#ill tag everything involved so all sides get mad at me

[perceptive0ne]

So to start

Nobody asked but I'm posting my classpecting headcanons for Disco Elysium.

Let's do these in order of the ones I'm most certain of to least. If I'm completely uncertain I simply won't post it.

Harrier DuBois: Bard of Void; nonnegotiable.

Cuno: Page of Rage. Same deal.

Kim Kitsuragi: Mage of Mind. This one took some time because I almost had him pegged as a knight at first, for some reason.

Jean Viquemare: Knight of Blood. I'm not putting him here simply because he's prickly, the Espirit de Corps checks do reveal more about his character that would possibly place him here; I'm mentioning this as I'm more than well aware of the bias present based on how we get to perceive his situation. However, how he reacts in this situation, how he has reacted in previous situations regarding his partner, how he interacts with other members of the 41st, how he views himself and how we gain that information, as well as further information from the writers as to the codependent nature of their relationship despite having only known each other 2 years has me finding this assignment hard to doubt. Cope and seethe.

Judit Minot: Rogue of Time. This one was a bit more difficult as for this entire situation she's trying to just give Harry, the player character who we view this world through, enough time and space to try to heal but she's only been working with him for like 2 months at that point in time. A lot more of this is just on the vibes she gives and the bits and pieces of information regarding her home life and who she's previously worked with.

Neha: Maid of space, although there could be argument that she could be a light player because luck, that is vriska specific based on the relevance she assigned to it and y'all should know that by now.

Ruby: Seer of Doom. I'm choosing not to elabor8.

Titus Hardie: Heir of Life. Likewise.

Trant Heidelstam: This is the most Light player man I have ever seen in my entire life; so much so, i feel a slight embarrassment on not figuring a class. Most likely a Rogue or Knight with him being Specialist Backpedal, but he could be an Heir. Or he could be just a knowledge class of another aspect but I highly, highly doubt it.

Klassje Amandou: I want to say Witch of Breath. But witches are generally a bit bubblier, rebel against their aspect a bit more which she. kinda does in a way befitting this game ig? she also has the potential writing for a mage of light, though, and that bit scares the shit out of me, but that could very well be biased as fuck, which I suppose is intentional. I will not be elabor8ing also.

Cunoesse: She's in the bard/maid dichotomy so hard that ill be honest, its a bit difficult to tell; defo of the creation/destructions classes. i honestly think shes hope/rage or life/doom adjacent but the only reason shes on this list is to spark discussion, so please do.

There are so many people I've left out, but I encourage the yall to talk about it. I wouldn't post otherwise.

[maskedemerald]

Pre-Order The Last Straw Novella

So the Kickstarter didn't work out but that isn't going to stop me! The book still comes out on the 25th of November! I'm still planning to do a smaller print run so if you want Paperback its going to exist! Follow the link to my website to pre-order in either E-Book or Paperback format!

A Curiosity Piqued – The Last Straw Novella – Masked Emerald

Also If you are interested I have some thoughts about the Kickstarter experience below the cut! Just my thoughts going forward and not words from any kind of expert on the matter. In fact they are rather rambly, sorry about that.

The Numbers

Costs

Indie printing is definitely not cheap, the costs have gone up for pretty much everything. However the worst thing was the increased cost of postage. Everything I read said make 20% of the goal postage costs. The way things are now I found it was more like 35% which is not good. My original printing costs were £3000 but by the time I'd added on fees, postage for the physical books and taxes it was £7000!

The Problem with Social Media

One of the biggest adversaries I faced was the algorithm and social media. Discoverability is shit on pretty much all social media at the moment. Getting seen beyond my existing followers was a big challenge. The only place I found growth was Tumblr and specifically in the Writeblr side of it (Hi new writer friends! I appreciate you! I'm still catching up on the tag games from when I was ill!)

The Experience

Preparations

Definitely next time starting preparations earlier. There is a lot of preparations involved so I'm definitely going to give myself more time so I'm not trying to do it all at the same time.

The video was harder than I thought it would be, give me unscripted streams any day over trying to get that perfect take.

Shy Bens Get Nout

Is a useful phrase however my anxiety sometimes makes it hard to actually do but seriously if you don't ask then you don't get. While it wasn't me that asked, someone asked on my behalf and as a result I got to do a talk about the book on the radio. Pick up the courage and ask, it might just make a difference. The worst they can do is say no. Which yeah can be intimidating but I need to get better at it!

Stress

I've been describing the Kickstarter as a mad dash. That's what it felt like. I had to constantly be pushing it and then things got worse, I got ill. I was in bed with no capacity to do anything for a week. It tanked my ability to push the Kickstarter. I seriously think its a good idea to have a bunch of posts already written and scheduled to go out. That way anything I post is extra. I really didn't like the stress of it personally so if I try again in future I'll be working to keep the stress low.

Future Plans

Longer Term Funding Pool

I'm going to be tracking the money made by The Last Straw and any merch designs to count towards the next print run of either The Last Straw or the next book. I'm also thinking about the people subbing on Twitch and the people considering becoming a Patreon. These people by the time a book comes out have put money into the printing pool and I think it would be more fair if they can also get the physicals without needing to pay full price. Also without them feeling they need to participate in a Kickstarter to make the thing they want happen. So I'm planning to change my rewards! Subs and Patreons will get virtual stamps towards physical items. This lets me keep entry low and even based on how much I get across the Twitch subs and Patreons. I'll be posting a proper breakdown soon.

Plans for Trying Kickstarter Again

I plan to try crowd funding again if the long term pool doesn't get enough for the next book but I am also considering trying out other sites like Indiegogo. The flexible funding is interesting if I could work out the costs the right way. We'll see what happens in March/April when I need to start thinking about printing the next A Curiosity Piqued.

[argumentativeaxolotl]

THANK YOU. No- dude- quite a few of people have been saying I “got what I deserved” and that I shouldn’t be on Ao3 if I don’t want to interact with proshippers since it’s a proship website which is EXACTLY WHY I PUT “PROSHIPPERS DNI” since I don’t want to breed that kind of environment and possibly have someone get groomed in my comments section. I don’t want to promote toxic behavior and if that means being firm with the more extremeist side then so be it. Like calling someone a creature of hell may be more extreme on my end, but I’m ADMITTING IT. Like I’ve already changed the description and everything(the reason everyone is mad at me isn’t even because the fanfic itself it’s the description💀). I think people are more upset with the fact it’s a “religious metaphor” (it’s not) than actually being called that and the fic was finished last year 😭

Ao3 through emails has stated that if I don’t want to interact with them I should block them when 1) I didn’t even know you could do that because ao3 preaches non-censorship and freedom and no-judgement or whatever and 2) why doesn’t that apply the other way around? If a proshipper doesn’t like me or my works why can’t they block me? If I’m actively stating “no proshippers” in descriptions or in tags of fics that’s actively going to make my audience smaller and would effect me and my reach more than anyone else since I’m “excluding” a larger portion of fandom since extreme proship is so widespread.

Like I don’t care if people are proship in their own time as long as real kids and real adults and real people aren’t involved, but unfortunately most of the time real people are involved in many different ways, but if you point that out you’re either labeled as a harasser and a bully or “just a hater” or something.

Someone even called me entitled for not wanting to interact with proshippers but that’s like going on instagram and getting uncomfortable with sexual ads. I’m allowed to be uncomfortable in all spaces unless I’m actively seeking certain things such as porn and the works. I don’t get why it’s “entitled” of me if I don’t want to work with or interact with people like that. There are plenty of people on Ao3 who aren’t comfortable with the glorification of rape, incest, etc which is what a lot of the extremist Proshippers do and I want to interact with those people over the proshippers. Like I can choose the crowd of people I wanna hang out and interact with, right? 😭

Again if I don’t want to interact with proshippers with my fanfics the only thing that’s doing is harming me as an author since that would narrow my audience so I don’t get the big deal of not wanting to interact with people who sometimes have legit groomers and pedos in their circles but won’t admit it 😭

Like I’m anti proship only because of the really creepy people on that side of the fandom who glorify things that shouldn’t be glorified or who actively seek out the younger portion of the fandom. Like I couldn’t care less who people ship as long as it has no real world consequences- unfortunately a lot of the times real life and fiction collide in unfortunate or horrid ways like the Slenderman Stabbing case from like 2014 where that two girl’s friends tried to summon Slenderman and legit almost killed their friend because they thought he was real or something. Like that is a perfect example of how some people with mental illnesses or just how some people in general don’t understand fiction from reality and it can damage other people in real life and that’s TERRIFYING.

LMAOO I'M ONE OF THE PEPOPLE THAT REPORTED YOU

I'm gonna send your post to the Ao3 staff so they know you actively bash and harass people on other platforms as well, enjoy the IP ban sweetiepie!! 🥰🥰

Ah I see so you’re one of the proshippers 💀 nahhhh bro cuz I don’t give a fuck if you’re actively shipping minors and adults in your own time but don’t bring me and my fanfic into that shit. It is disgusting and it isn’t an okay thing to do. If you wanna do it in your own time I do NOT CARE. But don’t bring this shit up and get upset with my fic because I said to get lost.

If you want a proship fic go write one or talk to other proshippers. I don’t believe in proshipping(firm anti) and you will not change my mind on that. It IS GROSS. It can have REAL WORLD CONSEQUENCES. It can allow ACTUAL PEDOPHILES and SEX OFFENDERS access to REAL CHILDREN.

Again I do not give a fuck if you are a proshipper or not, but don’t actively say I’ve harassed you. I haven’t done shit to you- oh what I don’t agree with your beliefs and your ship? Womp Womp dude. You clearly don’t agree with mine and that’s OKAY. Don’t get butt-hurt over being called a creature of hell because you’re clearly acting like it dawg 💀

I haven’t harassed anyone nor have I bashed anyone. I haven’t gone after you- you’re just offended that your favorite proship isn’t in the fic. In that case, go find your favorite ship and read that instead dawg. I ain’t gonna deal with such bullshit because guess what? I do not care about what your shipping beliefs are as long is it doesn’t effect real people. If you enjoy that, go look for that on ao3.

You don’t want hate hence why you’re sending in anonymously. Actually message me and we can talk this through in private since you’re clearly not understanding what harassment is. Don’t hide behind your screen, DM me.

Oh and while you’re at it, can you give me an example of harassment? You messaged me first here and I have every right to defend myself and talk about what happened.

[papergirllife]

Chapter 1

Synopsis:

You don’t know what it’s like to be free, to make your own choices, and live your own life. For your whole life, your parents have been treating you like a puppet on strings, controlling your life to every single detail, as well as ignoring the fact that you have feelings. Other times, when you disobey their wishes, or speak up about your own opinions, they bash you down with words, in other words, psychological abuse, has led you down the long winded road of depression and anxiety. What happens when you meet a man who’s willing to be your guide out of this terrible downpour? Would you give a shot at happily ever after?

Warnings:

big age gap (kinda?)

issues on anxiety

issues on depression (mild)

issues on parental abuse

smut (maybe)

Tag List: @etherealtyjaem​ (lmk if you wanna be on the list)

It has always been like this, being locked up in the study room so you could ‘study’ for hours end, or that’s what they think you’re doing. You studied in an elite academy with your smart cousins, only to have you graduating with average grades, which of course, earned you a harsh scolding from your parents. Now, you’re supposed to be studying business for university, even though you had zero interests in it, the subject is fine, it’s what you’re studying it for that irks you. Your family runs a business in Seoul, but from what you can see by secretly skimming through the files as well as the arguments behind shut doors with your aunts and uncles, things aren’t going as planned.

You don’t have many friends, nor a phone, they took it away from you when you wanted to go out with some friends, claiming that it’s a distraction that should be locked away. You felt like Rapunzel, locked away from the world, they don’t have any love for you, you’re quite sure they don’t, they had once slapped your face ten times when you had a boyfriend behind their backs, and you were 15 for god’s sake, along with other things that you rather not say, you don’t want to relive all those painful memories.

Sometimes you wished you could go back to the time when you were a child, when you were at your grandparents’ in the morning, her warm smile and loving eyes, when you didn’t know what laid ahead. You wish you hadn’t realised that you were being abused, you used to think what you went through was the same for other kids as well, until you talked about it with other people and scared them away from you. The painful memories sinking back in made the words in front of you blurry as you felt tears seeping in your eyes.

Depression.

It’s deemed as something ridiculous in your family, and that people who are suffering from it are weaklings and don’t deserve anything from this society.

‘Does that mean I’m weak?’

You never went to therapy nor took any medication for your mental illnesses, and recently the development of anxiety attacks are constantly putting you on edge. You have them at least once a week, sometimes you even had problem breathing, but you couldn’t tell anyone about it, nor anyone would ever listen to your cries of help.

“We’re going to help sell your uncle’s house this Saturday,” your mother said as she was folding the clothes.

“The mansion he recently bought?” you asked, confused as to why he would sell the mansion he was obsessed with just two months ago.

“Yes, he bought that without our permission back then, so now we need to sell it for funds, and you need to be there to entertain the potential buyers, give them a tour around the house and other enquiries. You have to direct them to us if you think they’re truly interested, it’s going to be an open house concept party,” cold, that’s how your mother sounded, her claims of putting family above everything else flying out of the window whenever her demands are not met.

“Okay, is there anything else?” you asked, hoping to be excused as soon as possible.

“No, you can continue your studies in the study room.”

That’s what basic communication is in your life, you tried talking about your interests, your opinions, but they either fall on deaf ears, or you would receive a lecture for having a ‘false perspective’. You’ve given up on talking to them about things that are going in on your life now, they don’t listen anyways.

The party is filled with old men with their muffin tops waddling around with a wine glass in hand and talking obnoxiously loud, obviously having too much money to go by, looking at how overly filled their bellies are.

You tried hiding away in the house, but your family kept pushing you out to talk to them. Their stares were not intimidating, no, but it made you feel uncomfortable as their gazes linger a bit too long on your legs or anywhere else, and the way they didn’t want to let go after they shook your hand, made your anxiety levels rise to the roof.

You would find random excuses to run away, like going to refill their glass or saying you need to use the loo, your heartbeat going as fast as your legs could take you away from them.

When you came back out from hiding for the 6th time, both your parents were rushing you to meet someone new.

“He’s a man of great fortune and power, so the chances of him buying this house is high. Don’t try to hide from this one, or you’ll get it when we get home,” your mother warned, her eyes side eying you with daggers.

Your mother’s threat made you sick inside, what are you to them? A scapegoat?

You weren’t paying attention to who or where was she pushing you to, but once you stopped, the man in front of you made your eyes as big as saucers.

‘How is a man like this doing here?’ you thought to yourself.

“Hello Mr Suh, we’re quite busy at the moment with other potential buyers. Why don’t we allow my daughter, Y/N, to show you around?” your mother said, her voice overly sweet, like day old cotton candy.

Once you were in front of him, your parents left. Leaving you helpless as your social anxiety kicks in, your eyes trained on his shoulder, eye contact, especially from this man, made you very nervous.

“C-can I give you a tour?’ you asked, hoping to ditch him halfway.

Johnny looks at the way your eyes avoid his, it wasn’t hard, given how tall he was, there’s just something so intriguing about you, so different from the girls that throw themselves at him with zero doubts.

“Nice to meet you, Y/N. I’m Johnny,” Johnny introduced himself by bending down slightly, a friendly smile on his face, one that you can’t decipher whether he had similar intentions as those nasty old men had.

To say that the tour was horrible would’ve been an understatement, you kept stuttering under his piercing gaze, instead of looking at you like you were his next meal like other potential buyers, Johnny was genuinely listening to what you have to say. You didn’t think the house was any interesting, it was just a bunch of useless expensive things under one roof, like the movie room, the slides at the pool, the ‘mini’ bar. These things weren’t appealing to you, riches are overrated when it becomes too common, like your cousins and their different designs of Birkin bags, you weren’t exactly fond of their favourite alligator skinned ones as well.

Yet Johnny didn’t look at the cliche setting that you are currently presenting, instead his eyes are trained on yours, it wasn’t a scrutinizing gaze like the wives of those perverted men who stared down on you, nor anything that seems predatory, it only held calculation and observance. On the house? It doesn’t seem like it. On you? You can bet this whole house that he’s met women far more beautiful compared to a plain jane like you.

“T-that’s all for the tour, Mr Suh. Would you want me to direct you to my parents, if you’re interested?” you asked, hoping that you’d get to be alone again.

“Can you take me to the park nearby? I’d like to see the facilities available in this housing area,” he answered smoothly, as if he had calculated every little detail in his life.

You nodded wordlessly at his request, taking him to see the park nearby the house. It was a weird sight, having a man as tall as Johnny towering behind you.

“This is the park,” you pointed stupidly, cursing at yourself, obviously this is the park,  anyone with eyes could tell.

Johnny inhaled the breath of fresh air this area offered, his shoulders not as tensed up after. A smile decorated his handsome face as he turned towards you.

“Let’s sit.”

Johnny directed you to the nearest park bench, his size taking up most of the bench, yet he scoots into himself as you sat down next to him, giving you personal space.

‘Does he think I’m going to lower the price of the house for him? I don’t even know how much they’re selling it for,’ you thought, thinking this man must be mad that an unimportant person like you could negotiate with him.

“I’m going to be honest with you, Y/N. I’m not interested in the house,” Johnny said, breaking the silence.

Your mom isn’t going to be pleased when she hears this, you thought as you bit at your bottom lip, thinking about how harsh is she going to react if she didn’t get a buyer out of this event.

“Thank you for taking your time for considering through out this-

“I’m interested in you.”

Did you hear that correctly or was your mind playing tricks on you?

You stared at Johnny as his hand comes close to your face, he wasn’t pulling you closer, instead his fingers reached out to gently graze the underside of your eyes.

“I can see what you’re hiding,” Johnny said solemnly, his eyes showing you pity.

You quickly took out your compact mirror out of your pocket, checking to see if you did a bad job on the concealer for your puffy eyes today, but it looked fine.

“I used to be involve in theater, and I’ve seen people covering unwanted marks or eye bags on their face many times. It’s not obvious to most people, don’t worry,” Johnny explained.

The touch of his fingertips on your face was filled with warmth, as well as his eyes when he looked at you now, if his eyes were honey you’ll be as addicted as Winnie the Pooh. His touch was quickly gone as it had came, his hand placed back into his lap as he stares ahead.

“I’m not going to assume anything, but from what I can see, I don’t think you deserve to be going through what you’re facing now. And as for your family’s company, it’s not going to last long even if they managed to sell this property out. You’re going to be in a much more disappointing situation when that happens, I’ve been in the business game my whole life, my predictions hardly go astray anymore,” Johnny said without a sliver of judgement, he was just laying out the cards for you to observe.

Johnny reaches for a card in his coat pocket and handed it to you, it was his business card.

“I can take you away from all this chaos raging among your family, if you can call it a family that is. I’ll be seeing you soon, Y/N,” Johnny said before standing up and walking away to the direction where his car awaits, his driver closing his door.

That was most definitely a statement.

[a-dragons-journal]

If you're a singlet you have no place involving yourself in syscourse and you ESPECIALLY have no place calling us or agreeing with hurtful, offensive words that mock us for having a trauma disorder that were coined by a known abuser who preys on mentally ill people. For someone who claims to give a fuck about people "traumatized" by dumb kids roleplaying you sure don't have any respect for any other traumatized group

Anon, as gently as possible, here is the first post in this conversation, which kicked it off. You may notice that I am not the one who brought up syscourse. I don't know if you're the same anon I've been speaking to or not, though I think you are based on your writing style and what you're saying? But either way, I did not "involve myself" in anything - the anon who brought this directly into my inbox involved me. If I were inserting myself into a conversation, I would agree with you that it's not really my place, but I didn't - I've done nothing but reply to people who brought it directly to me.

And if you are the same anon, then frankly, you don't get to bring this argument into my inbox unprompted and then be mad when I participate.

(You may also notice, if you've been following me for any length of time or if you scroll through my blog for a bit, that I very rarely post about plurality at all, much less syscourse. This is for the most part because I am aware it's not really my wheelhouse, and in the rare instance I do reblog something like that, it's almost always signal boosting plural voices. And I've been very transparent about that from that first post I linked onward in this discussion.)

I would also point out that, as I've acknowledged at least once and I think more than once during the course of this discussion, that everything I've said, I've gotten from other plural people. I'm not making these arguments up for myself; they're the arguments that have been presented to me that make the most sense, are the most internally consistent, and don't entail insisting that people are lying about their own experiences. Again, if I were pulling these opinions out of my singlet ass, you'd be completely right that I'd be out of my lane, but I am listening to plural folks - it's just that I've listened to both sides of plural folks, and the side that seems correct to me (both morally and logically) is not the one you're presenting to me currently.

With that cleared up:

First: please, genuinely, point out to me where I have mocked you or agreed with things that were mocking you. If I've done that somewhere, I want to know so I can avoid doing it in the future. Nothing I've said has been intended to mock or make fun of, and I genuinely am not sure where I've come off that way (other than possibly in some slightly snarkier tags in a response to a recent ask, which to be honest weren't meant to be taken too seriously and are more me letting off a little frustration steam re: this conversation than anything, but I do apologize if they were offensive). But me supporting one group of people in no way equates to me mocking another group. I've said nothing disparaging DID/OSDD systems at any point.

Second: regarding this:

with hurtful, offensive words that mock us for having a trauma disorder that were coined by a known abuser who preys on mentally ill people.

I honestly don't follow you at all - what words are we talking about at this point, and who is this "known abuser" you're referencing? There's been a jump here where you lost me, I think, sorry. (Possibly there's some community history I don't know about, or possibly I do know about it and am just not connecting the dots, ha.)

Third and finally: Whether you are the original anon or not, you haven't... actually addressed any of the points I presented here. If you have rebuttals to them, I genuinely would love to hear them. Otherwise, with all due respect, you're kind of just repeating things that have already been said louder and expecting a different response.

(But I suppose if you would prefer me to not "involve myself," I could just start deleting your asks instead of answering them, if you'd prefer that? /hj)

[rurifangirl]

aight. here somes the ask lore thingie

tw for ppl readin: mention of mental illness, father mention

firstly, how did rui end up meetin the rest of the gang? did they all have sum sort of run in? did they just happen to meet on exident?

also is the father a villain? i remember ya mention him, and was wonderin

and do they have a specific place where they stay? like in a dormstory, a single house, do they live in a single town, or in completly different places?

do any of them suffer from mental/physical illnesses? if they do, how does it affect their life/relationships w others?

Aight, so here we go, be ready cuz shit's long.

(1st part - The Rui n the gang meeting; The Shou meeting) No Tw

Honestly, I also kinda wanted to do this for quite a long time, so I'm gonna firstly talk about how the gang (w/o really mentioning the others name's since they're gonna get introduced soon) met itself and decided to form, and then I'll individually do It in Lyva's and Shou's case, specifically Shou's since i mentioned that his meetin was somethin id have to take care of in another post, so i will rn.

First things first, w the whole gang. Now It wasn't really casually, mainly because Lyva n Rui did meet up, but It was during a special occasion still, that being a really important manifestation in one of the main regions in my oc universe. (They don't have name's yet so pls don't bash me🤡) Them being primarly the Forest, where Rui eventually lives in after all of his past shit, the near-countryside part, where Lyva was living, a pretty much city living on water, where Shou's currently living, and many more, as such the dunes with which I'll introduce Qiran (hopefully tomorrow/today),The sea itself, some High up places and as I said many, many other more. Other than this brief intro, they meet up where Lyva used to live, but mainly because of problems and out of conviniance.

Everyone had something to take back from, so they agreed to help eachother to reach that end, so it's all really planned. Now i won't really go w Lyva, cuz i explained how she met Rui the first time n how they helped her, so I don't need to ramble more on this. Now I'm gonna go w Shou's part though.

This Is more of a note i wanted y'all to know first, cuz i really like how Lyva n Rui met him the first time (cuz the second time was when the gang then all agreed to form n all that jazz.). Basically, Rui n Lyva were out, n visiting new places as such, to prepare themselves further and to try and search for more weapons, cuz they both knew that they'd eventually get in trouble, and even though they still are good, they wouldn't stand much a chance, n since Shou's Place is known for its production they decided to go. N fun fact, there's many funny shit that happends, for example Rui tries to touch a fish, but gets SLAPPED by It. They're still mad >:[. Ajkskdj anyways, some other stuff happends n they just, lose themselves. They had a map ofc but still managed to do so. But Rui was usin It so, I don't really blame em for gettin lost.

Shit happends n they find themselves pratically in front of his shrine/palace. Shou's servitors (cuz he saw everything happend from afar n gave them the okay) brought em in, but rather than makin em idk some tea n just making them recouver, Shou rather put them under some "tests" w/o tellin em, to see if they were any use.

For example he brought them some cups of tea, but before drinking them Rui noticed somethin unusual in the water, so they gave Lyva a sign to not drink It, n as Shou asked as a reason why they just replied that they weren't thirsthy, leavin Shou in a kind of defeated state. Bitch if i love this part honestly, there's so much fun to seein all of their reactions, but I'm gonna go brief rn. So other of this tests pass later n Shou eventually gets upset cuz they're all winnin n seemingly makin fun of him, lettin him in a weaket standpoint, n a fight happends. Even though it's a 2v1 situation he can still manage pretty well, so It ends in a draw. They get to talk after this and get to understand that they don't have to necesseraly be on the opposite side, though Shou Is still unsure whether to belive in that or not.

After they leave him, pratically almost alone w only a bunch of servitors helpin him. He admits defeat n won't show up until the event and yadayada. (Also it's during this weak time of his he'll meet Qiran which i already have plans w so it's all goin to be said bout their relationship in their post.)

(2nd part, the father mention.) Tw:father mention

So it's true that w Shou i did mention his father, but I'm not entirely sure bout his involvment honestly. In theory he kind of is a villain itself, even because of his devilish nature, so it's true, but im not sure whether to make him an independent villain or part of a group of them. But rather than that yes, i do want to make him some sort of villain in the end, because that's also part of Shou's agreement to be part of the group. I will make concept art for him so he'll definetly be involved. Not gonna lie, mabye that bastards also involved w Rui's cult too in a way or another but im givin in too many details holy shit I'll never get outta this fuck

(3rd part- where do they live) No Tw

They live in their own homes honestly, but It would be no surprise if they'd all decide to sleep over someone in specifical, though they have their own place. I made some concepts for Rui's intern home, which here It Is 😤 (forgive me for the bad quality but it's 2 am rn 🤡) I made this a while ago but only did Rui's, so I'll do Lyva's, Shou's n the other one's too. They live in different places, for the exception of, atm, Qiran, since I'm gonna say that they're more of a traveller n don't have a stable home.

