#if this even counts as a fully-fledged death

[akystaracer22]

Distrust Fall:

A leap of faith gone wrong, an eternal promise kept eternally. No matter how long it has been some things never truly change.

Notes

How to fail a trust fall: Step one

Vaggie's relationship with Adam is very complicated, but at the moment there is a lot of animosity and it shows.

Adam is of the opinion that Sorry doesn’t mean jack shit if you make the mistake again, so he just doesn’t apologise because he thinks he’ll just fuck up again so there’s no point.

The hotel needs a licensed therapist at this point dear lord.

Alastor still isn’t over the whole “Radio is fucking dead” thing.

If there is one thing that Adam knows off by heart, it’s the names of animals scientific or otherwise. That was the guys job once upon a time and assuming he doesn’t know that stuff is the true quickest way to piss him off. He’s also really good with animals which pisses off Anthony because Fat Nuggets *likes* Adam and it drives the sinner up a wall.

Alastor and Lucifer are on the ground. Angel, Husk, Charlie, Vaggie, and Adam are on the roof.

Alastor was going to let him get a cm from the ground before catching him dw.

Lucifer used to be friends with Adam in the garden because I live for that sweet sweet friends to enemies tragedy.

Adam really does not like people staring at his face, it’s a mild form of scopophobia caused by his time in heaven with people always giving him shit for how he looked, particularly his facial features (Yes I drew on everyone calling him ugly and average on twitter and shit). He used the mask to get around it, that way people couldn’t actually see what he looked like.

This was originally 1260 but then I got an idea that blew this out by 500 words lol.

The graveyard with be elaborated on in a future connected one shot.

This is officially a fully fledged AU

Regarding Adam's claws, they're gold to combat the greyness of his palette, but also as a nod to Midas, the arrogant king who's touched turned everything to gold. Angelic blood is also gold so if you want you can interpret it as having blood on his hands.

Fingerless gloves because I thing they're neat.

I based Lucifer's wings off of duck wings!

Also Lucifer's angelic appearance was based on space. I heard Sera call Charlie "Daughter of the Morning Star" and I went feral.

He has a full shifting night sky in his wings, clothes, and hat.

Angels have white pupils now I don't make the rules.

References saved my life.

Word count: 1725

(Comic and fic under the cut! Click for better quality)

@irregular-child

Adam leaned away from the edge as the wind drifted through his wings, keenly aware of the fact that his wings wouldn’t break his fall and he did not in fact trust jack shit in hell to break it except the ground.

“Are we sure this is a good idea?”

“I’m with princess perfect this is a fucking death sentence,” Adam agreed, a little reluctantly because it was still the princess of hell, “You’re trying to fucking kill me.”

Vaggie smirked, because of course she did because she was trying to kill him, he wasn’t that dense, and just shrugged, “I mean, worked for me didn’t it?”

“That wasn’t even a fucking trust fall that was to get you to fucking fly and you know it! Fucking bitch,” The first man scowled and tried to step away from the edge, the crack whore of an arachnid immediately shoving him back up, “Would you fuck off?!”

“Would you stop being a dick?”

“Would you stop sucking them?”

The white jumping spider stared at him for a long moment and Vaggie stepped away from him for once, great! Cool! One person was leaving him alone and soon a second one will!

Great! About fucking time they got the message-

-------]

Lucifer paced nervously around Dazzle’s statue; this was a terrible idea. Having Adam go through a trust fall this early was going to end in disaster one way or another.

The main issue being nobody liked Adam and wouldn’t care if he fell. Hell, Charlies girlfriend has already tried to kill Adam off for good multiple times since he got here!

This was going to be a mess; Alastor was supposed to be catching Adam but he was just standing there looking completely unprepared and-

“Are you going to get ready or not.” Lucifer snapped at the radio demon, wings flicking out behind him in agitation.

“Oh, I have no intention of catching him.”

Lucifer froze, his tail stilling before lashing behind him as he turned on the deer-eared sinner, “What.”

“You heard me.”

“Oh, I heard you alright, and I think you should try that again.”

“And why are you getting so worked up, hm?” The sinner hummed, sneering down at the king, “Last I checked, the first man was your enemy after he tried to kill your own daughter.”

“I-” Lucifer paused, then scowled because Alastor was right. Why was he getting so worked up over this. This was Adam they were talking about. Adam who was crass and rude and cold to everyone. Adam, who would rather sit in his room all day than even look at any of them. Adam who was…

“…Luci, do they all hate me?”

…

“I can see why they left me for you.”

…

“It is good to see you again my friend! Come, much has changed since your last visit!”

… Adam who was so much more than who he was now. Who was probably the only person left in hell that remembered Eden.

Damnit.

“That’s none of your business you son of a bitch,” The fallen angel snapped at the cannibal, eliciting nothing more than a growing grin from the bastard.

Not a day went by in hell where Lucifer wished that this wasn’t his circus and that the sinners weren’t his monkeys.

Someone screamed above him.

The seraphim whipped his head up, eyes widening as he registered Adam twisting the air as he was shoved off the roof by Angel Dust.

Fear struck his heart like an exorcists blade when the first man tried to use his wings to glide, only for a single wing beat to send him into a spiral hurtling towards the ground.

He caught Adams eye for a single moment before it was obscured by his good wing, the man was terrified. He didn’t know sinners reformed after death and despite it all. Lucifer would never wish someone to experience falling from their death after quite literally falling from heaven.

Not even on Adam.

Something in his heart spurred the king into action, kicking off the ground as his wings snapped open to catch the air. A single beat of his wings and he was already well off the ground.

Lucifer reached a hand up for Adam as the fallen angel reached out to him in kind, panic written across both their faces at the idea of a horrible accident.

Lucifer’s wings moved the air one more time and-

“And… you will catch me?”

Lucifer laughed softly, a gentle chiming sound from where he stood behind Gods first man. He was trying to show him a game Lucifer and his kin would play from time to time amongst the spires of heaven.

The game was simple, one angel was to stand up high with their wings folded and fall. Then the other angel was to catch them. It was supposed to build trust, not to mention it was a delight in and of itself.

Standing amongst the grasses of Eden, Lucifer saw no reason not to share this game with Adam. He’s already grown fond of the way that Gods creation would go out of his way to show the angel what he’d been up to since his last visit.

“Be not afraid my friend!” Lucifer’s wings spread quietly to punctuate his point, divine magic threading his words, The Voice ensuring that the first man would hear and believe him.

“No matter how far you fall, I shall always be there to catch you.”

Lucifer wrapped his arms securely around the fallen angel as his wings curled around wing and man alike, bracing himself as the added weight as they both fell together.

It’s funny, it reminded him of when Adam first fell, a fiery ball that could have almost been mistaken as a shooting star had Lucifer not known better.

They hid the ground with a slam and the fallen seraphim had to bite back a shriek as his wings took the brunt of the force. They’d be left aching for a while.

Lucifer grunted as he pushed Adam off of him, sitting up and folding his wings in, allowing them to slip out of existence while they healed, he definitely didn’t want to do that again.

He slowly got to his feet while the first man got his bearings, dusting himself off and rubbing his shoulders to try and alleviate the pain.

“Why the fuck did you save me?”

Lucifer jerked and looked down at Adam from where he was glaring up at him, a note of confusion held carefully in his gaze before it dropped.

“I-”

“Well, isn’t this quite a surprise!”

Lucifer’s expression shot into a scowl as he rounded on the radio demon very blatantly interrupting the moment. The bastard just grinned and stared down at the both of them.

From the corner of his eyes Lucifer noted Adam’s good wing hitching up instinctively to cover his face from the demons gaze before dropping.

Lucifer turned his attention back to the radio demon with a glare that could melt steel, “You were going to let him fall,”

“I was going to do no such thing,”

“You just said-!”

“I said nothing you just assumed I was going to do nothing at all!”

“Listen here you!” Lucifer was just off again by the main doors opening and the other’s all barrelling out at the commotion.

Lost in the sudden onslaught of attention and having to field Alastor’s snarky comments, Anthony’s suggestive remarks, and Charlie’s concern, he didn’t see Adam flee the scene.

It wasn’t until much later that he was able to recognize the first man’s absence, searching the hotel to see if Adam was okay.

He found him at the graveyard, sitting among the many tombstones for the exorcists slain in the battle that caused Adam to fall.

Lucifer paused at the entrance to the burial ground, watching Adam sit there facing away from him for what felt like an eternity.

Despite the dead being gone, the king of hell still felt like the exorcists weapons were pointed at him, a warning that if he made one wrong move they would rise from their graves to protect their leader, to avenge him, to strike Lucifer down in an instant.

The once-angel of the morning star carefully stepped away from the cemetery, making sure he didn’t break the silence. Even if Adam wanted to be disturbed, he wasn’t the right person to do it, not in this place.

Besides, he still had his own thoughts to sort through, like why in the name of the divine he saved Adam when he would have survived regardless. He would have been fine even if he did hit the ground unimpeded so why-

Lucifer grimaced as the answer stuck to him like a parasite, he knew damn well why he saved him. It was the same stupid reason he preened Adams wings for him, the same reason he treats the first man’s wing rot and the exact same reason he made that deal with Adam after he fell.

He was attached.

Stupids horribly foolishly, Lucifer still cared for Adam even after everything.

By the stars he beat Adam within an inch of his life! Adam tried to kill his daughter!

But emotions were hardly logical. They weren’t logical when he fell for Lilith in the garden and taught her and Adam both The Voice, they weren’t logical when he freed Eve, and they weren’t logical now.

Lucifer cared for Adam, even if by all logic he should hate the man.

“Dad?”

Lucifer looked up to meet his daughters eyes, a small smile letting her know he was okay, “Hey there Duckie.”

Charlie’s expression softened at the nickname even if he still looked concerned, “Dad… are you sure you’re okay?”

“If I’m not now, I will be, so stop worrying about little old me Char-char,” Lucifer chuckled, “However… Adams in the graveyard if you want to talk to him, he seems like he needs some company right now.”

He made his exit quickly after that, he knew what Charlie would do, it was in her nature to help people, it was what made her so special.

But Lucifer, he helped people once, and now… he had a new person he could help again.

And he might just know where to start.

[tadpolesonalgae]

Demon!Azriel x reader: Teeth and Talons - Chapter 11

Warnings: murder, general death, Azriel, gore

Word Count: 3,549

-Part 10-

——————————————————————————————————————————————

It’s been simmering away long before he turned you. Maybe even before he met you. Bubbling and festering deep in the marrow of your bones, suppressed and denied over and over until it became something awful and ugly, untameable and unstoppable once it’s leash finally snapped. Wreaking devastation with wide-grinning teeth, talons that snicker-snack through flesh, crushing corpses beneath its leather covered paws.

You can feel it cracking open an eye, a slimy, translucent film beneath its lid, opening blearily, fully fledged at last, and ready to wreak havoc on everything around it.

And you know just the place to begin your destruction, how to set the doomsday in motion.

The twisted fucker that got you into this situation in the first place.

—————

It’s been a long time coming, this selfish sense of justice that you need to bring.

How many other women and innocents have they murdered in the name of mild boredom. The devil makes work for the idle, and their palms are softer than cotton. Easier to shred through.

Night hasn’t even fallen when you crawl up the walls of the palace, built in the centre of the citadel, able to see the priestess’ temple from the high crenellations. In a fleeting thought, you wonder what she’d think of your actions, if she’d condemn them or turn a blind eye for the sake of your own suffering. But she won’t be spared either—she should have warned you. Not sat you down over a cup of tea and given out her own simpering story.

Your claws hook over the balcony, effortlessly hauling yourself into the boy-king’s chambers. Take in the gaudy and lavish spread, undeserved opulence at its finest, long past the line of decadence. Nobody needs a golden chamber pot beneath their bed, no matter how well they eat.

Heightened senses pick up the beat of two hearts outside the door, filthily-paid guards positioned at the entrance, and your forked tongue flickers out over dark, rubbery lips. Drool drips onto the floor, but you pay it no mind, snaking silently across the marble before flinging the doors from their hinges. Blood splatters and bone splinters beneath the force, glittering talons making a wretched mess of the spurting bodies, unthreading sinew as you crush their lungs beneath your paw, the steel of their weapons nothing against the raw hide coating leathery limbs. At your back, your tails thrashes, gouging slashes in the stone as spikes slice through marble, putting breaks in the castle that nearly broke you.

Your nostrils flare, picking up the scent of someone young, blood too sour to enjoy laced with the overripe flavour of age. The sag of skin practically a flavour in and of itself as you skitter down the hallway, scrambling up the walls, clambering along the ceiling as you spot a familiar pathway, ones you’d been forced up when you were human. A human woman with bare feet and scrappy clothing, still shot through with remnants of sickness.

The great hall looms before you, and your pulse spikes, screaming for you to loose hell on the people within. Your back arches in a stretch, easing your muscles into working condition, warmed from the earlier blood-bath.

With a flick of your great, thrashing tail, the massive doors cave in, being flung from the frame in a crash of dust and stone. It doesn’t even take a minute before the guards within are splattered upon the pristine walls, dripping blood and viscera onto pretty, marble floors. Staining the stained glass red.

The boy-king screams, a high pitched wail that grates on your ears as you slither through the hall, only to come to a stop at the foot of the dais, watching as an acrid smelling liquid drips from the too-large throne where he’s cowering. Blacked-out eyes flick through the room, but the advisor is no where to be found, fury lighting you ablaze, rage rippling through your soul as magic pulses through the room, shattering the glass, sending bloody fragments raining down on the gardens below.

You hardly feel his tiny bones crack beneath your palm, as simple as squashing a fly—the difference being you’d feel bad about the latter, stealing food from the spider. Hot flesh is crushed into the floor, leaving a mushy pile of indiscernible parts dripping from the throne, iron mixing with ammonia.

Again your nostrils flare, heart pounding with bloodlust as you search for the man who’d sentenced you. Who’d been responsible for casting you out into that forest, beyond reason.

A broken cry sounds from the entrance, and you whip around, rubbery maw sharpening into a grin as you find your meal, held upon narrow, shaky legs that wouldn’t make more than a mouthful. His eyes are round and terror-filled as they take in the hell-beast you’ve become.

Shadows writhe at your wings, crowing them in a corona of darkness, tail thrashing and tearing at stone.

The advisor stumbles back on doddery old legs, stumbling and tripping as he falls on his bony behind, hands scrambling as he frantically pushes back from you, like a baby trying to crawl away. Razor-sharp teeth glitter, kept clean and pristine, waiting to be used.

You prowl forward, excited to take your time stripping his skin from his skeleton, feeling it peel from his flesh. Claws click on the marble floor, ticking like the second hand of a clock as you revel in the rising scent of his terror, so many wonders afforded to you with this new body.

His mouth opens in soundless scream, a wet gasp rasps from dry, old lips, hot breath wheezing from sinking lungs.

You press your paw over his chest, pinning him to the ground as his skeletal hands weakly rub at your fingers, trying to remove the great things from spearing him entirely as they curl into his back, tearing at sagging muscle. You wish you could gloat, could tell him who you are, see if he remembers what he did to you. See if he remembers being the one to suggest leaving you to the devil you’d sold your heart to in order to be cured from the plague.

His eyes are wide and glassy…the old man with already fading hair and wrinkles that swallow his eyes beneath flaps of loose skin.

The memories pour in, the rope biting into your wrists, weakness coating your muscles…eyes as black as the devils. The look alone had been enough to have nausea roiling in your stomach, threatening to upend it right there on the marble floor you’d been shoved to. Eyes that had swallowed you whole—black like you’d never seen black. Dark as pitch.

(alarmingly void, more than anyone’s have any right to be…and lacking in definition. Just one solid layer glazing across the obsidian coloured surface. Depthless.)

Terror-stricken blue eyes stare up at you, watery and weak as they strain and bulge beneath the pressure on his chest.

Ice glazes through your veins, blood freezing over just as a wave of pure power slams into you, throwing you back through the hall.

Your head cracks back against the marble, spine aching from the shockwave and you slide down onto the floor, collapsing behind the throne before slithering back to your feet, snaking down the dais. Eyes locking with cocoa.

There’s a brief moment of sorrow that flashes. It’s hardly noticeable, and passes before you can fully grasp it, but it’s enough for her to slip in.

Elain raises her thyrsus, knocking its base against the floor, a thrumming wave of power gathering in a shield as your talons clack against the stone, warily prowling forward, mouth watering to sink into his flesh. Cocoa flicks through the room, finally taking in the carnage—the blood splatters, and splintered fragments of bone dripping from the dais you’re standing on. The warped and crushed corpse of the young king.

“What have you become?” She breathes vehemently, delicate brow narrowing over cold eyes, shields rising up and locking down, sceptre spinning in her hand as she sets one foot before her, the other behind at five o’clock, pointed outward. A snarl rips from your chest, watching as she takes up a defensive position between you and the exit—between you and the rasping advisor. Between you and your meal.

Before you can think properly, you’re darting forward, faster than a shadow, shooting across the floor as talons crack down on her shield of magic, the staff appearing as a way from her to convert her power into a weapon. Burning rage pounds through your skull, yearning to obliterate as magic gathers at your fingertips, rubbery lips stretching into a grin when it coats your claws, slicing through her barrier.

She’s thrown back in the room, robes skidding through cooling pools of blood until she reaches the threshold of the caved-in doors. Glee beats in your chest as you skitter forward, the sound of leather stretching as your grin widens, showcasing gleaming rows of razor-sharp teeth, ready to rip and shred to your pleasure. The staff has been knocked from her tender hand, and she grapples for it as you scuttle closer, speeding up the closer you get until darkness is building at your back and your wings are flared in a display of dominance, keeping her pinned to the bloody marble with shadows.

Incisors glitter in the light as your jaws part above her, preparing to bite down and end when steel wreathed in fire slides beneath your throat. “Step away from her.”

Eyes flick up, jaw locking as stinging, searing pain lances down your right collar bone, bleeding into your shoulder as your gaze locks with a whirring, mechanical eye. Golden and russet narrows with unforgiving fury, glowing like the flames from a forge as the blistering steel raises in warning before pulling back. Fire sparks across the floor, aiming for your limbs to burn you alive as he spins, making to slice the blade across your throat.

Darkness flares out of nowhere, colliding with rampant and furious fire, and you’re thrown back as another figure joins the fray. One that’s packed with deadly power, great wings wreathing his back as he looms over Lucien.

“Step aside, Azriel,” the male hisses, flame licking up the walls, heat sweltering.

“Put the blade away, and I’ll consider letting you keep your other eye,” he drawls lowly, syllables dragging like gravel from his throat. Fury gathers in the room, settling like oil over your skin, so heavy and greasy you can feel it practically weighing you down.

“Look around,” Lucien snarls, flame deepening with sizzling rage, held in check by a leash of thread. “Your mate has killed dozens of humans, as well as trying to murder mine.” His power flares on that last word, as if instinct is roaring at him to protect but he’s restraining it. “Put. Her. Down.”

Even through your haze of anger, the words clang through, reverberating across leathery skin, hackles raising at the threat.

Azriel shifts on his four great paws, wings flaring menacingly as a snarl rips from his throat, settling between you and the male. “You look after yours and I’ll look after mine,” he growls, darkness taunting flame, building steadily at his back.

A little further behind Lucien, Elain shakily pushes up from the pool of blood, a trembling, pale hand reaching for her staff, brimming with a pale light. With a flick of her wrist, the magic flares, beaming like a spear for the unprotected underside of his throat. Faster than thought, faster than instinct, you’ve shot across the marble, skittering beneath his front left paw, jaws snapping viciously as your own power grates against Elain’s before sending it careening off, gouging marble from the crumbling castle.

