#if I am allowed to have a white surface near me i WILL draw on it lol

[icewindandboringhorror]

more photo diary posts.. various life images...

[bullet-prooflove]

4000 Followers: Barcelona - Matthew Keller x Reader

Tagging: @rosielou94 d @kmc1989@toheavenwmydrms@noxytopy

Companion piece to:

5 Times - Keller almost tells you he loves you.

Three Minutes - It takes three minutes for Matt Keller to lose his humanity.

Transactional - In the wake of your injury, you leave Keller a Dear John letter.

It takes a couple of months for Matt to track you down. You’ve rented an apartment in Barcelona, near the town centre because your working a legal gig for the Picasso Museum. Your business has been flourishing in the time you’ve been apart. You’ve bounced from Frankfurt, Vienna, Milian and now to here. Matt’s always been a few steps behind you, he’s missed you by twelve hours back in Italy.

Matt has never done this before. He doesn’t chase after women, he’s usually the one that does the leaving. The fact he wants to follow you, it speaks volumes.

When you enter the apartment he’s sitting on your couch flicking through a Spanish fashion magazine, his brow furrowed. He sets it down on the coffee table as you close the door behind you.

"I'm not giving you security details for the museum." You tell him drifting towards your desk to check your laptop. To your surprise it looks untouched.  

"You know that's not why I'm here." He says as he raises to his feet and approaches the desk. His fingertips caress the tiny terracotta dog perched on the corner. It’s new, an unusual piece, not expensive but he knows it’s a sign, one that you’re planning to stay for a while.

“No I don’t.” You say distractedly as you close your laptop. “Because you don’t give me a reason behind anything you do, why you leave, why you stay, why you turn up in my place in Barcelona. I get nothing from you Matt.”

“Avery…” He says softly, his palm coming to rest upon yours and you pull away because his touch, it always leads to the same damn thing. “You know how fucked up I am.”

“Yea,” You tell him meeting his gaze. “It’s a good excuse to hide behind when shit gets too real isn’t it?”

This right here, this is why he loves you. You see through all of his bullshit, you call him on it. You are the first person who has ever bothered to scratch beneath the surface of his psyche. The only one that sees him.

“Avery.” He whispers, catching your hand. He squeezes it lightly and your fingers twitch underneath his touch. You don’t have much mobility in it anymore, Woodford saw to that. “Please just let me show you.”

“We’ve played this game before and we both know where it leads.” You say as you draw away, your hand slipping from his. It feels like a knife plunging into his chest but he gets it, your protecting yourself because he is not a safe bet, he never has been.

You watch as he removes his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans before he takes out a ticket stub and places it on the desk beside you.

“This is from the night we went to that art show in MOMA, you were wearing that dress, the blue one with the white flowers.” He murmurs as his hands come to rest on your hips. You tip your head up to look at him and for a moment he allows himself to hope, he prays that this is the time he can finally get the words out. “I remember because…”

…that was the day I fell in love with you.

But the words they just won’t leave his lips, they die in his throat as he cradles your face between his hands, his forehead coming to rest upon yours. He realises in that moment that it’s never going to happen. Those words they’re associated with so many terrible things in his life. There’s no pleasure in them, no joy, there’s just anguish and grief.

“I can’t tell you what you want to hear sweetheart but I promise you I feel it.” Matt whispers against your lips. “I feel it with every fibre of my being."

“You should go.”  You tell him, your palm coming to rest upon his chest before you push him away lightly. “You’re just going to break my heart all over again.”

You twist away from him then, because your eyes are stinging and you don’t want him to see that weakness in you.

“Avery.” He rasps and sigh as you turn back towards him.

“Matt look…” You trail off because the last thing you expect to see is Matthew Keller on one knee in front of you, a little black box in his hand.

You recognise the ring, Alexandrite with an accent marquise cut, set between two diamond leaf clusters in a rose gold band. You’d been devastated when you’d had to sell it to pay Matt’s legal bills but you’d owed him, because he’d killed a man for you, saved you from something worse than death.

There’s a lot of history attached to that ring. It had been taken from your family in the late 1930s along with the rest of their belongings before they’d been shipped off to a concentration camp in Germany. Out of the four family members that went in only one came out, your Grandmother. That ring was the only memory she had had of her own family. It had been the first thing that you and Matt stolen together. It had been residing in a collection of stolen Jewish artwork, along with other Nazi memorabilia. The other shit that man had had in his collection…

You’d burned that place to the fucking ground afterwards.

“I hate shit like this.” Matt had told you after you’d deposited the three stolen pieces of artwork you’d managed to rescue inside Peter Burke’s porch. He’d find it in the morning, get it back to the place it belonged to.

“All she wanted is to see this ring one more time before she died.” You’d told him as you sat in the passenger seat of his car, looking at the circlet inside the tiny black box. “They took everything from her.”

“We did a good thing here tonight.” He’d told you as he’d walked you to your door that evening. “Consider this one on me.”

You’d taken him to bed for the first time that night.

And now he’s on one knee in front of you, with your Grandmother’s ring.

“I might not be able to say it.” He tells you, his eyes meeting yours. “But sweetheart trust me when I say I feel it.”

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Like My Work? - Why Not Buy Me A Coffee

[richardgrimes]

who wants a sneak peek of the kryptonian-powered olivia au

Na einai kalytero anthropo apo ton patera tou.

A scream tears itself from her throat, echoing in her head as if in a long, cavernous tunnel.

Her vision blurs and burns with too hot tears. She doesn’t know where she is—doesn’t recognize the room she’s in or the silhouette of the figure at her side calling out for someone.  Is it her name they’re calling?

The tears trail down her cheeks. Drawing her focus in like a magnetic pull are two smoking holes in the wall straight ahead, rapidly converging into one at the middle.  Dying, orange embers flicker around the scorched edges.

“Olivia?”

Voices call out to her.  A man, then a woman, overlapping in a cacophony of sound.

Her stomach tumbles over itself like clothes in a dryer as her vision goes blurry a second time, and then the nothing she’d awoken from takes her into its arms once again.

Olivia comes to with a shuddering breath and wide eyes.  And pain, pain everywhere, especially her leg.

Her sister is at her side in an instant, her bedside.  She’s in a bed.  In a hospital.  A monitor beeps to her left.

“Olivia, you’re awake!”

The skin around Rachel’s eyes are puffy, the eyes themselves bloodshot.  She looks as if she hasn’t slept in days.

There’s movement outside the door that’s too quick to make out.  Voices call from the hallway.

“Where am I?” Olivia asks, though she knows half the answer.

Rachel’s face contorts into shapes of sadness, of despair.  What happened?  What happened?

“You’re in New York General,” her sister says.

A man with brown skin and a white coat enters the room, presumably a doctor.  Her doctor.

What happened, what happened, what happened, what happened…

Why can’t she remember anything?

“Can you tell me your name?” the doctor asks her.

That, to her relief, she can remember.  “It’s Olivia Dunham.”

“Do you know the year?”

She ignores him, looking to her little sister.  “Why am I in the hospital and what is wrong with my leg?”

“You were in an accident, do you remember?  In New York?”

The mention of New York stirs something in her that it didn’t just moments before.  A memory breaking its way through the surface of her fog filled mind.  A sense of urgency tugs at her.

“Is Peter here? I need to see-”

“He’s here, he’s here.”

Almost as soon as the question leaves her mouth, Peter appears in the doorway, hastily making his way to her with a relieved smile on his face.  A million thoughts racing through her mind tell her that there is nothing to be relieved about.

He leans down to speak to her, still smiling, and something about it seems placating, like she’s some rust-covered coil spring prepared to snap.

She cuts off whatever it is he’s about to say.  “I went somewhere.”

Peter nods.  “I know.  You went to New York.”

“No…” she shakes her head.  “Yeah, but no.”

His face turns serious, yet soft, with a trace of that same despair that haunts her sister’s features.  “Olivia, you were in an accident.”

“No.  No…”  Her voice takes on a panicked edge.  “I was trying to get somewhere and someone was trying to stop me but I went there anyway and-”

The constant beeping near her bedside speeds up, frantically signaling that something is wrong.

“Oh, God, what is happening?” she asks, fearing her own body, her own mind.

“Mr. Bishop, please.  She needs to stay calm,” the Doctor calls, his voice a demanding presence.

A memory causes her to sit up on her elbows.

“He told me something.”

“Who?” Peter asks, cupping her jaw with his large hand.  The feeling of his skin against hers does nothing to assuage the panic rising inside her.

“I don’t know.  I can’t remember, but,” she takes a deep breath.  “Oh, it was very important.  There’s something I have to do.”

“Who, Olivia?  Who told you to do what?”

She looks around the room as Peter speaks, seeing the doctor's concerned face, her sister’s visible worry and exhaustion.  An odd hole pierces the wall straight ahead of her, allowing a view of the sterile hospital walls out in the hall.  They’re burnt and curled at the edges, like a fire had spread and disintegrated all the wallpaper and insulation in its wake.

Distantly, she recognizes how distraught she sounds as she grips Peter’s sleeve with a strength that directly opposes his gentle hold on her face.  “I don’t know, but there’s something that I have to do and I—I think that our lives may depend on it.”

“Whose lives?” Peter asks, shaking his head with worry and confusion.

She blanks, staring into his concerned eyes.  Your life…your precious life.  Rachel’s.  Ella’s.  Astrid’s and Walters.  Phillip’s.  Charlie’s.

“Everyone’s.”

She needs her gun.  She’s not safe.  The hole in the wall catches her attention again.

No.  No one is safe at all.

[halfmoth-halfman]

i'm already like this anytime i read one of your fics, esp your ghost fics, but i'm just so askasdalkj i love this so much. fair warning for below the cut because it's fawning over jo's writing hour for me and i am not holding back

am i about to ramble and maybe not make sense? probably. but oh well because i have to talk about this

your👏🏼characterization👏🏼of👏🏼ghost👏🏼

i've said it before and i'll say a million more times, but you are a literal goddess of characterization, like your ghost is basically canon to me. the way you manage to make him so realsitic, so grounded without going overboard, always astounds me. it's such a delicate balance between writing ghost and simon and you go completely above and beyond every single time.

your writing is a masterclass of showing the nuances in a character's personality, the beauty and simplicity in the building of a relationship between two people. you can see it in the small ways ghost and helen hold each other up and find ways to support one another. it's the way ghost recognizes that he's not an easy person to be with, but helen still is because to her he's not broken, not hopeless, he's just struggling. and she understands that. she gets him.

and the little ways you differentiate between simon and ghost always get to me because it just alsdakjs ugh. both such different parts of himself, but agreeing that helen is the best thing to ever happen to him and wanting to do whatever he can to keep her around as long as possible. he loves her with every part of him, even the ugly ones, and she sees that and doesn't turn away, doesn't try to fix him, but help him.

and the fact that they're both such capable people so used to protecting others and themselves, but they allow each other past that stern surface and allow themselves to be protected by each other???? the way they've let themselves become secure enough in this relationship to not turn tail and run when they're struggling, but find a way to communicate that, to trust each other enough to understand that sometimes they just need space. the way they speak to each other with their code, because they trust each other to stick around long enough to need a code to begin with.

and just this????

Sometimes they’re squares—which means either I love you, or I miss you—and sometimes their triangles. The latter, he’s not sure if they have a meaning. He just draws them back on your knee, watching your lips slide up into your cheek as you try to read your book. He likes it—the code. The one he can say down the radio. The one he can draw on your arm when you’re both pressed together in some place in the Middle East.

i know perfection doesn't exist, but the way you write ghost is damn-near close. he's a serious guy, he has his rules, his walls, but there's still some levity to him too and even in the more serious moments, you always manage to sprinkle that in there with the perfect amount of snark that just feels so him

One black circle, one white circle; one green circle, one red circle. “Naturally, I’m the colourful ones.” “Naturally,” he snorts.

all this to say, i'm weak. i'm weak for your ghost. i'm weak for ghost and helen. i'm weak for your writing. there are not enough words in the english language for me to describe how much i adore you and your writing and your willingness to put up with my shenanigans when i talk about characters 💜

circles and squares

simon ghost riley x f!reader (cod)

an: you should all thank @halfmoth-halfman for this one and our early morning chat. I heart you lots.

an: written on phone, mind any errors.

Ghost is aware he’s not the easiest person to be with. 

He's an entanglement of repressed feelings, scars that run deeper than layers of skin and a need for solitude, that you seem to have slid past. 

You take it all in your stride, not fazed—not asking too much—the patience of a saint.

It’s not that why he likes you. It’s that you make up rules for the two of them with relative ease. Providing him with ways to express himself without using words.

For someone whose skin is littered with only a handful of marked memories and a heart still soft, you surprise him with how deeply you understand him.

How much you just get him.

In all of his future thinking, Ghost never envisioned such a soul would fall for him—although Simon had always hoped. 

Two fragmented parts of him working together, desperate to keep whatever was happening between the two of you intact. Even if he had little to give and not a whole lot to offer, you stuck around.

You say very little when it comes to his past, taking what you can with gratitude. When you’re ticking, turning over thoughts—needing something but unsure how to ask for it—you make up solutions to give him a voice.

Not a physical one, but one just as loud.  

“—like this,” you explain, taking the pen from his hand, drawing a circle—small, no bigger than 2cm—onto the plain, crisp page. 

The black stands out, all stark against the white paper on the chipped wooden desk. His eyes glancing up from the nib, to your eyes.

He wants to ask for an explanation, folding his arms, sighing as he runs his tongue over his teeth. 

You smile. 

He suspects it isn’t because you hear his sigh or because of the way he folds his arms—but because you know him. 

You know it isn’t to do with impatience or confusion, but rather because you understand that the two of you squirrelled away in a room brings questions. Ones he wants to save you from, as though you’re a damsel and not a lieutenant under him. 

You don’t need to protect me.

You’d said that once. Under him, your legs on either side of his thighs as your fingers brush over stubble and blemishes.

But he does.

Not just from the gossip, from the glances. But those who look for him—those who inflicted each defacement he lets you see.

If anything, you’re one of the very things he needs to protect. Keep you safe.

“If we fill it in like this,” you say, shading in the circle. “We’ll know the other person isn’t okay. We don’t have to explain to why, but we’ll know.” 

He cocks a brow, not that you can see it. His mask, the one all plain black, more for the base than out in the open, hiding his expressions from you. 

Ghost suspects, though, you see right through the fabric. Like you saw through him to begin with. Ignored the snark and the bitterness, saw something—someone—worth getting drenched for when you were both stationed in Europe. 

He hadn’t liked the rain before then, not the scent of it—not the way it made his clothes cling to his skin, how it suffocated him. But he likes how you looked in the rain, how your face relaxed even as your hair flattened to your head. How your hand turned palm over, catching droplets like they were blessings and not something which had ruined an entire night of recon. 

“Alright, but if we’re OK?” He asks. 

Your head nods, drawing another circle next to it. Not filling it, just leaving the outline there. 

“Not filled in means we’re okay.” 

It doesn’t cross his mind what they’ll do if there’s no paper, if there’s no way in a crowded room to get across that you’re drowning. That it feels too much. That you need him. 

You think about it, though. Because you always are. Always thinking of ways to make things easier, better. Ticking it off—always assessing, attempting to better things. Not for you, never for you (your selflessness knows no bounds), but for him. 

An answer to his inner thought was answered a month or two later.

It’s a mess, loud voices—arguments brewing in fractions as mutinies begin to build. Price in the centre, chewing his cheek, fingers twitching, likely desperate for a cigar or even a drink as another captain chews his ear off.

The 141 rarely partner with others for this reason.

He doesn’t linger on Price. Knows if he’s needed, he’ll hear his name cutting through the loudness. So he looks for you, eyes searching, finding you pressed into the corner. Alone. 

You’ve not been sleeping. Tossing, turning beside him. Fingers reaching for him, finding his side, his arm—even his fingers—as your brows knit and stencils lines into your face.

He never wakes you, just lets you take—and when you don’t take, he just holds. Clutching you close, pressing your ear to his chest, hoping the steady beat of his heart is enough.

Sometimes it is.

He suspects now wouldn’t be.

Your back is pressed against the wall, eyes down on the ground before they flick up, and for a moment, he forgets how to breathe.

Not just because your eyes are stunning, cutting into him from across a room, but because of how you look at him: a silent calling, a beckoning, a help dancing close to your pupils.

Slowly, for confirmation, he watches as you raise your right hand, drawing a circle on your left shoulder. His eyes track it, following it as it meets your starting point. Mind drowning out Johnny, not even listening to the group of idiots next to him—focused instead on how you begin using your finger to fill in the symbolic shape.  

He nods.

Feet moving, gloved hands pushing shoulders and bodies, parting the pockets of people as he moves towards you.

Ghost isn’t sure what he can do when he gets there, his pulse just thumping—following only a need to be next to you. He expects murmurs, more suspicious comments about how he’s always close by to you. Smarter soldiers recognise that he always has an eye on you if you’re close—they’re just not smart enough to identify something is already happening, and has been for a while.

As he nears you, he’s thankful he doesn’t need to ask it because you’re already keeping your eyes on him. Seeing as he gets closer that your lips are slightly parted, a little O created, chest rising and falling as you take in shallow breaths. 

He wants to offer something, whether it’s his voice, presence, or anything. Which is why he asks:

“Wanna get out of here?” 

He’s not sure if you expect it—not sure if you had considered it an option. Your head nodding, furiously, blinking away tears that threaten to spill as your hand brushes his wrist. 