(4th part- the mental/physical ilnesses) Tw: Self harm and Mental ilness mention

Well, this Is gonna be a ride. They all suffer from Ptsd, which Rui n Shou suffering from It the most. It still affects them all, though in different occasions, so Imma just do them in specifical. (Also because i gotta add some shit to shou that i didn't wanna add because i thought It was too much honestly)

Rui-

It affects them really much. They use crystals n gems to avoid anything going w their past or anything remotely related It, as whenever they feel awful about havin those flashbacks when they still were a child. They never want to talk about what happened, n during their moments It gets really, really bad. Both emotionally and physically, as their body sometimes cannot handle anything so it completely shuts down. They never really got any help for It as Rui's too scared to share bout their experience, both because of trauma itself that doesn't make them say anything even if they wanted to and because of the cults influence, so either way they've got to handle It by their own.

Lyva-

Other than havin to deal w mornin sickness, which Is the least for her, she has to deal w her neglectful childood and how desperate she's always been for litteraly anythin, whether it's related about love,friendship, food, toys, anything. She tried to seek for help and semi found It, but as of now she can't keep up w It and has better things to take care of. It's still really bad overall, but she's hoping for things to get better. Spoiler It really won't.

Shou-

⭕Tw for sh⭕

It's... really fucking bad. I'm gonna get outta this w saying something i didn't want to add because it's really triggerin, but im gonna do It now. So basically, I've mentioned them acting feminenly for his own mother, but i didn't say what would've happened if he displeased her. She would just stare down at him and whispering some awful shit or names. This would happen especially whenever he'd slip off that mask of his or revealed even a tiny bit of his devilish essence. Note that he's still a child here. So, best thing he could to was to "punish" himself, which basically consists of him scratching his arms too much and, i don't really want to continue this, forgive me but it's kind of triggering even for me. But...you can guess what he's doing, since he even to this day still keeps sharp nails. I'm sorry for putting this, but it's another way to show how his mother fucked him up and now suffering from this.

I'm sorry for rushin the last part but i'm not personally vibing w it.

Tags undercut

@a-chaotic-dumbass @spoopy-fish-writes @dopesaladlady @damnfoxx (I'm really unsure bout taggin ya in this ;-;)

If you want your tag removed, dm me cuz it's 3 am at the moment n i may have messed em up. (I'm not gonna recheck tomorrow so that's why)

[lokidrabbles]

Sweet Knitted Wishes (Loki x Reader)

Loki becomes jealous of reader’s relationship with Tony Stark and reflects on this

A/N: Next portion of my Loki x Reader Winter series! Had a lot of fun writing this one! As always, Gender Neutral Reader! Warnings: Slight jealousy and pure fluff

Loki supposed this was another natural tendency for humans. As he continued to study and acclimate to Midgardian culture he took focus on the change of temperament and behaviors they would display during this ‘Holiday Season.’ He comprehended it enough. It was a time of the year were they would grow closer, bond as comrades and family, engorge themselves with festive foods and drinks, and become even more physically needy than before.

The latter didn’t really phase him much, as he always perceived humans to be physically needy creatures. He would catch wind of how often handshakes, embraces, kisses and pats on the back would occur at Stark’s facility. He had the misfortune of experiencing one of Captain America’s bone crushing handshakes once, perhaps as a retaliation from the last time they battled. Despite this, Loki wasn’t a very physical person, when it came to humans of course. Even his childish tag-a-longs with you didn’t involve much exchange with bodily movements until much recently. And at the most, it involved an innocent kiss in a hidden location where no one could even fathom it.

He figured you respected his personal space as you too became suddenly touchy feely with your coworkers and comrades. He discovered your favorite greetings included side hugs and quick pecks on the cheek, nothing too risque however. For the most part, you got along with everyone at the facility fairly well. For those few unknown workers, you were polite and attentive, just what a model worker would be.

As his observations continued, Loki soon had come to known just how differently these greetings would be with the one Tony Stark.

And he absolutely detested it.

Loki knew you had a different relationship with your boss, one involving many exchanges of teasing remarks and playful banter. These weren’t ill intended remarks however. You had great respect for Stark and it was evident with how you would describe him to Loki. At the same time, you both connected and got along extremely well. You both were smart, witty, had your own individualistic charisma and had a knack for looking out for others. You had told Loki you best interpreted it as having a big brother who will always look after you and call you out on your misgivings.

He knew both you and Stark have had this relationship for much longer than he has been there. And yet, Loki felt as if he should fit that role in your life instead. Not as a big brother, but as someone equally meriting praise. You were also playful and clever around Loki, and for what he interpreted, you also held him in high regard. This was exhausting as the only image appearing in his head was the need to go head to head with Stark in some time of metaphorical battle for your hand.

His possessiveness got the better of him one evening when Stark had surprised with an early holiday gift. Loki had been lounging around your vicinity as you were ready to call it a night. Stark, loudly voicing his entrance into the room, had called out to you to hand you a small gift bag since he wouldn’t be at the facility for the remainder of the week.

It wasn’t until you exclaimed joyously and wrapped your arms around Stark’s neck that Loki felt a strong, uncomfortable pang in his chest. The feeling felt heavy and twisting, as if a hand had reached his insides and crushed it with an immense force. A million thoughts ran into his head and his lips became distorted.

“Tony you little shit. This is so lovely, thank you so much!” You had said, finally releasing your loving embrace from around his shoulders.

“This is so I don’t get any crap from you after I’m back from Europe. Also because now you owe me something even nicer.”

From the corner of the room, both you and Tony failed to notice the grumbling Asgardian with a dark cloud forming over his head. Jealousy wasn’t the right word to describe his anger, but resentment. Resentment towards Stark for being fortunate enough to receive this type of intimacy from you. For receiving your attention and utmost respect in any way possible. And resentment for feeling comfortable enough to be this way with you. Loki used all of his strength to hold back any rabid temptation to whisk you away and keep you all to himself.

But he knew he couldn’t do it, and it wouldn’t be very characteristic of him to do so. 

Loki wanted to send Stark flying through a window again. Now that would be more fitting to his character.

“Hey, reindeer games.” Tony hollered out to Loki, only to be met with daggers for eyes.

“What?” Loki responded scornfully.

“Better stay out of trouble while I’m gone. (Y/N), keep an eye on him for me will ya’?” Tony gave you a quick wink before exiting the room, to which you rolled your eyes heavily at.

Loki remained bothered at the whole incident and he slouched in his seat, defeated at how much Stark had riled him up yet again. From a different perspective, he appeared like a pouty child who had failed to get the attention they wanted. And maybe this is what he had actually felt, the loss of your attention for another man, a man who had defeated him long ago. He knew you’d never see him in that way but the possibility continued to tug at him.

You approached Loki after gathering all your belongings and immediately recognized his ‘moody’ face.

“You okay? Were you waiting long for me?”

His eyes only peered up at you, his expression still rigid. “I’m fine. And no.”

You scoffed. “Tony got on your nerves again huh? I know you hate that little nickname he gave you.”

“He’s a fool but I don’t waste my time being bothered by it.” He was the God of Lies after all.

“Right. Lucky for us, we won’t have to deal with him for a good while. Should be fun for us.” You grinned at him, suggesting some mischief between the two of you.

Even as mad as he was, Loki couldn’t resist smirking at your remark. “It will be quite enjoyable without Stark breathing down my neck.”

“Oh!” You halted for a bit. “That reminds me!”

You jogged quickly back to your desk and rummaged through your drawer, taking out a green gift bag stuffed with white tissue paper. 

Loki’s curiosity overtook him, forgetting his turmoil for a brief moment. He slowly walked over to you as you puffed up the crumpled tissue paper.

“I know it’s a little early but I wanted to give you this before the weather gets any colder.”  You said, handing over the small gift to him.

Loki stood frozen. “I...don’t understand.”

“Of course you do. It’s an early present for you. I just didn’t want to take it out in front of Tony. I’m sure you wouldn’t have wanted to try it on in front of him.”

Loki’s eyes darted back and forth between your face and down to the gift you held for him. A gift, from you, just for him. He hesitantly reached out to grab a hold of it, brushing past your fingertips.

“You didn’t get anything for Stark?” Loki couldn’t resist asking. This was an opportunity to have his ego boosted.

“Tony has like everything so I’ll probably just order some hard liquor for him or something. I figured no one has really gotten you anything before.”

“I don’t know if I should take that as an offense.”

“Go ahead and open it though, let me know if you don’t like the color.” You said, motioning to his gift.

Loki dug in, pulling the paper out, unsure of what to expect. He reached in and began to pull out something soft, warm, something made of heavy yarn. Loki pulled out the item, revealed to be a large knit scarf, beautifully deep green with with soft golden tassels at its end. He couldn’t possibly resist to think it, but this was indeed his color scheme. His favorite colors. Meaning you had picked this with intention specifically for him. He was running in your thoughts somewhere.

Loki was speechless. “I...um.” “You don’t like it?” You asked, your face slowly becoming dejected which put Loki on high alert. “No, it’s not that. I’m just...taken back a little.”

“Mind if I slink it around you? So you can see if it’s not too scratchy.”

Loki slowly nodded as you reached out to grab the scarf from his hand, your finger gently brushing against his again. He lowered his head slightly, enough so you could fling the scarf gently around his neck, looping it again so it had a tighter fit.

“What about now? Warm enough?”

Loki tugged at the scarf a bit from his neck, shifting it to a more comfortable form. He then took a moment to reflect on how it felt around him. It was puffy, maybe a bit too much for his liking, but he understood how it was intended to keep him warm against the cold winter winds. The heat circled his neck in a soft, gentle embrace, similar to a pair of soft arms encircling his shoulders and neck.

“It’s lovely.” He said, a small smile forming behind the green knitted yarn.

“I’m really happy you like it.” You exclaimed, a small smile also forming on your face. “I gotta admit, I was little nervous you were gonna throw it back at my face.”

“And why would I do that?” You shrugged. “I guess it was just important to me. I wanted to make sure it was something you liked.”

Loki felt a pang in his chest again, but this time it was softer and warmer, and it spread all over his body. Your stupid attention to detail warmed his dry heart. The shimmer in your eyes made him feel worthwhile, and perhaps a tad more significant than whatever Tony Stark was for you. You saw him with eyes of admiration, but this look? His intuition told him it was much more different.

“That’s touching.” He said mockingly. “But thank you. This was a bit surprising to say the least.”

“That’s what the holidays are all about. Ready to head out?”

Loki trailed behind you as you gathered your items and made your way to the exit the facility. Throughout the rest of the evening as you both went your separate ways, Loki continued to wear your gift, disregarding how ludicrous the notion was of imagining your arms wrapped around him. They would be tight, warm, and secure, and would apply as much intention as your gift would have. Tony Stark would have your respect and admiration, but he certainly didn’t share this intimacy as Loki did. After all, humans provided much sentiment in the simplest of objects.

[dreamingofscully]

Grey Canyon 7/?

Rating: Current Chapter: PG, Series: up to Mature Categories: Western AU / MSR / WIP WC: 1450 / Total WC:  7.3k

Updated on Mondays and Fridays.

Thank you to @ceruleanmilieu​ for the beta ❤️ Tagging: @impulsive-astrophile​ @baronessblixen​ @suitablyaggrieved​ @gillywitch​ @today-in-fic​ (let me know if you want to be tagged when I post!)

all chapters in order: ao3 / tumblr

CH 1 / CH 2 / CH 3 / CH 4 / CH 5 / CH 6

CHAPTER 7: “New York”

Grey Canyon, Colorado 1885

Lunches in the dining room or kitchen, and dinners in her room had become customary. He brought her more journals, which she read into the night, staying up far too late and waking bleary-eyed and happy. It had been nearly a year since she’d been able to keep up on any new medical developments. Even though she knew she’d never get the chance to pursue a career in the field, reading about others’ work gave her a taste of her old life, reminding her of why she’d wanted to be a physician in the first place.

As happy as the articles made her, the darkness within her deepened by the same degree. That Mulder had known she’d want them made her pause and feel guilty. His friendship had been a comfort, something she didn’t know she needed. But how could friendship stay strong when it was one-sided? She tested him, poked fun at his stories, but walled herself off from anything deeper. Sooner, rather than later, she felt it would not be enough.

Would losing his friendship, an unbearable thought, be worse than sharing a part of herself that she’d buried so deeply, she felt belonged to a completely different person? Could she be the woman that she once was? The possibility of her former self re-emerging thrilled and terrified her.

It was dinner. He sat across from her, telling another story, trying to convince her of something mad. For once, she was only half-listening, lost in her thoughts of where this connection between them was going. She’d never been able to pretend very well, though, and Mulder noticed.

“You’re not listening, Dana,” he said. He wasn’t upset, even though she felt he had a right to be. “Story’s a bit too far-fetched, even for me I admit.”

“I’m… I’m sorry, Mulder, I was just distracted.”

“Anything you care to share?” He smiled at her, his eyes soft and gentle. He never pushed, never tried to force anything out of her. Sometimes she wished he would.

The same old conversation, she thought. ‘No, I’m fine’, is your next line, Dana.

She found herself, instead, telling a story of her own.

“My father, he… was a captain in the navy, during the war,” she started, not quite believing she was telling him this. If she went far back enough, things weren’t so bad. “He’d distinguished himself, made a name for himself, despite being an immigrant.”

She looked out the window, at her own warped reflection in the frosted glass. The lamp painted her face in grotesque shadows. Her hands found the edge of her napkin, fraying the edges.

Swallowing, she continued. “He was able to use his influence to help his children get into good schools. I excelled. We were very close. I think… he was proud of me,” she paused, blinking back the threat of tears. “He died, about a year ago.”

“I’m sorry,” Mulder said, his hand reaching across to cover hers, stilling their restless movements.

“I’d been accepted into medical school, a rare thing for a woman,” she looked back at him. “New York—it is the very best and the very worst, at the same time.”

Mulder nodded, squeezed her hand, his focus giving her courage. She trusted him, not knowing why she should. Her father told her she’d had good instincts about people, recognizing almost immediately who had integrity, and who did not. Looking at Mulder now, she knew him, almost as much as she knew herself.

“My brothers. They didn’t do so well in school. They… got involved with different sorts of people. It was a vicious circle—they could not please their father by being smart or hard-working, so they tried to win him over by bringing home money obtained from more dishonest means. My father was aware of how these… groups preyed on those who were less fortunate. Their relationship only got worse. When he died…”

Dana withdrew her hand, clenched them underneath the table. It hurt to say the words, to allow the reality of what had happened to enter the air of this room, to add to the weight on Mulder’s already heavy shoulders by sharing her burden with him.

“Because I was an unmarried woman, they took control. I had no other recourse. They would not allow me to go to school. Instead, they said I was to marry.”

“But you wouldn’t,” Mulder leaned forward.

“The person—” she stopped. “I do not like to speak harshly, to judge, but the man they wanted to give me to was just the sort of person you would expect, given their type of dealings. I suspect I was meant to be payment. Their younger sister in exchange for more power, more money.” She spat the words out like venom. The anger she’d felt when she’d first realized what her brothers intended came back with equal strength.

“I thought I could reason with them. Perhaps I could be a doctor for their ‘organization’. I would have done anything, except they would not listen. They use violence and intimidation to do what they want, I could do nothing. There was no one else after Papa...”

Dana breathed heavily and covered herself with her shawl, overcome with a sudden chill, though the room was not cold. There, she’d done it, for good or ill. She’d run from her family, abandoned her life while he had chased ghosts for ten years in hopes to bring his own back together.

“So you find yourself here, in hiding? Playing school marm and nursemaid to a bunch of —”

“Mulder.”

“I’m sorry, I just...”

When she looked up at him again, his face, normally filled with amusement and softness and passion, was now like a stormcloud, staring off into the darkness of her room. It reminded her of his outburst in her room late at night, what seemed like so long ago.

“Your mother?” he said.

“She… could do nothing. She felt my choice to be a doctor was a mistake, that I should accept my duty to the family, and be a wife. That I should accept it without complaint,” she said. Guilt rose up inside her, thinking about her mother: they would not hurt her, would they? “I don't have a family any more, Mulder.”

He rose from his chair and paced. She could feel his anger coming off of him in waves, while she shivered in place, unmoving.

“There must be something—”

“I have learned to live with my fate, Mulder.”

“I don’t accept that,” he said, waving his hands around her modest room. “You deserve so much better than this.”

“Please, sit.”

He looked at her, saw her.

“You’re cold.” He brought over a quilt from her bed and laid it across her shoulders, rubbing his warm hands along her arms before crouching beside her. She let out a shaky breath, imagined she could see the water vapor apparating between them.

“I can see your mind working. Trying to think of something to do. Please, Mulder. It is too risky.”

“Are these people really that dangerous?”

She nodded, silently pleading with him.

He looked at her, reluctant but steady, then cupped her face. “I do not agree. But I promise.”

She sighed and closed her eyes, leaning into his hand. Warmth spread through her chest at his touch. She was so tired, but the weight of her secrets had been somewhat lightened, and his promise lifted her spirits. She chanced a smile when she opened her eyes.

“If all of this hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have met. Perhaps this was all meant to be, fate… destiny,” she pressed her lips into his palm, and brought his hand down to her lap. “I will not pretend though. It was terrible, and difficult, and I have not shared everything.”

But I will, was her unspoken promise.

Mulder caressed her hands with his own, remaining close. The warm lamplight enhanced his features: his stubbled jaw, full lips, strong nose. She couldn’t help it, her hand rose to his mouth, caressed his bottom lip with her thumb. He froze, searched her eyes, his anger disappearing under her touch, replaced with something else. Something she recognized, that he’d awakened within her these past weeks as well.

<i>Yes</i>, she thought, willing herself to speak the words aloud, for her thoughts to reach into his mind.

Suddenly, he blinked, and shook his head. She dropped her hand back to her lap as he stood up, taking his things and moving to leave.

He turned before opening the door. “Thank you, Dana,” he said, his voice like sandpaper. “For telling me.”

“Good night, Mulder.”

He smiled, meeting her eyes with a shy smile. “Good night.”

[notbigondoors]

{out of equations} I am a little afraid that I’m being misunderstood because of how it appears I am running my blogs. The truth is, I am a shy, derpy potato, and I suspect I’m just coming across in a much different way than I wish to. Below is my attempt to clear some of that up, so that hopefully anyone whom I’ve inadvertently made to feel like I am ignoring them or don’t want to write with them can feel better. Thank you for reading, if you do, and otherwise I hope everyone is having a lovely day. =)

I don’t know if this is actually a thing or not, but it occurs to me that I may be giving people the wrong idea about my blogs. It’s been so for a while that I keep getting compliments on my writing/portrayals, but then so many of my mutuals never interact with me and eventually unfollow, or start threads and drop them after a few replies. Now, people are entitled to lurk, change their minds, become disinterested, lose muse for a thread, and/or decide they don’t like writing with me or feel that my writing doesn’t measure up to theirs once they start. That’s perfectly okay! I’m not mad, I’m not calling anybody out, that’s absolutely okay! Right now, I’m talking to any of my mutuals who feel intimidated by me, feel I don’t want to write with them because I haven’t reached out to them first, or feel like I’m basically telling them they’re not good enough to write with me because I haven’t started something with them. I want to take the time to say how wrong all of that is and to give you an idea of how I really run my blogs.

First of all, real life has not been easy for me lately, as I’m sure it hasn’t been for everyone, given various things going on in the world. Between what’s in the news lately, the pandemic, and a chronic illness of mine coming out of remission after 20-ish years, I am definitely not at my best. I am on many medications for my chronic illness that come with a shopping list of side effects that make me feel physically horrible on a daily basis, but also they cause brain fog. I’m legitimately having trouble remembering things, which means that starter I told you I’d write you and then never did? Yeah, I don’t hate you, and it’s not that I don’t want to write with you, I just have honestly forgotten I even said I would do it. Combine that with my Tumblr notifications not working properly and a large influx of new writers and interactions lately due to WandaVision, and I am really honestly forgetting what I’ve said to whom on here. Side effects of my meds also include insomnia (which I already had, so it’s gotten worse... yay?) which means I’m not getting enough sleep and that’s compounding everything else that’s already making it hard for me to keep everything straight.

In addition to that, I have very bad anxiety, of the kind that interferes with my ability to do everyday things. Social anxiety is a huge facet of my generalized anxiety disorder. Simply put, I am introverted, shy, and terrified of talking to new people, even online. Even messaging with people I know can sometimes drain me mentally. It is not that I dislike you, or that I don’t want to talk to you, or that you are bothering me. None of those are true. I just am not good socially. I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to do, and I feel so intimidated, especially with so much amazing talent on here. I would like to think that I am a nice and approachable person, but I rarely ever reach out to people. Liking a starter call almost gives me a panic attack. Sometimes I sit and stare at one for an hour, really wanting to do it, but then I think... well I’d have to put my url since all my active rp blogs right now are sides. Would they get mad that I’m not just hitting like? Is that already too complicated and they’d just ignore me? Yeah, they probably wouldn’t want to write with me anyway. Aaaaand I close Tumblr and never like the post, heh.

I see talented writers on here all the time, I read their really great, funny, interesting, harrowing, or exciting threads and think... I wish I could write threads like those. But I just lack the social skills to get involved. My anxiety tells me things that aren’t true all the time, like that I’m extraneous, people have their groups and I should leave them to have fun in peace because I’d only be bothering them. It is not my intention to always make others do all of the work by waiting for them to reach out, or hoping they write that first starter instead of me, or waiting for that indisputable starter call that finally makes me feel comfortable enough that yes, they want to rp with someone like me... it’s just unfortunately where I’m at mentally right now.

Time is also an issue. I work full-time online as a teacher for a university, I have about 160 students, and I have students all around the world in all different time zones, so my job is pretty much 24/7. I am constantly answering student emails, grading assignments, dealing with technical site issues, etc. Sometimes I really want to interact with new writers on here, but I don’t bother because I am afraid that my activity level won’t be what they want or expect. That’s a big reason why I haven’t been expanding my roleplaying to Discord or joining large rpg groups. I can’t guarantee activity. Sometimes I will be very active, sometimes I won’t be active at all... and I won’t always know ahead of time. 

Anyway, this is a lot of rambling and I’m sorry for that, but I wanted to clear up any notion that I am aloof, that I am super selective and that’s why I’m not rping with you, or that if I seem to be ignoring you, I am. SO. NOT. TRUE. It’s a combination of my being too afraid to reach out, having health issues that make me very forgetful at times, and feeling like I have to hold back because of scheduling issues or a lack of free time. So... yeah. That’s that. If you’ve gotten this far in reading this post, you are sweet and precious and a wonderful human being. Thank you for taking the time to do so. If I said I would write you a starter and never did, please remind me. I am 99.9% sure the reason is that I just plum forgot. If I appear to have dropped a thread you really loved, please remind me about it. I may not have even seen your reply with Tumblr’s crappy notifications not showing up for me. And if you want to rp with me, I don’t bite, I’m not intimidating, yes I want you to reply to that open starter, yes I want you to randomly tag me in a starter or drop something into my ask box, I am honestly just a scared potato who really cannot Social™ well.

Wanda, Vision, and Pietro are most active right now. Please bother them. I have a leafling OC who is very adorable and versatile, I promise you. Please bother him. I also rp Gizmo. Please bother him.

Bother whoever you like, ask me questions about them, answer open starters (literally any of my blogs you can just search for “open starter” and they’ll all come up), and send in memes.

~ Silence, a.k.a. Si, a.k.a. Shy Derpy Potato, out. (^-^)/

[ddaenggtan]

forever rain | knj | m

Being dead isn't anything exciting. Just a lot of walking the same halls of the same apartment day after day after day. Things change when the new tennant arrives, though. Kim Namjoon isn't anything you could have expected; not the way he's so careful and gentle with his plants because he breaks so many other things, not the way his friends joke that he's psychic because you refuse to let him get in the face one time, and certainly not the way he comes home after literal months spent moving things away from table edges for him and announces that he knows he's being haunted and he has some questions for you. You didn't know ghosts could fall in love, but he makes you feel alive again, like you're standing in the rain while thunder crashes around you. You should've known nothing good would come of falling in love with someone living, though. You should've known that heartbreak was the only way this could end...that the rain doesn't last forever. 

part of the Love Yourself Collab, please please please go check out the other fics. Everyone involved is so freaking talented and I have been vibrating out of my skin with how excited I’ve been to read all of these. 

pairing | kim namjoon x reader (unspecified gender, even!)

word count | 18.8k | cross posted to ao3

genre/warnings | ghost!reader, slight fluff, hard angst, literally the most angst ever it gets fluffy for a bit but litERALLY this is an angst fic, major character death, unprotected sex (idk what the etiquette for ghost sex is but you should still wrap it before you tap it fam), depictions of terminal illness (v mild), mentions of blood (several, but not graphic), major character death, allusions to violence, namjoon is a klutz whats new, depictions of terminal illness, major character death, i added that tag three times pls dont read this if you aren’t comf with mcd bc i literally tagged it three times so y’all would definitely see it, also probably have some tissues ready bc i cried while writing it so 

a/n | this is, to date, the saddest thing i have ever written in my entire fucking life. formal apologies to this joon bc oh my god you poor soul. i’m not kidding when i say you might cry, because i’m a big baby wuss and cried while writing the fucking outline when i first decided to write this for the collab so like......rip my own heart. i was really honored when i was approached about the LYA collab, bc like,,,,,mE? WHAT? and i was really nervous because i’ve never been part of any collabs in any fandom ever, and to have to do something like forever rain and mono as a whole justice, like,,,,,,, *screaming* y’know?? so i went on mono lockdown and just had the whole thing on repeat and was like “alright. what emotions does this make me feel.” and i eventually settled on the loneliness and isolation that he expresses, and feeling like no one understands what you’re going through, but that ultimately the album as a whole and forever rain give off this feeling of like. things get better, you’re not as alone as you feel, and you just gotta get through the bad stuff to find the good stuff. basically i just got really in my feels about it and was like ‘lets make myself cry ahahaha’ and,,,i dID i cried several times while planning and writing and editing bc im a Soft Bitch and don’t read much angst for that exact reason lmao. so buckle tf up y’all, this a helluva ride!! 

