album packaging, and the one for 2023 came our like, yesterday. it's a surprisingly fascinating topic! (darts a look at my most recent book on polish typographic book covers. darts a look at another book i have on polish Boxes and Packagings. or maybe i'm just interested in that stuff. hm) i also kept on nodding along almost every sentence, because I Too am ridiculously opinionated about album packaging, lol.

last movie/show: the new percy jackson show!

sweet/savoury/spicy: complicated question, need at least two business weeks to ponder. but if i had to rank them, it'd be sweet > savoury > spicy? i don't care about spice, tbh! but that might be because i'm pretty bad at handling it, lol. when i cook ramyeon, i have to add half of the soup powder packet and additionally soften the spice with coconut/rice milk :')

relationship status: single, and unsure if i'm sad about it or glad i don't have more stuff to be anxious about lol.

last thing you googled: "tag piping", after some posts about how ao3 doesn't do it for the silmarillion characters anymore, apparently. i think it's supposed to be like, appending aliases/other names to the tag, like my | jgy, but i'm not sure why it's called that exactly. i also went to check what the tags look like now and hm. i'm not sure if adding (tolkien) to the names of very obviously tolkien characters is much better, but i don't really go there, so

current obsession/s: my lads my dudes my little guys ateez, i guess! but that aside, hmm. i don't currently have any microobsessions, but before, it was mechanical pencils and their leads. oh! analog cameras and identifying them on photos of kpop lads is also somewhere out there. whatever this is. my last.fm account. gifmaking and how the hell do people make their gifs so sharp and crisp? actually, um, let's define an obsession, shall we...?

tagging: feel free to do it, feel free not to, etc, @natandacat @madtomedgar @labyrynth @crashorpie @gloriousmonsters @raise-me-up-take-me-up @woobifiedvillain @paperchamomiles @mariposakitten

[pens-are-frenz]

I came up with a plot-ish thing for some sort of royal setting? I'm not entirely sure, but the plot doesn't feel... enough to try and start a book about it so I decided to just post it here.

Maybe if this idea gets some support and I have some time (aka procrastinating real projects) then I'll turn it into a short story and post it on ao3 or something.

Cast of Characters:

Main Character (referred to as m/c) (do not have an idea for gender yet- so they/them shall be used) -> Hero from a land (great world building ik) (they were sent to assassinate the King)

Antagonist (? he's not really the antagonist, but it's like- people think he is. So he's a good person put into the role of villainy for the majority of the story) (referred to as King) (he/him) -> The King of a very vast nation that surrounding countries both fear (because it is growing so quickly) and are jealous of (because of the amount of land and recourses that this kingdom holds)

Antagonist's Friend (referred to as Queen) (he/him) -> Okay this might require a little bit of explaining. So basically, this guy has an extremely vital role in the kingdom and it's affairs, so much so the people of the Kingdom have started calling this dude their Queen because he functions as one (they also know that their King is probably too dumb to land anyone else anyways so it's fine)

Main Character's Bestie (reffered to a Kat- because she really likes cats) (she/her) -> Not at all included at any point in the story because m/c is off on their quest. She is very sapphic and has a kitty.

Plot-ish:

Okay so (you know it's real when Quill pulls out the 'okay so' and the bullet points) to recap: King is the ruler of a vast land that literally everyone else wants.

M/c works for another kingdom and is sent to King's kingdom (badumchuck) to assassinate him (the reason being that once they end the family line [he has no siblings or children], the kingdom will be fractured for long enough to launch an invasion)

This is the intensely fractured part of the story. To summarize, they go there. They manage to get to the kingdom, enter without getting caught.

Again, I have no idea how, but the main character ends up talking to the Queen (idk he finds them or something)

M/c understands that they are essentially pinned into a corner, so as a last ditch effort to not get thrown into the dungeons for life, they try to convince the queen that it is a bad idea to stay with King

The Queen takes personal offence to this, and offers m/c a side of the story that they've never seen before, painting King as a pretty great person.

The m/c is kind of changed by this view and honestly has no idea what to do. Now that they know that their kingdom was sending them out to kill a perfectly good ruler who the general population is happy with, they have no idea what to do. Especially since the clause for failing tasks was always death. They are also dually experiencing a morality crisis because before, they killed for their Throne without asking questions- but know that they knew that this target wasn't as bad as the propaganda sad he was, who knew how many innocents fell at their blade?

