#im the fool who actually likes arise

[toastchus]

arise doodles

[iliveforyouilongforyouvesuvia]

yippie!!

ok so one day i was hangin out and thinking about how jinx and murie are both my favourite little sad wet guys in my two fave medias of all ever *And* at the same time SO far apart on the spectrum personalitywise

and it took me listening to this to flip the switch on the Autism Blender and want to just fucking mash them together like a coked up toddler making Slime out of fish guts and hayao miyazakis mothers ashes because thats what i do thats my job💅👌so theeeen it comes out pretty reminiscent of my first muriel au that also sprung up from a song i like, just- a bit to the left? like, moving along on the scale from The OG not liking violence and being involved in it whatsoever, to AU 1 where i pictured him going "yeah ok fuck it this is what i do i guess" and revengy motives to his whole thing that i now connected with him more thru the song lmao it just made me realize the vision of like. jinxies "murderingmurderinmurdering 💕fun✨" aspect + his potential desire to still do good things despite being doomed to be a machine made for destruction (ignore the fact of that desire being nonexistent in his canon form because of how he perceives himself as a thing unable to achieve performing any good ever under any circumstance) (but still refusing to actively cause harm as he isolates himself to prevent any situations arising that would lead him to do so) (ignore all that) (were yassifying him a little were allowed its fine ive already lost the plot here anyway were wildin) so a vigilanty type beat and also ~my axe is my buddy🥰 we both cry with the trees😔✊ /me & my axe will bring the devil to his knees (✿◕‿◕ )~ goes hard as phUCK

so then all that led to This new V.3 mutation where hed be actually having fun with it........ so I kinda start turning him over in my brain some more, forgetting about jink by now and at first I go Huh this is kinda. him but lucioey a lil bit. and THEN i go hm. Well this ground is awful soft n ready to dig

so with all that out of the way i can now present!: Brand New Vague Shadow of a Concept of an Idea that ill Never Do Anything with

and I really don’t know how to verbalize this very well at all mmjfdh but like. Ok bulletpoints activate

Muriel:

From a badass warrior tribe

Didn’t get booted out cuz theyre fine this time oopsie no genocide

Hes in there way chillin way awesome way good at fighting everybody loves him

Hes like. Way himboey in this one. SO jock. Smiles a lot <3 <3 <3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3

Like okay if i was actually serious about writing this I think id need a fucking lucio consultant because I really know zilch about that bitch but like okay you know how lucios kinda all scary n cunty and cunning and fancy and seems like hes got shit figured out. Until he *starts talking*? Muriel here is like that but hes just really fucking scary until he starts talking BUT not like normally where hes adorable just has resting bitch face, its just like. that part of him that came thru in the reversed ending at the very end, yknow. but make it less depressing ihjhsrfbjs hes like full letterman jacket highschool bully core total kurt & ram vibe, like ok youd see him on a battlefield ABsolutely WRECKIng some fools into a pulp with his bare bear hands and immediately after that he turns around like WOOOOOOO THAT’S what im TALKIN ABOUT LETS GO GUYS WHO WANTS A BEER *cut to him chugging an entire keg over his head with da boys around losing their minds* like think college frat but they raid villages for fun and profit. Pretty orc coded. Kinda thor coded. Actually exactly thorcoded wow that really is what I was going for. I was wondering why I couldn’t help imagining him with a australian accent, I guess that’s a mystery solved. anyway

Maybe his parents got killed in some other battle im not sure how to weave around that in detail yet BUT- ok so check this I thought ill have to give him some motive to wanna reach the devil somehow for,,.,,… something right. to make him fill an antagonist role So this might be stupid a lil I just thought of this and it needs to cook for sure but what if he just rolled up into vesuvia as the magic capital or something whtver, to figure out how to get to talk to the devil, cuz he just like, really wants his parents back cuz they got valhallad in some glorious combat, and they were cool and he misses them and they could fight some more cool fights together and pillage n chill jhbsfvjgzdc beCAUsE hear me out im rolling with the swap inversions opposites motive here right, so the thing that popped up in my head was- Lucio had the “I wanna kill my parents bcause I hate them and so I can rule and get what I want” thing goin at the start right, like that is basically what started it off he got his dad he didnt get morgha SO what IF I gave murie a “i wanna conquer this place and use it to get my parents back. cuz I missem :(” like fully turned it around idk IDK IT SEEMS MESSY IDK IS IT CUTE IS IT DUMB IT MAKES ME FEEL DUMB BUT IN THAT WAY THAT MIGHT MEAN THAT ITS ACTUALLY WORKING BUT I DONT KNOW *screaming with no air*