Not to take his hand—the two of you don’t do that—but to tap. Once, twice. 

Thank you. 

He nods. Not able to (or wanting to) stop the way his heart soars at it—at being able to provide you with something.

Give you a fraction of what you give to him: a way out, a safe place.

In time, your things begin to merge with his.

Not just on base, but back in England too. Your socks are washed with his, your back covered in one of his tees that skirts your thighs.

He doesn’t mind, for the most part, only finding he struggles with it at night. When you’re sound asleep, soft snores kissing the darkness as he turns over the many ways you could be taken from him.

Ghost sleeps less when he’s home. Most of his REM is collected in the day, sun shimmering through the blinds, your fingers drawing shapes on his shoulders.

Sometimes they’re squares—which means either I love you, or I miss you—and sometimes their triangles. The latter, he’s not sure if they have a meaning. He just draws them back on your knee, watching your lips slide up into your cheek as you try to read your book.

He likes it—the code.

The one he can say down the radio. The one he can draw on your arm when you’re both pressed together in some place in the Middle East.

Which is why it doesn’t surprise him when you shout his name, the front door being kicked shut behind you—a surprise in a carrier bag.

“I know you’re struggling.”

You say it so plainly. Not a hello or how are you, getting straight into it, watching him as he stuffs his hands into the pockets of his joggers.

He says nothing either because there’s little reason to lie. He wears the truth well, the bags under his eyes worse than when he’s sent away on a solo—his need to pin you under him in the morning when sleep hasn’t been wiped from your eyes another tick against your assumption.

Retrieving the item from your bag, you place it on the counter with a tap. His eyes falling from you to them, noticing four magnets.

Nothing impressive, nothing too much. But he knows instantly what they are.

One black circle, one white circle; one green circle, one red circle.

“Naturally, I’m the colourful ones.”

“Naturally,” he snorts.

Moving towards him, you slide a hand over his hip. “They’ll live at the base of the fridge door, and we’ll slide one up—close to the top. When we remember,” you say, looking at him. “Same as the circles. For me, red is—“

“Black.”

Nodding, you try to smile. “Square.”

“Square,” he says back, quickly. Palm cupping your cheek, thumb brushing a line across it.

Wondering, as he always does, how you remain so soft, so kind. How even though you’re haunted too, you still find ways to do things for him—

“Because I love you,” you say, as though reading his mind. “It’s easy because I love you.”

Swallowing, he holds your cheek more firmly, his other hand resting on your hip.

“Y… you don’t have to say it, I’m fine with—“

“I love you. It’s why I worry.”

Rolling your lips, you sigh—soft and small—before you nod. “I know, Simon. But we keep each other safe. Yeah?”

He nods back.

Because you do keep him safe. Not wearing a mark on your skin from him—or asking him to leave one—just in case. Your name on the place the two of you call yours, just in case.

An understanding is known about the future—mainly around rings and names, just in case.

“Which circle are you?”

His lips twitch, a smile wanting to show. “White.”

“Okay, good.” Your finger begins to draw a triangle, his eyes narrowing, your lips rising into a smirk. “Bought something else, too.”

“Yeah?”

Nodding, you lick your lips, eyes widening as you continue to draw it on him. “Wanna go upstairs and… see?”

It hits him only then. The deviousness in your eyes showing.

Triangle means—

“I want you,” you whisper.

He snorts, his laugh dying in his throat, wrapping his fingers around the back of your neck, bringing your lips to his.

Kissing shapes against your lips, unshaded circles, squares, and then triangles.

[blue-opossum]

Heraldic Dragon Storm

        2 minutes and 30 seconds to read.

        Wednesday morning, 1 March 2023.

        Heraldic Dragon Storm

        Dream #: 20,526-03.

        The illusory dynamics of this dreaming experience first involve the typical arm (and hand) mobility theme and somatosensory responses to REM atonia, but after "walking with intent" (and vivifying my dream exponentially), the somatosensory factor transitions from directed to received (over my entire right side) and becomes incredibly vivid, with loud auditory phasing.

        My dream's first segment is a typical shopping narrative in an unknown location. After getting several items in a grocery store, I go to what I think will be a bigger grocery store, though it turns out to be smaller. I push the shopping cart from the first store, go outside, turn to the right, and enter the small store. During this time, I touch the various Australian bills, mainly the fifty-dollar notes, to multiply them in my wallet, realizing I can do this continually, having no limit to what I can spend.

        A man is sitting near the narrow entrance inside the building, though the perpendicular corner, where people exit, is open. I tell him he can look at my receipt (from the previous store) as I hold it, but he waves me and my shopping cart through. The aisle begins here but turns right at 90 degrees and turns right again with one checkout at the third counter (opposite the corner near the exit). In other words, the shopping area is only one rectangular path, with the entrance and exit at the same corner.

        One man walks close to my shopping cart but goes in the opposite direction. The area is too narrow to allow for much browsing.

        I do not see much to buy. I pick up a few fruits resembling mangos, but they have strange small donut shapes over their surface. The spots are reminiscent of white hole guard labels for notebook paper. Even so, I keep one that looks fresh.

        I pick up two pairs of unusual red fruits shaped like irregular Greek amphoras. (They are probably meant to look like hearts with partial aortas.) I select a few other items.

        At the checkout, I hand the male cashier a twenty-dollar bill. Some coins fall (more typical of my second post-hypnagogic dream content each sleep cycle), but he picks them up for me.

        Once outside again in daylight, I am unsure how I will get home. I consider getting a bus, but I decide to push the shopping cart home, though I am unsure where I am and which direction home is. Eventually, I "walk with intent" as my dream becomes more vivid, realizing there is a light rain (somatosensory response to variations in REM atonia).

        To my left are surreal storm clouds, one forming a black tornado with irregular curves. I am unconcerned. Ahead, at a T-intersection, is a tall building of at least five floors. Above the building are at least three animated sketches of heraldic dragons. They are unrealistic in that they look like neither living creatures nor clouds. Even so, curls of black smoke form some of the moving drawings.

        As I walk closer, my dream becomes more and more vivid, with incredible surreal beauty. The "cartoon" dragons continue to breathe fire and lightning onto the top of the building, seemingly with a sentient attempt to destroy it. I do not feel endangered.

         A loud roaring noise, similar to the last part of the alien light probe scene from "Star Trek: The Motion Pictures," occurs as I walk by the building. I consider that the heraldic dragon "storm clouds" will remain over the building until I leave the area.

        As I deliberately walk by the building, though in the middle of the street, rubble and dust from its eaves (because of a dragon's blast of fire and lightning) bounce along the street, hitting me lightly along my right side, head to foot. The sensation is incredibly realistic. I find it fascinating (and vaguely amusing) as I slowly walk until my dream ends.

[mythicamagic]

May I have one for "just wait for me here." "It's not like I can go anywhere." please.

Sesshoumaru arched a brow, staring across the sunlit glade towards a peculiar sight. His brother’s miko was acting strangely. She stood, clutching her bow tight- knuckles turning pale from the force of her grip. She tentatively used one end to feel around the grass, before prodding the ground with her shoe and inching forward.

Although they shared the same clearing, Kagome didn’t look up, nor acknowledge his presence.

Sesshoumaru gave in to curiosity, not particularly concerned about an enemy but too intrigued to ignore this display. She jerked when his boot crunched on a twig.

“Stay back!” Kagome snarled, voice shaking as she whipped her bow up defensively.

Sesshoumaru bit back a chuckle. What good would a mere bow do as a weapon without arrows? His humour soon abated however, staring into her murky blue eyes that gazed just over his shoulder.

Ah, I understand.

“W-who’s there?” she stammered, fear clouding her scent.

Inuyasha and her friends were clearly absent, always so foolish. They’d left a blinded miko vulnerable and alone?

Sesshoumaru gave the quivering woman a once over, noticing a few scrapes over her bare knees. Cut rope looped around her freed wrists. That strange white and green clothing she always wore was marred with dirt, torn in various places. She’d likely been kidnapped and escaped her captor on her own. Mildly impressive.

Still, she was nothing to do with him. Sesshoumaru turned on one heel.

“S-sesshoumaru?” Kagome called out tentatively. The words became firmer, more confident. “Sesshoumaru...wait. Please.”

The Daiyoukai paused, looking at her sightless blue eyes. “How is it that you knew who I was?”

She released a short, hard breath, clearly relieved to be speaking with someone. “I’m getting better at sensing stuff, I guess.”

“Hn,” he frowned, “and your eyes?”

Kagome touched her cheek, curling in on herself a little, “a demon blew a powder into my face and it blinded me. He kidnapped me...but I managed to get away. I just hope its temporary, ya know?” she gave a nervous giggle, despair threatening to take her under. Sesshoumaru hummed, attention drawing away to the forest surrounding them. He knew these woods well, and there was nothing around for miles. No villages nor clans. Just wild flatlands that eventually led to the mountains. She’d certainly ran a long way.

“I know we’re not friends- or even allies,” Kagome mumbled. “You’ve got no reason to help me-”

“That is correct,” he silkily agreed.

Her pretty features tightened with barely concealed frustration, amusing him. “But I’d owe you, hugely, if you just drop me off where Inuyasha can find me. I promise I’d return the favour- tenfold!”

Sesshoumaru chuckled, rather liking his position in this situation, studying his immaculate nailbeds in an unnecessary show of disinterest. “There is nothing a human could give to me that would be worth my time- nor do I need a favour.”

Blowing out a frustrated hiss of air through her teeth, Kagome stepped forward, gazing in his general direction. “So you’re going to just leave me here?”

“As previously established, miko,” he purred in a low tone. “We are not friends nor allies. Are we lovers?” he teased.

She instantly turned red, barking; “in your dreams!”

“Well then, if we are not friends, allies nor lovers, I have no need to heed your cries above those of the ants I crush beneath my feet when I walk,” Sesshoumaru turned away again, heading in the opposite direction.

“Wait!”

The desperate crunch of feet thundering through tall grass reached his ears, though the demon lord kept pace. Something knocked into his side- and Kagome stumbled, before latching tight onto mokomoko, wrapping her arms around his furs and hugging them to her chest.

Golden eyes widened at her audacity, pressing a palm against her forehead, trying to extract her from his person. “Off.”

“No way!” she twisted and tried to bite at his hand, narrowing sightless eyes. “Don’t be so heartless. At the very least, leave me at the nearest village- jerk!”

“You are doing a poor job of endearing yourself to me, wench,” Sesshoumaru lifted his hand, resting sharp claws against her damp forehead, slick with sweat. He prodded warningly. “Release this one.”

Kagome shuddered but refused to let go. “I-if I do, I’m as good as dead anyway,” she murmured, tightening her grip. “Please.”

Sesshoumaru flirted with the idea of releasing acid from his nails and reducing the nuisance into a pile of melted flesh and bone. However, even while blind- those blue eyes managed to fill him with a strange sense of intrigue. If this woman died, he ludicrously felt that the fates would turn their wrath upon him, not that he heeded the threat of any higher powers. She was so unusual in appearance, word and deed he could not help but think her a special existence, but even were she ordinary, Sesshoumaru felt his world would become less amusing without her presence in it. Encounters with Inuyasha would prove somewhat blander.

Sneering, his claws lowered. Continuing to walk with no acknowledgement of her trailing form hurrying after him, Sesshoumaru allowed her to hang onto mokomoko like it were a lifeline.

----

Kagome focused on keeping her footing, stumbling after the silent Daiyoukai. His furs pillowed her cheek, comfortable and silky. From what she could tell they’d left the wilder grass behind, her muddy loafers crunching on twigs and dry earth.

They didn’t talk often and she didn’t give voice to her exhaustion, closing her eyes after a while since it did little good to keep them open, her world endlessly black.

She tried not to fall prey to the dark feelings of dread and worry threatening to claim her, lingering on the outskirts of her tired mind. She’d come too far to give up now.

Kagome bumped into something solid and stopped. “What is it?” she mumbled.

“I am going to rest for the night.”

“Oh…”

His voice sounded a little light, which meant he found something entertaining. “I take it you are going to cling to me throughout?”

“Y-yeah, can’t have you running off on me.”

“Hn, if that is the case, measures will need to be taken.”

Kagome wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that. Nonetheless, she faithfully followed when he walked on, having little choice in the matter.

Warm, stuffy vapour began caressing her skin, rendering it slightly damp, her hair curling from the humidity. It began closing in around her like a shroud, the air thinning a little. Lapping water reached her keen hearing.

“Hot springs?”

“Indeed.”

Mild alarm raced through her bloodstream. Kagome squeaked- feeling herself being lifted up, a single hand grabbing her by the scruff and yanking so hard mokomoko was successfully pried from her grip, sending her flying through the air. Kagome cried out when water rushed up to meet her, warm and lulling, closing over her head. She quickly found her footing on the bottom of the pool and pushed up, sputtering as she broke the surface.

“You jerk! What the hell?!”

Sesshoumaru answered with a lofty chuckle. “You cannot expect to sleep near me while wearing such dirty clothes.”

“Throwing me into a hot spring isn’t the answer though!” she growled, splashing the water in his general direction, though she had no idea if it made contact or not.

“Hm? Would you have preferred being stripped bare to shudder against me all night long?” he suggested offhandedly.

“Of course not,” Kagome gritted out.

“Then I suggest you start bathing yourself, miko.”

Hesitating, Kagome wrestled with herself. The sound of his boots stepping over rocks and drawing further away loosened her tongue.

"J-just don't abandon me here, okay?"

He halted. "And what will you do if I decline to listen?"

"I'll haunt your ass once I'm dead."

"Hn."

He continued on, his answer not exactly assuaging Kagome's fears. With little else to do but tentatively trust him, she stripped out of her uniform and bathed as best she could. Without the use of soap or a sponge and being unable to see the dirt being washed away, it would likely be an unsuccessful bath. She tried her best to make herself 'clean', scrubbing at her uniform for good measure.

The silence was heavy, only broken by the sound of gently lapping water. She had no idea what time it was. How far away Inuyasha and her friends were. Kagome shivered, hugging her arms to her chest. She began to feel paranoid, suspecting the slightest sound. Dark youkai reached out, brushing her senses.

Kagome exhaled in relief, hanging onto Sesshoumaru’s aura.

“Step out of the water.”

She stiffened at the abrupt sound of his commanding voice. “And let you see me naked? No thank you.”

“There is no point in assuring you that I will not- since you cannot see if I am being truthful. I can merely promise that my curiosity about the human form will never be acted upon.”

Kagome flushed red. So he could look He just disliked humans too much to ever be ‘interested.’

She reluctantly supposed she had little choice in the matter. Standing, Kagome waded through the hot waters towards his voice, reaching out to feel for the side in order to climb out- only for her hand to be ensnared, captured by lithe fingers.

Kagome’s hazy eyes widened, climbing out with the aid of his grip, quickly covering herself with both arms as soon as she were able. “M-my clothes are wet…”

Something wrapped around her body, and she recognised the material to be a short towel. Quickly drying herself, Kagome paused when new, silky material nudged against her cheek. “Dress in this once you are done,” Sesshoumaru’s low voice rumbled.

Since she could sense his strong, dark presence linger close, she wondered if he were watching out for enemies or just plain watching her. Kagome fumbled with the silks, feeling around for the collar. Sesshoumaru’s rumbling chuckle made goosebumps race over her bare skin. She nearly bit out a comment- feeling hot breath fan over her forehead. His single arm nudged at hers, guiding her hand through a sleeve, before holding the parting open, allowing her to slip it on. Kagome blushed wildly, groping for the obi and hurriedly tying it at her waist.

A cool hand stilled hers once she was done, cutting into the rough rope still bound around her freed wrists. Kagome murmured her thanks.

“Where did you get the yukata?” she mumbled.

Mokomoko bumped her chest and Kagome held onto it reflexively as Sesshoumaru strolled away, the furs guiding her forwards. “I have many bases littered around the countryside, should I need to make use of them for trysts or shelter.”

��T-trysts?” she squeaked. “Is this clothing from...?”

“Do not worry, foolish one. That is an unused article of clothing. I keep them in case my lovers are in need of a spare change of clothes. I have been known to be...impatient.”

She arched a brow and used her free hand to measure the length of her sleeves, touching the seams. “This is a man’s yukata.”

“What of it?”

Kagome clicked. “Oh, nothing. I just didn’t know you were interested in guys.”

Sesshoumaru gave a tired, long-suffering sigh while wafting steam pulled away from their bodies, leaving them exposed to the cool air while they walked through what Kagome assumed to be a sparse forest. “Provided an individual captures my interest, gender has no bearing on who I share a bed with. It is inconsequential to me, unlike humans with your...limited choices.”

“Hey! Humans can swing both ways too. A-and look who’s talking! You’re getting all high and mighty about gender but species and blood purity matter a great deal to you. Sounds limiting to me.”

He became silent for a moment, which made Kagome feel slightly victorious. “Admittedly I have never lain with a human before,” he pretended to sound considering. “Are you volunteering yourself, miko?”

“As if,” she snorted, cheeks burning red. “You’ve tried to kill Inuyasha,” she quickly supplied as a valid excuse.

“Hn,” he gave an entertained noise, “so if we were not enemies, you would accept?”

Her mouth grew dry, feeling like she’d held her face over a flickering fire. “You’re way too arrogant to be my type.”