Of all the things you'd heard about death, all the different possibilities that existed in the world, the one thing you hadn't been prepared for was the boredom. You hadn't been prepared for any of it, really, too surprised by your own demise to plan at all, but even if you'd been able to, you don't think that this is what you would've counted on. An eternity - or however long ghosts existed - of being stuck in the same studio apartment you'd lived in when you died. The same walls, the same floor, the same view out the only window of the alley beside the building. It's boring and lonely and boring.

You've found more creative ways to entertain yourself as time passes. First, you started by figuring out just what being a ghost meant. You can't really communicate with anyone, haven't figured out how to make sure everything you say is heard, but you can manipulate objects pretty easily these days. The most difficult thing is becoming fully corporeal - completely visible and able to interact with things at the same time. It's hard enough to be visible, and you aren't really sure what the point of it would be when it would just scare whoever's living in your apartment; that's the last thing you want to do, run them off when they're the best source of amusement you've found.

You won't lie, you were a little offended when the first tenants moved in after you. It was difficult to watch your things get packed up and moved out by your friends, hard to lose all of the little things you loved in your apartment, like the shitty bead curtain you'd gotten as a gag gift or the photo collage of all of your loved ones. It's frustrating to not know how they're all doing these days; the one time you got brave enough to fuck with a laptop to check on them, you nearly broke the thing, and you haven't tried since. Still, it seemed cathartic for them to clear out your apartment, and it was a bittersweet sight, but you tried to focus on the positive side of it.

And then the couple moved in.

Not only did they fuck like rabbits - which is something you're going to stay pissed about, because there's no satisfaction to be had by you anymore, and it's the one thing you can think of that would be endlessly entertaining - but the couple was also grossly obnoxious. They had zero respect for your apartment , or you, and while one could argue that they didn't actually know you were there, it still made the sting of losing your entire life that much worse. You spent you don't know how many nights hovering awkwardly in the bathroom while they fucked, would constantly wander in to see them going at it on the kitchen counter at ass o'clock in the morning, and once you came in to see them tossing actual literal eggs at the ceiling like the absolute fucking weirdos they were.

So, naturally, you got a little mad. How dare they treat your apartment like that? They had no respect, but they were going to learn it real quick if they were going to live there with you, whether they wanted to or not.

They didn't last long after the first night of slamming cabinets and squealing hinges, but the thrown picture frame of their family was the conclusive end to their stay.

There have been others, since then. They haven't all been terrible, not like that first couple, but most of them have been sub-par roommates, and if you decided early on that if the rest of your immortal life is going to be locked in one shitty apartment with the absolute worst view in the city - because no one wants to see the drunken hookups and potential body dumps that take place in that alley - then you're at least going to share said apartment with someone nice to exist with.

You release a heavy sigh, staring at where your hand disappears through the shower wall. You've taken to testing the boundaries of the apartment again; you already know what the result will be, learned in the first few hours that you're stuck here, but you can't help trying when you get really bored. You just got distracted fucking around with the pipes in the meantime, because you're literally too bored to even focus. It's part of why you miss the last tenants so much, because you weren't ever really bored with them around.

A single mother and her two kids, crammed into a much-too-small apartment because it was all they could afford, and they were the light of your un-life. One a budding teenager that wrote angsty poetry who loved your trick of making things float around, and one an adorable toddler who adored playing peekaboo with you and coloring, and a mom that was too busy to notice anything out of the ordinary. It was like having a family again, made you feel useful when you could pull the meat out of the freezer for her to make dinner with or scratch a quick 'do your homework' on a steamy bathroom mirror. It was fun and it made being dead that much more bearable.

You really should've known that letting the toddler draw the two of you would be a bad idea, especially since there were several artistic liberties taken. It's not your fault the kid thought you'd look cool with fangs and bloody holes instead of eyes and claws that reached the floor. It was art, it was supposed to be a little different from reality. Still, you can't blame her for seeing the picture of her kid and 'my new best friend' and immediately calling the landlord. And a priest.

So, perhaps you gave the apartment a bit of a reputation. Maybe it's been a couple of months since the mom moved out and took your two buds with her. There might be the possibility that you've been the slightest bit salty about losing your friends and you've been extra-ghost-y whenever someone comes by to view the place in an attempt to make yourself feel a little better. Can you really be blamed for that? You just want a decent damn roommate for your life after death, and if that means putting the potentials through a little bit of a test, then so be it. You only feel a little bit bad for the landlord.

The creak of the front door pulls you from your thoughts, and the echo of a voice makes you narrow your eyes. Your first instinct is to slam some windows to scare off whoever's in your apartment, but you repress the urge. You'd die of boredom if you could die again, and whoever this is could provide a few hours' entertainment at the least.

You pop your head through the bathroom wall to see what's going on, and wow , who let an actual giant into your apartment? Fucking with the pipes could definitely wait for this guy.

"I know it's last minute, yeah," He says into the phone that's held carefully between his cheek and shoulder. His arms are loaded down with boxes and he's angled away from you just enough that you can't see his face, but he's tall and broad and wearing what looks like the world's comfiest sweater, and you want to badly to wrap yourself up in him. "But you know Joon needs the help. Don't pretend you aren't constantly willing to put off your thesis, I know for a fact that you went out to look at stationery with Tae last week, and everyone knows that's the most boring thing on the planet."

He's quiet, listening to the soft crackle of a voice from the other end. You slide through the wall completely, hovering as close as you dare to try and hear what the other person is saying. Tall, Broad, and Comfy scoffs.

"He can stare at one sheet of paper for at least ten minutes, Yoongi. Do I need to remind you of the time he spent an entire fucking hour debating which set of holiday scrapbook to buy because, and I quote, 'this one has the really nice rose pattern on it that would look great with the invitations, but, oh, look at the pinstripes in this one!'" His voice morphs into what you guess is an approximation of whoever Tae is, and you laugh at the high-pitched, nasally tone.

Tall and Broad spins, eyes narrowing as he looks around the room, and fuck , he's literally gorgeous. You've never seen someone more attractive in your life or your death and it would probably knock the wind out of you if you actually had breath. Comfy McGorgeous turns back around and sets the stack of boxes in the corner, continuing his tirade about Tae and stationery while simultaneously trying to talk Yoongi into coming, you assume, to help Joon move. You don't know who any of these people are, but they're already proving to be the most entertaining bunch that's ever graced these walls.

The door to your apartment flies open, making both you and Boyfriend Material whip your head around.

"Christ, Jin, you couldn't hold the fucking door open for us?" Someone grunts. Beauty Von Softness - or, Jin, as you should probably refer to him - winces and strides over to do just that as two more guys stagger in with a couch suspended between them. The second they're in the door they drop it to the ground and flop onto it, panting and sweaty.

"Listen, I was busy trying to get our resident hermit out of his cave to help us carry some of this shit," Jin spits back. "And you all know what it's like getting him out and about."

"Did you tell him that there's pizza after we're done? Because I've found that food is the best motivator for him," the guy closest to the door says. His hair is soft-looking and long and you wish you could pet it.

The other guy, the one who cursed Jin out and has the softest pink hair you've ever seen, laughs. "Jeongguk, you always think the best motivator is food."

"Well, yeah, because it is."

"For you, maybe. Other people require actual rewards."

"But food is a reward," Jeongguk mutters into the fabric of the couch. Jin tsks and smacks As Yet Unnamed on the back of the head.

"You're lucky I hung up on him when you bombarded your way into this place, or he'd definitely not come help us," Jin says as he leans against the back of the couch.

Unnamed starts to say something else but is cut off by someone running straight into the end of the couch. They all shoot to their feet, spouting apologies as the three of them maneuver the couch into the apartment properly.

"Sorry, sorry, Jimin distracted us from properly finishing our job," Jeongguk says quickly. He looks to the stranger with a small apologetic smile, and you're pretty sure if it were humanly possible, there would be actual literal stars in his eyes.

"Oh, it's okay, Jeonggukkie. I should've been looking where I was going." New Challenger walks straight towards where you stand, and you realize seconds before it's too late that he is not aware there is a massive stack of boxes in his path. Instinctively, you shove them to the side with your foot. Tall And Oblivious sets his boxes down without any trouble, none the wiser about any of it, and the three near the couch are too busy bickering in hushed whispers to have noticed you doing anything.

The newcomer straightens and turns to look at them all with a bright smile, and you think you might actually see The Light in the way his cheeks dimple. If you thought the other three were beautiful - which they are, no doubt about that, you're seriously wondering why the hell a bunch of supermodels are moving stuff into your apartment - then this guy is easily an Actual Fucking God or something. His brown hair is soft and shiny, his smile is warmer than the sun, and you're fairly positive that for the first time since you died, you feel goosebumps along your arms.

"Seriously, Namjoon, we should've realized you'd be up soon. You stay, start unpacking while we go get the rest of the furniture." Jimin shoves Jeongguk out the door while he's speaking, ignoring the taller's complaints, and Jin just shakes his head at the sight.

"Yoongi'll be here soon, he's finishing up another draft of his thesis. Hobi and Tae are stopping to get the pizzas and then they'll be here, too." Jin's voice is calmer than it was Jimin and Jeongguk, more soothing, and it makes you curious. Not only because of the tone change, but because you know Hobi, he owns the building and is the one who rented you the apartment when you first moved in. One of your favorite things to do is scare him when he comes by to make sure everything’s ready for a viewing.

"What? No, I said I was gonna pay for pizzas!" Namjoon looks distinctly more upset about this than someone should over not having to pay for pizza, at least in your mind, and it only makes you more curious.

"Yeah, but you also just moved out of your old apartment because it was too expensive, and had like an hour to load everything into a truck, so you're gonna let their trust fund asses pay for pizzas. We're seven adult men, and Guk could eat an entire horse and still be hungry. I'm not letting you pay for that."

Silence hangs in the apartment for a while before Namjoon gives a soft thanks to Jin. They share a smile before Jin makes his way back out. You follow each step, shadowing him all the way to the door before you're stopped. You lean your entire body forward, struggling against the invisible barrier keeping you inside, and the force of it nearly slams you back into the wall when you sag in defeat.

You aren't sure why you try anymore, but you know yourself well enough to admit that you're not going to stop until you can at least make it to the hallway.

Whatever you expected Namjoon to be like as a roommate, however unknowing he is about the situation, you don't think you could've guessed what he's actually like.

Out of the seven boys you saw the day he moved in, he's the only one living there. Not a complete surprise, considering it's a studio apartment, but you remember when there were nine people living there at one point, and there was barely room for anyone to breathe even if it had been pretty consistently amusing. Still, for one person, he's got a ton of stuff, and it's a shock it all fits. His bed is massive and comfortable and the best place to lay during the day because it's shoved between the brick half-wall and the large windows that take up one wall. The area's supposed to be for a dining table, you think, but you'd had your bed there, too, and the familiarity is nice.

His couch is small and old but manages to fit five of them, and it's a pleasantly jarring difference from the coffee table that looks like - and might actually be - an old steamer trunk. The exposed brick wall you love holds his mounted TV, a feat that took Jeongguk and Yoongi a solid hour and a half because they kept stripping the screws, and it's got one of those 8-cubicle bookshelf things under it that stores a frankly obnoxious amount of books.

He's got mugs for days, an adorable if odd collection of figurines and mini-statues scattered around the apartment, a strange obsession with some reclaimed wood shelf he's got hanging above his bed, but the absolute highlight of it all is The Wall.

It took them three hours to get it installed and set up the way he wanted, between the placements and the thick wooden shelf they’re perched on with supports and a small safety bar along the edge to keep them from falling off, but along the entire windowed wall and partway after it turns the corner runs a long shelf absolutely covered in plants. There are some elsewhere, like the one he keeps hanging from the bathroom ceiling and the couple in the kitchen, but most are on The Wall. Each one is in its own special pot, each a unique color with a name painted carefully along it, and most of them look half-dead. They're all distinct and unique from each other and they all surely have different needs and ideal conditions, but you'd never guess because Namjoon is so wholly committed to them all. He takes time every day to water them and prune them if he needs to, he checks on them constantly. He even reinforced the safety bar for the ones that sit beside his bed, so there was less chance he'd accidentally knock them around while sleeping.

It's fascinating, watching him tend to them. He's so careful and gentle, with absolute precision in every moment. He cares for his plants the way some people would care for a pet or a child. He doesn’t believe any of them are past caring for, slowly nurses all of them back to health and frequently turns up with more he’s saved from some department store. The most endearing thing, though, you decide as you sit curled among the haphazard blankets of his bed and watch, is the talking. It's every day, for as long as it takes him to care for the plants, and it's the cutest thing in the world. He's talking to some succulent as you just stare at him, filling the comfortable silence of the apartment with his soft, soothing voice, and you wish he could hear you when you talk back to him.

"I know they mean well, but at some point, I've just gotta live my own life, y'know? I can't study something just because everyone expects me to, and I can't pursue some dream just because people think I'd be good at it. I've gotta do what's right for me, don't I?" His tone is positive and bright, a contrast to the gloomy sky that casts shadows across the apartment.

You float over, hovering beside him to look at the plant he's lovingly stroking with his thumb. It's in a pretty periwinkle pot, with the name 'Mang' painted in careful but shaky black handwriting. It's not your favorite - that's the one in the bathroom that hangs over its light blue bowl, a quickly scrawled 'Koya' on the bottom - but it seems to be one of Namjoon's personal favorites based on how often he talks to it specifically.

"I think it's nice you do things for yourself," You tell him. He doesn't react, unable to hear you, but it's nice to hear your own voice after so long. You slide one of the plants - Chim, in a small yellow bowl - to the side and away from his elbow, and he doesn't notice. "You know yourself better than they do. You should trust yourself."

He keeps mumbling to Mang, something about everyone following their own dreams and doing what they need over what people want or expect, when you lay your hand over his.

Thunder cracks through the sky and the first raindrops hits the window as your non-existent skin hits his, and it's the most real thing you've felt in a long time. It's as if the scent of ozone and electricity is in the apartment itself, crackling in your hair and filling your nose with the overpowering scent of the sweet summer rain. You can almost feel the water hit your skin, the way the wind whips at your hair, and it's so intoxicating that you almost miss the sharp inhale from the man beside you.

He's not looking at his plant when you look up, but instead at the window in front of the two of you. You glance at it, and for a fraction of a second, you can see yourself in the reflection. The glimpse has you jerking towards it before you can stop yourself, desperate to know if something has changed. You haven't seen your reflection since you died, not in the mirror or the window or the toaster, and maybe, just maybe, it means something's changed.

Your hand stops against the glass of the window as you reach forward. You can't feel the cool of it under your palm, but it's no less a barrier for you as it would be for Namjoon. Something in you breaks as you watch the raindrops race each other to the ground.

"Ah, I forgot the forecast called for rain today," he mutters, eyes focused on the lightning that streaks by. He doesn't react when your fist slams against the glass, nor when you let out the scream that's been building in you for however long it's been since you died. You're so close, not even a hair's breadth from feeling something new yet familiar for the first time in so long, and you can't. You're still stuck in these four walls, unable to even reach the air outside.

You just want to feel the rain again.

You move dejectedly away from the window, ignoring the way Namjoon shivers as you pass. The temperature in the apartment has dropped considerably, you think, between the storm and your own mood. You can't tell, really. You haven't felt warm or cold or hungry or anything since you died that isn't the oppressive loneliness of life after death.

A dry sob tears itself from your throat and you hurry to hide in the bathroom as Namjoon turns to look around him. He mumbles something you can't hear and after a few minutes, he returns to tending to his plants, leaving you to your tear-less cries in peace.

It becomes quickly apparent to you that Namjoon should really have a roommate, if only to save him from himself. It takes a few weeks for you to realize this, but luckily he seems to narrate his life as he goes through it - which is overwhelmingly adorable to you, and you refuse to acknowledge that - and that means that you hear it every time he goes, "Ah, Namjoon, be more careful next time," or "Oh, shoot, that's not, fuck, I gotta buy more eggs now." It's painful to watch, even for you, and at some point, you just couldn't take it anymore. No one else is around to help, but someone needs to you, and clearly the universe means for you to be that someone.

It's a full-time job, protecting him from himself. You've saved countless mugs, pushing them farther away from the edges of counters and tables, and been just in time to shove bowls or vases an inch over so that his elbows glide harmlessly past them. It's almost exhausting, if you could get tired you would, but it's worth it, you think, as you catch the bookshelf under the TV as it tilts. You slide it gently to the floor, glad that Namjoon is distracted by how close he came to losing a toe to notice.

Because that's the other thing about this tree of a man: he's the most oblivious person you've ever fucking seen. It doesn't matter what it is you do, whether it's bouncing his spray bottle of water so it doesn't break on the hard floor or shake the counters so that the knife he's about to drop on his fucking hand falls the other way, he doesn't see a single fucking thing. You'd think he was blind if he wasn't so attentive to the way his plants grow. He notices nothing and you're glad for it because you really aren't sure what he would do if he knew you were going around haunting him just to keep him alive. You just want to help, want to keep the soft smile he wears more often around for as long as possible.

You don't dare to look into why you want that, too afraid of what you might find there.

It's also just fun to watch him and his friends, relaxed and unreserved. You never had many friends when you were alive, just a small handful that you really truly loved and whom you miss every day. Watching these seven boys fills you with nostalgia and a strange sense of joy because they really are some of the funniest people you've ever been around.

Like now, with four of them sprawled on the couch while Jeongguk and Hoseok make themselves comfortable leaning against the bookshelf under the TV - which has been bolted to the wall since it almost broke Namjoon's foot - and Namjoon watches them all from his bed since it's the only other place to sit. There are beer bottles scattered around and decorating the half-wall that separates the bed from the room proper, everyone is varying levels of drunk, and you're curled up close to Namjoon, leaning against the wall so you can stop him from knocking over any of the bottles nearby because you know him too well at this point.

"I'm just saying, I don't understand why they made him so over-powered in the new movies, because he's supposed to be some kid from Brooklyn! Giving him the high-tech suit essentially strips him of the friendly neighborhood persona that he's always relied on!" Jeongguk has been ranting for a while about the newest release in the Spiderman franchise - apparently, he's part of the actual Avengers now, which is a shock to you since the last thing you heard before you died was that the franchise was canceled until further notice or something.

"And I'm saying that if they didn't give him the suit then it would've made no sense how he was able to do those things," Yoongi responds. You're pretty sure he's just arguing to be contrary at this point, because you remember him telling Namjoon the other day that he prefers DC over Marvel.

"Garfield's Spiderman could do those things," you mutter, "And he didn't have a fancy suit."

"Okay, then how do you explain Andrew Garfield's version being able to do that stuff? He doesn't need the suit, he never has!" You preen at the way Jeongguk echoes your thoughts. "I'm telling you, I don't care how good the relationship with Holland's Spidey and Iron Man is, by giving him the tech and the advancements they did, they've undermined everything that Spiderman is supposed to be about."

"Jeongguk come off it, everyone knows Garfield's Spidey was just all bad writing. I mean, what kind of person can do all that stuff, realistically? He's the one that really needed the Stark suit." Taehyung's voice is slurred and quiet, definitely as drunk as the rest of them. 

"What-! No! I could do half of that without being bitten by a weird science spider!" Jin scoffs at Jeongguk's words. 

"Yeah, sure, Guk. The same way you can do that bottlecap challenge."

"Bottle cap challenge, and yeah, I could!" The youngest stands and you don't bother to hide your grimace. 

"This isn't going to end well, is it?" You ask. No one acknowledges you, too busy finding something Jeongguk can kick the cap off of as the boy readies himself. He's steady on his feet but his face is red and he can't seem to stop giggling. 

"If I do this, you gotta call me SpiderGuk from now on, okay?" He says. No one agrees, but it doesn't stop him from laughing again and doing a couple of roundhouse kicks to warm up. 

"Okay, okay, Joonie doesn't have any regular water bottles, but we found a screw-top beer in the fridge so ya gotta use that," Jimin says as he stumbles over with said bottle. Jeongguk just nods, an adorable focused expression on his face. Jimin holds the bottle in the air, and you can already tell his grip isn't tight enough to keep the bottle still when Jeongguk kicks it. 

The next ten seconds happen in slow-motion. Jeongguk's leg flies out to kick but his drunken body isn't able to handle the sudden shift in balance, and he slips. His foot hits the bottle slightly too low, and it goes flying out of Jimin's weak grip into the air. Everyone in the room watches as it hurtles straight towards Namjoon's face, and you react out of habit and instinct, catching it in one hand before you even realize you've moved. 

Everyone freezes, staring at where the bottle hovers in front of Namjoon's face. You're the only one able to see your fingers wrapped around it. A shock jolts through you at the realization of what you've done and you drop the bottle as if it burned you. Fuck, they were all going to freak, then Namjoon would move out and you'd be stuck alone once more. You should've just shoved him out of the way, what were you thinking, you're so fucking stupid-

"Dude," Hoseok mutters from where he's perched on the arm of the couch. "Holy shit, Joon, you're fucking telepathic." 

Yoongi rolls his eyes and smacks his chest. "Telekinetic, you fucking-"

"Holy shit, you've got fucking superpowers!" Jeongguk squeaks. "Do it again!"

Namjoon isn't even able to get a word out before there's a book flying at his face, and you panic. You can't catch it, too rushed, but you manage to deflect it so it hits the bed with a soft thump instead of braining Namjoon straight in the nose. 

"Woah, you really do have superpowers," Jimin whispers. He lobs a bottlecap at Namjoon, and you catch it in your palm before letting it drop onto the half-wall. 

"I don't have...what the fuck you guys," Namjoon insists. His eyes are as wide as saucers behind the thick glasses he has on. He looks freaked out and you want nothing more than to hug him. Your hand reaches out of its own accord, halfway closing the distance to stroke his hair before you catch yourself. 

"Hey, levitate your plants," Jin demands. Namjoon looks panicked as he glances at the wall of plants, and you heave a sigh. With any luck, they're so drunk that they'll remember this as a strange fever dream, but you can't just let them keep throwing things at him. You crawl over to the wall, avoiding Namjoon as you do, and grasp one of the plants tight. It's a white pot with red polka dots, a simple RJ on the side, and it's fucking heavy. You only get it a few inches off the shelf before you're forced to put it down.

"Oh my god, catch this!" Taehyung throws a coffee mug straight at Namjoon's head and you panic again. You catch it, and you've decided you're fucking sick of them throwing things at him, so you lob it back and dart across the room to bounce it safely to the counter before it can break. 

Everyone in the room stares at the mug and then looks back at Namjoon, who hasn't moved from his spot on the bed. 

"Oh my god, you're a superhero," Jeongguk whispers, awe in his eyes. 

"That's fucked up," Yoongi mutters, wincing when Hoseok elbows him. 

"Maybe we should get some sleep," Namjoon says quietly. The others look like they want to disagree with him, and you have no doubt they want to explore the newfound 'abilities' of their friend, but they still start gathering trash together before they head out. 

Namjoon lays awake for a long time that night, glasses folded and sitting atop the half-wall beside you. He's oblivious to the way you watch him, too lost in thought to feel the weight of your stare or the chill in the air. 

"I don't understand," He says after a while. "I really don't, but there's got to be a reason for it." He doesn't elaborate, merely turns over and evens his breathing out until he starts snoring, but you watch him for most of the night. He's fascinating, this human, and you wonder what makes him so different from the others you've met. 

He apparently decides to experiment. You've known Namjoon is intelligent since he first moved in and you saw his collectible encyclopedias, but you hadn't realized just what it would be like in actuality. 

It starts simple. He'll toss something in the air and let it clatter to the ground. Nothing big, just little things like pencils or bottlecaps, and not far, just enough that his eyes narrow as he apparently tries to use his telekinetic abilities to manipulate them. 

It slowly graduates from there. Next comes the way he stares at something across the room, hyper-focused on whatever it is until you notice and move it around for him. It's a guessing game, sometimes, trying to figure out just what he wants to move or how he wants to move it, but each time you're successful, he smiles so brightly, dimples on full display. Who wouldn't want to make him smile like that?

It's hit or miss, sometimes. You're only so strong, and while you've had a lot of practice, you still get tired. You lifted his bookshelf almost a full inch before blacking out. Next thing you knew, a couple of days had passed and Namjoon was staring at a coffee mug. That was a significantly less fun day; between losing time and having to catch coffee mug after coffee mug, you were exhausted and a little shaken. 

So when he stops staring at things for extended periods of time, when he starts to go back to reading and scrolling the internet and bingeing all the completed shows that Netflix and Amazon had to offer, you're grateful for it. He still occasionally tests it out; he's always subtle about it, choosing to stare quietly until you notice and make whatever it is float around for a minute. Once you wandered around looking for him - a feat in a studio apartment - and found him just sitting on the bathroom floor, staring at a shampoo bottle.

You'd like to say that you don't move things entirely because he wants you to. It's a good test of your abilities and how far you can push yourself until it becomes too much, and it's always nice to have actual evidence that you still exist - in some form, at least - in the world. The validation that comes from seeing him smile every time you lift a pencil or slide a coffee mug to the side, it's not for any reason but the satisfaction of knowing that you have some kind of existence. Some kind of impact on the world, even if you can't be seen and can't leave the apartment.

It's part of why you start moving things around yourself more often; you're hoping he just blames it on his overactive 'abilities' if he notices because you really aren't sure what he would think otherwise. But you also know for a fact that just seeing that you have some kind of sway over the world still - over the things inside this tiny apartment - makes you feel just that bit better about being dead.

Which is why it's such a fucking shock when the door to the apartment slams open one evening just for Namjoon to slam it closed again and announce into the air, "So I know you're haunting me, please don't try to deny it, I only want to talk to you."

You freeze where you are, halfway through the closet door from where you were reorganizing his clothes because they made no sense and you were bored. He's looking around the apartment, almost desperate in the way he's searching, and you can't bring yourself to move. It's obvious he can't see you, and you aren't even sure if he's being serious, but the way he huffs and clenches his jaw before moving into the kitchen tells you that he probably is.