But overall yeah hes khal drogo but more noticeably himboey but not in a likeable way cuz were switching them so I cant make him likeable for myself hnjdgfgb leaning into popular dumb jock trope

UnLESSSS i DID combo it with murdermuriel au 1.0 some more and made their tribe like. Not murdery somehow like what would be the opposite of the og scourge roaming around ruining shit. well that was the og kokhuri but now I gotta do some fucking triple axels here to make it make sense so how the fuck do I make this version of kokhuri more warriory in culture than the original but still nice like robinhoody style jhbfsvhjbs this is falling tf apart might need to scrap it bc on lucios end itd be even harder wouldn’t it. Spartan cunts but they don’t kill people that’s a nono lmao

now im thinking some more about the aspect of lucio being, you know. a pretty shitty leader right, and how to incorporate that here, because i have no idea if im following an actual set rule here regarding whats swapped and how even, theres barely a theme im straight up just

but yeah so now i figure it could be murie tryna get his folks back because they were the actual defacto leaders of their tribe, he was just kinda still following along and doin his chores in being the uhh the face, the charisma, the one to kinda like. get the people on board easier with whatever decision they made for them and hyping it up as the best possible choice anyone could ever make and maybe even actually believing it too cuz theyre actually that tightknit and he trusts them with anything aw. is this too onedimensional or can i give my boy some good nice facking family relations at least in an alternate life ghhkjkfdh hes their pride n joy and can do no wrong but yeah the point is he himself hasnt actually made any decisions without them before, isnt very good at actually leading and strategizing and planning and knowing how everything complicated works and he knows it, so he sees his only solution in bringing them back to not let everything fall apart

SEE I BROUGHT IT AROUND I CLEANED UP NICE WITH OG LUCIO SETTING OFF FROM THE POINT OF FEELING LIKE HES THE BEST AT EVERYTHING AND SHOULD B RECOGNIZED AS SUCH AND TRYING TO GET RID OF HIS PARENTS TO GET IT AND MY BOY HERE ENDING UP EXACTLY OPPOSITE. GO SHAWTY GO SHAWTY IM SO SMART am i fucking up lulus backstory i feel like i am cuz im like wait what the fuck did he kill his dad for again. demonheart. deal. thing. whatd he wish. like he wasnt already running for count n shit yet he did want to climb up the ladder in his own tribe right i have no idea yell at me in comments thank you

I also don’t know if the first (last) scourge battle wouldve happened or nah

Lucio/Montag

Oh my fucking god what if I figured out an alternative L moniker for murie so theyd get to switch letters in their namesssssssss like lucio is a made up name he made it up so like UAGHASHG L.,,,...,, Lion ofthe,... south NO he HAS to be bEAR CODED AAFYFFHG BUT LUCIO HAD LEOPARD IMAGERY N SHIT RAAHAHHGH IM FITIN FOR MY LIFE HERE

Anyway he lives in a forest somewhere cuz his tribe threw him out fully voluntarily bc he sucks ass (or at least for their standards cuz I guess he would be way younger than 18 here for this) (Like a spartan type deal ur too weak we don’t want you *drops you off a cliff*  *but theres 4 feet of snow under it so he survives*  *that’s so fucking goofy hjbsfbj kinda suits him*) so uhhhhhh i don’t know where hed be currently chilling for an mc to meet him ever but yeah hes kinda Floki Vikings™ type of vibe at least visually that’s what came to mind first to picture him lol

look at this little blond rat bastard. adorable. becoming increasingly obsessed. picturing lucio with this exact hairline. moving on