The sound of his quiet chuckle changed as they seemed to step into an enclosed space. Kagome reached out and touched a rocky surface, dragging her palm over it. The remnants of a demonic barrier littered the area. She suddenly stopped, yanking mokomoko and forcing Sesshoumaru to stop with her. “Have you just taken me into one of your trysting spots?"

“Where else are we to rest?”

“Not here!” she burst.

“You complain often, miko. I will leave you to the hungry animals outside if need be," he sneered. "Do not worry. This place has not seen use in a long time and is clean, I assure you,” his tone lulled into a patronising one.

Kagome held her tongue, uncomfortably settling down onto a silky bed of furs when he guided her over to it. She felt extremely weird. Staying in a place where Sesshoumaru had once had sex wasn’t exactly how she’d envisioned her Thursday going.

Something smooth and pronged was placed into her hand- and she gentled a little, quietly thanking him. Beginning to brush her wet hair, Kagome carded her fingers through the strands, making a soft noise of enjoyment.

All the while, she felt the keen sensation of being watched. Arranging herself into a more comfortable position on the bed, she sighed, gazing in his general direction. “I might be blind right now but I can feel your eyes on me. What’s up?”

“Up?”

“I mean- is something bothering you?”

“No,” he sounded briefly considering. “Rather...this one noticed your ears.”

“Hm? The fact that they’re round compared to yours?”

His thumb and forefinger closed around the sterling silver stud pierced through her earlobe. Kagome stiffened, soon relaxing. “Oh, my earrings? They’re not a big deal.”

“They are different from what I have seen before,” he stroked the shell of her ear consideringly, making her shiver. "I wish to test something.”

Since the demon lord had been magnanimous enough to offer shelter, provide new clothing and allow her to tag along with him, Kagome decided to indulge his curiosity. She sensed him move and root through something nearby, a box, she assumed.

I wish I could look around, her lips pursed, exceptionally interested in what one of his hideaways looked like.

“Remove the earrings.”

Nodding, Kagome fiddled with them, taking them out and rubbing her ears slightly. Removing them always felt weird. An inquisitive claw brushed her ear, and Kagome swallowed, holding still with mild confusion as Sesshoumaru donned her with new earrings. When he pulled away, Kagome brushed her fingers over them, finding some sort of stone dangling from her ears. They were cool to the touch and weren’t too heavy, a nice weight.

“What kind of stone are they?”

“Never you mind,” he rumbled, something tickling her brow. She wondered if it were his bangs sliding forward. Soft breath fanned over her nose before it pulled away. “Merely wear those for the duration of your stay. They suit you.”

Kagome tilted her head slightly, “well...okay? They’re not a keepsake from an old flame, are they?”

“No. Those are mine.”

She hummed, touching them again. “You can keep my earrings if you like. They can be my way of saying thanks. They kinda look like diamonds so maybe they’re to your expensive tastes.”

Even though they’re fakes.

Sesshoumaru made a rumbling noise that she assumed was positive, and wondered if they had been his true aim all along. She figured that would be all for the night- before feeling a touch against her hair. Kagome paused, fighting an exasperated smile. Who knew Sesshoumaru could be kind of… cute?

"Anything else?"

"Hn, your hair would suit this kanzashi. Hold still."

Kagome got the feeling their dress-up session was going to take a while.

---

When she awoke, the permanent darkness made it difficult to know exactly what time it was. Only the birds chirping in the trees outside let her know dawn had broken. The heat at her back that had warmed her throughout the night was gone. Kagome sat up, touching her bed hair and refusing to examine what the warmth had belonged to.

"Sesshoumaru?" she rasped.

She heard him shift and stand within the cave, "I sense something nearby. Wait for me here."

"It's not like I can go anywhere," she quipped, smiling slightly.

He made a noise of acknowledgement, walking away. His footsteps became softer until they disappeared completely. Kagome felt unnerved by it.

She reached out with her aura, but this time there was no assurance from his dark youki. Kagome steadied her breathing, trying not to freak out.

Strangely, the darkness was giving way to something. Murky shapes. Browns, whites and buttery yellows. Kagome’s heart burst with gladness.

“Holy shit,” she breathed. “It wasn’t permanent...thank God.”

She could see! Well, kind of. Colours were back though, and shapes were sure to follow.

A commotion was happening outside though. Distant cries could be heard, along with familiar shouting. Kagome stumbled to her feet, following the light source out into the open despite the lack of solid objects yet.

Inuyasha’s loud voice broadcasted his location, making him easy to find- a bold red blur to Kagome’s eyes. Other colours were nearby, purples, blacks, pinks, yellows, oranges and greens.

“Guys!” she breathed.

The murky shapes turned, sharpening slightly into hazy focus. She registered Inuyasha’s horrified features. “K-Kagome...what the hell?”

She blinked and frowned, wondering what his problem was. The Hanyou rounded on a white shape that had sprinkles of red mixed in. “Hey, bastard! Why the fuck is Kagome dressed up like that? W-why does she reek of you!”

Looking down towards a nearby puddle, Kagome crouched and squinted, curious about what Inuyasha was babbling about. Her face came into focus, and her lips parted in surprise.

It wasn’t just one kanzashi, a few were nestled into her fall of curling wild hair. They glittered in the morning light. Some made of ivory, the others were black and adorned with gems. The blue of her eyes linked beautifully with the sapphires hanging from her ears. Everything paired well with the yukata he’d given her, which was white with illustrated ocean waves and smoky clouds patterning its hem and sleeves.

After enduring kidnapping- stumbling about blind for many hours, falling into ditches and streams and not knowing if she would live or die- Kagome couldn’t help but appreciate being swathed in finery. It made it feel a bit...pampered. Happy.

“Kagome, are you alright?”

She raised her head to find Sango and the others drawing closer, Inuyasha was still engaged with a verbal sparring match with Sesshoumaru that would likely head south soon.

“I’m fine,” she murmured, Shippo’s cute face appeared near hers, clear as day.

“We were worried!” he exclaimed. “We couldn’t find you anywhere after Inuyasha caught up with that demon goat and killed him.”

Nice to know my kidnapper is dead, she thought dryly, murmuring an assurance to Shippo but soon standing. She hurried closer to Inuyasha just as he took out Tetsusaiga.

“Hey- stop,” she called firmly, grasping his trailing sleeve. “That’s enough. Sesshoumaru took care of me last night, that’s all.”

“Took care of you?” Inuyasha paled, ears pinning back.

Kagome turned red. “W-what? What’s weird about that? Nothing happened!”

“Then why are you dressed like- like...that!”

Sesshoumaru gave a velvety chuckle from where he stood further away, tilting his chin up and curling his lips with an air of disdain. “I amused myself with your miko, Inuyasha, that is all,” he sneered. “She struggled so sweetly beneath me when I forced the clothes on her.”

“Bastard!” Inuyasha snarled, confused when Kagome stepped in between them. She glared first at the Hanyou, “Quit it- both of you! You’re acting like children!”

Turning her dimmed sights on Sesshoumaru, she struggled to see him clearly since he stood further away. “I don’t know what you seek to gain from lying but...thank you for all that you’ve done up till now,” she murmured. “My offer still stands if you need a favour.”

Inuyasha blustered behind her, shouting up a storm. Kagome muttered a ‘Sit’ to get him to quiet, straining to hear Sesshoumaru’s reply.

To her surprise, with Inuyasha briefly incapacitated, Sesshoumaru drew closer. The sweep of his brows, regal nose and cupid’s bow of his lips caught her dazed attention- her breath halting. Familiar diamond style studded earrings adorned his ears.

“These will do nicely as payment, miko,” he rumbled.

Kagome blinked and slowly smiled, sharing a quiet moment with him. “I-I suppose you’ll want these back,” she murmured, closing her hands around the sapphires on her ears.

“I have plenty more.”

“Right, of course you do,” she giggled, hearing Inuyasha squeak out a ‘did you just giggle at Sesshoumaru?!’ from his crater.

“Hn, as I said, they suit you,” Sesshoumaru turned. “And miko?”

“Yes?”

He began walking away, but she could hear the smile in his voice without seeing his expression. “You have captured my interest.”

Kagome’s eyes widened, heart bursting into overdrive. Her stomach fluttered with butterflies, and she felt a mix of confusion and anticipation.

Ditto, she thought with a faint smile.

[redorich]

Hello! Can we get a little something for the hermit canyon AU? I was thinking something Karl centered, maybe they accidentally find his library or otherwise find out about his "travels". They're probably invisible for the whole thing, but do they do anything afterwards? Do they leave little notes and reminders? Would they try to help at all? Or would they push it to the back of their minds and try to forget about it?

Unlike most discoveries made by Hermits, Joe does not find a secret location on a normal surface run. When Etho found the Pogtopia ravine, it was a mystery to him, unsettling and vivid. When Grian found Technoblade's snowy cabin, it was on complete accident, just because Grian needed to explore, to get out of the canyon for a few hours.

When Joe exits the canyon, as he rarely does, he makes a beeline for Karl's library. Time is... not something Joe concerns himself with, but he prefers to constrict himself to the linear travel of the fourth dimension nowadays-- if such a thing as "nowadays" can be said to exist when tangling with time.

Where was he? Ah, yes. He moves quickly, because he dislikes spending more time away from Xisuma's side than absolutely necessary, even if the admin has been having a run of good health days and there are twenty-two other Hermits to attend to the admin in an emergency. He doesn't bother with invisibility, or walking, or other mundane things. Joe simply hovers in the air, flying toward his destination and perhaps fiddling with the tick speed just a little, just enough to get him there faster.

There's a residual feeling of familiarity, like a relationship with an ex-girlfriend which has long since turned sour, near the canyon. There's a whisper there of magic, of gleaming white spires, but all Joe can see is red.

"It's a shame, what they did to this library," Joe mutters with a tsk. Posters of hazy LSD-esque drawings of various time periods and locations line the walls, molding away as red vines climb on them, devour them.

He shrugs. Might as well move on; nothing of value remains here.

To the south is a place Etho has visited only briefly and in passing: Kinoko Kingdom. It's a hotspot of activity at times, and a ghost town at others. Etho didn't even know the name of the place until Puffy reported it. Joe doesn't care. For all that Etho likes to present himself as a cryptid, scaring poor innocent wood-dwelling folk who are just looking for a big fuzzy triclopean spouse, Joe is the one with experience as a cryptid. Let them see him. What are they going to say, "I saw Herobrine"?

He touches down, finally, in front of another library made from mushrooms and wood. Allowing his eyes to flash white for a moment so that he can ferret out the building's secret room, he is both disappointed and unsurprised to see it empty of life. Karl Jacobs, resident time traveller, is not there.

Joe closes his eyes. He doesn't want to have to do this. For decades, there was a place he called home, a place he built from the ground up. It was a place in between life and death, and so he called it the Inbetween.

He opens his eyes, and he is there. It's like walking down a street you've been down a hundred thousand times before; even with your eyes closed, you know where you're going. There are no longer dozens of imperfect copies of himself running around, brainless and waiting to be culled like lambs to the slaughter in order to fuel an affront against nature. Now, there are many iterations of Karl, all wandering aimlessly... save one.

The only version of Karl wearing color stands in an open-air corridor near the courtyard. Even from a distance, Joe can see his chest rise and fall far too rapidly for him to actually be getting any air. (Joe sees everything here, where his eyes are white and cannot be anything but white.)

"Why am I here?" Karl babbles to himself. "I haven't time-travelled-- or did I already forget?"

"You didn't forget," Joe reassures him. It does not have the intended effect.

Karl screams, turning around so quickly that he falls on his ass. He scoots away like a crab missing a leg, scrambling for some distance. "Your eyes--!"

"Come closer," Joe says. "I won't hurt you."

"You're Herobrine!"

Joe exhales slowly. "I was Herobrine. What I am is the only person who can help you."

Karl warily clambers to his feet. None of the other Karls dressed in white pay the two men any mind. "What do you mean?"

"You've got yourself stuck in a dimensional loop of Homestuck proportions, Karl," Joe says. "So did I, when I built this place. It took me decades to figure out how to get out of it, and I knew what I was doing. You don't have that."

"Am I stuck here forever, then?" Karl says mournfully. He waves a hand at the carefree automatons wearing his face. "Will I become one of them?"

Joe takes a few slow steps closer, keeping his hands where the stressed-out time traveller can see them. "I'll take care of things on this end. You won't ever have to come back here again."

Karl sags in relief like a marionette with its strings cut.

"Does the name Eret mean anything to you?" Joe asks. It's a name he's heard from Puffy's lips once or twice, and if her information holds true, things could get much easier.

Karl blinks. "Uh... Yeah? What about them?"

Joe continues. "Dark hair, tall, white eyes like mine?"

"I've never seen Eret without their sunglasses, but I guess, yeah," Karl replies. Of all the things he would have expected Herobrine to ask about, Eret isn't one of them.

"Imagine what Eret looks like," Joe suggests. "Think real hard about them. Imagine them here, in the Inbetween, right in front of us."

Karl has no idea why Herobrine wants him to daydream about Eret (even if their voice is very nice), but if the man is pulling his leg, well-- it's fucking Herobrine, he can do what he wants.

Speaking of that nice voice, Karl hears the voice in question scream out of nowhere. Karl flinches away from the sudden loud noise, before his eyes catch up to his brain and he realizes that he just magicked Eret into existence in the Inbetween.

"What the fuck," Eret says. "H-Herobrine, uh, long time no s-see..?"

"Sorry about that time I kinda tortured you," Herobrine says brightly. "I'm nicer now."

"I doubt--" Eret begins caustically, then remembers exactly who they're talking to and shuts their mouth. "...Why is everything so dark?"

"Take off your sunglasses," Herobrine suggests.

Eret grimaces, but obeys. This place is practically humming with magic, so they just know they're going to get blinded by it the moment they remove their glasses, but they remember what happened last time they pissed Herobrine off.

Wincing, they remove the sunglasses, expecting pain and receiving... nothing. The glint of light on quartz is a bit uncomfortable, but that's a normal human uncomfortable that Eret hasn't experienced since they were a teenager.

Herobrine smacks them on the forehead with his palm. "I take back what I said about 'living with this power for the rest of your life', and all that," he says. "You can turn 'em off now. I'd recommend not turning those eyes back on, though-- at least, not here. It's a little bright, magic-wise."

Eret gapes. All these years, they feared the day they'd meet this powerful man again, imagined what they'd say as they cursed his name or begged his forgiveness... and here he is, giving them exactly what they desperately hoped for but knew they'd never receive simply because he's 'nicer now'.

"Herobrine," Eret says, "why have you done this?"

"Call me Joe," Herobrine says.

Karl interjects, "Joe mama," under his breath. It is with the utmost shock on Eret's behalf that Karl does not in fact get immediately smited into oblivion, merely smacked on the forehead.

"Now you won't forget," Herobrine-- Joe says. "Anyway, I have shenanigans to be up to back in the canyon, so I'll send y'all back now. Those red vines are bad news, and so is their egg, so y'all better take care of that, please. It's really messing your server up."

Karl blanches. "The canyon?"

"Oh, look at the time. Have fun, be safe, bye," Joe says with affected mild disinterest.

Both Karl and Eret have so much to say, so many questions to ask, but they fade away before they get the chance.

[sirthisisa-wendys]

The Sacrifice Part 6: Geto Suguru x Fem!Reader

synopsis: you have to give to get. But are you willing to do what it takes?

wc: 1.5k

tw: none

masterlist

You’re sitting across from the Rain God, his face stern and unmoving.

“Geto, I assume you have brought me here to discuss the reason why I have withheld rain from this woman’s village.”

“Yes,” Geto begins, bringing the noodles to his mouth. “That, and I need you to explain to her how to renew your favor with them.”

“Making love to a human can breed ill-effects,” Yuta murmurs, his lips connecting with his cup, but his eyes never leave your face. “You know this as well as I do, your Holiness.” Your head turns towards Geto, but the strange words from the god are not explained to you. Instead, Geto laces his fingers together and nods.

“Indeed, your Graciousness, but I am asking you to give y/n some insight, that is all.” Yuta runs his tongue over his teeth, then scoots his chair back.

“Why do you care so much about the people who tried to have you murdered, y/n?” he wonders, and you hang your head slightly.

“I’m not so heartless that I would wish everyone dead because of one person’s actions, your Graciousness.” Yuta huffs out a laugh, then leans forward on his knees, eyeing you carefully.

“One person’s actions can cause a whirlwind of consequences. Your General Commissioner has done quite a lot for a man his age.” You sigh, pushing your hair back behind your ears as you feel deep disgust for the elder’s crimes. First, he killed the Dragon God’s sister. Then, he angered Yuta somehow. What else had he done?

“Tell me, what did he do, and what must I do to make it right?” Yuta skillfully dodges your question, waving it away with his hand and sighing.

“Unfortunately, Gakuganji made a pact with the God of Death long ago, before he enraged me or Geto. What would make it right could very well endanger your own life. And I’m sure the Dragon God will not allow anything of the sort, will he?” The man’s eyes slide to Geto, who is clenching the armrest with a white-knuckle grip. “It’s either that or…” Yuta places his head on a propped-up fist. “You can give her to me for a week.”

“A week?” You stand, shaking from outrage. “No.” Geto sits still, eyes cast downward. “No!”

“Only a week?” Geto wonders, still not looking at either you or Yuta.

“Just a week. Compared to eternity, it’s nothing.”

“You’re seriously considering this?” you ask Geto, and he finally looks up at you, his black eyes full of worry.