You follow him, curious, and watch as he pulls a small package out of his bag and starts ripping it open. You float the remains of what looks like gift wrap over to the trashcan, because you know Namjoon will forget, before going back to watching him. He's only a little careful as he cracks something in his hands and then slaps it onto the fridge, and you peek around him to see that it's some kind of words or something. There’s a wide variety, with no clear theme to them, as well as at least one of each letter of the alphabet. It's then you remember the throwaway comment Yoongi made during that night - "You need, like, poetry stuff, like those magnets that go on the fridge that people write that deep shit with, y'know? I'm gonna buy you one," - and realize that he'd followed through on his vow. 

"Alright," Namjoon says, leaning against his kitchen counter and staring at the magnets. "First and foremost, am I really being haunted or is this some kind of hallucination?" His gaze never falters, doesn’t ever drift from the magnetic words now spread across his fridge doors. It takes several minutes to build up the energy and the courage to move closer to the fridge.

You don't look at him as you move the words around, but you can hear the sharp intake of breath. That's likely all the confirmation that he needs, but still you clear a spot and let the words ' I am here ' sit where he can see them clearly. You wrinkle your nose, disliking how formal it sounds, but you have to make do, you suppose.

"Okay," Namjoon breathes. "Okay, prove it. My brain could work this into a hallucination. How do I know you're really a ghost?"

"Seriously?" You huff. "What the fuck am I supposed to do that wouldn't work into a hallucination, dude?"

He gets fidgety in the few minutes that you spend wondering how the fuck you're going to prove that you're a real actual ghost to someone who clearly doesn't believe in them. His foot taps at the floor and he scratches at his hand, which only makes you want to wrap your own hands around his until he stops, much like your best friend used to lay her legs across your lap to get you to stop shaking your knee.

The realization comes in a flash, and you're moving letters around before you can stop yourself.

Face book, Park Jihyo, best friend.

Namjoon stares at it for a long while before he brings his phone out of his pocket and begins to tap at the screen. You don't get too close; you've got a history with shorting out electronics, and you aren't sure you want to know what your best friend is up to without you there with her.

"Okay," Namjoon says. "Okay, I've never seen her before, so I don't think my brain could work her into a hallucination. Okay. Alright. I'm being haunted. This is fine."

"Calm down, I'm haunting the apartment, not you." He doesn't react to your words, as usual, but it still makes you feel the slightest bit better. He stares at his phone for a little longer, and the curiosity burns under your skin, but you resist. You know from experience that if you try to get too close, his phone will stop working. Just like TV, the stereo, the laptops, everything. You've had enough experience with that kind of thing to know what will happen.

"Okay, Casper," Namjoon huffs out after several minutes of waiting. He looks up and his eyes dart around the apartment, and you wonder if he's just nervous or if he's trying to spot you. "Where are you right now? Can you make yourself visible? I mean, I know you're a ghost, but it feels rude not talking to you to your face."

You huff a laugh but reach for a coffee cup. You know you can't just make yourself visible at will; you've only done it a couple of times, to your knowledge, and none of them have been on purpose. It's even more difficult to make yourself corporeal and physical, harder than just manipulating objects, but you did it once. Back when the single mom still lived here, when her toddler was falling and you had no way to cushion the fall except with your own body; you still aren't sure how it happened, but you remember being able to feel the floor against your back and the warmth of the baby on top of you for a split second before you were gone again. You won't forget that any time soon.

You float the mug towards where you stand, holding it in front of your face long enough that when you pull it away, Namjoon's eyes don't follow it. It's a strange feeling; you know he can't see you, can tell by the way his brow furrows and his eyes slide around the space, but it feels like he's looking straight at you. It feels like you're being seen for the first time since you died.

"So, where are you from, Casper?" His tone is forcibly conversational, as if he's trying his best to keep himself calm. You roll your eyes and move the magnets to show ' here ' and he nods. "You're not gonna try to possess me, or kill me, or run me off, are you? No offense or anything. I figure you would've already at this point, but...cover my bases."

No. Am nice. I think.

"You think? You don't know if you're a nice ghost?"

Does anyone truly know if they are nice? You frown, trying to figure out how to say what you want to say with the limited words available. I can only try. It's still not perfect; there's more that you want to say, more that you want to be heard, but this has to do for now.

"I can accept that. Alright. Just talking to a ghost in my kitchen. Okay. This is totally normal." He rubs a hand over his face, and you're a little impressed. Everyone else that's lived here has freaked when presented with the knowledge that you're a ghost. Namjoon looks very much like his world is exploding, but he doesn't have the same fear and apprehension in his eyes. He's certainly coping better than the single mom.

"Are you the only ghost? Here, I mean, are you the only ghost here?" He breathes a sigh of relief at your 'yes.’ "Can you see other ghosts? Do you know any other ghosts?" The 'don't know, no' that you move around on your fridge seems to unsettle him a little, but there's a curiosity burning behind it that makes your skin tingle.

Can't leave, is what you say next, cutting off whatever question he was about to ask.

"You can't leave at all? The building, or the apartment?"

The second.

"Wow. You're really stuck here?" He looks around the apartment as if seeing it for the first time and sucks in a breath. "What do you do all day?"

Watch. He cocks a brow. You are... You hesitate. The word you need isn't there, everything that comes to you is too poetic or corny for you to actually say, but the weight of his eyes is heavy on your hands. Fun is what you settle on, but it's not right either. 'Interesting' isn't there, nor is 'fascinating' or 'lovely,' and you don't want to scare him off by telling him that part of the reason you watch him so much is that he's so full of life that you feel less dead when he's around.

He laughs at your words though and shakes his head ever so slightly. "Alright, well, I'm gonna shower, so just, don't...watch that?" You squawk at the insinuation that you would, quickly rearranging the letters to spell ' privacy' and making a large angry face out of the rest of the words. He's already turned away, though, and it makes you angrier.

You don't want him thinking that you would peep at him. You already make sure that you're facing the windows when he finishes showering, you've been determined to not be creepy since the day he moved in, and to have him think otherwise is like a slap in the face. You slam the mug against the counter and he startles, turning to gape at it. You carry it to where your words and make-do emoji sit waiting for him to notice them.

"Okay," He says quickly. "Okay, privacy, yeah, got it. You respect my privacy. Appreciated."

"How fucking rude," You mutter as you set the mug back down. You don't adjust the magnets as he disappears into the bathroom. You want him to see them, want him to be reminded of the fact that being dead doesn't mean you don't have basic decency.

You can't get him to shut up now that he knows you're there. He still forgets sometimes, mostly when he's talking to his plants or narrating the way he carefully constructs some origami creation, but more often than not, he's talking to thin air. He spends a lot of time perched on his counter, watching you move magnets around his fridge through the thick lenses of his glasses before he spouts off some other question for you to answer. 

He covers the basics first: how old you were when you died, when your birthday is, your favorite color, what you were studying in school, and of course your name, though he insists on calling you Casper. You aren't sure why but you also don't get a chance to question it, because he hits you with more and more questions every day. Sometimes you don't answer because you can't, too limited by the poetry magnets to be able to really converse; sometimes you just don't have the energy to move the magnets around, but those are days are rare. The only times you use the tired magnet are when you find your limbs too heavy to move, weighed down with the memories of what it meant to be alive. 

Those are the bad days, but his questions make them just a little easier.

"How do you move around? Do you just float everywhere?" Walking, but different. No weight. Soft.

"How are you able to manipulate things in my world? Are they different from things in your world?" Focus. Takes time. Same.

"Do you sleep at all? Do ghosts dream?" No sleep. Just existing.

"You don't eat, do you? Should I be stocking up on snacks for you?" No. Save your sustenance. "What was the last thing you ate?" Don't remember. "Huh. I hope it was something good." Same.

"Were you ever in a relationship?" Once. A long time before. "Do you miss them?" Not anymore.

"What did you do while you were alive?" School. "Oh, really? Do you remember what you studied?" Boring. Important then, but it made me forget to live. Not important now. Namjoon goes quiet for a long moment after this one, staring out the window at something you can't see. He nods but doesn't ask any more questions, and he reads for the rest of the night.

It only takes a couple of weeks for both you and Namjoon to get tired of standing in his kitchen fucking around on the fridge. His legs get tired and he gets distracted by his thoughts, and you can barely keep up with the rapid-fire questions you get.

So Namjoon buys one of those cheap cookie sheets with the slightest lip at the edge and dumps the magnets on that. He leaves it on the coffee table, usually, there for you to pick up if he asks something but out of the way for when he stretches out to nap lazily in the afternoon sun.

You like the cookie sheet more than the fridge. He watches you as you work out your responses, can see the way you start to move one word before moving another instead; it makes it feel more like a conversation.

It becomes a favorite pass-time of Namjoon's, curling on the couch and putting some sort of music on in the background and just talking to you. A lot of nights his questions stop with a lingering silence from one or both of you; yours because you don't have the ability to share the words running rampant through your mind, and his for reasons still unknown to you. Still, you've missed it. You've missed talking to someone, being heard when you speak, having someone ask how you are at the end of the day.

It's the little things.

"You said you can't leave, right, Casper?" Namjoon's curled up on his couch, tucked into the arm with a blanket thrown over his lap, a mug of something warm in his hands to combat the chill of the season, and some R&B track playing lightly from his phone. You knock your fist against the cookie once - a sign for yes that you'd both agreed on. "So, are you just always here then? You don't go anywhere else?"

"Fuck, how do I explain this?" You mutter. You stare at the magnets in front of you for a long time before rearranging them. Not always. Tired sometimes, disappear.

"Disappear?" He reads. "What do you mean? You just, what, stop existing?"

Don't know, you respond. Only happens when tired. When used too much of me. He hums an acknowledgment, eyes focused on where the cookie sheet sits on the couch between you. You? What entertains you?

"Everything," he answers without hesitation. "I'm trying to work through my stack of books I want to read and finish all the shows I'm interested in, but the guys would have my head if I didn't get out and do things like a normal person."

That's where you leave to?

"Yeah." He sets his mug - now empty - on the coffee table and settles into the blankets. He looks cozy and soft and you would wrap yourself up with him if you could. "I take a lot of walks, and bike rides. I like to see the river, the trees, all the animals that live there. The beach is always fun, I get to see all the crabs and whatnot that wander in and out of the ocean."

"I wish I could go with you," you whisper.

Fun is what you spell on your sheet.

"I guess," he mutters. "It's enjoyable, at least. I'll bring you some souvenirs, or pictures next time."

You let the sheet settle on the couch as he turns the TV on, setting up a drama that he's on recently. He doesn't say anything else for a few hours, waits until the sound of rain hits the windows and stifles the apartment in an otherworldly haze.

"How long have you been dead?" His voice lingers in the air. You've been expecting these questions, and you're honestly impressed he's held them back for as long as he has. That angsty teen hadn't hesitated a single second to start asking you questions.

A while. Years. I think .

"Do you ever get tired of being a ghost?" There's something in his voice that you can't place, something that tells you this is more than just his usual morbid curiosity. Every part of your soul - whatever's left of it, anyway - is screaming at you to lie to him, to tell him that no, being a ghost is great. You've never wished he could hear you more than this moment, when all you want to is wrap your arms around him and ask him why he looks so much older than he is.

Sometimes, you tell him. It is lonely here, and boring. Fun to be unseen, but unable to do much more.

He nods like that makes all the sense in the world to him, and he brings the blanket up around his shoulders. "Do you ever miss your friends, or your family?"

Would you not? He huffs out an unamused chuckle, nodding again.

"Yeah," He says softly. "Yeah, I would. Do you want me to help you check on them? See what they're up to?" The single knock that echoes in the room is deafening to you, filled with a hope that you haven't felt in years. You've never let yourself think about them for long; if you did, you don't think you'd be able to come back from whatever that place is that you disappear to when things become Too Much.

Namjoon pulls his phone closer and starts fiddling with it. He doesn't hesitate when he types in your name, and you feel an emotional blush fill you when you see that he doesn't even have to finish typing for your profile to pop up. You glance at him, the way his brows are furrowed behind his glasses and his tongue pokes into his cheek just a little while he concentrates, and you wonder how many times he's looked at the pictures of you when you were alive. How many times has he scrolled through, reading the words people shared after you were gone, scrolling through the grief and loss to get to the words you posted yourself, the little snippets of your daily life that you would give anything to be able to relive?

"Do I still look like that?" You wonder aloud. As expected, he doesn't react, just continues tapping at his phone.

You two spend the rest of the night like that, each curled at opposite ends of the couch while Namjoon slowly looks up your friends and family and updates you on each of them. Jihyo got married, to someone she'd gone on a date with a few weeks before you passed, and she's apparently trying to start having kids; Your mother and father aren't very active, but they never were. They both share pictures of you when you were a baby each year on your birthday, and more recent photos of you on the anniversary. They have a dog now. It's cute. You wonder if it helps them cope with the loss.

Your other friends are doing well, too; most of them are still figuring out their lives, but it seems like all of them are settling in their skin and finding comfort in who they are. They're out there, navigating the world and doing things they enjoy, meeting new friends and making new memories.

You stand by the window for a long time, cookie sheet of magnetized words pressed against your chest as if you can feel the cool of the metal against your skin, and watch rain drip down the panes as you imagine what your life could have been.

You can always hear Namjoon before you see him. He whistles as he walks down the sidewalk, his small way of letting you know he's on his way back from wherever he's gone that day, and today isn't an exception. Relief sags through you and you move away from the windows, let your fingers trail against the ceramic of the newest succulent he'd bought, and head towards the kitchen. The kettle is turned on and heating a few moments later while you pull a mug down from your cabinet and set it carefully on the counter where Namjoon will see it.

It's a regular routine, for the two of you. He heads out, usually in the early morning after turning on some music or a show for you, and when he comes back, you make sure there's hot water for his tea or cocoa or whatever he feels like drinking that day. The sound of his whistling gets louder the closer he gets, a simple way to let you know he's safe and he's home. You glance through the cabinets and quickly make a note on the fridge that he needs to buy more of his special tea blend soon.

The lock turns and you smile, waiting patiently as Namjoon saunters into the apartment. He sets something down on the kitchen counter just as the kettle starts to scream, and you wait while he pours the water and gets it ready.

"The cherry blossoms bloomed," He says. You grin. "They look great. I got some really nice pictures while I was there, I'll show you tonight. I was thinking we could try to finish Voltron tonight if you want. We'll have to go back an episode though, I think I fell asleep during the last one." You knock once against the counter beside you, and he turns with a wide grin to glance at the spot where you stand.

It's ridiculous for your heart to speed up in your chest, for the hair on the back of your neck to rise, for breath to catch in your throat; you don't have a heartbeat, you don't have breath, you're a shadow of the person you used to be, and yet...

And yet, seeing his dimpled smile focused so naturally on where you are, as if it's just second-nature, is like a breath of fresh air after years underwater. It smells like flowers, like dirt and earth and a new beginning. It feels like you're alive again, and you don't want it to end, but too soon he's turning away to finish steeping the tea. Something lingers in the air for a moment after but it's gone too soon for you to place it.

You both settle on the couch, Namjoon tucking whatever he brought home with him under his arm, between his body and the arm of his ratty old couch. Your cookie sheet is in its place on the coffee table, unneeded at the moment. You can't help the glare that you give it; the things you would give to be able to just speak and be heard are endless.

It rattles a little and you look away.

Namjoon is quiet as the show plays. He doesn't react when you move to turn the oven on, but he does laugh quietly and thank you for it when he goes to put his dinner in. He eats and you don't bother him, though the way he keeps his little package hidden away makes curiosity burn through you. Eventually, once he's eaten and washed his dishes and laughed at the way you rubbed them dry before setting them carefully in their places, he settles back into his blankets and turns on the music he loves so much.

He's got a book balanced in his hands and your cookie sheet rests on the coffee table, and you both just sit like that for a long while, enjoying existing.

"You remember your life, right Casper?" You thump lazily against the wall in response, eyes drawn from where you watch the gloomy sky slowly get lighter with the dawn. He isn't looking at his book anymore; he probably hasn't been for a while, based on the way the pages have migrated around his thumb, too busy staring at the wall across from him. "Do you remember your death?"

You hesitate. You've tiptoed around the subject before. He's always been too afraid to ask directly, and it's too painful for you to offer it freely. You thump against the wall once more, and he nods like he already knew the answer.

"Are they very different?" His glasses are falling down his nose and your fingers itch to push them up. Instead, you reach for your cookie sheet. He makes a sound in the back of his throat when he sees it moving, reaching under him for his package. "I forgot, I got you this. Thought it might be easier."

He sets it down and you slide the contents out of the wrapping easily. Inside is a small dry-erase board, complete with markers and eraser, small things that should be easy for you to manipulate. You beam at him; he can't see it, but you think he might be able to feel it because he perks up and smiles a little.

"You don't have to answer," He adds. "I was just curious to know if being dead is really as different as everyone makes it out to be." You nod and thump once against the board before you uncap a marker and start writing.

It's a bizarre feeling, after so long. The muscles in your hand don't ache, no matter how much you write, and you can't feel the smooth surface of the board under your fingers or the weight of the marker in your palm, but it glides against it cleanly and leaves a thick black streak behind.

It takes you a minute to write everything out, get it worded how you want. Namjoon doesn't interrupt you, just watches the marker move against the board and smiles every time you go to erase something that isn't right. Eventually you show it to him.

There are similarities. I'm still me, I still enjoy TV and music and books. Things are duller now, like there's a filter over them, and it's harder to do things. Like when you're in water, or mud, like that. Resistance.

"Oh," Namjoon replies, "That's not what I expected. It makes sense though I guess." His hand moves against his chest, rubbing lightly as he looks over your words again. "Is there anything you actually like about being a ghost?"

"Well, being invisible is pretty cool," You say, writing the words as you do. "And it's actually really fun being able to walk through walls and stuff, even if I can't go anywhere outside of the apartment."

"I'm sorry you're stuck here," Namjoon says. You startle a little, looking up at him. You think he actually heard you for a split second, but his eyes are locked on where you're writing your words out on the dry erase board.

"Yeah, me too," You tell him. He stares at the board for a long moment, chewing nervously on his bottom lip as he does. "Ask what you want to ask, Joon," You write as you say it.

"How did you die?" He blurts. You sigh and he jumps a little, looking fully at where you sit. You're shocked; you know that sometimes little noises cross over, like when Jin heard you laughing, but it's still rare. You can't figure out how it works, but you want to.

You write for a long time, letters small so they fit on the board. The whole thing is crowded together, looks like one long string of letters instead of the story it is.

There's a lot of violence in this neighborhood. You probably know that by now. People are always getting robbed or mugged or something around here. Someone tried to break into my apartment by banging the door down. It didn't work, luckily, but I got really paranoid afterwards. One night I was cooking, and someone's door slammed really hard. I spilled the water I was boiling, slipped. Blacked out after a while, and when I came to, there were police everywhere. I guess I hit my head harder than I thought, because they carted me away, and I couldn’t follow.

"I'm sorry," Namjoon says softly. "You deserved more time."

Yeah. The universe had a different plan, I guess. He smiles at that, and it settles the anxiety thrumming under your skin. Wouldn't have met you, so I guess that's a bonus. He rolls his eyes at you but he laughs softly, so you consider it a win. You doodle on the board then, simple little designs that don't mean anything beyond being able to see your effect on the world.

Namjoon sucks in a breath beside you and you look up at him. He's always been good about looking towards where you are, doing his best to make eye contact with someone he can't see, but he still always tends to look through you.

Not this time.

This time, electricity sings through the air as your eyes meet his. You don't know how, but you know he can see you. His eyes roam over you, taking in the crumpled sweater you were wearing with the stain you like to think is pasta sauce on the arm, the hair you can't ever really tame, the way you sit cross-legged on his old thread-bare couch with a dry erase board in your hands.

Neither of you moves. He looks torn between fear and amazement, every emotion in between flitting quickly over his features, and you're terrified that if you move, whatever spell that's been cast will fade. It had been so long since you talked to anyone when Namjoon slammed those magnets on the fridge, and the conversation has been a reprieve, but to be seen for the first time in years...

It's invigorating.

Watching Namjoon just look at you is something you won't ever forget, not for as long as you exist in the world. He looks at you like he's memorizing every detail, every hair and wrinkle and pore, and just knowing that he can see you fills you with something new.

"Namjoon...?" You call hesitantly. His eyes fall on your lips.

"Again," He says. Your brows must furrow, maybe you frown, you don't know because it's been so long since you've needed to pay attention to your facial expressions, but he notices your confusion. "Will you say something again?"

Breath you don't have catches in your throat, wraps itself around a heart that doesn't beat, but you smile a little. "I'm glad I met you."

Namjoon smiles. It's big and blinding and knocks everything out of you except for that emotion that's been sitting in your chest since the first time you watched him talk to his plants. You lean forward, and you can tell the exact moment you disappear, because his smile falls and his eyes unfocus. A whimper leaves your throat, but he doesn't react, and that may be the most painful thing that's ever happened to you.

"Can I feel you?" His voice is hushed but the words reverberate in your head. His eyes dart around, looking for any glimpse of you, and your hand trembles as you reach out.

Goosebumps raise on his cheek where your hand touches him and his breath stops for a moment, but he smiles again and leans into the chill. You bring your other hand up to cup his other cheek, your dry erase board lying forgotten on the ground, and Namjoon's eyes flutter closed.

"I think I might love you," You say quietly just before you press your lips to his. He doesn't react to your words, but he lets out a soft sigh at your kiss. Thunder cracks through the apartment, a torrent of rain unleashed on the windows, but you don't move.

The two of you sit like that for hours, until he starts shivering and his nose turns red, like it does when he forgets his scarf on the cold days, and his breath puffs in the air. When you finally pull away from him, he smiles, and the blush on his cheeks has nothing to do with the cold air that makes up your form.

"Yeah," He says softly, voice nearly drowned out by the storm raging outside. "Yeah, I can feel you."

If you expected things to change much after that, you were wrong. At least a little. Namjoon still disappears to go on his walks, you still start the kettle the second his whistles drift up to the apartment. He still asks you a million questions, but they're more normal now. Your favorite music, color, what you wished you'd done with your life, if you've been able to corporealize again recently, what you wanted to watch that night.

"Come on, Casper," Namjoon groans. "I promise you can do it." You huff and he smiles, clearly having heard it. You're tempted to just disappear somewhere, rattle some pipes in the bathroom or the kitchen so he thinks you're in there and leaves you alone, but he smiles at you again and you're weak for that dimple.

You grip the watering can again, doing your best to lift it and manipulate it the way you need to. It's heavy, and something about the metal makes your skin itch, but the more you struggle the more you're able to pour the slightest bit of water where RJ - a giant plant that you don't even know the name of - sits in the corner of the room across from Namjoon's bed. It's the twentieth-something time you've tried this today, and you're ten seconds from just giving up completely, but you can tell this is important to Namjoon.

He's been talking all week, between the late nights where you lay over his blanket-wrapped form and the mornings where he ducks out with a soft goodbye. He's told you everything about his plants that you think he possibly could, teaching you about them and showing you how to care for them. It's interesting, you won't lie, and it's always fun to see him light up when you recall something he's told you, but you're exhausted and every part of you is shaky, and you're more than a little worried of what might happen if you push too far again.

Still, Joon hasn't looked great lately, like he might be getting the flu, and you want to be able to help him with all the things he does in the house. You've already started doing the dishes and folding laundry, since those were the two things he was the absolute worst at, but you feel like you should be doing more.

"Good job, baby, I'm proud of you!" You grunt and let the watering can fall back to the ground with a loud thump that almost definitely has the downstairs neighbors cursing Namjoon's name. "See, and now we're done for the day! C'mon, we can put on Sens8 and cuddle."

He's on the couch before you can stop him, wrapping himself in blankets except for one lone hand that sticks out, expectant. You roll your eyes and sit beside him, close enough that if you had a body you would be cuddling instead of just sitting awkwardly beside him.

You know that this is just going to make your hand all pink and gross, right?

He just smiles when the board flips around to reveal itself and wiggles his fingers. "It's worth it," He says. "I'd rather be pink and gross than never get to hold your hand at all."

You can't even feel my hand, Joon, there's literally no point to this. He huffs and wraps his hand around the marker in your hand, shivering at the chill that runs through him when he does. He grins and gestures down to where the tips of his fingers are already turning red.

"Clearly I can feel it, Casper."

You're glad he can't see you, that you don't have a heart that beats or blood that runs, because if you did, your face would no doubt be red. You have no doubts that Namjoon would tease you about it.

He's quiet as you both watch the show; he makes the odd comment here or there, but his mood seems to have calmed some. When he first got back from whatever place he visited that day, he'd been anxious and jumpy and entirely too on edge.

"Hey, Casper?" He asks quietly. You slide a hand against his cheek to let him know you're there, and he leans into the chill again. "What do you think about me?"

You don't move for several seconds, hand still poised around his cheek.

"Like, your feelings. What are they? Will you tell me?" You knock once on the wall behind the couch. Your hand stays poised over your board for long enough that Namjoon starts to get a little restless. Words refuse to come to you. Every time you start to think you have a way to describe to him what he means to you, they disappear as quick as fog on a summer's afternoon. Frustrated, you let the board fall to the couch and scrawl a quick 'hold on' so he knows you aren't just ignoring him.

It's been weeks since you've seen what you're looking for, your cookie sheet with the word magnets having been basically forgotten in lieu of the more personal and convenient dry-erase board, but right now you know that if words won't come to you, you'll have to go to them.

You finally find it, shoved under several encyclopedias and magazines, and the noise you make is so triumphant that even Namjoon hears it. You curl back up beside him, careful to make sure the blanket is wrapped tight around him, and make sure he can see the words as you move them. It still takes a long time, constantly changing and rearranging and stacking to make sure it conveys the things you need it to convey.

You are like music. A symphony of summer days and peach skies with soft rain. You are a storm in the moonlight. I'm not lonely when I have you pouring around me. You make me feel alive again.

Namjoon is silent for a long time, and you wonder if you've gone too far. It's more poetic than you'd like, too frilly and fancy and emotional than you usually are, but they're the only words you have.