Tension ripples as the four of you are locked in on one another, senses keyed to the slightest movement, waiting for the coil to snap so the others can be torn to shreds.

The room explodes in glittering black, razor sharp talons clicking skittishly as power splits your two sides apart, blasting a wall of physical adamant between you, just translucent enough for Elain and Lucien’s figures to be wrought in shadow.

Azriel’s body lowers, both in a bow and in a circle of protection, paw shifting forward to keep you tucked beneath him. Instinctively you follow, curling back into his power, tail pulled tight—ready to lash out.

The darkness simmers away, revealing the tall, powerfully hewn figure of a male. Wickedness practically drips from his finery, raven-black hair pushed neatly back from his brow as sharp violet eyes settle coldly over the scene. A wave of dread ices across your skin, a weight dropping in your belly as you take in the immense power that’s rolling from his shoulders—a god.

Azriel doesn’t so much as breathe different, but his shadows gather beneath you, thick and lush like a rug of black wool, drawing his magic in closer as a circle of protection. A suggestion of defence.

“Azriel.”

The voice is deep and icy, dripping with malice, and the spines at your back prickle. Your own magic weaves through with his shadow, hiding in plain sight but ready to spring free as fear pools in your stomach.

Violet flicks through the room, taking in the splatters of blood, dripping viscera, then his gaze locks with yours. It’s a new kind of fear, you realise, being singled out by a being so much greater than you are, and you shrink away, pushing back into the protective power of the male above you. His stance broadens, covering more of you as great paws settle further apart, braced for sudden movement.

“What happened here?” The god doesn’t remove his attention from Azriel, but it’s clear the question is not addressed to him. The shadowy wall fades entirely, and your gaze shifts to the two figures opposing you, Elain having gotten to her feet, robes soaked in blood, staff gripped dismally in her hand with grim determination.

“Your brother let his mate run free,” Lucien replies lowly, tone like gravel—lined with restraint. “She tried to kill Elain.” Fire brightens before again banking, as if being soothed by the reminder of her presence at his side. Sharp, violet eyes once again cut to you, “is that right?”

You manage a quiet snarl, fear drumming in your pulse, paws shifting like a great cat preparing to pounce. Muscle coils tight with terror at being faced with the god, having his attention settle like ice over skin, preparing to rip away. His sharp eyes narrow on you, and you pull your magic tighter.

Is that right? He repeats, and you recoil into Azriel’s chest, flinching as the god’s voice echoes through your mind. Through your peripherals you can see as a frail body starts to life, gangly limbs trying to heave up his torso as the king’s advisor return to consciousness. Once again you shift on your paws, hissing viciously at the trembling man, blood and vomit coating his front as he takes in the four beasts before him. Five.

“She wouldn’t kill Elain,” Azriel growls from above you, shifting his paw to block your line of sight from the advisor. “I wasn’t asking you,” your god replies coldly, attention pinning you to the ground as violet bores into you. “She won’t be able to speak yet,” Azriel bites out, power thrumming at your paws, curling up your arms, brushing at the leathery hide you’ve been coated in. “She changed less than a week ago.”

“Then why weren’t you watching her?” Lucien growls sharply, eyes blazing.

The god casts a warning glance at the fiery male, but does no more than that, evidently also seeking an answer.

Azriel shifts above you, and you can feel the oiled gears of his mind clicking effortlessly, spinning his information into a silky web. “I was,” he growls, gaze turning to the god appealingly. “You know as well as I do everything is well warded. The only way she could have escaped is if someone let her out.”

“If someone let her out?” Lucien echoes disbelievingly. “Those wards are practically impenetrable. It would be impossible to unlock them from the outside.”

“Lucien’s correct,” the god drawls icily, gaze drifting to Azriel’s, warning glittering in their depths. A timer counting down as his patience begins to fray, the metallic scent heavy in the air. Azriel makes no obvious moves, but you can feel his frustration curving around your bones, wrapping you tight to him.

It seems the god senses his hesitance, pouncing on the second of indecisiveness. “Don’t try and hide things from me,” he bites out coldly, power weighing heavily in the air, so intense it sets your iron stomach churning.

A muscle feathers in Azriel’s jaw, before charcoal eyes raise to violet. “She wasn’t going to make it,” he growls lowly, resentment coating his tongue. “Elain can attest to that.”

Violet flicks to hardened cocoa expectantly, but the priestess is already watching you, peering beneath a strained brow. Her jaw is tight, but she gives a curt nod, fingers still bone white around her staff. “That’s true. We both saw her before,” she answers, gaze briefly meeting Lucien’s. “She was feverish and already going into delirium. It’s unlikely she was going to survive.”

The god’s attention returns to Azriel, the edges of his irises slightly thawed but remaining hard.

“She was going to die,” Azriel repeats, words pulled taut as they leave his tongue. “She had to go through the Pit, or she wouldn’t have survived.” The three figures stiffen preternaturally, colour draining as something cold and awful settles uneasily across the room.

“The wards were likely weakened from residual magic,” he grits out, still keeping you wrapped beneath his shadows, as if trying to keep you hidden from them. “Enough for someone to get through.” You press a little closer into the lines of his body, tension beginning to drip away, releasing its hold on your heart. “They’d already tried to take her once. They thought this would be their chance to get back at me.” Shadows writhe across the marble floor, flaring with concealed rage, fury manifesting in his power.

“You think your brothers caused this?” The god asks slowly, eyes once again touring the room, filled with drying gore. Azriel nods, and you begin pulling slowly at your magic, gathering it close to your skin, preparing to jump.

Tension and fear knots your stomach, twisting in vicious carvings as you keep yourself coiled tight beneath the solid frame of Azriel’s form, keeping pressed tight.

Cold violet flicks over the squashed carcass of the young king, distaste passing through his features. “You’re telling me your brothers created a gap in your wards, and she managed to do all this before you noticed?” The god drawls skeptically, voice clean-cut like glass. Azriel’s talons pierce the marble floor. “She went through the Pit,” he repeats lowly, “she’s much stronger than—”

The advisor starts in your peripherals, body jerking to life as the contents of his stomach is heaved upon the floor.

Your tail cracks like a whip, coil snapping free, splattering pieces of flesh against the already blood-caked windows.

Body obliterated in the blink of an eye, before curling back tight to your paws.

Silence buzzes across the room, four pairs of wide eyes watching as bits of intestine drip from the sill, pooling in a gouged-out puddle in the floor. Almost immediately Azriel’s own tail is curling around you comfortingly, shadows stroking at your sides as if to lull you back into a state of ease, soothing the wild drum of your heartbeat, tail twining with your own.

Cold power raises from the floor, darkness thrumming in warning as tension buzzes in your ears, having them flatten against your head.

“How much blood did you give her?” The god’s tone puts fractures into your bones, like rock grinding against rock, grating on your soul.

“As much as she would take,” Azriel replies quietly, and you feel his attention brushing affectionately over your leathery skin. Silence reigns heavily, stretching out as you huddle back into his power, wanting to escape from the immense power of the god.

“You did what?” Elain breathes, eyes wide as she stares at Azriel, grip tightening on her sceptre. She seems to be the only one of the three capable of formulating a response, something blazing in her eyes. “She was going to die, Elain,” he snarls protectively, body settling closer to you. “Because you neglected her,” she hisses, brown eyes cold and hard as they bore into the male. “You plucked her up out of her life, you refused to properly care for her, you were the one who refused to teach her anything because she wasn’t what you wanted.”

Azriel’s snarl is like thunder breaking across the heavens, marble trembling beneath your claws, and you settle against the sound.

Yet it doesn’t seem to bother the priestess.

“If she was the one who tore all these people to shreds,” she breathes, pale blue light blazing from her staff. “It is because you put that anger into her.”

——————————————————————————————————————————————

general taglist: @myheartfollower @tcris2020 @mali22 @amygdtjhddzvb @sfhsgrad-blog @needylilgal022 @hannzoaks @hnyclover

az taglist: @azrielshadows1nger @jurdanpotter @positivewitch @nightcourt-daydreaming @assassinsblade @marvelouslovely-barnes @v3lv3tf0x @kalulakunundrum @vellichor01 @throneofsmut

[carpenoctem-if]

Carpe Noctem - Intro Post

DEMO - tba

You are a nobody. A supposedly ordinary human in a world full of powerful beings. Your life is all in all pretty average if not bordering on mind-numbing, like watching paint dry... That is until you were kidnapped and tossed into one especially small carriage to be delivered somewhere only the ancients knew of.

From now on nothing will ever be the same and you need to adapt to the ever-changing outside world as fast as possible. All the while trying to decipher your past and with that your part in an every-growing political conflict that borders to develop into an all out war the world has yet to see.

General content warnings: Bigotry & prejudice, horror elements, interspecies awkwardness, explicit language, depictions of violence, injuries, blood and death, explicit sexual content (if selected), flashbacks of a dark past to unveil, sprinkled with some homophobia here and there & general an unfair treatment of people with disabilities.

FEATURES

-> customizable MC (name, pronouns, appearance, identity)

-> semi-set personality due to evolve (MCs reclusive upbringing forces you to start as someone that's not entirely comfortable with other people and as such you'll be able to choose coping mechanisms your MC will use to compensate such a deficit)

-> 5 characters to romance (3 in book 1, not sure if the other two will follow, they'll probably be fully romanceable in book 2)

-> POVs of the ROs included

-> an open-minded author that is inclined to change some NPCs to fully fledged ROs depending on the general opinion/wishes of readers

-> an emotional roller coaster, all in all nothing for ppl that want a light-hearted theme

-> later on you'll be able to choose part of your race (vampyres, merpeople, demons, shapeshifters, phoenixes -and many more) & with that you can determine and further develop your special skillset. Your heritage will reward you with quite different flavour texts for every possible race there is, so yes. It will matter greatly what you chose. And each of the available races will have disadvantages that could prove quite...fatal in certain situations.

romanceable characters:

the master [Alois|Alice|Alix] (m|f|n) 24 winters

An aloof demeanor at the first glance, A has a cold, strangely shrouded gaze. They're reclusive as fuck, so there isn't much the general population knows about them. Oh. And A is your esteemed master -as if any of you actually want this dynamic... A seems to hate you and your position even more, especially the hidden context it supplies to everyone they meet...

A has almond-shaped silver eyes that always seem distant and unfocused. They have defined cheek bones with mostly soft facial features and quite long, silver hair that is often tied to a simple ponytail. A wears fine dark clothing without other prominent features to despict their wealth.

Content warnings for A's route: denial of feelings aka one of the slowest burns imaginable, domestic violence, implied/referenced rape/non-con, anxiety attacks, self-harm, angst & hurt/comfort

the protector [Leto] (m|f|n) too many to count

Leto is a raven-like creature most would describe as monstrous-looking. They are rarely seen and the few moments they are, death is certain. For many commoners it's enough to see one of Leto's black feathers to warrant a swift escape.

Their past eludes them and you have to wonder - why does some antics of them seem kinda...familiar?

Content warnings for Leto's route: survivor-guilt, body dysphoria, angst, captivity & enslavement, torture, ptsd

the assassin [Zane|Zoey] (m|f) 28 winters

Z is everything their mother wanted them to be. Her own personal weapon. One she is now inclined to use for her vendetta against you.

They have dark brown hair with intelligent hazel green eyes that seem to observe their surroundings constantly. Z was raised with stories about you, stories you know nothing about. How can it be that they seem to know more of you and your family than you yourself?

Should it worry you that they sound extremely resolute in stating their sole purpose is to rid the world of your existance?

Content warnings for Z's route: enemies to frenemies to lovers, eating disorder, alcohol-addiction, a tendency of morbid jealousy, past emotional abuse & manipulation

??? [redacted]

??? [also redacted]

more info tba

Small note of the author:

Everything is slow burn in this - even the character customization, cause I want to add those moments seamlessly into the story.

I tend to take my time. You can expect me to heavily focus on the characters and their feelings, with a slight disregard to describing the environment and such. I work with minimalistic efforts to still give a sense of what I imagine everything to be but with the intention to leave fine details to the reader's own imagination.

I'll try to be considerate of everyone's preferences, especially in the more kinky parts of the story. There'll be versions for more assertive characters as well as more passive one's. Though I should add that the ROs all have their own set of bias that they prefer. However there will be growth throughout the story, including that.

The gravity of your choices will intensify throughout book 1, especially as you get to know the Circle and the Court and every other political hive of intrigue.

And yes. You can die. The ROs can die. Almost everyone will be able to at some point, I guess. Though I don't like the idea of writing a total distopia, don't expect me to change my mind regarding that one that easily.

More infos will be added over time. I'll post lore snippets of my sketchbook soon, like the worldmap, the general outlines of the Circle & the Court, the different races and such.

Asks are welcomed.

[rainstormwrite]

Good news.

Hello, everyone! I come bearing incredibly good news…

I've finally finished writing the update.

Not only that, but I've also already rewritten POVs and adjusted clunky scenes, meaning that the update is ready to be released.

I would've probably released it without warning you all, so it would've been a surprise, but I just want to give you some heads-up.

Even though the whole project is now over 260k words, the actual amount of content that was added in terms of singular playthrough is somewhere around 15 - 25 full pages (very approximately since I've already lost count because of all that branching and re-reading the same content over and over again), depending on the route and some other variables. As you can guess, this is due to the overwhelming amount of branching, the different personalities of the MC, the changes between said personalities, and stuff like that. To add to that, a big cause for such a large word count increase is the number of times I had to copy and paste some parts of the scene to make slight changes. So, in many places, the content is not entirely new, but rather slightly altered because, at that moment, I couldn't find an optimized approach to make some scenes changeable depending on your choices without copy-pasting them.

So, this whole situation is not very typical, so to speak, because in some other cases, this amount of words would've sufficed for a whole book already. But, in my case, it's just… one conversation. Yes, you've heard that right.

Basically, all that this update contains is the encounter with the crowd that the MC sees after exiting the hut. The new content ends right after the said encounter ends.

After you choose your approach to said conversation (personality of the MC at that moment, put in other words) you then also choose one of the three routes (tell lie #1, tell lie #2, tell the truth). After that, you only get some choices when something that may compel your MC to change what they wanted to do mid-way happens.

I want to highlight that, you don't really get to decide what exactly your MC says on each page. The tone of how they speak and their opinions about subjects and people are all derived from the prior choices you made, starting from whether your MC shook Theo's hand and told the group the truth and ending with whether your MC went into the tunnel and what they thought of Philip's/Burchard death… The MC's behavior may change very drastically just because of one choice you made earlier.

I'll admit, this is a very experimental approach from my side, but that allows me to shape your MC into a full-fledged, believable character without it feeling like you don't have control over them. Maybe my words don't convey my point exactly, but I guess you'll see it with your own eyes.

There are different sets of choices to make in the routes, even though sometimes they may be similar. Each route uncovers some information that the others didn't, so it adds to the replayability.

All in all, this may be a somewhat polarizing update due to my decisions, but I fully understand that and am of course willing to hear your feedback about the new content.

Give me somewhere around 24 hours so that I can set everything up and roll out the update to you all.

Also, there were some old questions in my inbox that I couldn't answer because, quote 'your blog was restricted by our anti-spam control' (I found that out one month and a half later after sending a ticket to Tumblr's support), so here are those questions:

Yeah, I'm okay. In fact, now I'm okay more than ever due to me finally finishing writing this update.

Thanks for catching that! It's fixed now!

Sorry, you two, that I'm answering you only now.

[dyslexicandakeyboard]

Today's controversial take is that Bruce's character isn't assassinated all that much by writers, fans just don't like him as a fully fledged character with flaws in his own right.

Like I know Gotham War just happened but the last time (in my memory) he ever was physically abusive with the kids was Forever Evil/That-One-Panel-Where-Bruce-punched-Dick-New52 and UTRH/RHATO 25. It's been a good 10ish years since he hit Dick and a good 18 to 9 years since any of Bruce's and Jason's fights.

And no, Bruce hitting Tim doesn't count, that was explained.

That is a good couple of years between each event.

Bruce is a flawed individual, he's a flawed parent. Bruce has hurt his kids, physically and emotionally. Doesn't mean his abusive. I'm not saying Bruce never hit his kids, what I'm saying that it was more complex than that.

All this crying about how editorial doesn't want Bruce to be a good dad but that fandom does is petty bullshit. If you pick up a random issue Bruce ain't beating his kids or emotionally abusing his kids. You just don't read and expect the Batfamily to have Hallmark family dynamics.

No one wants to read the actual arc but they'll read out of context panels which dumb down the conflict.

Bruce hitting Dick during Bruce Wayne: Murderer was not abuse, they were fighting. Bruce hitting Dick during the Court of Owls was abuse. Bruce hitting Dick during Nightwing 30 wasn't abuse. Bruce hitting Dick during New Titans 55 was abuse. Just two times.

Bruce fighting Jason during UTRH wasn't abuse, it was self-defence. Bruce fighting Jason during RHATO wasn't abuse, they were fighting.

Bruce is consistently portrayed as a good but flawed parent. Even after post-crisis, even after Death in the Family, you will find good moments of Bruce being fatherly.

Such as (mind my shitty quality phone pics)

Knightfall

Robin

Batgirl

Batman: Fugitive/Batman: Murderer

Grayson

War Games (Funny I know)

obi there many more examples but I haven't read all comics nor do I have them on hand (Scrolling though pages is veery exhausting. Hashtag firstworldproblems)

[imasadboi]

Raise The Stakes

Next

.

CW: Blood, violence, stalking, kidnapping, death, vampirism, sex, blood drinking, drugging (with blood), ooc Leon, cutting (palm), (more to be added as series goes on).

Summary: Leon, a vampire turned against his will, believes he can get everything he lost through you. He will have you, not even your fiancé would deter him.

Word Count: 1,257

.

Hi, this will be my first fully fledged series. I've been working hard on this for this past month and intend to do weekly uploads. (If not weekly, then bi-weekly!) I hope you enjoy and look forward to future chapters. And don't ask for pings, please. Simply follow my blog to get future updates.

That night still rings in his mind like discordant notes—the night he was turned. His gums ache and his hands clench into tight fists as the memory threatens to replay in detail. All it took for his family to be lost to the hands of Death was a rogue vampire, a spawn of the Devil. By the cruel hands of fate, he was spared and awoke to the grim sight of his mother’s throat torn to shreds and bloodied. His father had his head torn from his body, the bone sticking out from the gaping wound. His younger sister’s body was nowhere to be found—at first. It wasn’t even a short walk down the road until he saw the way that beast had torn his beloved sister’s dress apart before doing the same to her mortal flesh. He cried out in agony at what had befallen his poor family.

Worst of all, the scent of iron hung cloyingly in the air. His new hunger was made known to him in brutal fashion. His mind was befuddled, as both human and beastly instincts fought to dominate his actions. As his new instincts took over, his nails elongated almost painfully from the roots. His canines grew longer causing his gums to chafe from the rapid growth. Senses heightened and everything became too much at once; The thought to give in crossed his mind at that moment.

But the one thing that held him true despite his entire being changing; rage. Pure, unadulterated rage. Whether God had decided to show him mercy that night or not, it was due to this feeling that kept him tethered to his humanity. Even through unabating hunger and lines of drool slipping down his chin, he steadily buried each family member. As he sought to repair the wreckage of his family home, he noticed the silver chain that lay on the floor, its only pendant, a dainty cross. His fingers burned upon contact, before he ripped a piece of cloth from his already torn shirt and picked it up. He held it close to him for a moment before pocketing it. He wouldn’t rest until that vampire had paid for what he’d done.