“It’s better than going against Toji. I trust Yuta will be nothing but honorable while you are with him.” You flinch at this admission, and back out of the room slowly, unsure of what to say other than a string of curses you wouldn’t be able to take back. Yuta’s dark blue eyes follow you, a smirk playing across his face as you turn around, marching off to your room in silence.

_____________________________________________________________

“Y/n, you have to listen to me.”

Clymenestra is staring at your face in the mirror, the tears scrubbed away from your appearance before she had the nerve to enter the room. “If I had to choose between Toji or Yuta, I would choose Yuta in a heartbeat. Facing the wrath of Toji could be the end for you. Either way, he’d get what he wanted, which is more souls to reap and bargains made.” You shake your head, hoping there’s another way for you to save your city and get rid of Gakuganji without having to deal with any other gods.

“Toji has the upper hand,” you note, fiddling with your fingers. “What good will staying with Yuta for a week do?”

“Yuta is one of the older gods,” Helen murmurs, and you look over to her in confusion. “Compared to Geto, he looks younger, but he’s eons older than him. And he might have some insight into what you can do to help get rid of Gakuganji.”

“Why haven’t any of you wanted to stop the General Commissioner?” you wonder, turning around in your seat, and the girls look away with varying levels of sheepishness.

“I was so thankful to be free from that place that I never once considered saving a single soul from there.” Cly offers, shrugging. “And I couldn’t save them now even if I wanted to.”

“But what about next year? We’ll have another girl torn from her family and brought here, where she may never be able to rejoin them, even in death.” None of the girls respond, and when you realize they’re just as selfish as Gakuganji, you push back your chair with force. “Have none of you thought of anyone but yourselves?” you yell, just as the door to the room swings open, revealing Geto and Yuta.

“Clymenestra, pack y/n a few things. She’ll be coming with me to the Realm of Rain,” Yuta announces, but you shake your head.

“There has to be another way to get some answers.”

“There isn’t,” Geto states, looking at you sternly. “If you want to save your people, then you’ll go with him.” Everything in you wants to rebel against his words, but then you consider the alternative.

Toji Fushiguro was not just feared by you, but every single immortal being in the room - except Yuta. If Yuta could give you a way to make things right without having to make a bargain with Toji… wouldn’t a week be the least of your problems? Silently, you give in. There were only two options, and by the looks of it, you would be less ashamed if you took the one Yuta offered.

As you walk towards Geto, he holds his hand out, then takes yours and presses a soft kiss to it. “If I leave with you, I will never depart from your side,” he whispers, and you nod twice. “It won’t be long. Just a few nights is all he’s asking for. I'll be here waiting for you when you return, my love." He pulls you in for a deep, loving embrace and kisses you with just as much desire as the night before.

Cly reappears with your things, and Yuta clasps his hands together, which makes you pull away from Geto abruptly.

“Perfect, we should make it just in time for lunch.”

_____________________________________________________________

You arrive on a solid cloud - unlike the ones from the night before - to the Realm of Rain, with Yuta holding his hand up to help you down. You take it graciously and step onto the mirror-like water below, your footsteps barely making the surface move. “Up ahead is my palace. I will have the attendants prepare your room while I give you a tour. Then, your lessons will begin.”

As if previously hidden by a mirage of nothingness, a massive, five-story high palace looms in front of you both. The beige-colored brick is covered with greenery: vines, grasses, and a singular tree at the top of the palace. It appears to be hovering slightly above the water, its presence overwhelming but alluring all the same. You can see little birds flitting to and from the palace windows, and flowers of various colors dotting the greasy knolls on the roofs of lower levels. It all seemed so beautiful and peaceful, but appearances could always be deceiving.

“What lessons will you give me?” you ask him as the castle draws near, and he hums thoughtfully.

“First, you need to know what happened between Gakuganji and me. Then, you’ll need to learn how to avoid Toji in order to kill Gakuganji once and for all.”

“Wait,” you halt. “Kill Gakuganji?” Yuta turns back to you, his dark blue eyes mischievous but unyielding.

“Oh, yes,” he smiles, jerking his chin at you. “And then you’ll deliver his soul to me. That’s how you can make things right.”

“Why can’t you kill him?” you wonder. “Why can’t Geto kill him?”

“Because every immortal is bound by the pacts given by the God of Death. He’s one of the eldest gods, and his bargains are binding forever. They cannot be rewritten or undone by anyone outside of the two parties.”

“So, if I get Gakuganji to break his bargain, then I can kill him?”

“Yes and no,” Yuta begins, looking over at you as he steps under the archway that leads to the entrance. “You can get Gakuganji to break his bargain and he will die, but Toji will come and collect his soul immediately. You need to get him to break his bargain, but somewhere where Toji has no domain.”

“The God of Death has domain everywhere,” you whisper, and Yuta shakes his head.

“Yes and no, again,” he replies, pushing open the door. It’s only then that Yuta turns around to face you fully, hands spread wide. “If you get him to become a sacrifice, then Toji has no domain over Geto’s property. That would effectively break the bargain and aid you in delivering his soul to me. Think you’re up to the task?” You raise a brow, then smirk at the god with confidence.

“Of course.”

_____________________________________________________________ TAGLIST: @sunfloweroranges @jibe-gajima @jotazinha @brownskinnedgirll @leanne-tamashi @vabybizzle @amaris9 @fuegy-fuegy @ambiguous-something @kontentious@missbonekitty @fyotituti @honouredsatoru @sandyscastle @flare-on @sasahime @ggotgame @just4readingfics

[5uptic]

crewfu: fanfic spotlight!

We work together by Anonymous (5up & DK, unrated, gen | 248 words)

Summary: One likes plants and baking, the other loves to create and design video games. They stay up and create monstrosities together, it's their fun, it's their favourite game. Aka a 5up and Dk roommate au!

No matter how life tangles, I’m still here with you. by hungryandsleepy (5up/Steve, general rating, m/m | 279 words)

Summary: 5up has been working so hard on his new map, and of course, he needs someone to give him a motivation to go to sleep.

objectively pretty by vesque (5up/Steve, general rating, m/m | 462 words)

Summary: steve is drunk. he's pretty sure 5up is too. that doesn't mean being called pretty is any less momentuous.

you plus me by mangoedges (5up/Steve, teen rating, m/m | 489 words)

Summary: 5up and Steve meet.

he said to me by mangoedges (5up/Steve, teen rating, m/m | 656 words)

Summary: 5up and Steve share a moment.

by the snowmen by mangoedges (5up/Steve, teen rating, m/m | 670 words)

Summary: Steve has a moment when it's all over.

today you got to know me (a little bit too slowly) by runninohhoney (5up/Steve, teen rating, m/m | 675 words)

Summary: Steve lights up a cigarette. 5up doesn't smoke.

what would it take by mangoedges (5up/Steve, teen rating, m/m | 787 words)

Summary: It's Steve's first mission. He hecks up. Or does he?

sorta cute by floweruru (5up/Steve, unrated, m/m | 822 words)

Summary: ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ he said. ‘That’s just disrespectful,’ he said. Yet there was 5up, crushed like a can in Steve’s embrace, feebly kicking at nothing as his feet leave the pavement.

i was gonna kill u, but ur kinda cute?? by Cthulhuer (5up/Steve, general rating, m/m | 1k words)

Summary: Steve is a mess and 5up is worse.

I hear a Symphony by AwkwardAce (5up/Fundy, unrated, m/m | 1.1k words)

Summary: He exhaled until his lungs ached for air, fingers twitching as he opted to remove the sleek white gloves he wore in a feeble effort to soothe himself. It didn’t work. He wrung his trembling hands together as his eyes raked down the worn leather case taking in the doodles- some etched some drawn- across the faded surface. He snapped the buckles open and his breath hitched, catching in his already tight throat. For a moment the world span, his head throbbed and he wanted nothing more than to run and hide. 5up breathed out slowly, shakily.

staring by lytriis (5up/Steve, teen rating, m/m | 1.1k words)

Summary: steve asks 5up out. 5up doesn’t know how to respond.

and it's four am, and yet, you're here by vesque (5up/Steve, general rating, m/m | 1.2k words)

Summary: in which steve shows up at 5up's house, in the middle of the night, completely spontaneously

more than this by mangoedges (5up/Steve, teen rating, m/m | 1.2k words)

Summary: Steve catches 5up venting.

3:15 by vesque (5up/Steve, general rating, m/m | 1.2k words)

Summary: Steve tries to guess Five's name. It's much more difficult than he anticipated.

things were different by fourpebbles (Apollo/Steve, teen rating, m/m | 1.5k words)

Summary: His eyes circled around to his friends, Kimi and Janet engaging in pleasant comversation, sleepy and becoming increasingly more sober. He looked, finally, across him, and caught Dumbdog staring at him. What now bro, what did this guy want. small talk, turns into not small talk, then there's no talk

Once Upon A Dream by SmearedWords (5up/Steve, teen rating, m/m | 1.5k words)

Summary: 5up looks ethereal, while Steve is struggling to breathe. "You're not real either." Or: Steve has a crush and a nightmare in three parts, 5up is tired, the crew life is hard and Polus sucks.

the ones you love will call you back by homeward_bound (Apollo/Steve, teen rating, m/m | 1.8k words)

Summary: stevesuptic: dude, is it weird that i miss vegas   DumbDog: No? I do too.   stevesuptic: okay [steve misses vegas and apollo. they talk about it]

cough it out by cj__writes (Apollo/Steve, teen rating, m/m | 2k words)

Summary: Apollo thinks that Steve must be well and truly gone, at this point, because he giggles, like Apollo’s just told a particularly funny joke. He looks Apollo right in the eye and asks, “Do you trust me?” “Absolutely not.”

ivy by Secular_Czar (5up/Steve, teen rating, gen | 2.1k words)

Summary: It might be a sad day, in general, but Steve isn't about to let it get to him. His friends won't ever let him wallow either.

The Colosseum by WhenTheFogClears (general rating, gen | 2.1k words)

Summary: Five squinted, looking at the colosseum intensely. He thinks Apollo was latched onto the sphinx’s shoulder, fur matted with blood. Janet was slumped against a column, probably out, with Kimi whose bow was snapped in two, her leg twisted at an odd angle. DK was in the corner trying to cast various supporting hexes and charms with a broken arm, whilst Hafu was dragging a heavily bandaged Steve away. or 5up slaughters a cat

Oneshots :) by woofles1990 (5up/Fundy, 5up/Steve, teen rating, multi | 2.5k words, oneshot collection)

Summary: Just a bunch of MCYT/Among Us oneshots, mainly featuring 5up's crew because yes :)

the adventures of 5up and steve staying up late because they're under 30 by 5280ft (5up/Steve, teen rating, m/m | 2.5k words)

Summary: “The night is young!” Steve yells at the ceiling, throwing his hands up in the air. “Take advantage of it! Commit crimes! Fuck hoes!” Five catches his hands in the air and laughs. “You wish you had hoes.”

unreasonably in love by cj__writes (Apollo/Steve, teen rating, m/m | 2.6k words, chaptered WIP)

Summary: "It was like pieces of a puzzle, everything coming together. And now, here they are, standing in their apartment, which looks more like a hollow shell than a home, filled solely with scattered boxes and the minuscule amount of furniture that they brought with them to Vegas." Or: what happens after Apollo and Steve move in together.

cant be love by fourpebbles (Apollo/Steve, teen rating, m/m | 3.5 words, chaptered WIP)

Summary: He had chuckled to himself, he felt so stupid. Who in their fucking minds names a playlist 'sugr?', he thought, internally cringing. A story where a Steve meets an Apollo, and some things happen.

Somewhere in the darkness, us together for a while by tumtummeke (Apollo & Kimi & Steve, teen rating, gen | 3.6k words)

Summary: Apollo worries about Steve. Steve breaks his vape pen. Kimi plays power washer. Self-indulgent angst, with a generous helping of friendship and cuddles.

odyssey by 5280ft (5up/Steve, teen rating, m/m | 23k words, chaptered WIP)

Summary: "First you will come to the Sirens who enchant all who come near them. If any one unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens...they warble him to death with the sweetness of their song. Therefore pass these Sirens by and stop your men's ears with wax that none of them may hear." -Homer, The Odyssey

Also: SilverSprinklez10‘s yupwaves collection.

Summary: This is a Harry Potter AU based on the characters/personas of the youtubers/streamers.

FAQ:

Wait what is this: pretty straight to the point! i’ll regularly share crewfu-related fanfictions to this blog :)

How regularly is “regularly”?: great question! LOL. it depends on the flow of fanfics that get uploaded, which i do not have any control over, but i’m looking forward to do this twice a month. after all, it’s only me doing this and i often run on a tight schedule.

What’s the format like?:

[title of fic with link] by [author of the fic with link] ([main pairing(s), if there is one/multiple], [fic rating: eg, general rating], [relationship: eg, m/m] | [word count in k] ([added prompt to specify if it’s complete or not)])

Summary: [summary provided by the author. if it doesn’t have a summary, a “No summary” prompt will be put instead]

(What does WIP mean again?): Work In Progress :)

Why are you doing this?: from the beginning, my blog has hosted conversations about RPF (real people fiction) and crewfu pairings. this has evolved into people sending me updates about certain fics in the crewfu tags every now and then, but i wanna take the next step and just do these things myself. after all, i’m already lurking in the tags often to see the fics that get posted. as someone who is both a writer and a reader, i wanna appreciate fanfic writers and help out other people that want to read fanfic and consume more fandom content!

Will it be AO3 only?: well, ao3 has a very helpful tag system that makes finding fics incredibly easy, as well as allowing people with no accounts to like and comment on fics, so that’s the site i will personally look in for fanworks. but if there are any fics you’ve written or liked in any other platforms, such as wattpad, you can always contact me through my inbox (send an ask or a dm!), and i’ll make sure to include for the next fanfic spotlight :)

Does it mean you won’t reply to fic asks anymore?: yeah, i guess. since i’ll be doing the searching myself it seems counterproductive. but if i ever skip a fic or again, it’s in another platform, or you’ve posted/read the fic a while ago and you want to get more traction on it, hit me up and i’ll take it into consideration!

Will you read every single one of the fics on your list?: oh no. again, i run on a tight schedule, and also i have my own taste when it comes to fics. i won’t be reviewing fics or any of the sort, and my intention extends to simply sharing these fics to this page so people will have easier access to them :) that’s where ao3 tagging becomes SUPER useful!!!

So what’s the criteria for the way you’ll sort out the fics in your list?: word count, going from lowest to highest. in case of fics in other platforms, i guess i’ll put them at the top of the list. i’ll also be looking for fairly recent fics, so let me know if you want any old-ish fic to be included.

I see you talking mostly about 5up/Steve and Steve/Apollo. Can I still send/see other crewfu fics?: why yes absolutely! my goal is to push every fic which heavily features regular crewfu characters - 5uptic and supdog just happen to be very popular pairings. so, to give you a list: core 4 (5up, hafu, dk, steve), apollo, aipha, annie, janet, kimi, ellum, koji... you know the drill. it doesn’t have to be centered on a relationship, or about 5up in specific, etc. my only requirement is that any of the previously mentioned members are a central part of the fic or are HEAVILY featured in it (sorry, minecraft fics with 50+ tags who only mention 5up as an afterthought won’t make the cut :/).

Isn’t shipping Bad™?: well, it’s a little more nuanced than that. i will go out of my way to discourage and shame people who often violate CCs’ boundaries by acting like so and so has a crush on this person, or that this and that are Actually Into Each Other or secretly dating. any sort of tinhat bullshit is a big nono (think larries). but i run on the assumption that people who write rpf understand that what they’re doing is simply write a completely fictional story using real life personalities, and understand the boundaries necessary to do it - aka they’re not tinhats, they understand they can’t assume everything about CCs’ thoughts and personalities, they understand that what they’re writing is strictly fiction, they keep these works only in fandom circles, etc. (but again, it’s only one me doing this, so please be kind if i don’t happen to know that this person is Actually a tinhat or whatever).

show fic: NO. (seriously. i don’t feel comfortable putting my ao3 account out there. please respect my privacy on these trying times <3)

I REALLY don’t care about your rpf/fic talk: fair! i’ll be tagging every single one of these posts as “fanfic spotlight”, so just mute the tag using tumblr settings so you’ll never have to look at these! likewise, you can follow the tag if you want to keep up with it, or search it on my blog to look at the other entries you might have missed (but this is the first one! lol).

Hey, my fic is here and I don’t feel comfortable with it being shared over here: no problem! let me know as soon as you can and i’ll take it down <3

[cherryatnight]

Me and My Husband - Giyu Tomioka

master list || asks

warnings - mentions of death, bodily harm (caused by someone else), thought of losing a loved one

word count - 1479

a/n - hello everyone!! if you couldn't tell this short story is based off the song Me and My Husband by Mitski. if you have any requests feel free to send an ask and let me know, i hope you're all doing swell <3

(2nd person pov, any pronouns)

"And I am the idiot with the painted face In the corner, taking up space but when he walks in, I am loved, I am loved"

Looking around, you realized all the Hashira were looking at you. You've made a fool out of yourself, everyone knew it, but they wouldn't tell you, no matter how much of an outsider you were. Although you were physically strong, you lacked the mental strength a Hashira should have, you could never communicate with others well. Ever since you joined the Demon Slayer Corps you had done everything alone, you survived the Final Selection alone, you can survive being a Hashira alone. Walking away from the group, you decided to sit under a tree on the other side of the garden, you didn't want to deal with the embarrassment that came along with being late to a meeting. Suddenly, you felt your sad aura change, quickly turning your eyes met Giyu's blue ones and the air felt crisper, like you could actually breath without the pressure of living up to any standards. The others either didn't notice or were too caught up in what they were doing to see that he had arrived, so he made himself comfortable next to you, leaning your head against his, you explained your mishap to which he responded with a light hearted chuckle.

