#i should write down dome headcanons for him

[gvtsfvkk]

Some pre-Stain Chizomes bc he's my muse and whenever I have serious art block I just draw him idfk

[eyelessfaces]

just in case

poe dameron x reader

summary: while fiddling with bb–8's memory, you stumble onto an audio message– poe's prerecorded goodbyes.

based on @ivystoryweaver's headcanon on this post! thank you for allowing me to write something about it!

warnings: angst, mentions of death and war

tags: gn!reader, hurt/comfort, fluff, kissing, poe being an absolute sap

word count: 2.6k

masterlist | taglist | ao3

updates blog: @eyelessupdates

He can’t help the fond smile growing over his face at the sight of you, deeply focused on the repair project in front of you before his knuckles hit against the doorframe a couple times, catching your attention. 

Your gaze meets Poe’s as he steps into your workshop, your expression of concentration quickly giving way to an easy smile when you see him, closely followed by BB–8. 

Poe greets you with a kiss, his hand lingering at your side when he pulls away. 

“What’s bringing you here, handsome?” you ask, shifting to put away the tool you still have in hand. “Hey Beebs,” you smile as you glance down at the droid that greets you back. 

Poe gazes down at his droid, his look shifting back at you. “Could you take a look at him whenever you got the time?” he asks, a small, defeated sigh escaping his mouth. 

“What’s up?” you question, crossing your arms and raising an eyebrow at him. It hadn’t been that long since you last checked up on the droid.

“I think there’s something up with his memory, he’s been acting a little forgetful lately” Poe explains; you can see the concern in his eyes, can hear the worry in his voice.

“Okay, I’ll see what I can do.” Poe nods, pinching his lips into a quiet smile as he looks down at the droid. “Hey, you don’t have to worry'' you reassure him, resting a hand over his arm. “It’s nothing too serious usually. Nothing I can’t fix.” He nods again, knowing he can trust you with this, knowing you're as good at this as he is at flying. 

“I’ll take care of him as soon as I’m done with that” you point back to the mess of scavenged parts resting over your workbench.

“Thank you sweetheart,” he says, cupping the back of your head and leaning in to leave a quick kiss on your forehead. “I’d stay with you and tell you about my day, but I have my last meeting of the day in about less than five minutes.” he shrugs, starting to walk backwards to exit the room.

“Sure, don’t worry.” you smile. “Come over when you’re done” 

As promised, the minute you’re done repairing the project you were working on, you lower your workbench to BB-8’s level, letting him roll onto the surface before you adjust it to your level so you can examine him. 

“Hey buddy. memory issues huh?” you coo, grabbing your tools, gathering everything you need to check up on him. He responds with upset beeps, his upper part sagging in defeat. 

“That's okay. Happens to the best of us,” you reassure him, setting to work on diagnosing the problem. “So since it seems to be a memory issue, I’m gonna have to look through your data” you explain, opening his access panels. 

It doesn’t take long for you to identify the issue: a few corrupted memory files. It’s a relief to see it's nothing severe, just a bit of corrupted data that needs to be cleaned and restructured. “Hah, found the problem,” you say, beginning the delicate process of correcting the corrupted files. “Looks like some of your memory files got a bit jumbled. Should be fine once we get that sorted out, there shouldn’t be any problem.” you explain. “You know, Poe always gets so worried about you.” you say, trying to keep the droid calm as your fingers work through the wires and circuits. BB–8 emits a series of grateful beeps, and you smile, focusing back on the task at hand. 

As you work on fixing him, BB–8 chirps curiously, his dome turning to watch you. You explain each step in simple terms, trying to distract him and make it the least stressful possible for him. “I’m working through your memory module. Some of these files are corrupted, so I’m cleaning them up and re-organizing everything. Just like tidying up a messy room.”

BB-8 responds with a relieved series of beeps, and you chuckle. “Yeah, I know it’s not fun for you to have me mess with your memory stuff, but I’ll have you be back to your old self in no time.” 

As you carefully rework BB–8’s memory files, you fumble slightly with a delicate wire, causing a brief short circuit – the droid jerks and beeps erratically before suddenly playing a vocal message. You reach to stop it, assuming it’s a manufactured error message you’ve triggered, but you freeze when you recognize Poe’s voice. “Hey baby,” Poe’s voice crackles through BB–8’s speakers, startling you. You frown, confused, ready to stop the audio message. “If you’re hearing this, it’s probably because something happened and I’m not around anymore.” Your heart properly skips a beat. “I’m sorry I’m leaving you like this,” he sighs softly. “Damn it’s weird talking like this when I’m still here,” he chuckles. You step back, driven by morbid curiosity, firmly intending to listen to the rest of it. 

“But you know, with everything that’s been happening lately and that’s gonna happen, you never know what’s next.” 

He sounds tired. You bite down onto your lip, a soft frown forming over your face and your gaze lost as the recording continues. “I could die in two weeks or in twenty years from the moment I’m recording this, so it’s pretty strange. I just… I love you so much. I wanted you to hear it from me one last time.” 

Your lips curl into a weak smile, tears welling up in your eyes. It’s stupid. He’s still here. It’s just a recording in case he dies.

But somehow, you can’t help it. Not with the prospect that you could listen to it again one day, in the context it was intended to be listened to.

“You’ve always been supportive of my bullshit, no matter what, and you were always there for me no matter how stupid I got, so it’s only fair I thank you one last time. I really hope we got to enjoy our time together” 

You pause the audio message, running your hand over your face, sighing deeply. You want to stop there and not listen to the entirety of it, on one hand because you aren't even supposed to hear it or know of its existence in the first place, and most of all because you’re not sure you can handle it – but your curiosity gets the best of you, and you let it go on.

“It’s stupid that I want to cry, because I’m still here” he chuckles. “You know, I’m recording this because I couldn’t sleep.” he declares. You can hear the soft strain in his voice, you can imagine him and his tired eyes, his hair slightly mussed from tossing and turning like he always does when he’s restless.

He sighs deeply before he speaks again. “I uh… Today’s mission went awful. I could have died and I didn’t even tell you” his voice drops with the weight of his words, he pauses for a second, and the knot inside your throat tightens.  

“You’re sleeping in the next room. You know, you looked so peaceful when I got out of bed that I didn't want to bother you by kissing your forehead, but I did it anyway because I remembered I might not be able to do it forever”

You can’t help it, it’s over for you. Tears roll down your cheeks on their own, the back of your hand suppressing your sniffles and the soft laugh you huff out at his way of always saying things that will get you.

BB-8’s upper part shifts, and he emits a soft, sympathetic whirr, trying to console you.

“I’ve left this message with BB-8 because I know he’s always with you if he’s not with me. Take care of him for me, will you? And take care of yourself. You’re stronger than you know, and you’ll get through this. I love you. So much. More than you know. Which is why I’m gonna cut the recording and get back to bed to hold you tight while I can” 

Your heart tightens inside your chest. You slowly shake your head, tears forced out of you when your eyes fall shut.

“Alright, okay, bye sweetheart. I love you.” 

The recording cuts, ending with a click, leaving you in a stunned silence. BB turns to you, beeping sadly, and you give him a weak smile before wiping the tears over your cheeks with the tips of your fingers. 

You huff out a heavy breath, one that you didn’t even realize was smothering your chest, and force yourself to finish taking care of BB–8 despite everything. 

You’re still sobbing when Poe comes in again. 

He finds you, full on tearing up, not even hiding it – which he finds strange, because you usually turn around and pretend to look for something to quickly dry your tears, and proceed to poorly try to deny you’ve been crying just to avoid worrying him. 

And the context he’s facing quickly leads him to assume something is wrong with BB-8, something you couldn’t manage to fix and now blame yourself for – BB–8 is quick to deny with appalled beeps, so Poe really doesn’t have any idea what he’s dealing with. 

When you pull him near and hug him tight, gripping his hair, longing to be as close to him as possible, he’s still as confused, but he’s swift to take action and hold you even tighter.

His embrace is warm, comforting, his touch delicate as his hand appeasingly rubs over your shoulder, and you progressively manage to calm down and quiet your sobs. “What’s going on babe” he quietly asks, trying to not pounce on you. His fingers carefully lift your chin up, taking care of clearing the tears from your face, his eyes searching yours intensely as he waits for your answer.

You sigh softly, your breath still ragged from sobbing. “I was working on Beebs and I found your…” you pause, realizing you’re not even sure what to call it. You're not even sure you want to say it out loud, to say it's a goodbye message. “I found your recording– I didn't mean to, it just–”

“Oh,” his face drops in saddened surprise, immediately understanding what you’re talking about. “Oh baby” he sighs, shaking his head as he pulls you back into his arms. You weren't supposed to know about this, even less hear it fully, not until he died, that is. “I didn’t want to scare or worry you. I’m sorry you had to hear that– it was just… a precaution.” he murmurs as you cling to him, the remnants of your tears dampening his shirt.

“I know,” you whisper, your voice weak and muffled against his chest. “I just– It was hard to hear. I don’t want to think about losing you”

“I don’t want to think about leaving you either,” he says softly, pulling back just enough to look at your face again. His thumb brushes away the last of your tears when you look at him, his gaze over you filled with a mix of sorrow and unwavering love that you manage to feel just by looking into his dark, warm eyes. “But I need you to know how much you mean to me, no matter what happens”

“Poe,” you scoff-whine. “I know. You’re pretty transparent about it already” you grin. 

When he’s not saying it explicitly, he always has a hand on you, always at least leaves a kiss over your cheek or forehead when he’s not full-on kissing you, and always makes sure to bring you back those jogan fruit cakes you like from Coruscant when he has to go there, and just the way he looks at you has you aware that he loves you, so he really doesn’t need to do that much, but he’s Poe Dameron, so it’s a prerogative.

“I happen to be a very romantic man” he jokes, smiling when he sees you chuckle and shake your head the way you do when he pulls stupid lines. “I just wanted you to hear it from me one last time sweetheart.”

“You and your dramatic flair” you tease lightly, gripping onto his jacket as you let out a soft groan. “You couldn’t just leave a normal message, could you?”

“You know, subtlety isn’t my strong suit” he grins, pressing a soft kiss to your temple. “But seriously, I’m sorry you had to hear it like this. It was meant for dramatic times, not when I was about to ask you if you wanted to get dinner off base like now.”

You snort up a laugh, your arms wrapping around his neck. “You do owe me dinner after that.” 

“I know, right?” he scoffs, an amused smile over his face. “And it means I get to spend more of my alive time with you, so–” he teases, his fingers gently rubbing your back. “Stop that, it’s not funny” you frown, playfully hitting his chest with the back of your hand. “–Plenty of time to remind you that I love you” his hand squeezes yours gently.

You pull him closer, pressing your lips to his in a kiss that is both tender and intense, slow at first but deepening when the fear, the relief, the overwhelming love you feel for him step at the front of your mind. His hand moves from your hip to cup your face, his thumb caressing the skin of your cheeks rough from the tears.

When you break apart, your foreheads are still linked, his fingers gently tracing your face, your breaths mingling. “I’m joking about this, but I promise I’ll do my best for you to not have to listen to this recording again anytime soon.” 

“Mh, hope ‘anytime soon’ means a few decades at least”

“I promise. I love you too much to leave you like this. And I know I’ll look sexy when my hair turns gray” he adds with a playful smile.

You laugh, the sound breaking the lingering tension and bringing a sense of normalcy back. “Oh, definitely” you grin, raking your fingers through his curls. “Most handsome silver fox in the galaxy.” 

Poe smiles, kissing you again, softly. You can very clearly feel BB–8’s presence when you pull away, his needy beeps attesting of his need for attention.

“Yeah, alright buddy” you sigh, turning back to the droid to finish up his repair.

“So he’s okay?” Poe asks, approaching the workbench. 

“He’s all fine, good as new” you smile. “Hey, try running a diagnostic”

The droid runs his internal check, beeping happily once he’s done and everything seems to be alright.

“See?” you turn to Poe. “All good.” you grin at him, glad to have something concrete to smile about after that emotional rollercoaster you went through.  

“Thank you, really. I knew you’d fix him up” Poe declares, smiling as he watches BB roll off the workbench and onto the floor, navigating around your feet. “And I was serious about that dinner, by the way,” he says, watching you putting away your tools and tidying up your workbench. “We could both use a break.”

“Yeah,” you agree, scoffing. 

Poe’s hand finds yours as you turn the light off and leave the workshop, your fingers tangling as you walk through the corridors of the base, finding your way out. 

“Hey,” Poe calls, pulling you closer as you walk. You hum, looking at him, noticing the slight hint of worry in his eyes. “You really think I’d look hot with gray hair?”

You scoff, shaking your head. “Absolutely baby”

A content smile grows over his face, and he nods. “Cool.”

—

any and every comment/reblog is greatly appreciated!!

star wars taglist:

@lockleysgrl @my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction @alexxavicry @mystinky-butt @anightshift

@whatthefishh @dameronshandholder @campingwiththecharmings @mintgreen24 @spider-starry

@jakecockley @cocodiem @spxctorsslxt @friedwings @luxisluxurious

@stvnnie @dowbastan @il0vebeingdelulu @hammerhead96 @pigeonmama

[aurora-boreas-borealis]

Seven times flynn and crack is whack for this post plzz

Wait I forgot to fully finish that title 😭😭 I should never type when I’m tired

It’s ‘Seven times Flynn took care/helped someone on the team and one time they helped him’ I really wanted to explore him being the heart of the team and what that entails!

—————————————

“Time freeze!”

Suddenly, the next thing he hears is Tenaya’s screams and the smashing of crates mixed with the surrounding noise of frantic footsteps. Letting out a breath he never remembers holding, Dillon opens his eyes to find Flynn is standing where Tenaya once stood, leaning down to give him a helping hand.

“You alright there, Dillon?”

Panting, he grabs the offered hand and Flynn hauls him up to his feet, his head spinning at the sudden whoosh. His legs tremble under the weight, causing him to sway slightly. He falls into the shorter man, who grabs his right arm and slings it across his shoulders, letting him lean against him.

“Thanks.” Dillon murmurs, drained.

“No problem, mate.”

—————————————

Crack is whack LOL, okay so the fic is nothing to do with the title, I actually read a text fic with that saying and it has been stuck in my head since. However, it’s close to being finished! I just keep putting it off :’D

(honestly most of my titles is just me typing random bullshit until I come up with a proper name after I finish writing)

So uh this one, honestly I’m not sure what it fully is? A headcanon or maybe it’s something else, either way skin condition is conditioning and writing about it helps! In this, Flynn is dealing with an eczema flare up after an awkward battle

—————————————

Grimacing, Flynn continues his search.

He’s tried as many moisturisers he can get his hands on in Corinth but they haven’t worked. And to make it worse, even his usual go-to moisturiser wasn’t working, which really put a dampener on his optimism.

Surprisingly, this latest flare up stemmed from an attack bot of all things. It had cornered him outside of the dome and de-morphed him in the process and fighting in a wasteland under intense heat didn’t really do him any favours.

After the battle, his skin felt like it was screaming at him as it scratched uncomfortably against his clothes, which resulted in one of the worst flare-ups he’s had in a while.

[ashdreams2023]

You know I read somewhere that the asgardian ship traveled for 5 months so I want to ask

StarkSis!reader x loki on the asgardian ship headcanons

I think thor would be a medium kind but he would need a LOT of help😂

Please🤍

Oh I can definitely write that!

You and Loki on the ship of Asgard:

You and Loki’s relationship wasn’t a secret to anyone on the ship which thank god was a blessing

Though it didn’t stop Loki from hiding with you in very unconventional places to make out

The kids just loved to run and point at you two giggling

"What it is so funny?" Loki would ask constantly

"Let it go, they are babies"

Thor wasn’t the greatest king but he was alright

Which meant both of you had to help him and a LOT

"And if somebody do feel nauseous our doctors are on the rooms to the right" he’ll look back at you two for confrontation

"Yes brother, they are on the right"

You share a room with but there were nights where you and revengers would all sleep in Thor’s room because it gets lonely for him

After like two months of traveling you sit down with Loki and start talking about your future when you land on Midgard

"You think things would be better back there?"

"I honestly don’t darling, your family is down there so that should make you happy"

"You’re also my family Loki, you and all of Asgard"

You knew you had a lot of explanation to do to tony when you get back you wanted to enjoy your time with the Asgardian as much as possible as well

At one point you were playing hide and seek all over the ship because you got bored and even taught the kids some games from your childhood to play

The food was alright but you did sneak around with Bruce at late times to make you something more earth like to eat

You’ve been caught by your beloved multiple times doing so too

"Just tell the chef what you want and he’ll do it!"

"But I rather make it myself!"

He only left you alone about it when you started bribing him with sweets

Thor always had one of you stand by when he sat to listen to some issue someone had

"My king the bathrooms became very crowded every morning and the elderly can no wait for long in those lines!"

Thor would blink then look again at who’s with him that day

"We’ll make a schedule of who gets in and when starting from tomorrow, no worries Thor"

When you kept getting closer to earth Tony’s messages were finally reaching your phone and good god you had to sit down after reading them

You missed so much and now you had to deal with the consequences

The two brothers would comfort you

"It’s gonna be ok, I found out my life was a lie this can’t be so bad"

"And I’m responsible for many lives yet I am barely holding on, so we’re all domed in a way"

When you saw thanos ship is when you knew shit was about to go down

You held into Loki’s hand for dear life and prayed

This was it

[thatweeboverthereisthirsty]

Twst characters with an s/o who self harms, part 1

Ok so I was feeling really angsty when I started these so yes I did make these angsty. I came up with the idea and just sort of rolled with it so I hope ya’ll enjoy if you needed some angst, cause this definitely serves serious sadness vibes. (P.S. these are super long ngl.) (P.P.S. I’ve never written for Vil before and honestly really don’t have much of an opinion on him but I really wanted to write him in this situation for some reason)

Prompt: how chosen characters act when they realize that their s/o self harms headcanons

Characters: (Part 1: Leona, Ruggie, Vil), (Part 2: Kalim, Floyd, Idia), (Part 3: Trey, Jade, Jamil, Rook, Lilia), (Part 4: Malleus, Cater, Azul)

Warnings: Depression, self-harm, cutting, insecurities, panic attacks, heavy angst, medium level description of cutting, other possible triggers

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! DO NOT READ IF YOU THINK THIS MIGHT BOTHER YOU!

Leona Kingscholar: 

Would probably be napping with you when it happened.

You’d fallen asleep as well and of course he wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to appreciate you without you knowing or anyone watching.

The flowers were always in full bloom in this section of the garden dome. They framed your face beautifully and brought out the colors of your skin.

He ran a gentle hand over your cheeks and pressed the pad of his thumb to your lips. They were always so soft. 

From there he pulled his tail up to curl around your ankle and slid his fingers down your neck, past your collar bone and over your shoulders. 

He was slightly annoyed that the fabric of your large sweater was getting in the way though so he instead reached for your hand and slipped his fingers under your sleeve to massage your wrist.

Wait, what… no…

He would pause and sit up in alarm keeping his fingers on the scratchy rough bumps on your arm. 