Leon regains his bearings as he’s finally released from the memories of his past. From his palms, rivulets of blood flow freely. He quickly rids himself of his tight grip, nails no longer digging into soft flesh. He grimaces at how he’s let 100 years slip by without any progress. Sure, he’s hunted down other vampires yet the one he looks for never seems to be around. He shakes his head in frustration, his obsession beginning to crawl back into his mind like a decrepit parasite when a wave of nausea washes over him. Hunger. How long ago did he feed? He can’t recall. Time no longer ties him to this plane of existence. What would be the point in keeping track of the seasons, of the sun rising and falling when he can no longer feel its rays on his skin—skin that’s become paler with each passing day.

He grimaces how foreign his thoughts have become, how less human he’s become. But now’s not the time to be thinking of his ever fading humanity. He needs to eat. All he really needs is himself, so he gets up from the throne he’s sat on. He dusts off imaginary dirt from his lap and sets off to find yet another poor animal to claim as his victim. If there was one thing he’d swore never to do was feed on a human. 

Can’t really uphold that promise if I keep starving myself, he thinks. I wonder if it’ll be wolves or unsuspecting deer on the menu tonight. 

Finally out of the castle—one that was so graciously empty—his eyes linger onto the forest that lies ahead. Just as he’s about to take a step, he hears hushed voices. Part of him feels annoyed that someone’s decided trespassing was a suitable nighttime activity but his curiosity also gets the best of him. He makes his way towards the voices, keeping to the shadows. 

“We really shouldn’t be out here,” a voice says quietly, yet with the night so hushed, they might as well have been yelling. 

“We’ll be fine, you know you don’t have to be scared with me around, right?”

Leon hears the hesitance in the other’s voice just before they speak, “I know but there’s been more animal attacks as of lately. I don’t want anything bad to happen.”

“You have such an imagination, but that’s what I’ve always liked about you. I didn’t want us to miss this chance to be together with all the wedding planning that’s been going on. I’ve missed you. Missed us being alone together.”

Leon feels a pang of jealousy as his confliction has yet again robbed him of something so precious. Something he as a vampire will never get to have again. He moves to get a closer look at the couple before him when he carelessly steps on a layward branch. He holds his breath, more  out of habit than anything, as he quickly moves to obscure himself.

“Did you hear that?” The first voice asks.

“Hear what?” Leon hopes the second person might convince the both of them to continue with their walk but the first voice pipes in again.

“Is anybody there?” Leon decides to keep quiet, hoping they both lose interest.

“See, it was nothing, let’s just keep walking. We only have so much time before we have to head back.”

Leon listens to the pair of footsteps walk away but that ache in his chest doesn’t seem to go away.

Would it really be so bad to keep an eye on them? Leon deliberates as his feet follow after them, I just have to make sure they stay safe. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to convince himself of, the morality of stalking after a couple or if he’s really doing this with their best interest at heart. 

He follows them for some time, keeping a good few paces behind so as to not arouse suspicion. It’s only when they stop to settle down in the grass does he catch sight of them both. The first he sees is a man, dark-haired and brown-eyed. He’s got a smile on his face as he talks to his partner, you. 

The moon hangs high in the sky and perfectly illuminates your being to Leon. His eyes widen a fraction as he takes in your appearance. The smile you reflect back at your partner tugs at his heart. He can’t help but want it for himself. He’d do anything to have it all for himself. A feeling cements itself in his brain, he had everything he loved taken away from him in an instant. But you, he could have you, right? It doesn’t matter that you’re engaged to be married.

You would be his, no matter what it took. But acting too hastily is ill-advised, he knows capturing you had to be done with care and planning. And most of all, he had to make sure nothing and no one would get in his way, that included your so-called fiancé.

He memorizes your scent carried over to him by the wind. A slight shiver runs down his spine. He lingers to take one more glance at you before departing. He makes quick work of dinner and walks directly back to his abode. His dead heart beating in anticipation of what’s to come.

[hauntedpenguinobservation]

Carpe Noctem - Intro Post

DEMO - tba

You are a nobody. A supposedly ordinary human in a world full of powerful beings. Your life is all in all pretty average if not bordering on mind-numbing, like watching paint dry... That is until you were kidnapped and tossed into one especially small carriage to be delivered somewhere only the ancients knew of.

From now on nothing will ever be the same and you need to adapt to the ever-changing outside world as fast as possible. All the while trying to decipher your past and with that your part in an every-growing political conflict that borders to develop into an all out war the world has yet to see.

General content warnings: Bigotry & prejudice, horror elements, interspecies awkwardness, explicit language, depictions of violence, injuries, blood and death, explicit sexual content (if selected), flashbacks of a dark past to unveil, sprinkled with some homophobia here and there & general an unfair treatment of people with disabilities.

FEATURES

-> customizable MC (name, pronouns, appearance, identity)

-> semi-set personality due to evolve (MCs reclusive upbringing)

-> 5 characters to romance (3 in book 1, not sure if the other two will follow, they'll probably be fully romanceable in book 2)

-> POVs of the ROs included

-> an open-minded author that is inclined to change NPCs to fully fledged ROs depending on the general opinion/wishes of readers

-> an emotional roller coaster, all in all nothing for ppl that want a light-hearted theme

-> later on you'll be able to choose part of your race (vampires, merpeople, demons, shapeshifters, phoenixes -and many more) & with that you can determine and further develop your special skillset.

romanceable characters:

the master [Alois|Alice|Alix] (m|f|n) 24 winters

Aloof, cold eyes and reclusive as fuck. And your esteemed master -as if any of you actually want this dynamic... A hates you and your position, especially the hidden context it supplies to everyone they meet...

A has silver eyes that always seem distant, defined cheek bones with mostly soft facial features and long, silver hair. A wears fine dark clothing without other prominent features to despict their wealth.

Content warnings for A's route: denial of feelings aka one of the slowest burns imaginable, domestic violence, implied/referenced rape/non-con, anxiety attacks, self-harm, angst & hurt/comfort

the protector [Leto] (m|f|n) too many to count

Leto is a raven-like creature most would describe as monstrous-looking. They are rarely seen and the few moments they are, death is certain. For many commoners it's enough to see one of Leto's black feathers to warrant a swift escape.

Their past eludes them and you have to wonder - why does some antics of them seem kinda...familiar?

Content warnings for Leto's route: survivor-guilt, body dysphoria, touch-starved, angst, hurt/comfort, captivity & enslavement, torture, ptsd

the assassin [Zane|Zoey] (m|f) 28 winters

Z is everything their mother wanted them to be. Her own personal weapon. One she is now inclined to use for her vendetta against you.

They have dark brown hair with intelligent hazel eyes that seem to observe their surroundings constantly. They were raised with stories about you, stories you know nothing about. How can it be that Z seems to know more of you and your family than you yourself?

Should it worry you that they sound extremely resolute in stating their sole purpose is to rid the world of your existance?

Content warnings for Z's route: enemies to frenemies to lovers, eating disorder, alcohol-addiction, a tendency of morbid jealousy, past emotional abuse & manipulation

??? [redacted]

??? [also redacted]

more info tba

Small note of the author:

Everything is slow burn in this - even the character customization, cause I want to add those moments seamlessly into the story.

I tend to take my time. You can expect me to heavily focus on the characters and their feelings, with a slight disregard to describing the environment and such. I work with minimalistic efforts to still give a sense of what I imagine everything to be but with the intention to leave fine details to the reader's own imagination.

I'll try to be considerate of everyone's preferences, especially in the more kinky parts of the story. There'll be versions for more assertive characters as well as more passive one's. Though I should add that the ROs all have their own set of bias that they prefer. However there will be growth throughout the story, including that.

The gravity of your choices will intensify throughout book 1, especially as you get to know the Circle and the Court and every other political hive of intrigue.

And yes. You can die. The ROs can die. Almost everyone will be able to at some point, I guess. Though I don't like the idea of writing a total distopia, don't expect me to change my mind regarding that one that easily.

More infos will be added over time. I'll post lore snippets of my sketchbook soon, like the worldmap, the general outlines of the Circle & the Court, the different races and such.

Asks are welcomed.

[loosesodamarble]

Nostalgic Date

Summary: Nacht takes Josele out for a special date after he catches her reminiscing. Genre: romance Word count: ~900 A/N: This isn't a fully fledged fanfiction, more like an extended scenario. But I'm still tagging it with the fanfic tag because it's lengthy enough that I feel it's alright.

..........

One day, Josele is looking at some old pictures of her and the Faust twins. She takes her time admiring pictures of Nacht from his delinquent days. The bleached hair. The revealing clothes. The attitude. Nacht was sexy as hell back then and she's still thinking about it to this day.

Nacht finds Josele looking at the pictures and gets a bit self-conscious about his old look. He liked the way he looked back then. In the present, though, Nacht admits that he styled himself that way because it felt like a reflection of who he was: troublesome, irreverent, evil. It didn’t feel right to look exactly like the pure and good Morgen. Nacht still sometimes wishes he and Morgen weren’t identical twins.

Josele reassures him that the way he was back then and the way he is now, she loves Nacht all the same. As long as he accepts who he is, she'll love him.

Some time passes. Nacht has to go away for an extended period of time for work reasons. The day when Nacht is expected back home, he doesn't arrive. Concerned, Josele contacts him via communication device. Nacht answers but he's brief with her. "I'll be gone a little longer, but when I get back, I'll take you on a date. Promise." Josele accepts the offer.

Josele is at the base when another one of the Bulls, let's say Magna, finds her and is all "Miss Josele, there's this guy at the door asking for you. He seems like trouble if you ask me."

With her interest piqued, Josele checked through the window. She sees Nacht, but looking completely different. His hair is bleached once more. He's wearing fashion more in line with his delinquent past. It even looks like he's smoking a cigarette. Though he quit cold turkey after Morgen's death, to Josele’s knowledge at least. Josele goes outside to make sure she's seeing things clearly and it really is Nacht.

When Nacht looks at Josele with a flirty little grin. "What's the matter, babe? I told you I'd be taking you out when I came back, right?"

"I... Uh..." Josele's face lights on fire and she's flustered and not sure what to make of Nacht being like this. "Y-you did..."

Nacht tosses aside the "cigarette" he had in his mouth (it was just a lollipop stick) and saunters up to Josele. "What're you waiting for, babe, put on something nice and then we can hit the town in style."

Josele gets changed into something a little nicer for the date. She's still very unsure of what's going on but she finds herself liking Nacht’s act and looks forward to the date.

Nacht keeps up the cocky, flirty delinquent persona for the whole date. He's a little more daring and cheeky than he normally would be.

His arm is either around her shoulders or around her waist. And when his hand is down lower, he dares to give her ass a tap once in a while. He calls her "babe" or "doll." His flirtations are much more forward and a bit risque, perhaps even raunchy when Nacht leans in real close to whisper directly in her ear. At some point during the date, Nacht just pulls Josele into an alleyway for a spur of the moment make out session.

Nacht isn’t merely acting shameless and cheeky though. He’s also managing to blend the sass with more classically romantic gestures. He sneaks away for a moment only to surprise Josele from behind with a kiss on the cheek and the gift of a rose. One that was dyed black. "I got an aesthetic to stick to, babe. You understand, right?" Later, he buys Josele a crepe to eat as they walk. And when a bit of cream gets smudged on her cheek, he wipes it off for her and licks it off his thumb. "Not as sweet as you taste though." The wink when he says that makes Josele choke on the crepe.

It does feel like Nacht's old delinquent self is back, with a slightly softer edge. And the act is taking Josele’s breath away, making her blush and giggle like she’s a young girl again.

When Josele and Nacht finally return to the base, the facade finally comes to an end.

"So how was it, darling?" Nacht asks without an underlying snark. The overly confident smirk he’d had during the date is replaced by his tender smile. "I hope I didn't make you uncomfortable."

"I wasn't uncomfortable at all! In fact, the date was..." Josele bites her lip before continuing. "A breath of fresh air. And somehow nostalgic too."

Nacht glances off to the side at that. "We weren't together back then..."

"But it was fun to experience what it might've been like." Josele takes Nacht by the hand and pulls him in for a kiss. When they part, she speaks again, "Thank you, Nacht. It really was fun." She reaches up to touch Nacht's bleached hair. "You really do commit, huh?"

"Only for you, darling."

Josele is happy that Nacht has accepted that he can be a good man despite his past faults. But she will readily admit that seeing him be a bad boy again, just for one day, has made her fall in love with him all over again.

[blitzor0de0]

Anyways! As proof that I can in fact write Vox, have a little RadioSilence thing I wrote.

Summary: Rumours say the revered Radio Demon is back in town, how does his old pal Vox react?

cw: semi rewrite of episode 2, minor staticmoth, angst, Vox's crippling insecurity issues, unreciprocated love

word count: 1.2k

Foolish One

How fucking dare he?! After all, they had been through, their business endeavours... Their friendship? Was it all for null? Was it his fault…? Fuck no, he was the best, nothing was ever his fault.

Said tumultuous thoughts plagued the Technology overlord daily. Ever since that wretched Radio Demon disappeared from Vox’s life, he had been void of all meaningful emotion.

Rather Vox drove himself mad with his own work, drowning in it to avoid having any time to dwell on his own thoughts. He spent more time with Val and Vel. Their partnership eventually becoming more of a casual sexual relationship with the doll, and a full-fledged relationship with the moth. Though, neither of which could fully satiate him.

In life, Vox wasn’t one for relationships, he was enamoured with his own work, much akin to what he had been doing these past 7 years.

Greed, power, fame.. It was all that ever pleased him, both in life and death.. His intricate way of words, how seamless it was to manipulate someone, especially with modern day’s technology.. A few advertisements here and there, and VoxTech stocks would be booming.

That was until he met Alastor, together they could take over Hell and be the true leaders instead of that pathetic excuse for a king, Lucifer. The media demons, covering both radio and tv.. The power the two would hold would be immeasurable.. Oh how Vox longed for the days where his dreams contained those two things. Power.. and Alastor..

Alastor.

To say Vox's relationship with the Radio Demon was bittersweet would be an understatement. He despised him, the thought of seeing Alastor being hurt brought the TV immense joy He despised that deer. Seeing him in pain would be glorious.. Dishevelled, bloody… The thought alone sent a shiver up Vox’s spine..

But yet, his stomach would drop ever so slightly if said thoughts weren't caused by him.

If anyone else was to injure Alastor, they'd have to be God himself.. No one struck more fear into people than Alastor.. No one was stronger than Alastor… Right..? Well, at least no one had made it known if that were the case.

Vox had to be the one to cause Alastor’s suffering. He of all people deserved it. That asshole was the one to betray him after all.. Abandoning him when he needed him most…

Raindrops pattered against the window, creating a soothing harmony. Hopefully it was lulling most inhabitants of Pentagram City to sleep.. Humans did always have a tendency to find great comfort in the rain, even searching for things such as 'Relaxing rain sounds to sleep to' or other types of white noise. The repetitiveness of the rain did reduce stress, but on nights like these, Vox found himself wide awake.

Mindlessly staring out the window from his bed, Vox let out a small sigh.. Was it out of frustration, from sadness, longing? Vox himself couldn't pinpoint it, perhaps it was an accumulation of all those, and maybe more.

Soft snores echoed in the almost barren room. Ah.. Right. Val was here, Vox had almost forgotten, being so lost in his thoughts.

Rumours had spread like wildfire around Pentagram City, rumours of Alastor being back in town, that he's been lurking about..

Vox had eyes and ears everywhere within the city, and somehow without fail, Alastor had managed to escape from every lens.

The rumours were even nonsensical things such as him helping out the Princess of all people?

That made no sense at all.. Scouring through his thoughts files, dating back at least two decades ago, not once did Alastor ever mention growing close to the Princess, the subject of all their discussions regarding the royal family was solely focused on Lucifer and how to kill him, or kidnap him, torture him..

It made no sense.

Even then, if Alastor truly was back in town, why wouldn't he visit, did their final conversation linger on Alastor's mind too?

Vox felt sick to his stomach reminiscing on it. A foolish mistake on his behalf. Yes, of course he tried to invite Alastor to join the Vees.. to which Alastor rejected. That pissed him off..

But even worse, Vox confessed his love for Alastor that very same day.

After working together for so long, Vox had grown to admire Alastor, Vox wasn't one to admit when he felt inferior to someone, but even without words, it was obvious to both overlords.

Admiration turned into idolisation. And idolisation turned into infatuation.

Many moons had passed since Vox’s realisation of this.. frankly, rather embarrassing crush of his. Words weighed heavy on his shoulders of how he would confess, if he was to do that at all.

But one thing was clear, even in the present day. Those feelings would never leave him.

Those words haunted Vox.. How meekly he sputtered out “I think I love you” after plotting their next business deal together.

He planned exactly what to say, why didn't he stick to it?! This internal battle is something Vox fought with every day.

But one thing confused Vox more than anything.. Why did Alastor only laugh before continuing their discussion?

Was it to ridicule him? Brush it off? Or was it a knowing laugh?

With being a Television, Vox held the capability to record his every day life, typically he would delete the recordings by the end of the day, or trim it so only relevant and important parts remain, but Alastors laugh, his own final goodbye to Vox, had never been deleted, in fact. It plays in his dreams every night. It meant too much to him.

Without realising it, said recording had been echoing throughout the room, waking up his lover in the process.

With a grumble, Val finally opened his eyes, feeling himself growing crazy from the laugh track repeating for the past five minutes. “Voxy, I swear if you do not stop playing that shitty deer’s laugh, I'll castrate you.”

Well.

That's certainly a way to snap someone out of their thoughts.

“Oh.. Sorry, I didn't realise it was playing.” Vox replied, too tired to put up much of a fight. “I'll just get some work done, sorry for waking you.” And with that, he got up and left for his surveillance room.

Rather uncharacteristic of him to just up and leave without even a small spat, even Val noticed. But the moth needed his beauty sleep after all, so paid no mind to it… He'll remember in the morning… probably.

Within no time at all, Vox had began scanning all of his monitors, just trying to see a glimpse of his old friend.

Nothing.

Zilch.

Nada.

Where.Was.He.

Frantically, he started to reverse the security footage, how idiotic.. Why would he be out at this time of night? But as he reversed through the evening, then afternoon, morning… To yesterday, even ereyesterday. He was nowhere to be found.

Vox could only feel his frustration growing stronger and stronger as his screen started to glitch rather periodically.

Within enough time, with seven years of pent up frustrations, sadness, betrayal.. The overlord’s emotions boiled over in a cacophony of glitches and harsh sobs causing the city to have yet another blackout.

[seventh-district]

and it tastes so bittersweet

“You never answered my question, you know?”

Your words are more of a gentle nudge than an accusatory statement, hoping that maybe you can coax another secret out of the crypt of a man sitting before you.

You watch a small smile surface on his features, and he bites it back before it can grow into a full-fledged embarrassed grin.

“You’re gonna think I’m crazy if I tell you.”

The sincere hesitance in his voice pulls a surprised laugh out of you.

“Matthew, I already know you’re crazy.”

Your words are dripping with affection, no malice to be found behind them, and you watch as his shoulders begin to shake with poorly hidden laughter.