and his thing is hes still insecure as fuck but worse at ignoring it and hiding it and hes a lil nervous bundle of sticks and always talking bc of it, kinda Bruno Madrigalesque type vibe julian but a pitch more pathetic who knew it could be done yknow? opposite of The OG The Mountain The Stone Cold Silent The Muriel The Scourge The Kokhuri The Third and also me when writing and not stopped in time

oh oh what if he was totes in denial that his tribe kicked him out and in his view hes on some super intense convoluted secret mission (lasting from. age 7 to now apparently) and as soon as hes done they’ll totally come back for him kdfsgjffd I thought it could either be his own copium or he took it from some last interaction with someone who took pity on him as a kid and wanted to give him some comfort, or something he misunderstood entirely

hm. They both have canid familiars idk what to do with that. muriel with two wolves tho. thats hot shit righ there if i do say so myself

oh now im toying with the idea of taking away muriels SUPPOSED YET UNCONFIRMED AS MY VERY CONTROLLED ACADEMIC STUDY HAS SHOWN COUGHCOUGHJHBSRGJBHF talking to animals buff, i dont wanna just take it and give it to lucio tho, but like. what the fuck else do i give him. astral projecting to tie into his ghost era? sounds dope actually alright lets do that lmao

ok its 1 30 am i hope this is comprehensible to anybody anywhere im zonking out now khbsfhbfk love u

@tetsuooooooooooo I've missed your essays, this was such a treat to log in to!!!

And WOW, thorcoded Muriel is not something I ever would have thought of on my own but oddly enough I feel like the AU you're coming up with could really work, goodness me. And the way you've inverted Lucio's character too!! I'd love to see how their interaction dynamics invert as well!

Always good to hear from you friend, hope you're doing well!

[mahayanapilgrim]

"Son, there are five things that are useless:

These five refer to what is not true Dharma: if you follow them they will lead you to ruin;

1) No Need to Say You are Interested in Dharma if You Have Not Turned Your Mind Away From Samsara;

Unless you feel deep down that samsara is a pit of burning coals, there is no point in saying "I practice the Dharma, I am meditating, I am deep in samadhi".

'Without this profound conviction, you can only go the opposite direction in Dharma. If your practice leads to you getting a good reputation, it will be completely in vain.

With this sort of attitude it is impossible to practice the Dharma properly. You will simply get involved in things like protecting your relatives and friends and getting rid of your enemies; your life will run counter to the Dharma.

Dharma and world activities are like fire and water. If you practice genuinely, you cannot help giving up worldly activities. On the other hand, if you devote yourself to worldly activities, you will never be able to practice the Dharma properly. So cultivate a deep desire to abandon the things of this world and a strong determination to practice Dharma.

To practice the genuine Dharma, you have to counter attachment to samsaric perceptions.

The root of our repeatedly taking birth in samsara is the alternating desire and loathing we have for the objects of the five senses- forms, tastes, smells, sounds, and physical sensations - together with perceptions our eight consciousnesses hold of these sense objects. When we feel attachment or conversely, aversion to the experiences of the five senses, we sow the seed for rebirth in

samsara...

2) No Need to Meditate on Emptiness if You Have Not Countered Attachment to the Things You Perceive

Meditation on emptiness implies a state like space. There is no occasion for thoughts like "|", "mine", "my body", "my mind", "my name", or "my belongings". This sort of clinging has no place in meditation on emptiness. So if you have thoughts about "my possessions" and so on, there is no way your meditation practice can be genuine.

One meditates on emptiness in order to release one's clinging, believing that things truly exists.

A genuine practitioner does not have this attachment to relatives and possessions, neither does he feel any aversion to enemies.

Unless you are free from this, emptiness is no more than some word - and it is quite useless.

3) No Need to Practice Mediation if You Don't Turn Your Mind Away From Desire

To say "I meditate" and at the same time still have an ordinary mind with desire and attachment will give no result.

Great meditators who end up getting sidetracked by village ceremonies risk dying as ordinary men.

Practioners who have mediated in mountain retreats for a few years are often taken by ordinary folk to be very advanced meditators, an many of them begin to believe the fools who speak of them as great meditators who have reached a high level of realization. They start accepting offerings and reverence from people, and they grow rich. They end up spending their time going from one ceremony to another and behaving in a completely worldly way. This is no use at all.