Almost afraid to look he would shakily pull your sleeve up to reveal dozens of tiny red lines littering their way up your arm where smooth clear skin should be.

Oh my god. You- you had been cutting yourself. For how long though. Scars from ages ago were faded and just barely visible underneath the fresh cuts. 

He leaned forward and took a deep breath, catching your scent which was for the most part covered in that strong perfume you always started wearing after the two of you had started dating.

It had always annoyed him and he told you so too but when you started crying he had dropped it and never brought it up again. Truth be told he didn’t care that the perfume was strong or that you wore it in the first place he was just confused as to why you felt the need to cover up your own scent when it was so lovely.

It never occurred to him that you might not be using it to smell pretty but to cover up the scent of blood. 

He leaned forward again and this time he pressed your wrist directly to his nose. The smell of blood was mostly concealed by the perfume, which made his nose twitch and wrinkle in disgust. But surely enough the iron tang of blood reached the top of his mouth and made him recoil. 

- Leona had never been so pissed off in his entire life. He felt loathing so deep inside him he physically ached. Not even his anger towards how he was the second prince matched this. 

Without caring how rough he was being he shook you awake yelling obscenities. You were startled and felt tears of surprise spring to your eyes. What was going on? Why was he suddenly acting like this?

You looked down at where his hand tightly gripped your wrist. Searing pain shot through you and you realized what this was about. He had discovered your secret.

As if on a switch you kicked into fight or flight mode. You pulled back but he grabbed your other wrist so you thrashed and tugged in panicked attempts to free yourself from his grasp. 

Leona was having none of it however, and simply pushed you back on the ground and sat on your legs, pinning your arms down in place besides you. 

You had nowhere to go and no way out. The amount of confusion and emotional distress that flooded you so suddenly gave way and you felt yourself drain of fight. 

You went completely limp and let your eyes cloud over. There was no way to avoid this so you would put up every wall you had. 

In your transition from panic to numbness you missed everything Leona had been saying. “Stay still. Why are you freaking out. Stop struggling! I won’t let you escape until you explain this! Are you listening to me? Listen! Stop! Why! How could you!” 

None of these words registered in your mind as anything but pure anger. He stopped yelling when he realized you had started to shut yourself down, just like you did whenever you felt emotionally attacked. 

The Shift from anger to concern in his eyes was quick but you wouldn’t catch it anyway. He bit back a growl of frustration and forced himself to loosen his grip on your wrists. He shook as he pulled himself off of you and gathered you in his arms. 

What would someone like Kalim or Cater do now? How would they calm someone down? “Damn it.” he hissed out. He wasn’t good at this kind of stuff and never wished he was until this moment. Why had he been so rash about confronting you? Why couldn’t he have an ounce of control over himself when it came to you?

He cleared his mind of those thoughts. They could be had at a later date. Right now you needed him more. He sighed and pulled you closer.

“Shhh! It’s ok. I’m not mad at you. I just want to talk ok. It’s gonna be alright. You’re safe here. You’re safe with me. You always will be. I’m not gonna hurt you. I promise not to yell anymore. I’m right here ok. You don’t have to panic. Nothings gonna happen.” He spoke softly and shakily. Was this right? Why did it feel unnatural? Was he really that heartless that he couldn’t stand to comfort his own lover? 

No, It wasn’t that this felt unnatural. It felt natural. It was just wrong. Like he never thought he would have to say these things, like he never thought that they would be necessary. It was like he hated the fact that he had to calm you down in the first place. You shouldn’t be panicking. You were supposed to be calm and happy, sleeping with him in the garden even though you hated getting dirt in your hair and the pollen from the flowers bothered your nose.

He watched as you slowly started to come back. Your shaking began again and your teeth chattered with anxiety. Fear and sadness filled your eyes and spilled down your cheeks. He smiled sadly, relieved that you didn’t completely decide to shut him out. This changed however, as he felt tears of his own run down his face and drip into your lap. 

“Hey, hey, it’s ok I’m not angry at you, ok? I just want you to feel better. I just want you to feel better.” He repeated shakily. It was true. He wanted it more than anything in the world right now. 

“Y-you’re n-n-not m-m-ma-m” You could barely get through the sentence so he shushed you before you could. He shook his head and pulled your face to his chest, finding comfort in burying his face in your hair. 

The two of you stayed like this for a long while, waiting for you to calm down. 

“Why?” he asked when you stopped shaking and your breathing came easier. 

You sniffled, “Cause I can’t help it. I do it because of everything that hurts. All my insecurities and weaknesses. I do it because of them and it’s because I’m not enough-” “No!” He cut you off.

“You will always be enough. You never need to do this again, it doesn’t matter that you feel like you have to. I know that you don’t.” he stumbled over his words again but finally got out what he wanted to say.

After you told him about everything that made you want to hurt yourself and he told you that none of that should make you feel like any less than you are, he took you back to his room where you fell asleep in his arms.

All night he stayed awake holding you close. Trying to burn his love for you through physical contact. In the morning he would get into contact with the school guidance counselor. He wanted to make sure you never felt like you had to do that to yourself again.

Ruggie Bucchi:

This hyena is no idiot. He knows an infection when he smells one. “Let me see your arm.” his voice is firm in a way that it usually isn’t.

You internally panic. What will he do when he sees it? Will he think you’re ugly and push you away? You shouldn’t have done it, but the blade just looked so clean and sharp. How satisfying would it feel to push the sharp edge into your skin just once? You had thought a few nights before. Now though you regretted it. 

Knowing that there was no way to escape this you slowly held out your arm for him to have. 

He pulled up the sleeve, careful not to irritate your already damaged skin. You can’t look at him as he calmly takes in your cuts.

The silence stretched for an eternity before he looked up at you again. You still didn’t meet his gaze. Willing tears not to fall you pulled your arm back but didn’t push your sleeve down. The cuts hurt more now that it had been a few days and you didn’t feel as good about the pain as you had when they first started bleeding. 

“Hey… baby? Look at me.” You flicked your eyes up to meet his gaze briefly before settling your’s in his lap. He sighed and wrapped an arm around your waist, hoisting you into his lap and using his other hand to push your head into his neck. 

You wrapped yourself around him and let your tears fall. 

His fingers gently carded through your hair as he rocked back and forth in attempt to soothe you. 

Soon you felt yourself calm and he must have noticed it too because he pulled away and padded to the bathroom.

When he returned he set a first aid kit down next to you on the bed and held his hand out for your arm again. You hesitated before giving him your arm and watched guiltily as he cleaned and wrapped your wounds.

Once he finished you pulled your sleeve down again and mumbled out a quiet thanks. 

“Baby, you can’t let those kinds of injuries get infections. It could lead to disease and other horrible things.” You nodded and he continued. “Do you want to talk about it?” 

No you really didn’t want to discuss it. It had been a low moment and you really didn’t feel like focusing on it. You shook your head and muttered something uncatchable under your breath. He tilted his head and you sighed.

“No I-” a pause, “I just, it was a bad moment, it won’t happen again.” He sighed in relief

“Ok but you have to promise that if you ever feel like doing anything like this again you come straight to me.” You nodded.

The two of you spent the rest of the day relaxing in bed, even when Leona came to get Ruggie for something he seemed to realize that you needed to be left alone.

He never had much growing up but now that he did have something, he would never let it break. You were too valuable to him. If you ever did this again he would drag you to a specialist. He loved you and he intended to make sure that being loved was the only feeling you ever felt again.

Vil Schoenheit:

Shock, horror, anger, disappointment.

These were the first feelings he recognized when he caught sight of your scarred thighs. Bumps of healed up injuries felt like knives themselves underneath his fingertips.

He was shocked that you had these scars in the first place. 

Horror set in when he realized that they were self administered wounds.

Anger surged through him when he saw how ugly they looked in comparison to your otherwise flawless beautiful skin. More anger when he realized that they weren’t even visually ugly, they were emotionally ugly. They were permanent proof of your suffering. 

Finally disappointment for not noticing them sooner. What if he had noticed before it happened? Then you wouldn’t have these lines all over you and maybe you wouldn’t have had to feel like doing this in the first place.

You were still sound asleep in his bed but he felt that something like this couldn’t wait so he gently ran his fingers through your hair and whispered for you to wake up until you stirred.

Sitting up, you yawned and fell forward to lay your head on Vil’s shoulder, careful not to catch any of his beautiful hair under your head. 

It was a few moments before you felt him push you away and you looked up with a face that asked “what’s wrong?” He sighed. “Sweet Potato you know I love you and you know I would never be upset with you if you had to come to me because you were sad.” your face must have shown your confusion cause he bit his lip and looked down at your lap. The shorts you were wearing must have ridden up in your sleep because a lot more skin was on display than you anticipated, and at first you didn’t mind. Until you realized that he could see your scars as well.

There was a long moment of silence of the two of you just sitting there staring at your thighs. It was interrupted when you felt tears drop onto your bare legs. You looked up to see Vil crying. He never shed tears no matter how upset he was, it ruined his makeup and made his eyes puffy and red. It upset you how he always held his emotions in for the sake of his looks. It seemed like such a hard and unhealthy thing to do. But now he wasn’t holding them back. He sniffled and you felt tears of your own roll down your cheeks.

“Don’t cry baby, please don’t cry. I don’t want you to be sad.” You lifted your shaky hands up to his face and used the pads of your thumbs to wipe his tears away. He lifted his own and placed them over yours. His eyes were filled with sadness and you hated it. You wished nothing more than to make that sadness go away. Just like he chased your sadness away.

“Vil, this happened a long time ago before we got together. I stopped ok, it stopped. I stopped cutting when I met you.” He shook slightly as he responded. “But did it stop hurting. Did you stop because you didn’t want me to find out or because you weren’t hurting anymore.” 

You hesitated. It was a while before it stopped hurting but you hadn’t wanted to cut in so long it was hard to remember how it felt when you did it in the first place. Vil choked on a sob and took your silence as a no. You continued to wipe his tears and hold him close. 

He was always so strong and prepared for you. It was surprising to see him like this, to know that your pain would lead him to break down. 

“Hey. When we first got together I was really scared that you would reject me once you realized that my body wasn’t as perfect as you thought it was. So in order to distract myself from that I would- I-” you paused to take in a shuddering breath. “I wouldn’t cut anymore, but I would do everything I could to keep the wounds open.” 

He tensed up in your arms. Panic and guilt swarmed his pupils and he parted his perfectly glossed lips to say something but you cut him off. “I THOUGHT- I thought that if I still had injuries I could put off showing you my body. It was easy to tell you I had a cut that was still healing and that I didn’t want to aggravate it in case it would scar.” he looked down at your thighs again.

Vil vaguely recalled how you had avoided any touching or serious physical contact for a long time, claiming that you didn’t want some accident wound to scar. He had completely believed it and agreed fully. Beauty was important to him and if his Sweet Potato didn’t want a scar then he would respect that fully. He had even given her tips and special creams that would prevent scarring. He had no idea it was a self inflicted injury and that you wanted the cuts to stay open. It had never occurred to him that his need to have everything perfect would stem insecurity in the people he cared about most. It made his stomach turn.

“It took a little while but I realized that I didn’t like the cuts anymore. I wanted them to heal. I took your creams and advice and I helped them close. They still scarred from being open for so long but the fact that they were gone was comforting. You healed me. I was afraid to let you in and let you see how imperfect I really was, but eventually you broke my walls down and I let you in. I was afraid that I would get better. I didn’t know how to feel. You were healing my heart and making me feel beautiful again without actually giving me a makeover. And when my heart healed I let my wounds heal. I let you heal me, and I’ve been healed since then.”

He sobbed again and pulled you into his chest. How could he have not noticed how you had been hurting? You sighed as he smoothed a hand over your hair.

“H-how long did you do this?” He asked in a quiet voice. You had never heard him sound so small and vulnerable. “It doesn’t matter. I stopped and I will never do it again because you fixed me. You taught me how to be strong. How to feel beautiful even when the world turned ugly. Here, look, feel.” You pulled back and grasped his hands in yours and pulled them down to your legs. He flinched back when he realized what you were doing, but still let you guide him to lightly press his hands against your scars. 

They felt bumpy and uneven under his fingers. He gently ran his palms over the skin and tried to ignore that nagging feeling of self disappointment. You smiled at him gently and leaned forward to kiss away his tears. “Vil?”

He looked up at you again and pressed a kiss to your lips. “Never do this again. If you feel sad come to me and we can figure it out together. You said I make you feel strong, well you make me feel strong too so come to me and we can be strong and beautiful together. Because you are beautiful. You aren’t perfect but I don’t want perfection. I just want you, and your big beautiful smile lighting up my life. Your happiness, that’s perfect enough for me.” 

You hadn’t noticed when you started crying but your throat was dry as you choked out a sentence that made Vil physically ache. “You think I’m beautiful?” 

“Of course Sweet Potato, you are the most beautiful thing I have ever laid eyes on. I could try my whole life and never achieve anything near your level of beauty, and that will never change. Your beauty inside and out is unparalleled, even with a tear stained face and scars on your legs. But please, please, PLEASE, never hurt yourself again. I can’t stand the thought of you hurting to the point of doing this.” 

You nodded, “never again.” He smiled with relief and pulled you into another long hug. You are beautiful. You are perfect. He would never let you feel like anything less. That was a promise.

[ckret2]

Alright let’s talk GVK spoilers!!!

My reactions as best I can remember them!

- love how Kong is humanized from the very first scene, like every time he shows up he’s humanized so much more than other titans are. If that was at the expense of other titans being made likable I wouldn’t enjoy it so much, but like, Godzilla is made pretty lovable over the course of Monsterverse, Mothra is too, and all the titans featured for long are given recognizable emotions that let us see them as more intelligent and feeling than “just” animals; so all of them are made understandable/likable/sympathetic. But of them all, Kong is the only one really humanized. Which makes sense, because like, big monkey! Basically our distant cousin!

- And they kept playing, like, normal songs for him, which cracked me up.

- I really appreciated how you could SEE the titans in this movie. After all the weather effects to hide the titans in KOTM, there was such a clear difference in this one from the very start. Kong in the daylight! Godzilla makes his first attack at night, and even then you can see him much more clearly than you can for most of KOTM! Nice!

- after the Iwi were portrayed as silent stoic witnesses in Skull Island, I really appreciated that they took an Iwi character, made her a main character, and gave her dialogue and a real role to play in the story while also keeping her deaf/mute. I think that was a good way to improve on the way that the Iwi got got sidelined in the last movie while still maintaining the worldbuilding!

- I didn’t appreciate so much that, y’know, they murdered the rest of her people off-screen in order to do it. Couldn’t they have gone “her parents died so she got adopted by a Monarch agent that was close to her family, but like, the rest of her tribe is fine”? Or at the very least “their island got fucked up so they had to be evacuated but like they’re settling in somewhere else”? “They’re living under this island dome with Kong and they know what’s up and Monarch’s keeping them in the loop and they decided they’re chill with their new dome home, but this one girl likes to go on adventures with Monarch”? Something? Did we have to kill them all off? Y’all make up an entire fictional indigenous culture and then murder them off-screen when you don’t need them? Just let them live.

- a few minutes in I was like “hold on, we’ve got two characters that speak sign language, we’ve got a giant gorilla, gorillas learn sign language, is there any reason they can’t teach Kong?” and then later I was like “OOOOOH!!” Humans and titans learning how to communicate with each other has been one of my favorite themes to explore in Monsterverse fanfic so I was absolutely tickled to see it getting explored in canon, too.

- That said I think it’s hilarious that the girl managed to teach Kong to sign without, like... anybody seeing. Kong’s hands are above the tree line and there are cameras everywhere, how did NOBODY with Monarch see him signing.

- Bernie’s weaponized being an annoying coworker to such a degree it can only be called an art, and I really appreciated it.

- Godzilla’s extra chonky in this movie and I dig it. Roomie noted he was extra crocodilian and I dig that too.

- “There’s been no confirmed titan sightings in three years” I don’t buy that for a minute. They’re BIG. Rodan NESTS IN VOLCANOES. They found a MOTHRA EGG. Humans have A SCARILY WELL-FUNDED ORGANIZATION DEDICATED SOLELY TO FOLLOWING TITANS AROUND. Like, most of the lore in GVK that I don’t personally like, I can be like “eh... I can tweak it just a little bit with headcanons to make it work for me...” but NO confirmed titan sightings? You expect me to believe ALL of them moved underground when we’d previously seen them all prefer to live above ground? You expect me to believe that now that they’re all AWAKE, they learned how to HIDE?? Uh-uh. And at the end of KOTM there was stuff in the credits about using titan droppings as biofuel, obviously they’re still walking around up top! Can’t take that from me. Nope.

- Who the FUCK is Ren Serizawa and how is he related to Ishiro Serizawa? IS he related? Maybe they just dropped the surname as another “yeah this is a Godzilla movie for Godzilla fans” easter egg but I have a hard time believing that he can’t be somehow related to the other character with the Very Important Last Name who was so important in the last two Godzilla movies. If he is related I’m sure it’s been explained in a tie-in comic or the novelization or something, I’ll look it up later.

- I had to look up how much weight huge battleships can carry while writing a KOTM fic where Ghidorah hitches a ride on one, and y’all, I had to pull weird gravity-negating magic to get him to ride on that boat. Godzilla and Kong woulda sunk that boat like a rock. All I could think during that scene is “this wouldn’t work and I know that because I DID THE RESEARCH and I wasn’t even getting PAID.” I’ll choose to believe that Monarch gets special heavy duty ships designed to carry titans but nobody mentioned it because it wasn’t relevant to Kong’s journey.

- The bit where they could see where Godzilla was swimming because he’d got half a ship hooked to him that was bobbing around on the surface, didn’t Jaws do something like that with a buoy? It’s been ages since I’ve seen Jaws. Anyway good reference.

- Insert “they’re gonna need a bigger boat” joke

- I LOVED the part where they shut down all the ships to get Godzilla to leave. Both because, one, it’s a spectacular callback to KOTM’s “turn off all the guns so he knows we’re not a threat” that makes it seem like now that’s just what Monarch knows what to do to get G to chill out, and two... we know that Godzilla backs off either when he’s killed his enemy or when his enemy has yielded to him. At the end of KOTM—and the end of GVK—the act of yielding is presented as very ceremonial and uniform across species: everyone lowers anything they’ve got that could be dangerous (claws, fangs, beaks, axes) and bows to show Godzilla they’re not gonna fight. Battleships, obviously, can’t bow, but even without being inducted into whatever secret titan cultural intricacies might be going on, humans have figured out their own way to “bow” to Godzilla: cut all the power, so their ships can’t move and can’t use weapons. I know the movie presented it as “playing dead,” but c’mon, if Godzilla could hear MechaG power up from halfway around the planet then he could hear that Kong’s heart was still beating, and he’s been around enough boats to know humans can turn them off and on when they want. The humans bowed to Godzilla. He accepted that they yielded and left.

- Mark Russell looked like such a dad in this movie, like he’s retired 100% from being a rugged action hero and now he’s just Pure Dad. I like him better when he’s a dad, it’s a good development for him. He got like 3 lines and I’m like “I appreciate this character development.”