The queen can see this and so he lets him stay

This post is a mess, and so is this idea tbh. Welp-

[bestboybarbatos]

We Pin a Little Post

About the Blogger

Hullo, I'm Moth, or at least that's what you can call me. I was once a writer and artist, but I'm terribly out of practice at both. I'm hoping to rekindle those old passions, and collect what comes forth here on this lil side blog. I have a long time interest in demons, to the point of weird obsession, and frankly it was nice of Solmare to make an otome game catering specifically to that. I may also write for Arcana Twilight, since the devs aren't.

This is ultimately a fandom blog. It's multifandom, but like... compartmentalized, ya know? Same platform and genera and what not. More might come into the mix over time if I find another game with particularly interesting characters.

My favourite characters from each game are Barbatos Obey Me and Vega Arcana Twilight. I inexplicably like the little shit queen of hearts in Twisted Wonderland as well, but I'm not happy about it and hold a personal grudge against Disney so I don't know if that'd ever even go anywhere.

Masterlist

Categories will be updated per fandom, category, and character, once relevant works are posted. Writing will likely be cross-posted to AO3 and art might be posted on DeviantArt, if I can ever be assed enough to learn how to use it again.

Arcana Twilight

Art

Nothing Here Yet!

Fanfiction

Nothing Here Yet!

Headcanons

Nothing Here Yet!

Requests (Currently CLOSED)

Nothing Here Yet!

Obey Me! Shall We Date?

Art

Nothing Here Yet!

Fanfiction

Nothing Here Yet!

Headcanons

Nothing Here Yet!

Requests (Currently CLOSED)

Nothing Here Yet!

Ideas and Works in Progress

A place for me to make notes of things I'd like to make, and give you guys a preview of what might come!

Arcana Twilight

I have a fic I want to write that hops through several games with one of my OC's that starts here. OCxVega, though gets poly after the Arcana Twilight arc. The OC is a fem-presenting enbie named Nova.

Obey Me! Shall We Date?

Witchling!AU - OCxBarbatos

Ultimately a soulmate AU with a lot of extra nonsense. Follows an OC from prior to her arrival to the devildom to... whenever I get sick of writing it tbh. OC is named Merry, and the concept of gender escapes her. Set in a vaguely medieval times in some version of the human world, either just before or just after the Demon King took the big sleep. Merry is something called a witchling, and boy is the church pissed about that. Some nonsense happens and she's brought to the devildom at age 5 or so and taken in by the brothers. More canon depiction of the characters than Culture Shock will have.

Culture Shock - OC!MCxEveryone

Obey Me: Poly, Fucked Up, Monsterfucker Edition. If you really think about it, there's a decent amount of morally dubious activities in canon, but it's hidden under a rosy veneer of ooey gooeyness. I'd like that veneer to not be there and there to be a lot more fucked up shit happening in literal hell. I'd like demons to be much more different than humans than they're depicted in the game. One part brutal retelling, one part Yandere AU, I guess lol. OC MC isn't named yet because I'm looking for something Thematically Appropriate, but they're a goth gremlin child raised by a single father who's interest in the occult rubbed off on his spawn. They took a nosedive into demonolatry in high school, but slowly distanced themselves after the more physical world made it hard to focus on that. So yeah, more demonic demons, more esoteric angels, an AFAB goth dommy mommy MC, an exploration of the fucked up cultures of heaven and hell, and Too Much Smut, all wrapped up in the package of the exchange program.

Body headcanons for everyone, canon and Culture Shock versions

Personal spaces headcanons for everyone

Will probably open requests for this pretty quickly, as all I want to do is think about demons.

[snowangeldotmp3]

since you requested ronance asks: robin confronts nancy about why she throws herself headfirst into danger without thinking to save other people. they argue about it. nancy finally admits that it's because she can't lose anyone else to this shit. they collapse in each other's arms and just hold each other. they're both traumatized. but they're together in this. it's a moment of clarity for both of them.

first off, obsessed with the halloween themed username. werewolf robin stans RISE.

second. i had to open up a word doc to write some of this down, bc i'd imagine it goes like this:

“are you out of your mind?” she spits at robin, who’s equally as furious. they've just come back from another demogorgon hunt. robin opens her mouth to fire back, but nancy beats her to it. 