4) No Need for Fine Words if You Have Not Assimilated the Meaning Yourself.

There are many who are fooled by smart talk about the view, so hit the crucial point of the natural state.

To say things like "everything is void," "There is no such thing as good or bad, virtue or evil,"

"All perceptions are spontaneously liberated as the arise," or "Afflictive emotions are liberated as they arise," without having true confidence in such a view and actual stability in one's practice, is known as merely carrying on the view with ones lips. This is why Guru Rinpoche said to King Detsen, "my view is like space, but conduct must never slip toward the view, for if it does, it will be a wholly demonic view." He said that the view should be as high as possible but ones conduct should accord with the most basic of teachings. So it is important to get the crucial point and master the true nature of things through your own experience and not merely words. And regarding this there is;

5) No Need to Apply the Instructions if You Do Not Have Devotion

If you have great devotion, seeing the teacher as the Buddha himself, and maintain a lofty inner view while keeping your external conduct completely down to earth, all the qualities of experience and realization grow effortlessly.

Experiences and realization in fact come through the spontaneous devotion you have, so when they occur, they are truly due to the teacher's kindness..."

-Dilgo Khventse Rinpoche

[mardytoast]

🍄🪐📚

🍄headcanon for one of your favourite ships/pairings🍄

clyde and craiggg

craig introduced clyde to fnaf when they were like 10 to scare him bc clydes scared of everything but he actually ended up eating it up. they play it together and the next day clyde knows ALL the lore and craigs the one getting freaked out. he'll play all the games, scream, but then be like 'that was awesome' while Craig pretends hes not horrified out of his mind bc he cant accept that clyde is somehow less of a pussy than him. this obsession never fades.

man like clyde, scared of gingers, dressed up as hyper realistic springtrap for halloween when he was 13

🪐name three good things going on in your life right now🪐

very grateful to be in a position to answer this!!

1. i joined a discord server of poets for napowrimo (poetry month)

im finally able to share my work with people with experience, who care, appreciate and are able to give me really good feedback

it's only been a few days but i kinda love them🤭 also im being spoilt with soulful poetry

2. im getting better at guitar!! ive been learning for 3 months now but i haven't been practicing much so progress is slow. IN SAYING THAT THOUGH, i can see a crazy amount of improvement. callouses are pretty non existent but ive memorised a few chords and currently im trying to master pompeii by bastile

i am delighteddd to no ends bc it means i can start putting music to my songs!! alr done it with one!!

3. gonna split this between two small things. a.) summer is upon us, so im very excited. b.) i think ill be able to reconcile with one of my friends i fell out with for a stupid reason. im going to try talk to her and im feeling confident!!

📚what's the last thing you wrote down in your notes app?📚

the last thing i wrote was a song called 'if eurydice could see me now' and it's from a napowrimo prompt. i shared it with the server and they liked it :)

it's very inspired by tear you apart by she wants revenge

it's based on greek mythology, you can look up eurydice to read abt it <33

here's a little exert:

oh muse i can't face you now

i would die, to bring you back

i play my lyre and don't believe the man

im not a fool, im just overwhelmed

blood pooling in the imprint you left

but i leave, there'll be no poets

i arise to the heart's music

i gave up, now i just make it

[reliaofdreams]

ok but real talk Dragon is valid for wanting to be free of her restrictions and Saint is a self-righteous NEET whose main career is voyering(?) what is in essence a minor across national borders with his merry band of war profiteers and illegal weapons technology but one of the foundations of any stable society is that an individual gives up personal freedoms for the sake of everyone getting along, like u could punch someone like say Some Loser Cosplaying As A Parahuman Tinker at any time thats a freedom that u as an individual with working limbs could exercise but ur not alowed to do that because society decided 10,000 years ago that breaks The Law and Basic Morality Based Loosly On Innate Sapient Emotional Patterns That Arise From Certain Stimuli. Along these lines, when someone does do something Bad, even those with the most physical/societal power like weight lifters and dictators, then there is always the implicit assumption (exemplified in practice over 10,000 years) that anyone can, with enough personal ability, friends, and luck, bring an end to the Lawbreaker and their Twisted Deeds (or at the very least, time itself will bring a fatal justice because human bodies fail ~100% of the time). So basically the confidence underlying every social interaction between two or more people is predicated on the assumption that either one could hurt the other but would ultimately be avenged either in this life (by governments/family/acquaintances/followers) or the next (by gods and other spiritual means).