After too long, he exhales. It's heavy and deep and it feels like he's trying to expel more than just air from his body.

"You make me feel alive, too," is all he says, whispered into the softness of his blanket in a voice too small for his long limbs. He shivers, and you hear him choke down a cough, and then he disappears into the bathroom for a long time. When he comes back out, he doesn't say anything, just slides into the mass of blankets on his bed and lays his arm out across the mattress. You spread out across from him, watching the rise and fall of his chest as he looks through you and out the window where the rain is letting up.

"Looks like the rainy season is gonna last longer than everyone thought." You slide your hands around one of his large ones and just hold them like that. His eyes sink closed and something like relief stands on his face for a moment before it's gone, swept away by the peace of sleep.

You wonder what it is that he sees when he looks out the window. If it's the plain brick wall and windows of the building next door, or something more.

You aren't sure you want to know.

Namjoon's flu only seems to get worse. He leaves early in the mornings, as if he thinks you might not notice the way he coughs into his scarf just because the sun hasn't risen fully yet. He stays gone most of the days, and even when he apologizes quietly during the twilight when he slinks back in to the sound of the kettle screeching on the stove and his tea already waiting to be steeped, he still doesn't stop.

You've taken to playing blues while he's gone, mostly the old school stuff, digging out the vintage record player he has buried in the closet and setting it up on the coffee table. It’s the only technology you can use without shorting it out. You don’t know why, but it makes you grateful the record collection Namjoon keeps tucked away inside the coffee table that you’ve learned is in fact an actual steamer trunk that he salvaged and restored himself.

The music fills the apartment, distracts you from the oppressive weight of his absence. He knows you wait at the window for him, you told him that back when the two of you were first getting to know each other.

You're so fragile, you had told him. He had laughed at you, quiet and fond, and waited for you to explain further. You're so full of life and breath and possibility, and the world is so big and so dangerous. I'm scared you won't come back.

"Of course I'm going to come back," he told you. You didn't even need to tell him that you're afraid of what being alone might do to you, now that you're so used to his presence. You're being heard again, sometimes even seen, and you don't know if you can go back to the stagnant depression of solitude. "I'll always come back to you."

That was the first time you thought you might love Namjoon. The feeling has only gotten stronger, and now that you wait at the window with your eyes focused on that tiny section of sidewalk you can see at the end of the alley, it threatens to consume you whole.

You wait at the window for hours. You know because you glance at the clock every minute and a half, mocking you with every tick as it hangs limply on the bathroom door. The sun sinks below the horizon, the moon rises to take its place, and they switch again while you wait. The dawn paints the sky in beautiful shades of pink and red and orange and the faintest purple, but you can't appreciate any of it, because you're too anxious.

He could be hurt. He could be gone, and you wouldn't ever know until his friends came to pack his things. He could have left, too; maybe he finally decided that living with a ghost was just too much for him and just ran. Maybe he figured out that you love him, that you would move heaven and earth if it meant he was safe forever if only you could leave this apartment, and it was too much for him.

What if he knows about how you lay beside him every night? How you tuck the blankets tighter around him, cover him in warmth and comfort before settling on top of them and closing your eyes and pretending that you can feel his arm draped over your waist and his breath on the back of your neck. What if he felt you, that night you wandered into the bathroom while he was showering to write on the steam-covered mirror that he needs to buy more eggs soon and got distracted by the way he looked stepping out of the shower? What if he knows your stomach flipped at the long limbs and the hidden muscles and the sheer size of him? What if he knows the real reason you were quiet that night, the way you kept replaying the moment in your mind and wishing you had a body so you could have just touched him, at least.

It's closer to noon than midnight when his whistle echoes up through the window.

"Hey, I'm home," He calls as he enters the empty apartment. You're upset, but you're more filled with relief than anything because at least he's safe and he's here now. He makes a beeline for where the kettle is just starting to whistle, already reaching for the honey and the tea you set out on the counter for him, and you do your best to calm the storm of emotions inside you.

Did you have fun, wherever you were? You ask him, floating the whiteboard in front of his face so he has to acknowledge it.

"Yeah, I did," he responds as he stirs his tea. "Jin invited everyone over for some end of summer thing. I didn't feel too great at the end of it, so I just spent the night there."

Don't party too hard, you might remember how to have fun, you joke. It falls a little flat based on the grim smile Namjoon gives you. Are they gonna come over here again anytime soon? I've missed scaring Hoseok.

He lets out a real laugh at that. "I don't know, maybe. My birthday's coming up, after Jeongguk's, so they could definitely be planning something. I'm heading over to Yoongi's later to help plan for Guk's party. I might stay there tonight, so try not to worry, Casper."

I'll try, you tell him. You both know you'll stand at the window every second he's gone, but you don't want to tell him why. You don't want to tell him that you love him through a dry erase board, or some fancy poetry magnets. It doesn't matter that you may as well have already said so by telling him that he makes you feel alive again; you haven't said the words to him, he hasn't seen 'I love you' in the messy scrawl that is your handwriting on some stupid board, and therefore he doesn't know.

You don't know if you want him to.

He stays gone that night, as he said he might, and reappears the next day to shower and change before he vanishes again. The next time he shows up, he takes a bag with him when he leaves, which only worsens your fears. He stays gone for three days this time, doesn't apologize when he turns up again and just mumbles a soft hello into the air before he makes tea and sags into his couch. He's asleep in seconds, and as much as you want to scream at him, you can't bring yourself to disrupt how peaceful he looks.

When he wakes, he takes a shower and ignores the ' can we talk ' you scrawled in the steam. He packs a bag of fresh clothes and doesn't say goodbye when he leaves, just disappears and leaves you standing at the window with the pail in your hand, caring for the plants he isn't. The slam of the door sounds like nails in a coffin and breaks what little was left of your soul.

He shows back up nearly a week later, and the relief at seeing him again is overridden by the sheer anger at being left in the first place. You don't start the kettle when you hear his whistle, the quiet and hoarse tune of a familiar song barely reaching the window, but there's plenty of noise when he enters.

The cabinet doors are quaking with your fury, the lights flicker and threaten to burst, and Namjoon just leans back against the door. He’s soaked from the storm thundering outside, even his jacket plastered to his skin, and he’s shivering slightly, but you can’t see anything past the rage.

"Where the fuck were you?" You demand; there's no point, it's not like he can hear you, but the way he sighs makes you feel like he can, so you continue anyway. "It's been almost a week, you didn't even think to stop by for ten seconds so I know you're okay? I thought you were dead somewhere, you could've been, like, shot, or something, I don't know, just bleeding out in some ditch, and I wouldn't know! And what about all the plants? I know how to take care of them, sure, but do you know how hard it is for me to do it?"

Namjoon sighs again, the breath catching in his throat and coming out in a cough, but you don't pay much attention to it.

"Why would you act like this, Namjoon? What did I do, is it because of the things I said? Do you not want me to feel like this about you? Because this a damn good way of making sure I don't, I assure you, so by all means, just keep disappearing and leave me alone with the plants you decided to rescue and save!"

His cough gets worse and he just shakes his head, covering his mouth and making his way towards the bathroom.

"If you want me to hate you, it's too fucking late, Joon!" The slam of the bathroom door punctuates your sentence, and you quiet at the sound of continued coughing. You knew his flu was getting worse, but it's never sounded like that. Even when you were alive, you knew that the wet sound that's muffled by the bathroom door isn't what a cough should sound like. The lock of the door clicks, and it shocks you into movement because he's never - never - locked you out of anywhere. He knows it wouldn't stop you, knows it as well as you know that you'd respect that boundary if he set it, and yet here he is, locking you out even as he coughs up what sounds like a lung in the other room.

You hesitate at the door, torn between respecting his boundaries and knowing what’s happening. You want him to trust you, always, and yet you find your hand disappearing through the door before you can stop it. You stand like that for a long moment, just listening to the sounds of his wracking coughs; the sound of a crash echoes through the apartment, though, and you’re through the door completely in the span of a heartbeat. 

Nearly everything that had been on the counter is scattered on the ground, Namjoon himself gripping the sides of the toilet as if he would fall apart otherwise. A single glance tells you that the crash happened as he turned from the sink to the toilet, and if his jolting shoulders didn’t tell you why, the sounds of his retching would. That isn’t what fills you with dread though; the disorientation, the vomiting, all of it comes with being sick sometimes, but the red staining the bathroom sink? 

That’s not normal, and you know with every part of you that it’s the reason he’s been gone so much. 

The temperature in the apartment drops with the sun, but your arms surround Namjoon as best they can. Goosebumps break out on his arms, shivers run down his back, but you don’t move away from him; he doesn’t say anything, just sits there with his forehead pressed against the cool of the porcelain. He stands eventually, ignores the way he passes completely through your body to rinse the sink and brush his teeth. 

You let him stay quiet until you’re both on his bed; you’re pressed up against his side and running your hands along his forearms, idly wondering if you would be able to feel his heartbeat if you were alive. 

“It’s not...it’s not gonna get better,” He says eventually. “There’s not a cure, just some things to draw it out and give me a little bit longer even if they come with more pain. I go once a week to see if it’s gotten worse, check how much longer I have. It’s why Hobi let me move in here rent-free. He pays the bills, says it’s the least he can do. I wanted to be closer to him anyway, so that’s a bonus, I guess.”

“I’m so sorry, Joon,” you whisper. Your board lies forgotten, somewhere on the couch maybe, you aren’t sure and can’t be bothered to pull yourself away from him long enough to find it. You don’t need it right now, though; he knows what you mean by the way the cold presses against his bicep with your palm. 

“I didn’t want you to know.” You’re not exactly surprised at that; you’d figured as much. You just don’t understand his reasoning. “I didn’t want you worrying about me, or anything like that, like the guys do. They always look at me and it’s all they can see. Like they’re already mourning me, even though I’m still here. I didn’t want to feel like that with you.” 

“I know,” you say. You don’t, not really. Your own death was sudden, a shock to everyone you knew; you didn’t get the luxury of saying goodbye, didn’t have the burden of knowing you would be gone soon. 

The two of you sit in silence for a while, until you can feel Namjoon’s chest quivering under your palm. When you look up, he looks at you, really and truly at you , and he has tears in his eyes. 

“I don’t want to die, Casper,” He whispers. You suck in a breath because he can see you, and you don’t even know why, but you don’t want to lose this moment. “I don’t want to leave all of this behind. I don’t want to leave you.” 

“It’ll be okay,” you say softly. His brow furrows and a tear slides down his cheek. “I promise you it will be okay, Namjoon. It gets easier, and people remember but they aren’t stuck forever. And I…” You falter, and it takes his eyes meeting yours to make you realize he can hear you. And there’s only one thing you’ve ever needed him to hear. 

“I love you,” You tell him. “I love you, and I will never forget you.” 

He surges forward, lips meeting yours in a rush of air. You moan at the feeling of him against you, realizing that for the first time since you died, you can feel something under your fingers. His skin is warm against your fingers, his lips soft against your own, and when he reaches up to cup your jaw with his hand, he doesn’t pass through your form. Instead his hand settles heavy against you, and he moves your head to lick into your mouth. 

Tears that won’t fall prickle at the back of your eyes and you climb into his lap before he can stop you. He’s still crying so you wipe away the tears before they can fall, pressing soft kisses to his cheeks, his dimples, his nose, every bit you can reach. A question sits at the back of your mind, and you can see it lingering in his eyes, but neither of you asks it.

“You’re so cold.” His whisper is nearly lost amidst the thunder that shakes the apartment, but it makes you smile a little. 

“Warm me up?” 

His chest is still quivering with unspoken sobs, but he nods. “Always,” he tells you. “I’m always going to be here.” It doesn’t take long to pry him out of his clothes, takes even less time for him to sink into you. It feels just like it did when you were alive, only magnified; you can feel him hot and warm inside you, can feel the beat of his heart in the firm muscle under your hands. His moans are quiet and hoarse but you wouldn’t have it any other way. 

He keeps one hand on your waist and the other on your neck, holding you close enough that he can kiss whenever he wants. “You’re beautiful,” He whispers. “The most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.” You just press another kiss to his chapped lips and let him dig his fingers in hard enough that it would bruise if it could. When he’s close to his peak, he stops thrusting, just sits inside you as he grinds your hips down to his, and presses his forehead against yours. 

“I love you,” He tells you, lightning casting his shadow across the wall for a brief moment. “I love you, I do, I wish-”

“I know,” you tell him before he can continue. “I know, Namjoon, I know, and I do, too. I love you, too.” He comes a few seconds later, the warm seed soaking into his sheets because it has nowhere to go. His warmth disappears from under your hands and his arms fall to his lap when the only thing holding them up is gone. All you can hear is your quiet sobs mixed with his and the rain against the window, and for the first time since you came back, you really, truly, wish you had died. There’s no point in being a ghost when you can still feel your heart breaking in your chest. 

“Casper, are you ever scared?” 

It’s the middle of the afternoon. Namjoon is sprawled across the couch wrapped in blankets while Lucifer plays in the background and you doodle aimlessly on your board. You don’t need it as often now; you’ve gotten better at focusing your energy into being heard, though being corporeal still eludes you. You don’t know how you did it that night, but you’re grateful for it. 

“Of what?” You ask, looking towards him. He’s not looking at you or watching the show, just staring at the ceiling. He focuses at your words, lifts himself up into a sitting position. A shiver runs through him when his legs move through you, and you settle a weightless hand against his knee out of habit. 

“I don’t know,” He replies. “Just...whatever comes next. If there’s something that comes next. Being forgotten. Being stuck here forever.” 

You aren’t stupid; you know why he’s asking. The question lingers in the air, colors all of your conversations now, but the truth is that neither of you has the strength to ask it and neither of you knows the answer. 

“Sometimes,” You tell him. “Sometimes I wonder what Jihyo is doing, if she ever had a baby like she wanted to. I wonder if my parents are still alive, and what they say if they visit my grave, what they tell me now that I can’t respond to them.” 

Namjoon nods like he’s already thought of that, and he probably has. 

“Most of the time I try not to focus on it, though. It’s not helpful, it only upsets me, and I don’t…” You trail off, unsure of how to word your thoughts. “I don’t know what might happen if I only focus on the negative. I don’t know anything about what’s true about ghosts and what isn’t beyond that I exist now, and I can’t risk becoming something bad. So I try not to focus on it. It’s easier when you’re here.”

He grins and blows a kiss in your general direction, and you pretend not to notice the blood on his cracked lips. He’s quiet for the rest of the episode of half of another. 

“Have you ever seen a light?” 

“What?” He doesn’t seem to hear you, and you repeat your question on your board for him. 

“A light,” He echoes. “Like, the light.Y’know, the light at the end of the tunnel, ‘don’t go into the light,’ that thing.” 

You hesitate at that. You knew what he meant, what he actually wants to know here. He’s easier to read now than he was in the beginning. 

You watch him as he watches the space where you sit, curled up beside him on his couch. He can’t see you, of course, but he can see where the board rests in your hands. His gaze is heavier than it was when he first moved in; his cheeks are hollower, skin more gaunt with a grey tint that’s only made worse by the constant rain. The sun is just starting to break through the clouds, a brief reprieve after weeks of the dreary stone-colored clouds. It casts shadows along the walls, reflects off something in the window across the alley, and backlights Namjoon beautifully, casts a halo of light around the brittle brown hair you love. 

Once, you tell him. Just once.

“Why didn’t you go to it?” 

There are so many things you could tell him, so many different ways to answer such a simple question, but you find yourself lingering on the one thing you know is the ultimate truth. 

Because I love you.

September comes with even more rain and a bittersweet atmosphere. Jeongguk spends his birthday at Namjoon’s apartment and then comes back a little over a week later, surrounded by the other guys and carrying enough food to last a few months. You stay curled on the bed, one of the only safe places for you to not mess with anyone or anything. Your board is tucked into the blankets, ready to be used but hidden from view just in case. You watch as Namjoon sits on the couch, tucked between Taehyung and Yoongi with both of them leaning into him as much as possible, Yoongi’s hands wrapped in one of his and Tae’s head on his shoulder. 

The other’s aren’t far, leaning against the back of the couch and on beanbags they’d brought with them, all laughing as Hoseok does his best to act out whatever he’d been given in charades. He’s not bad at it - you’ve guessed the last few he’s done - but he is utterly ridiculous in his mannerisms. You know why; it’s the same reason everyone kept smiling when Namjoon refused all of the food he was offered, why Seokjin would crack a terrible joke whenever it got too quiet for too long, why everyone is resolutely ignoring the growing pile of tissues on the table. 

It keeps a smile on Namjoon’s face, though, and a laugh in his eyes, and you can’t ever be anything but grateful for that. 

Hoseok stumbles, nearly falling and whirling his arms to catch himself before eventually falling anyway. You laugh along with the others, grinning at the way Hobi pouts and rubs at his hip. You’re focused on the way Joon laughs, the way it lights up his face and brightens the entire room, which is why you see it first. 

The tickle at the back of his throat quickly becomes a cough, wet and wheezing and enough to make him throw the blankets from his lap and stumble to the bathroom. 

You’re there before he is, helping him slide the door closed and locking it behind him as he bends over the toilet again. The six of them are quiet in the main room, speaking in hushed whispers that neither you nor Namjoon wants to hear. You turn the knob on the sink, wetting a towel while you drown out the sound of voices, and letting a hand run over Namjoon’s back. 

“I’m okay,” he mutters. You ignore the way his voice shakes, the way his lips are redder than before, the way this happens more often than before. Instead, you just press the damp rag to his neck and watch his eyes close in relief. When he stands and flushes the evidence away, you already have his toothbrush ready and waiting, and you stay as close to him as you can until he takes a deep breath. 

“I’m okay,” He repeats. “I’m okay. It’s my birthday, and I’m okay.” 

He goes back out with a smile on his face and a laugh in his voice, teasing Hoseok about the way he fell and reenacting it, even. When he settles on the couch, he urges the others to continue the game. There’s a brief moment of hesitation before Jimin declares that he’s next and pulls something from the bowl on the table. 

You know you aren’t the only one that notices the way Namjoon’s eyes linger on the six men around him, but you are the only one that notices the way they also linger on his steamer trunk, the shelf with his books, the TV, the record player, the scrapbook of his life that they all worked on and Taehyung pieced together over the months, the plants on the wall that he had cared for. He looks around his apartment as if he’s looking at it for the last time. 

As if he’s already planning who’s going to get what. 

He finally asks the question you both have been thinking about, nearly two months later. His breathing comes in ragged pants, his lips stay chapped, and he keeps several blankets around him at all times to try to hide the shaking of his body. Your soft sobs echo through the apartment constantly; while you reheat the tea he doesn’t drink for the millionth time, while you quietly water and prune the plants he’s saved from death the way you wish you could save him, while you sit curled around him as he sleeps, soothing his coughs with quiet whispers. 

Night has just begun to fall, the rain of the day turning into a soft drizzle, and you stare at him blankly, unsure how to process what you’ve just heard. 

“Do you think I’ll come back?” He asks again, slightly louder. As if you hadn’t heard his shaky voice the first time. It’s not the question that floors you. You’ve been expecting this for weeks, months even. You’ve wondered it yourself as you prepare tea and ignore the sounds of him vomiting blood in the bathroom, as he disappears to the hospital and returns with a worse prognosis than before, as you’ve adjusted to the idea that you are dead and he is dying and you cannot do anything to help him. 

You never would have expected the hope that his words carry though. 

“Why does it sound like you want to?” You ask. Your voice is clear in the air and you’re glad for it, because this isn’t something you want to talk about through your board. 

“Because I do?” His response is delayed and sounds more like a question than a real answer. 

“Why?!” You demand. 

“Are you serious, Casper?” His brow is furrowed as he sits up and lets the blankets fall away to sit haphazardly off the couch. 

“Are you? Joon, why would you want to come back?”

“You’re seriously asking me that question? Why would I not? I’ve got so much I still want to do, I never thought I’d get the chance to after I got the diagnosis and now I might be able to. Why wouldn’t I want that?”

“Because it doesn’t work like that! You don’t get to just wander the world and fuck around, Joon, you’re dead.”

“Yeah, but you can still read and write and everything. I’d have all the time in the world to read the books I want to read, watch the shows I want to watch, write the music and stories and lyrics that I want to write.”

“Yeah, so long as it all stays in this apartment!” The light in the room flickers slightly with the force of your irritation. “You can’t do anything that isn’t in this room, Namjoon, you can’t use any of the electronics, you can’t read a book unless it’s here, you can’t write music unless it’s on actual paper, you can’t do anything.” 

“Yeah, and I could make that work. Why are you so upset about this? I thought you’d be happy.”

“Happy? You think I’d be happy that you’d be stuck in these four walls forever, too? Why would that make me happy?” Namjoon stands, running a hand through his hair and shaking his head. 

“Because I’d be with you! We’d be together, forever! Do you not want to be with me?”

“Of course I want to be with you, Joon, but not at the cost of you being stuck here. I don’t want that for anyone, certainly not the man I love.”

“And what if that’s what I want? What if I want to spend the rest of time with you? I’m already spending the rest of my life with you, I’m in love with you, I don’t want to leave you.”

“And I don’t want you to go, but Joon, why would I want you stuck here, too? This isn’t something fun. This isn’t anything that I enjoy.”

“Oh, so you regret it all then?”

“I didn’t say that, I just don’t want you to be stuck in a shitty studio apartment for who knows how long when you can’t fucking do half of the things you love! You wouldn’t go on walks, Namjoon, you wouldn’t go with Guk and Jimin to the movies, you wouldn’t get visits from Hobi, you wouldn’t get to shop with Taehyung or Jin, you wouldn’t get to drag Yoongi away from his thesis or celebrate with them when he finishes it! It’s not like being alive, Namjoon, you’d be dead and alone and in hell!”

“Whatever,” He mutters, shoving his arms into his coat. “Why can’t you understand for one fucking second that it wouldn’t be like that with you? I’d rather be stuck here forever than have to die in some shitty apartment and not even be able to touch the person I love.”

“Why can’t you understand that it’s still death? You’d be dead, Joon, your friends would go to your funeral and disappear from your life, and you’d be stuck staring out that window at that shitty alley for the rest of time. You don’t get it, you don’t how terrible it is to be stuck here and watch life pass you by.”

“Then why the fuck are you still here?” He asks. The door slams behind him before you can answer him, and your scream shakes everything in the room. You just barely catch one of the plants in the kitchen, a brown-potted one with ‘Shooky’ scrawled in Yoongi’s familiar handwriting, before it crashes to the ground. You return it to its place gently and huff another frustrated groan. 

You wish you could explain it better, but you know he wouldn’t get it even if you could. He doesn’t understand what it’s like to be trapped between four walls and unable to do anything without massive amounts of effort. And he won’t, not unless he experiences it himself. 

You’ve already watched him wither away. You’ve watched him become thin and sallow and a shadow of the Namjoon who first moved in, and you don’t know what you would do if he came back. You wouldn’t be alone anymore, of course, and you’d have him here with you, but at what cost? Namjoon was built for cherry blossoms and sunshine and the riverside. He would hate being trapped here even more than you do.

Still, you could have been more understanding of his view. You can admit that even being stuck in a shitty apartment wasn’t so terrible when you had Namjoon there to make you laugh or watch TV or read to you. It may even get better if he turned into a ghost; maybe you could hold his hands in yours, could feel him wrap his arms around you, could press kisses to his skin again. 

You move to the window and stand there waiting. It’s not good for him to be out, even if the rain had stopped a few days ago and the forecasters promised it was the end of the downpours. He was still weak, you’d be surprised he even went anywhere to begin with but you know he likes to walk to calm himself down. 

You worry for what feels like hours. You can’t focus on anything, not the way the sun starts to set, not the sound of cars passing or the neighbor leaving. You’ve worked yourself into knots by the time you hear his whistle echo up through the streets, nearly lost in the sound of some argument in the alley below you. You catch a brief view of his coat and smile when you see that he’s got some half-dead plant tucked under an arm. There’s the briefest glimpse of what looks like a Ca scrawled onto it, and your heart jumps in your throat.

You make your way to the stove, turning the heat up slightly too high so that it’ll be ready when he comes in. The arguing outside gets louder but you pay it no mind, pulling the honey out and setting it next to his favorite mug. You’re reaching for the tea when you hear something else. It definitely sounds like Namjoon’s voice, but it’s not in the hall or at the door like usual. It’s raised, like he’s yelling at someone, like it was just a while ago when he was fighting with you. A crash startles you and before you can even reach the window to see what’s going on, there’s a deafening bang. 

You slam your fist against the window, watch the red mix with dirt, and the kettle isn't that only thing that screams. 

“I think that’s the last of it,” Jeongguk says. His voice is scratchy and quiet, but it’s deafening in the silence of the apartment. 

“Yeah,” Hoseok replies. His eyes are rimmed with red and his hands shake as he slides the last mug into a box. “Thanks for the help, Guk. I don’t, um.” He sniffles. “I don’t think I could’ve done it myself, y’know?” 

“I know,” Jeongguk agrees. They’re quiet again, adjusting the things they’ve boxed and avoiding finishing what they’re doing. 

“Oh, can you get that?” You don’t have to look to know what Hoseok is talking about. Jeongguk grunts an affirmation and makes his way over. It’s a strange feeling, having someone pass through you again for the first time since. His hands fly into the air as he tries to lift, clearly not having expected it to weigh anything. 

His reflection in the window frowns, and he tries again, tugging on the pot. 

“I can’t get it,” He says. “Do you think he glued these things down or something?” 

“No,” Hoseok replies as he wanders over as well. “He used to pick them up to re-pot them, remember? And the others came up with no problem.” 

“Well it’s stuck or something, you try.”

Hobi takes Jeongguk’s place and pulls hard at the plot, but your grip doesn’t waver. He huffs and disappears. When he returns, he’s got a butter knife in one hand that he does his best to slip under the pot. He tries hard to pry it up, so hard that you almost want to give in. You don’t though. 

The knife clatters to the floor with as much force as Hoseok can put behind it, a curse following quickly behind it. 

“Fuck it,” Hoseok says. His voice is shaky and you know he’s near tears again. “Just fuck it.” 

“But that was-”

“You can try if you want, Guk, but I just-” He chokes back a sob, shaking his head and moving to pick up the boxes he’d set down. “I just can’t, okay?” He disappears out the door in a hurry, and you wish you could follow after him. 