- Despite all my qualms about how conspiracy theories and extremist groups are handled in Monsterverse (and WHICH conspiracy theories they decide to reference), I really love Madison and Bernie’s dynamic. The adult man who’s the excitable wide-eyed believer in every BS conspiracy you can possibly imagine; and then the serious, severe Teenage Girl On A Mission who’s hypercompetent because she was raised for five years by a friggin doomsday cult militia; and despite having wildly different personalities they’re just, in total agreement about everything. Handled just a BIT differently (like, leaving out the more gross IRL conspiracies) they would be a wildly fun comedic duo—especially with Josh the Only Sane Man coming along as the hapless sidekick. And they all play off of each other so well! Both in a comedic sense, and in more serious moments—when Bernie talked about his wife, there was a real moment of empathy between him and Madison with very little said. I’d watch an entire movie just about the three of them. I’d watch a TV show.

- On the one hand I wasn’t too much of a fan of KOTM’s “all titans... are inherently In Tune With Nature... nature has a Balance, because that’s a Real Thing and not an anthropocentric concept to describe how we like nature to act, and they automatically restore it... because they’re like, some kinda borderline divinities or something... we should probably be worshipping them...” thing; but, now that it was totally absent in GVK, I sorta miss it. Like I feel like there needs to be a balance, a few humans who are like “i lowkey worship these dudes?” and a few others who are like “they’re cool but like, that’s a lil extreme” and that neither side be presented as Right in how they regard titans’ relationship with nature.

- “All titans come from THE HOLLOW EARTH” nah I don’t buy that it’s silly. Basically, what I object to is the idea that all titans have some sort of intrinsic similarity (they all come from the same hitherto-unknown location; they all are part of the same pack that has the same alpha; they all are fueled/fed by the same energy source; etc) rather than letting them be SEPARATE species whose only unifying traits are “they’re all big enough to fuck everything up everywhere they go” and “they’re big enough that the typically-insurmountable barriers between different biomes (mountain ranges, valleys, long distances with terrible weather) aren’t insurmountable for them, so even if they’re specialized in different environments they still all have to deal with each other pretty often.” I’ll make some exceptions for convergent evolution (i.e., claiming multiple titans developed similar traits that are relatively easy to spontaneously evolve and a prerequisite for a creature to survive at such a large size). But I can’t buy “this big gorilla has more biologically in common with this big crocodile-iguana than he does with, say, gorillas,” or most of the other “all these titans have THIS IN COMMON” claims that Monsterverse makes, including “everyone’s from hollow earth.” So I’m tossing that out the window and substituting my own headcanons. Some might’ve evolved there but some evolved on the surface. Maybe a majority of them like ducking in and out of the hollow earth like some kind of titan shortcut system. Kong’s species, I can buy, IS native to hollow earth, considering that they built a whole-ass society down there with tools and architecture.

- I’m SO curious about the little underground Kong home, the Godzilla motif in the floor, and the axe that appeared to be made with a Godzilla scute. What’s the story there??? We know Godzilla’s species and Kong’s species are ancient rivals. Is it because Kong’s species hunted Godzilla’s to steal their scutes to make weapons, seeing them as a valuable resource the way, like, early humans considered woolly mammoths a valuable resource—thus making that Godzilla on the floor equivalent to cave art of mammoths made by people who hunted them—until the Godzillas got pissed and started fighting back en masse? Or were Godzillas and Kongs already enemies when Kongs decided to start making weapons out of their corpses? Did they use to be allies, fighting together, with Godzillas voluntarily offering shed scutes and/or bones of their deceased members to Kongs, and that place used to be a shared home until they started fighting?

- What about that power source, is it something that was already there that both Kongs and Godzillas started to deliberately harvest for technology/atomic breath? Or did Godzillas automatically channel that stuff and Kongs exploited/borrowed/traded with Godzillas to utilize it too? Or is the power from Godzillas who collaboratively poured a bunch of power into the place thus that Kongs were able to use it too? I doubt Godzilla’s species CREATED all that weird energy but the question remains of whether, like, they channel it FROM underground, or naturally produce the same thing in their own bodies, or what.

- Godzilla using his atomic breath to dig a hole STRAIGHT TO KONG just to KICK HIS ASS is hilarious. How lucky that Hong Kong just HAPPENS to be straight over Kong’s house! Were all the tunnels to the hollow earth made by pissed off Godzillas who wanted to kick monkey ass??

- I loved the aesthetic of the battle scene in Hong Kong, with the brightly colored neon building outlines, VERY cool look. The choreography of the battle scene was great too, especially

- we literally broke into applause when Kong shoved the axe handle in Godzilla’s mouth. Love it, perfect callback, that was the ONE thing from the original King Kong Vs Godzilla I was hoping to see referenced and there it was.

- You could really see a difference in how Kong and Godzilla fought—Kong doing a better job at using tools and the environment, Godzilla fighting more like a reptile. They seemed to emphasize Godzilla’s more animalistic behaviors in this movie to accomplish that contrast—he was down on all fours and moving like a crocodile more often, he was clawing at Kong’s chest—but even though it seemed a bit different of a combat technique it also didn’t seem out of place compared to how he fought in prior movies. And we’ve already seen that if Godzilla’s involved in a fight and one of the combatants knows how to use the environment, it’s typically not gonna be Godzilla. (See: Ghidorah using the reflection in a building’s windows to see what’s behind him, and recognizing a nearby power source and biting it to juice himself up.)

- So many of Godzilla’s enemies seem to have specialized in negating his atomic breath in order to combat him! The MUTOs directly suppress his ability to use it—and it makes sense that that’s an inborn ability they have, since they evolved to use Godzilla’s species as prey. Kong has a weapon that both acts as a shield to absorb the breath and turn it back against Godzilla’s species—they didn’t evolve to counter Godzilla, but they developed tools once a rivalry happened. Ghidorah’s the exception—which makes sense, since he came from space—but even at that we see him using tactics specifically to take into account Godzilla’s most powerful weapon (such as keeping one head on lookout for when he starts glowing so that they know when they need to dodge).

- LOVED the reveal that MechaG was based off of Ghidorah’s brain, it has vibes of both the Kiryu Saga and the way that Heisei MechaG is based off of Mecha-King Ghidorah. Not the most surprising plot twist, since we’d theorized that they might use San to make MechaG, but I wasn’t 100% sure they were gonna go with it until they finally did. Even when I was going “huh, the mecha pilot’s chamber looks weirdly organic” I didn’t make the connection to WHY until the reveal, lol.

- “Ghidorah’s necks are so long that the heads have to communicate with each other telepathically” that’s COMPLETELY WILD but I love it, it follows very well from their prior portrayal as telepathic empaths in Heisei, it lines up with their emphasis on electricity (because BRAINWAVES AND ELECTRICITY, hey ho movie monster pseudo science!), and it very much compliments my own private headcanon that they’ve got some psychic/mind control abilities.

- The movie ended with both “Godzilla won, technically” but also “since they teamed up as equals, the ending doesn’t FEEL like ‘Godzilla wins, Kong loses’ but rather ‘they both won against a common foe’” and since I’m on both Team Godzilla and Team They Should Be Friends, I’m happy with this outcome. Plus since the last time they fought, the Japanese movie company graciously let the American monster win, so it’s only polite that the American movie company graciously let the Japanese monster win.

- There were just a few too many humans in this movie. I was intrigued by Ren but we didn’t get much out of him, but like I guess somebody had to be in the pilot’s seat other than the Apex CEO. Didn’t care for the author of the hollow earth book, I feel like his role was superfluous. Didn’t need the Apex CEO’s daughter there at all, coulda done without her. How about this, combine all three roles. Instead of having a whole-ass author who knows about the hollow earth, just casually reference that Rick from KOTM wrote a book about it since he was the expert, and (since he wasn’t in this movie) say that he tragically died going to explore the hollow earth himself, and that way we’ve got the book with the “titans are from there” theory AND an excuse to share the “humans die when they go underground” info. Now, have Ren be working for Apex as a pilot for Mechagodzilla, but have him be MechaG’s pilot because he’s also a good pilot in general, and can fly those HEAV things. Have Apex send him to Monarch to be like “hey, you guys trust me right, since I’m Ishiro Serizawa’s relative? We at Apex have heard all about your failed hollow earth expedition, and due to Ishiro I’ve got some past ties to Monarch so I’ve got high clearance with y’all, so I could bring over this useful Apex tech that’d let you go underground and use what I know about hollow earth from my past time at Monarch to help guide things.” Once they’ve got the little chunk of energy stuff and go topside, he hustles it straight to Apex and straps into his seat to run MechaG. Bam, you’ve combined “person who knows enough about hollow earth to help the expedition,” “person who represents Apex’s interests and gets the energy,” and “person who pilots MechaG” into one character, in a way that takes three flat/underdeveloped characters and turns them into a single interesting character with a lot going on and some intriguing ties to the rest of the cast.

I think that’s everything?? Hoo.

[greyias]

You ever spend so long writing/expanding on an extremely minor and undeveloped background character you become intensely attached to them? To the point where you try and find ways to recreate them in-game?

Thus is my fate, to fall too hard for this extremely fanon/headcanoned version of Theron’s poor, doomed astromech from Lost Suns, who has sort of graduated into his sidekick in this AU fic I’ve been working on forever-and-a-day. So much so, I’ve gone and tracked down the closest customization for T7 in-game to my little dome-headed pal.

Lookit that chrome dome good boy.

I’m not sure at what point I started to fall for my little fanonized version of this obscure and forgotten astromech, but it was somewhere between him fandroiding over T7′s cult status within the SIS droid circle, and this beautiful exchange:

It also gave Theron a moment to contact M-6 to have the astromech meet them at engineering. Sliding a glance at his two, for lack of a better word, companions filling the corridor with quiet chatter, he decided to send the message to M-6 over a text relay within his implants.

The data packet came back in seconds, and the droid beeped in his ears. Curious, he replied with a query, receiving a very simple response. It was a crude pictographic data packet, but he understood the droid’s meaning.

He thought about sending back a warning to the little astromech that he should watch his language in any official medium that might be reviewed later by the analytics department -- but that'd probably be hypocritical. Plus, Theron had no doubt who would get the blame for corrupting the circuits of innocent little astromech droids if the Director of the SIS ever heard a droid cursing in binary.

Does canon!M-6 flip Theron the bird via emoji like my widdle fic!M-6 does? EH. Probably not. He seems to be more of a worry wart, and a storytelling device so Theron has someone to monologue to and infodump on before he gathers the rest of the cast as companions. Poor little faithful guy, he’s just happy to let Theron babble on endlessly about software upgrades and implants, wake up in the middle of the night to haul animal carcasses away that he tried to warn Theron about, and also haul most of the pieces of his giant spy ray around everywhere.

Sadly, he only lasts three of the five comics before he’s unceremoniously dissected off-screen by Imperials. RIP M-6, best little spy droid buddy. You live on in my heart. And apparently this fic if it ever sees the light of day.

[yanderecandystore]

Remember that Villain Eldritch I asked for way back? What if the s/o just gave up and went on to find love and ignore Eldritch or atleast try to....Now I can't stop thinking of a Eldritch that looks like a puppet masterwith the theater masks . - Cold Anon

Ya know Cold, I've been having a hard time writing recently because I haven't felt inspired but now I realize the biggest mistake I ever made-

WHY DID I TITLED AZIR "THE WINGED ONE", IF I COULD HAVE CALLED HIM "THE PLAYER"???

It would have fitted his character so much better and it wouldn't be such a mouthful!

I feel so baaaaaad ;-; Okay listen- I know this is really bad but- Can we just call him Azir The Player!? I'm sorry but it literally fits his "Life is all a game/an theater play" personality-

Yes boo, I remember your request, and I'm glad to be able to write for it again :3

TW/Tags: [🎲🦚☄️] // mentions of mind control // mentions of stealing identities // humans being treated as pets/playthings // mentions of memory erasure // mentions of blackmail/kidnaping // delusional thinking

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

Player One Wins [Yandere!Eldritch OC (Azir) x Reader - Headcanon]:

For those that don't know Azir, he is the character of [🌨️🔮🦚], who likes to create and collect "snow globes" of various humans cities- Basically creating enclosures for humans to his own visual enjoyment. You could say he is kinda like the Collector, although Azir does not care for having a huge collection, he just wants a couple of Earth's cities that he finds aesthetically pleasing- And easy to have his control over.

I like to imagine that all of the Masked ones have the ability to change in size, except for Ibu who struggles to change his physical form, so he resorts to his illusions when it comes to disguise (just a bit of an thought, I think the others try to make themselves appear bigger in Ibu's presence just to provoke him-). In other words, Azir can easily make himself bigger to take a whole small town for himself, and even become small enough to fit in with the humans.

It's not a hard job for him. Sure, it's pretty time consuming since he has to basically erase the memories of the outside world of every single individual to be able to have a bit of order inside his little cages, but to him, it's all worth it.

The type of sick fate that awaits the poor inhabitants of said small towns are not easy to predict. It depends on what game he wants to play. I don't doubt that whenever he has a new specific concept in his head, he will do whatever it takes to achieve that ideal concept.

Being that an apocalyptic scenario in one day, maybe a completely happy paradise in the next day, maybe a full day just to praise him for the absolute God that he is- As long as he has control over everyone, he can easily manipulate the situation to make it sound like that day never happened.

But then again, he is easily bored- So his latest trick was to try and live a successful human life from the ground up, it sounded like a fun challenge to someone that doesn't care for other's well-being, you can thank Ibu for giving him the (wrong) idea of how humans function. After he noticed you were suspicious of him, he changed his game.

It was a lot more fun in this game, he felt more like himself- It was a lot more satisfying playing the role of the villain than the good guy, yet in a way- He still had nothing to lose! He already won, everyone you know and love is under his possession, even yourself.

But that wasn't really true though, the only thrill of this game is of you chasing him- So for you to simply stop playing, it meant the game wasn't happening anymore, and he had lost.

He had lost because you weren't feeling his ego anymore, but that doesn't make sense in his head- You're the one that has bailed out, you're the one that should have lost- Why does it feel like- Like he lost his own game??

Sure, you know what? Fine, go for it- You'll probably die in a blink of his eyes anyway- It's not like he'll notice if you're gone or not. He still has literally everyone else in town to be his toy. Try ignoring the constant citizens that will look at you dirty because they're under his influence- Since he feels like you cheated in some way.

You are extremely stupid if you think you can just ditch him and his game, as long as you're here, you don't have a saying in whether or not if you'll participate in his game. You're stuck in this massive pretty cage- Of course you won't be able to get out.

He has to reassure himself that it's foolish of you to be so stubborn, you're his from the moment he created this "snow globe"- Why would you ever just- Ignore him?? Don't you want to know the truth about your situation? Of who and what he is??

He would annoy you constantly, sometimes by disguising himself as one of your friends/relatives to be able to get closer to you and see more personally how your life was going without his interference- And on other times, he would simply watch by being outside the crystal dome, just observing from an outsider perspective to see how are you doing, since you keep ignoring him even when he tries to provoke reactions out of you.

He feels so lonely- In his mind he is only concerned because he thinks it's unfair of you to simply get out of the game, but in reality he does miss you a bit. He tells himself that you somehow cheated your way into winning this game, and that's the part that upsets him the most- Even if very deep down, he knows that you didn't cheat, since he had no proof of it.

But after seeing you build a new life with the other mortals made him lose his shit-

You filthy, filthy cheater, that's not how the game was supposed to go! Why- Why would you even consider changing the game?? He is the one who gets to set the rules- And in his rules there is no more characters involved in this story, there is only you and him as the players and actors of this ongoing plot-

It's not fair for you to simply cheat on him like that- You shouldn't have tested his patience.

You want a villain? He will be your villain- Taking away all the ones you love from you, and hopefully you two can restart this again without these inconveniences-

Just don't fuck his game, his theater, his entertainment- It's clear that he can't get it if you're away, being the actor and director of your own play- Cheating your way away from his game and from him, he is almost too disappointed to get back at you, but just barely.

Get ready to get back into his game- Hopefully you'll be able to keep your memories of your partner and kids, it'll depend on how good you'll follow his instructions.

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

[anonymous-gremlin]

An au where Korekiyo didn't kill Tenko and got away with the murder. Also Himiko is the mastermind and Tenko the traitor.

Perspective of Shuichi because he has an ahoge. But the angst is a bit more other characters centric. Everyone has angst tho

Definitely gonna write multiple parts.

Part 4 of ?

Almost everything is the same with some changes until chap 3.

Masterpost Part 3 Part 5

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Gonta is great and loveable

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No Seesaw (Part 4/?)

Aka if Kork got away with it

It wasn't done? Shuichi had thought it would be over now. But he should have known better.

This was far from over

Rocks started falling out of the sky looking very much the like meteorits they saw in Kirumi's motive video just a few days ago.

They started running again. Although you couldn't call it running really. More than halve of the group was injured in some type of way and that slowed them down.

The dome was still there. There was no escape. Shuichi's breath picked up and he felt like he was drowning. Black spots before his eyes.

He was drowning

And drowning

And drowning

He felt someone picking him up.

Sounds all around him. He heard yelling. "Let's go!" "Watch out!" "Duck!" "It's on fire!"

Slowy regaining consciousness, he looked up to the person carrying him. Gonta runned, Kokichi in the other arm. Although his glasses were missing and blood was running down his face, he was running without bumping into things.

His feet must have been bruised too. Gonta had never worn shoes during the entire time they had met him. Something about how they didn't feel right on his feet.

Downside of that was that he had walked onto stuff like sharp rocks and hurt his feet badly leading to Kirumi staying many nights up to tend to the wounds with upmost care. She had told him various time to be careful.

Gonta had tried to be careful but sometimes while catching bugs, he would get hurt. Shuichi had seen it happen way too many times while getting dragged along with him to catch bugs.

It's not that Shuichi didn't enjoy it. Bug catching was not his favourite activity but it was a good distraction from all that was happening.

After almost stumbling, Gonta looked down at Shuichi. "Is Saihara alright? Gonta is gonna put you down, okay?"

Carefully, he set Shuichi down and layed a unconcious Kokichi a bit better so he wouldn't fall out of Gonta's arm. "You're very brave, Gonta, I definitely owe you one after all of this is over, if we even survive" Shuichi said.

Gonta smiled. "We have to stay positive, we are gonna survive this, Gonta wouldn't let his friends die. He promises"

How could he stay this positive in a situation like this? It reminded him of another person.

A scream errupted from a bit further away. It sounded like Kiibo. "Hold Ouma for Gonta" Gonta said while pushing Kokichi into Shuichi's hands. "Wait! Gonta!" Shuichi yelled after him but it was too late. Gonta was already around the corner.

A giant rock crashed down there. Gonta's scream was the last thing they heard from him.

He....he....

Was dead.

Gonta was dead.

Shuichi couldn't believe it. Tears streamed down his face.