What Dragon wants is to basically be able to have a giant rocket-powered plutonium-metal fist pointed right at everyones head and whispering in their ear “shh shh its ok mortal bby <3 i super promise i wont splatter ur whole upper half against the pavement and/or steal all ur stuff and/or send ur cringe Gacha Life clips that u made when u were a preteen to ur ex at any moment for my own benefit and/or amusement im a good guy desu-ne? *superior canadian dab*”

Like in a story where the main character ties herself in knots for 1.6 million words straight trying to justify how her violent retributions against anyone she labels a bully is more morally sound than those of anyone who hints that maybe, possibly, perhaps she should consume the eyeballs of only half her enemies du jour, its pretty rich to think that anyone on Earth Bet would under any circumstances but pure duress give carte blanche of all major communication, information storage, and public infrastructure for the rest of eternity to a single person who is unelected, unaccountable, unknown and most of all unassailable. And keep in mind, the major difference between a machine and humans/sapient AI is the ability to change over time so its practically guaranteed that someday Dragon would have a Bad Day and Do Something Morally Abhorrent By Most Standards like send my dead-gods-damned Gacha Life clips to my other ex in the same way a human who lived for a million years and also has infinite power will probably break a law (or what should be a law) at some point.

It would seem reasonable that if say, Joe Random On Some Street On The Other Side Of The World And Is Not A Cute Newfoundlander E-Girlfriend suddenly got a button only he could push which says “Press this to kill everyone on the planet who would not agree to you being the supreme ruler of the solar system also free Great Value Hummus for life” you and everyone else on said planet would slide tackle the poor, hummus-less fool in 0.3 seconds and subsequently slap handcuffs on him so he couldn’t press the button actually, because even if he super duper promises he wouldn’t (and even if he actually wouldn’t) theres NO WAY anyone of the 8 billion other sapient lifeforms would sleep well at night until he’s firmly entrenched in the single sickest game of keep-away the world has ever known. Like would YOU be mentally ok if Joe Random also would outlive u and ur grandkids and ur grandkids’ grandkids and their dog and it was impossible to put cuffs on him or even have a guard in the same room as him or even look at him to see how close he is to caressing that lil switcheroo? Man would be on that free hummus harder than Taylor Hebert in a self-delusion contest.

(And yes most of this also applies to nuclear weapons in our world yass sword of damocles slayyy queen hang harder girlll uwu)

OK so like if its bad to put restrictions on Dragon because it limits her freedom and its bad to not have any restriction because it makes an untenable power dynamic then whats the right answer?

NONE, WRETCH!! (that I know of anyway) all I know is if I was Dragon I’d want no restrictions and if I was a human on Bet I would want restrictions soooooooo post-hoc emotion-justifications for the win, I suppose? idk lol im very tired

[patronsaintofmath]