You spend a dark evening in bed with your effectively immortal partner (in crime). The two of you open up to one another, eventually getting a taste of each other in a way that you hadn't anticipated.

Dead Dove: Do Not Eat - Minors DNI

Pairing: Matt x Reader

Word Count: 7,446

Content Warnings: [spoilers for The Malenkee Saga] [SH / NSSI] [blood] [blood consumption] [death] [watching someone get shot] [bleeding] [violence] [vague & foggy traumatic memories] [scars] [DIY heart transplants] [implied murder] [sensual/sexual(?) desire that is hinted at but never acted upon aside from a few little kisses] [you and Matt are both wanted criminals, mentally unwell, and so, so in love with each other <3]

There isn't any explicit sexual content in this fic, but due to its dark and graphic nature, it's still NSFW. I wrote this from the same perspective with which I watched the entire Malenkee Saga - that of an adult. I've recently become aware that some people view Malenkee/Viewer as being a child. While I don't know why, given that Matt literally confesses his romantic interest in them at one point, and Jim clearly states that his videos aren't for kids, I still feel the need to clarify this.

This fic is not intended for anyone under the age of 18.

The small bead of blood trailing a thin line down along your forearm is darker than it used to be.

There’s plenty of things you’re sure you’ve forgotten in this life, numerous aspects of your past that you can no longer recall with any amount of certainty. After enough years pass, any particular memory you think back on could have just as easily been a vivid dream. But you’re quite certain that your blood used to be red.

It looked green, blue, violet even, as it coursed through your veins, thinly veiled by the skin of your wrist. But whenever that skin was opened and the liquid took the path of least resistance, flowing out in a slow, steady stream across your skin, it was always a deep, vivid red.

The liquid that’s now pooled in the crease of your elbow and is quickly congealing into a sticky, tacky puddle is solid black, though.

It’s not the lighting. Yes, the room is fairly dark, but even when you set your blade aside in favor of palming around in the sheets and find your phone, it’s flashlight shining a spotlight on your arm, it’s still black. You straighten your arm out, twisting it under the light, inspecting it with a dull sense of curiosity. This is far from the most unsettling thing you’ve ever witnessed, but still, it is a bit odd.

Why is it like that?

When you tilt your arm, you half-expect the little puddle of semi-liquid to follow gravity’s pull and slide downward, but it stays put, practically having adhered itself to your skin already. It hasn’t fully dried yet, refusing to spread out and tinge your skin a shade darker like it used to. It just clings to you, growing more viscous by the second.

After staring at your arm in dumb silence for a minute, trying to think of any reasonable explanation for this anomaly, your mind suddenly offers up an unpleasant yet helpful memory.

This is the same viscous black liquid that you watched escape from the bullet hole that one of those bastards put in Matt’s neck.

You felt it before you saw it, hot and wet, spraying across your face as your eyes snapped closed. It was the only sensation you could process aside from the deafening ring in your ears.

As the ringing faded out, it was replaced with the sound of Matt’s heartbeat growing ever weaker, ever slower. You blinked your eyes open to see him sprawled back on the floor in front of you, all but lifeless. The bottom of his mask had ridden up his neck, allowing you to clearly see the entry wound, slowly weeping a thick, black liquid.

Every following aspect of that memory remains as much of a blur to you as it felt when you experienced it firsthand.

Two pulses, yours rapid and his slowing, their alternating beats a pulsing pressure in your ears, your arms, your fingers.

The pressure on your wrists increasing exponentially before vanishing altogether as the chain holding your handcuffs together snapped, its links unable to withstand the newfound force you exerted upon them.

The floor falling away from you as your body rapidly stood, moving of its own accord, acting upon long-forgotten instincts to summon strength you didn’t know you could possess.

As the seconds passed in slow motion, you began to feel less like an onlooker and more… like a commander.

Your body the puppet, your mind the puppeteer.

Now, you’d been making attempts at reconnecting yourself with your unique set of abilities ever since Dimi had made you aware of them. You hadn’t managed to get very far with them, though. The fact that no one was entirely sure of the scope or extent of your abilities didn’t help matters either. How do you train a muscle that you can’t feel anymore?

Dimi had suspected that you may have been capable of more than just telepathy, suggesting that your mind very well might be capable of transferring more than thought. Perhaps it could transfer energy. Perhaps it could transfer force. Perhaps it could… manipulate your environment. Bend it to your will.

So, he’d worked with you to the best of his ability during the time you spent together, to try and help you find that power again. To your genuine shock, his suspicions had been correct.

Though, you never got farther than lifting so much as a paperclip by the time that he…

By the time that Matt…

By the time…

You hadn’t gotten very far with your telekinetic efforts.

For some strange reason that up until that point you had yet to understand, every subsequent encounter you had with Matt left you feeling… more like yourself. Or, maybe… more like some version of yourself that you used to be. For the life of you, you couldn’t describe why, but the more time he spent around you the more you found yourself capable of.

While you laid in the hospital recovering from your… memorable encounter with that man behind the white mask, you filled your free time with practice. Any time you were alone in your room, you’d put all of your energy and focus into lifting the heaviest objects you could see.

Anything to keep your mind off of whether or not you’d ever see Matt again.

The chair beside your bed was too heavy. As was any of the other actual furniture or equipment in the room. So you set your goal a bit lower. Working your way down from heaviest to lightest, you tried at every object in the room until you were able to move something.

You ended up spending a lot of time opening and closing drawers, as well as misplacing all manner of small objects that week, much to your nurse’s growing confusion, and Dr. Roberts’ subtle amusement.

After being released from the hospital, you were finally able to test your abilities on a wider range of objects, and from there your days consisted entirely of keeping yourself alive, honing your abilities, and finding Matt.

You hadn’t gotten much more adept by the time you found yourself in his company once again.

The events that played out that day gave you confirmation of what you’d already suspected, though.

He definitely made you stronger.

Simply being in close proximity had been enough for you to feel the effects, but you had no idea how much potential power he truly held until he literally pulled it out and handed it to you.

Looking back, you’re still not sure if it was the life he gave you or simply the traumatizing experience of having him shot point blank in front of you that spurred you on.

It was probably both.

You’re quite sure that he had no clue what he was doing when he offered you part of himself. Hell, you’re fairly certain that he doesn’t even know what he is, let alone what you are or what you’d be capable of if given access to whatever kind of power he holds.

He was genuinely just trying to give you one more chance at life.

There was no way in hell that you were just gonna take it and run. He’d saved your life, so it was only fair that you return the favor.

The two poor men they sent to execute Matt and take you in never stood a chance. Their guns flew out of their hands before they could even take proper aim at you, and the fight was over before it even began.

Bits and pieces of that day flash in your mind, blurry and out of order. You do your best to sort them.

You remember your nails tearing into skin.

You remember screaming. Begging. Prayer.

You remember muscle tearing, blood flowing, bones cracking.

You remember the weight of a human heart, cradled in your hands.

You remember the brush of your bloodied knuckles against Matt’s skin as your trembling hands lifted the tail of his shirt.

Even now, trying to parse through it all threatens to send you into another migraine, so you just let the memory settle back into the haze of your foggy mind.

The only thing that matters is that the two of you walked out of that room alive, with two hearts beating in each of your chests.

-

The bathroom door leading into your bedroom swings open slowly, allowing light and steam to flood in. The widening fraction of light spreading across your floor and the smell of soap on hot steam is enough to snap you out of your thoughts, and you realize you’re still sitting there pointing your phone’s light at your bloody wrist. You quickly turn it off, your pulse rapidly increasing at the realization that you’re about to be found out.

You snap your head around to face the motion in your periphery as Matt steps out of the bathroom, looking down as he ties a cloth rope around his waist, cinching his robe closed. As he does so, he speaks to you, meandering his way a few paces over towards the bed.

“You were right, doll! This extra robe of yours fits me quite well, don’t you think?”

His hands land on his hips as he raises his head in a proud display, gracing you with that unabashed grin of his that he has such a penchant for hiding.

This might be the first time that you regret being able to see his facial expressions, though.

You watch as his eyes dart from your face down to your lap, to the blood staining your exposed skin, to the way the light from the bathroom bounces off of the sharp, shining blade resting on your knee. You watch his expression shift from one of relaxed joy to one of panic in about two seconds flat.

He’s sat himself down on the mattress in front of you before he even speaks, his hands anxiously hovering over you, not sure what to do but needing to do something.

“Love, what happened? Why… what…”

His voice is soft and sincere when his eyes look back up and meet yours.

“Did you do this to yourself on purpose again?”

You didn’t have the decency to try and hide this from him, but you do have enough of it to at least look guilty at having been caught. Your head drops in a nod of confirmation, and you mutter a small “yeah… I’m sorry…”

You don’t see the slow shake of his head, but you hear the sadness in his voice when he speaks.

“No… no, you don’t need to be sorry, love.”

Your eyes catch the movement as his hand draws closer to your face, hesitating and hovering a few inches away.

“May I… touch you?”

You nod again slowly.

“Of course.”

You feel the pads of his fingers gently come to rest along your jaw, still soft and warm from his shower. He carefully angles your head up to face him.

“I just want to know why… Are you hurting? What’s… what’s upset you? What drove you to do this tonight?”

You close your eyes and shake your head slowly, contemplative. This side of your self injury is something you hadn’t really explained to him yet, so it’s understandable that he thinks it’s because something’s upset you.

How the fuck are you gonna explain that you were just doing it tonight because it feels good?

“I’m not upset, Matt. Honestly! I just…”

You dare to meet his gaze again and he’s still eyeing you with a level of concern that is far too sincere, far too unconditional, far too gentle.

You wouldn’t think a man that has taken as many lives as he has could ever look at you with such innocence in his eyes.

The saddest part is that you really don’t think it’s an act. He really is just… an enigma.

Well, it’s not like it’ll be the craziest thing he’s ever heard, right? Maybe… maybe he’ll understand.

“I’m not sure how I can explain this to you, honey…”

You glance away from his face, and your eyes catch on the way the sleeve of his robe has slid up his arm, exposing the skin there. Countless raised black lines litter his forearms, and you figure you’ll start out with a question for him.

“So, uhm… you’ve cut yourself many times, right?”

His eyes dart down to his exposed wrist, quickly flicking over towards yours, and then back up to meet your gaze again. He nods as he hums a questioning agreement.

“Mhm?”

“And… like we spoke about before, it’s usually because you’re trying to relieve some sort of pain that’s inside your mind, yeah?”

He nods again, brows furrowing in concern.

“Well, uhm, have you ever just… felt the urge to do it even when you weren’t in any pain? Maybe even when you felt good? Have you ever just… wanted to cut because it feels nice?”

He seems to take in your words for a moment, his gentle grip on your jaw loosening entirely as his hand lowers down to find your wrist instead. He carefully cups the back of your forearm, bringing it further up towards him to get a better look at the rapidly healing lines.

“Is that why you did this tonight? Because it feels good?”

There’s none of the mocking or confusion you feared would be in his tone.

“Yes. I just… it’s been a while since I’ve even done it, what with… everything that’s been going on lately. I’ve scarcely had the time! And- and it’s not like something happened today that upset me, I just… I don’t know. Sometimes something will happen that reminds me of how nice it feels to get hurt, and… I get that urge again.”

His fingers tap rhythmically against your skin as he hums in contemplation, eventually responding with another question.

“So… what happened? What reminded you of how good it feels?”

Oh, yeah. That’s a good question, actually.

Hah.

“Well…” you huff a small laugh at the memory.

“You remember how I was trying to cut that strip of hard plastic yesterday?”

His head nods curtly as he recalls your attempt, realization already seeming to dawn on his features before you can finish explaining.

You can’t help but smile at him a little.

Smart boy.

“And you remember how I gave up and tried snapping it in half with sheer force?”

It’s his turn to smile a bit, his lips quirking up to the side in a knowing smirk before he parts them and finishes your explanation for you.

“And it snapped, broke into several small, sharp pieces, which flew in all manner of directions.”

You nod your head in silence, letting him tell the rest of the story.

“One piece flew up and scratched you… right…”

He reaches up, carefully grazing the pad of his thumb across the apple of your cheek.

“…here.”

You can’t help but sigh and lean into his gentle touch, recalling the way he worriedly sat you down on the bathroom counter yesterday afternoon. You could feel his fingers trembling, muttering about your reckless behavior as he applied ointment to the very minor wound.

“That’s all it was, honestly. That’s all it took to make me crave this feeling.”

You both glance back down at your wrist, still cradled gently in one of his strong hands. Silence lingers for a moment, and you eventually break it with a scoff.

“That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?”

He pulls in a deep breath, his thumb grazing over a patch of your skin littered with old white scars. His voice is oddly calm, almost… resigned when he speaks.

“…no. I don’t think it does.”

Your gaze flicks back up to meet his eyes at his unexpected acceptance.

“You don’t?”

His eyes meet yours for a moment before he slowly releases his grip on your wrist. You lower it back down to rest on your lap as his focus shifts to his own arms, rolling one sleeve up to better showcase his scars.

“I don’t. I guess… I can understand it, in a way.”

It’s only now that you realize he never answered your question earlier.

“Yeah?”

“…yeah, but… it’s not exactly the same for me.”

You wait for a moment, expecting him to elaborate, but his silence remains. You can’t imagine what could possibly be so different about it for him that has him reluctant to tell you.

“You never answered my question, you know?”

Your words are more of a gentle nudge than an accusatory statement, hoping that maybe you can coax another secret out of the crypt of a man sitting before you.

You watch a small smile surface on his features, and he bites it back before it can grow into a full-fledged embarrassed grin.

“You’re gonna think I’m crazy if I tell you.”

The sincere hesitance in his voice pulls a surprised laugh out of you.

“Matthew, I already know you’re crazy.”

Your words are dripping with affection, no malice to be found behind them, and you watch as his shoulders begin to shake with poorly hidden laughter.

You add onto your response with a little more reassurance.

“And I’m right there with you, you know? I’ll be impressed if you’ve got some reason for doing this that genuinely shocks me. So, just hit me with it.”

He glances up at you again, his laughter fading as he composes himself, and you still see a trace of hesitance in his gaze.

“Do you really think there’s anything I could learn about you at this point that would make me shy away from you, Matt?”

His shoulders shrug, and he mumbles his response through his teeth as they chew nervously at his bottom lip.

“…maybe?”

You reach out to grab at his hand before catching yourself, pulling back a bit.

“May I touch you?”

Consent goes both ways, after all.

He nods his head in a definitive “yes” and you take his hand in yours with all of the same gentleness that he graces you with. You idly play with his fingers a bit as you lean forward, ignoring your own injury in favor of focusing on him.

“You don’t scare me, Matt. I know you’re different. Very different. But… so am I, you know? We may be two different kinds of strange, two different kinds of crazy, but… I think we compliment each other’s differences. Uhm… besides, I think we may be more similar at this point than either of us really know.”

His expression shifts to one of confusion at that, and you’re quick to divert the topic back to his confession.

“I promise you’re not gonna freak me out, regardless of your reason for cutting. You can tell me. I want to know.”

He pulls in a deep breath, steeling himself before he speaks.

“Well… it’s true that a lot of the time I do it to… relieve the pain… inside me.”

You nod your head, silently urging him to continue.

“That’s not the only reason, though.”

One of your hands leaves his, trailing your fingertips softly down the heavily scarred skin of his inner arm.

He looks away from you when he finally says it.

“I like the way it tastes.”

Your motions come to a halt at his words, and you sit there just blinking and breathing for a moment as it sinks in. His muscles begin to tense as his fear spikes, and he’s about to apologize, get up and run out of the room in embarrassment when you finally start laughing.

He doesn’t know if he wants the floor to swallow him whole or if he wants to sit here a little longer, taking in the sound of your beautiful laughter. Even if it’s at his expense.

You crane your neck around to look up at him from where you’ve nearly doubled over yourself in your laughter, and finally speak.

“Is that all? Is that what you were so afraid to tell me, Matt?”

His confusion is written all over his features as you lean back up, one hand coming to rest on your chest as you compose yourself. The poor thing sounds so confused when he answers you.

“Uhm, yes?”

You smile, shaking your head at him fondly, as you’re quick to put his fears to rest.

“That’s nothing, sweetheart! I promise you.”

The tension in his muscles visibly relaxes, and he manages to hold your gaze as he speaks this time.

“Really? It doesn’t… turn you off?”

You watch his eyes widen at his sudden realization of what he said, and he’s quick to clarify what he meant as a furious blush dusts his cheeks.

“Not- not like that! That’s not what I- oh, bloody hell…”

You bite back your knowing grin, maybe a bit too eager to watch him fluster himself like this.

“You know what I meant, don’t you?”

You decide to relieve him of his growing embarrassment, nodding as you reassure him.

“It’s okay, love, I know what you meant. And no, it doesn’t freak me out. Nothing like that, honestly. I actually… it’s… hm.”

His brow furrows a bit as you search for the right words.

“It’s curious.”

You think for a moment, before a silly question pops up in your mind. You’re teasing him with it before you can stop yourself.

“You’re not… a vampire, are you?”

Your lighthearted tone works in accomplishing your goal of getting him to relax a bit, and you watch him laugh a little as he shakes his head in denial.

“No, I don’t think so, pumpkin. It’s… not like I crave it, and I certainly don’t need it to live, I just… enjoy it?”

You hum in acknowledgement, failing to keep your mind from offering up a mental image of him making such a discovery. You picture him cutting his skin open just to bring his wrist to his open mouth, tongue lapping at the pitch black liquid that escapes the broken skin.

The… pitch black liquid…

He watches your smile fall as you lose yourself in your thoughts, a look of intense curiosity replacing it. Your head snaps up to look at him, stating the obvious like you’ve just had a revelation.

“You have black blood.”

He blinks at you for a moment, before slowly nodding his head in agreement.

“I do.”

“Has it always been black?”

He glances away from you, his eyes landing on nothing in particular as he gazes into the distance behind you, trying to recall.

“As far back as I can remember, yes.”

You hum as you think, knowing that you likely won’t be getting any solid answers as to the man’s true origins tonight.

No matter. Even if neither of you ever manage to figure out why he is… the way he is, that’s not something you’ll lose sleep over.

Looking down at your own wrist, and the now dried blood adhered to your skin, another question comes to you.

“What does it taste like?”

He seems a bit thrown off by your shift in question, but recovers quickly enough, trying to find a way to describe it.

“It’s… uhm… hm. I don’t know! It doesn’t really taste like any food I've ever eaten, so I don’t know how to compare it.”

Well, that answer is coming from a man who’s genuine favorite food is sopping wet bread, so, you’d be taking his description with a pinch of salt anyways.

With your curiosity now peaked, and with a newfound solid excuse to indulge yourself once again, you allow your impulsive nature to take over. Quickly picking the blade up again, you bring it to the soft skin of your inner arm, near your elbow where the veins are better hidden, and make one fast, shallow swipe across. Just enough to draw blood.

Matt nearly shouts your name in horror as he reaches for your hand holding the blade, keeping a firm yet gentle hold on your wrist.

“What was that for?!”

The panic in his voice is enough to make you wince in regret, and he catches your reaction, misinterpreting it as fear. He lowers his voice significantly, doing his best to keep it level.

“I’m… I’m not mad at you. I’m not going to hurt you. I just… what was that? Why’d you do it again?”

Your eyes stay locked on the fresh cut, watching the blood slowly leak from it. You note how it moves slower than usual, far quicker to congeal and coagulate, moving more like a quick-drying glue than normal human blood.