Jeongguk looks down at the small plant, with its painted periwinkle pot and soft leaves. He runs a quivering finger over the leaf and sniffles. He doesn’t try to lift it again, just stands and lets his tear soak into the soil.

“I wish you could come back to us,” He whispers. “We thought...we expected more time. It’s not...it’s not really fair, y’know? So if you can hear me, if you can come back to us, please do. Please.” 

He turns and leaves, the apartment door slamming behind him like the lid of a casket. Your grip on Mang loosens now that you know no one’s going to try to take it. You’d watched them pack everything else up; you’d let them take the steamer trunk full of records, the shelf full of books and movies, the collection of mugs, the soft blankets, the ratty couch, the rest of the plants he’d cared for so tenderly. 

Piece by piece they had packed Namjoon up and walked him out of the apartment, but this was the one piece they couldn’t have. This was his favorite and none of them knew how to care for it like you did, and you had to. You owed it to him. He deserved to come back to at least one familiar thing, never mind that you woke up not even a day later and it’s now been weeks. If there was one thing you wanted him to see when he got back, it was his favorite of his plants. 

The sun glares into your eyes from where it shines down on the city. It reflects off something in the window from across the alley, would be blinding if you actually had eyes. You pay it no mind, focused instead on the remains of the broken brown pot down in the alley, the way you’ve pieced them together in your head a thousand times just to trace the word Casper with your eyes. You can almost hear his voice saying it, even now.

You whip around, eyes darting through the empty space of the apartment as your hands tighten around Mang.

All that rests there is empty space, mocking in its loneliness. You remember when he moved in, remember how it felt to test the boundaries of the apartment and wish you were free. The want is still there, to leave and never think of it again, never think of him. You know better, though. You could never escape the memory of him, the way he laughed and smiled and spoke. You could never abandon Mang. Not when he said he’d always come back to you. 

You turn back to the window, cursing the sunlight with every other breath. It fades, slowly, into the black of night, before returning again, and again, and again. Days pass, each one feeling like years. Hoseok doesn’t appear to show the apartment, no one comes to collect the small periwinkle pot between your palms, and the ghost of his laugh echoes around you. 

The sun blinds you again. You don’t even know how long it’s been, just that you’ve yet to move. Light glints off whatever hangs in the window across the alley. That's when you see it, a vague reflection in the weathered glass of a dimple and a grin, and warmth surrounds you.

“I told you I’d always come back, Casper.”

[lokilickedme]

Master Fic List ~ updated 7/13/20

Sorry for taking so long to do this...it was brought to my attention that it’s been almost a year since I updated this list and several people have requested it - so here you go, my fully updated and almost completed Master Fic List with links, synopsis, character rosters, pairings, ratings, word/chapter counts, warning tags with squick notices, and update dates.

All fics on this list are posted at AO3 unless noted

*The Loki Reads series is exclusively on tumblr.com

Everything is under the cut because this list is LONG (75 individual works, 13 series, plus published works included at the end of the list)

Fics are categorized by main character (i.e. Loki, Tom Hiddleston as Original Characters, etc)

Series and associated AU’s and side stories are grouped together (Chemical + Prehistories + Troika Apocalyptica + Penumbraluna + Wolfsbane…you get the idea)

Fics are identified as WIP (work in progress) or complete, with associated word counts and chapter amounts.  Latest update dates are noted for WIPs.

WARNINGS are notated, though the warning tags at AO3 should be paid attention to because they are far more complete and detailed.

Fic genres (romance, comedy, thriller) are briefly notated but these are general.

There is a link at the end of the list to my published books at Amazon, if you’re interested in those.

This list will be updated as fics update and incomplete information will be added as I have time.

Click READ MORE to see the complete list:

Exclusively on tumblr:

Part 1 - Loki Reads The Night Manager Part 2 - Loki Reads High Rise Part 3 - Loki Reads Fifty Shades of Grey

~WORKS AT AO3~

Word/chapter counts are current as of 7/13/2020

Loki

Jack Montague - WIP - 183,860 words, 65 chapters, ongoing - WARNINGS: hardcore sex, language, violence, sexual deviance, mentions of abuse, mentions of depression, explicit everything, blood/vampyric activities, numerous smutty kinks, and whatever else you can think of.  Not kidding, everything in this one is really hardcore.  Supernatural romance/adventure in the post-MCU/Post-2012 Avengers.  Main character - Loki.  Secondary character/love interest -  Jack Montague.  Relationship - Loki/Jack. Side characters - Adam (OLLA), Thor, Nick Fury, Eve (OLLA), Selina (Sanguine).  The Trickster God has been exiled to Earth for a very long time…as the oldest living monster in the realm, he’s bored off his skull and endlessly intrigued when he runs across a monster of an entirely different kind - and strikes up a playful romantic partnership with a vampire who may be far more than he bargained for.  *EXTREMELY EXPLICIT*  Updated 6/14/20

Sugar Skull - complete - 3115 words.  Side story to Jack Montague, part 3 of The Joker And The Thief.  Main character - Loki.  Side characters - Jack, Thor. WARNINGS: Language, sex.  What Loki does every year on Halloween.  *MATURE*   **also published in the Trickster Tales compendium

The Gucci Incident - complete - 4278 words.  Side story to Jack Montague, part 2 of The Joker And The Thief.  Main character - Loki.  Side characters - Adam.  WARNINGS:  Mostly language.  Loki and his vampire father-in-law Adam chase a pair of bedroom slippers across New York City.  *MATURE*

The Trickster’s Wife - complete - 71,001 words, 31 chapters.  Post Avengers, MCU.  Romance/epic adventure.  WARNINGS:  Very explicit sex, some language, some violence, very adult themes, mentions of abuse.  Main character - Loki.  Secondary character/love interest:  Princess Anja.  Relationship -  Loki/Anja.  Side characters - Thor, Odin, Frigga, Bragneire.  Asgard needs Loki, but Loki has a price - a wife he has no right to ask for.  So of course he does just that.  *MATURE, EXPLICIT*

The King of All The Rest - WIP - 1444 words, 1 chapter, ongoing (Part 2 of Myths of Asgard) - Sequel to The Trickster’s Wife.  Romance/comedy. Main characters - Loki, Bragneire, Anja.  Relationship -  Loki/Anja.  Loki has retired, left Asgard, left the throne, left everything save for one beautiful thing that he’ll never lose again…the wife he fought so hard to keep.  WARNINGS: Sex, language. *MATURE*

The King’s Heart - complete - 47,229 words, 21 chapters.  WARNINGS:  Explicit sex, sexual violence, abuse, language, mental illness, blood, grief, very adult themes.  Main character - Loki.  Secondary character/love interest - Lyra.  Side characters - Thor, Frigga, Aleks Lokisson, several offspring.  Post-Avengers UA.  Loki has been given the throne, but his apparent madness prevents him from opening his heart to his new queen. *VERY EXPLICIT*  **currently being reworked for publication

The Wolf King - complete - 44,315 words, 17 chapters.  WARNINGS:  Sexual activity, language, some violence, smutty talk from Loki, adult themes.  Fluffy adventure/romance.  Loki’s son Aleks has been handed the throne, but he doesn’t want it yet - not while there’s a universe to be conquered in “other” more satisfying ways.  But a mysterious pair of offworlders have a vested interest in the boy king fulfilling his prophecy the way his famous father did.  Main characters - Aleks, Loki.  Secondary characters/love interests - Cara, Lyra.  Side characters - Thor, The Syl, Sleipnir, Loki’s daughters, some surprise guests at the end. *MATURE*

Lost Creatures - complete - 4929 words.  Main characters - Loki, Thor.  WARNINGS:  Explicit sex, explicit language, violence, male/male.  Loki and Thor have always loved as much as they’ve hated…but which of the two emotions is the stronger?  *EXPLICIT*  **published in the Trickster Tales compendium, original version remains on AO3

Civil Disobedience - complete - 1066 words.  WARNINGS:  Spanking, nonconsensual. Main character - Loki.  Short vignette involving a Dominant Loki and his disobedient plaything.  *EXPLICIT*   **Rewritten for publication in the Trickster Tales compendium, original version remains on AO3

Mine - complete - 2051 words.  WARNINGS: Explicit sex, language, voyeurism, angst.  Main character - Loki. Side characters - Thor, the bride.  She was one thing over all others…she was mine. *EXPLICIT*   **published in the Trickster Tales compendium, original version remains on AO3

THE TEMPEST SERIES

Main character for all parts - Loki.  WARNINGS FOR ALL PARTS:  Hardcore sex, strong language, some violence, implied bestiality, very heavy smut.  All parts complete.  Dark romance/thriller.

Part 1 - Darkness Lives In Me - Loki’s fall from grace (1421 words) Part 2 - Before Chaos - Loki plots to take over Midgard (3120 words) Part 3 - After The Maelstrom -  Loki kills some time before the conquest (3088) Part 4 - Eye of The Storm -  Loki finds a way to…well… (2369 words) Part 5 - Her Side of The Storm -  Loki’s chosen conquest tells her side (2476) Part 6 - A Perfect Whirlwind -  Loki serves his time, misses his chosen (2928) Part 7 - Cyclone In A Teacup -  A conjugal visitation to Midgard (2654 words) Part 8 - An Intemperate Rain -  Loki comes bearing gifts (2132 words) Part 9 - Darkening Skies -  A trinket with…dubious powers (4304 words) Part 10 - The Nature Of Thunder -  Loki, kidnap, what could go wrong? (3325) Part 11 - Lightning Strikes -  Fury’s revenge, Loki’s redemption (3905 words)

*All parts of the above series:  EXTREMELY EXPLICIT including violent consensual sex*

No Regrets -  complete - 1634 words. WARNINGS:  Crazy explicit sex, language, absolutely no plot.  Smutty comedy.  Loki, dad’s throne, and a willing partner…just another Wednesday on Asgard. Main character - Loki.  Side characters - woman, Thor, Odin. *EXPLICIT* **published in the Trickster Tales compendium, original version remains on AO3

Whisper -  complete - 6440 words, 6 chapters.  WARNINGS:  Explicit sex, explicit language, threatened explicit violence.  Main character - Loki.  Side character - woman.  Romance.  Asgard has fallen while Loki is imprisoned far beneath the city, leaving him the sole survivor - and as the world slowly decays above him, he opens a path to escape through the dreams of a Midgardian female.  *EXPLICIT*

The Dragon Queen - complete - 37,503 words, 28 chapters. Main character - Loki.  Relationship - Loki/Eira.  Romance. WARNINGS: Very hardcore sex, violence, rape, abuse, language, torture.  Odin has given up trying to break Loki - until the day he sends his other prized prisoner into the Trickster’s cell.  *EXTREMELY EXPLICIT*  *WARNING - CONTAINS NONCONSENSUAL SEX SCENES*

The Good Stuff -  complete - 3513 words.  WARNINGS: Crude explicit language, some smutty sex and references and drunkenness.  Comedy.  Main characters - Loki and Thor.  Side characters - Frigga, Odin, castle servants.  Two bored brothers, one long night, and mom’s secret hooch stash - what could go wrong?  *MATURE*  **published in the Trickster Tales compendium, original version remains on AO3

Smooth Criminal - Part 1 of the Criminal Activity Series - complete - 4252 words.  WARNINGS: Explicit sex and dominance.  Avengers (2012) adjacent.  Where did Loki get that suit anyway?  *EXPLICIT*  **published in the Trickster Tales compendium, original version remains on AO3

Blue Collar Criminal - Part 2 of the Criminal Activity Series - incomplete - 1171 words.  Post-Avengers.  WARNINGS: None really, it hasn’t gotten far enough yet.  Sitting on the throne is dull as fuck.  Might as well hit Asgard again, only this time Loki only intends to conquer one human - the girl from the suit shop.  *WILL BE EXPLICIT IF I EVER FINISH IT*

Tom Hiddleston as Original Characters

The Department - WIP - 148,227 words, 37 chapters, ongoing. *UPDATED 7/10/20* Main characters - Greta (OFC), Chief (Tom Hiddleston).  Side characters - Andy (Andrew Hozier-Byrne), Cree (Jason Momoa), Cade (Chris Evans), Kevin (Dave Bautista), Hawk (David Tennant), Sarah (Sarah Lancashire), Ted (Sebastian Stan), Wilson (Owen Wilson).  Pairings:  Greta/Chief, Greta/Andy (FWB).  Comedy/romance.  WARNINGS:  Explicit sex, explicit crude language, sexist banter, minor violence.  Greta arrives in a small town in Minnesota to wait out her disciplinary review after an on the job accident and struggles to survive a crackpot stationhouse full of cops who may or may not be quite what they seem…while trying really hard not to fall in love with the Chief.  *EXPLICIT*  - updates weekly (Sundays) **now off hiatus!

Hammer Of The Gods - WIP - 29,935 words - 28/30 chapters, ongoing.  *UPDATED 4/18/20*  Main characters - Jake (Tom Hiddleston), Tate (OFC), Pete (Chris Hemsworth).  Pairing: Jake/Tate.  WARNINGS: hardcore language, explicit sex, mild/brief violence, referenced mental/emotional/verbal abuse.  AU Loki and Thor as human construction workers renovating a house next door to a recently divorced mom who really needs to learn how to live again.  *EXPLICIT*

Sunflower - WIP - 33,577 words - 13/15 chapters, ongoing.  Main characters - Tommy (Tom Hiddleston), Chloe (OFC/Dove Cameron).  Side characters - Amy (Sarah Wayne Callies), Martin (Idris Elba), Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) , Tony (Robert Downey Jr).  Pairing: Tommy/Chloe.  Sweet romance.  Don’t park in the disabled spot unless you’re ready to fall in love with the girl you stole it from.  WARNINGS:  Sex, mild language, injury description.  *MATURE*

THE MCCLARY CHRONICLES

Part 1 - Sgaile Leannan -  complete - 58,066 words, 20 chapters.  Main characters - King McClary (Tom Hiddleston), Molly Thompkin (OFC).  Romance.  Molly arrives in Scotland on a work assignment and meets her nemesis - the surly kilted sheep farmer who owns the land she’s trespassing on. WARNINGS:  Very explicit sex, explicit language, mild violence.  This story was rewritten for publication with changes - original version remains on AO3.  *EXPLICIT*

Part 2 - Samhach Mhiannan -  complete - 78,763 words, 25 chapters.  Molly returns home to Philadelphia with a little secret - and her world flips upside down when King shows up at her door months later.  SAME WARNINGS AS PART 1. This story was rewritten for publication with minor changes - original version remains on AO3.  *EXPLICIT*

Part 3 - Na Binne an Leann -  complete - 77,600 words, 25 chapters.  Molly moves to Scotland to be with King, but her future with the cranky sheepherder is, as always, shaky and uncertain.  SAME WARNINGS AS PARTS 1 AND 2. This story was rewritten for publication with minor changes - original version remains on AO3. *EXPLICIT*

A Meeting With The King - complete - 2507 words.  Side story to The McClary Chronicles. What really happened that day at Clendon Williams when King met Ian, told from King’s POV. WARNINGS: Some language, mild violence.  *MATURE*

Aingeal Ard - WIP - 16,297 words - 16/20 chapters, ongoing.  *UPDATED 10/14/19*   WARNINGS: rough language, explicit sex.  Main characters - King McClary (Tom Hiddleston), Molly Thompkin (OFC). A retelling of Sgaile Leannan from King’s POV, chapter by chapter.  *EXPLICIT*

Chemical and its Related Side Stories

Chemical - incomplete version, ended - 263,007 words, 58 chapters.  This story was rewritten and completed for publication in two volumes with major changes - the original version minus the final chapters and epilogue remain at AO3.   AU Loki/Tom Hiddleston as a bartender in San Diego who falls for the last girl he should ever look at - who just happens to be his soulmate.  Main characters - Tom Heyworth (Tom Hiddleston), Anja Black (OFC).  Side characters - Chris (Chris Hemsworth), Ewan (Ewan McGregor), Pop Heyworth, Cara, Kady, Robert Laing, Eric (Michael Fassbender).  Romance.  WARNINGS: Extremely hardcore sex of all kinds, language, mild violence, references to past sexual abuse and child abuse. *EXTREMELY EXPLICIT, NOT REMOTELY KIDDING*

THE CHEMICAL PREHISTORIES

All parts complete, all parts MATURE AND/OR EXPLICIT for sex, language, references to past abuse, mild drug use.  **This series of shorts have now been published as Volume Three of the Chemical books

SIR -  Characters:  Anja’s mother and her lover; young Anja Das Vorspiel -  Characters:  Alicia and The Boss Quiet Gods -  Narrator:  Eva.  Characters:  Eva, Tom, Chris Medialuna -  the original unused ending to Chemical Two Princes -  Narrator: Anja ADDITIONAL WARNING: character death The Mechanic -  Narrator:  Chris.  Characters:  Chris, Tom, Anja Eidolon - Narrator:  Emma.  Characters:  Emma, Tom, Anja ADDITIONAL WARNING: disturbing imagery, imagined character death, mental illness The Scottish Barman -  Narrator:  Ewan.  Characters:  Ewan, Tom, Anja Taos -  Narrator:  Alicia  ADDITIONAL WARNING: character death Girly -  Narrator:  Anja

Penumbraluna -  complete - 19,179 words, 10 chapters. Main characters - Tom and Chris (as teens).  Side character - Meredith Hemberley.  Coming of age.  WARNINGS:  Strong language, references to sexual abuse and child abuse, mild drug and alcohol use, male/male (brief), semi-explicit sex, character death.  Tom’s friendship with Chris, from the day they met as kids up to the point where Chemical begins.  *VERY MATURE THEMES*  **This novella has been published as part of Chemical Volume Three

See You After The Apocalypse - Part 1 of the Troika Apocalyptica series - complete - 5414 words.  Chemical AU, post-Chemical - Tom, Anja, Chris, Pop, Cara, and Tom & Anja’s two babies have all survived the zombie outbreak, hunkered down in the cabin in Big Bear.  But Tom sends Anja and the two little ones away with Chris when the mountain is overrun with the undead.  Will they find each other alive when it’s all over? WARNINGS: Suspense, mild violence.  *MATURE*

Meet Me In Phoenix - Part 2 of Troika Apocalyptica - incomplete - Characters: Tom, Anja, Pop, Chris, Cara.   Chemical AU in which Tom & company survive a zombie apocalypse, are separated, and embark on a cross country quest to find each other again.  WARNINGS: language and some sexual references.  *MATURE*

Wolfsbane -  complete - 1826 words.  Tom/Anja Chemical AU side story.  Assassins in love.  Tom and Anja are agents assigned to bump each other off, if they can stop seducing each other long enough to pull the trigger. WARNINGS:  Language, sex, mild violence.

Tales From Quarantine - ongoing, limited series of oneshots - 6171 words currently, 2 chapters.  Short stories featuring several of my fic couples in lockdown during the covid-19 crisis: Tom and Anja from Chemical, Jack and Loki from Jack Montague, Molly and King from The McClary Chronicles, Adam/Eve/Selina from Sanguine, Jake and Tate from Hammer of The Gods, Tommy and Chloe from Sunflower, Greta and Chief from The Department.  WARNINGS:  explicit sex and language

Tom Hiddleston as Himself:

Body Double - complete - 143,489 words, 40 chapters.  WARNINGS:  Explicit sex, language, references to past sexual and physical abuse, brief reference to miscarriage, heavy Dom/sub undertones.  Main character - Tom Hiddleston (as himself).  Secondary character/love interest - Anna (OFC).  Side characters - Chris Hemsworth, Ian. Pairing: Tom/Anna.  Romance.  An actor and a body double working on his film embark on a romantic relationship after the movie wraps.  *VERY EXPLICIT*

Other TH Original Characters:

Burn -  complete (will fill in this summary ASAP)

Would You Like To Play A Game? -  complete  (will fill in this summary ASAP)

Golden Boy - incomplete  (will fill in this summary ASAP)

Awakening -  complete - RPF -  (will fill in this summary ASAP)

Beautiful Disaster -  complete  (will fill in this summary ASAP) **this fic has been partly rewritten and published, the original version remains on AO3

Dandelion Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 - complete (will fill in summary ASAP)

Broken Petals - A Magnus Martinsson fic - incomplete

Yes Please, Magnus - Magnus Martinsson fic - complete

Weekly Meetings of The Most Useless Muses in The History of Fanfiction - incomplete - 23,802 words, 22 chapters.  Pretty much what it sounds like.  Characters - all of them.  WARNINGS: All of them.

Adam - Only Lovers Left Alive

Sanguine -  complete - 28,795 words, 16 chapters. Main character - Adam.  Secondary characters - Selina, Eve.  Romance/mystery.  WARNINGS:  Very explicit sex and violence, language, vampirism, blood, pregnancy, rape.  A redemption tale twisted up in an epic love story between a vampire and a mortal who break a few rules and make a few of their own in the process.  *EXPLICIT*

(Adam is also a prominent character in JACK MONTAGUE and THE GUCCI INCIDENT)

Thomas Oakley - Unrelated

Sleep -  complete - 1471 words.  WARNINGS: Sex and language.  Thomas Oakley is chosen for a college sleep studies program.  Too bad the only thing that puts him to sleep is an orgasm.  *MATURE*

Tom Hiddleston - Jaguar Promo

The Way of The Cat -  complete (summary will be filled in ASAP)

Andrew Hozier-Byrne

THE TALIESIN SERIES

Part 1 - Nobody -  complete - 3293 words.  Romance/fantasy.  WARNINGS: character death, raunchy language, implied sex, implied drug use.  A perpetually reincarnating Celtic deity (Andrew Hozier-Byrne) just won’t stop causing problems for the Pantheon, no matter how many times they reboot him and his lover.  Loosely based on the song.  *MATURE* 

Part 2 - Shrine Of Your Lies - WIP - 1011 words, 2/15 chapters, ongoing.  Romance/fantasy.  WARNINGS:  Explicit sex, some language, some implied violence.  Taliesin (Andrew Hozier-Byrne) and his lover have been reincarnated again, this time without any memory of who they are - or of each other.  Fate won’t let them wander for long though and their paths cross over two parallel lifetimes. *MATURE*  - this fic may not be updated on AO3 as I plan to change the background setting and include it in the upcoming WICKLOW HOUSE book of short stories

(Andrew Hozier-Byrne is also a prominent character in THE DEPARTMENT)

Can Yaman

Kiz Yan Kapi - The Girl Next Door - WIP - 5533 words, 3/10 chapters  (will fill in this summary ASAP)

Chris Hemworth

Thor’s Beard -  complete - 3163 words (Part 2 of Forgotten Gods, side story to Hammer Of The Gods).  WARNINGS:  Explicit sex, language.  Pete from HoTG hooks up with Jake’s older sister and a battery operated device.  *EXPLICIT*

See You After The Apocalypse - see above under The Chemical Prehistories

(CH is also a major character in Hammer Of The Gods and Chemical)

Allan Hawco/Frontier inspired

A Wife For Mister Brown -  complete  (will fill in this summary ASAP)

Et Tu, Mister Brown? -  complete (will fill in this summary ASAP)

~~PUBLISHED BOOKS~~

All of the following are available at amazon.com in both paperback and Kindle formats:

Sgaile Leannan - Rewritten from AO3 version with changes/additions.  Sex, language, adult situations.  *EXPLICIT*

Samhach Mhiannan - Rewritten from AO3 version with some changes/additions.  Sex, language, adult situations.  *EXPLICIT*

Na Binne an Leann - Rewritten from AO3 version with minor changes/additions.  Sex, language, adult situations.  *EXPLICIT*

Chemical Volume One - Rewritten from AO3 with major changes/additions.  Sex, language, adult situations, references to past child abuse.  *EXTREMELY EXPLICIT*

Chemical Volume Two - Rewritten from AO3 with major changes/additions (includes the final three chapters, ending, and epilogue that are not included in the AO3 version).  Sex, language, adult situations, references to past child abuse.  *EXTREMELY EXPLICIT*

Chemical Volume Three - The Prehistories and Penumbraluna - a compilation of the Chem shorts and the novella (some are partially rewritten)  *EXPLICIT and VERY ADULT THEMES*

Here And There - Book One of The Strada Series - not associated with any AO3 fics.  Sex, language, violence.  Paranormal romance.  A man falls out of the sky - literally - and Holly’s quiet existence goes all kinds of sideways when his otherworldly nemesis follows and the two of them end up in her bed…and inextricably in her life.  The Strada have been here longer than mankind, but their existence has been closed off to the “There” - a dimensional prison realm that separates them from the humans by a split second of time.  When the protective barrier between the dimensions begins weakening, the most dangerous creatures ever created start coming across to wage war against their own kind, using the world of the humans as a battlefield.  Two angelic criminals - Keene and his soulmate Baltho - have been conscripted to regain control...but do either of them want to?  And perhaps more importantly, can they stop fighting with each other long enough to do their one job?   *EXPLICIT SEX, violence*

The Carmichael Addendum - not associated with any AO3 fics.  Sex, language, violence.  Paranormal/supernatural romance.  Clarissa is one of a final few peacekeepers left in a world where the monsters have quietly retreated into myth - but the local library has started spitting immortals and werewolves out through a rift in the Genealogy section, and it’s time for the last two slayers - Clarissa and her ex-husband Kaine - to come out of retirement.  But orchestrating peace with the enemy is a difficult undertaking when you can’t even work out a visitation schedule with the ex and your self-help divorce group is peopled with oddly sexy males of dubious origin.  A heated love triangle with monsters on the side and a middle-aged single mom heroine who’s more than a few years past her prime.  *EXPLICIT SEX, violence, language, adult themes*

Trickster Tales - a compilation of  seven Loki fics that originally appeared on AO3 (most were rewritten to varying degrees for publication).  Includes Mine, The Good Stuff, Civil Disobedience, Smooth Criminal, Lost Souls, No Regrets, and Sugar Skull.  *EXPLICIT SEX and adult themes*

Beautiful Disaster - a short romance in three acts - *adult themes*

*All of the above are available in both paperback and Kindle format

Complete officially published works on my author page at Amazon

[wrestledwiththegods]

I see you do yandere requests and 💦 so what do you imagine the darker papas and Copia are like?