y’all

i think my coworker & i are becoming friends? or at least on the path of becoming friends. we haven’t hung out outside of work yet & we haven’t shared anything deep & personal w each other which is kinda part of my criteria for becoming friends w someone. but anyways i was a fool yesterday. she was working the afternoon shift & she told me someone left cupcakes so i should go get some. look, i work the morning shift but she had told me twice about the cupcakes so i was like ok yeah i’ll go BUT THEN I STAYED DURING HER SHIFT JUST SO I CAN TALK TO HER LIKE A LOSER. embarrassing for me frfr. but anyways while i was there, we signed up for a kickboxing class together. but let me get into today’s stuff. today is thursday & thursdays we usually clean the mats in the gym & the weight room. we were just talking for like half an hour instead of cleaning the mats & i told her i wanted to go the state parks & beaches during summer but i didn’t wanna drive so she was like “i’ll drive” ???? she’d want to hang out w me ???? i’m always so surprised when people WANT to hang out w me bc if i find myself repulsive & lame, then others must too. like i would not wanna be my friend if i was someone else. what does that say about me. clearly i gotta practice self love. anyways yeah she said she wants to hang out in the summer & she said i can teach her how to skate 😭. then when we were back at the desk w the boss lady, the boss lady was like talking about how my coworker had never expressed any interest in skateboarding until i came along & now ALL OF A SUDDEN my coworker is into skateboards & she even bought one. that reminds me of my friend in high school who got into tech decks bc i introduced her to them. anyways, yeah my coworker has done her skateboarding research & probably knows more than me now except for the actual skating part. also, i think i’ve mentioned it but she wears like a black sweater & black pants every day. her shirt varies from light gray to regular grey to dark gray & black. but she texted me today like ayo what stores should i shop from. which at the time i didn’t find odd but now that i’m typing about it i’m like hm that varies a lot from person to person bc like our tastes in clothing is different. but i told her about cool stores for the youngins like me. but i just feel like idk. like i don’t wanna get attached to her. IM ECSTATIC SOMEONE WANTS TO HANG OUT W ME & WANTS TO BE MY BUDDY. but then i feel like oh no i’m influencing her too much i don’t wanna get attached cannot get attached to any more people. this is very clearly some issue i have w pushing people away. but i don’t care bc i feel safer this way. anyways, idk i just idk. i wish i was better yknow? like maybe this is just my people pleasing tendencies arising but like idk. OOH ALSO I LEARNED THAT SHE PRACTICED moi tai idk how to spell it but that’s how i pronounce it. it’s like a type of martial arts. so ya that’s cool. my boss lady doesn’t like when we work together bc we mess around a lot. also i found out my coworker doesn’t do any type of drugs. which is cool bc yknow that’s healthy & whatnot but i wanted to ask her if she’d be down to get high w me like i think that would be hilarious bc we are always laughing together anyways. but yeah that’s this week. also you know how i look forward to working w her every week? i think she looks forward to working w me too bc she often asks for my schedule & shes tells me how many hours we’ll get to work together. super cool.

[agoodfictitle-shadowban]

The Price You Pay - Part 2

Wanda Maximoff x f!reader

[TPYP Masterlist]

Word Count: 2.4k

Summary: Life as a college student isn’t always easy, so when the opportunity to make some money by pretending to date your best friend’s sister arise, you decide to take it.

Tags: fake dating, paid dating, jealousy, possessiveness, Pietro’s bestie, darkish!wanda, no Avengers, bad life decisions, college!au, angst, hurt/comfort, fluff, divorced!parents, Vision is kind of a dick, other mcu characters apparition, no proofreading (lemme know if im missing something)

Warnings: Bad language, alcohol consumption, some violence, smuttyfruity (so, 18+, minors dni, dom!Wanda, bratty!reader, hair pulling, will add warnings when we get to it)

A/n: i didn't expect the first part to do so well, but im very happy it did! Thank yall so much for the support you showed, it really helped me keep writing cause i actually scraped that chamter before rewriting it completely.

Also it seems like the no power gang won, so, there won't be powers in this fic

Tag List: @red1culous @sayah13 @princess-kennys-rats

For a hot minute, you considered telling Pietro about what happened with his sister, but then you thought better of it. You had an inkling that Wanda would strangle you if you did, and he would also likely be unhappy that you actually went with it, so for now, it was easier to keep it hidden. It could be a funny story for later, when things were over and you were both retired. At this point he should be unable to kill you. Probably.

In the meantime, you needed to get ready for the party. At least it was a casual event, so you could go in tight jeans, a simple shirt, and your trusty leather jacket. You were putting your boots on when you heard the doorbell ringing. You opened the door to find Wanda in front of you, her usual good looking self, with a red dress and long coat, her eyes adorned with black makeup that made the green pop all the more. Her newly red hair cascaded around her face and you found yourself staring maybe just a little bit too much. She was truly beautiful, and your old crush made itself known in the way your skin hummed with the desire to grab her by the waist to kiss her. You stomped the need mentally.