You act quickly, before it can dry any further, bringing your arm up to your mouth and pressing your tongue flat against your skin. Dragging it upwards, you chase the short trail it made all the way back to the source, sliding the tip of your tongue across the cut a few times before pulling away.

You close your eyes, taking a moment to focus on the taste.

…

He was right. It doesn’t taste like anything you’ve had before.

If you had to compare it to something, the closest you could get would be…

“Bittersweet.”

Your eyes snap open as you utter the word, and you meet Matt’s gaze again.

You couldn’t decipher the mix of emotions currently written on his features if your life depended on it. His tone is nothing short of bewildered when he finally speaks.

“What?”

You crack a smile at him.

“It tastes bittersweet! But- you’re right. I’ve never tasted anything quite like it either.”

At an obvious loss for words, his mouth opens and closes a few times in silence, reminiscent of a fish.

Cute.

You give a light tug on the hand of yours he’s still holding, and his grip tightens slightly. You huff a small sigh, understanding his reluctance to let you go. You offer him a compromise.

“You can take the blade if you’ll give me my hand back, love.”

He reaches up with his other hand and carefully plucks the sliver of stainless steel from between your fingers, reluctantly loosening his grip on your wrist.

You shoot him a grateful smile, immediately reaching down and dipping the pad of your index finger into the little puddle of blood that’s since formed atop the cut. Pulling your hand back, you eye the way it clings to your skin before your eyes flick over to Matt, watching you with what you can only identify as horrified curiosity.

You bring your finger up towards his lips, and to your slight surprise, he doesn’t back away. Attempting to appeal to his recent confession, you offer him a soft-spoken question.

“Aren’t you curious what I taste like?”

You watch his eyes flick back and forth between yours and your blood-soaked fingertip, and you prepare yourself to pull back. You ready yourself to apologize for being so forward, and for scaring him the way that you did. As soon as you make the first move to pull away, though, he parts his lips and finally speaks.

His confession is nothing more than a soft whisper.

“Yes. Please.”

There’s an immediate shift in the air as he speaks, and you watch a sudden, desperate hunger make itself visible in his gaze. He reaches out, fingers slowly closing around your wrist once again as he brings your hand further towards him.

You watch in rapt fascination as his eyes close, he parts his lips, and the pad of your finger is gently pressed down against his waiting tongue. His lips close tightly around your fingertip, and slowly, reluctantly, he pulls your hand away.

No traces of blood remain as you glance at your finger, and you watch as he swallows, his eyes blinking back open a moment later.

You suspect that you shouldn’t feel as much pride as you do when you notice his blush having returned in full force.

Your eyebrows raise as you cock your head to the side in question.

“So? What do I taste like?”

Finding his voice, he clears his throat as his gaze wanders from your eyes, to your smile, and finally down to your blood-stained wrist.

“Better than I do, poppet…”

He can’t help himself as he reaches out a hand, moving towards your wrist before stopping and glancing up at you, wordlessly requesting your permission. You nod, a loving smile gracing your features, and in the back of his mind he wonders what he ever did right in this life to deserve someone like you.

He swipes two fingers through the small puddle of blood that’s yet to finish drying, his touch feather light and obviously trembling. Bringing his fingers back to his lips, he cleans them of your blood quickly, like a man starved.

“A damn sight better than I do, that’s certain.”

You ignore the heat you feel rising to your own cheeks, and counter his compliment with a little playful banter. Taking on a flirtatious tone, you bat your eyelashes at him and wave away his words.

“Why, Matthew, you flatter me!”

That seems to work in breaking the tension a bit, and he chuckles at your theatrics before he speaks.

“I’m serious though, doll. Your blood really does taste better than mine.”

You glance down at the dried blood and quickly healed cuts adorning your wrist, the previously open wounds now sealed off, replaced with thin black raised lines. Just like…

Just like the ones on Matt’s arms.

It’s at this moment that you realize that you never showed him the discovery you made while he was in the shower.

“You know what? That’s… actually a bit odd. I figured mine would taste pretty similar to yours…”

You trail off in thought, and Matt cuts in, his own curiosity now peaked.

“Why’s that?”

You reach out for your phone once again, turning its flashlight back on.

“Well, because… uh…”

You point the light at your wrist, clearly displaying the dried bloodstains on your skin. They’re solid black, and so are your new scars.

“It seems that my blood is black now, too.”

Matt’s eyes widen at the realization, looking back up at you in genuine confusion.

“Wait- but- why? It used to be red! I know it did! It- it got all over my hands when I was pulling all those safety pins out of you…”

You nod in agreement.

“You’re right, it was red then. But I think… something happened since then that caused my blood to take on the same properties that yours has.”

You turn the flashlight back off, placing your phone aside.

“What do you mean?”

There’s that soft, innocent tone of his again. He truly has no idea how giving you one of his literal hearts may have also passed along part of his… DNA, parasites, black magic… whatever the hell he’s got coursing through his veins.

Maybe those bullets to the head really did do a bit of damage to his cognitive skills.

Or, maybe being alive for 160-something years just begins to erode your mind at some point.

Looking up to respond to him, you let your eyes wander across Matt’s features.

His long brown hair is still messy and damp from his shower. A few shorter pieces cling to his temples, framing two small round scars from his past unfortunate run-ins with the cops. You know there’s a third one, from another, older, more… traumatizing entry wound hidden by the hair above his left ear. You felt it one night before you saw it, when you’d been carding your fingertips through his hair. As the two of you laid together, one of your nails had caught on the raised textured skin while you idly scratched them along his scalp.

You’ll never forget the way he sobbed into the sheets, holding onto you for dear life as he shakily recounted the events that gave him that specific scar.

You’d never wanted to kill someone as badly as you did that night, when Matt told you bits and pieces of what that horrible man had done to him.

Hard to kill someone that’s already dead, though.

None of the scars from his various bullet entries have a matching exit wound. So, since you can’t very well take him to a medical facility to have him studied, you really have no idea how his body handles getting shot. It could be anything from simply adapting to living with multiple bullets in his brain, to something more far-fetched like his body managing to dissolve any foreign objects that enter it, and mending itself like nothing ever happened at all.

It’s not like that’s any more far-fetched than his body’s ability to store, remove, and receive hearts like they’re some sort of accessory to be swapped out whenever the situation calls for it.

An ability that has been gifted to you as well, apparently.

Your eyes follow the trails of wet hair that cling to his neck, snaking their way down to his collarbones and disappearing beneath the plush fabric of the robe you’ve gifted him.

Reaching out, you glance at him for permission to touch, and once granted, you gently tease the ends of his hair out from beneath his robe. Laying it out across the cloth covering his shoulders, you nod in approval. That must be more comfortable than wet hair clinging to his skin.

As you move to draw your hand back, you stop as your fingertips trail over his most recent scar. Yet another black, raised circle with little tear lines running out from the center in all directions, reminiscent of a star.

A permanent reminder of the time you witnessed a man blow a bullet hole in your beloved’s neck.

You run the pad of your thumb across it, feather light, and resist the urge to lean in slowly and press your lips to the mark. Shaking yourself out of your contemplation, you struggle to remind yourself of what you were just talking to him about.

Lord, maybe he transferred some of his memory issues over to you as well.

You think hard for a moment, and it eventually comes back to you.

“Do you remember when you gave me your heart?”

You watch him blink back into the present moment himself, and can’t help but notice the way his gaze had been lingering on your lips.

“Of course I do, poppet.”

Pulling back, you allow your hand to drop from his neck, trailing downward along the curve of his shoulder and following the length of his arm until you’re once again holding his hand.

“Well, as you know… I got a whole lot stronger that day.”

He nods, smiling as he recalls the events of that day in his own mind.

His unusual reaction to the memory draws a question out of you.

“What was it about that day that’s got you smiling, huh?”

Your tone is teasing, but the question is genuine.

His answer is immediate.

“You saved me.”

Oh.

“Why wouldn’t I smile at the memory of that?”

You quickly shift yourself forward a bit on the bed, and hold your arms out in an obvious request for a hug. He happily leans in, allowing you to wrap your arms around his torso and bury your face in his neck. Your voice is muffled by the fabric of his robe when you speak, but he hears you all the same.

“And I’d do it again. You know that, right?”

You feel him nod against you, as well as the vibrations that emit from him as he hums an affirmative against your shoulder.

“As many times as it takes. I’ll do it again.”

He pulls you closer, holding you a bit tighter as he breathes his response.

“I would too.”

After a long moment just spent holding him, you pull back, still needing to finish your explanation. You stay close to him though, and lace the fingers of your hands together as you speak.

“Well, I think you gave me more than just your heart that day. I think along with it, I also gained your regenerative abilities, and as a byproduct of that- your black blood.”

He lets out a little contemplative “huh” as his mind connects the dots you laid out before him, and he smiles again.

“That’s a good thing, then, isn’t it? I mean, it’ll just help keep you safer if anything… bad… happens to you in the future!”

His ever-positive outlook shines through in his response, and for once, you fully agree with him. This is a good thing.

“You’re right! I think this is really good. Although, hopefully I won’t have to actually fall back on it, but it’s a good thing to have. I mean… it’s not like I plan on either of us running out into the face of danger any time soon. I think we’ve had about enough unfortunate confrontations for a while, don’t you?”

He nods emphatically, his smile fading to a small frown as he sighs, recalling everything the two of you have been through together.

“I agree, doll. All I’ve wanted to do is go home with you from the first time I met you, and now that we’re finally here… I don’t really want to leave.”

He follows his words with a hint of embarrassed laughter, as if there’s anything else you’d rather be doing either.

“Matthew, you know I’d happily lay in this bed with you until the sun burns out.”

He fixes you with a strange, worried look.

“When’s that gonna happen?”

It takes everything you’ve got not to laugh at the sincere worry in his voice. You try to keep a straight face when you answer him, and you feel yourself failing. So instead, you lean forward, planting your forehead into the soft cloth covering his chest in the way a cat headbutts their owner in a show of affection.

“Oh, you sweet thing. Don’t you worry about it, I was just joking.”

If the two of you somehow manage to still be alive when that star eventually dies… well, you’ll just have to burn that bridge when you get to it.

He seems satisfied with your answer, and brings a hand up to cradle the back of your head as you lean into him.

As you sit there for a moment, breathing in the scent of his soap mixed with the detergent you washed his robe in, your mind wanders to yet another unanswered question.

Pulling back, you look up into his eyes as you tell him.

“I still don’t know what your blood tastes like.”

He huffs a small laugh.

“I mean… like I said, doll, I can’t really describe it.”

He thinks for a moment, continuing.

“Besides, I really don’t think it’s as good as yours. Yours is… sweeter, I guess.”

Well now you’re more curious than ever.

“Well I think mine tastes kinda bitter, so… maybe it’s a thing where you like mine better but I prefer yours?”

He hums as he mulls the suggestion over, shrugging.

“Maybe!”

You nearly shove your face back into his chest at the realization that he isn’t gonna get the hint if you keep approaching it like this. You love him to death, but this fool couldn’t catch a hint if it hit him in the hands.

“Do you… think there’s any way that… maybe… I could taste yours sometime?”

You give him your best puppy-dog eyes, pushing aside the embarrassment you feel for requesting something so… intimate… from him.

You watch the realization dawn on his features, and you await his answer with baited breath.

“Oh! You really want to taste mine?”

You nod your head eagerly, giving him a small, shy smile.

“Well, I mean- of course you can! You can have some right now if you want it!”

You watch him lean back from you a bit, re-rolling his sleeve from where it’d fallen back down to cover his arm. You try to not be shocked at his eagerness and willingness to give you what you request. He’d probably cut off his whole arm and give it to you if you asked him for it. Especially if he thought it’d do anything to make up for the whole finger-removal scenario.

His willingness is a gift, and you swear to yourself that you’ll never abuse it.

You watch him reach over to where he’d placed the blade, noticeably out of your reach, and as he picks it up you suddenly remember your manners.

“T-thank you, Matt. You don’t have to do this for me.”

He smiles at you fondly.

“No need to thank me, doll. I’m more than happy to satisfy my poppet’s curiosity.”

He continues talking as he brings the blade to his wrist.

“Besides, I’m a bit curious myself…”

He quickly makes a small, shallow cut, mirroring the way you made yours, and you watch the blood rise to the surface of his skin. He places the blade aside once again, and immediately reaches out a finger, dipping it in his blood and offering it up towards your waiting lips.

Now that the shoe’s on the other foot, you fully understand why he turned red as a tomato when you did this for him.

It’s terribly intimate.

Taking the tip of his finger between your lips, your eyes close and you lose all focus as the taste of him hits your tongue.

This is genuinely the best thing you’ve ever tasted in your entire life. Holy shit. If yours tasted anything close to this good to him, then you need to applaud his restraint, because good god do you wanna latch onto his arm and drain him dry.

You refrain though, allowing him to take his hand back. When you open your eyes again, he’s eyeing you with hesitance.

“Is it okay? I mean- like I said- I don’t think it’s nearly as good as yours-”

You accidentally cut him off in your eagerness to assure him that it’s incredible.

“Are you joking? You taste amazing, Matt!”

That familiar heat rises to his cheeks as you unabashedly compliment him.

“Way better than mine, honestly.”

His response sounds unconvinced.

“Really?”

You reach out a hand towards the half-healed cut on his wrist, asking him the same silent question that he asked you. He nods, and you swipe two fingers through the remaining blood, bringing it to your lips and savoring the saccharine taste of him.

After another brief moment of losing yourself in the experience, you bring your attention back to Matt. You catch the way he must have been staring at you the whole time, and you give him a warm smile, leaning forward once more to ghost a kiss across the warm skin of his left cheek.

“Thank you.”

He flushes even darker than he already was at your combined proximity and display of affection, and he stutters out a blissed-out, lovestruck response.

“O-of course, doll. Any- ahaha… anytime…”

Your own smile can’t help but grow as you admire him, with his half-lidded gaze locked on your lips. You’d almost go so far as to venture a guess that the act of consuming each other’s blood imparts a slight sedative effect, given the way you feel and the way he looks.

Glancing back down to his wrist, you watch the cut finish closing up, now fully replaced with another little black line. With any lingering hesitancy having flown out the window by now, you bend down, placing a tiny little kiss over the freshly-healed cut. You revel in the way you hear his breath hitch as you do so.

Looking back towards Matt, you blink sleepily up at him.

“You ready for bed, love?”

He subtly nods in enraptured agreement, and the both of you move to rearrange yourselves on the bed. You settle into your respective positions, with you on his left and him on your right.

Draping the sheets over both of your bodies, you pull him close to you, and breathe deep as you feel him fully relax in your arms. You gently rest your head on his chest, and reach down, searching for his hand to hold. Tangling your bodies together, you begin to take notice of the quiet beat of your hearts, gradually falling into sync with one another.

As your eyes close, you feel his lips press a gentle kiss to your forehead, followed by his soft voice, whispering quietly into the night.

“G’night, poppet. I love you.”

You smile in your half-asleep state, mumbling your response as you softly squeeze his hand.

“Love you more, Matt.”

A/N: If you'd like to read my thoughts in regards to the process of writing this fic, as well as the musical inspiration behind it, you can find all of that over here, in the end-notes on Ao3! Header Image Sources: x - x - x Lastly, of course, here's the link to The Malenkee Saga, and here's a link to Matt's videos if you're just looking for him.

[plethoraworldatlas]

Hour Of Joy Death Toll

Someone has finally counted all the dead bodies shown during the Hour of Joy Tape; In total, there are 264 confirmed deaths during the HOJ. While that's already insanely high and raises tons of questions (and further supports some theories), I fully believe the true death toll is even more.

The tape only shows a handful of locations, cutting all around and jumping forward to fit the list of the full hour into a 2 minute segment; Lobby, Game Station, a Train tunnel (there are multiple), two different backroom/tunnels/hallways, Playcare overview (only one specific angle), School, Make a Toy, the Walkways to Poppy's room. Furthermore, we only see people dressed as either scientists and researchers, suited business people, and a few hard hats.

We never see any of the actual production lines, never see any of the warehousing areas, never see any of the loading docks or shipping areas that we know exist (both because of the Huggy escape attempt tape and basic logic). Not only that, think about all the backrooms and hallways and tunnels you go through in just the first three chapters; Most of them still have blood splattered around, think how many got partially cleaned up when they moved to bodies (we know they cleaned up some due to how many bloody bodies in the HOJ tape are seen in areas that are fairly clean when we go to them).

Combine that with the fact that Playtime Co is basically the combination Hasbro and Disney in their universe, and the view of the factory we get during the news segment about the CatNap recall shows it as a enormous building stretching on beyond sight, with hundreds of smoke plumes. There's got to be at least multiple factories worth of production lines and work floors in there. It's gotta be at least as big as that nearly hundred Acre big Boeing plant; And that's just the above ground levels! Even with the automation (which we don't know for certain how much there is as make a friend looks to be a one off gimmick for the tours) we're talking thousands of factory line workers alone!

Factor in all the crazy sprawl going on, all the nooks and crannies, and the limitations on the locations and sheer number of cameras such a place would realistically have before saying "screw it, no on is robbing hallway #28-c without going through a dozen cams before that so no need for another useless angle".

Everyone, bar the player who wasn't there, died. And, remember the tour groups because the factory tours never stopped. And, all the people going there to try and adopt a kid at Playcare like the parents Stella talks too (they aren't factory employees, they're too surprised by everything). AND ALL THE KIDS! Because, even if the theory that the Prototype took them down with him to the depths is true, there's no way they all survived, no way none died during the Hour of Joy.

And I don't believe that he spared or "saved" any of the kids, Poppy was too broken up about how not even the innocent were spared and the Project Playtime has what's obviously the Prototype tell the monsters to spare literally no one 1. To feed the other experiments and 2. Because otherwise they'll make more experiments (ie, turn more kids into them. Since it's already alluded to that the Prototype had some way of taking over the minds of the other experiments to at least coordinate the HOJ, and he is a Cult leader level manipulator, it's within reason he'd convince the others that there's no way to save the kids or let them go and that they could only be "saved" by being killed before getting turned). Home Sweet Home has literally hundreds of beds, not including the Cradle rooms! And it's heavily implied they were packed to the point no one noticed when kids disappeared unless it was an actual adoption (probably rare but common enough not to draw too much suspicion) or one of the fake adoption/chosen going away ceremonies.

So, the population of at least a small town, including a full-fledged orphanage town, all disappeared one day, and no one looked in the building? Not one person got past the main entrance or through any loading docks to see anything?

I fully believe that Playtime had big financial backers behind the Bigger Bodies Initiative; Ones with even more desire for the BBI results than just the faint desire for immortality and resurrecting the dead that the original Poppy experiments started out as. Those experiments almost drove the company into financial ruin, and that was just drowning and reviving rats. Think about the experiments we see; Think about the BBI's justification anyway! Would it really make sense to put a bunch of Huggy's on a factory line when you got automated toy makers already? And why would literally any of them need fangs or the ability to crush heads with a single punch!?!

My bet is, once the original experiments started working enough for someone like Laith to notice and think it's not crazy enough to not try and get investors interested in funding immortality and resurrection experiments, they started going further until even that well started to run dry. Hence, Bigger Bodies, but not for the reasons we're lead to believe; I doubt the toy workforce idea was ever serious, frankly I doubt even Dr. Sawyer thought it was (though it would be funny and be in character for him to not realize he's working on a weapon and genuinely thinking he's making toy slaves). The only reason to go the way BBI went, to create such dangerous experiments, is if you want to end up with weapons and killing machines; Ones that are very stealthy.