"One done, more to go" Himiko's voice laughed through the speakers. "Oh, this is so amazing! Don't you think, Tenko?" A pause and some mumbling probably to herself but still hearable over the speakers. "Tenko? Where is that good for nothing degenerate?" "Click" the click had the microphone Himiko had probably been speaking in being put out.

The execution music kept playing but something else could be heard.

"Over here! Here is a opening!"

Shuichi couldn't make out who the voice belonged to but immideatly started running towards it.

In the dome was a big hole made. They were finally free! He could practically taste freedom.

"Watch out!" The next things happened so quickly.

A flash of blue, someone pushing him out of the way. Kokichi falling out of his arms. A giant rock hitting where he had stood.

More screams and then his vision went black

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Part 5 coming soon!

Notes:

Please don't kill me

Ideas and headcanons for this au are always welcome

Same as writing advice or spelling corrections.

[owlespresso]

royal treatment / emet-selch

Consort!Reader/Solus zos Galvus My ko-fi is still open for donations. I write headcanons and drabbles in exchange for donos. https://ko-fi.com/owlespresso Commissions are also open! https://owlespresso.tumblr.com/post/186937812263/commissions-are-open  SPICY CONTENT below the read more. You have been warned.

The scent of rich incense curls into the air and twines around your robed form as you navigate the royal chambers. Quietly do you tiptoe around the grand canopy bed and the plush leather couches. In the distance, the entrance to Solus’s personal bathing chambers stands. It’s slightly ajar, steam curling into the air from the slight crack, hinting that it’s in use.

It seems Solus wants you to bathe with him, tonight. As the emperor’s constant companion, you are accustomed to seeing sides of him that he reveals to no one else… including his unabashed nudity.

Does he long for a more sexual touch tonight? Or will he simply be satisfied by the lone press of your bodies together.

A thrill shocks up your spine as you near the door, gently pushing them open. 

Steam already rests heavy in the room, obscuring your vision momentarily. Its moist warmth settles against your skin. The smell of sweet roses and chamomile clings to the air and floods your senses. One of his highnesses’s favorites.

The chamber is wide and composed mainly of stark, white marble. A hollowed out, square space in the center acts as the main bath, flooded with crystal clear water. Pillars stand firm on either side of the tremendous room, thick and engraved with intricate, decorative patterns. 

Red and pink petals drift aimlessly over the bath’s surface. A small station to the right holds shelves of towels and toiletries, as well as a rack to hang one’s robe. A table resting in the corner hosts a bevvy of drinks to pick from. Had you been alone, you likely would have perused the selection. 

“And here I was, thinking you forgot about little old me.” The emperor’s voice rings soft and sultry over the open space. He rests against the far edge, elbows resting atop the finely cut marble. The muscular stretch of his torso is held above the water, ilms of perfect skin on full display. He is a man chiseled from only the finest of stones, every curve and sharp plane honed to strict perfection. Though his years on the battlefield have long passed him, it’s clear he still takes care of himself. 

It’s a devotion you can’t help but admire. 

“I could never,” you insist gently, a smile curling the corners of your lips upwards. Just the sight of his bare chest is titilating to you, finally freed from its usual prison of the royal regalia. The thick, flowing garments that usually cover him from head to toe are mercifully absent, letting you know you’ll be able to enjoy his company to the fullest, tonight. “I hope you’re well, my lord.”

You shrug your shoulders, allowing your silken robe to slide from your body and collapse to the floor, a puddle of sleek fabric. You’re completely bare underneath it, nipples already hard, cunt beginning to moisten in anticipation for what’s to come.

“As well as one can be after a long day of dealing with the oh-so-noble court,” he sighs languidly and rests his chin atop the back of his fingers. “I fancied my days on conquering and bloodshed to be over, but perhaps I should bring the troops down south to conquer the rest of Corvos. T’would be a splendid excuse for a vacation.” His gaze drags over the stretch of your body, lingering on the curve of your hips and the soft curve of your chest.

“An invasion as a vacation?” you inquire with a raised brow.

“A vacation in comparison to the dry monotony of conversing with rich fools.” Solus huffs out a laugh.

“Perhaps you should give yourself some time to relax before you commit to that plan,” you say with a soft smile, wading into the warm depths. The water sloshes around your waist, a few of the crimson petals sticking to your skin. “Allow me to help you to relax. It’s the least I can do after all you’ve been put through, today. I imagine count Flavius really put your nerves through the wringer. He was ranting for hours yesterday about the new taxation policy, like he doesn’t have enough money already.”

Upon your approach, he moves from his lofty, lounged position. The water shifts around his steep form as he steps in your direction, arms outstretched. You steer yourself immediately into his embrace, hands resting atop the broad stretch of his chest. The smell of rose water tied with natural musk surrounds you, all too familiar and comforting. 

“As much as I appreciate your willingness to serve your emperor, I would much rather take the lead this time round. Let us use this time to unwind… and wash away the wretched stench of countess Leonus’s perfume.” He wrinkled his nose, eyebrows furrowing into a scowl. His lips set into a pout which you were unashamed to admire as cute. 

He shakes his head as though to clear the memory of it, reaching towards a porcelain dish perched close to the ledge of the bath. He grasped a pale soap bar, meticulously cut into the shape of a rose. The needlessness of it made the corners of your lips curl into a wry smile. Every piece, every belonging was touched by the wealthy’s incessant need to make every object in their house unique and ornate.

He pays no mind to it, instead lathering up his hands as you finally come to stand before him.

“Please, take a seat.” A soapy hand presses against the small of your back, urging you into his lap. You rest upon his thighs, hands perched atop the broad curve of his shoulders. Though this is a dance you knew the steps to, you could not suppress a sharp intake of breath, nor could you fight the sheepish warmth that coalesced in your face. His gaze, keen and searching, roamed from your eyes to your chest, making a grand sweep over your top half. “Truly a sight to die for.”

He emphasizes his point by bringing his hands over your chest, calloused palms and fingers rubbing against your sensitive nipples. They raise to firm peaks within mere moments. Your eyes shut, lips parting around a soft gasp. He leaves white suds in his wake, spreading the sweet scent across your skin. 

“Idle flattery will get you nowhere, your radiance.” Your voice comes out shakier than you’d like it. His flattery, you immediately come to find, will get him wherever he wants to be.

“Oh? Is that why you’re already putty in my hands?” he says with a scoff, giving your hips a pointed squeeze. At this point, it’s more about teasing you than washing you clean. You bathe before your nightly visits to him, he knows this well, and has likely memorized your schedule for the lone purpose of teasing you at the most optimal times.

“Guilty as charged,” you acquiesce with a little laugh. You can already feel the slick gathering hot and heavy between your thighs, cunt drenched with your anticipation. “I can’t hide anything from you, your radiance.”

“At last you realize how futile it is to try and hide from your emperor,” Solus presses kisses up and down the expanse of your throat. There’s no doubt he notices every subtle twitch, every little noise you make. The water sloshes around your midsection as he urges you further atop his lap. The tip of his hardened cock kisses the softness of your cunt. 

His palms slide to cup your bottom, fondly squeezing each cheek. His thumbs caress the supple skin in slow circles, another sensation to add to the blossoming pile of them. It’s a series of delicate but purposeful touches that leaves you breathless and wanting, those long fingers mapping your sides and worshipping your body. No ilm is left unattended, your body relaxing muscle by muscle as he descends upon you. 

Any and all prospects of getting clean are washed down the drain as you lose your common sense to lust, eyes shutting, allowing yourself to get caught up river’s torrent. He’s the pull of the tides, the twining of the dark water around your legs, tugging you towards the soft soil at the bottom of the stream.

“Solus,” you sigh, fingers running through lush, ebony locks. You pull on the strands ever so slightly, feel an inkling of satisfaction as he softly moans against your collarbone. 

“Mmm?” he purrs in response. His long fingers curl around your right breast, giving it a pointed squeeze. Your back arches instinctually, gaze lifted towards the domed ceiling. His lips dance across the other, tongue rasping over your other nipple. He gently teases the firm bud with his teeth, before his lips wrap around it. The molten beginnings of your pleasure lap at your seated form, toes and fingers curling at the growing intensity.

He gives it a firm suck, the light press of teeth tearing a surprised gasp from you. He plays at the other with long fingers, squeezing and twisting it. He grants you no reprieve even as he releases your breast with lewd pop.

“Whatever is it that you want from me, my lovely? I cannot give you what you want unless you tell me.”

“Fuck me,” you plead, warm breath brushing against his ear. The shiver that rolls down his spine in response does not escape you. The tips of your nails run over his shoulders, causing goosebumps to spread over that vulnerable, pale skin. You every trick, touch him everywhere you can in order to elicit more of a reaction. If you know anything about Solas, it’s his unfortunate penchant for teasing. And at this point, when your mind is solely on pleasure, you’ll do anything to speed the process up.

“No, no,” he coos soothingly, “You’ll get your satisfaction later, my love. But for now, allow me to savor the privilege of your company.”

“All the flowery language in the world won’t satisfy me as much as your coc—” you feebly begin to reprimand him, in the middle of your weak scolding, he made a pointed roll of his hips. The heated length of his cock rolls exquisitely along your sodden folds. The sudden jolt of pleasure made your head loll back, a gasp wrenched from your weak throat. 

“Why waste your time on words when you could be making such beautiful noises for me?” Solus croons mockingly, his touch wandering back up to your chest. Calloused hands press to your hardened nipples, the course texture making your back arch all over again, too winded to offer a competent reply.

There’s little else you can do but squeal and croon and writhe atop him.

“There we go. Was that so hard?” he spares you no quarter, the honey-coated words striking hardest when you have almost no way to retort. His fingers find home between your legs, beginning to tease your arousal-slicked cunt. He barely presses into your entrance, eyes shut, head tilting to the side as you roll your hips. The hand not pulling pulse after pulse of arousal from the crux of your legs spans across the full size of your hip, holding you in place.

He drinks his fill of you, kiss after greedy kiss pressed to your soft lips. He pries your pleasure from you, works your body as a master musician works a violin, fingers dancing along thin strings. Your clit twitches with each fine note of pleasure, working you towards a warm release despite his intention to draw it out.

As though sensing the incoming climax, his touches halt. 

“Solus!” you near scream, fixing him with an incredulous stare. Your hands feebly press to his shoulders, your bottom lip caught underneath your teeth. Your hips immediately begin to wiggle and squirm, desperately attempting to grind atop one of his broad thighs. “Please, can we—”

“Hush, sweetling,” Solus cajoles, fingertips dancing up and down your sides. “You’ll receive your pleasure in due time. Bear with me until then. Trust that your beloved emperor will take care of all your needs.” 

How can you not, when he dominates you so sweetly? A shudder rolls up your spine, eyes sliding shut as you melt into his touches and embrace. He completes you, builds you up and tears down when he sees fit, a splendid cycle you immerse yourself in completely. 

It’s impossible to tell how long you spend in the baths. Your world zeroes down to him and him alone. 

He teases you to near orgasm at least twice more, leaving your pink folds agonizingly sensitive. Your cunt twitches when his fingers tease your inner thighs. Had the warm waters not surrounded your lower half, your cunt would have been utterly soaked with your juices. Your chest heaves up and down with each heavy breath, your torso slick with sweat.

“You’ve done so well,” Solus praises. His hands wander downwards, long fingers pressing to the soft flesh of your ass, urging your legs around his waist. Your heels press to the small of his back, weak arms clinging onto him for dear life. “A pitch perfect performance.”

The head of his cock presses snuggly against your sodden folds. It’s enough to coax another moan out of you, made to sing for his majesty as he makes the long slide in. His thick member throbs against your walls as he splits you open. His girth leaves not an inch of you wanting, pressing against every nook and cranny that demands his attention. He fills you to the brim, satisfies you in a way no man ever has or will again.

Tears blur the pale creams and yellows of your surroundings as he takes you. 

“Oh, what are those tears for?” Solus taunts. Plush lips brush against your wet cheeks. Fondness drips from his voice, a hand wandering south. “Are you really so desperate for release? You poor thing.” His voice curls with mock sympathy, as though he hadn’t driven you to this state in the first place. You have half a mind to tell him as much, but the sudden rock of his hips knocks the coherency out of you.

“Is that better?” His long fingers span the length of your hips, squeezing the flesh underneath his palms.

“Do you really have to ask?”–is what you want to say, but all you can manage is a hasty nod. Your eyes fall shut as he begins a sharp, relentless pace. The gentle caution he had spent so long teasing you with vanished in a mere moment, replaced by the domineering emperor foreign territories had grown to hate and fear. Each thrust is consummated by a new, overwhelming wave of pleasure. Your orgasm is brought closer at a faster rate thanks to prior teasing, made putty and limp in his hands.

Finally, at last, your orgasm washes over you. The space behind your eyelids goes bright white, your body trembling and writhing helplessly against the broad stretch of his chest. Your nails feebly catch against his snowy skin, blindly scrambling for purchase.

He fucks you through it, because of course he does. There’s not a drop of mercy to be found within his ragged thrusts. His hot breath brushes against the shell of your ear in the form of pants and growls, for even he cannot keep his veneer of kingly arrogance. He loses his rhythm, his hips jackhammering into your center. He blindly seeks his pleasure, and in a few moments, he finds it.

His hot essence coats your walls, cock hitting the deepest point inside of you. The sheer sensation of it makes every of your limbs quake, wrenches a gasp from your scream-raw throat. 

Silence settles between you, besides your own haggard panting. You pull breath after breath into your weary lungs. You haven’t even regained your bearings when he begins to stand, arms wrapped around you tight. The cold stings against your lower half as he lifts you from the water, easily stepping out of the bath from the elevated bench.

“Twas a grand performance,” he murmurs into your hair, pulling back to press a delicate kiss to your forehead. “I would say you’ve earned your fair share of rest. Allow me to take care of the cleanup.”

Easy, you think to yourself, thumping your head to rest against his shoulder. Your eyes shut, and the fatigue that has settled among inside your limbs drags you into a state of light dozing.

[ltleflrt]

Ltleflrt’s Writing Year in Review

Once again I felt like I could do more this year, so this is the theme for the decade.  But I got SO MUCH DONE too!  And more than I did last year, so I’m happy to see an improvement :D

Total 2019 Word Count: 215,491 Total 2019 Kudos: 7,581 Total 2019 Hits: 63,620

My 2019 Fics:

Dreaming in Digital: 173,818 words (44,142 from 2019)

When Dean finds a deactivated sex bot, he knows it’s his lucky day.

Set in a Cyberpunk world where global warming and climate change has driven most of the human population into domed cities, Sam and Dean hunt rogue tech and science experiments gone wrong in the shadows, protecting the lives of those the government doesn't care about anymore. On a trip to the dump to scavenge for valuables Dean finds Castiel, an Angel Industries sex bot, which is worth his weight in credits. But when he turns the sex bot on, he learns that Castiel is sentient.

Artificial Intelligence is illegal, and for good reason, but Cas doesn't put off dangerous vibes. That doesn't stop Sam from researching his creators while Dean's off making friends with the android. If there's someone out there creating a robot army unconstrained by the 3 rules of robotics, Sam's going to make sure the operation is shut down for good.

Castiel just wants to exist. He wants to read and work in the Winchester's greenhouse and have movie nights with Dean. But he also wants to understand. Himself. His unexpected reaction to Dean. What it it means to feel.

I started this fic in February 2018, and finished it in April 2019.  As of this post, it is the longest thing I’ve ever written.  And definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever written.  You know that saying about blood, sweat, and tears?  So true. (the blood was from a cat scratch when Kitty Cas tried to jump in my lap while I was writing and I got clawed, but it counts!)  I am proud of the results, even if I got tired of it and cut out a bunch of stuff I wanted to do.  2020 goal is some timestamps!

Where The Heart Lives: 12,876 words

Home is where the heart is, but it's nice to have a cozy little love nest too.

A collection of related short ficlets without a plot. Just small glimpses of Dean and Castiel being happy and in love.

This was a 30 day art challenge called Cottagetober, that I turned into writing prompts and added a 31st day since it was an October thing and I wanted a ficlet for every day.  Writing these fluffy snippets every day made me very happy, and I think I might do something similar in 2020 if I can find a list that sparks joy.

Reunited: 2,681 words

Castiel has changed a lot in the 10 years since he was a shy bookworm in High School. But it seems like few of his previous schoolmates have grown up much, if the revival of the rumor mill as soon as he walked in is any indication.

Dean Winchester certainly grew up, though. And he seems far more interested in Castiel than the rumors.

Written as a prompt from  @melilovesmakeup-blog, this little fic spawned much joy, and inspired a prequel from @bendingsignpost, which is honestly so dang flattering.  I love this little universe, and I’m heckin’ glad I randomly decided to take prompts.

Cloud Nine: 2,254 words

“Hey, angel.” Dean’s voice is warm with love and pride, and it makes Castiel squirm in his bindings. “You think you can take more?”

I love finding new ways to write non-traditional a/b/o!  One day I was driving around, and thought you know what I need?  Dom!Omega!Dean and sub!Alpha!Cas.  Not a lot of it out there yet, so had to write it myself.  And I really want to revisit this and write a prequel.  I Have Ideas!

The Git (you) Up: 1,323 words

Dean's been crushing on his new neighbor across the street from afar. When he gets an invitation to a neighborhood BBQ, he's finally going to meet the hottie. Now if only he can get the courage to talk to him.

I saw a ridiculously cute video on the internet and I was inspired!

Burning For You: 1,998 words 

Due to their busy schedules, Sam and Eileen hire a wedding planner. As Best Man, Dean steps in to help as much as he can. The fact that Castiel is gorgeous and immune to the dangers of Dean's touch is a bonus.

Another prompt!  I do prompts like never, but I’m so glad I did and got this one.  I had an immediate, and visceral need to write this fic as soon as I saw the ask, so thank you very much @alessariel!  This prompt was for both of us! :D

To Build A Bower: 633 words

Dean decorates his home to attract a mate.

Look.  Look.  I just really fuckin’ love bower birds okay?  Okay.  Thanks for the prompt @zarauthforsaken!

Special Delivery:  2,012 words

Castiel accidentally gets a package meant for his sexy neighbor.

Another prompt! From @queenandthree <3 

Fun story about this fic, the premise was originally going to be used in Satin and Sawdust, but got discarded.  I’m thrilled I found a reason to use it in a short story!

Work Life Balance: 2,227 words

As leader of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, one of Dean's duties is to balance Order with Entropy, and enforce the will of the Fates. When Castiel's nature as the demigod of War urges him to destroy more than he should, he seeks out Dean's council.

A prompt from @kazshero!  I have had Four Horsemen headcanons for years, and could never come up with a story for it until I got this prompt.  Super grateful for it!  Death!Dean is my jam :D

The Menagerie: 1,452 words

Baby the Pegasus is giving birth to her first foal. Dean and Castiel are there to help her through it.

A prompt fill for @nickelkeep!  An excuse to turn Baby into a pegasus!  FLUFF! <3

A Trip To The Beach: 734 words

Camp Counselors Dean and Cas take the kids on a field trip to the beach.