"Me and my husband we're doing better it's always been just him and me"

After a long night, you walked into the garden all the estates surrounded, it was peaceful there, it always had been at night. Taking your Nichirin blade off your belt, you set it aside before laying down and looking at the starry sky. You heard someone walking into the garden behind you, but you didn't worry, you knew who it was. Giyu layed next to you, and without saying anything he gave you a quick but passionate kiss and you two let the silence engulf you. This had become a nightly routine for you even before meeting Giyu and slowly he followed that nightly routine. You slowly got up and Giyu went to follow, but you pushed him back down and took his raven colored hair out of his messy ponytail. He always said he hated you doing his hair, but before missions he always had you tie his pony a little tighter for good luck. You slowly start combing your fingers through his hair, he slowly relaxed against you and let you continue, starting to hum your guy's song. You had met him after he was taken in by your mentor, Sakonji Urokodaki. You both trained together with two other young kids, Sabito and Makomo, but you two were the only ones to complete the final selection without getting eaten by a demon. He never left your side after that, you had tried to get him to open up to you multiple times after losing Sabito, but he always just stayed silent or changed the subject.

"And at least in this lifetime we're sticking together"

The relationship you and the Water Hashira shared was never something either of you shared openly, you both loved each other beyond reason and would do anything for the other, but your remote and quiet personalities never lead you to need to flaunt it out, hell, you didn't even tell anyone the two of you were married. You were sure everyone knew, how couldn't they? Whenever you weren't on a mission or training youngsters, the two of you were glued at the hip, even if there were no words exchanged. In the beginning, some of the other Hashiras had tried to figure out your guy's relationship but dropped the subject after not learning what they had hoped to hear. Eventually everyone found out after Giyu had been injured on a mission and you can running into the Butterfly Mansion while pushing by the other slayers and holding back tears. He was minorly injured and would heal in a few days, but all you cared about was seeing him safe now and all he cared about was knowing there was one less demon that would put you in harm's way. After that, they all had the answer they had been wondering about for ages.

"me and my husband we're doing better"

Most of the time, you two never went on missions together, you assumed it was just the luck of the draw. One day, you two had been called to a mountain along with Shinobu, something about a Twelve Kitzuki living on the mountain. You didn't mind, the other two didn't seem to either, considering you all had defeated at least one of them before. As soon as you got to the mountain, Shinobu left to go coordinate the clean up and show how to administer an antidote to some wounded people. Shortly after, you and Giyu split up, promising him you'd be okay, you gave him a kiss goodbye and headed on your way to find the demon that had taken so many of your fellow slayers. Then you heard it, a young kid yelling about his sister, following the sound you were faced with the demon you had been sent to kill, a lower rank five. His white hair covered part of his eye, but you had been able to observe and figure out which of the twelve he was. You recognized the kid's earring's, Giyu had said something about his sister being a demon and how he just let them go, you had called him crazy in the moment, but later you knew you would've done the same if you were in his shoes. Trying to keep the kid in your eye, you turned to the demon and waited to be able to see his abilities. Spider webs shot out of his fingers and surrounded the kid in a cage that was slowly closing in, after quickly running and slashing him out, you turned to the demon, you could see the anger seaming off him. Running at him, you went to slash his neck and it easily came off with only half of your strength, odd but you weren't going to question it. You turned to the kid and assessed him damage, he seemed over exhausted, and probably had a few broken bones here and there, you knew he would be okay. Thats when you felt, the shivers down your spine you got whenever a demon was near, you turned around, but not fast enough, the spider-like demon had sent an array of webs your way, all you could think of was keeping the kid safe. You stepped in front of him and took the blast, very well knowing how badly you'd get hurt. Launching back, your vision got blurry and it was hard to focus on the demon, calming your breathing you charged at the demon before you heard a voice ring out and you knew you and the kid would be okay. Giyu was here, and within a minute, the demon was no more. He must not have seen you because he rushed at the kid and his sister first before seeing you laying a few feet away from the kid. At first he couldn't figure it out, but then he saw your front side, dozens of slashes scattered your skin from head to toe.

It was warm, the next thing you felt was immense warmness and a pressure in your left hand, almost like a hand. Slowly and painfully, you opened your eyes and looked at your hand, Giyu laid there holding your hand against his forehead. His ocean blue eyes looked up to meet yours and you could tell he was heartbroken, his eyes seemed dull and sad, even looking at you. Before you could say anything, all you heard were apologizes from him, from not being there to protect you, to allowing you to go off even though he knew one of the Twelve Kitzuki were there. Your heart broke at the sight, such a strong person was completely shattered at even the idea of you brushing death for a dumb call you made. You grabbed him and pulled him into a hug, it was painful for you to move in such a way but you didn't care, all that mattered was him, and him knowing that you were okay now. Apparently you had been asleep for almost two weeks, and not once did he leave your side, his missions had been put on a pause and he didn't even leave to eat, he just sat and waited. You knew that even if he didn't say it, you had scared him more then the surface showed, you two were all the other had and you'd bet your life to save the other. But it was okay, cause you and him were together and that's all that mattered.

[jugandbettsdetectiveagency]

nancy/ace; 2x11 drabble

Her nose itches, her fingers are freezing, and she’s ninety percent sure that’s blood over there on the asphalt.

She swipes a lock of rain-damp copper hair away from her eyes and tries to calm the rapid pulse of adrenaline shooting through her veins. It threatens to spike again at the sight of deep, claw-shaped gouges in the metal of the truck parked in the centre of them all.

Someone—a girl in a dirt streaked white jacket—screams. It all happens pretty fast after that.

“Like a heat emergency?”

“There’s something wired into the engine.”

“Guess we inhaled.”

The five of them hold themselves like caught breath. The glass bauble holding the key to their memories swirls lazily in front of them, like it’s got all the time in the world to let them figure this out themselves. A low grunt cuts through the tension.

“Hey, does anyone here know where I can get some bandages?” the guy that spoke last adds. Their eyes all move in unison, down to where he’s gingerly cradling his leg. Even in the dull, overcast light a great gash is clearly visible across his thigh. “‘Cause, ow.”

Instinct has her moving first, ushering them all towards the shack that’s signposted as The Claw. “Okay. Let’s try in there.”

The restaurant is empty other than a whirlwind of debris, made up of makeshift weaponry and pieces of scrawled on paper, littering nearly every available surface.

“Hey, look,” one of the other girls says, pointing. In the corner of the room stands a pinboard. Among an array of other things, photos of each of them are tacked to it. “It looks like we made ourselves reminders of who we are.”

“Can you read ours out while I,” she gestures at the soaked denim covering the thigh of the guy with the soft-looking hair.

When she glances up he’s already looking down at her, where she’s pressed up against his shoulder, a contemplative expression on his face.

“Did you know you stand very close?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean—” She takes a step away on the pretence of finding the first aid kit.

He follows, grimaces when he puts too much weight on his injured leg. “That’s okay. You smell quite nice. Flowery.”

“Oh. I— Thank you. You… have very pretty eyes.” She ushers him into the closest chair as an excuse to hide the redness tinting her cheeks.

“Thanks. If I remembered what they looked like I’m sure I’d agree.”

She learns she's Nancy and he’s Ace, and, beyond the fact they both work here, very little else.

“And I’m Nick’s girlfriend,” she hears the girl, George, say.

The other boy, Nick, grins back at her. “Nice.”

Their chatter, cut through with the more discernible lilt of a British accent—belonging to Bess, Nancy repeats to herself—fades into the background as she tries to get her fingers to cooperate enough to do a decent job of stemming the blood flowing from the cut. And it is a cut, too clean to have been made by the same thing that attacked the truck outside. She files that information away for later.

Ace, for his part, puts up with her fumbling with minimal resistance. He only starts to shift in his seat when Nancy can sense he’s gearing up to speak.

“You think,” Ace begins, barely a second later. So, she thinks, allowing herself the barest smirk, maybe she knows him pretty well. “You think any of the rest of us are dating?”

That throws her. “If we are, we didn’t write it down on the cards,” she answers diplomatically.

“Right, of course.”

Nancy doesn’t know what it is, but she doesn’t like that she’s the reason those eyes have dulled by a fraction. “Maybe it’s a new thing,” she corrects in a rush. She clears her throat, trying to put as much of her attention into taping up Ace’s leg as possible. “Hypothetically. We haven’t told people yet so we didn’t write it down. Although, it’s not like they’d remember right now if we did.”

Nancy exhales shakily. This… whatever this flustered feeling flapping about in her chest is, it’s throwing her. She gets the sense she’s usually more sure footed.

“I’d definitely want to tell people. If, say, you and me… you know. Were,” Ace says. He catches her eye and holds it, the smooth lines of his face betraying nothing but sincerity.

The warmth in her cheeks is back. “Guess we’ll find out when we get our memories back,” Nancy murmurs. She secures the last of the bandages and draws away.

A smile, part puckish, part shy, hides at the corners of his mouth. “Fingers crossed.”

.

.

.

“If this place isn’t cleaned up by tomorrow a Viking god isn’t the only one who will be unleashing their wrath upon you.”

Nancy looks up from where she’s sweeping away the worst of the mess to lock eyes with Bess on the other side of the counter.

“It’s so good to have the old George back, isn’t it?” Bess says sweetly, even as she violently wrings out the dish rag between her hands.

Nancy’s snort gets lost to Nick loudly interrupting before George has a chance to bite back. “I, for one, think it’s very good.” He leans down to drop a soft kiss to her upturned lips, staying there until some of the tension leaks from George’s shoulders.

Allowing herself a deep inhale, Nancy turns away to pick up her full dustpan and carry it out back towards the trash.

“Oh!” She rounds the corner, drawing up short to stop herself colliding with Ace’s chest, grip tightening on the dustpan to keep it stable. “Sorry, excuse me.”

Ace drops his hands from her elbows now that she’s steady, but otherwise stands his ground. “They never show you this part in the movies. I think far less people would be tempted to invoke supernatural entities if they all ended with a cleaning montage.”

They’re standing so near she’d have to crane her head back to look him in the eye, but they’re pressed way too close for that. Instead, she keeps her gaze downwards where it catches on her haphazard patch up of his leg wound.

“Speaking of clean up, you should really go and get that checked out. I am no nurse and it is probably on its way to being infected as we speak.”

“What did I just say about invoking supernatural entities? I heard about George’s wrath from way back here.”

“Go,” Nancy says, rolling her eyes. “You’ve got a good enough excuse to bail.” She gives his arm a little shove, as much to get him moving as to give herself some space to breathe.

She wasn’t sure, when they’d all stood over the apparatus and inhaled their memories, if they’d get to retain every reset they went through. And as the different versions of herself poured back into her head, playing like the slides of a movie, she didn’t know if she was happy that, apparently, they got to remember it all.

She swallows, making an attempt for light. “Besides, I’d say I’m well equipped to deal with vengeance at this point, even from a harried George. I’ve got your back.”

“Would never doubt the Hero of Horseshoe Bay.”

He still doesn’t move to leave, waiting, and the pressure of one reset in particular is building in her chest until she can’t not say anything anymore.

“Listen, Ace,” she calls out when he’s about to let the back door swing shut behind him. “About… about some of the things that were said when we were… not really us.” Nancy let’s her eyes flutter closed for a breath, steeling her nerve in the face of Ace’s ever unreadable expression. “Today was strange enough without trying to figure anything else out. We can just forget it all happened. It’s okay.”

Silence stretches out between them, and Nancy is about ready to hitch up the last of her dignity and leave when Ace speaks.

“I think,” he says, tapping his fingers against the edge of the door. “I’ve had enough forgetting for one day.”

She catches a flash of that same smile from earlier, the one that’s just for her, as he rounds the corner. “Goodnight, Nancy.”

[stufftippywrote]

perfect

Cicadas sing a sharp song in the trees. The heat blisters the pavement. It’s a miserable summer afternoon for most people, which is why Wei Ying loves it. It’s nothing compared to sticky, swampy Yunmeng summers. In dry heat like this, the sun feels good and the trees are brilliant green and Wei Ying loves being alive.

He doesn’t love being in class, but at least everyone is miserable along with him in this heat. Lots of mopping brows, lots of unsatisfied murmurs. Is there any relief to be found in Gusu on such a day? Some have heard there’s a lake a bit further up in the mountains, big enough for swimming. But they’re not allowed to go up there; it’s off limits to everyone but Lan inner disciples. Only Wei Ying knows for a fact that it’s there; that’s because he’s been sneaking off up there every night since summer school started.

Lan Qiren enters and the room falls silent. The frantic wiping of sweat of brows continues, a current of activity in the quiet classroom. Lan Qiren surveys them silently and frowns. He’s sweating, too.

“Due to the excessive heat,” he says, coughing, “the upper grounds of Cloud Recesses will be opened to students for the duration of the day. That includes the lake. The back hills and the waterfall are still off limits.” Nobody picks up this last bit, because the minute Lan Qiren says “lake,” the room starts to buzz with whispers.

Not even Lan Qiren can quell them; there’s a torrent of nervous energy in this room, and it won’t survive an entire lesson. Sure enough, about twenty minutes before the end of the class students start gathering their things as though they’re ready to bolt. Wei Ying knows they’re only waiting for one of them to take the lead, and they’ll all start filing out with or without Lan Qiren’s say-so. Well, that’s a position he’s always happy to fill. He stretches out, grabs his backpack, and leaves the room without a word or a look back.

He heads up the stone stairs carved into the mountain, backpack slung loosely over one arm, whistling to himself. The other students will have some time catching up to him; he knows the way to the lake, and they don’t; besides, they have to go change, and Wei Ying always keeps his swimsuit in his backpack, just in case. So he climbs the stairs solo and pushes through the line of vegetation that lies between the path and the lake.

He’s about to emerge from the trees when a splash draws his attention. Quickly, he hides and peers over at the lake.

Someone’s already there and swimming. Wei Ying sees dark hair, pulled into a neat topknot, and the lines of what looks like a fairly strong body, blurred by the moving water. Some student has beat him to it. Which is a little surprising, because Wei Ying’s the only one with the chutzpah to sneak off in this direction when they’re supposed to be somewhere else. He watches in kind of dumb fascination as the swimmer moves to the near edge of the pond and surfaces.

Oh. Oh, that explains it.

It’s Lan Qiren’s annoyingly perfect nephew, Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan, who is too good to attend classes with students his own age. Lan Zhan who, rather than making friends with such students, serves as a sort of disciplinarian, regularly snapping unruly students back into line with nothing more than a cold glance from his admittedly perfect face. Lan Zhan, who Wei Ying had to learn to avoid early in the summer, because he kept catching him trying to sneak out or tiptoe into forbidden places. That Lan Zhan.

Wei Ying steels himself to be utterly annoyed by whatever happens next.

Lan Zhan lingers for a time, head and shoulders above water. Then he approaches a large rock where his things sit in a neat white bundle. In one fluid movement, he lifts himself up with both hands on the rock and swings into a sitting position, his toes in the water.

It all happens like slow motion. Wei Ying’s brain sputters, then lurches, then goes completely on the fritz.

He’s—he’s—he’s actually perfect.

Wei Ying knew he was perfect, but that was an annoyance like everything. The beauty of his face was a mockery of everything Wei Ying stands for. He could find words to speak when faced with that stern face, but his words have dried up now, because Lan Zhan’s body is – Lan Zhan’s muscles are –

He has no idea Wei Ying is watching him. His face is serene, his body relaxed, and the sun beats on him like a spotlight, turning the edges of his skin to gold. Wei Ying is gobsmacked. How dare he. How dare he sit there with that expression, not knowing that he’s turning Wei Ying’s insides into molten lava just by being there … with thighs like that .. and a bare chest like a sculpted statue … and good god his arms, and his shoulders, and he already has an annoyingly perfect face, only now it’s matched up with that --- that body, and Wei Ying has never wanted to close his mouth around a drop of water the way he does now, as water trickles down Lan Zhan’s chest.

Oh, and he’s wearing a fucking Speedo.

It’s common knowledge that a Speedo looks stupid on like 95 percent of guys, and yet Lan Zhan looks as though it was created solely to fit him. And nothing is left to the imagination. Holy fuck, that knowledge is going to burn though him until he’s cinders. He struggles to concentrate on something – anything but that.

It’s going to be a very different experience the next time Lan Zhan disciplines him.

Oh. Oh, now his mind is up and running again, but the direction it’s going is dangerous. Lan Zhan angry with him, Lan Zhan throwing him against a wall, Lan Zhan tossing him to the grass. Standing over him. Kneeling over him. Those powerful thighs and well-muscled arms. A hard hand on his wrists, unyielding no matter how much Wei Ying resists. Lan Zhan forcing Wei Ying to his knees. Lan Zhan between Wei Ying’s legs, edging forward, pinning him down as…

“Fuck,” he swears, suddenly and far too loudly. Lan Zhan looks up. Eyes suddenly sharp, he leaps to his feet and scans the tree line. Wei Ying has no choice. He just hopes Lan Zhan doesn’t glance between his legs when he shows himself.