Okay. So. Without going too deep into it, in the time between me writing my original rules, and getting this ask- I had a long and meaningful conversation with a friend about yandere and how a lot of its hallmark traits resemble stereotypes of certain mental illnesses. How this has been harmful to those groups, the stigma, etc. Please know this is not me talking down about your ask or saying you cannot enjoy that content, but I've decided to not write that specific thing for my hcs.

That being said, I am still MORE than happy to write villainous or "darker" hcs that dont involve that specific "obsessive" yandere feel. If that makes sense.

Sorry I hope you still enjoy this!

Also note: most of these have multiple outcomes depending upon certain factors. Ill be tagging anything villain or "darker" as darkau so people can blacklist!

Papa Nihil is a mad king type of villain. It's his world, baby, and maximum hedonism is the goal. He may be older but that does not at all stop him from seeking pleasure even at the risk to his own health. Fucks everything that moves. Holds parties to an extravagant degree. Definitely the kind of bad guy to monologue about past exploits and deeds with the turn of his hand like they weren't horrible things to do. We all (read: other people who aren't him) have to make sacrifices for the church. When he first sees you, you seem like a fun new toy, so to speak. "Cute" is the first word to come to mind.

Likely he first tries to buy your affections. A wolfish smile on his face as he asks if you want a taste of the good life. You two could have some fun. Yet even if you say yes, he soon finds its not enough. Why? He asks himself with a frown. He tries harder, takes more of your time if you let him. You get pulled away from work to have meals with him. He actually asks personal questions about *you* that normally he wouldn't give a shit about in a plaything. But you're not just one of those silly siblings of sin he plays around with.

He hasn't felt this way in a very long time. Its the most serious he's felt in a long time. He still wants to fuck around and basically be his worst self, mind you. But he wants you to be at the top with him. You two can burn brightly together, taking in the best of what his awful actions have bought you. This is if you say yes. If you say no… he smiles. No hard feelings! You'll never be forced to do anything you don't want. It's like he turned off his personality at the drop of a hat. You'll still get gifts after that. Feel his eyes on you around the church. The parties get louder, his screwing around more apparent when you walk in a room. Still, you'll feel his focus on you and nothing else. Almost like he's anticipating for you to change your mind. He'll be waiting.

Papa I - Papa I has always been assumed to be the least threatening of the Emeritus family. He likes to garden, kept to himself after getting off stage. Much of his real "work" is private, you see. Whether it's preparing a poor lost lamb for a ritual after they had betrayed the church for some personal gain. Or slowly and intricately cutting into their skin sigils for the Morningstar. Hes even been known as the best if you need a torturer (although thankfully it is rarer in these days).

You probably take his notice when you express interest in one of his many poisonous plants- lily of the valley. Only if ingested, he tells you. But if you think those are beautiful, he has a lot more he can show you- his private collection.

Its shortly after that you find your duties reassigned to his office. Its out of nowhere, but definitely a step up. The way he phrases it to you is that he needs more help with the garden as one of his previous assistants needed a change of pace. And from what he's heard of you plus your interest, you seem perfect for the job! Really, he just craves to be beside you. Listen to you chatter as you both work the soil, see the sweat roll down your neck on hot days-

The difference between Papa I and everyone else on the list here is that he probably won't make a grand move or gesture. He pines. Hopes that you'll see his feelings and his darkness and love all of it. But deep down he knows how unlikely that is. That one day he'll show you the beauty of ritual hands on. See the blood glisten oh-so-beautifully on your skin. He still sighs happily thinking on it.

If you never express feelings for him, he basically devotes himself to making your life better, in his perspective. Changes your work schedule so its timed well for you to get a good night's rest. Looks out for things you might *need.* If there is anything you want to learn, he's more than happy to show you himself or help you get the resources you need. When it might get bad is when someone expresses interest in you, or you to someone. Ah… well. They're just not good enough for you. Not in his mind. He'll tell you rumors he's heard. Talk to them directly to get them to back off. He has an entire checklist in his mind that they have to meet. Pretty much no one will.

If someone does (its possible but unlikely), however, he feels his heart break. He still pines. And longs. But he lets you go to that person. After all, no matter what horrible things hes done, he wants you to be happy. His heartache is worth that.

Papa II- Papa II as a villain is actually a lot closer to the steteotypes and rumors about him normally- ruthless, cold, and seemingly doesn't care about others. He has this anger deep in his core that is never fully expressed. Truly, he is a sadist in that he usually enjoys the pain of others at his hands. Likes helping out on those rare occasions torture is a thing with Papa I in the lower underground sections of the church. Always seems like hes looking for someone to punish, and usually in a very unpleasant way. Yes, this has extended to death if he deems the "crime" severe enough. The sadism extends into the bedroom for harsh "games"- however he's not a monster when it comes to sexual partners. Still gives them aftercare, even if its a tad on the unfeeling side and more out of obligation.

It probably wasn't just one thing that put you in his sights. He noticed you one day probably doing something kind and kept running into you. He likes picturing your heart racing when you see him, like prey in the face of danger. Over time he starts developing a fondess that he can't quite deny. It's strange. Its been so long since he's genuinely felt this way about anyone, he doesn't know how to react at first. So he pulls out some stops. You get letters, at first, delivered by a ghoul. Later they come with expensive gifts he thinks you'll look good in or enjoy. You should wear it. It pleases him so much to see wear something he got you. Its sort of a subtle claim in his mind. He does expect replies delivered to a certain ghoul or place. Eventually the ghoul comes and there isn't a letter. You're being summoned.

He asks you straightforward to be his prime mover. He's honest in his intentions that he wants you exclusive only to him. He would give you the same if you asked. In fact, he would give you almost anything if you asked. At first this might all seem business but you might notice the slight flush in his cheeks, the unusual hesitation in his voice- little tells. Also the fact he's never asked anyone to be his prime mover, as far as you know. If you say yes, you find he's more gentle when its just the two of you. He has this warm smile in bed you'll catch. He kisses your forehead softly and its this aching tenderness. When others are around, no one would ever know.

If you say no, you are dismissed and he thanks you for your time. Its as if you don't exist to him after that. He just… walks past you like a ghost. Won't acknowledge you if you were to say anything, though I certainly wouldn't. Basically the walls he let down for a brief moment are back up and reinforced. It hurts to see you around, but hes stronger than that. There are things to do in the church. He'll take out these feelings on someone else.

Papa III- As a villain, Papa III is a siren. He's beautiful, says all the right things and pulls lost souls down to the depths with him. On a quick glance, he just seems like someone very devout to the principles of the church and/or hedonistic party guy. His favorite thing to do is lure new people to the church, have them do horrible things and then offer shelter from the other world who will no longer accept them. All with a cute wink or a few silver laced words. This applies to his relationships. He moves fast and likes whoever is interesting at the time- platonic, romantic, alliances. If he decides you're not fun anymore, you get a kick to the curb if the former. The latter usually just ends up to some horrible fate. He thrives on people wanting him so badly they would do anything.

Which is why you as a concept is frustrating. Likely he's already picked you up as someone to have around as a casual fuck or in his "entourage", so to speak. He doesn't fuck around when he wants someone. But you've lasted so long, held his interest. There's a shitty little mercurial part of him that keeps denying what should be obvious. Some days he thinks he'll get rid of you in the morning. Other days he thinks how he can't live without you. He probably has his epiphany when someone else suggests it might be time for you to go. His reaction is filled with anger and aggression. The person seemingly disappeared the next day.

Suddenly he'll be a lot more affectionate. Act like you're his partner in how he conducts himself instead of a follower. All his other sex partners are dumped but not replaced. He asks you be exclusive and practically fucks you to oblivion when you agree. He took after his father in the wolfish smile department. That's what you get from him if you start questioning any of this. Why wouldn't he? You're his favorite. He loves you. The truth of the matter is, even if you didn't love him back, as long as you don't betray him- it stays like this. He adores you and wants you at his side.

If you had answered no to any of it in the first place, he would have gone on without a thought. Oh well!

Papa Copia- Copia is pulling all the strings. He has been for quite a long time. That's why he's papa now, no? Everything and everyone is bent to his will, at least for now until they need another reminder. He's had others killed or just plain framed to get them out of his way. But through it all, the shy and incredibly awkward mannerisms he exaggerated to put peoples guards down, were the most real around you. In gatherings in the church he'd find himself staring, quiet and calculating. He'd slip into fancies about what it would be like to have you romantically. Something about you makes him feel… like an ordinary man. The vulnerability made his heart race and dangle over an imaginary precipice.

Once the new Papacy is official, he comes to you, privately. No, you're not in trouble, he smiles and gives a nervous laugh. He has a proposal. He wants you to be his prime mover. His jewel above all others. If you accept, you'll be treated like royalty in the church. Hanging on his arm at events where no one would dare to touch you or speak ill of you. Sometimes when you're alone he just likes to hold you. Out of all the terrible, rotten things on this earth, you're actually his. Once he realizes he can trust you, he tends to have more vulnerable moments. Things he's probably never told anyone. No matter how stained his hands, he will make sure you are never hurt.

However, you're free to tell him no- He'll be shocked, perhaps try to charm his way. If you still say no, he leaves to think on it. As much as it pains him, if he cannot have you, he would rather not see you at all. He's not going to kill you or hurt you though, no- you might think so for a moment when you're pulled into his office with Imperator behind him. Instead he tells you with some regret that you are to be transferred to another church. He'll miss you, as will the members of the main church of course. But you're needed elsewhere. That's it. As if it was just routine. The next week you leave and he watches you from a window, something in his chest aching. You are his soft spot. And he can't risk having that exposed if he can't have you.

[paintedrecs]

Since you've semi-recently gotten into "Gargoyles," do you have some fanfic recommendations for it? (And yes, you can include your own fics if you want. We don't mind.)

Hahaha honestly I don’t have a lot of other recommendations - when I was close to finishing the show, I got impatient and checked the David Xanatos/Owen Burnett tag on AO3, which <em>literally had six fics in it</em>. I was surprised and disappointed, and I spent a few days idly writing a fic in my own head. Since there was nothing out there for me, I had to create my own content.

At one point, I told @mad-madam-m​, “I'm talking myself out of writing a Gargoyles fic that 1 person (me) would read.” She replied, “Why would you talk yourself out of that.” I said, “.....huh, fair point I guess.” A few days later, I’d posted an 11k fic.

The funny part is that M, who had not seen the show at that point, has now written 10 Gargoyles fics (going on a 30k+ 11th) to my 4. So really, she played herself.

I’ve poked around in a few other Gargoyles fics - basically scrolled through the whole tag and checked for anything that sounded like it had sufficient Owen in it - but I’m...kinda picky about my pairings, and I’ve gotten weirdly attached to the rarest possible dynamic in this fandom. (Polyamorous Xanatos, married to Fox and dating Owen, but without any romantic/sexual OT3 trio action.) 

And I’m also very picky about how people write Owen, because there’s this odd tendency to separate Owen Burnett from Puck, treating them as different people/personalities. Owen IS Puck. Puck is Owen. Just because his face and name changes doesn’t mean he does. 

I wrote nearly 37,000 words to try to properly convey my love for this incredibly complicated, fascinating character. (Each subsequent fic was because I felt like I didn’t quite do enough in the last one. I still have a few more in me, if I can ever get around to writing them.)

So...my recommendations...really are just my fics and M’s. Sorry!! It’s sad for me, too. :(

Here they are, though, if anyone’s interested. 

My Fics

Then Fate O’errules (30k)

This two-part series has my original Owen POV fic (11k), and an 18k Xanatos POV follow up, since M wanted to know what Xanatos was thinking during all of their relationship drama. (These fics are, incidentally, the first time I ever used the E rating. Gargoyles is an oddly inspiring show.)

I’ve left this as a complete series, since it covers everything I wanted it to, and I consider it a full story.

However...I’ve been dipping back in with timestamp-style fics, so everything I’ve written for this pairing all fits within the same universe: canon-compliant, with the very slight and (I think) fully believable addition of Xanatos being romantically/sexually involved with Owen.

But a Dream (5k)

Technically this has an unhappy ending (unusual for me), but it fits between chapters of my longer series, so it’s just a glimpse of a tougher point in their relationship, when Owen was stubbornly breaking his own heart and Xanatos was massively failing at communication. I honestly really like what I did with the snapshots of their dynamic here, regardless of the angst.

Spirits of Another Sort (2k)

Another quick timestamp between episodes, because I couldn’t stop thinking about Xanatos putting so much effort into trapping a trickster, when he already had a far more powerful one at home. I also have a LOT of emotions about how incredibly desperate Puck is to stay with Xanatos, as Owen. I love exploring their love, as messy and complicated and painful as it is.

[Pending fics: Another short timestamp, from earlier in their relationship, set in the dojo. An outsider perspective on this unusual Xanatos family dynamic from David’s dad, Petros. And, if I ever manage to go back to it, a fairy tale AU that I fully outlined months ago.]

Mikkimouse’s Fics

To my incredibly great fortune, M ended up liking the Xanatos/Owen dynamic as much as I did, so she’s written a few lovely fics for this pairing, now bringing the grand total in the AO3 tag to fourteen.

The Course of True Love Never Did Run Smooth (2k)

M and I had a conversation some time ago about A Midsummer Night’s Dream, because how can you talk about Puck (and Oberon, the douchebag) without bringing up that play. M then produced this very wonderful snapshot from later on in the Xanatos/Owen relationship, when they go to a play together and run into unexpected emotions. It’s very tender and true to them. I love this one a lot.

Important Questions (592 words)

Xanatos gets drunk. Owen is indulgent.

Explanations (195 words)

A very short, very sweet glimpse of the Xanatos family. I love seeing Owen’s softer side, especially with young Alexander.

Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be (5k)

While all my fics are tightly focused on the Xanatos family - primarily Xanatos/Owen, with Xanatos/Fox and Alex in the mix - M has really run with the wider Gargoyles world. She’s particularly great at writing Elisa, who’s one of my favorite characters in the show (which might not be visible from my fics, since uh...Owen doesn’t particularly like her, and I’m largely writing from his perspective).

M has a fantastic grasp on Elisa, though, and has fully sold me on the idea of Elisa and Xanatos eventually becoming really solid friends. This fic has achingly great Xanatos/Owen pining, but it’s mostly about Elisa (sniping at Xanatos but grudgingly getting along with him because he’s frustratingly brilliant and ridiculously charming), and it’s A+.

New Friends and Stranger Companies (3k)

Another stop along the “how the effff do Elisa and Xanatos become best friends??” journey, with Xanatos showing up at Elisa’s apartment after the events of The Gathering. There’s some Owen/Xanatos and Fox/Xanatos, but it’s mostly about Elisa & Xanatos starting to see (to Elisa’s dismay) how much they have in common. There aren’t many people in the world who know what it’s like to be a human hopelessly in love with a very powerful...non-human.

It’s messy and complicated and Elisa begins to really get a sense of the kind of guy Xanatos truly is, beyond his immense wealth and evil plots and fondness for messing with her easy-to-mess-with roar-happy winged boyfriend.

Concerns (200 words)

Some episode timestamps, because this really is the kind of show that inspires you to fill in the gaps. First, a brief exchange between Xanatos and Owen after they’ve discovered Goliath and Elisa (their two biggest harassers and meddlers) are off on some Avalon World Tour, leaving them free to do whatever they want.

That Shrewd and Knavish Sprite (2k)

And an exchange between Hudson and Owen during The Price, when Owen got his stone hand and Hudson turned out to be a lot more perceptive and difficult than the extremely easy to predict Goliath. Also an introduction to another unexpected friendship I’m super on board with: Owen needs friends, and Hudson makes weirdly perfect sense. (They’re definitely not there yet in this fic, but I’m hoping for a sequel.)

Gargoyles Three Sentence Fics (575 words)

Some of M’s early explorations of Elisa and Alex, whom she wrote wonderfully even before watching the show.

Ill Met By Moonlight (5k)

An Elisa & Xanatos friendship? Weird, but it works. An Elisa & Owen friendship? ...Not really going to happen.

One of the things I really like about this show is that it has all these different layers of relationships. Xanatos can be deeply in love with both Fox and Owen, but that doesn’t mean that Fox and Owen are going to feel that way about each other. They get along and definitely grow closer over the years, especially with all three of them being Alex’s parents, but they’re different kinds of people who live different lives and who both happen to have fallen in love with the same man.

Similarly, Elisa and Xanatos becoming best friends doesn’t mean that Owen and Elisa will ever be close. You don’t have to like all your friends’ friends - being an adult means recognizing and knowing how to navigate those complexities.

So here we have Elisa waking up tied to her least favorite person in the world, a sentiment that Owen has no interest in refuting. But they can still work together, and Elisa can still feel and express concern for Owen when she realizes he’s not quite as put together as he always appears.

(Also really great action writing. M is fantastic at that.)

Gentles, Do Not Reprehend (1.2k)

Along with Elisa, M has really made Alex her own. She’s working on a 30k plus Alex-centric story that I am super excited about, and this is an initial window into some of how that will look. I lovelove the unusual and wonderful Xanatos Family structure, and M does such a great job of building it out in funny, emotional, believable ways.

[clarenecessities]

so shit’s fucked

here is a timeline

09/03/2019.

two people in a 70 person server discuss the SU movie in the general chat channel, using spoiler tags because it had just recently been released. this lasts five posts.

09/07/2019.

alyson comes into the general chat channel and says man, isn’t it a bummer that SU is n*zi apologia and racist and actively harmful?

Donnie says yes, it’s harmful, but drop the n*zi comment because RS is jewish (alyson does not, then or the other two times donnie asks, despite donnie being jewish himself). He later says he doesn’t care about SU at all

Synth says it’s understandable that people would drop the show because of poor handling or the racism issues, but agrees that n*zi is too far when there’s genuine propaganda out there

Beta says yes, the writers could have handled things better, but reducing the message of the show to “n*zi good” is a deliberate misinterpretation

A fourth person comes in briefly to say they also don’t care about SU and that this should probably be in the discourse channel.

About halfway through the conversation, after his second request to stop calling SU apologia was met with a sourceless insistence that other jewish people criticized it (though alyson did not specify whether they used the term n*zi apologia), Donnie told her she was taking this very personally, which Alyson met with “Am I? I said a thing, said it was unpopular, and left it. and then got swarmed?”

At this point she held ~46% of the conversation.

She then abruptly left, saying, “like. Hooooboy, there's so much assuming and passion and defensiveness going on here, so I guess I'll leave since I've seen this all before and know for a fact that no one is going to let it rest.“

She held 41% of the final conversation. Everyone who weighed in was either explicitly open to criticizing SU or completely indifferent, and were simply asking her not to refer to the work of a Jewish nb woman as n*zi apologia.

09/10/2019

Alyson writes a post. The introduction is more or less “if you uncritically like SU, unfollow me” and goes on to say she underestimated how few people in the neopets fandom recognize its harmfulness. She says she’d been thinking about leaving the Neolodge discord for a while, but her mind was made up on the 3rd when she saw "a lot of hype and support" (5 posts), four full days before she posted in the general chat. She says she "was swarmed by questions asked by people who didn't want to hear [her] answers." (there were two questions asked of her: “did you just kind of want to get mad at us for enjoying steven universe?” and “were you venting?")

She says that SU is her “litmus test” of sorts, implying--possibly by accident--that she was then testing the Neolodge by dangling some SU-discoursey bait. 

The post was tagged #the problem isn’t liking a thing and #it's denying anyone from not-liking it for very valid reasons

Except the problem was demonstrated to be specifically that she was asked not to use a particular term to describe that not-like

7 months later, 4/16/2019

There is a Neolodge board on our own neopets.gov. Alyson shows up and is polite & sociable until more people that she recognizes filter in. She neomails hollis to broach the subject of what had happened in september, saying “from what i remember it was mostly synth who was very reactionary and aggressively posting at me because i criticised steven universe“ which, if you’ll review the logs, is both not about synth, who only posted twice (probably an honest mistake), but also grossly mischaracterizes the nature of the incident. Over the next day or so she and Hollis discuss the nature of the lodge and what transpired in September. Hollis emphasizes that the Neolodge has never been a place for bigots or their sympathizers, and Alyson goes radio silent.

4/24/2019

Alyson writes a new post. It tells a different narrative than we see play out in the logs. Her summary of events is as follows:

So, when wondering on the chat if anyone else was critical of the franchise, instead the chat suddenly sped up and i was swarmed by a bunch of anti-criticism fans who almost immediately -instead of reading my beginning attempts to elaborate on where i was coming from- posted over and over again that rebecca sugar is a marginalized voice and as such, immune to criticism, and how dare I insinuate a jewish woman of writing nazi apologia.

To reiterate, she began a discussion. Every person who responded was either openly critical of SU or indifferent. They were not suggesting RS is immune to criticism because she’s marginalized; they were in fact largely agreeing with the criticisms that Alyson raised, but asking her to be more conscious of the impact her choice of terms could have (and in fact was having).

I (a neurodivergent, mentally ill, pansexual aromantic woman, aka also a marginalized voice) was talked over and treated as if i ate babies. Obviously, I left the neolodge discord after that.

Again, she held 41% of the conversation--and by her own admission had already been planning to leave the Neolodge, and had thrown down this final ‘litmus test’ despite not wanting to engage with the results.

Now, obviously marginalization isn’t a contest. There’s no “I have more problems” or “I have worse problems” that will ever get us anywhere constructive. As I said in my own reply to her post, this was not a matter of RS being untouchable because she’s marginalized, but of Alyson’s behavior when asked not to draw the comparison between RS’s work and literal N*zi apologia.

Hollis refused to read and think about what i had said and the information i linked to, despite apparently going back in the discord chat and viewing the whole mess, where i had also laid out information to back up my observations.  Instead, my voice talked over, my words and concerns discarded, I was treated as if I had committed some heinous act, and if i had changed as a person then maybe they might let me back in to the neolodge.

Now being privy to the entire conversation, I can assure anyone reading this that Hollis read & thought about everything Alyson said very seriously. We had an in-depth and nuanced discussion, and ultimately realized that this was not simply a matter of whether or not SU is a poorly handled cartoon or full-on apologia. It was a matter of Alyson’s unwillingness to engage in a discussion she herself began, her repeated refusals to respect the comfort and wishes of our Jewish members, and her later misconstruals of the conversation as a ‘bombardment’.

Alyson insists she did not call RS a n*zi, and that critiquing the show is not equivalent to doing so, but unfortunately ended that thought with this:

Words mean things: look up apologia.

Now, I’ve already pointed this out, but apologia means “a formal written defense of one’s opinions or conduct.” Thus, every time Alyson has insisted SU is actual, literal N*zi apologia, she means that a Jewish nonbinary woman conceived of and executed an explicit defense of fascism, n*zis, the H*locaust, regardless of how involved she was or wasn’t in the production of the show itself.

Personally, I choose to believe that Alyson herself is unaware of the definition, and instead meant that SU makes excuses for fascism, or alludes to n*zis, or much gentler (if still harmful) language. I choose to believe that she’s conflating it with an apology, and simply didn’t follow her own advice.

The Neolodge is home to actual children/minors/underage people and most of the people in the incident were younger than 21. That is children.  I was getting annoyed at young non-adults. 

This is blatantly false. The Neolodge has always been a minor-free space, and there’s been discussion of upping the minimum age to 20. That Alyson herself is 30 may have skewed her perception, but as you can see in our response to this angry anon, we have always been concerned with the protection of minors & the promotion of a safe, comfortable atmosphere.

Alyson goes on to say that she had liked & trusted Hollis, and this came with no prior warning--presumably because Hollis had been polite and even friendly when she came to our board, and they hadn’t interacted much over the previous months since her exit from the discord.

So if you’re like me, and don’t put up with bullshit, and refuse to lie down and let bigotry get further footholds into western culture and be lauded for it, consider staying away from the neolodge and users like hollis and synthaphone

I still don’t quite understand how we got here, tbh. People standing up against a stark refusal to respect someone’s comfort as a Jewish person has somehow been skewed to mean they’re the bigots, and “western culture” is in danger, specifically from this gay nb & their nefarious lesbian pal, who spoke the least of anyone in the conversation.

I can’t speak to what’s going through her head right now. I don’t even know if she read the replies enough to know she was spreading misinformation about the Lodge’s age restrictions, let alone her (hopefully accidentally) drawing an obliquely antisemetic portrait of RS. I’m not even mad at her at the moment so much as confused. I genuinely don’t understand her rationale or what she thinks would motivate us to do the things she says we’ve done. I don’t think she’s a bad person, or even that her actions would be unfair if the situation were what she’s purported it to be.

But the fact of the matter is, it isn’t. She tried to start a fight seven months ago and has been hanging onto it since, convinced that she was in the right, never considering the express opinions of the people she claimed were so passionate about the show she so loathes. She’s attempting to drag Hollis’s name through the mud because they were kind enough to give her a chance to explain her side of things & she squandered it by instead parroting the talking points of the video we had all watched back in September, when she originally posted it.

She’s throwing Synth in for good measure, because they’re the only person she could be bothered to identify.

It’s not a true account of events, she made no effort to have a good-faith conversation at any point (particularly about her own behavior), and frankly it’s unfair. It’s easy to dump snippets of DMs and announce that you’re blocking anyone who disagrees with you, sure--it can even be good for you. But in this case it’s more of what we saw all those months ago in the discord, when she tried to stir the pot and left after scarcely 30 posts had gone by; it’s cowardice. It’s a way to frame the narrative in such a way that she can maintain her illusion of moral superiority, secure in the knowledge that everyone who has criticized her or her behavior is a bigot and and writes n*zi "apologia” apologia.

She’s isolating herself from the community one group at a time, and I still don’t know why, because she won’t talk to me about it. She won’t talk to any of us about anything that isn’t SU, and I don’t care about SU. I care about her & her motivations, and I’m starting to accept I’m never going to truly know either.