Yes, this was definitely based on a conversation I had with @jupiterjames.  When I got the prompt from my bestie, I *had* to make it about us lol

Quoth the... Wait that's not a Raven: 930 words

Dean, Castiel, and Sam are paranormal investigators. Tonight's haunted spot is a Pet Store.

A prompt from @purgatory-jar!  And to be honest, I may revisit this idea with something longer someday.  Writing TFW as paranormal investigators is too much fun to pass up :D

Hunter's Caress: 142,229 words (WIP)

Castiel Jameson won't rest until the outlaw who murdered his brother faces justice, and Dean Winchester is the only man alive who can help him track the villain down. Some say Winchester is a cold-blooded killer himself; others say he'd been wronged his whole life. All Castiel knows is that the desire glinting in Dean's green eyes is even more dangerous than he is. Castiel fights to keep his mind on business, but during the long nights on the trail with the dangerously handsome hunter he finds himself dreaming of yielding to Dean's illicit kisses and losing himself in lawless passion.

Dean Winchester is about to hang when Castiel saves his neck with his crazy plan. But dying might be better than spending day and night playing nursemaid to such an infuriating city slicker. He appreciates the stubborn detective's desire for justice, but he'd appreciate Cas a lot more if he'd stop being a lawman long enough to just be a man. He certainly has all the right equipment. Dean aches to run his fingers through Castiel's dark hair, yearns to know how Castiel's golden skin will feel against him. And before the coming of the next dawn, Dean vows to teach him the pleasures and sweet rewards of a Hunter's Caress.

I’ve had this idea since the first year I started writing Destiel fic, and it’s been sitting in my WIP folder since 2014.  I don’t want to be done writing Destiel, but I’ve been struggling with my writing for about 2 years now, and I’m afraid it will only get worse when the show ends and the fandom starts to slow down without new content.  I figure if I don’t do this story now, it’ll never get done.  And that’s unacceptable, because this has been on my mind for far too long to let it never see the light of day.  Of all of my stories, this one is the most For Myself thing I’ve ever written.  And based on the way it’s going, it’s probably going to overtake Dreaming in Digital as my longest fic by the time it’s done lol

[locked-behind-the-walls]

Reviews of Some Nova’s Fics

I have been on the (non-fiction) writing kick as of recently, which finally lead to me writing some fic reviews. I've been planning to start writing reviews for B7 fic for a long time, but those plans mostly involved some highbrow "New Wave" gen in the vein of the stories published in The Aquitar Files. Of course, this means that when I did write some reviews, they were about the stories of the classic slashfic author beloved by the fandom. :D

Why Nova? While I like her, she's far from being my favorite B7 author, in slash or in all the fic. I think she's just easy to write about, for me at least - there are a lot of things that I like about her, and a lot of things that frustrate me, and they often are in the same story. Her writing has a lot of clearly discernible patterns and tropes, and I find it much easier to write about them than about the subtleties and nuances of relationships between the characters; I may say that while I like reading both gen and shippy fics of all types, I may tend to write about even the shippy fics in the same way I write about gen. I also probably tend to "accentuate the negative", not because my feelings about this author are mostly negative, but because I find it easier - and more entertaining - to write about the things I dislike than about the things I like.

Let's start? Be warned, those reviews contain spoilers and discussions of heavy subjects. The fics I read and reviewed here: Delinquent, Avon at the Window, Five Easy Pieces and a More Difficult One, Town Mouse, Country Mouse, Love Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry, Before and After, Why I Can't Stand Vila Restal, Prime Suspect, Time and Fevers, Outlaws and In-Laws.

Delinquent

This was the first Nova's fic that I read and one of my favorite ones so far. It has some problems - while I like good boy/bad boy pairs, I think she sometimes tries too hard to shove Blake and Avon into these roles; the way Avon regains his rebelliousness after getting together with Blake felt too abrupt, almost comically so (I know that Magical Healing Cock is a thing; perhaps we should come up with the B7-specific version, Magical Class-Consciousness Rising Cock); and, of course, "undesirable associates" gets repeated ad nauseum. But I just find the idea of Avon being Blake's childhood hero so adorable, and it's for sure one of the most original takes on "they knew each other pre-canon" trope in this fandom. It's interesting to review it after reading other Nova's fics - now I can clearly discern some tropes and headcanons she used in many other fics, e.g. exploring characters' backstories, accentuated differences in Blake's and Avon's upbringing, love restoring the fighting spirit in characters and so on.

Five Easy Pieces and a More Difficult One

I... frankly don't remember that well the more psychological parts of this one, even though I read it not so long ago. What I remember well is all that sex and the bit with the uprising, which sums up my priorities quite accurately. (The sex was damn good. And so was the uprising.) In my defense I must say that it's one of those "faux-casual sex turns into emotional commitment" fics, so sex and romance are interwoven very closely here, even by the fanfiction standards. It's also quite trope-heavy, going through several slash cliches, and as someone who's not a fan of many slash cliches I can say that it's done in pleasantly non-cringy way (except the first part, which was somewhat cringy. I think nothing can redeem Visiting a Gay Planet and Trying to Fit In for me, except maybe outright parodies).

Town Mouse, Country Mouse

Another story about Blake's and Avon's very different upbringings, the one that probably got the most stylized, most deliberate and most extreme about emphasizing these differences. I found the sordidness too sordid and the cutesiness too cutesy, but it was probably the point.

Love Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

Oh right. One of my least favorite tropes of all times is using other people as cannon fodder to showcase your Great Romance, and this fic is this trope in spades. Nova clearly likes it - she uses it in several fics, sometimes with several people. That's where we would't agree, I guess. Avon killing himself is another thing which we would't agree on. I get it that Avon have seen (and done) some shit, but the only case in which I can imagine him killing himself is, ironically, if he shared Blake's idealism - it would make such a hellish mix with his personality that it might get just too difficult to bear. This one is not the major point of disagreement and I think can be written convincingly, but here it just comes off as too dramatic. I liked the Vila voice, though, it was pleasant to read and created interesting interplay with the grim backstory and not exactly sunny main story.

Before and After

The only thing I liked about this fic is that Avon got put against the wall for killing Blake. (This review will surely gain me a lot of friends in the fandom.) It was bold and quite cathartic. But of course, here it was because he wanted it - he's too cool to just be shot, apparently. I can also add half a point for the homophobia thing - I don't mind exploring this subject matter in slash, and don't even mind portraying main characters as homophobic, it could be done in an interesting and nuanced manner, but here I felt like it was only somewhat interesting, but mostly felt forced and just made them too unsympathetic. Apart from that, it's just way too similar to Love Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry, except now Deva is also dragged into the Not As Good As performance.

Avon at the Window

Ouch. I guess we are supposed to read this one in non-quite-serious, kinky way, because otherwise the situation described here becomes just way too appalling and overshadows any enjoyment one could derive from characters getting together. On the other hand, at least here Avon's Horrible Past is not as jarring as in Outlaws and In-Laws, because this fic is much more angstier and here it's more a center of the story. Nova is very unsubtle at laying out the angst here, crude even - and effective, considering that from all her fics, I remember this one the most and it provoked the strongest emotional response. It's a controversial trope, and I'm not a fan of how she engages with it, but in its own way, it worked.

What I dislike, however, is that Blake is basically mischaracterized for the sake of angst. I can see him to be uncomfortable with prostitution, but I can't see him react in such over-the-top judgemental and aggressive manner. I think it would be more realistic - and more interesting - if he tried to be understanding, but was making such poor job of it, being so clearly not okay with the whole situation despite trying to be, and it eventually lead to falling out between them. I believe he at least would bother to learn more about it and would knew how old Avon was at that time! And then I would be able to buy his more bitter and aggressive behavior PGP because well, Avon shot him, he has the right to be upset, and besides he did seem more bitter and aggressive in general in the last episode. As I said, Nova is very unsubtle here and sometimes it hurts the quality of the fic. Also, while treating domes and space stations as ordinary cities under the open sky is a very common trope in Blake's 7 fanfiction, it also one of my least favorite ones and here it's truly egregious in the bits set in the Space City.

The part I liked the most is the one where they are discussing the book about the prostitution. Nova can be very good in sociopolitical stuff, and those ARE the themes where I wouldn't mind her to be unsubtle, but alas, there is too little of it in this fic.

Why I Can't Stand Vila Restal

At this point it started to read like several other fics, some of them Nova's and some of them not. I don't have much to say about this story - it's easy to read and the sex is good, but there is just nothing new about it. Also, Blake is too paternalistic in this one, which can be done well but I just don't dig it, especially in sex scenes.

Prime Suspect

Another fic that I mostly forgot soon after reading. Blake playing detective was fun, and the resolution was deliciously wacky - but what I love about Nova is that she's not afraid of wackiness. Orac bashing is probably the only sort of character bashing I can stand, and no, that's not because it's not alive, it's because it's such an asshole. (I like Orac anyway).

Time and Fevers

Other characters are dragged into Blake's and Avon's love lives to make a point about their love - again! Deva, this time, and Jenna, somewhat, and while I like Blake/Deva, but definitely not like this. At least some time is given to explore their relationship, though not much. I would have preferred if Jenna either got a larger role or wasn't mentioned at all - as it stands now, it's just too creepy. Did she also die? I think we just are not supposed to care. :(

I liked quite a lot of things about this fic. I have a weakness for the washed out, beaten down Blake, and this fic portrays him rather well. Characters are older than usual in this story, and it is also handled well. The theme of love giving you back your mojo is developed better than in Delinquent, even though it involves unfavorable comparisons with other relationship (but not explicitly so, thankfully). The angst is good and not overdramatic, but rather more muted and melancholic, which goes better with Blake's 7 fics. The stuff about sexual histories of the character was, like almost always in Nova's fics, one of the strongest points. However, some bits gave off the vibe that was too romcom-y, especially Dayna and Soolin acting like matchmakers - it's just so not my thing.

Outlaws and In-Laws

One of my favorite Nova's fics and so quintessentially her - very good and hot mess at the same time. It has a lot of themes which I like and most of which Nova generally does well: explorations of characters' pasts and their sexual histories; political themes, including sexual politics; quite a lot of worldbuilding and interesting original characters. That first time is one of my favorite ones, the sex is original, hot and not unrealistic at the same time. Even the cheesier parts didn't feel that bad (or maybe my love of the Gothic genre helped me to get through them). However, the mood of the first and the second part of the fic was just way too different, which again might have been the point, but I don't think that it works that well there. I agree with Aralias' review that Blake is too damn passive in the second part, and this that just felt like him abandoning Avon. I think it contributes to the sudden drop of temperature in the story, figuratively speaking. I also wish we spent more time with Blake's mom - she seemed like a fascinating character, and yet most of her arc was spent on wackiness and being an obstacle.

So, those are my reviews of Nova so far. Maybe I'll write more in the future after reading more fics, or maybe not. Of course, all those fics are also well-written, and easy to read, and have good characterizations, but other people already wrote about it. At this point I can describe Nova as an author who sticks strongly and noticeably to the tropes and headcanons that she likes, and some of them I like too, while others not so much. Her fics also have a lot of mood whiplash, some of which probably wasn't intended as such. I also got the impression that she's better in more lighthearted stories than in straightforward angst.

[drinkyourfuckingmilk]

How would you convince Solas to embrace the new world and move forward? What would be your argument for him?

Ooooh I’ve got so many headcanons of my Lavellan slapping him with some fucking truth, and I can only write this in a way my Lavellan Marlowe would be thinking it; 

1. Solas is not necessarily responsible for what happened to the elves - the evanuris are. The evanuris were obviously unleashing something world-destroying upon Thedas, and Solas says that every alternative plan to stop them was worse, so he was backed into a corner and basically had to create the veil - the result is that elves were worse off than before but the important point here, which Varric reiterates in their banter, is that it cost the elves their dominance over Thedas, but it didn’t cost them their entire race or the entire world. Solas needs to get this through his boiled egged dome - he saved the world, his actions had costs, yes, but what is the better outcome: great cost to the social situation of your people vs the entire world and all life within in it being destroyed? Solas saved the world and the actions he took to do so was because the evanuri’s backed him into a fucking corner.

2. Solas’ actions are essentially the reason all of modern Thedas exists - humans, qunari, dwarves - and elves are still alive when it could have meant extinction - given how he frames what the evanuris were doing to the world -which I believe is the blight brought on by Andruil or something else as horrifying.

3. Solas was the leader of rebellion against enslavement - he has good, admirable principles; he believes in the inherent right of all beings to exist freely and he abhors slavery and denial for any being to think for themselves. Depending on your inquisitors actions in the game he shows he values freedom, free-thinking, compassion, consideration, kindness, open-mindedness. He values these things which is how he became such a powerful leader of an anti-slave rebellion in Arlathan - the people who followed him and joined his cause believed in these ideals, and thus they would abhor him rewriting the world at the cost of the lives of people who love, live, breath, think freely in modern Thedas. He was backed into a corner when he had to create the Veil and endanger many elves, but how do you weigh lives against the benefits of beautiful omniscient magic that he’s so nostalgic for? That’s what this bitch was fighting against! Solas took a stand against these magically gifted, powerful evanuri’s because they supposedly used it to dominate others they perceived as different/inferior. The elves who joined Solas’ cause - whom he believes he’s fighting for by purging modern Thedas to restore - would be betrayed by his current actions. His actions would betray all the values the elven people who joined him fought for. 

4. Solas as Fen’harel took great pains in denouncing his divinity - Solas does not like people buying into their own hype. He shows this by rejecting any assertions that he’s a divine God in the time of ancient Arlathan, and he shows it by disapproving of an Inquisitor who buys into the Herald of Andraste hype. At his core, Solas disapproves of anyone having so much power that they believe they’re above others, or entitled to make decisions on the common people’s behalf. He says this, “Responsibility does not equate to authority, and decision is not inherently better than indecision”. So Lavellan could parrot his own words back at him to remind him that he ISN’T a god and is NOT responsible for the actions he took as a result of being backed into a corner to save the elves, nor is he entitled to change the world as he see’s fit simply because he has the power to do so.

5. A lot of his banter with Varric is very important. As is his relationship with Cole. Because both Varric and Cole stress the importance of the world changing, and that change is not inherently bad or means the world is worse off than it was. You can move on, adapt, live on and thrive - and that things may seem worse in so far as its different - but that different does not equate to inferiority (something I headcanon my Lavellan Marlowe saying to Solas is “differences between all of us should never be viewed as inherent inferiorities, and those who view it as such are doomed to trample this world in their ignorance” OH GEEZ that’s corny but there it is)

6. Solas speaks with such disdain for the evanuri’s with their monopoly of power over the common people, and he sings the same tune for Tevinter. So, is it safe to say that Lavellan could remind him that perhaps it was for the best that ancient Arlathan failed, since historically those who hold enough of a monopoly of power to bring so much devastation to the world need to be stopped, and that perhaps despite the beauty of magic, there is some wisdom in thinking it needs to be curtailed if the result is that those who wield it best could enslave, dominate or destroy those without the same talents? THUS, modern Thedas has its problems, yes, and the persecution of mages and fear of the Fade and spirits is short-sighted, but ultimately modern Thedas doesn’t have the same fear as ancient Arlathan in that there wasn’t a being who could threaten all life with their magical powers except the blight (which is obvs implied to be a result of the evanuris, or Corypheus who only ended up in his position of power thanks to ancient elven power). Basically, Solas needs to realise that the world might be less pretty but ultimately better off for the freedom of all people, regardless of race of class, to exist without that much power because those are the values he fought for in ancient Arlathan. 

7. An important, final, finito point is that Solas is a sad little bitch who was always told by friends or foe that he’s not worth listening to, his worldview and open-mindedness towards other beings like spirits is madness not wisdom, and that he’s basically a PC weirdo who is shunned because he’s a democrat living in an elven republican nightmare - and Lavellan comes along and loves him for who he is at his core which he is evidently unused to. And he needs to let go of his self-imposed responsibility for the creation of the veil (which in my opinion is the evanuris fault for backing him into that corner) and take some goddamned time to live by his own values and embrace a humble life of exploring the world he’s so curious about and settling down with the love of his life. 

8. Solas can be a pompous asshole who thinks ancient elves are all that, but his conversations with the other companions show he’s genuinely curious and invested in their worldviews (”Iron Bull, how do your people wear shirts?”) and it should be easy as fuck to convince him modern Thedas is of value because it holds many different and fascinating views on the world and how to live, and Solas is - when not overwhelmed by guilt and a misplaced sense of responsibility - a very curious, open-minded person. He’d probs love to explore modern Thedas and learn more about how many different ways of life there are. 

9. LAST POINT. Solas can be a cunt. He’s dismissive of different ways of life (the Qun for example, though I’m also personally opposed to their brand of brainwashing) but also shows a curiosity and enjoyment of cultural differences despite of this. I think his value of ancient Arlathan and elvhen culture is only magnified by the fact that it was lost, and seemingly by his hand. But his actions show otherwise in that he repeatedly states ancient Arlathan had its many flaws, he hated the slavery, he rebelled against its leaders, he enjoys talking about modern Thedas etc etc. He’s very flawed and contradictory, but its very easy to see how Solas falls into traps of thinking ancient Arlathan and the elves were superior only because he feels tremendous guilt for having an inadvertent part in destroying what he was familiar with. His actions in Inquisition though, show otherwise, particularly if he becomes friends/lovers with the Inquisitor. He can let go of his guilt and see modern Thedas and its diverse people for the value they have through the eyes of someone he respects. 

[honeylikewords]

You know why I’m here. Let’s hear it.

thank you for your service, cydney, you are so brave in sacrificing yourself so as to allow me to Infodump about my Angel, Walter Cruz, whomst I love so dearly and so well

so anyway silly stuff aside I’m going to now reply using proper capitalization and punctuation so as to make this post somewhat legible (since I know my rambling will be... dense), so HERE WE GO

This is Walter Cruz.

Well... sort of.

Technically speaking, we never see Walter Cruz. So there are no gifs of him. And, technically speaking, that’s a gif of Oscar in Operation Finale, but, in my defense, that particular style and facial expression is generally how I headcanon Walter as looking. But that’ll get explained later. For now, I should just say that, yes, technically, we never see Walter’s face. Still, I know what he looks like, because that face up there is the face behind the voice we hear in Gimlet Media’s Homecoming, a podcast wherein stars my dearest, darlingest Walter Cruz, as played by Oscar Isaac.

Walter Cruz is a 26-year-old Army soldier coming home to the U.S. after three tours with the military, most recently having been stationed in North Africa. He has been brought to Tampa, Florida, and is staying at a rehabilitation center for soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, the center being tied to the Geist company’s Homecoming Initiative, a privately-funded but governmentally connected initiative that he doesn’t fully understand, but assumes is friendly and in place to help him re-adjust to civilian life, as he was told was the purpose of the center. 

The podcast is comprised of audio clips from recordings of Walter’s sessions with his therapist at the Homecoming Initiative, Heidi Bergman, as well as outside audio clips, such as phone calls between Heidi and her boss, Heidi’s boss and his own boss, dialogue between Heidi and others, et cetera. Heidi Bergman is, by default, the protagonist, but at the heart of the show is Walter, and what’s happening to Walter at the Homecoming Initiative.