He steps forward from the trees, waving a halfhearted hand. “Hi, Lan Zhan,” he says with a grin. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Lan Zhan’s brows knit. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Oh, but I am!” Wei Ying keeps moving forward, despite his best intentions. Lan Zhan’s body is like a gravity well, drawing him closer. “They lifted the restriction so we could all come up and swim today. It’s brutal out,” he says, squinting and raising against the sun although he’s actually perfectly comfortable.

“Oh.” Lan Zhan looks at him warily. “So others are coming?”

He says it evenly, but Wei Ying wonders if there isn’t some trepidation there. He’s perturbed enough that Wei Ying’s entered his space; what are twenty-some classmates going to do to him? “They’re changing,” he says. “They’ll be here in a few minutes.” He grins. “Just you and me for the time being.”

He thinks the look in Lan Zhan’s eyes is anger, but he doesn’t know for sure. “How do you know this place?” he asks, sounding unsure and not at all like his usual gentlemanly self.

“Oh, your uncle explained how to get here when he gave us the notice this morning,” Wei Ying lies. “I just didn’t have to go back and change like the others, so I got here faster.” He taps his backpack. “Swimsuit’s in here.”

Lan Zhan’s eyes widen. “You’re going to change … here?”

“Why not? Ain’t nobody here but us boys,” Wei Ying says, and winks. He’s suddenly terrified of showing Lan Zhan his naked skin, but he can’t afford to show it. He strips off his T-shirt.

Lan Zhan turns as though offended by the sight. Well, sure he would be, since no one else can measure up to him, Wei Ying thinks. “Hey Lan Zhan, is this what you do while the rest of us are suffering in class?” he asks breezily, stripping off his shorts and boxers. Lan Zhan’s back remains resolutely turned. “Just swimming out here like a fish all day long? I bet I could beat you in a race.”

“There’s not … room here to race,” Lan Zhan says. He still won’t look.

“We’ll go down to Biling Lake next time,” Wei Ying challenges. “You can look at me now. The swimsuit’s on. I won’t offend your sensibilities.”

“I’m not offend—” Lan Zhan turns, and then something clips the edge of his word. He stares at Wei Ying like he’s got three heads.

“Oh, well, glad to hear, then.” Wei Ying sits down on the rock where Lan Zhan had been. “So. Mind if I take a dip?”

The coolness returns to Lan Zhan’s voice. “Suit yourself.” But he’s still staring at Wei Ying.

For just one moment, Wei Ying remembers all those earlier fantasies. That’s exactly the look he imagined on Lan Zhan’s face in those moments. The look where he can’t quite keep his anger in check. The look that says Wei Ying’s getting to him. Wei Ying has no idea how he is gettingto Lan Zhan in this moment, just sitting on a rock. Unless…

Nah, couldn’t be.

The next moment, Lan Zhan’s diving into the water. His body is an arc of movement, a single curved line, and Wei Ying loses his breath again. Apparently he needed to be reminded that Lan Zhan’s body is a flawless machine. His brain is pinging madly and he wants with all his heart to just drop into the water and swim for Lan Zhan like a shark. That would probably be a bad idea. He knows he probably has an advantage in an underwater tussle, but somehow, he doesn’t really want to win anymore.

Lan Zhan has emerged, in a shallow portion of the lake, his head and half his chest visible above the water line. He has eyes on Wei Ying. “Well?” he asks, something curiously hesitant in his voice.

“Well, what?” Wei Ying feels like he should be holding his breath. He’s careful to keep his voice casual.

Lan Zhan looks down, then to the side, then to him again. It’s a very un-Lan-like action. After a short silence, he ventures in what is almost – not quite -- a tentative voice, “Are you coming in?”

Wei Ying stares down at him. The silence that follows is pregnant with possibility.

“Wei-xiong!”

Nie Huaisang bursts first through the treeline, then, following him, the rest of the students in noisy gaggles. “Wei-xiong, how did you find this place so quickly? We all got turned around looking for it—”

Splashes sound here and there as the students find their way into the lake. Soon, the whole place is echoing with the sound of laughter and chatter. Wei Ying’s gaze finds Lan Zhan, through an increasingly dense thicket of people. Lan Zhan is looking at him with eyes that are almost sad. A moment later, he turns away.

It’s disappointing. Wei Ying had thought – perhaps imagined? – that there was something starting to happen there, something thawing in the relationship between them. He considers giving chase. But Lan Zhan is striding through the trees and disappearing before he can say a thing. So much for that.

Still, Wei Ying has an image he didn’t have before. Lan Zhan, dipped in gold, his body bare and his chin uplifted toward the sun. It’s printed in indelible ink on his mind now, along with a memory of Lan Zhan’s gaze, softer perhaps than Wei Ying has ever seen it. He closes his eyes and savors both the picture and the memory for a moment. Then, grinning, he rejoins his friends.

[littleoldrachel]

"how much did you drink?"

for the utterly wonderful @gumnut-logic who asked for how much did you drink? with virgil and scott from this prompt list. tysm my lovely 💚💚💚💚 this ran away from me a bit and i am Not Sure but i hope you still enjoy!

[if you wanna prompt me, hmu! but beware i am slooooow]

Scott slinks through the sliding doors, relishing the cooling sweat on his skin as the sky begins its raspberry ripple across the tropical island. His dawn runs are the only time he gets to really be - he loves his family with everything he has and more, but that half hour with just the consistent crunch of earth beneath his feet is his own perfect sanctuary.

And goodness knows he needs it after the past couple of days.

A flash of Alan’s terrified face as the grapple line gave way and he’d plunged -

Scott screws up his face, crumpling the image like one of Virgil’s discarded “rubbish” (read: brilliant, if rough around the edges) sketches.

Speaking of which, it’s time for Scott to do the rounds and check in on his sleeping brothers.

There’s Alan, sprawled haphazardly across the floor of his bedroom - the only sign of his near-death encounter in the careful bandaging around his forearm (“I can too still game like this, Scott, I’m not balancing the controller on my wrists??”). Gordon too, is starfished on his duvet, but beginning to stir as fractured sunlight dances across his room.

Virgil, however - most unusually - is not burritoed in blankets, which sets Scott’s choir of alarm bells ringing. He hesitates, then sighs, patching through to Thunderbird Five even as he makes his way to Virgil’s studio (also empty).

“John?” he asks quietly, because John works on an unpredictable sleep schedule that gives Scott more stress than he cares to admit, but he would like John to be sleeping right now.

“John is sleeping, Commander. May I be of service?” EOS’ voice is more than a little grating in comparison to the bird song that floats through Virgil’s open windows. Scott resists the urge to grit his teeth - he is trying, okay?

“EOS. Hi.” He rubs his chin, eyes catching on the top sketch of Virgil’s messy pile: Thunderbird One streaking across a stormy sky mid-lightning strike. “Can you tell me where Virgil is?”

“Virgil is in the hangars, where he has been for the last thirteen and a half hours,” EOS says primly.

Scott’s head snaps up, even though there’s nobody there to stare at. “What? Did he fall asleep down there?”

“No, Commander, he is very much awake.” There’s something in her tone that riles him up, a pre-rehearsed nature to it, but he deliberately sets it aside for Future Scott. He’s given a curt thanks to EOS before he’s even registered that he’s striding down to the hangars, concern driving him with a speed usually reserved for rescues.

He hears Virgil before he sees him, a loud swear and a clatter of tools as he’s rounding the corner into the workshop.

Virgil is kneeling over a workbench, picking glumly through the jumble of parts skidding across the surface. Dark brows knitted tight, skin pale beneath fluorescent white lights, a graveyard of abandoned mechanisms, drained mugs, and scraps of graph paper all around him.

"Virgil."

It comes out a little sharper than intended, slicing through the silent workshop and causing Virgil to start violently.

"Scott! What are you doing here?"

"I came to ask you the same thing?"

"I'm…" Virgil gestures vaguely at the chaotic work surface. "Fixing."

"Have you had any sleep?

Virgil frowns. "I'm fine, it's not that late yet."

Scott stares, concern steadily rising. Virgil is known for losing track of time when absorbed in a task, but only usually with his art, and only for this period of time when he's upset, working something through, or...

Only then does Scott take in the way Virgil's hands tremble around the pieces of metal in his fingers, the jittering beat of his leg like helicopter wings, and slight dampness of the unstyled waves of hair across his forehead. He blinks at Scott, squinting a little in that way that Scott knows means a killer headache is brewing.

Methodically, the Commander of International Rescue surveys the room, searching for the source of the issue. His eyes land on the culprit: a coffee-stained jug, completely drained save the dregs of coffee grounds plastering the sides of the container.

It’s a big jug.

Scott swears.

“Virg. How much did you drink?”

Virgil’s eyes dart all over, not resting for a second on Scott’s face. “I - I don’t know. I just had some whenever I got tired and now I’m-” He wrings his hands, sending metal parts spilling from his palms.

“But why? What the hell were you thinking?” Scott’s tone is chiding, too harsh, and he makes a deliberate effort to reign in the reprimand that’s rearing up inside him.

“I just... “ Virgil swallows, meeting his eyes for a moment, looking away at the disappointment there. “I just needed to understand what happened to the grapple lines. To make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Oh, Virg.

Scott softens, Commander melting back into Protective Big Brother because he gets it. God knows he gets it. He steps towards Virgil, wraps a hand around his elbow, feels it shake beneath his touch.

But why like this, Virgil?

“For thirteen hours?”

Virgil blinks and the genuine surprise in his eyes is enough that Scott accepts that this wasn’t a deliberate act of self-destruction and that loosens the anxious knot in his chest a little.

“I didn’t mean -”

“I know.”

Virgil ducks. “I just needed to find out -”

“I know.”

Virgil bites his lip, and Scott knows the image of their littlest brother’s panicked face is stuck on repeat in his mind. Scott closes his eyes, allows the video to roll in his own head, and the pain that rips through his chest has him tugging Virgil into his arms for a hug. Big as he is, Virgil is never one to say no to a hug, and he folds himself into Scott’s chest with a sigh. Scott can still feel the tension thrumming through Virgil’s body, and he instinctively tightens his grip.

Trust Virgil to hurt himself with his bean-juice addiction. Frankly, they’re lucky this hasn’t happened before with the amount of the stuff he pours into his body.

“I know I’m not having a heart attack, but -”

“You know I love it when you begin a sentence like that -”

Virgil tries to laugh but it comes out a little shaky. "Shut it, you." He rests his head on Scott's shoulder. "My heart is going so fast it hurts. Feels like a goddamn panic attack."

“What the hell have you done to yourself?”

“Mild caffeine overdose,” Virgil’s voice comes out muffled. “Sorry.”

“Mild. Caffeine. Overdose.”

Virgil laughs again, a little surer this time and pulls back from the hug. “I’ll be okay. Just gonna feel horrible for a bit, I think.”

“You think. Let’s see if Grandma agrees.”

“No! Let her have her time away - this is - it’s stupid. I’m fine.”

Scott gives him a Look, but Virgil glowers right back.

Scott loves him, but Jesus, does he wish he could trust Virgil to be honest with him about his health.

“Don’t make me set you up in the infirmary. You know I’m not bluffing.”

The glare intensifies. “I’m fine, Scott.”

Scott resists the urge to roll his eyes with a truly Herculean effort. “I want to do a scan, just to be sure.” “Scott -”

He plays the trump card (regrets playing it at the look on Virgil’s face, but needs must). “I could have lost Allie too, Virg. Don’t make this harder than it is.”

Virgil sags. He taps his watch. “EOS?”

“Yes, Virgil?”

“Please can you pull up my vitals for my dear big brother to fret over?”

“Of course, Virgil. Though I don’t understand why you want Scott to fret, he seems grumpy en-”

“Thank you, EOS.”

A holograph flickers into view, and Scott scans them, relaxing slightly at the lack of danger. Virgil’s heart rate is too high, as expected, and he’s dehydrated and exhausted, but otherwise, he really does seem okay. Still, Scott knows how dangerous dehydration and exhaustion can be, and more to the point, so does Virgil.

“You’re a stubborn idiot, you know that, right?”

“I learned from the best.” Virgil’s smile is teasing, but he’s okay, and Scott releases the breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure, Scooter, whatever you say.” Scott glares. “Right. You’re grounded for at least a day -” To his credit, Virgil only looks a little crestfallen. “- And you’re going to rest.”

Scott can practically see the cogs turning in his brother’s mind as he seeks a loophole or way to escape, but for now, he’s going to ignore it. Another problem for Future Scott, poor guy …

“Let’s go. Up to the lounge, now.”

“I should clear up -”

“Nuh-uh. Lounge. Now.”

Virgil lets out a loud sigh, and with much griping about leaving the workshop messy for Brains, leads the way up to the lounge. Scott follows closely, eyeing how Virgil’s feet drag with exhaustion even as his fingers tap away with restless energy.

Scott deposits him on one of the couches, tosses a throw over him, and resists the urge to tuck him in, but only because -

“I’m not sick, Scott. I’m okay! This isn’t necessary,” Virgil calls after him. Scott returns seconds later, a glass full of water.

“Drink all of this. And then have these.” Scott drops two electrolyte tabs beside Virgil. “Now excuse me, but I’m going to consult a qualified medical opinion before I believe you.”

“I am a qualified medical opinion -”

“- Who hasn’t overdosed on caffeine this morning.”

Virgil scowls. “I’m never going to live this down, am I?”

*****

Scott returns with Gordon, whose concerned professionalism quickly morphs into a shit-eating grin when it becomes apparent that actually, Virgil - for all his brilliance and talent - is an idiot.

But he’s surprisingly gentle when he fetches Virgil another glass of water and suitably soothing as they take a calm stroll around the flatter paths of the island to help Virgil burn some restless energy. The waft of pancakes draws them back into the lounge where Scott has stacked up thick, fluffy pancakes that melt on their tongues and warm them inside out.

By now, Virgil is visibly less shaky, and Gordon’s concern has dissipated to the extent that he blatantly steals three pancakes off Virgil’s plate. To be fair, Virgil probably doesn’t need six pancakes, but still. It’s the principle of the matter.

Scott - bless his heart - has also queued up the latest series of the ocean documentary that Gordon and Virgil gush over, but that Scott himself finds mind-numbing. The three of them squash together on one sofa, chomping pancakes and squabbling over blankets as the sun rises on another beautiful day.

Alan strolls in, nose first and still half-asleep. “Pancakes?” he says hopefully.

He catches sight of Virgil and seems to shake himself awake immediately. “Virgil? What the hell are you doing up?”

“Language,” Scott says thickly, the effect lessened by the mouthful of pancake and chocolate spread inside it.

“What the heck,” Alan waves a dismissive hand. “It’s barely ten, Virg?”

“Tell him what you’ve gone and done,” Scott says, because damn straight is he going to hold onto this one the next time Virgil’s yelling at him for taking a stupid risk. Well, at least I can drink coffee without poisoning myself, Virgil can just hear it now. .

“I drank too much coffee,” Virgil tells the ceiling.

“Sorry, V,” Gordon says, his smile wicked. “Allie didn’t quite catch that.”

Virgil sighs. “I overdosed on caffeine,” he says loudly.

“That’s a thing?!” Alan splutters. And then he bursts out laughing and Virgil wants to glare because he’s exhausted and his head is throbbing and there’s an anxious wriggle in his chest that keeps poking at his limbs.

But he also thought for one terrible moment yesterday that he wouldn’t get to hear that laugh again. The relief is infectious.

It never takes much to set Gordon off, but cracking Scott is a true victory, because for a second, the lines around his eyes crinkle with something other than stress.

Alan sets himself up with pancakes (far too smug that he’s allowed the chocolate spread on his where Virgil was only allowed syrup), and plonks himself down on Virgil’s right, bandaged arm and all. Whilst Gordon and Alan quarrel over species of tropical fish, Scott looks over at Virgil, raising his eyebrows. Are you okay? it says.

Virgil smiles and nods.

Inevitably, Scott and Gordon are called away on a rescue, just as Alan has grown tired of the nature documentary and is demanding something more exciting. Virgil consents to the first movie Alan picks out, because he’s too busy watching Gordon fly his beloved ‘Bird away with an expert hand.

God, he’s so tired. His limbs are heavy and aching from the tension of holding them in place all night and his head pounds in beat with his too-fast heart..

He’s utterly exhausted. If only his mind could get the memo. Instead it careens between thought processes: the grapple lines, his failed calculations, the disaster zone he’s left the workshop in -

It doesn’t matter though.

Because Alan’s alive and that’s all that matters.

Alan, whose gentle hand snakes through Virgil’s hair in a tender, soothing way that plucks at the knot of anxiety in Virgil’s chest, whose ministrations are a blessed, momentary pain relief for his sore head.

*****

It’s dark when he wakes, though he doesn’t remember his overwrought brain finally giving into sleep. His limbs no longer feel like they’re spasming out of control and his head aches with a more manageable pain, but he’s still drained. On the floor next to him, Alan is snoring at the centre of a nest of blankets - at least two of which Virgil is sure were wrapped around himself before...

He raises his head to look for his water glass, and nearly jumps out of his skin at the sight of his oldest brother standing in the shadows, watching. He’s still in his uniform, which suggests Thunderbird One just docked - presumably her engines through the open patio doors are what woke him.

“What the fuck, Scott?” he hisses.

“Sorry,” Scott says, though he doesn’t sound particularly apologetic. He moves into the light, and repositions Alan so that he can rescue one of the blankets for Virgil once more. “Go back to sleep.”