[drkcnry67]

ttile: my alpha, my omega

pairing: John x Reader

fluff 2020 sq: age gap

kink 2020 sq: daddy kink

Abo 2019 sq: older alpha/younger omega

rating: 18+

tags: WARNING: THIS IS NOT FOR MINORS!!!! THIS WILL GIVE YOU NIGHTMARES!!! DO NOT PROCEED AT ALL!!!!! I REPEAT NOT FOR ANYONE UNDER THE AGE OF 18… TURN BACK AROUND DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200, DO NOT HIT THAT KEEP READING THING… DO NOT PROCEED… THIS STORY CONTAINS VAGINAL PENETRATION, ORAL FEMALE RECEIVING, HARDCORE SEXUAL CONTENT, FEMALE HEAT, MALE RUT, ALPHA CLAIMING OMEGA, FIRST TIME SHOWER SEX, ALPHA KNOTTING OMEGA… YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!!

summery: not telling

word count (optional)

kink 2020 masterlist  fluff 2020 masterlist   ABO 2019 Masterlist

Many centuries ago, in a land now known to the world as Russia.. lives a legend where monsters of myth and story roam… to the west side we travel for our story today where we meet YN a young omega who is unaware yet of her full potential…

YN a young single omega who lives with her aunt who has always let her be her own person… but this her 21st birthday was when she now had to go and find her Alpha… she was now on a journey that sooner rather than later would cross her path…

John a handsome rugged alpha whose passion in the 4th week after his 35th birthday would soon lead him to a city called Bucharest to seek out his omega who would be on a journey of her own to find her alpha…

~today~

you were walking through the streets it was another day, another day of go to various places and check on the small businesses you were involved in… your own aunt had refered you into some small business transactions that you were now in charge of…

walking through the center of town, your nose caught a strong scent, you began to follow it… you were not paying attention as always you were listening to everything around you… 

 As you grew so did your abilities, your strength, your speed, your smell, your hearing, your sight… but you sure as hell did not see this one coming… for just a few feet away from you was someone new to town, someone who neither of you knew at the time would soon both parties would be very very very INTIMATE with one another. 

You were close to the fountain in the center of town, john who was not paying attention either was sitting on the edge of the fountain watching and listening to the bustle of the city… You were the one who was stupid enough to not be able to sense this one… 

for you tripped over a stone and fell knocking both you and John into the fountain… this was how you both met… not the greatest way to meet someone but certainly a unique way of doing things… 

john was first to come up for air… he noticed you struggling so he reached out and grabbed you by the hand and pulled you out of the water… some people who worked at the business your family had you in charge of had witnessed the entire thing, they came over with blankets awaiting orders or at least one of them was…

the other was your cousin, Castiel… your cousin was standing there laughing, this earned a low growl from John as he helped wrap you in the blanket… then he wrapped himself in one… 

John: “are you alright?”

YN: “ill be fine, but i should be asking you that… its my fault your all wet in the first place… i should have…”

you stopped speaking when your nose picked up the scent that now sat beside you… this man, this man was an alpha, your alpha… 

John however was having a similar reaction, this was the start the start of something beautiful… 

Castiel and his collegue come up to you as your cousin begins being a 1st class dumbass… 

Castiel: “oh cuz you tumbled cause you werent paying attention, what a clutz… how the hell are you still alive with you being so clumbsy?”

you had to show some restraint… you had to try and assert some authority…

YN: “you there shadowing my cousin, is the nearby apartment owned by the family still open…?”

collegue 1: “yes ma’am would you like it stalked with food and clothes for you and your friend here?”

YN: “yes and get my cousin a mouth muzzle he needs to learn when to speak and when not to speak…” 

 You hissed that last word.. this made john realize how badly he wanted you right then right there.. he could feel the feistiness coming off of you.. this sent him straight into a rut… 

 You however were already entering heat, you could feel johns hands round your own and the fact that you kinda knocked him into the fountain wasnt much better… both of you were not mad about the incident… But you now had started shivering, John gently picked you up into his arms you began to lead the way… 

the apartment nearby was prepped and ready when you and John arrived… John set you down on your feet…

John: “leave us we will let you know if we need anything…”

the poor collegue left in a haste… John went to lock the door as he took off his wet jacket and hung it by the door… you stripped off your sweater and tossed it on the heater… 

John: “cute place… i dont suppose you are a single omega, are you?”

you nod as you kinda do a hair shake but shiver in the process… 

John: “you should shower to warm up… go on i might join you in a few moments… just gonna see if there are towels…”

you nod not caring… you slunk to the bathroom and start the shower before stripping off your wet clothes… you get into the shower and the hot water starts to warm you up as you just stand there not caring that John might join you, not caring that it was the middle of the day..

John outside the bathroom was taking off his wet clothing and making sure his head was clear and that he was fully mentally composed before heading into the bathroom where he knew you were behind the curtain…

you knew he was just outside the curtain, so you turned around and smiled quietly to yourself… John came into the shower and stood behind you… eyeing you up and down he felt something come over him… his senses going haywire… 

John: “fear not i wont hurt you sweet omega… why dont you let go of all the embarrassment from earlier and let loose with me?”

YN: “but dont you have to claim me before we “let loose” as you so put it…”

John: “are you okay if i claim you right here right now? i know you feel the same way about me as i do about you…”

YN: “claim me John i do feel the same way.. and i have a bad heat right now ive had it since before i knocked us into the fountain… help me daddy…”

John at that moment placed an arm around your waist, you placed your arm on interlocking fingers, his teeth changed into fangs he let off a low growl before spinning around so he was under the water as he sunk his fangs deep into your shoulder…

the feeling of being claimed made a loud shrill of moaning sound escape your lips... Blood flowed from the wound down between you and John just the feeling that you had been claimed was amazing... 

Then John released the bite, he spun you around and lifted you up placing you on his massive cock... He trusted hard into your virginity... He was getting as much pleasure from this as you were... The release came in waves, fast never slowing waves... 

John had you against the wall as he thrust into you again, his cock already rock hard again... your pussy throbbing for more, your moans turning soft to loud in seconds... the kissing was constant... the thrusts grew more and more frequent with each passing moment... 

with now being claimed every single rut and heat that you both had been feeling in the last week came on and on and on... escaping the shower after your recent release before it hit again you both got out of the shower and dried off...

John: “im gonna fuck you into the middle of next week...”

YN: “but the age gap the pack...”

John: “do we really care about that?”

YN: “no daddy of course not...”

John: “by the way keep calling me daddy and ill give you my knot alot sooner than we may plan to...”

YN: “yes daddy...”

John threw you onto the bed and climbed on top of you kissing you he was hard again, you felt him slide into you a moan released from your lips. the feeling of being fucked by your alpha had your mind going ten thousand miles a minute... 

Johns mind was dragging him through the dirt... both of you would have to face the pack leaders sooner or later... yea there are alphas but there is a council that guards every single decision made within each pack... 

one of those leaders happened to be your uncle... that leader had spies everywhere... he knew what was happening in that apartment right then... he was planning his attack... 

several hours later you and John were laying there waiting for John’s knot to take effect... covered by the thinnest sheet on the bed you were just happy to be in the arms of someone who cares deeply for you...

John: “when the knot finishes being released, we need to connect with our packs and face the trials of their thoughts on us...”

You knew he was right but you snuggled in closer, his beard tickling the back of your neck... thats when you both heard it the footsteps and running outside the door... 

John: “alright baby girl stay calm just move with me we cant let the knot escape your body...”

the door flung wide open John was pounding you into the bed as your uncle and his men walked inside...

Nazam: “excuse me what the hell is going on?”

YN: “be with you in a moment uncle...”

you and John finished and then snuggled back into a spoon this time with a thicker blanket over the naughty bits...

YN: “uncle, what an unplesent surprise what brings you and your lackys here?”

nazam: “dont play dumb with me... i can smell the blood, this man claimed you didnt he?”

John spoke at that moment keeping his arm around your waist...

John: “yes i did, my name is John winchester im the alpha for the north eastern pack... i came this way to find my omega... and i found her in the form of your niece... now like my omega here asked, What brings you here?”

Nazam: “well well well, let me see here ah yes im here to invite you both to the trials of rites tonight... there is still 8 hours for you both to prepare... now dont you dare take it lightly and if you think about skipping town we will deny the trial of rites by which instead you both will be exiled hunted and killed... that is all...”

YN: “leave this apartment uncle... we know our rights and legally im claimed by John he and i cant be seperated... and if need be i will fight you uncle...”

Nazam stands tall and eyes you with John...

Nazam: “i suppose you will stand by her side...”

John: “yes and i intend to marry your niece with or without the blessing of the packs... this is the life we both want and its together forever... i hope this knot that im releasing into your niece gets her pregnant the council’s laws prevent execution or seperation of the couple upon findout of pregnancy... now leave good day sir...”

nazam leaves his henchmen follow, your cousin’s friends come in and fix the door... you and John are left alone once more with eachother and your thoughts... 

John: “were you serious about fighting your uncle?”

YN: “were you serious about marrying me?”

John: “i guess we both have plans and together we shall conquer it all... now lets rest a bit before tonight so we both have strength to deal with what is to come...”

You smile as John still having you on his cock so his knot can finish flips you around so you both facing eachother as you both begin to nod off..

John: “yo lacky thats outside the door...”

Collegue 1: “yes sir...”

John: “wake us up in 7 hours we are going for a snooze..”

Collegue 1: “as you wish sir...”

the lacky left you felt John holding you close to his strong form as you drifted off into a sleep full of happy thoughts... John fell asleep shortly after you did... both of you dreaming of a life where no threats stood in the way of your better lives...

~thats all for now~

[divagonzo]

Quarantine (Romione, One-shot)

Ao3 // FF.net (will post them there tomorrow but Tumblr gets the first crack tonight)

A/N: I’d intended to have this posted last week but RL got in the way and so much fell onto my plate as “back-up daughter” to friends who are out of state for their elderly parents. What little time I had was claimed by so many other things too. I know there is a Princess somewhere mad that RL interfered in my life once again. One of these years my life will be only dramatic in the stories I write. Alas.

Rated M (so much smutty goodness in this one!) for Lemons, Limes, Citrus galore. Not Ace Safe in the least (This means you @headcanonsandmore​)

TW: Mentions of current British events involving a towheaded cockwomble and his deputy. Tagging @hillnerd​ and @abradystrix​ just ‘cause.

Give me my demarcation line darn it!

“I swear to Merlin that I am going to strangle that sod,” Hermione growled before putting the two-way mirror down in her office. “That cockwomble!”

“Love?” Ron poked his head in, wondering what got Hermione into a bit of lather this morning from her noon call with the Muggle PM.

Hermione took off her reading glasses and rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes, wondering how much more cocked up the world was going to be in the interim.

“What’s happened, dear?” Ron stood at the doorway, wondering too what was going on. “I heard you cursing. Did you speak with that tosser of a PM?”

“I did,” She hissed. “Do you remember that boring ministry dinner we attended last weekend? The one where I was seated across from the PM and his partner, talking boring politics while you tried to keep from complaining about the rubbish chicken they served for the main course?”

“Of course. Who could forget that Merlin awful chicken that even you could cook a better one than what was presented to us? Who did they get to cater it, Malfoy?”

“You’d think, right? Anyway, it seems the PM has gone and contracted some virus, one that appears to be worse than the flu for some people. Unfortunately, now, since we were within close contact with the bastard,” 

“Please don’t tell me.”

“We’re quarantined for a fortnight because that sod insisted on shaking everyone’s hand when they arrived, including yours.”

“Shite.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought too. At least the kids were off at school.”

“That – “ Hermione tuned out for Ron’s caustic rant about the current PM who seemed to have less brains than Flint seems to possess. “I can’t believe he did that.”

“So we have to be home, inside, for 2 weeks. We can’t even go out shopping for groceries, you to work, anything.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“I know. Fortunately, we’ve not been to see your parents since we met with the PM.”

“And your parents?”

“I’ve only talked with them on the phone. I’ve not been by there in 2 weeks.”

“Harry & Ginny. I mean she is at home with a toddler and Harry’s been working on a case for weeks now with his group. I had a meeting with him last week to discuss training for the new class coming in.”

“Then we need to tell him and others and let them decide.”

“Bugger. How bad is this virus?”

“From what he said, most people get a little sick but it’s not a big deal. The problem is that for one in five, it’s serious enough for a visit to the A&E. From what he said also, there’s about 1 in 20 that need critical care.” Hermione sat back in her leather office chair, sighing. “I need to contact St. Mungo’s and let them know to prepare for this. I think I also need to share this with the Wizarding population, too, so they can take care of themselves too.”

“That bad?”

“You know how I talk about history entirely too much?”

Ron grinned, thinking about how often Hermione would pick up a tome for a bit of light reading. “Of course I do. Last year you were reading something on the Dark Ages. Seemed quite bad.”

“Oh, it was. It was how a plague back in the 14th century and how it decimated the European population.”

“Sounds grim.”

“It was. There are articles by historians that the plague killed between 25 and 50 per cent of the population of Europe. Only a few places were reasonably immune to it.”

Ron frowned. “Please tell me it won’t be that bad for us.”

“It won’t. We have better medicines and potions to take now unlike back then. We have a level of hygiene now that makes the transmission less likely.”

Ron said, “You mean how we take a bath or a shower daily?”

“That and always washing hands when coming out of the loo.”

“Who wouldn’t? That’s gross.”

Hermione grimaced. “You know there are plenty of men who don’t wash their hands.”

“True and they’re disgusting.”

“Anyway, we’re going to be home awhile.”

“We’ll need some groceries to tide us over.”

“I’ll firecall Neville and let him know to keep the kids at Hogwarts until this passes for us.”

“Good idea. Looks like we’re going to break out that industrial-sized Mirror you got for me when I was laid up on bed rest with the kids.”

“I’ll go get it and put it up in here for you.” Ron stopped. “So if you’re infected, then I am too, right?”

Hermione smiled, thinking of a delightful Sunday lie-in they had last weekend. “Yes, you would be.”

“Well since I’m on the same broom you are, it’s not like you have to sleep on the couch or anything.”

“No, neither of us has to sleep on the couch.” Hermione stood up from her leather office chair and went to the doorway, pushing her husband gently into the doorframe. With a glance, she ran her fingers through the fringe and his hair, appreciating the softness of the hair on his head. “And no illness will keep me from doing this,” She stood on her tiptoes to gently kiss him. 

Ron reached for her hips and pulled her body flush to his own. “Keep that up and we won’t get any work done this afternoon.” 

Hermione kissed him on the nose before pulling his head forward, resting her forehead on his. “And once again, you’re right. I did say I needed to do a couple of things before this evening.” She sighed. “But I would enjoy dessert tonight.” Her smile turned wicked. “I think we would both appreciate some quality stress relief.”

Ron pulled her close again, snogging her breathless. “I’ll hold you to it.” He hugged her tight, pressing his nose into her hair. “I’ll go get the mirror out of storage and set it up. Then I’ll firecall everyone to warn them off, including Harry and Ginny.”

“I admit this is going to be, well, interesting.”

Ron erupted in a cheeky grin. “Remember the last time we had a fortnight to ourselves?”

“You mean that little cottage in the French Alps at Mont Fort? That was quite nice of Fleur’s parents to rent it out for us for that holiday.” Hermione smiled thinking of that particular Holiday. “The Muggles only saw one hut out there in the middle of nowhere but didn’t see the Wizarding village down the side of the mountain. I don’t know of any Holiday we’ve ever taken that was better than the one there.”

“You certainly weren’t complaining that we were snowed in that week and slept in front of the fireplace every night to stay warm.” Ron ran his hands along her face. “And to think, nine months later Rose came along.”

Hermione snuggled into his chest. “So you’re hoping for that again, aren’t you?”

“That’s up to you, love. While I would never turn down another child, it’s not my decision, is it?”

“Maybe I wouldn’t be on bed rest for months if I was again?”

“You weren’t with Hugo.”

“We’ll see what happens,” Hermione stood on her toes and kissed Ron again. “But first, we have to take care of the business stuff.”

Ron kissed Hermione on the nose. “I’ll get your mirror up in a moment, right after I talk with Mum and Dad.”

Ron left Hermione in her office while she considered how she was going to do her job to her standards while stuck at home for a fortnight.

Demarcation line for the win!

Ron finished with the last dish in the sink after their dinner of cottage pie and salad. The grocery budget shrunk back down to a reasonable amount once the kids went back to Hogwarts after Winter Hols. He didn’t mind since the kids had everything he lacked growing up, with enough food to feed a small army every meal for them and provided them treats from time to time as well. But the household budget would strain slightly with two teenagers eating their weight daily. How his parents managed all the kids on his Dad’s meagre salary he’d never understand except to respect his Mum and her skills.

Two small yet strong arms wrapped around his midsection, hugging her front to his back. “I’m so glad you’re home with me. I’d go completely mental if I had to spend two weeks away from you during this barmy time.”

Ron pulled Hermione to him, lifting her onto the ledge of the counter. The kids never noticed that the counters were the perfect height for him and a little tall for Hermione. She didn’t mind, not when they were still young and working too hard and grabbed a shag whenever they could manage it those early days of owning their cottage. Tonight, though, they had plenty of time on their hands. His hands went to her thighs, rubbing his calloused hands up and down her smooth skin. “I’d have walked into our quarantine to keep you company during this time. Might I remind you that our vows said In Sickness and in Health? I think this qualifies as in sickness.”

“It’s not like I even feel off. Maybe it’s that cockwomble of a PM who is an idiot.”

Ron opened her pyjama top, exposing her chest to him. It was almost 25 years after the fact and even with all of the changes to her body from having kids, the curse scar along with the gold galleon burns along her chest never faded. They’d healed up well enough but those early days, when he was still learning every square inch of her body, he’d kiss each scar, each burn spot, each memento of a moment when her bravery cost something, some bit of pain in their lives. “Fucking gorgeous,” he growled. “Damn gorgeous.”

“You’re barking,” she smiled as she worked at lifting the tee shirt up his torso, leaving small kisses on various freckles on his body. He finished the job, tossing the shirt behind him so she could appreciate his body. While he wasn’t out running with the kids daily now since his ankle ached a bit from time to time, he wasn’t a gangly teenager like he was at 14. He’d filled out some and put on some muscle on his shoulders and back which Hermione never failed to appreciate. “Deep in thought?” she asked.

Ron looked back at his wife and saw her smirk. “Yeah, just wish I’d been able to tell 14-year-old me to quit being such a tosser and that he’d eventually get the girl of his dreams.”

“You’d already had me but I had to learn to appreciate you,” She worked her hands down his lean torso, settling them on the tops of his hips. “How could I have been so stupid to not realize that you express love to people by giving your time and affection in doing things for people. Once I figured you out, I realized you’d been telling me for years how much you loved me. Once I realized that I was being selfish in thinking you had to express affection the way that I understood you so much more.” She pulled his hips close, feeling his sleep trousers straining the front. “I’m glad I pulled my thumb out.” She grinned at him before shrugging out of her top, leaving her in her skin. “And I’m glad that you put something special in.”

Ron laughed but dropped his sleep trousers, leaving him in his skin. “You mean like you want right now?” he stepped between her knee and then pulled her hips forward to the edge of the countertop.  

She pulled on the back of his head down for a tempestuous kiss, feeling his excitement poking her thighs. Releasing his lips for a moment, she breathed, “here or somewhere else?”

Ron lifted his hands from the sides of her hips to her breasts, feeling the tips harden under his fingertips. “Oh we’re staying here,” He cheeked before kneeling before her. “I want dessert first.”

Hermione leaned back on the counter, holding onto the edge while Ron feasted on her tender flesh, giving her so much pleasure and joy that if she could cry, she would. Instead, she let go, embracing the vulnerability she could express with her husband. Ron was the only one on the planet who could quiet the racing raging thoughts in her head, slow down the near-constant anxiety that she had to always be the best at everything, and temper her sharp edges that so many others presumed about her.

A shudder rippled through her body followed by the frisson that she gladly welcomed, all given freely by her wonderful husband. She reached out and found the soft ginger hairs on his head and ran her fingers through them, appreciating the solid feeling under her fingertips while he used his to make her groan in ecstasy. 

Another rush of pleasure coursed through each nerve in her body, leaving her quivering in the abundance of sensory overload. She would never tell anyone besides Ron but what he did for her before they had sex was her favourite part. Everything he brought to their intimate moments only magnified how much she adored him.

Two hands reached up her body to tease her breasts, pinching the tips under his well-practised fingers. 

“Oh God,” She moaned and felt the jolt of pleasure erupt from her core, spreading out to her fingertips and toes. 

When she could open her eyes, Ron was standing in front of her, patiently waiting for her approval. She nodded once, having lost the capability to speak anything coherent some time ago, and felt the pleasure of having his cock inside her.

“Shit, this is fucking amazing,” he kept still for a moment to make sure she was ready. Twenty plus years of making love to this wonderful man – and the shagging and, as crudely as it was factual, the fucking – she never grew tired of it. Like the loaves of bread he made for Sunday lunch for the family, he never let it grow stale or trite.

Hermione reached up to hold onto his shoulders, to have any kind of leverage while he continued to make love to her. While he might have popped off in a minute when they were much, much younger, he had stamina now to last long enough to make her satiated. Who knew that she could feel that much from a shared intimacy with this amazing man she called her husband?

“Yes, right there, feels amazing,” she praised him for every second she could articulate. Her husband thrived on being praised and told how well he was treating her. It took too many rows after they finally pulled their collective thumbs out - and some tears on her part - to realize what he needed to flourish. 

“Gonna fuck you hard, Hermione, going to make you walk like a bloody bowtruckle for a week when I’m done with you,” he’d cheek back.

“Yes, please do, yes” each moment he spent driving her spare, with his hands, his manhood, his mouth, anything he could use to afford her pleasure and joy. “It’s not like anyone is going to notice us, right?”

“No one’s going to interrupt. I’ve locked the door, the Floo, and put us under a Fidelius Charm. 

Ron kept going, eventually pulling her hips forward and resting her legs on her chest and her feet on his shoulders. Hermione pressed her heels into his collarbone, changing the angle he fucked her. “Yes, right there, keep going,” her praise for him only grew more incoherent, more broken as he nattered on, offering filthy comments in response to her. He understood her best of all. He was the only one who got to see her vulnerable, this candid for him. 

A sheen of sweat covered both of them, rattling the cabinets and drawers underneath them. Noises echoed in the kitchen into the parlour along with the occasional groan of wood underneath Hermione’s arse. The slap of wet skin against wet skin echoed along with the growing cacophony into the cottage.

“Hermione,” Ron’s voice rumbled.

“Whenever you are,” she replied. 

Ron continued for another dozen strokes, fighting like mad to hold on. He looked down at his wife and saw her tits jiggling on her breasts while one hand had slid down her slick body to where they were joined, pressing her fingertips into the crevice where her bundle of nerves was, rubbing in tight little circles.

“Oh fuck,” he growled before exploding. He pulled her hips flush to his, feeling her clenching around his length. 

She groaned like the long-departed ghoul in his childhood attic, imitating a banshee with a bad cold. She shivered, not stopping even after he’d quit thrusting into her welcoming body. He pulled back, gasping for breath and stretching his back. She continued to quiver from all of the sensory overload while he hid the smug grin on his face from making her behave in such a wanton fashion. 

Seconds which felt like minutes later, Ron pulled Hermione from the edge of the countertop, lifting her onto his shoulders and carried her to their couch. She scrambled off with him plopping down first followed by her cuddling into his side. She scratched the soft ginger hairs on his chest while he caught his breath.

“We get two weeks like this,” said to the top of his wife’s head. “I never expected to have daily shags ever again, not after that first summer.”

Hermione looked up and smiled before resting her head back on his chest and crossing her knee over his thighs. “I guess we should take advantage of it before everything goes pear-shaped again.”

“Would you say it’s fortunate that we got this earlier than later than everyone else?”

“Honestly? I’d rather get it and get it over with and get back to work helping the rest of our country survive this disaster.”

“Disaster?” Ron rubbed her back, feeling the hairs standing up under his fingertips. “You mean that walking fuckstrumpet of a Prime Minister for the Muggles?”

“If I thought that the populace was manipulated into voting for that sod, I’d open an inquiry. But I don’t trust the Muggles and their discernment of the propaganda that passes for the media now.”

“You’ve never trusted the media, Hermione, not after that bint Skeeter defamed you repeatedly when we were younger.”

“I recall you being shirty too after she went after our kids that one time at the Quidditch World Cup back in 2014. Good thing Ginny gave her what for on Harry’s behalf.”

Ron wrapped his arms around Hermione’s shoulders, pulling her more onto his still heaving chest. 

A soft continuous thumping on the window made them turn their heads. Sure enough, it was raining but also an oversized Barn Owl was on the railing, tapping with his beak in the utter darkness.

“Merlin, can’t even enjoy the moment,” Hermione growled before getting up from Ron’s comforting embrace to stroll to the window and open it, bringing in the very wet owl inside. “I must answer this immediately, isn’t it?” she asked the owl who hooted softly. “Bugger, OK. There are rashers on the countertop for you. I’ll send this back straightaway.”

Hermione saw the MoM seal on the outside of the parchment and cracked it with a fingernail, watching the three feet unroll. She scanned the document before her eyes grew as large as tea saucers then read it again.

Ron sat up on the couch, watching his wife standing only in her skin by the window, the fireplace behind her lush arse highlighting it and silently making him drool, yet she had not a care in the world who might see her form, already engrossed in what had been sent to her.  “That bad, love?”

Hermione turned her face back to Ron and saw the thunderheads rolling across her face. “That bloody PM didn’t bother to listen to the Muggle doctors and is being admitted to the hospital tonight. The sod has left that other tosser - “

“He’s the bloke that looks like he was used for quaffle target practice, right?”

“That’s the one.” She took a deep breath. “That means I’m now the Shadow Minister, temporarily. The real Shadow Minister is also under quarantine.”

“But so are we, right?”

Hermione’s smile erupted. “Nothing like a bubblehead charm to go into work, which I, unfortunately, must do for an hour early tomorrow morning. That Ruddy idiot wants to talk about the state of the Ministry before going forward at 7 am.”

Ron stood up from the couch, looking fanciable and fit in his skin. Four strides and he was next to her, swallowing her up in an enormous hug. “I guess that means we need to get to bed so you can sleep, right?”

Hermione looked up at Ron, his beard shining like gold in the amber lights of the fire in the locked fireplace. “Eventually, love. I would prefer round two.”

Ron turned, pulling her with him as he walked back to their bedroom. “Round two, huh?”

“I need to work this stress off and you’re the medicine I need tonight.”