I don’t want to give away too many spoilers in case people want to listen to the show (it’s a total of twelve podcast episodes, each one approximately 30 minutes in length, which you can listen to here), but we as listeners slowly start to realize that the Homecoming Initiative may not be as well-intentioned as it makes itself seem, and that Walter is in danger from manipulative medical practitioners, an abusive system of experimentations taking place on him, and may be being medicated in a way he neither consented to nor needs. So, for anyone for whom that may be a trigger, please go in carefully!

Now, on to more stuff about Walter on a personal level.

Walter is very sweet and down-to-earth, very humble. Within the first few moments of hearing his voice, we know he’s unassuming, protective of his friends, and understanding of the difficulties in other people’s lives, being very empathetic and caring. He speaks in a gentle tone, and while not necessarily loquacious or excessively talkative, he’s clearly intelligent and thoughtful, finding careful ways to explain himself to others. 

Walter loves animals, particularly dogs. He loves telling jokes and playing little pranks, often being a little bit of a tease, but only ever in a loving, playful way. He knows when to stop messing around and be serious, and has a very level head on his shoulders. Still, he has a warm, friendly sense of humor that seems to naturally bleed into everything he says, as if he’s always a few words away from trying to make someone smile. Plus, he has a wonderful laugh; kinda breathy, like he’s trying to stay quiet, but as it builds into something bigger and fuller, his voice comes in and it’s just so warm and fluttery.

Walter loves road trips and believes they’re essential to getting to know one’s partner as their truest self. He wants to be an accountant once he leaves the military. He likes pineapple cobbler and camping. He doesn’t like Titanic, but he’s seen it more times than any normal person has. He has sisters and a mother who he lived with after being discharged from the Homecoming Initiative, and who he loves more than anyone in the world. He has a dog named Sammy, who loves to eat bacon.

Walter loves Yosemite National Park and, without giving away too much, there is good reason for me to believe that Walter spent a great deal of his time after the events of the Homecoming Initiative in a cabin in Yosemite. I like to imagine he climbed Half Dome Hill without a permit.

Walter is also headstrong, determined, not always one to follow rules, full of hope, and almost a little naive. He believes in the best of people, and many bad, bad people use that against him. He wants to help people and do good, and live a life of love and togetherness. He cares more about the problems of others than his own problems and will gladly put himself aside to do anything for someone else.

That being said, because of his generosity of spirit and trusting attitude, Walter’s... Walter’s been through a lot. A lot of people have used him for the wrong things and abused him, and for a very long time, particularly immediately after being discharged from Homecoming, he couldn’t even take care of himself, as he was so damaged by the abuse. He’d been lied to, psychologically manipulated, physically manipulated, and medically abused to the point where he could not so much as even tie his shoes and was in, essentially, a catatonic state for several months. 

But he, somehow, even through all of that, came out the other side as strong, hopeful, and charitable as ever. Clever, quick-witted, and tender. The same Walter, unbroken, just bruised. He’s very brave, very kind, and so sweet it aches.

I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but I probably will, eventually, just so I can accurately describe all of Walter’s experiences when I write about him, but this next portion of the post is going to be speculative stuff about his life after the events of Homecoming as a narrative, so I’ll try to step carefully around any major spoilers while also integrating his story arc accurately (or, well, as accurately as I want. I’m the boss, here, and I’m valid to want to give him a soft ending!). 

Anywhomst.

I love to imagine Walter and his sweetheart in Yosemite. While his first trip there was so he could heal and take time away from being Walter Cruz, case-patient, and instead be Walter Cruz, normal nobody, and therefore likely wouldn’t be a good time for him to be in a romantic relationship, I like to think he’d come back there in the future, once he’s more at ease, ready to be in this relationship. In fact, the two of them choose to live just outside of Yosemite when they decide to move in together.

It’s only a few hours from Bakersfield, where his mother, Gloria, lives, after all, and he could come visit her every now and then. He knows, now, that it’s hard to live with her-- not because he doesn’t love her or because she doesn’t love him-- but because, for her, the past will always be visible on him, like a stain he’ll never manage to fully wash away, and he wants to let the past go and feel clean, and be seen for his present and future potential instead of just the pain of the past.

That’s why, when Walter falls in love, he feels so... different. 

He’d grown so tired of everyone looking at him and seeing Walter Cruz, soldier, Walter Cruz, Homecoming Initiative victim, Walter Cruz, human vegetable. And he felt like everyone who had known him before was so fixated on why he wasn’t the exact same boy he’d been when he was 19 that they wouldn’t let him move on from his pain, forcing him to stagnate in it.

But she doesn’t make him feel like that. 

She met him long after Homecoming, more than five years later. He still has episodes, of course, spans of days where he can’t figure out if the things he thinks are dreams or memories or erased half-memories of things that happened, or if he’s missing something important, but she never judges him, never forces him to speak. It never makes her change her mind about him.

She’s not a therapist or a doctor or some prying caseworker trying to coax his life out of him as if it’s a state secret they’re entitled to knowing; she’s just a woman who loves him, adores him, holds him close at night and lets him squeeze her and bury his head in her neck like a little child, safe from the world, safe from anyone trying to drain him of himself. 

He fell in love with her because she makes him laugh; he hadn’t really laughed in so long, and then she happened. She makes him smile, makes him feel normal and accepted, light and free. She doesn’t treat him like fragile glass or like some manila envelope to be wrenched open and shaken for its contents. She doesn’t push him to talk about anything he doesn’t want to, which is why, in a roundabout way, he talks to her the most.

Out of everyone he’s had to talk to-- his mother, his therapists, his doctors, the federal agents, the cops-- she knows the most. In fact, she kinda knows everything. Everything he knows, he’s told her. He spread it out over time, letting her in slowly, the details falling into place organically over time as she pieced together the truth from the strands of information Walter willingly gave her, but the truth is, she doesn’t care about the Geist corporation, or Homecoming, or Heidi Bergman. She only cares about Walter.

It’s not that she doesn’t care that he suffered-- of course she cares-- but rather that she doesn’t care about the conspiracy, the facts, the X-Files-esque ‘unveiling’ of the gritty details: she only cares about taking care of Walter, and helping him move on, leaving all the scum and garbage that ever hurt him behind. He’s not a case to crack or a puzzle to solve, he’s someone she loves, just the way he is, no matter what. She knows he’ll never be ‘all better’, healed of every wound inflicted by these monsters, but she wants him to be able to grow and live a life beyond what came before. It’ll always be there, in his past, but it doesn’t have to always be where he is in his present.

And Walter loves her all the more for this alleviation.

They live just outside Yosemite, a ways away from any cities, in a nice, quiet place. Walter was insistent on a cabin, and it works out well for both of them. Sammy has plenty of room to run and chase squirrels and rabbits and birds, and Walter’s got lots of quiet and calm to keep himself from getting too stressed. His sweetheart and he love to take long hikes into the park, having their own special little spots all throughout the park, locked in Walter’s memories for different reasons.

One outcropping of rocks overlooking the valley was where they had a romantic picnic, one where Walter laid his head in her lap and just closed his eyes and let himself feel okay, safe in her hands. Another place is the base of Bridalveil Falls, where he’d held her from behind and rested his head on her shoulder, the spray of the falls brushing his face as he kissed her cheek, allowing himself to smile and be happy with someone he adores. 

He likes to tease her about the name, Bridalveil Falls, wondering if she’d ever be the bride of Bridalveil Falls, asking if she’d like to have a veil train as long as the sheet of water that tumbles down those cliffs. Walter plays it off as a joke, but he knows why he watches her face carefully as he makes that ‘joke’, he knows why he leans in closer, listens for every possible interpretation of her words, for the delicate meaning of her inflections in her answers.

He does, deeply and truly, long to know if she’ll marry him.

Walter’s always been one to commit himself to what he believes in. He stands firm and fast by what he wants, and he knows what his heart wants. It wants her, now and forever; she’s his someone to lean on in his darkest hours, and his someone to uplift with the strength he knows he can only garner through his love for her. She means the world to him, and she makes it easier to live in his painful, confusing, ephemeral plane of existence.

So, he tells himself that when the time is right, and the stars align just the way he wants, he’ll ask her. He probably won’t wait long at all-- lord knows he loves her too much to practice anything even remotely close to self-control-- but he’ll wait just enough to let her know that he’s not off his rocker, not manically suggesting this to her on a whim. Walter wants her to know it’s real, it’s honest, it’s earnest, and it’s true: he loves her, and wishes to spend all his life building on that love.

Nowadays, he works as an accountant. He likes the work: it’s simple, steady, solid, and he’s good at it. It leaves him lots of time, too, to wander the park, or around his house, or in the small town they live in just outside Yosemite. He likes it, as well, when he and his sweetheart stay in for a day, just curled up together in the cabin, holding each other close, hovering near each other if they have to move around.

They still go on trips, though. Long, long road trips, with Walter behind the wheel and his beloved by his side, talking and reading and listening to music, but mostly, just being together, even when it becomes quietly tense to realize they’re in the middle of nowhere with someone (who they assuredly do love) and it’s awkward and uncomfortable yet somehow so natural and as it was meant to be, the frustration of the road melting into the comfort of being together.

He likes to stay up just a little bit later than her when they get to the hotel room, watching her fall asleep. It makes him feel something gentle and protective inside of himself, because he sees her resting there, by his side, and knows she trusts him enough to be so vulnerable in his presence. She trusts him to keep her safe through everything, and he appreciates it. Plus, she’s cute when she sleeps; he likes a little snoring and turning from her when they’re in bed, since he was used to the sound of his platoon all snoring like chainsaws at night.

It’s a good life he has, now. He sees his mom regularly, he has a woman in his life who he loves beyond his own capacity to put into words, he has a home and a job and a sense of existing in his own body as himself, not as anyone else’s puppet or playing or practice experiment. His dog loves him, and he gets to eat as much cobbler as he wants (he’s even tried his hand at baking his own, though he prefers baking them together with his darling).

And it feels good to stop trying to outrun himself, to stop chasing this invisible thread he hoped would lead him out from the labyrinth of his own mind. He has to live with who he is, but he can live with that and also live with others. He can live with the people who love him and want him to be safe and happy and wholly cared for. And no one can ever take away his innate goodness, not even himself, not even if he tried.

So he’s happy, in the understated way truly happy people are; he’s not always giddy and gleeful, nor exactly “happy”, but he’s content, and even when he’s in pain, he’s not alone. He’s loved, and love endures everything. Loved and not alone. That’s all he could ask for. So, perhaps, he’s not simply ‘happy’, whatever that means: he’s well. And all is well.

[inviictas]

⌜   CIS MALE, HE / HIM   |   heavydirtysoul by twenty one pilots, slytherin, entp   ⌟   ⏤   meet CRISTIAN RAMIRO DE LA CRUZ ; a THIRTY year old who kind of resembles MANNY MONTANA, don’t you think? they originally hailed from SAN FRANSOKYO where they lived with their adoptive parent, GOGO TOMAGO (   BIG HERO 6   ), but word is that they’ve been working a desk for much of this year. they’ve always been pretty STAUNCH & VALOROUS, but have gotten way more INJUDICIOUS & BELLICOSE since they woke up. maybe their power of N / A can help in taking down the dome. you can check out his stat page HERE and his pinterest board HERE.

ALL ALONE   /   whether you like it or not,                 alone will be ( something ) you’ll be quite a lot.

SECTION ONE OF THREE : BULLET POINT HISTORY trigger warnings for talk of chronic ill health, prison, sociopathy, serial killers

i dont have the energy to write a long bio. b glad.

anyone who knows cristian’s birth mother, mariana de la cruz, can agree on at least one thing - whether she SHOULD have or not, she always say the best in people. it probably had something to do with how little about people she actually knew. ana was born, it seemed, to suffer ; she spent her whole life sick, all of her time either in hospital, or at home. she was beyond sheltered, and she had very few friends because of it. her kindness could only get her so far in life when she was so separated from it. 

she started to write to PRISONERS in her late teens. it was a decision made out of loneliness, and she figured that was a feeling that the people she wrote to could relate to. as heinous as some of their crimes were, ana continued to feel empathy for them. if she had just a few more critical thinking skills, maybe she wouldn’t have fallen in LOVE. he was a sociopath, and a homicidal sadist. he was a serial killer. he was serving consecutive life sentences. and still, she got on his visitation list. STILL, five years after they initially began to exchange letters, she obtained a marriage license. and two years after that, cristian ramiro de la cruz, mariana and her locked up love’s child, came into the world.

back when he was just a baby, of course he visited the prison with his mother ; they would make the trek together once every six months, as this was about as much as she could MANAGE. his mother thought that he was their miracle, and at that, believed wholeheartedly that his father loved them both. when he got old enough for conscious thought, he’d REFUSE point blank. his mother was blind to the type of man that his father was, but cristian’s defining memory is from when he was six years old, and he was gazing back at his father through the bars of their visitation room. there was no love, in those eyes - eyes they SHARED, he would hate, later on. there was nothing in his expression, that even implied a hint of care. mariana was delusional, but cristian could see what she couldn’t. he would kick up a fuss ever after as his mother prepared to leave, and though it broke her heart - and her visions of a happy family - she would leave him with a relative.

outside of this delusion she had, however, mariana was the best mother that he could have ever wanted. she was the sweetest and most gentle soul ; she loved him with a real ferocity, this baby she had never thought she would have, and she was WICKEDLY over protective of him. mariana didn’t love that cristian had to grow up quickly, because of her health. it didn’t make her happy to have a son that could cook for them both when she was simply too weak, or that knew her exact medication dosages off the top of his head, or who had been taught how to place her into the recovery position should the worst ever happen. he should have gotten to be a KID, and he didn’t, because of her. it hurt, more than anything, and it was probably why the fact he wanted nothing to do with his father pained her so ; they shared EVERYTHING, in their home. they experienced everything, together. and the one thing that cristian couldn’t do was love the man he knew was a monster.

when he was ten years old, his mother collapsed the day before one such visitation. he found her at the bottom of the stairs, and he called 911 from her phone as he had been taught to. it wasn’t the first time that his mother had been to the hospital, over his childhood, but it was the first time that he didn’t leave with her. it was decided that mariana was no longer in position to take care of cristian, or herself. she was better off in assisted living, and he would do better in care.

it didn’t take long for him to be taken in by leiko tanaka, also known as go go tomago. and she was a good substitute, for a mother, though he told her many times that she would never REPLACE mariana. she didn’t want to, and she won his respect very early on for how she approached dealing with him. she was there, when he needed someone, and she never hesitated to help him, when it was required. but she brought him to visit his birth mother once a week, and when he was old enough, he was allowed to go and see mariana alone. she helped him buy presents for her, she didn’t STOP him from leaving school early, when his mother’s health seemed to have dipped. leiko didn’t control him or attempt to take a place she had no right to, and so, cristian didn’t form a grudge. it was as easy as that.

and what was more, as he got older and started to go through puberty - she stuck by him, even when he acted out. cristian had a huge capacity for anger - and when he lost his head, he would... break things, over yelling. she never lost her head with him. she always spoke calmly, even after he had punched a hole into his wall, or shattered his mirror. and when he asked, she didn’t HESITATE in sending him to counseling ; something he recognized he needed, all on his own, as he reached his sixteen birthday and realized that his BIGGEST fear was being his father, and he was very quickly turning into him.

cristian decided to become a DETECTIVE because he didn’t want to be the kind of hero that leiko was. he wanted to be law abiding in every way - almost to prove to himself, to his father, to everyone who had ever known him, that the blood that ran through his veins wasn’t EVIL. he started his youth group, recently, because he had been there. he had been angry. he had lashed out. he had made bad choices in his teens that he was lucky hadn’t come back to BITE him. but he’d gotten past it, for the most part, and he wanted to help others. that’s all he’s been trying to do.

SECTION TWO OF THREE : HEADCANONS trigger warning for mention of cancer

mariana is still alive today, and cris visits her once a fortnight. he still brings her a bouquet of flowers every time, though the gifts he gives are ever changing ; she goes through periods, and right now, she’s enjoying an embroidery hobby, so he brings her thread. 

his father, though he doesn’t think of him as such, is also still alive - though he TREATS him like he’s not. he was diagnosed a year ago with stomach cancer, and cristian’s mother has urged him almost every time he’s visited to do what she can’t, and visit. he’ll never want to upset her enough that he’ll tell her the only time he will is when he’s DEAD, but he certainly thinks it quite a bit.

the only reason cristian hasn’t taken on leiko’s surname, by now, is because there’s a part of him that thinks doing so would be hiding. he’s cristian de la cruz, and yes, he’s the son of a serial killer. it’s certainly something, and perhaps he would have had an easier time in life at certain points if he wasn’t who he had been BORN. but he’s pretty stubborn, so, here we are.

morals wise, cristian is a good guy. in every other sense of the words, he probably... wouldn’t be classed as so. he’s pretty arrogant, and he has a fairly bad reputation in the police department because of his tendency to kind of run with things, and charge ahead. they like to say he doesn’t THINK, and that’s why he makes ‘poor’ decisions - but cris is actually very conscious of everything that he does, and he’s very willing to... make the tough call, so to speak, so that no one else has to. 

he’s still very hot headed. he still goes to counseling. he still fucks up, from time to time. it’s all very human. 

he came to walt disney academy for school, and he never left. it’s not because he loves the town, cause he really DOESN’T, but he fell in love while he was at the university - and his heart may have gotten broken, but he had already sort of set himself up for life, here, so... what can u do. 

SECTION THREE OF THREE : WANTED CONNECTIONS 

you know the usual DRILL ! friends ( anything from best to passing ), enemies, hookups, exes, the very most. hit me up if you’re interested !

i’m going to send in wcs later but:

his enemy with benefits ! they’re just ... either, someone he’s booked multiple times, someone with villainous ties, someone who he’s just hated since he was a kid and who’s hated him right back. but they get p hot and heavy now and it’s just... fun ? can it b called that? prob not. should be 27+

cristian’s partner in the buena vista police dept ! they go way back to police academy, and they used to try and outdo one another at every turn before they realized they could work TOGETHER and be better than everyone. have become super tight friends even tho cris is def the bad cop in their good cop bad cop dynamic, and they get along.. real well.

work dynamics ! ppl he gets along with , people who think he’s horrible, people who love his methods, people that hate them. give me someone who hates him solely because one time he drank their whole carton of milk that they left in the work fridge

his ex fiancé ! they would have dated from when cris was about 20, up to when he was 23 ( so they shld be like... 28+ ). they were gross and in love and we can talk abt why they ended ! 

membeRS OF HIS GROUP FOR TROUBLE YOUTH . 

his oldest friend + current roommate. wld work really well for another older big hero 6 kid ! 