“Did the rescue go okay?” Virgil asks instead, relieved at Scott’s easy nod - and relatively clean, dry appearance.

“Gordon’s heading back now, all good. And no issues with grapples today, thank God.” Scott’s voice is low but Virgil still flinches from it.

“I’m going to find out what happened, Scott, I swear -”

“I know you will.” Scott’s voice is so firm, so strong that it momentarily steals Virgil’s breath how much faith Scott has in him. "I know you’ll figure it out, Virg. But you don’t have to do it on your own. You and Brains will work on it and find a solution, John’s going to identify the person responsible, and EOS will make sure they can never do it again. But it’ll be when you haven't overdosed on caffeine. Do you understand?”

It’s the kindest of reprimands. The same kind of pleading why won’t you just take care of yourself tone that Virgil finds himself using more and more on Scott these days, but with so much understanding and love, Virgil finds himself blinking back tears.

He can only nod and Scott steps back. “I’m going to go shower. Get some rest, Virgil.”

Scott turns to leave and Virgil forces himself to muster up his barely replenished energy reserves. He snags Scott’s sleeve, “Scott - thank you.”

Scott smiles a smile that’s just them, soft and trusting and concerned. “God knows you’ve looked after me through far worse hangovers than this. But don’t you dare do this again, Virg. I mean it. Don’t make me confiscate all the coffee on the island, because you know I’ll do it if I have to.”

“I know you will.”

Scott runs a hand through Virgil’s messy waves fondly, letting his hand rest at the nape of his neck where the headache pain is regrouping. “Sleep, Virg.”

And he does.

[marmosa]

oi, is it hot in here?

Fred x Fem!Reader

Word Count: 2.4k

Warnings: none

A/N: my best friend came over yesterday and showed me a snippet of one of her george fics and then immediately hyped me up to write this one. girls and gays i present the aquamenti spell, enjoy ;) (this is so out of pocket, could you tell i was going thru it). also if anyone wants more george content please let me know, i’m a fred girl through and through, but i have no shame in showing some love to george <3

***

“Fred, just because we’re allowed to legally use magic now, doesn’t mean we’re legally obliged to,” [y/n] mumbled, flat out glaring at him as he pouted at her from across the library table, trying once again to convince her to duel with him.

“Just because we’re not required to, doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be tons of fun. Come on [y/n], you know just as well as I do that you’re dying to try out some new spells,” Fred pleaded, reaching across the table and pushing the book she was using to shield her face from his relentless puppy dog eyes down.

“Even so Weasley, you’re going to get yourself in a spot of trouble you’re not going to know how to get out of. Just because I play coy doesn’t mean I wouldn’t absolutely smoke your arse if we did duel,” she hummed surely, straightening her posture to emphasize her sudden breath of confidence.

“Win? I doubt that,” Fred shrugged, leaning back in his chair, a mischievous idea bubbling to the surface of his mind, “No, you’re not bold enough to win.”

“I- me? Not bold enough?” [y/n] sputtered, incredibly offended at his insinuation but still trying her best to stand her ground, “I know what you’re trying to do y’know and I know you’re also full of shit. You wouldn’t last a second against me.”  

Fred glanced over at her, a smartass look on his face, “I think I could last at least two seconds, maybe five, maybe six, maybe a million, but you’re too much of a stick in the mud to find out.”

“I’m not a stick in the mud, I’m just smart enough to not let myself get dragged into your chaos- as fun as it is sometimes,” [y/n] mumbled the last bit, trying not to inflate his ego anymore than he needed, despite feeling no shame in admitting that his antics were usually paired with an inescapable rush of adrenaline.

“Yeah, whatever you say sweetheart,” Fred rolled his eyes, missing the quick crack in [y/n]’s composure at the pet name that practically rolled off his tongue with ease, “just don’t come crying to me when you get bored one afternoon and need someone to duel.”

[y/n] furrowed her brows and felt her competitive need finally snap, “Listen here you dim-wit, if you want a duel so bad you’ll get a duel, but don't you come crying to me when I hand you your arse on a silver-lined platter.”

Fred sat up excitedly, tapping his fingers against the table, “See, there’s that competitive [y/n] I was hoping for. I appreciate the threat, but you might want to save that fire for the duel, you’re gonna need it.”

“You’re a twat, you know that?” [y/n] grumbled, crossing her arms and sinking back into her chair.

“Only for you,” Fred winked, a shit-eating grin plaster on his face, “see you at the dueling grounds.”

“Yeah, yeah, get out of here,” [y/n] waved him off, biting back a smile.

***

“Aha! So you showed up in the end,” Fred cheered, dashing over and scooping [y/n] up in his arms, swinging her from side to side as she hung on for dear life.

As soon as he set her down she glared up at him like he’d just forced her to ride the worlds most dangerous roller coaster, “just because I was reluctant, doesn’t mean I’m a downer. I’m always true to my word Freddie.”

“Ahh,” He hummed low, crossing his arms and shrugging, tapping his chin inquisitively, “I suppose so. But what about that one time when you promised me that we’d go up to the tower and then you bailed-,”

“I had a potions exam to study for and my brain felt like it was melting, don’t you dare turn one on me. Last time I checked you were the one who bailed on me when we planned to go rob Filch of his-,” [y/n] started but was cut off when Fred pressed one of his hands against her mouth, shushing her with the other.

“You don’t want anyone to hear do you? That could get us in an enormous amount of trOUBLE- EW!” Fred hacked and jumped backwards, wiping his hand furiously against his jeans, “you’re a sick, sick woman.”

[y/n] grinned triumphantly, wiggling her eyebrows at his disgusted expression, “don’t lie, you loved it. Now come on, we came to duel, didn’t we?”

“You’re really testing my patience, [y/l/n],” Fred chuckled lowly, “but you’re right, get into position so I can completely ruin you.”

“I’d like to see you try,” [y/n] hummed, winking at Fred as she shuffled into her spot, drawing her wand and bobbing it in her hand.

The duel began and the two made no waste of time jumping at each other, throwing charm after hex at one another, testing out every single spell in their arsenal (well the one’s that wouldn’t painfully injure or kill either of them anyway). It was electric, the wild passion for their craft buzzing excitedly behind their eyes, present in the way they danced around each other, avoiding spells and quickly returning them.

[y/n] felt a laugh bubble out of her chest when Fred disarmed her, dashing off to retrieve her tool, ducking as he fired another spell right over the top of her head. Fred couldn’t help but follow suit in laughter as she turned around and flung a disarming spell of her own, managing to hit him and send his wand flying farther away than he probably would’ve liked.

“Come on now, [y/n], you wouldn’t harm a totally helpless boy,” Fred pleaded teasingly, inching to the side while trying to maintain eye-contact with her, mostly for his own safety than showmanship.

“I told you when we started this Weasley, I wasn’t going to go easy on you,” [y/n] called out, jerking out her arm, “Aquamenti!”

Water sprung forth from her wand, shooting directly at Fred and knocking him clean to the floor, positively soaking him from head to toe. He sat up immediately, his mouth hanging open in shock, still processing what entirely had just happened.

“I won,” [y/n] muttered, cheer surging through her in unexpected waves, “I won!”

“Shut up!” Fred groaned from his spot on the floor, pushing himself up off the floor, the cold slowly but surely seeping into his bones, “I don’t wanna hear it.”

[y/n] bit back a smug grin, crossing her arms across her chest and tipping her head back as if she had just won a crown far too heavy for her head, “Sorry, what was that about me losing?”

Fred glared back at her, his narrowed eyes nearly on the brink of being completely shut, “Shut. Up,” he repeated, enunciating his pauses.

“Aww, is someone sad with the outcome,” [y/n] cooed, spinning around to face him as soon as she had retrieved his wand, her triumphant spirit being shoved aside as a more uncomfortable emotion took hold.

“Shut up and hand me my wand ya git,” Fred mumbled, snatching his wand back from her, “we get it, you won.”

[y/n] couldn’t help the heat that was crawling up her neck, suddenly hyperaware of the situation she was currently in. Why’d she chose that spell? Why’d she chose that spell in this random room, away from others, when he was wearing a crisp white dress shirt that was now clinging to him like a second skin- god she could see so much.

Fred glanced over at her with creased brows, confused at the sudden spot of silence, wondering what had gotten little miss triumphant to go so quiet. When he saw her shuffling through her book bag, an amused little smile wormed its way onto his face- oh he was going to have fun with this.

“Why so quiet all of a sudden, sweetheart?” Fred drawled, biting back a grin at the way she tensed her shoulders.

“No particular reason, just felt bad about rubbing in my victory s’all,” [y/n] replied, still shuffling through her bag for a, uh, pack of gum she could have sworn she had had earlier.

“You? Feel bad? About a dueling victory against me? Sounds like a lot of rubbish to me,” He shook his head, grabbing her shoulder and tugging her to her feet, “There’s something else.”

[y/n]’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets, straining to avoid glancing down at his toned chest, “There is absolutely nothing else. Scout’s honor.”

Fred sported a smug grin as he leaned down to be eye level with her, his eyes raking over her face, noting her balled up fists shaking at her sides and her abnormally wide eyes, “Are you sure, you look awfully tense.”  

“I’m not tense,” she waved him off, feeling near the verge of combustion trying to control herself. It didn’t particularly help that he was staring at her like that while her mind raced through the hundreds of ways this interaction could go, her heart hammering in her chest at the suggestiveness of her thoughts.

“Come on, you can tell me, I won’t say anything out of line,” he bargained, trying his best to coax her out of whatever dumb act she was playing at.

“Again, I am completely fine,” she reassured him, rocking on the balls of her feet, trying to subtly put some space between them.

“I’m not so sure that’s true,” Fred lilted, titling his head to the side slightly, “what, is something about me bothering you?”

[y/n] felt her stomach drop, so he did know, of course he knew, she wasn’t particularly inconspicuous about her dilemma, but she refused to let up now, “There is nothing about you that’s bothering me, Freddie.”

“Oh, so what I’m hearing is that you like what you see?” he teased, darting his tongue out to wet his lips.

“I-wait, now hold a minute-,” she began only to lose her voice as he backed her into one of the many pillars in that room, her palms pressing flat against the cool stone.

“See, I still don’t quite believe you,” he whispered, pressing his forearm over her head, placing the other on his hip as the water he’d been drenched in had practically sealed his pockets shut.

“And why not?” [y/n] struggled to maintain her composure, her resolve diminishing by the second.

“Because someone who’d didn’t like the view wouldn’t be staring at it so plainly,” He concluded, shamelessly eyeing her up and down.

[y/n] didn’t know if she wanted to curl up into a ball and die or yank him down by his collar and let him absolutely ravish her then and there, her mind was too clouded to pick one. Luckily, Fred seemed to be significantly more level-headed than she currently, which meant he made no waste of time taking the reigns of the situation.

“So, what if I did agree with you what then,” [y/n] muttered, looking down at her shoes, trying her best to avoid his piercing gaze.

“I’d say that you’re in luck because,” he placed his hand under her chin and tipped it back upwards, forcing her to look at him, “I’m enjoying my view just as much.”

“Well then, what’re you gonna do about it?” she quipped, shamelessly darting her eyes between his eyes and lips.

“I’d say kiss you, but only if you want it,” he replied, moving his hand up to cup her cheek.

“I do. I do want it, please Fred,” she pleaded, not even caring if she sounded desperate anymore, throwing her pride to the wind.

“You don’t have to tell me twice.”

Fred leaned down and captured her lips in a heated kiss, his hand finding its way to the small of her back, pressing her off the pillar and into him. It quickly became something desperate, longing, all their pent up tension finally spilling out of their overfilled cup. [y/n] felt up his chest, smiling to herself as she concluded that it did feel as nice as it looked.

He made quick work of hoisting her up, linking his arms under her thighs and pressing her back against the wall, relishing in finally being able to touch her the way he so desperately wanted to for all those years. She did the same, tangling her fingers into the wet hairs at the nape of his neck, basking in the warmth coming from him despite his soaking wet clothing.

“Do you want to stop?” Fred asked softly, pressing a few soft kisses to her jaw and neck, “we don’t have to go any further.”

“As lovely as continuing sounds,” she breathed, smoothing his hair out of his face, “I don’t think we’re geared for that right now. And you need to get changed of those clothes before you catch a cold.”

“Good lord you sound like my mother,” Fred groaned, knocking his forehead on her shoulder.

“Did you really just bring up your mother right now,” [y/n] asked incredulously, wiggling her way out of his grip and back onto her own two feet, “that’s weird man.”

“I wouldn’t have if you didn’t bring up my need of a change of clothes!” Fred exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air to emphasize his point, “Besides, who’s fault is that?”

“Someone stupid probably,” [y/n] shrugged, picking up her robes and tossing them square at him, “wear those so you don’t get colder, if someone asks, you took a dip in the lake.”

“That’s even more unbelievable than just telling someone straight up what we were doing,” Fred replied, flat out, pulling on the robes that we’re obviously too short for him.

“Well too bad, loser of the duel has to follow the winner’s rules,” [y/n] shrugged, offering him a smug smile.

“Can we go back to a couple minutes ago when I’d managed to shut you up?” Fred quipped, crossing his arms as he pouted at her.

“Nope, no can do, you kissed me Weasley which means I have nothing more to be embarrassed about,” [y/n] sang, taking his hands and swinging them along with hers.

“Well I take it back!”

“Please no,” she frowned, sinking her shoulders.

Fred sighed and pulled her into a hug, his words muffled against her hair as he mumbled softly, “I could never say no to that face.”  

[lluvguts]

Cool Blue ; Chapter One

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through sunsets we wander

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☽ warnings: none

☽ fic masterlist

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By the time Alberto had rowed out into the furthest stretch of waters toward that quaint little island he'd been eyeing for months, it was already nearing dinnertime. He promised his foster father, Massimo, and younger sister, Giulia, he would return to the Marcovaldo home with a lovely new piece for their kitchen or else Massimo's hearty dish of alfredo wouldn't be served to him.

Alberto had grinned at the promise. He knew that even if he came home with a stick figure drawing of himself, sitting cheekily on a beach someplace, they'd hang it on the icebox and love it regardless.

He'd done a few paintings of the sunset from their home, sure, but it was the beautiful curve of greenery this approaching island offered that Alberto just couldn't refuse. There hung something familiar in it's many trees and overgrown bushes somehow, but Alberto just wasn't able to place it. As he neared he hurried to moor the boat by the section of the island mostly taken up by dark, porous shore rocks. He chanced to teeter at the bow before jumping onto the closest boulder, its surface nicking his heels in a few spots but he didn't mind. He hated to wear shoes ever since he was a child, and Massimo had even claimed when he'd discovered Alberto as a wide-eyed toddler, he was absolutely shoe-free. The ground was damp with the constant ebb and flow of the ocean, and for the heat seeping into Alberto's toes from the sparkling sun-kissed sand, he felt oddly at home.

Alberto glanced at the sun, hardly able to resist reaching out a hand to remark on the beauty of it. He spun back to fetch his bag of paint supplies, clutching the case to his broad chest so as not to let anything plop into the ocean. From where he was standing, precariously but full of glee on the rocky shoreline, there was a small alcove just beyond Alberto's line of sight. There were a few times he'd wished he'd brought at least a pair of sandals--or perhaps he could use his work smock and tie it around his heels--as he walked down the beach, because the ground was steadily rising in temperature as the sun baked the sand, but he tried not to complain much when there was so much to marvel around him.

He set his bag down on the ground by a rocky pool, which Alberto promptly sat beside and rolled his pantlegs up so he could dangle his ankles in the warm water. From where he sat, he was given a perfect view of the sun, creeping closer and closer to the horizon, so Alberto pulled out his pad of paper and a few pencils just to sketch for a while. He shaded the trees around him, drew each jagged rock, and perfected the way the sun kissed the ocean and left sparkling trails down the horizon. He could draw today, just to soak up the scenery and get his concepts down, then bring out the paints tomorrow. Massimo would probably joke and ruffle his already messed up head of curls once he got back, with smudged fingers and no canvas, but say all was fine. As he worked he hummed to himself, a song from some old record Giulia played on their gramophone (or, as a younger Alberto favored calling it, the magic-singing-lady-machine) after dinner and the kids were cleaning up. Still focused on the page, steadily filling, Alberto reached out a hand and groped around in his bag for an eraser without looking. When he didn't find one, he grumbled a bit and pulled his hand back, only to realize he'd shook loose a few sticks of charcoal and a paintbrush that rolled across the ground and fell, soundlessly, into the pool. The brush floated along the surface but the rest slipped below the surface.

"Merda!" Alberto hissed, trying to grapple one of the charcoals with his toes but it only sank further into the murky blue below. He shut his eyes and opened them again, more than willing to dive down there and retrieve those precious charcoal sticks. They cost him quite a few allowances and extra shifts at the Pescheria.

But then something happened that made Alberto leap from his spot and hold his dripping knees closer to his chest.

One stick of charcoal was flung from the pool and landed on the grass a few feet from Alberto's bag, soaking the ground in black. Then came up another, this time closer to Alberto. He flinched at the torrent of gravity-defying art supplies, allowing himself to inch closer to the mouth of the pool, reflecting his green eyes wide, breath held, waiting. Another reflection flashed across the pool's surface, something vibrant that made Alberto look up. But there were no trees or even a bird to cast the reflection.