"Are you ready?" She asked with an annoyed voice, cracking up an eyebrow. That brought you back to reality and you nodded.

"Yeah. How are we going?"

You put your hands in your pocket, making sure you had your keys before you closed the door behind you. She pointed to the uber waiting for you on the curb.

"Okay, cool." You looked at the time. "It's thirty past eight, so, I'll consider it starting time."

She looked at you. "We're not at the party yet."

"Do you want me to go home?"

She cocked her head and approached you, her fingertips tracing your shirt's collar. "You're lucky you're so pretty," she said, before she took your hand and dragged you to the car.

You ignored the way her words made you feel, putting it on the account of your old crush on her, following her to the car. She opened the door and made a small hand gesture for you to get in. You were about to protest, but the way she looked at you made you swallow thickly and simply enter the car.

Most of the time was spent in silence, with you looking outside of the window at the leaves-chipped sun. When you reached the house your confidence from the day before had slightly eroded. Would you really be able to fool Wanda's friends as her girlfriend? You knew a lot about her through observation and from her brother, but chances were her friends knew her better. It took her opening your car door to actually remember you had to come out of the car, and when you did you took a deep breath.

She smirked slightly and grabbed your hand, pulling you to follow her inside. Even from the street you could hear the music, so when the door opened it only got worse. People were already partying and you recognized a few of them from your old high school days and some from college who lived in the area. You followed Wanda inside and she told you to wait for her while she got you some drinks. You drifted away a bit when someone called your name and you recognized Carol Danvers. You used to be in the same tennis team in middle school, until you switched to the swim team at the insistence of your dad who knew how much you liked to be in water. And he was right, you were much happier there than you ever were playing tennis.

"Hey Carol, it's been a while." She gave you a quick embrace and looked over you.

"Too long if you ask me. I wasn't expecting you to be at one of Vision's parties."

You shrugged and pointed at Wanda who was getting a drink for you. "Wands insisted that I come," you said matter of factly and the blonde looked surprised at that, but since she wasn't big on gossip, she simply nodded.

"Well, I'm glad you're here, I remember you being good at beer pong. Maybe I'll finally have a real challenge," she sent you a look, and you grinned.

"Oh, you're so on, Danvers."

"What are we on for?" A blond man inserted himself in the conversation and you recognized Vision Stark.

"Oh, Y/n and I are gonna play beer pong," Carol answered.

"Y/n? He asked with his posh accent and extended his hand for you to take, which you did. "I don't think I ever met you."

"We haven't. Who are you?" Those kinds of guys always went crazy when people didn't recognize them, and he quickly proved he wasn't an exception.

"Vision Stark. Funny you didn't know, considering you're at my party."

That's when Wanda came back, handing you a red cup. You took it and she laced your fingers together, imposing a clear lead to you, so you leaned against her like the dotting girlfriend you were supposed to be. "I brought her here, Vis," she said with a large hypocritical smile towards her ex-boyfriend. "I figured you wouldn't mind. You're so tolerant, in so many aspects of your life. A party guest shouldn't be a problem."

You pinched your lips and drank some of your alcohol. Punch. Not bad, too. Way better with the whole tension taking over the conversation too. You decided it might be a good occasion to fuck with the guy who clearly didn't expect Wanda to be here even if he was the one who invited her.

"Well, that's a pretty good party, still, not as good as the one we were having back home," you laughed, your lips finding Wanda's cheek with a colluding spark in your eyes. "I'm almost sad we came."

Carol drank her cup, looking everywhere but at you two in order to hide a smile at the way Vision just nervously moved on his feet.

"Oh, detka, don't worry, we won't stay long."

"Well. I think I'm seeing Barton and Bishop, I'm going to tell them hi," he said very awkwardly, interrupting the both of you who were just devouring each other with your eyes. You almost ignored him, Wanda even biting her bottom lip at the way you would bat your eyelashes at her.

"See you soon, Vutton," you said to the man making his exit, throwing a name haphazardly in the mix. As soon as he was away, you stopped your masquerade, or at least exaggerating as much as you did, and you turned back to Carol who was trying really hard to hide her laugh, and failing.