[airyravenmaid]

Eye Contact

Back at it again at Krispy Kreme with more FF Versus XV bullshit. This one’s kinda wonky and really bizarre since the AU overall ties in with a KH crossover I helped make up along with personal headcanons, but can also standalone for a FFXV AU in itself. I’m just clearing that up since there is a part mentioned towards the end that nods to a world the Chocobros went to as one of their many “world detours” en route to the one they needed to go to in order to establish diplomatic relations with a potential sister kingdom also of light. ...Oh, and there are implications of another headcanon regarding a certain Immortal Marshal, but that’s a popular HC in itself, so that goes without saying. So, yeah, sorry for that; just warning y’all so you don’t get confused and want me burned at the stake.

Alright, alright, that’s enough idiotic justification rambling from me; I’m already buzzed as is and can hardly think right anyways lol. Just enjoy the crazy piece I wrote so I can try and work on the next tone. This one’s not Lightis and is more platonic bc Light’s making fray-ends with these dumb boys :3c. Maybe I can write more of her befriending the others, but we’ll see. ‘Til then, here’s this one and happy reading for those who see this! 💘

Staring back at Prompto from the caravan bathroom mirror was himself, but more clouded. He only blamed it on having just gotten up and dressed for the day not too long ago, figuring he’d taken care of everything he needed to per his morning routine. The very sight of his dull, everyday mirror reflection made him sigh a tad forlornly, but realizing the time to go was imminent only had him slap two hands to his cheeks once. Putting on his more traditional smile, Prompto gave the mirror two thumbs up as enough motivation to start the day right. No prob! He could do this, he could do this!

Upon going to exit the vicinity for the fresher outside world, Prompto rubbed whatever lingering weariness stuck by away from his eyes to clear his vision. When things still looked slightly blurry as before, he gulped. Fumbling through his smallest bag, he dug for what he thought was taken care of already. Pulling out two connected circles he knew to be his contact lenses case, Prompto opened it to find it empty, to his panic.

“Maybe I’ve still got my spares…?” Prompto hoped, rummaging through the bag to try and find more disposable lenses. He found the source box, but opening it only gave him an empty container and an expectation for a very rough day ahead. “You’ve gotta be kidding me! I’m out already?!”

“Prompto, what’s the hold up in there?” Gladio called from outside. “We gotta move!”

“Be right out! Just— making sure I didn’t forget anything is all!”

“Then do one last good check and hurry. We haven’t got all day either!”

Prompto in response called out a playfully affirmative “Aye, aye, Big Guy!” before going to search what he could of something to counteract his flawed eyesight. There was a definite solution on him, he knew, but the glasses case buried somewhere on his possession was considered a dead last resort. Otherwise, those days of having them as his sole option were over and done with. His investigation was thorough, but unfortunately, his results came up fruitless with no lenses available.

Giving up, he exited the caravan to catch up with the other four and hurry into the vacant passenger’s seat in the Regalia before it finally drove off along the world around it. His only hope now was for supplies to be low enough for warranting a pit stop at the nearest store of some sorts, or at least somewhere he can pick up some new spares. Luckily in recent days, he’d been thoroughly reminded to digitally order replacements by a certain team strategist, but there was no telling when the chance to claim them would come. A gunsman’s aim-precise eyes certainly depended on excellent vision, and in a way, so did the entire team.

“So! Ignis, where’s our next destination?” Prompto asked next to him, knowing subtlety was key in his strategy to get his lens replacements. “Anything we gotta do first?”

“Actually, our first order of business is none too far from the Disc of Cauthess,” Ignis noted. “Seems we’ve run low on a few things, and waiting to get them is out of the question.”

“I couldn’t agree more! The sooner, the better; the more supplies, the merrier! So, no need to wait on it.”

“What’s your hurry for?” Lightning inquired, suspicious. “It’s just a run-of-the-mill supply run. We’ve done them hundreds of times.”

“Oh, I know that, it’s just, umm… you never know what you’ll find there that’s useful. And I’m just curious on what’s ‘in store’ for us.”

Lightning rolled her eyes at the quip and slouched back a bit further in her seat. “I guess. Whatever floats your boat, Prompto.”

Prompto knew the excuse was flimsier than wet paper, but if it got Lightning to not interrogate him any further thanks to her lack of concern, then he wasn’t gonna complain anytime soon. His secret plot was to rightfully claim his contact lenses in the proper place, find a place to hide and put them in, and the others would remain none the wiser without being slowed down in the slightest. Until then, however, he’d be stuck in the car unable to so much as fully enjoy the moving sights around him. And what photographer could be truly happy at being unable to see the full, beautiful world that made their digital easel? So much as thinking about it made him more antsy than usual, Prompto exerting it in the form of impatiently bouncing his leg due to only so much space in the Regalia.

He was too distracted by his hasty need for his contacts that he didn’t notice the sky blue eyes of Lightning staring a hole in his skull from the seat behind him. The only feeling compelling her to stare was her good old friend skepticism. Though definitely none of her direct concern, Prompto seemed up to something. But, what was it? That answer she didn’t quite know just yet.

Ignis pulled the car up next to one of the gas tanks, his suggestion to Noctis and Gladio on filling it up for the road taken without much question from either. Lightning got up to stretch her legs and see if anything was of necessary interest in the Mini-Mart, while Prompto went a little further a distance to see if his guess was correct. To his relief, he found what he’d expected to be in the area’s vicinity. It didn’t let him stray so far from the others that the Regalia was out of sight, but it was still a bit of a walk away on its own.

Okay, en-bee-dee, Prompto kept reassuring himself. Just a little trip to the nearest little pharmacy; in and out, then nothing happened from the others’ perspective. Walking in was a lot easier when only strangers he didn’t feel as self-conscious around were also minding their own business like he was non-existent. They were oblivious to who he was as a person and everything; the perfect getaway, he could say! In and out, then he’s run about!

“Hello, Sir, how may I help you?” the optical center clerk greeted. “Are you here to pick up something?”

“Yeah. I’ve got my prescription,” Prompto told them, surrendering the proof that he was medically approved to be there. “I’m here for my spares.”

The clerk looked it over carefully, nodding once the written prescription was validated and approved. “Just give me a few minutes and I’ll be right back out with the brand. It’s the monthly ones, right?”

“Yup! I know they say ‘daily is healthy’, but… turns out it depends on the person.” Prompto let out a laugh under his breath. That was certainly not an agonizing road he wanted to go back down again. Better safe than sorry!

The clerk took about as long as they’d promised. In “Prompto Time”, however, it felt as though every second passed was a minute wasted. He nervously clung to the hope of the others not having gotten done sooner and were presently waiting on their energetic youngest member. Just when it felt like forever had almost gone by him, back came the solution to his trouble of the day. Prompto mutely sighed in relief, thanking them while taking his new supply of contact lenses and handling what he needed to in regards to officially purchasing them.

So as not to risk hitting the road blind as a bat, Prompto hurried into the nearest bathroom to put them in his eyes. In accordance with his process, Prompto removed no more than his fingerless gloves and washed the hands underneath. His studded wristbands got a bit damp from the watery suds, but he couldn’t have cared less. Under the warm gusts of the hand dryer his palms went, rubbing each other all over to eliminate every layer of water.

And now… the harder part he dreaded so much. Two tiny dome-shaped, colorless terrors waiting to torture Prompto until he was to manage in getting them over the two most sensitive organs in his head. Nonetheless, he opened the box and took out the first pair, peeling off their wrapping and concentrating on his reflection. One wrong move, and it’d be over for him and his vision. Spreading his first pair of lids apart with his thumb and pointer finger, Prompto used the other index one to use as an applicator.

“Just a little further…” Prompto gulped, shakily pressing the contact more towards the rim surrounding the stressed lavender-blue of his eye. When it got too close, he wound up giving into fear and setting his finger down to let him blink for relief. “Wait, okay, time out! I need a second…”

“You did remember to wash your hands first, right?” the sudden voice of Ignis asked from behind, startling Prompto into nearly poking his eye out with the younger’s shriek.

“Ignis! Dude, don’t do that! But, yes, I washed my hands, I promise. What— are you doing here, by the way?”

“Tracking down my AWOL friend, who I knew to be running a bit low on his own supplies. Did you find what you needed?”

“Yep! Should be good for a long while!” Prompto looked behind Ignis, even near spots most wouldn’t detect so easily. “Nobody… followed you, did they? Like say…”

“If it’s Light you’re worried about seeing you, then no, she’s waiting in the car. Even if she had followed me, I believe you’d be more than safe in the men’s bathroom.”

“Right, right! Just making sure is all! You never know, you know…?”

“I ‘know’ that there’s also no harm in her finding out about your poor eyesight. I doubt she’d care too much if she knew, anyways.”

“Well, sure, but… let’s just say some things are just better off totally left behind without the reminder. And besides, there’s no harm in not telling her, either! For now, ignorance is bliss.”

“At least, until she gets too suspicious and finds out one way or another. You aren’t exactly among the best at ‘acting natural’, Prompto. Especially when you’re nervous.”

Prompto dismissed the notion, working on getting the first lens into his eye. “I’ll be fine, Iggy. What Light will never know won’t hurt her~.”

“One way or another, something’s bound to happen. But, on the subject. These lenses? They are not meant to be worn to sleep.”

In response, Prompto first let out a mock-buzzer noise while crossing his arms into an X-shape. “Wrong, Iggy! I was sure to get the monthly ones that are a little safer. Besides, that was like one time I did that!” Seeing the raised brow on Ignis’ forehead made Prompto backtrack, knowing he’d been seen right through like glass. “...Plus— okay, maybe two others, but I know that now! Thanks… anyways, though. It won’t happen again, I promise.”

“I’ve enough faith in you to uphold that, but also give your eyes time to ‘breathe’ to be at your safest. And, do know that there’s no harm in a certain someone learning something new.”

Ignis left Prompto to finish putting his contacts in peacefully, having no need to tell him where to go afterwards. One down, the other to go. His fingers were shaky, but gripped the lens for dear life to do everything in his power not to drop it. At a snail’s pace, towards the other eye it went until its rim made a perfect contact around the iris. Winking a few times to get the plastic to stick, Prompto moved both eyes back and forth behind his lids, settling on a good enough feel for the new contacts in place.

“Ah, that’s better,” Prompto sighed, happy to see everything clearer than before. “Thank the Six for ‘boneless glasses’ to make my life just a little easier!”

Cleaning out his contact lens case with enough disinfecting solution and putting them in the Armiger’s storage system for ultimate safety, Prompto looked both ways and around on the outside of the men’s room. When the coast was clear, he shuffled out of the store uttering the appropriate “stealth music” as if a spy on a deathly mission. He ducked around some of the aisle shelves to hide himself occasionally, holding a long note once at the entrance before springing out of the building.

“Haha! Completely nailed it!” Prompto boasted, hurrying his way back to the Coernix Station - Cauthess while looking back at the pharmacy he’d escaped from. “And just in time to hit the— ROAD!”

“There you are,” Lightning said, knuckles on her hips and slightly hunched forward to show more of her disapproval at the spooked boy. “Missed you at the shop. Where’d you decide to wander off to?”

“N— Oh, nowhere, Light! The shop just didn’t have what I needed to pick up, so I found someplace else!” Prompto grew even more anxious at the well-known glare being as strong as ever thrown right at him. “I’m telling the truth! I didn’t go too far!”

“You’re up to something, Argentum.”

“Yeah, I am. I’d say about… five-foot-eight? Not as tall as Gladio or Ignis, but you’ve got a little catching up to do—”

“—You know what I mean, don’t be wise. What are you hiding?”

“Me? I’d never hide a thing, ma’am! I’m Prompto ‘Open Book’ Argentum, that’s me!”

“If you’re such an open book, then you’ve got no reason to be so scared of telling me the truth. What is it, already? Spill it.”

Just then, the savior in the form of the Regalia pulled up and honked the horn, courtesy of Noctis driving up front. “You two having fun over there? Whatever you’re talking about can be said in the car, too.”

“Can it, Prince,” Lightning hissed coldly, getting in one of the two remaining seats. “This conversation isn’t over, Prompto. I’m letting you know that now.”

Gulping, Prompto sat himself down in the car, giving Noctis wordless permission to drive onwards again. Thankfully, he was separated from Lightning in the back thanks to Gladio sitting between them. A bit of a tight fit considering how large the man was, but nothing close to “excruciatingly unbearable”. Even with a living barrier between them, Prompto got chills tingling his spine in the worst way possible whenever he was faced the brunt of Lightning’s infamous staredown. Six, if looks could kill, then he’d have been vaporized by now for gazing directly at such a goddess in woman form that had as much beauty as she did perseverance. All he had to do for the time being was work his way around her suspicion until she forgot about it enough, and he’d be home free! After all, how hard could that be to try and get away with…?

The next time they stopped for a while to camp out later on in the day, Prompto sought the opportunity to celebrate his new contact lenses. He did so in the form of, what else, taking advantage of the exquisite outdoor scenery. Letting everyone else know he’d return in due time, Prompto set off to a remote area of the woods with his camera in hand, on the hunt for whatever might catch his eye and become a future memory of the past. Such a moment would be even better with someone else there to also experience the magic with him, but— as much as he’d rather stay far away from the nastier parts of it— nature was bound to have something to tickle his fancy within it.

Prompto took in everything about his surroundings to see what he could do for his little “indie photo op”, as he’d put it before stepping away from camp. Tripod, check. Camera, obvious. Light source? “On fleek”! Angling? Top-notch! Alright, everything was in place and nothing nearby that he could see to mess it up. Selecting his first snapshot spot, Prompto positioned his beloved camera in its standing hold, setting the timer for when it’d go off. Counting down the seconds; three, two…!

“There you are,” Lightning interrupted, scaring Prompto into stumbling into his tripod and accidentally taking a blurred photo of the ground instead of the nice view.

“And there goes my shot,” Prompto sighed, filling his lungs with his breath and exhaling to calm himself enough. “Light, at least warn me first before sneaking up on me like a serial killer!”

“If you’re mad about your dinky little photo, just take it again. This place isn’t going anywhere, but neither am I until you tell me the truth.”

“Oi-vey, there’s just no dropping that, is there? Why do you wanna know so badly, anyways?”

“Because if it wasn’t something worth hiding, you wouldn’t be dodging the question so much. Now, fess up, Argentum. I’d hate to resort to ‘less pleasant’ ways of getting you to talk.”

Prompto found himself sweating in the brow and backing away, one step in reverse synchronized with Lightning’s forward. “There’s nothing to say, already! I’m not hiding a thing!”

“I don’t buy it. Either tell me and let me leave you alone, or don’t tell me and only make this harder on yourself. Make the right choice.”

He’d run out of options, and inner shame prevented him from potentially making for an awkward confession. So, between fighting it or flight, Prompto chose the impulsive option of the latter with his beloved camera in hand. He could always come back for the tripod later once he didn’t have a rosy-haired warrior out for his past. Although it was common sense to know Lightning was chasing after him, Prompto gave into looking back at her anyways and running faster before turning his head around again. When he did, all he received was a faceful of tree bark smacking him right against the face, his camera falling to the soft ground unharmed when his hands went to cover achingly where he got hit.

“Looks like you’re out of options, Argen—” Lightning started to say until she realized Prompto sank to the ground covering his face. Her irritation cooled into an odd sense of concern, now going over to inspect the man more carefully. “Wait, are you hurt?”

“Mmm-mmm,” Prompto got out, something crystalline falling from his left eye and sticking to his upper cheek. When he felt it, he gasped. “Don’t come any closer, okay?”

Lightning grew more worried, especially at the sight of what seemed to be a tear. Did she go too far in pressuring him into injuring himself? That was quite a run into the tree he just did… “I have to make sure nothing’s broken. Are you bleeding?”

“No! Stay back! I’m fine!”

Lightning disobeyed and removed Prompto’s hands from his face. To her relief, he didn’t seem to be bleeding or bruised, but strangely, neither eye seemed damp with any tears. How that could be was unknown to her, but then she looked closer at what was really stuck on a freckle. Against Prompto’s further protest, Lightning picked it up and squeezed it between two gloved fingers while examining it a little better. After a few seconds, she recognized what it’d been if not a salted tear of pain like she initially believed.

“...It’s a contact lens,” Lightning pointed out, still looking at it until Prompto snatched it back from her. “Why do you have a contact lens on you?”

“N— Not important,” Prompto mumbled, trying to slip the lens back into his eye, but to no avail without the proper concentration.

“Sounds so to me. Look.” Lightning knelt down in front of Prompto, getting him to look at the new gentleness her eyes now held for him, not a trace of force to be seen on her. “If this was what everything was all about, you can tell me. Unless you really are somehow secretly conspiring against the others, then I have no reason to get that much on your case over a little contact lens.”

“You thought I was—? No! Never!” Prompto sounded almost offended that she’d think that of him, but in all fairness, he was acting a little off his loop from trying to hide his secret from her. “...I dunno if I can tell you, though. I wanted to make a good impression on— well, someone who’s never met me before this.”

“You’d have better luck by being honest. Trust me, I’ve had my share of bad news, so since you’re not putting anyone’s life in danger, whatever you have in you, I can take.”

Before he could think of any other objection, Lightning sat down next to him against the tree, picking up his camera and brushing off the dirt it’d acquired from the fall. She checked it over to see if it’d gotten cracked or anything of the sort, but was pleased to hand it back to Prompto when it looked as intact as ever. Prompto frowned; there was no way out of this, was there? And it’d be rude to leave a lady unanswered when she’d so sincerely asked, so… time to face the music, it seemed. Astrals, this was gonna suck.

“Well, as you could probably guess, my vision’s not the best in the world,” Prompto confessed, a sheepish laugh leaving his throat. “That’s why I gotta wear contact lenses to— ya know, fix that. Can’t be a photographer or gunsman that can’t see, can you?”

“Then how come you don’t just get glasses?” Lightning wondered as Prompto used his phone reflection to fight the lens back over his vision hole. “It seems harder to put those things in, doesn’t it? One wrong move, and you’d never see again.”

“It’s not so tough once you get used to it and take care of them the right way. And I am never going back to wearing glasses again when I don’t have to! They look fine on Iggy, but count me out!”

“So, you did used to wear them? Why’d you stop?”

“That’s kinda where the whole ‘I’d rather not talk about this’ part comes in. When I was a kid, I didn’t just wear glasses. Believe it or not, I also actually used to be pretty chunky and more of a turtle. Always in my shell and whatnot, you know?”

Lightning didn’t say it aloud, but the revelation did surprise her. Trying to picture a younger, slightly more plump Prompto that couldn’t so much as speak his mind sounded completely foreign to her. But, he also sounded… different in telling his tale. There wasn’t the usual buoyancy to really be heard, or too much of the wise-cracking nature she was more familiar with. No, all Lightning could hear was more of a sadder little boy wearing a sunnier mask to hide a past he wasn’t proud of. She logically kept her full judgement in line, wanting to hear more to see what else there was to it.

“You don’t say?” Lightning commented. “First, on you needing glasses back then, why was that? I’d have figured a noble from Lucis would be able to afford something ridiculous like laser eye surgery, or—”

“—Eh? ‘Noble’, who? If you’re talking about me, I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong guy there, Pink,” Prompto laughed uneasily. “I could never be able to pay for that.”