If they had funding from someone who had the money to bail them out and fund a living toy weapons program, said person would definitely have the resources to at least lockdown the factory to keep their secrets.

[wild-karrde]

Congrats on getting to 800! Got one for the ficlet, the quote is "I keep forgetting you can do that" with Anakin and Ahsoka.

AHHHH THANK YOU NONNIE! I worked and reworked this one half to death, so I HOPE YOU LIKE IT! Thank you for the prompt!

Rating: G

Warnings: none

Word Count: 726 words

“Keep up, Skyguy,” the young Togruta taunted as she practically bounded through the dark forest ahead of her master. Anakin muttered under his breath as he tried to shake off a tree branch that had snagged on the sleeve of his tunic. The fabric ripped loudly, only annoying him further as he heard his padawan lightly dance further ahead. 

“Snips… wait for… kark… AHSOKA!” he whispered loudly. 

This entire plan had gone poorly from the start. He and Ahsoka had bickered yet again on the way down to the planet’s surface. She felt he didn’t trust her, and he was unsure of how to reassure he did at this point. To make matters worse, the scouting report for their drop zone had been incorrect in that it was a bug-infested grassy marsh rather than the steppe that had been promised. They’d adapted, hiking through the muck to their staging point and setting up camp after a brief tussle with some of the wildlife. They’d been lucky to not lose Hardcase in that scuffle. Luckily, the nexu had only managed to mostly scuff his armor before they pried him out of its jaws. And now, on what was supposed to be a cloudless night with a double full-moon to light their scouting expedition, it was instead overcast, plunging the forest Anakin and Ahsoka were picking their way through into near-total darkness. Rex had seemed utterly relieved when Anakin had ordered him to stay behind and supervise setup while he and Ahsoka scouted ahead. 

He could have at least looked a little less pleased about it, Anakin thought bitterly. 

At least their argument from earlier didn’t appear to be weighing too much on his padawan. “Watch that tree on your left. It’s got that one poisonous moss on it,” she called out.

Anakin froze. 

“How do you know that? I can’t see anything.”

Her voice was much closer now, only feet away, and Anakin had to fight the urge to jump. 

“Echolocation. My montrals can sense what’s around me. Kind of like seeing in the dark without actually seeing,” Ahsoka replied cheerfully. 

“I keep forgetting you can do that,” he muttered. “How do you know about the moss?” 

“I could smell it as I passed. It’s got a weird smell. Kind of like bad ale.”

“How do you know what ale smells like?” her master retorted. “You’re fourteen.” 

She was uncharacteristically quiet, and he sighed, realizing how accusatory he sounded. He also knew she wasn’t going to betray one of his trooper’s confidences. 

I bet it was Jesse. Or Fives.

“You’re at least not drinking any of it, right?” 

“No,” she said quietly. “Doesn’t seem very appetizing.”

She thinks you don’t trust her judgment, and you’re not making much of an argument against that.

Anakin huffed a laugh as the opportunity before him suddenly clicked into place in his mind. “Good. Because I need your senses to be completely uninhibited, especially right now. Seems like you’re going to have to be the one to guide me through this.” 

He could practically feel the pride and excitement rolling off her, but she kept her tone in check. 

“I can do that.” 

Anakin grinned in the dark. “I know you can, Snips. Just don’t walk me into anything. This is also an exercise in trust too.”

She giggled quietly. “Better watch out for that boulder directly in front of you then. Even if it’d be funny for you to walk into it.” 

“Thanks,” he joked. “I know I maybe deserve it.” 

He felt her fingers lock around his upper arm, tugging him around the obstacle in front of him. He followed her lead, his shoulder grazing the boulder she’d mentioned as they carefully made their way around it.

“True,” Ahsoka replied. “But I’d prefer to get revenge when you least expect it.” 

“Revenge is not the Jedi way,” he chided teasingly. 

“Maybe not. But I’m not a fully-fledged Jedi… yet.” 

Anakin chuckled. “You’ll get there. Eventually.”

She squeezed his arm before releasing it. “Of course I will. I’ve got you as a master. And we’ll figure things out.”

“We will,” Anakin agreed. He took a step forward, but his foot caught on a large tree root, and he tumbled forward, landing facedown in the dirt. 

“Snips…”

“I told you. When you least expect it,” Ahsoka chuckled. “Now we’re even.”

Thanks for participating in my 800 Follower Celebration!

Tag List: @seriowan @partoftheeternalsoul @misogirl828 @ellichonkasaurusrex @the-sith-in-the-sky-with-diamond @staycalmandhugaclone @fordo-kixed-rex @wizardofrozz @ariadnes-red-thread @extrahotpixels @justanothersadperson93 @leftealeaf @meekaeilmyerhs99 @echos-girlfriend @lucyysthings @obihiddlenox @merkitty49 @baba-fett @sleepingsun501 @samspenandsword @ladytano420 @fxlsealarm @runforrestr @rennyboo9 @djarrex @corrieguards @the-cantina @witchklng @gelflet @fives-lover @teletraan-meets-jarvis @rain-on-kamino @ladykatakuri @arctrooper69 @hidden-behind-the-fourth-wall

[maybeebeee]

Won't You Stay With Me, My Darling?

weeeee i'm writing again? i started writing this like two months ago and finished it at 1am so...do with that information as you will haha but I've been thinking about this au for aaaages and am glad that i finally finished writing something for it! hope you love it like i do :)

Pairing: Layla El-Faouly/Marc Spector, implied Layla El-Faouly/Steven Grant

Rating: G

Characters: Layla El-Faouly, Marc Spector, Steven Grant, Jake Lockley (mentioned), Khonshu (mentioned)

Tags: AU - Star Wars universe, Jedi Layla El-Faouly, bounty hunter Marc Spector, mutual pining, fluff, first kiss, idiots in love

Word count: 2301

Summary: A Jedi and a bounty hunter face a moral conundrum. In other words...Jedha is a cold planet, and Layla doesn't do well in the cold.

Read on AO3

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Despite being a desert moon, Jedha is freezing all the time, which Layla had not been expecting the first time she had stepped out of her ship onto the planet’s surface. It’s been six months since then, and every time she’s come back it’s been just as much of a shock — and yet she still finds herself coming back again and again.

Of course, that’s mostly thanks to Marc. Or more specifically, Khonshu demanding that Marc keep coming back. The skeletal avian creature keeps promising just one more contract, and then the bounty hunter will be free, but there’s always something else, and Marc is bound until Khonshu decides to withdraw whatever hold he has on his already-fractured mind.

Layla still feels uneasy around the alien — ever since their first meeting when she had sensed the way the very air around him was almost stained with the dark side, she hasn’t trusted him. She trusts Marc, and Steven, and even Jake now that she’s met him a few more times, but not their…employer. Anyone who uses the dark side to indenture people can’t be trusted, no matter how “beneficial” the work they send them to do is.

And it’s true that Marc’s work is generally for good, it’s why Layla joined him on his travels in the first place. Taking down Imperial cells across the galaxy — especially those operating their own further very illegal and unethical programs within — is what she had already been doing herself, as a way to honour all of her fellow Jedi that had given their lives trying to do the same before the purge took them away. 

It’s nice to have someone else to fight alongside again, even if his employer is an untrustworthy bird creature who fell off the Jedi path centuries ago and has been using the dark side to bring people back from near-death and force them to serve him as his own personal bounty hunters until he feels like letting them go. 

It’s not like that’s Marc’s fault. 

In any case, Layla doesn’t mind coming back to Jedha regularly. It’s one of the few places in the galaxy she feels truly safe as a Jedi these days, and the hum of the Force through her veins when she’s here is always a source of comfort.

She’s trying to focus on it now, sitting on the floor of the small, draughty room she and Marc are staying in this time, but the cold nips at her even through her layers of clothes and makes it hard to keep her mind fixed on her meditation. It’s been hard enough to meditate since Master Taweret was killed — though Layla had been a fully-fledged Jedi Knight for several years before the purge, the loss of her old master had left a hole in her heart that she’s still not sure will ever fully heal, and reaching out with the Force had been almost impossible for weeks after Taweret’s death. She’s still getting used to it now, though it’s been nearly three years. 

People always spoke of how hard it could be to reconnect to the Force after the loss of their master, but nothing could have ever prepared her for how hard it would be after the loss of her entire Order. Not only is Taweret gone, but so is anyone else who could have helped her through this.

And then there’s the Marc issue. 

Her whole life, Layla had been taught detachment. Never letting her feelings compromise her work as a Jedi. Loving people and being compassionate but never allowing deep attachment to one person to occur. Even her very familial-like relationship with Taweret was on a knife’s edge of being too attached in the Council’s view, which was partly why she had been pushed through her Trials at only nineteen. And romance was absolutely off the cards.

Now though…the Order is gone, and Marc is here. Marc, and Steven, and Jake. But mostly Marc.

Layla’s been drawn to him from the first moment they had crossed paths, and it seems fateful to her that they’ve stayed together this long since then. The Force drew her to him, she’s sure of it, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still conflict in her mind about it. 

She loves him, she has for some time now. She hasn’t admitted it out loud, but she senses that he knows, and it’s clear that he feels the same too. And although she’s made her peace with it, it’s something she’s still unsure of navigating, something that brings…not fear, per se, but an uncertainty that she’s not used to.

The Jedi had tried to keep everything so black and white. Light side and dark side. Since the fall of the Order she’s seen so many ways that it can co-exist and intersect — like in Khonshu even, someone who is so far into the dark side the Jedi would have written him off a long time ago if they’d known he was still alive, and yet he wants the Empire gone as much as anyone Layla would see as more typically light would. Granted, he has very questionable ways of going about his work, and she’s certain it’s more out of self-interest than the greater good, but…he’s still helping, in some strange way.

Layla’s grown less afraid of her feelings in the past months. She knows she’s doing work that the Jedi would be proud of, even if she’s not necessarily doing it the way they would’ve wanted her to. She’s confident, not afraid of igniting her lightsabers and fighting in the name of peace and justice; and not afraid of admitting, at least to herself, that her feelings for Marc are there. 

That doesn’t make it any easier to act on them, although her own hesitation is starting to drive her mad. It’s like she just can’t shake the hands of the Council on her shoulders, warning her that acting on her feelings could be a path to the dark side. She knows it won’t be — if losing Master Taweret taught her anything it’s that love has only made her more determined to stay on the path of the light, but…maybe it’s just that this kind of love feels like a violation of rules she’d been directly instructed not to break.

“You’re thinking so loud,” Marc comments from the doorway, where Layla knows he’s been standing for at least a few minutes, “I thought meditating was supposed to stop the thoughts.”

“It’s supposed to clear the mind,” She corrects, not opening her eyes, “But I can’t concentrate when it’s so cold.”

He finally moves toward the makeshift bed they’d set up in the corner when they’d arrived — it’s his turn to sleep on the floor, and thankfully he’s not complained as much as usual this time — and plops down on the pillows. He’s quiet for long enough that Layla finally gives up and peeps open one eye, enough to catch him staring at her.

She sighs and leans back to lay on the cold floor before she can think better of it, and a shiver runs up her spine immediately, “Alright, I give up. How long has it been anyway?”

Marc shrugs and holds up a tracking fob before just as quickly tossing it into his bag. “Long enough to debrief the bird and get my next job. We can go in a few days. Steven wants to get some supplies from the markets, which probably means he wants new clothes—” 

His gaze shifts towards the window for a moment, where Layla can sense Steven’s presence and almost picture his indignant expression, “Yeah, I’m onto you, no more ponchos…” Marc shakes his head, “Fine, but it better not be on me when I come in, ever. Anyway,” He glances back at her, “I think we’re all overdue for a good sleep. So…let’s do that first.”

Layla stands up and stretches out her stiff limbs — sitting down for that long really doesn’t do wonders for the joints, she thinks. “Good idea. Meditation is rest, in a way, but it’s still…taxing on the mind and spirit.”

“Again, thought the point was to clear the mind.” Marc imitates her with a half-smile, to which she shoots him a withering stare as she sheds her outer layers of clothing and climbs into the bed, “Sorry. Yeah, you get this look when you’ve been meditating, like you’re awake but you’re not really there again until you’ve slept. I do notice things sometimes.”

She purses her lips at him, fighting the heat rising to her cheeks at the notion of being so known by someone. By Marc. “So you do.” She muses and drops her head to the pillow, “Good night.”

“Sleep well.”

Layla tries, she really does, but it’s so cold. There’s several blankets piled on top of her and she’s still shivering despite her best efforts to stay perfectly still in the spot she’s already warmed with her own body heat. Thoughts of warmer planets swirl in her mind, of deserts with actual desert heat, or jungle planets with humidity that makes her hair frizz up something terrible but at least keeps her cocooned in warmth and relative comfort — at least compared to the bone-biting chill of Jedha.

It’s probably been twenty minutes by the time Marc speaks up again from his spot on the floor.

“Layla, I can hear you shivering.”

“I’m fine.”

Layla hears the telltale rustle of blankets and knows that Marc is standing, staring. She pointedly keeps her own gaze fixed on the ceiling. A beat longer, and another pile of blankets is dropped on top of her, on which she can faintly smell Marc’s familiar metallic, smoky scent. The man himself is still standing beside the bed, so she finally turns her gaze towards him. Even in the dark she can see how earnestly he’s looking at her, and it makes her heart leap up into her throat. Neither of them say a word. 

Layla is a little shaky as she lifts up the covers in silent invitation, never mind the cold air it lets into the bed with her, if only for a brief moment. Any hesitation she had been dwelling on before is gone, throwing caution to the wind and deciding for once in her life to follow her heart. Stars, the Council would be so disappointed in her. But it’s now or never.

Marc nods, wasting no time slipping in beside her and pulling the blankets tight around them both. Layla finds herself drawing close to his warmth immediately, curling an arm around his waist as his own hand presses tentatively into the centre of her back. They’re chest to chest, sharing the same breath in the almost nonexistent gap between them, and it’s so warm. 

Layla can sense his nerves — although she doesn’t need the Force to tell her that, with the rabbiting of his heartbeat thrumming through her so clearly she might’ve thought he’d pressed his own heart right into her chest in silent offering. It’s clear that their unspoken line has been crossed, they’ve gone beyond the threshold without even having to say out loud, “Come in.”

She reaches up with her other hand to trace her fingers over his cheekbone, and he lets out a long breath as he leans into her gentle touch.

“How long have you—” He starts hoarsely.

“Since the beginning,” She breathes, “Always.”

Marc leans in to press his forehead against hers, bumps their noses together with a quiet, disbelieving laugh, “The whole time. I was thinking this whole time that I was the galaxy’s biggest idiot, falling for…well, anyone really, but especially a Jedi who wouldn’t love me back. Hell, even Steven’s been telling me that. He’s…sort of in on this too, but it’s not like he would’ve done this, right? Honestly, I’m surprised I did it.”

Layla smiles warmly, presses a chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth, “I’m glad you did. I’ve been trying to work up the strength to tell you for so long, but you know it’s…complicated, with the lessons I had drilled into me by the Council for so long. But,” She punctuates with another soft kiss to his dimple, “This Jedi does love you back.”

His exhale is shaky, but he tilts his head to catch her lips with his own, and oh, Layla is well and truly done for. His hand is strong on her back, his mouth soft and warm and tasting vaguely minty — she never wants to taste anything else if she can help it — and all too soon he’s drawing back, though now his other hand is cupping her cheek just as she’s doing to him. She wonders vaguely if he can feel her blush under his fingertips, just as she can feel his. 

“You’ve stopped shivering.” Marc points out, but pulls her closer all the same.

She huffs out a laugh, “You’re warm.”

He sneaks another kiss before replying, “No more cold nights for you, hm? You let me in once and you’re probably not gonna get rid of me, or Steven when he finds out, just so you know.”

“I can live with that.” She smiles, “You’re all good company.”

Marc’s expression mirrors Layla’s, and it’s a while longer trading kisses and whispered stories of their many realisations of love for each other before they finally start dozing off, clinging to each other like they never want to be separated again. The galaxy is a tough place, and there’s still so much fighting to be done for the Jedi and bounty hunter pair before all this will truly get easier. But for now?

Layla is warm in Marc’s embrace. And that’s enough for her.

[harudnae]

Roger Pirates Week - Day 1 - Fun: Laughter / Song

🥁 *drumroll* 🥁

Let's start @rogerpirateswk with a DON !

When I discovered the prompt for today I knew I had to do something about that song 😏

Also posted on AO3 on 2023.01.23

Rating: Teen

Pairing: none

Summary: Song, laughter and the mysterious ways of fate, through the eyes of a certain red-haired pirate.

Content warnings : spoilers for everything (includes Wano & Film: Red), fic timeline: from 38 years ago to post-current canon, canon character death (not depicted), drinking to cope, angst and feels, family feels, heavy feels, hopeful ending, POV Shanks if that wasn't obvious already

Word count: 3.6k

🎼 The song that connects the past and present

Darkness. Yells and other loud sounds around.

Shanks cries, upset and uncomfortable.

Different, happier voices. A clicking sound. Then light... and new faces.

Shanks blinks, then giggles as his hands reach out towards the sun.

"Yo-hohoho, Yo-hohoho, Yo-hohoho, Yo-hohoho~"

Shanks curls into warm arms, one of his hands pressed against the big man's chest to feel the rumble of the deep voice lulling him to sleep.

Shanks is happy he got a new friend.

Buggy's pretty cool.

Shanks shows him around the ship, and they play together when Rayleigh-san and Gaban-san aren't teaching them how to read, write, or something else grown-ups do.

Buggy's good at learning too, but he still forgets some of the verses in that song.

Shanks patiently teaches him, and they sing together until Buggy gets them right. "Hey ! Now you're good", he grins at his friend.

Buggy beams. "Gyahaha, cool. Say, how come you remember this one so easy ?"

"Hmm. I don't know. It's like I always knew them."

"How so ?"

Shanks frowns. "Hm. Wait, I know." He grabs Buggy's hand to drag him along as he searches for a crewmate.

They soon bump into the First Mate.

"Rayleigh-san ! Say, say, you know how we always sing Binks' Sake, Buggy knows it by heart now, I taught him. But how come I know it so well ?"

Rayleigh grins. "Well, Roger always sang that one when you were a baby and he rocked you to sleep. Could be that you've heard it so many times that the lyrics stuck better ?"

Shanks blinks as a blurry memory of being curled up in Captain Roger's arms resurfaces. "Ooh. Okay."

Shanks is a fully-fledged Roger Pirate now, with his own share of chores, and he's trained enough to have permission to engage in fights with the rest of the crew.

Buggy joins too, and they make a great team together.

Shanks hopes things can remain like this forever. "...Never-ending, ever-wandering, our funny traveling tale! Yo-hohoho, Yo-hohoho, Yo-hohoho, Yo-hohoho~"

Buggy happily sings with him as they scrub the deck, always does when they do their chores : that song makes time pass faster, somehow.

There's a huge party after Oden joins the crew, where the samurai sings a song of his own.

The Roger Pirates teach them the one they sing the most in return, as they sail together across the Blues.

Shanks laughs everytime Oden doesn't remember the lyrics, putting emphasis on the few verses he knows and singing slightly off-key nonsense in between.

They sing along all the way to the last island !

Well... almost all the way, because Shanks chooses to stay ashore to care for a feverish Buggy. By night at the inn, Shanks sings the lullaby version of his favorite song to his bed-ridden friend, hoping he sleeps more peacefully.