Alberto let his head fall. And, blinking back at him, with the paintbrush that had been bobbing balanced on its nose, was what looked like a fish. But fish didn't have huge yellow eyes that made Alberto think of his cat at home, Machi, but not in an endearing way. Fish weren't that smart. Alberto had seen sea turtles and dolphins many times before, and they were intelligent, sure, but nothing compared to the humanlike stare this creature had fixed on him now. It stuck it's face out of the water, wincing at the harsh sunlight making its scales shine a deep teal. When its big yellow eyes trained back on Alberto, he saw the creatures features darken from underneath the water line.

"I think you dropped this," It whispered, in such a soft and shy way it made Alberto take in a ragged breath. Okay, fish definitely didn't do that. Was this thing...actually talking to him? The creature stuck its webbed fingers from the pool and took the paintbrush, staring at it for a moment before handing it out to a speechless Alberto.

"Woah! Uh...H-Hello?" Alberto breathed, gingerly taking back the brush.

The not-fish waved, only a slight shake of its hand above the surface of the water, and Alberto noticed the thin claws on the ends of its fingers.

"I'm not supposed to talk to you," It whispered again. Alberto watched the stream of bubbles that floated along the pool's surface as it talked. He still had no idea what he was conversing with, the creature seeming less and less like a fish and more as something from his imagination. It waded in the small pool, he noticed, forearms paddling softly without stirring the water. Its movements so effortless it left Alberto in awe. And if he gazed into the deeper parts of the water, he swore he saw a tail lazily lapping behind the creature.

"I...uh, I could only imagine why," Alberto squeaked. The paintbrush was still in his hands but he was now gripping it so tight his tan skin was turning white at the knuckles.

The creature stifled a giggle by placing one clawed hand to its mouth, but even still Alberto caught a glimpse of its sharp teeth. If he hadn't run away now, that was a pretty good red flag to be packing his things and high-tailing home--but he didn't. He wasn't exactly afraid of this thing staring back at him. Just a bit baffled by it, he was dying to look closer but the more Alberto craned his neck down into the pool to see, the creature shied back into the depths.

"What are you?" Alberto asked aloud, more to himself but still he knew the thing heard him. "Sorry! Was that rude? I'm not trying to be mean, but you aren't exactly the type of seal we'd see in Portorosso."

The creature's cheeks turned a darker blue, and it glared at Alberto. "I am not a seal." It hissed, its tiny lip pulled back to reveal that set of sharp teeth again.

"I get it! I get it! I said I was sorry! I'm just trying to figure this all out," Alberto scratched his head, looking back at his sketchbook for a moment.

"I don't even look anything like a seal!" It was still stuck on the stupid seal comment, with its blue eyebrows furrowed and eyes dark. The more Alberto heard the creature talk he realized, with a flush of embarrassment or something else, that it was a boy. Not a thing. Not an it.

"Okay, so you're not a seal. We've established this." Alberto was gathering his sketchbook and supplies to put back in the bag. The paintbrush was resting at the mouth of the pool. "Are you some type of...seahorse? Or an overgrown fish?"

The boy spit out a stream of water into Alberto's face.

"I'm a monster," He said promptly, his voice on the edge of staying shy or holding a grudge for the seal comment. "So...you should be afraid of me."

Alberto let out a laugh. This cute little thing? "Sure, sure. That makes much more sense." He stuck out his hand at the boy. "Well, nice to meet you, sea monster...Or, uh, whatever you are. I'm Alberto Marcovaldo."

"Alberto..." The boy repeated in a hushed voice, looking down at the water now as he said it. He flinched backward at Alberto's hand, looking up at his fingers with burning yellow eyes. Without knowing much of what to do, the boy kicked his legs until he was treading the water, letting the top of his head graze Alberto's open palm. The small fins around the crown of his head brushed Alberto's hand, smooth and slippery like seaweed. Alberto decided he was quite pleased with the weird texture of it.

The boy closed his eyes and let out a small noise, the side of his face now pressed to Alberto's hand. He had a fin on his cheek that neared his fingertips, and when Alberto touched it the boy trilled, almost in greeting.

"Oh, uh, are you ok? I think you're supposed to shake my hand." Alberto stated. He found his face felt uncomfortably hot watching the weird gesture the boy had just made, and even more so at the soft noises rumbling in his throat.

For a moment the creature considered extending his hand and taking Alberto's outstretched fingers, but stopped with a low growl, blushing blue.

"I'm--ugh! I'm not even supposed to be out here!" He wailed. "If they find me out here with, with a land monster? My mom's gonna kill me! I've uh, I've got to go, so um..." The boy looked at Alberto's paintbrush sitting within his reach and took it.

"Goodbye."

He ducked back under the water. In a second his head of blue fins dashed back up.

"Forever."

Land monster? Alberto could laugh. He'd never heard that one before. But he scanned the mess before him, the slimy puddle of water next to his leg that the boy had left when he took (stole) his paintbrush, the droplets scattered along his sketchbook, all blazing in angry red as the sun finished its journey along the sky.

Alberto scrambled up from his spot, mentally slapping himself. He had a hard time rowing the boat this far out while it was daytime, it was sure going to be hell finding his way home in the near darkness. As he stumbled along the shore and dropped his things into the boat, he wondered if he had the right paint colors for the boy's eyes.

Wait, he hadn't even gotten his name! Do sea monster-things have names? Like humans do? Oh, what did it matter? The boy said he could never come back to the island again. Their awkward five minute interaction was all they had. But Alberto was still stewing it all over as he made his way back to Portorosso, now relying on the oil lamp beside him and the glowing stars above.

/ / /

"Figlio, you're late."

Alberto rushed to hang up his bag and wash his hands. Giulia seemed to have been stuck with doing Alberto's dinner chores in his absence, setting the table and pouring waters. When he passed her she stuck her tongue out at him and smashed his offending pinky toe with her sandal.

"Ouch!" Alberto steeled his eyes at her from across the table, but she only grinned devilishly. Massimo was still expecting some sort of apology for almost missing dinner so he cleared his throat and pulled back the chair for his father to sit. "Sorry, Papa. The place where I set up my paints was pretty far, and I got carried away and lost track of time."

"Blech, Alberto, you stupido, at least change your clothes...you reek like fish..." Giulia sneered as Massimo handed them their plates.

"Hush, Giulia." Signor Marcovaldo gave her a small pat on her shoulder then turned to Alberto. All concern lost, he asked. "Where did you go to paint?"

"The island...?" Alberto chanced a look across his water glass to see their equal expression of shock and horror.

"The island?" Giulia shrieked. She let her fork fall and alfredo sauce splattered on the table cloth. "Fratello, that place is swarming with monstro marino!"

"Sea monsters, really Giulia?" Alberto tried to sound calm, but his heart rate picked up. "There's no such thing."

"Actually, Alberto, there is." Massimo pointed to the newspaper clippings decorating one kitchen wall, still frames of what appeared to be creatures with glistening teeth and bloodied scales.

"But Papa, those papers are fake! You said so yourself! Ercole's father only made those to scare people." Alberto argued.

"They are a menace to this town." Massimo stared into his plate of pasta. "My only hope is that you never get to see so yourself. They are killers."

Well, the one I met today didn't seem like a bloodthirsty monster, Alberto wanted to spit back, but held his tongue.

"Did you at least get to draw anything?" Giulia asked. Alberto sighed, glad they let the subject on sea monsters drop for the time being.

"Y-Yeah! I actually did," He boasted, rising from the table to fetch his bag. He undid the latch and took out his sketchbook, walking while flipping the latest page open for Giulia and Massimo to see.

Giulia's eyes widened and she barked out a laugh. Massimo smiled faintly, giving Alberto a solitary thumbs up.

"What? What are you laughing about?" Alberto turned the paper around and gasped. The entire page was warped and still damp, the lovely pencil drawings now only faint grey smears along the paper.

"That's-That's not funny!" Alberto growled at Giulia, who was wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. "It was the boat! A wave must have hit the side, or something!"

"Oh, yeah, Alberto. Blame the boat," Giulia giggled.

Alberto huffed and slumped back into his seat. That sea monster.

Machiavelli sashayed into the kitchen, smelling the dinner on the table or perhaps the laughter lightening the air. He curled up next to Alberto's leg on the ground, rubbing his cheek and whiskers along his bare ankle, purring for a taste of the alfredo sauce.

"No, Machi. You can't eat human food." Alberto chastened him, nudging his face away from the table leg. Giulia laughed harder.

"Hah! He smells the fish on you, 'Berto! Were you taking a swim with Papa's catch today, hmm?"

"Giulia, I said that was enough!"

He smells the sea monster on me, Alberto thought. He glanced down at Machi again and stiffened when he realized his purrs had really been growls.

/ / /

"Oh, Giuseppe, I'm so stupid!" Luca dropped his head into his hands and a flurry of bubbles chased his fins. "I can't believe I actually talked to him!"

The school of fish floated beside Luca, unblinking. Giuseppe, the goatfish in interrogation, only blew a tired bubble from his mouth and huddled closer to Luca.

"I saw these weird sticks floating into the water, and they stained the water black like those oil spills Momma had warned be about, but still I went to see what it was!" Luca took Giuseppe by the hand and cradled him to his chest. "I wasn't expecting to see a land monster up there. I just didn't want those things in the water."

"But," Luca continued to himself, as his herd of fish were clearly unable to do much of anything, least of all lend him advice. "That weird stick with the soft thing at the end was really pretty, Giuseppe. It was purple! The wood was purple! How did he do that?"

"It was Alberto that did that, I think. He painted it purple." Luca jumped up in glee, then floated gracefully back onto the rock he'd been sitting on, giggling at the dark sea above.

"Ugh!" Luca was a ball of emotions. "How could I be such an idiota? I took something from The Surface! I had to hide it, of course, but still!" He pet Giuseppe's scales and the goatfish blew some bubbles in Luca's face to calm him down. "He looked so much different than the way Momma talks about the land monsters. Alberto wasn't scary...he didn't have a harpoon, so that's a good sign, right?"

Luca looked to Giuseppe, and sighed. "I don't know what's happening to me..." Luca murmured to himself, gingerly touching his face and remarking how warm it was in the cool ocean water. It had been like that when Alberto was watching him too, with those bright green eyes. Green like the sea glass Luca had collecting on the rocky ledge of his bedroom cave. When he stared at Alberto, something tingled in his belly, burning low and delightful. He knew what that meant, though he tried to press it down into his abdomen until the feeling eventually drifted away.

"Oh, sharks, I'm just a dumb little crab, aren't I? I even tried to scent him! But I couldn't help it! That land monster smelled so...different. Like the sun, you know? All warm and fuzzy...it was so sweet. Oh, if Momma finds out about this...It's not good, Giuseppe. Not good at all."

"Luca, tesoro it's time for dinner!" Signore Paguro called from a few yard away in the Paguro home. Luca gasped and a trail of frightened bubbles drifted pass his eyes. He grabbed his moss-covered staff and herded the school into a more manageable spot for the night, and swam toward home.

[ausp-ice]

The second part of the story of Malice and Val's meeting! You can see the art/story for the first part here.

The story is also on Toyhouse.

Hearts of (No) Malice, Chapter 2: Intersection

The last thing Malice expects is for the human to return the next day, with their bag of devices and sustenance. They do the same thing as the day before—greet Malice, sit down, and retrieve what Malice assumes is their drawing device.

The human does not return the following day, but they do return the day after that.

At this point, Malice finds themself… curious. Most humans who face them are fearful and wise enough to heed their warnings, or otherwise Malice can manipulate the malice in their hearts to get them to leave. But this… Valence. They do not understand why the human chooses to stay here for extended periods of time, especially given Malice's presence.

So, of course, they observe. While they can see without the use of their eyes, visual perception of the human while Malice is looking away from them is suboptimal. On a whim, then, they slip into an abstract energy form before shifting back into their more solid form behind the human, looking over his shoulder.

Only to be surprised by the sight of itself—rather, a rendition of itself. "You are drawing me," they note, and the human jumps violently, pressing his tablet to his chest and looking up at Malice with widened eyes.

"I, a-ah, well…" they stammer, eyes flicking off to the side. A faint pink tints his cheeks. "S-sorry. I wasn't going to show anyone. You're just," he gestures vaguely at Malice, "very pretty."

"Pretty," Malice repeats, blinking all their eyes.

Valence nods. "You're just…" They hold out a hand and gesture down its body and then vaguely to its wings. "You know?"

"That is horrendously vague, Valence," they say.

The human hides his face in his hands. "It's, you know, the aesthetic? Black and blue are pretty, you're super tall and elegant but also sharp?"

Hmm. "Thank you, I suppose." Malice slips away, returning to the edge of the cliff in a shift of smoky movement.

"You…" Valence starts, "are you going to stop me?"

Malice hums. "What you do is none of my concern."

"O… kay. Neat. Very neat." Their voice gradually peters to a mumble.

Malice lets the time slip away. Valence remains, drawing and occasionally snacking, until eventually—there. That spark of malice, around the same time every day.

They chase the thread of it, shifting to an energy nearly imperceptible to nonmagical individuals. In mere moments, they are at an apartment.

Malice does not particularly care about the details of the situation they discover, but they do note two individuals, one with long dark hair and a slender form, the other with light short hair and a broader build.

Both of their malevolent feelings have been growing exponentially for the past few days. Towards each other both, but the long-haired one—toward the situation, the world, everything.

It festers and grows, now to the point that it has called Malice itself to the scene.

It plays out just as they expect. A physical altercation, escalating emotionally and physically, until finally—a knife in the long-haired individual's hand, buried in the chest of the other.

The malice fluctuates—suddenly gone, before roaring back. Malice approaches, phasing through the walls of the building as if they were nonexistent. They approach the individual from behind and set their fingers lightly on the individual's shoulders, a ghostly touch, and knowledge about them—no, her—seeps into Malice's awareness. Her name, her reasons, the suffering she accepted until pain turned to malevolence.

But Malice does not care for such details. "Will you allow the malice to consume you?" they ask, and she stiffens, gaze flicking to Malice's claws.

She scoffs. "They always say that welcoming evil will invite demons to your home."

Demons. One of the many sorts of beings humanity created to explain Edeia, though inherently such a label and its associations are often improper reflections of the nature of Edeia. Despite the offer of Edeia knowledge to the world, some still rely on their existing conceptions of supernatural entities.

Malice does not bother explaining this. "I can pull you back," it says, instead. "If you wish to let go. Will you?"

She clenches her fists. "No. He… no one ever helped me, even when I tried reaching out." She lowers her head. "Humans are selfish, even if they seem nice on the surface. When they have to risk their own self… ha. They won't."

"Perhaps so," Malice says.

"I don't care what happens to me. Whatever you want from me. I just want the world to burn and be free of it once I'm done."

"I see." They lean in closer. "Then… I shall give you just the slightest push."

Malice pulls at the thread within her, just slightly. Changing the weave. There would be no change now, but it will grow more and more uncontrollably as she feeds it.

As they pull away, she turns her head slightly to look at them. "What are you?" she murmurs.

"Malice," they answer, and leave.

-

The next day, Malice returns to the cliff. And of course, Valence is there. The human comes to sit and draw and occasionally talk, and they've become more bold the more Malice answers.

Malice… finds that it does not mind, however. There are not many situations where they would speak to anyone normally, so they indulge the human.

"How long have you been an Edeia?" Val eventually asks.

How long? "I… am not sure." They look to the city. "It was long before humanity reunited with magic."

"So at least a hundred years," Val murmurs.

Malice hums, crossing their hands behind their back. "I would say… twice as long would seem reasonable."

"That's… a really long time." A pause. "Do you… have any other friends?"

Malice scoffs at that. "What use does malice have for friends? I am ill will. Harmful intentions. All that calls to me is the malice festering within the hearts of humanity."

"Just humanity?"

"No. But humanity's malice often burns the fiercest. As Edeia, we are," Malice waves a hand, "embodiments of our Idea. Fewer of us tend to harbor ill will towards others when they cannot threaten us. When such emotions are trivial in the face of being the very concept itself."

Valence hums. Without turning around, Malice sees them frown and put down their tablet. "You mean like… Edeia don't need emotions?"

"Need? No. Those who have fully embraced their identity as a concept are just that—sentient representations of a concept. Consciousness and Concept, for instance."

If Valence is familiar with them. Judging by the way Valence's brow furrows, Malice is not certain.

"But," the human says, "you all do have emotions, right?"

"Most retain their emotions, yes. In one way or another."

"Do you?"

Malice turns their head slightly towards Valence. They consider his question. "They are unnecessary," Malice decides, and turns back.

Valence takes a breath. Lets it out, and sets down their tablet. They stand up and walk closer, closer, until, "Can I hug you?"

Malice blinks. They turn their head, looking over their shoulder at the human, who has his eyes on his fidgeting fingers. "Um… I'm going to hug you. Yell or something if you want me to stop."

Valence then proceeds to lift themself on their toes and wrap their arms around Malice's hips—they are far too tall for him. It is almost amusing. They then rest their head on the small of Malice's back.

It is… soft. The human's clothing is soft, his hair, his embrace. It is not something Malice has experienced since… since…

A long time ago, regardless.

They do not move, but eventually the human lets go. The loss of warmth is stark in the chill of the air.

Malice turns around fully to look at Valence, and the human cranes his neck up to meet their eyes. His hands are now tucked in the sleeves of his white sweatshirt, and his arms are folded.

Malice hums, lifting a claw near his arm. Valence stiffens slightly as his gaze follows it, but Malice does not touch. Instead, they vanish into smoky darkness once more.