“you could’ve been killed!”

“yeah, but i wasn’t! so it’s no big deal.” 

nancy spins on her heel. “it is! it is a big deal. “

“how, nancy? how is it such a big deal that i saved you?”

“because that’s not your job,” nancy hisses, dangerously close to robin’s face, “it’s mine.”

robin stops, anger melting away at the admission. nancy seethes, nostrils flaring and jaw clenching.

“nance…” she reaches out, hand hovering on nancy’s shaking form. nancy shrugs her hand off, refusing to look up at robin.

she knows nancy. knows she doesn’t like being vulnerable, knows she doesn’t like feeling weak. nancy’s not weak, that’s for damn sure. but no matter how many times robin’s tried to explain to her than emotion does not equal weakness, nancy’s still always incredibly hesitant to open up.

robin doesn’t blame her. she’s met ted wheeler.

this feels different though, different from their emotional late night talks. this feels heavier. robin can feel it. the weight of it hangs in the air in-between them.

nancy looks back up at robin, tears threatening to spill, bottom lip downturned, quivering. “i can’t,” she chokes out, “i can’t lose you. i can’t. i’m supposed to protect everyone and i can’t do that if you’re out here running around like a self-sacrificial idiot. i can handle myself.”

robin’s heart shatters. nancy thinks she has to handle things by herself. robin wants to let her know that she doesn’t have to. nancy sniffles, returning her gaze to the ground.

“nance, i used myself as a distraction because it was heading straight for you.”

“yeah, and you shouldn’t have done—“

“let me finish,” robin inhales deeply, steadying herself before she loses her confidence, “nance, you can’t protect anyone if you’re dead.”

robin must strike a nerve, because nancy breaks. she sobs, robin wraps herself around nancy in a bone crushing hug. nancy sobs and sobs and sobs. robin knows at one point she’s crying too. she doesn’t have the words for this, not yet anyway. she hopes nancy can pick up everything she can’t say. i’m sorry. i’m here for you. don’t leave me. i love you, i love you, i love you.

they stay like that, holding onto one another. anchoring them to each other. robins not sure for how long. they sway in the kitchen, just the tiniest bit. robin, in a moment of bravery and love, plants the softest kiss to brunette curls.

“you’re not gonna lose me, nancy wheeler.” it’s a promise. a threat to all the shit they’ve seen, everything that they still have to see.

“you’re not gonna lose me either, robin buckley.” nancy mumbles into the shoulder of robins sweater.

robin smiles softly. nancy means it. they’re stuck with each other now.

robin finds that she can live with that.

[jackiebrackettt]

uh uh okay i'm 4 followers away haha thank you so much to everyone who has followed we're almost there!! just making this post as a little rules thing:

-I'll accept prompts from anyone tbh bc i don't want to force ppl off anon and i can't verify who's followed and who's not. but! ppl who i can verify are followed will get priority. (and max relaxxattack gets priority over everyone if they want to request something sorry lol)

-i'll write knifetrick ranjack stuff preferably ran pov but i feel like i could manage jackie's aaand also bc c!beeduo are the only other ppl i've written for i'll take c!beeduo prompts but preferably c!tubbo pov (i'll tentatively extend this to benchtrio but writing tommy is so hard for me sometimes so. warning.)

-pls include what kinda vibe ur looking for (as in: light hearted, angst, jokey, etc) and also which character you'd prefer for a pov (keeping in mind the previous paragraph.)

-nothing nsfw obvi but i'd also like to ask that anything w/ heavier themes isn't requested (feel free to ask if something ur thinking of might be too much). and absolutely no irl prompts. characters only.

-also just keep in mind when requesting something that i'm probably only going to write a couple hundred words or something! closer to my insomnia posting fic maybe shorter depends on how many i get haha. so basically pls don't send anything too complicated/complex. i can do au stuff but i don't want to world build essentially.

-if i hit 50 followers in the next couple of days i won't actually be able to do requests until the weekend. I have an assignment i need to do ))):

-last note i will probably post these on my ao3 as well so if you have an ao3 account include it in the ask and i can gift it to you if you want! if you don't want me to reference ur tumblr account but you didn't go on anon also just lmk bc i'll prob include who requested what in the beginning notes of each one.

-hope this is everything thank you again guys ^_^