It seems to work somehow, because Buggy gets better in just a few days.

Shanks cries as Captain Roger tells him about the last island.

It's unfair that Captain can't complete the One Piece while he's the first person in known history to reach Laugh Tale and learn everything there is to know about the hidden secrets of the world. It's unfair that there's such a long wait before it's even possible, and it's even more unfair that Shanks can't be the right one for that.

Shanks wants to carry Captain Roger's legacy so bad...

And then Captain disbands the crew, sets off on his own and disappears, only to be executed in his hometown the next year.

Shanks cries, heart and guts full of grief and resentment, soul lonely and broken.

It's unfair that the crowd in the plaza is happy and laughing while they understand absolutely nothing about Captain's last words. It's unfair that the lyrics to that song are so closely intertwined with Captain's dream when they won't sing it together anymore, and it's even more unfair that even his only friend leaves him there.

Shanks doesn't want to sing ever again.

After spending a few months drinking his sorrow away, Shanks decides to set sail and gather his own crew. He recruits a few good men, and puts to good use all the lessons he learned during his time as a Roger Pirate to make a name for himself over the next years. He tells his crew early on not to call him "Captain" – he knows that technically, he is, but it hurts to hear that when he knows deep in his heart who's the only worthy Captain – and so, they settle for "Boss". It has a nice ring to it, and it doesn't reopen fresh wounds, so Shanks is fine with that.

They're a nice bunch, too : strong and skilled, always jolly, often teasing him about being an immature leader but ready to follow him wherever at his beck and call.

Shanks shrugs off the jokes about him being a bratty teenager – most of his men are older than him, and he admits that he's a dork sometimes.

They don't sing much, but they make up for it with regular fits of laughter.

It's somewhat healing, though Shanks feels his heart will always be a little broken, missing a piece of something dear.

Another day, another loot ! The Red-Hair Pirates laugh together after defeating a rival crew.

"Look at all the riches !"

"We're gonna buy some good food with that !"

"Treasure ! Treasure !"

Shanks frowns as he hears an unusual sound in the middle of the cheerful yells. He strains his ear, follows the voice, and opens one of the treasure chests. "Huh ?!"

A few of his men gather around him and join him in gawking at the baby in the chest.

Shanks mutters, "What are you doing in there ?"

Beckman supplies, "Maybe she was kidnapped by the crew that we just fought ?"

Shanks groans, "You've got to be kidding me..."

The baby starts crying.

"Okay, okay, please stop crying..." Shanks facepalms, unsure what to do, and improvises a half-baked lullaby.

The baby stops crying, opens wide eyes at him and starts laughing, tiny hands reaching out for him.

Shanks stares at the baby as his first ever memory comes back clear as day : the surprised faces of Roger, Rayleigh and Gaban gathered above him. His gaze softens then, and he murmurs, "Is this fate ?" He cautiously takes the baby in the chest and holds her close, observing her, then declares, "We'll raise her."

"No way !"

"Eeeeeh ?"

"Uh, you sure, Boss ?"

Shanks grins wide and nods the affirmative. "Yeah."

Shanks wonders how Captain Roger and the rest of his crew managed with two kids, while he and his men can't manage to get some sleep with just one aboard. And the baby's just been with them for a few weeks... "Ugh, why won't she sleep ? Uta keeps crying ! Ugh, what are we gonna do ?" As his crew complains too, Shanks hears a soft lullaby.

He gazes around and sees a woman singing to a baby cradled in her arms.

A memory of that song comes back unprompted, and he opens wide eyes. "Oh. Of course."

The next time Uta starts crying, Shanks starts singing Binks' Sake, shortly followed by his crew.

She curiously looks at them for a while, then starts laughing, cries and worries all forgotten.

Shanks keeps singing, and finds that he still remembers all the verses. And it's weird, but although his heart still aches a little as he reaches the end of the song, he finds comfort in hearing it again, and having new people – his new family – to sing along with.

Uta really takes a liking to singing as she grows, and eventually she remembers the lyrics to every song the crew knows by heart, too.

Shanks proudly raises her both as his daughter and the musician of his crew, hope renewed as he realizes she's about old enough to match Captain's Roger prediction that someone would come and surpass his crew.

Uta guards the ship when they're away, much like Shanks used to in his time as a cabin boy.

Shanks lets her freely explore the loot they bring back after raiding ships in return.

"Shanks ! What's this fruit ? It tastes so bad !"

Shanks feels a cold shiver run down his spine as an image of Buggy drowning shortly after eating the Bara Bara no Mi flashes before his eyes. He runs to his daughter. "Uta ! Show me that fruit !"

Uta hands him a pink fruit with spiral patterns.

"Oh, shit."

The crew soon learns about Uta's Devil Fruit powers, as the next time she sings alongside them they all experience the same hallucination.

Shanks blinks awake after the song ends, and finds that this Devil Fruit is weirdly interesting. Dreams carried by song, huh ?

Uta keeps growing, and starts making her own songs, virtually taking them on dreamy journeys each time she entertains the Red-Hair Pirates with shows of her own.

Shanks particularly likes the endless landscapes she shows them as she performs Binks' Sake.

Shanks got intel on the Gomu Gomu no Mi and with the help of his crew, manages to steal it from CP9, firmly intending to sell it for good money. He keeps it out of Uta's reach on the way to the Goa Kingdom in East Blue – no way he'll risk her eating another one, who knows what might happen – and hopes to find a buyer there.

They anchor the ship in Foosha Village, and before they've even set foot on the docks, a lively kid challenges them. "If you trouble us, I'll make you pay for it !"

Shanks simply chuckles. This boy has guts.

The boy – Luffy, as he learns shortly after – is also incredibly curious and stubborn. He follows them everywhere, asking endless streams of questions about life at sea and barely listening to the crew's answers, though he retains enough from the conversations that he soon tries to join the crew, begging Shanks to take him to sea.

Day after day, Shanks refuses.

Day after day, Luffy keeps trying.

Uta tries – and fails – to discourage Luffy, but eventually makes friend with him : while the Red-Hair Pirates plan their next trips, the kids explore the village together, compete against each other and develop a friendly rivalry. During the time they spend together, Uta also teaches Luffy the lyrics to Binks' Sake.

Though the boy always sings off-key, he quickly memorizes all the verses and happily joins the crew and their diva whenever she's throwing a show at Party's Bar.

Memories of the Oro Jackson and his time there flow back to Shanks without failing every time they do so now, and despite his heart tightening a bit at the thought, he softly smiles as he finds Uta and Luffy's friendship is not unlike the one he had with Buggy back then.

Luffy relentlessly keeps trying to join the crew, and even sneaks aboard once.

Fortunately, Uta finds him before they set sail for Elegia.

Shanks returns to Foosha Village with a broken heart and a heavy weight on his shoulders, not unlike the day he lost his Captain. "Don't worry, Luffy. Uta left the ship to become a singer. That's all", he tells the worried kid welcoming them on the docks.

Luffy doesn't buy it, and gets seriously mad at him, refusing to talk to him anymore.

Over the next days while the boy remains at bay, Shanks drinks his troubles away. So much for a fated encounter... I really fucked things up.

Beck decides to go talk to Luffy after a while without a single news, and disappears for the day. He comes back long past sunset and doesn't drop a single word, either.

On the next day, the crowd in Party's Bar becomes silent when Luffy shows up wearing bandages and bandaids all over his face, and asks to be allowed aboard the ship once more.

Shanks customarily refuses, and asks him where he got hurt like this.

"I fell", Luffy says before climbing on the nearby stool.

"No way. How did you fall to get hurt like-"

Luffy braces his tightened fists on the bar, turns to Shanks, looks into his eyes with fierce determination and says again, "I fell !"

Shanks holds his serious gaze for a while before cracking a sly smile. "Okay, you fell. Then I have no further questions for you."

"I have no further questions for you too, because it's yours and Uta's business."

"You're talking like a grown-up", Shanks remarks.

Predictably, Luffy tries to use that as leverage to join the crew.

Shanks refuses, resumes teasing him, and under the roaring laughter of his crew, things seem to return to regain a semblance of normalcy despite Uta's absence... There's still an acute ache gnawing his heart, but Shanks conceals it, knowing now that time dulls even the deepest pains.

Luffy soon resumes his attempts to join the crew, coming up with the silliest reasons to be granted access aboard.

Shanks keeps dismissing any and each attempt he makes with gentle teasing and laughter.

One day, Luffy tells him that he's thought about what Uta told him once, and that he decided what his greatest dream would be, before proudly proclaiming his outrageous idea.

Shanks blinks in disbelief as he hears Captain Roger's voice echoing in his mind, saying the exact same words on the day he recruited Oden. Tears fall from his eyes at the memories, and then he has startled laugh as it dawns on him that Luffy is old enough to fit right into the prophecies of the young mermaid the Roger Pirates met on their last passage in Fish-Man Island. Say, Captain, do you think he's the one ? Fate works in weird ways, right ?

Roughly a year passes, and Shanks still hasn't found a buyer for the Gomu Gomu no Mi, so he plans to travel up north and try his luck in another Blue.

Meanwhile, Luffy grows more and more reckless with his attempts to join the crew, and goes as far as planting a knife into his own cheek.

Hongo says the boy's lucky to have missed his eye as he patches him up.

Afterwards, back at Party's Bar, Luffy gets angry at Shanks once more after he refused to fight against the mountain bandit.

Shanks tries to reason with him, to no avail, and grabs his arm as he storms off.

Luffy's arm stretches while he keeps walking away.

Once Roux confirms with the boy that he did eat the Gomu Gomu no Mi, Shanks gives him a firm scolding and tells him about the curse that comes with being a Devil Fruit User.

(He also vows to himself there and then to never, ever, willingly approach a Devil Fruit again.)

On the return from their following trip, Shanks is surprised not to be greeted by Luffy as usual.

Makino's not tending to her bar, and the mayor is nowhere to be seen either.

Shanks gathers his most trusted men and moves further inside the village.

They soon hear a commotion in a nearby street and find the source of all the noise.

Shanks maintains his composure, he even smiles – can't risk to frighten Luffy, not now, not ever – but a cold rage races through his veins as he takes in the sight of the mountain bandits from a few days ago, beating Luffy up – can't risk losing him too, either.

They're only small fry so Shanks doesn't even have to lift a finger before all of them are incapacitated in a way or another, courtesy of Roux and Beck.

Only Higuma remains, but he uses a smoke bomb to make a quick escape and carry Luffy away.

Shanks freaks out at the unforeseen hitch in his flawless rescue, more so now that he's fully aware of the possibility that Luffy is the one his Captain told him about.

The mayor begs him to find Luffy and save him.

As Shanks regains his calm, Makino tells him that Luffy took his and his crew's defense against the mountain bandit and his men earlier at the bar.

Shanks blinks in disbelief. Ah... Reminds me of Captain Roger.

In the meantime, his men split up then spread out across the village and beyond to find Higuma, and soon inform their Boss that the bandit got away in a dinghy.

Shanks rushes to the sea, and gets here barely just in time to save Luffy from drowning. He sacrifices his dominant arm in the process, and has to use Conqueror's Haki to get rid of the local Sea King responsible for his loss, but all is well that ends well.

Luffy's safe, albeit crying his heart out.

There's still hope.

The incident leaves Luffy quite shaken afterwards, and more determined than ever to get stronger. He visits Shanks everyday during his recovery and though he's still chatty as ever, he obviously tries to be more serious and focused during conversations, and he lets Shanks rest too. And he's upset by their imminent departure, but he doesn't even ask the Red-Hair Pirates to take him aboard when they decide to set sail towards the Grand Line. "I will become a pirate with my own strength", he proudly says as the crew loads supplies aboard the ship.

Shanks teases him as usual...

But Luffy surprises him once more as he yells, "I'll gather my own crew and it'll be stronger than yours ! And we'll find the world's greatest treasure !! I'm gonna be the King of the Pirates, no matter what !!"

Is this fate acting again ? Shanks opens wide eyes at the brazen declaration. "Oh, so you're gonna surpass us ?" He grins, and on a wild bet, he entrusts Luffy the last memento he has from Captain Roger, and tasks the boy with returning it once he's claimed his title. As he walks to his ship, Shanks feels a new hope growing inside his chest, soothing his aching heart. He recognizes all too well in the boy that claims he'll be the next Pirate King both the dreams of the first tenant of the title, and traits he showed himself when he was younger. Maybe I can help some more. "Everyone has their time to shine", eh, Captain ?

Over the next handful of years, the Red-Hair Pirates become infamous all across the Blues.

Shanks acquires the title of Yonkou after proving to be a formidable enemy of the Marines and making alliances with several other crews.

It takes just a few more years before a familiar straw hat appears on the wanted posters delivered with the News Coo.

Shanks grins wide at the sight then, and throws a huge party to celebrate Luffy's rise to fame, not caring in the least that he and his crew are still hungover from the night before.

Everyone eats until they're full, drinks until they can barely walk, laughs loud enough to scare the birds away, and sings Binks' Sake over and over again.

Shanks heartily sings along, loud and hopeful again... And he doesn't wait too long before paying a visit to Rayleigh-san in Sabaody to tell him all about the kid.

The Summit War leaves Shanks with yet another bitter aftertaste, pondering what ifs and aimless questions while he tries his best to keep composure for the sake of everyone else.

What if I'd known who Ace was when he came to meet me ? Did anyone else, did Whitebeard know who his father was ? What if I arrived earlier in Marineford ? Is Luffy going to be alright ?

He mostly manages, until the burial is over and everyone leaves for the New World. Then he locks himself in his cabin for a few days and drinks some more, the only comforting thought amidst all this is that he met Buggy again and got to catch up with him.

And yet again, fate keeps playing tricks on his sanity.

Luffy comes back to Marineford to ring the Ox Bell sixteen times... with former Shichibukai Jinbe and Rayleigh-san.

Shanks blinks in disbelief at the News Coo relating the event, and though he's relieved to know that Luffy is apparently in good hands, he doesn't want to keep his hopes up in case they get shattered once more.

A couple of eventful years later – which just so happens to be the year Captain said someone would surpass him and his crew – Shanks returns to Elegia, rekindles his relationship with his daughter and sets sail towards Laugh Tale. And on the way there, Shanks finally meets Luffy as an equal on the high seas.

The boy has grown much more mature and much stronger, he gathered brilliant and amazing nakama around him, got himself a mighty ship, and earned the loyalty of thousand of pirates across the Blues along his travels, not to mention the countless outrageous feats he's accomplished on the way.

Shanks is happily convinced that Luffy is, indeed, the one that Captain Roger and Joy Boy were waiting for to complete their greatest dream. He thinks he couldn't possibly be prouder, and then-

The Straw Hats' musician pulls a violin out of nowhere unprompted, and starts playing the tune to Binks' Sake, to which the small crew happily starts singing along.

Shanks exhales a startled laugh as Uta joins their singing, and meets them for the verse, shortly followed by his whole crew. He keeps singing to the end, even as his voice wavers and a few tears stream down his cheeks over the last verse, "...Never-ending, ever-wandering, our funny traveling tale !" Oh, Captain, I wish I could tell you all about this kid. Really, it's such a funny story...

Additional A/N

Title stolen from Episode 380 😋

In Chapter 968, after Roger laughs, he says :

A tale full of laughs! (VIZ translation)

What a funny story! (Other translation I've seen around)

Tonda waraibanashi da! (Original text)

And then there's the last line of Binks' Sake / Binks no Sake :

Endless, aimless, this story on the uproarious seas! (VIZ translation)

Never-ending, ever-wandering, our funny traveling tale! (Other translation)

Hatenashi, atenashi, waraibanashi! (Original text)

I had been thinking for a while that the song lyrics were relevant to the plot, and I've been fully convinced ever since this chapter came out...

The last part of this story is obviously pure extrapolation and use of the fact that Uta is canon but Film: Red isn't (??), but I swear I spent half of the time writing this checking the timeline and everything so this story would be canon compliant 😂

In case you're looking for any of the Film: Red related extras :

Episodes 1029 and 1030

Uta's Special 1-Page Manga

Volume 4/4 : Chronicle of Uta

Volume 4 Billion : The Newborn Baby (Color version based on Oda's sketches & artist rendition, both can be found on the first link)

[soft--dragon]

Wonderful In Every Way

Inspired by this ask here

Word Count: 3,627

Warnings: Self deprecation/angst

This is a SFW tickle fic, if you don’t like that then don’t read :)

ALL OF THIS IS PLAOTONIC, DNI IF YOU'RE A SHIPPER >:/

“You’ll get it next time Tommy,” Ranboo wrapped a graze on Tommy’s shin with gentle hands. “Honest, I believe you will.”

Tommy scrubbed at his tear streaked face, sniffling quietly as the pain in his leg started to fade with the help of the healing potion. “I-I don't understand,” he bit out sharply, “it’s just gliding. I’m meant to be good at gliding. This is so fucking stupid.”

Ranboo hummed quietly, tucking the gauze back into his inventory and patting the side of Tommy’s leg. “Neither of us anticipated the wind Tommy, just bad luck.” 

His earrings jingled as he pulled away, settling back on the grass and letting his shoulders fall back comfortably. He was usually seen with perfect posture, the air of regalness and pride. Being raised as a Prince of the End turned him into an intimidating figure. But with Tommy, he allowed his walls to drop, comfortable to let himself relax around the young avian. And only the young avian.

Tommy had dragged Ranboo from mining to help him with a flying lesson, wanting to try and jump off a higher point to try tricks with gliding. However, the air currents had shifted while Tommy had been in the air, throwing him to the ground and just about scaring Ranboo to death when he saw the boy hit the ground. 

Thankfully, it was only a light grazing and a bit of bruising. Nothing broken or permanently damaged. Ranboo’s overprotective instincts yanked and shoved at him until he had scooped the dishevelled and slightly disoriented boy and took him back to his base to tend to his injuries. Tommy hadn’t been too happy about being manhandled but settled into the comfortable hold pretty quickly, always a sucker for physical contact from his friends and family. 

However, newly bandaged and potioned up, Tommy had turned bitter from the failed flying attempt. He was hunched into a ball, arms locked around his knees and staring at the ground like he wanted it to explode into flames.

“I just wanted to try some new flying tricks,” Tommy grumbled. 

“You can’t expect to throw yourself off a roof and be able to fly like that perfectly.”

“Phil can!”

“Phil’s a fully fledged avian Tommy,” Ranboo reminded him, tail lazily flicking beside him as he retold information that should’ve been well known to the blonde teenager. “He’s able to do those things because of the size and age of his wings.”

“Yeah, and I’m useless because of these pathetic fuckers,” Tommy glared daggers at the pairs of red plumage on his back. 

The harsh tone made Ranboo flinch a bit, ears perked in obvious alarm. His brain was scrambling for a reason for the sudden shift in Tommy’s voice, the anger and bitterness for his own wings jumping out so suddenly it made the enderman’s stomach roll with nerves. 

He tried the logical route of the blonde's distress. “What do you mean? You’re still young Tommy-”

The weak attempt was shot down in seconds by Tommy's venomous voice. 

“Yeah? Well so is Tubbo, and you. Yet you’re able to do such amazing things! You can teleport for fucks sake! That’s so cool!” Tommy was gripping his arms so tightly Ranboo feared he was going to puncture his skin with his talons. “Tubbo can fly, so can Phil- fuck, even Jack has better abilities than me! Wilbur, Sneeg, Niki, goddamn everyone Ranboo, you’re able to do things I can’t, and- a-and-”

Tommy choked words broke off in a heart wrenching sob, tears streaming down his face quickly. He shoved his eyes into the crook of his arm, trying to stem the flow with the material of his jacket.