“You’re not a noble? How could that be; you’re travelling with a prince of all kinds of people!”

“I know. I’m as surprised as you are, trust me. But, alack, I am but a commoner in a group of rich men! Even so, I honest to the Six doubt Pop would have been able to afford getting eye correction surgery for me. Shit’s expensive, lady!”

“Fair enough. Then, how did you get into the Crownsguard if you’re just normal?”

Prompto’s face grew even more sullen, looking at the camera between his fingers without a hint of his usual smile. “That’s what I’d like to know. It’d be super nice to think ‘wow, all my hard work paid off, so I got to be worthy of joining’, but… I just can’t believe it’s anywhere close to the truth. Sure, I got in; lost the weight, did the work, yadda-yadda. But really, even with Pop training me to get here today, I just don’t know if I’d have done so well on my own anyways.”

“It… sounds really important to you. Then, why go through so much if you feel this way?”

“To be honest with myself? A big reason’s all because I wanted to be worth something to Noct. Oh, and that’s besides him being a prince dealing with a commoner and stuff, too. My bestie’s kinda my ‘firstie’ too, if you know what I’m saying.”

Lightning scoffed, rolling her eyes more at the mention of Noctis than Prompto’s friendship with him. “Leave it to the little snob of a prince to hold such expectations on you. He’s got two others that aren’t broken, so why rope you into it?”

“What? Oh! No, no, Pink, you’ve got it all wrong!” Prompto’s tone grew more frantic, realizing he’d planted an accidental misconception in the ex-soldier’s head. “Look, I get you and Noct would rather not wanna deal with each other, but believe me. I’ve known the guy since at least high school; he’s a total sweetheart once you see enough underneath the surface! A little crabby, sure, but he’s really not anywhere as bad as you’re making him out to be.”

“More power to you, then, because I’m not seeing it. Whatever, this is about you, not him.”

“In a way, it’s kinda both. If it weren’t for how my friendship with Noct started, then I dunno where I’d be now. Me wanting to both protect him and be a good enough friend to him is what got me started on the road to changing who I was into someone much better. I’m not sure if I’ve totally succeeded yet, but if I’ve been with him this long, maybe I’m doing something okay for once? Maybe you don’t understand what I’m saying, but to put it all simply, Noct’s done nothing but help me all these years. And all I wanna do is do it back and keep doing it for as long as possible.”

...Wow. At that moment, that was the only word Lightning could form in her mind. She may not have understood why Prompto was going to such lengths for someone like Noctis, but if there was something she did get, it was the gunsman’s process. And though Gladio and Ignis she was beyond fine with as people once she’d gotten to know enough of them, something with Prompto resonated with her in a way those two hadn’t quite achieved (at least, not yet to her knowledge). Maybe it was on the fact at not being the only common person after all Now that he’d said that to her, but whatever it was, Lightning was curious enough to know more.

“Let’s just say I wouldn’t go and say I don’t understand where you’re coming from,” Lightning admitted. “To want to change so badly to make someone you care about the most happy… you’re not as off base as you think.”

“Really, now? Anyone back home make you feel that way?” Prompto wondered. “Like a best friend you’ve got yourself?”

“Yes, and no. Just know I’d do anything to see them have a good life. I can only hope I did enough to make that happen, considering every horrible mistake I’ve made.”

“Assuming they’re still around, if they seem to be doing okay because of you, then… well, lo hiciste, you did it!”

“Sh— they’re thankfully alive and breathing, but I can’t help but worry if I ever did enough or not. And even if I did, what now? Will they still need me anymore?”

‘This would be a little easier if I knew how close she was to the person she’s talking about.’ Prompto worded what he wanted to carefully. It wasn’t every day Lightning have off such a vulnerable aura, so the last thing he wanted to do was make her more upset. “If you ask me, just being able to stand by them and know you could help them go far in life sounds like reward enough. Sure, maybe you can’t be together forever and ever, but knowing you made an impact comes just as close.”

“And how would I know if my impact even mattered? For all I can tell, they could be fine without me. Better, even.”

“One way of seeing it? They may be able to live their own life just fine, but it’s hard to forget how they got to that life in the first place. If you impact enough, they’ll be sure to never take that for granted.”

Hardly even realizing it immediately, Lightning felt her heart mellow out a tad melancholically the more she thought about her most cherished protectorate. All the foolish mistakes she’d made along the way she may not have been ready to forgive herself entirely for, but in where everyone from Cocoon and Gran Pulse now were, she’d do anything to keep it how it’d become in the end. Now, of all the people to find that appeared to understand her in that way, it’s Prompto who claims such a spot.

“Those are some wise words coming from you of anyone,” Lightning told him. “Never imagined it’d be from the same person who’s compared gloves to being ‘hand condoms’, either.”

“Light, that’s only the beginning of my endless wisdom,” Prompto said proudly before simmering back down in his tone again. “But, frankly? I’m more surprised you were so willing to listen that easily. I’ve only really said all that to Noct.”

“It’d be ‘pot calling the kettle black’ if I gave you such a rough time about this. But, if you ask me, it really looks like you’re on the right track, even if you think you aren’t.”

“Can’t stop you if you wanna think that, but all I can do is keep trying and see if I can succeed. Until then, there’s no saying for sure.”

“Well, considering you’re already pulling more weight out here than any nobody could hope to, I’d say you’re making the progress you need. Hell, you’d give Sazh a run for his money if he saw how well you work a pistol. And he uses two!”

“Right! Now, for my next question; who the heck is Sazh?” Prompto in asking it sounded closer to his more chipper side, but was just as unfamiliar with the comparison.

“A friend back home. I think you’d like him just fine.” Lightning started counting off a few fingers, fishing out the similarities. “You’re both top-notch gunsmen, wise-cracking even in the tightest of situations, have a fondness for chocobos—”

“—Wait, wait, hold up! This friend of yours also sees the true glory of Eos’ finest creatures?! Do tell, Miss Farron! Don’t keep a guy waiting!”

Lightning couldn’t help but softly laugh at Prompto’s enthusiasm for once. That certainly got his attention. “It’s more his son, Dajh, that’s crazy about them. But, if keeping a chocobo chick in his hair amounts to anything, I’d say he’s a huge fan of them, too.”

“He keeps a chocobo chick in—! Get out! I’ve— that clinches it! I gotta meet this man someday! I just gotta, Pink! I’ve gotta learn his ways! How could I have been so blind?!”

Lightning pat Prompto a few times on the head, appearing to quell his innumerable excitement levels. “Easy does it, Sunspot. I’m sure he’d forgive you for taking a while to do that. But, while we’re on it, how did you get so good at firing a gun?”

“Well, I hate to keep bringing my pop into this, but back when I was still in training, he found my aim wasn’t just top-notch in taking a few snaps. Turns out projectiles are just my calling, too.”

“And I may as well ask this, too, but who is your dad? He sounds a little more than just another commoner. Is he a veteran?”

“You could say that, but you’ve met him already! He’s the same guy who sent you to travel with us in the first place!”

“What? But that was—” Lightning stopped, eyes widening when she realized who Prompto was talking about. She looked at his sunny, almost cutesy-looking mug, then comparing it to the complete 180 of his apparent parentage. “...No way. The Marshal?! Cor Leonis is your dad of all people?!”

“Yes… and no. Obviously, we’re not blood related, but he sorta adopted me as a baby. Then, eventually, he had to give me up to my… other parents. So, I guess I grew up the rest of the way with them.”

“He had to give you up? Why?”

“Guess it had to do with him being leader of the Crownsguard and all. Someone like that can’t balance such a huge responsibility and a kid, so he didn’t have a choice on it at all.”

“Then, how come you still call him your dad if he’s technically not anymore?”

“I try not to when I need to be formal or in front of other Guard members, but honestly, I still pretty much consider him my father even though I had to go somewhere else.” Prompto’s mouth flattened into another frown, this one as wistful as the ones before it. “Hard to admit, but he’s the only older adult figure in my life there enough to earn that title. My… folks weren’t exactly home too much, so I mostly had to look after myself all the time.”

“They left their kid on his own just like that?! Some ‘parents’ ya got there. Actually, I don’t think I should use that word. If they were really your mom and dad, then they shouldn’t leave their kid behind when it’s still in their control. If it wasn’t? Different story. But, that’s not the case here, is it?”

“Well, I— look, Pink, bad mouthing them isn’t the answer. Can’t change how I was brought up, so… what, huh?”

“I don’t care in the slightest. Prompto, you don’t deserve to be practically ignored by the two people meant to be there for you the most. I’m not accepting it, and neither should you, Mister.”

“It’s not like I ‘accept’ it, exactly. It’s— I just wish… you know…”

The words faded on Prompto’s tongue, but were replaced by a quiet gasp at what happened next. Of all the things to get from Lightning for any reason, her arms wrapped around his body in a strangely maternal embrace was definitely not one he expected. But, for once, it simmered his heart into steady, rather sad thumps. He didn’t find it appropriate to hug back, but it appeared Lightning wasn’t going to let go of him just yet. Although it was his primary thought, it didn’t seem to be a hug of empty pity; even at her rare warmest, the woman to him never appeared as the type to go and show something so pointless for another person. Rather, the display felt as comforting to Prompto as it did secretly unearned.

“You’re doing just fine. You just have to not quit while you’re ahead,” Lightning reassured him. “I haven’t been here as long as you four, but I’m sure they’d have said something by now if you weren’t at least close to good enough. Real friends stick by you from start to finish, but also know when you’re falling behind on what’s really crucial.”

“That sounds true and all, but…” Prompto silenced himself, shaking his head without the desire to say too much more. “Nevermind. You’re right; I shouldn’t overreact or turn into a real ‘Debbie Downer’ here.”

“I never said you were. Feeling low’s gonna happen against your control; it’s what you do with it is what makes the difference. I’m nobody to tell anyone else how to feel, but I can at least encourage you not to throw your hopes out the window just yet. Think you’d be able to do that?”

“Hmm, dunno. I’ve already got bad eyesight, so it’s not like I’ve got better ‘future sight’, either. But, man! Would if I could, Light. Would if I could.”

Lightning could feel a delicate little smile tug at her mouth corners hearing Prompto regain the laugh in his voice. “Careful what you wish for. Being able to see into the future might not be as nice as you think.”

“What makes you say that? Having that as a superpower would rock! Unless— yeah, maybe some things are just not meant to be seen before they happen. Is that why?”

“Among… other reasons people wouldn’t like it. Bottom line, I’d rather you waited and saw, and not saw and waited. You got that?”

“I gotcha! Won’t see any ESP from me, lay-dee! But, you mind if we get going? I did say I was only gonna be gone for a little bit. Don’t want everyone thinking I almost became bear chow again.”

“It is a good time to— wait, ‘again’? What do you mean ‘again’?”

“Nothing that’s not best left in the past! It was before you came along, and we’re all fine now! Don’t you worry your pretty pink little head there.”

Having done enough of interrogating Prompto for one day, Lightning left it at that and got herself off the ground. She was about to turn the other way hoping to be followed, when Prompto let out a loud, energetic gasp after looking at his camera again. Without explaining himself, he grabbed Lightning by the wrist and ran in the direction of where she’d originally chased him from. Besides not wanting to leave his poor tripod all by its lonesome, having another person with him in such a great spot was a photo opportunity just begging on its knees for him to take it.

And just who was he to up and refuse it so rudely?

“Really, Prom, we’ve gotta go,” Lightning insisted as Prompto set her up in front of the tripod and camera like a living prop. “Can’t this wait until later?”

“Not a chance!” Prompto chirped, making sure everything on his camera was all set and in position. “Why pass up the chance of a lifetime in getting a nice snap with my favorite photogenic newcomer?”

“If you wanted a selfie, then you don’t need my help with that,” Lightning quipped, hiding her smirk behind a few fingers at the consequent stunned blush on Prompto’s face born from the comment.

“Oh, fair maiden, how you flatter a clown. But, nope! You’ve gotta be in the shot; no way out until this memory’s made!” Prompto set the timer up, running to where Lightning was and readying himself for the shoot. “Smile for the camera, Pink! It loves ya!”

Lightning never really considered herself a “camera person”, but with how little time she had to think about it before the camera went off and captured her appearance in the moment, she did what first came to her mind. Giving off the most modest of her smiles, the shutter went off and immortalized the exact moment and pose the two were in. Prompto went to go look at his new photograph, rather pleased with the almost punkish way he had his tongue stuck out and the peace sign fingers on the hand belonging to the arm he’d wrapped around Lightning’s shoulders without actually making physical contact. As for his female companion in the snapshot, hers didn’t seem like anything to write home about, but nothing of it wiped even a bit away of the smile on his face.

“Another shot gotten! And this one’s the first to be blessed full-on by such a gracious presence!” Prompto beamed, making loops around the moon from how happy he was to have gotten a photo with Lightning. “Hey, why don’t you see how it came out, too? No need to let you miss out on it.”

“Why don’t you show me while we’re heading back to camp?” Lightning suggested, hauling the tripod under her arm and allowing Prompto to follow in her steps. “Nothing against you doing what you like, but we were supposed to head back a while ago.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course! And since we’re doing it now, take a quick look!” Prompto put the camera in front of Lightning’s eyes, the screen still on its most recent picture.

“Easy with— ...oh.” Lightning saw how the photo came out, rather impressed by the expert-level accuracy and the fact that even her more mild expression didn’t lower any of the quality either. “Gotta say, for someone that needs contacts, you’ve really got an eye for the camera.”

“I’ve had two for as long as I can remember. This journey’s not gonna last forever, so I might as well make a way to capture it for as long— WHOA!”

Lightning immediately ducked and caught Prompto by hugging her arms around to his torso, pulling him back up onto his feet hiding her suppressed urge to laugh. “Maybe tell me more on the way back. While looking where you’re going, of course.”

“That can be arranged. See, it all started when…”

Ignis was in the middle of getting the last few minor touches on camp set up, at the same time Gladio and Noctis were preoccupying themselves a distance from him with a harmless sparring match. Their combat reminded him personally to take a good look at his recently acquired Mythril Knives to ensure they were ready for use next time the team was to be under attack by the forces of evil or wilderness. His ears picked up on faint chatter past the sound of swords clashing and a prince rapidly warping, further investigation informing him that the culprits were the previously absent Prompto and Lightning. The ecstatic storytelling from his blond friend was nothing new, but the interested placid smile on his pink-haired one certainly provided some questions on what happened between them in the woods.

“—Then, I got attacked by a horde of angry baboons! As if that wasn’t bad enough, this leopard comes along and tried to take a bite of me in the worst way possible!” Prompto recited to a fascinated Lightning, Ignis recalling exactly the moment in question on one of the detours taken before they’d even officially set out on their current mission. “All because I wanted to snap a pic of this cute little baby monkey I saw, too! Was that so wrong?”

“You might have just scared the thing with your camera,” Lightning guessed. “What’s harmless to people might not be so to a wild animal. It probably mistook you for a hunter.”

“Still no excuse to try and get me killed! The little…” Prompto grumbled, trailing off and ending the bitter sentence in his head. “Any jungles where you’re from, Pink?”

“Not where I’m living now, no. But, where I was born, the closest I can think of is the Sunleth Waterscape. Never been myself; my sister and a few of our friends passed through it, though.”

“Bummer. Was that awesome ‘Sazh’ guy you were talking about one of those people?”

Lightning nodded. “Him and Vanille went at the same time. Speaking of which, you act a lot like her, too. I think you almost have her beat in the ‘perky youth’ department. And… some other more personal things you’ve got in common, too.”

“I won’t make you say things you don’t wanna, but my ‘Light’s friends I just gotta meet’ list is growing!”

“Maybe when I go back home, you can find time to visit. I’m sure they’d get a kick out of you.” Lightning’s voice had a noticeable lightheartedness to it, imagining the sheer chaos of Prompto meeting her loved ones back home.

“It sounds like you two had a good time out?” Ignis inquired, finally getting the two’s attention on him. His glasses-covered eyes were particularly on Prompto asking it, who knew the reason why.

“Definitely nothing I was expecting, that’s for sure. Anything could end a lot worse, but I’m happy this didn’t.”

“That makes two of us, sister!” Prompto agreed, bringing up the new photo of him and Lightning on his camera. “And guess who also finally got the ultimate selfie today? This guy, that’s who!”

“You finally partook in one of Prompto’s photos, Light? I always thought you to be the camera-shy type,” Ignis said, scanning the camera screen with intrigue.

“I’m not much for taking them, but it came out really well,” Lightning admitted. “As long as Prom doesn’t ask me to take too many of them, I don’t mind getting another in for him.”

“Do you really mean that?!” Prompto squeaked, beyond joyous.

“I just might. I don’t have ‘future sight’ either, though. We’ll just see where things go after this.”

Lightning only left it at that after, flashing Prompto another kind glance before going over to request a sparring match of her own with Gladio after Noctis concluded his with him. It hadn’t gone past Prompto’s cleared up eyes at all, the ecstatic shutterbug still feeling his innards doing giddy flips and turns about the events that’d transpired overall. He found himself smiling with his sunny aura after Lightning, freezing when he’d caught the look on Ignis’ face, too.

“Seems you’ve made a friend in her,” Ignis pointed out. “I’d have to be halfway blind to think she isn’t starting to warm up to you.”

“You really think so?” Prompto breathed, scratching one cheek with his pointer finger.

“I’ve more than a feeling. Not as scary as you thought her finding about your contact lenses was going to be, was it?”

“Pish-pish, lucky guess. Turns out, a lot of things that’s bothered me, she’s been on the same ride just as bad.”

“And yet a lot remains a mystery about our newest comrade. However, enough has certainly come to ‘Light’ with her since she joined us.”

Prompto laughed, quickly catching onto the discreet humor. “Can’t know everything about everybody, of course. Especially since there’s some things we just don’t know the answer to.” At the same time he said that, he fixed the black bands covering his right wrist so they wouldn’t reveal anything the mystery mark underneath.

“Which is perfectly fine. Everyone has their skeletons in the closet, big or small. It’s only a matter of how people take them is what makes the difference.”

Prompto couldn’t argue with that, being unable to avoid looking at not just Noctis toying around on a favored game on his smartphone, but also Lightning performing an impressive deflecting of Gladio’s strike. He still couldn’t fully believe what happened today did, nevermind actually reaching this point in his life. And yet, somehow, here he was; still among the Crownsguard of all things, and making a new friend that turned out to be sailing in the same boat as him in a way.

Another person— Lightning, no less, was more than willing to encourage him from her own honest faith alone. She’d joined Noctis in rooting for him, so Prompto had to be a fool to do so much as consider letting her own too because he couldn’t live up to the simplest of expectations. Whether or not he was sure he’d succeed in the end aside from his personal lack of true confidence, nothing was an excuse to stop after every step taken in the first place.

Prompto tapped one closed eyelid each gingerly, making sure what stuck to his eyes behind them were both secure. He laughed once to himself. Of all the ways possible he could have shared such a deep moment in the woods with someone, it had to be over a measly pair of contact lenses. Small world, he thought. Small world, indeed.