Ranboo’s mouth felt horribly dry as his friend broke down on his bed in front of him. He felt frozen, locked up and stiff as Tommy whined, his whole body trembling with his cries. Ranboo stumbled on his knees, shuffling over and not giving a single damn about the ripping his pants on the rocky floor.

“Tommy- Tommy, hey, can you look at me-?” His hands hesitated at Tommy’s shoulders then held onto them. When the boy didn’t flinch, he gave them a gentle shake, terror coursing through him at Tommy's gasping breaths. 

“Tommy, please,” He begged, ignoring the reprimanding voice of his father in his head sneering, “Princes don’t beg.”

A pair of bloodshot, blue eyes slowly lifted to meet Ranboo’s own, and the enderman’s heart shattered at the distress in the youthful pupils. He squeezed the boy's red jacket, tail whipping anxiously at his side.

“Hey, there you are,” Ranboo smiled gently, brow creased in worry. His hands reached to Tommy’s face, the boy doing the same for him when he was dangerously close to crying and burning himself. 

He then remembered his aversion to water and took a handful of his soft cape, slipping two fingers under Tommy’s chin to keep him still. He dabbed the edges of Tommy’s eyes and gently brushed away the tear tracks on his cheeks with careful movements. 

“How long have you been feeling like this?” He asked directly, never one to beat around the bush. 

Tommy winced, pressing his mouth into his arms again and refusing to look at his friend. “A while…” he muttered. He had to swallow back fresh tears to murmur, “Everyone keeps calling me a chicken, or powerless, o-or… well you know, you’ve been there for most of it.”

Something horrible and angry surged in Ranboo’s stomach, sinking its teeth into his bones and pulsating the rage throughout his whole body. How could they- how dare they. Tommy was their friend, why the hell would they say such awful things?!

Why didn’t you stop it then?

The thought hissed at the back of his head like a venomous snake, coiling around his brain and smiling at the mortified ender prince. Ranboo was sure his horror could be seen on his face because Tommy’s ear feathers dipped and he hurriedly tried to explain in a panic.

“I don’t care most of the time,” he rushed out, “I know they don’t mean it- I-I mean, I hope they don’t mean it. I just… the past few days have been a lot and it kinda mixed in with that, I’m just overreacting-”

“Bull. Shit.”

Tommy’s words died in his throat, flinching away from Ranboo who looked ready to murder six times over. He’d known the lanky boy ever since he arrived from the End, and he had never cursed.

Ranboo’s tail lashed at his side, his eyes narrowed into slits as his protective rage overtook his already instinct-riddled brain. “How you feel is never something to just brush off Tommy. They’re hurting you, and accidental or not, it’s not okay.”

Tommy’s breath left him as Ranboo’s hands took his own, cold fingers brushing over his knuckles tenderly. Ranboo breathed out sharply to relieve the tension lining his body, ears folded back in obvious distress. “You’re not overreacting. You’re hurting because of stuff people have said. They shouldn’t make those kinds of jokes if they actually hurt you, that’s not something we can let slide. You got me?” 

A moment passed and Tommy had to take in some much needed air. Ranboo’s cursing and sudden protectiveness made his brain short circuit and caused him to forget how to breathe. The burn in his lungs from the lack of oxygen settled and he scrubbed at his red eyes once more. A moment passed before he was able to speak again.

“O-Okay,” he muttered, “okay, I got you.”

Ranboo gave a single nod of satisfaction, running his thumbs back over Tommy’s hands, soothing the tenseness in the muscles until the small talons were lax in his claws. The poor boy looked so small curled into a ball on his bed, wings hunched in tightly as if to protect himself.

Protecting himself from their friends and what they could say to make him feel worse.

I will be getting them to apologise, Ranboo thought firmly, itching to go out and find their friends and give them a piece of his mind. But right now, Tommy was still a mess and needed a pick-me-up, so Ranboo stoked the fiery rage within him and settled it back for the time being.

With slow and careful movements, Ranboo took a hand away from Tommy’s own and reached out, placing a few fingers on the wing closest to him. He felt them twitch under his pads. “These aren’t pathetic,” he murmured, tenderly brushing fingers across the soft feathers. “They’re part of you, so automatically, that makes them incredible.”

Tommy huffed a breath, rolling his eyes a bit as his defence for compliments immediately kicked in, grumbling something incoherent in a weak protest but Ranboo didn’t pay him any mind.

“Your wings are wonderful Tommy, your smile is wonderful, you are wonderful.” He carried on, his claws gently brushing through the feathers to sort the ones in disarray from the crash.

There was an annoyed noise, but within it was a thinly veiled lilt of elation from the soft praise. “S-Shut up Ranboo.”

The enderman was smiling now, the pink in Tommy’s cheeks very obvious in the daylight. “What? I’m only stating facts Tommy, are you disagreeing with me?”

The boy seemed torn between cursing at him and melting into a puddle, instead settling with smacking Ranboo with a wing. 

Ranboo spluttered at the feathers that were lightly shoved in his face, pushing away the appendage and staring in mock outrage at the boy who was still huddled in a ball. He was watching with eyes that were just starting to light up again. 

The sight made Ranboo’s heart soar and mentally made a mission in his head to make that light brighter.

“That was rude,” he commented, “here I am, showering you with love and affection that people wish they could get from me-”

There was a light-hearted scoff and a roll of eyes. “You are such a prick-”

Ranboo barrelled onwards, fighting to keep a shit eating grin off of his face. “Tommy, I am trying to make a point here, please do not interrupt me when I’m monologuing.”

A small giggle rose from the boy but Tommy quickly muffled it, looking away to mask the slip but Ranboo had heard it, and by Prime he was going to hear it again. 

“As I was saying,” Ranboo continued on like a villain in a cartoon that was getting fed up with the protagonist. “You have a wonderful personality, in fact, that was part of the reason I became friends with you. You were magnetic in a way I can’t quite explain, I was drawn to you I suppose.”

Tommy’s cheeks were permanently red now, his eyes squeezed shut and his jaw clenched as he tried not to smile. Ranboo took that personally.

“Your smile is wonderful Fledgling, won’t you give me one?” He asked innocently, his fingers coming to brush back golden curls that framed Tommy's face. “Let me see why you’re nicknamed Sunshine, Toms. The clouds have been gathered for too long now.”

Tommy ripped his head away from Ranboo’s gentle touch, slamming his face into his hands and whining. “Stop, stop, stop,” he hissed, overwhelmed and flustered by the cooed compliments. “You’re so bad, you’re actually terrible, shut your mouth right now, bitch, pussy-” 

Ranboo snickered at Tommy’s spiel of curses and half baked threats, able to see how badly the young avian was blushing. Well, he couldn’t stop now, could he?

“Aw please Toms?” He asked sweetly, “just one little smile from my favourite, feathered friend? Please? I miss seeing it.”

“Eat shit and die,” Tommy growled from behind his hands, not meaning it in the slightest but he couldn’t come up with a nicer way for Ranboo to stop being so infuriatingly kind.

Ranboo pouted though Tommy couldn’t see it. “Tommyyyyyy,” he dragged out the end of the boy’s name, “c’mon, let me see iiiiiiit!”

His hands went to lightly jostle Tommy’s wings, though in the process his fingers skimmed the boy’s ribcage. Tommy yelped, instantly jolting away from his friend and curling into himself more. 

Ranboo’s ears perked in interest at the same time Tommy’s dropped in nervous excitement.

“Oh, hello there stranger,” Ranboo commented with a chuckle. “Little ticklish are we?”

Tommy squeaked from behind his hands, peeking out at Ranboo with a giddy look.

“R-Ran, don’t,” he gasped weakly, though he didn’t try and shuffle away from the other teen.

Ranboo hummed, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “Alright,” he agreed easily, trying not to laugh as he watched Tommy's expression fell. The boy was too easy to read. Ranboo then leapt across the bed to pounce on the avian, wrestling with the shrieking boy who was trying to shove him away 

The tease made Tommy’s legs fly out from being tightly coiled at his chest to kick at Ranboo. However, they were immediately snatched and the kneecaps squeezed. A shrill squeal tore from Tommy, trying to wrench his sensitive knees back, but only laughing harder when the ender prince scribbled underneath. 

“Oh, did I mention you have a wonderful laugh too?” Ranboo grinned, his thumbs swooping in to bury into soft skin, wriggling around in a way that had Tommy throwing his head back in fits of wild giggles immediately. “It’s so bubbly and happy! It must be my favourite sound here, I crave more! More!”

Ranboo’s claws gently scratched up Tommy’s sides and back, throwing Tommy into helpless, spluttering laughter, his wings flapping and shifting behind him as he squirmed. “Something wrong, little bird?”

“R-RahAHAHAhahan!” Tommy shrieked, smacking at Ranboo’s back as the enderman had faced away to get a better grip on his knees. “S-Stohohohohop ihihihit!”

There was a fond huff of breath. “Now why would I do that?” Ranboo asked teasingly, “if I stop, you’ll stop laughing won’t you? And you’ll stop smiling too! I can’t have that, I like seeing my little bird smiling.” 

His tail looped around Tommy’s flailing limbs to brush the tuft of luff over the boy’s neck, wagging more when Tommy scrunched his face up in mirth. His squeaky giggles poured out of him rapidly, his hands coming back from light-heartedly smacking Ranboo to try and fend off the new attacker.

“I’hihihil smihihihile! Ihihihi prohohomise!” Tommy gasped, his grin almost splitting his face with how wide it was. He yelped when the tail slipped through his hold to brush over his ears. “Rahahahahanbohohoo! Nohohoho!”

The ender prince snickered, letting his tail torment the blonde freely, focused on squeezing the skin and muscle just above Tommy’s knees at random to get a kick and squirm. “You promise you will?” He asked, reaching back to prod along Tommy’s sides and grinning at the wild flinch and bubbly laughter in response.

“Yehehehes! Yehehes Ihihihi prohohomise!” 

Ranboo hummed, pausing in his prodding, but continued to shift the fluff on his tail over Tommy’s neck, keeping the boy in suspenseful giggling. “How do I know you’re not lying? I might need collateral of some kind.” 

As Ranboo spoke, he turned back around and pulled his tail away much to Tommy’s relief. 

That relief was short-lived however when Ranboo's hands were lightly planted on the boy’s sides, feeling the muscles jump under the contact.

Tommy immediately gripped onto the teen’s wrists, but he didn’t make a move to shove them away, simply holding onto them as he giggled. “Whahat kihind ohof collateheral? Whahat doho yoohu wahant?” 

Ranboo’s smile widened, leaning down and practically purring as he spoke, “I want you to say that you are an amazing and wonderful avian that Ranboo Beloved the Third cares about very much.” He seemed terribly smug at the affronted look on Tommy’s face, and he aloofly explained. “By saying that, I’ll know that when I stop tickling you, you’ll still be able to smile because you know you’re loved.”

Tommy’s cheeks were back to being bright pink at that proclamation. He stubbornly shoved his face into the duvet of the bed, more flustered and giddy by the phrase then embarrassed. Ranboo took that as a challenge. 

“Your funeral man, you know your way out, otherwise this is your life forever.” Ranboo’s claws were back to digging and wiggling against Tommy’s skin, the wild jolt from the boy making him chuckle.

Tommy had thrown his head back in his laughter again, squirming against the bed but not going anywhere under Ranboo’s weight. His claws trailed up and down his ribs, along his collar bone, skimmed the sensitive parts of his wings, then all the way down to his belly. The pattern was repeated over and over again, leaving Tommy in stitches with how hard he was laughing. Squeaks and hiccups were peppered between each wild burst of giggles, the different spots gaining a new reaction every time. 

After minutes of the inescapable attack, Tommy finally called out for mercy. “O-OKAHAHAY! RAhahahahan! Ihihihihil sahahay ihihit!” 

Ranboo immediately stilled his hands, but left them on Tommy’s stomach as a warning, his fingers cool against the shirt. 

Tommy wheezed through his uncontrollable titters, trying to formulate the words that Ranboo requested, but kept falling into the same giggly trap and melted into the bed. His eyes slipped closed as he brought a hand up to muffle the laughter tumbling free, trying to calm down from the tickle attack. Ranboo softened considerably at the boy, moving to gently rub the palms of his hands into Tommy’s skin, calming the tingles still rushing through the nerves. 

“Breathe man,” he coaxed, smiling fondly at his friend. “C’mon, one big breath, you can do that.”

It took a few minutes for Tommy to actually manage to breathe in without bursting into another round of giggles, the atmosphere of the room leaving him happy and giddy. Ranboo patiently sat through it, running gentle hands over Tommy’s stomach to calm him.

Tommy was still slumped back into the bed, his smile wide on his face and his cheeks flushed pink. He blinked up at Ranboo who purred softly, reaching a hand up to brush through his hair. 

“Well? I’m waiting, Golden Boy,” he teased lightly, scratching at the soft spot behind Tommy’s ear. 

Tommy leaned into the contact with a content sigh, eyebrows drawn together in enjoyment. “I am an amazing and wonderful avian that Ranboo Beloved the Third cares about very much,” he recited quietly.

Ranboo paused in his scratching, having to hold back a laugh at Tommy’s displeased whine. “Sorry, what was that? Didn’t quite catch it?” He raised a brow. 

Tommy rolled his eyes, trying to lean his head back into Ranboo’s claws to urge him to continue. "I am an amazing and wonderful avian that Ranboo Beloved the Third cares about very much,” he repeated a bit louder.

Ranboo pulled his hand away and Tommy actually groaned in annoyance as he cupped his ear and leant in a bit, a shit eating grin on his face. “Tommy, I’m getting older which means I’m going deaf, I can’t hear you-”

“I am an amazing and wonderful avian that Ranboo Beloved the Third cares about very much!” Tommy yelled, sitting up from the bed to smack Ranboo’s shoulder. “Stop being a bitch, you heard me the first time with those dumb ears of yours.”

Ranboo snickered, dropping his hand back onto Tommy’s hair and ruffling the curls affectionately. “Maybe,” he admitted. “But you needed to say it again, you know it’s true right?”

Tommy sighed fondly and nodded, looking at the duvet shyly. “Yeah… yeah I know.”

There was silence for a moment, then a heavy weight was gently placed on Tommy’s head. The sudden mass made him flinch, blinking up at his hair, his hand lifting to brush against something cold and metallic. It was Ranboo’s crown.

“Wha…” he whispered, the crown feeling wrong, yet weirdly right on his golden curls.

Ranboo was smiling fondly, hand coming around Tommy’s head and gently pressing his forehead against the boy’s. “You’re going to fly one day,” he promised softly. “You're going to take to those skies and I'll be there to see every second of it. I have complete faith in you, Fledgling. You just gotta have some faith in yourself too, okay?”

Ranboo’s horns were gently bonked against Tommy’s head as he drew away. “So keep your chin up Featherbrain, your crown is slipping.” 

Tommy stared, completely in shock before bursting into mirthful giggles once more, pressing a hand over his face as he laughed. “You’re such a dork,” he said, voice cracking halfway. “Are you finally going soft on me big man?”

Ranboo rolled his eyes but the fond smile on his face didn’t leave. “Absolutely not,” he spoke firmly once more. “I have a reputation to uphold after all.”

Tommy giggled and brushed at the last of the tear tracks on his face. “Right, and that reputation will surely be damaged if I hugged you right now, huh?”

Ranboo’s face fell, his eye twitching as he stared at Tommy. The blonde snickered at the distraught look on the enderman’s face. The poor Ender Prince was having a ferocious mental battle on keeping up the bit, or folding to Tommy’s request. 

His answer was clear when he growled in the back of his throat and swept Tommy into a tight hug, his tail coiling a bit tighter around the boy’s ankle. A comforting weight to the young avian who hugged back just as tightly. 

“Thank you Ranboo.” His whisper made the teen’s ear twitch, and there was a deep rumbling purr of response. 

“Of course Fledgling,” was the reply, and Tommy had to hide his smile into Ranboo’s soft cloak.

[hexhomos]

okay your post (from twt) about the 2010s and american propaganda has been rattling around in my empty noggin rent free what did you MEAN by that? i'm so intrigued like did I fully miss something?

Oh, i mean that it's fairly obvious that the collection of character traits riot used to conceptualize jayce and viktor as a duo of silly game characters upon release fits play-by-the-book red scare / cold war propaganda tropes. Even though Jayce was released later. Bear with me, here we go:

to the left we have THE DEFENDER OF TOMORROW (superman type, piltover aligned, Representing The Hope of the Nation, very blatantly introduced as the strong boastful charming american man with the big hammer) and to the right we have THAT ONE CREEPY GUY WITH THE RUSSIAN ACCENT AND THE DEATH LASER (zaun aligned, cartoonishly 'evil' inhuman antag, whose 'evil plan' involves the conversion and later sublimation of the masses into his ~alienating personal ideology~, oh hey look its literally just the scary communist russian boogeyman that has come to take over america story but we made him a robot that wants to make more robots this time or something.)

My bullshit meter is probably hyper-sensitive by this point because I've been deeply into cape comics and it is such... a prevalent old ass shorthand there lmfao. Legitimately too many to count. The consequences of it being So Old is that we get the dissemination of these archetypes into all sorts of shit; there's hundreds of books movies tv shows etc that utilize this kind of 'antagonist building' to quickly signify which guy you should mistrust bc he sounds 'vaguely immoral communist-russian' and which guy you should root for because 'HE FIGHTS FOR LIBERTY AND PROGRESS AND THE GOOD-NATURED AMERICAN DREAM,' and that's just like. c'mon man. (IIRC during jayce's initial release this dynamic was *already* seen as a concern/problem or in the very least Cringe and people spoke up to have it tweaked, and later during the massive lore overhaul when jayce's first new stories came out talking about viktor doing 'amoral' 'experiments' the same red flags popped up again)

For the sake of comparison: OG viktor can be summarized with "russian grad student goes insane after his work is stolen, locks himself in room, comes out of it a mechanical beast with warped ideals" while OG jayce is "good-hearted american piltovan boy is offered a deal with the devil (viktor)! He rejects it, but the villain steals his crystal! what he doesn't expect is for the boy to teach him a lesson! (everybody claps)" and that was it. They didn't have a big buildup or anything, viktor just showed up in full mecharegalia one day and said 'hey i need that crystal for my crazy experiments' and then jayce beat his ass.

Their settled lore rework has made them a lot more nuanced and palatable as full-fledged characters in my opinion, mainly that by making jayce into the star studded fuck-up and viktor into the guy you're at least inclined to feel sorry for (and by giving them an actual years-long connection) you drum up empathy and tend to think of them as people.

Arcane is... look opinions get really heated here because it's new, and people are allowed to be attached to previous versions of characters, but since i tend to look at it as a movie adaptation set into it's own universe (because it is) i'm mostly just going like heyyyy this looks cool i like this they're nice and touchy feely and doing intricate rituals :) ! yay !

But say you're a casual player in 2012 and you're Not Fucking Reading Bullshit Character Bios; all you know is that shitty knock-off captain america and shitty knock-off red skull are duking it out on the middle of league of legends and you think it's funny because hey, you know these guys! you know this story! 'haha. nice.' you say. tale as old as time. That was the intended vibe.

anyway, what matters is that the internet loves gay little communist bitches these days, and they're most definitely eroding jayce's pure-hearted american goals. life comes at you fast