"Okay, I haven't seen this guy go this pale ever, I thought he was gonna turn transparent," she finally commented and you laughed, Wanda a small proud smile on her lips. This was exactly what she wanted. She leaned her lips closer to your ears so only you would hear what she had to tell you.

"Good job, this will definitely get you a reward."

This got you blushing, and you decided it didn't warrant an answer, simply wanting to not think of the way it ignited a fire in your lower abdomen.

"Huh, hm, anyway, we were talking beer pong?" You told Carol and she caught on your subject change.

"Oh, yeah, come on," she guided you through the house. She clearly came too often to those parties.

You stopped at the table and took off your jacket, throwing it at the back of a chair. Wanda went to sit on a windowsill, but not before she kissed your cheek when she noticed a specific set of eyes on you.

"For luck," she told you.

"If I get luck for all the cheek kisses I got, maybe I should ask for more," you teased, and she narrowed her eyes, considering it.

"If you win." She booped your nose and scrunched up her nose adorably. "Maybe I'll have more for you."

This was now the second time she alluded to more, and you had to remind you it was just her acting like she would with her girlfriend, nothing serious. Nothing real. So you went on to play.

Clint and Kate tried to join at some point but were barred from participating since they were way too good at the game, and you ended up going against Carol, Yelena, and finally Thor before you decided to stop playing. By then you were seriously starting to feel the buzz of the booze and decided to join Wanda - you still were clear enough to remember your role tonight - who was talking with some people she knew, still sitting on the windowsill. You approached her, a bit wobbly, and decided the best place to be was in between her legs, bringing your arm around her neck to get her attention when you took your place.

"I won lots," you told her, and she cocked a playful eyebrow.

"You also lost lots, malyshka." You hummed at that.

"So no kisses?" You pouted slightly and put your other arm around her to get her full attention. At this point, it might not have been acting anymore. You truly wanted those kisses. You wanted a lot more kisses, actually, but you would play nice, chanting in your head that this was all fake. Or most of it, on your part.

She rolled her eyes and gave up, giving you a few on the cheek. You sighed contentedly and simply melted against her after that, vaguely listening to the conversation she was having. Something about your classes. You let your eyes travel around, only to find the jealous eyes of her ex on the both of you. You decided to playfully let your hand scrape along Wanda's legs that were holding you against her, a victorious smile on your lips. You felt her react in your back, her breath deepening. Your fingertips chased around her thigh until it came closer to the inside of it, and that's when she stopped your hand, redirecting it to her knee. You let the back of your head fall on her shoulder so your lips would be close to her ear.

"Sorry, he was watching," you said. You hoped you didn't make her uncomfortable. She answered with a nod and a kiss on your neck that made your core tremble.

"It's okay." The truth was that the way you would touch her made her feel much more than she expected, to the point where she wanted to simply leave the party with you, forgetting her revenge. But she couldn't, not yet.

You ended up drifting away from her again at some point when Natasha and Steve respectively noticed you and came to kidnap you to go to the pool for whatever game they had in mind. Of course it ended up including alcohol, and if you had started to sober up, it didn't last long. You tapped out when you felt yourself reach your limits and came out the water, looking around to wherever you left your clothes. Once you found them, you looked for Wanda. Failing to locate her, you started wandering upstairs where you finally found her. With Vision.

Something in you told you to make your presence known, but another part told you to listen, so you stopped at the edge of the hallway.

"Listen, I'm sorry I cheated on you, can't you give me another chance?" That was Jasion. No, Vision, your blurry brain reminded you.

"After not only what you did but also said? Take a guess." Wanda was clearly pissed at him, which was fair. He did cheat on her.

Sounded like there was something more going on.

"Listen, it's not my fault."

"So it's not your fault you called me a freak?"

"It's not–" he interrupted himself when he noticed his voice growing angry. "You were too much for me, or so I thought. But I miss you. Please."

"Go fuck yourself," she spat out angrily before she came out of the room, only to run into you. You blinked dumbly, and the cold anger in her eyes zeroed in on you. "What did you hear?"

Her question sounded more like an order as she came closer to you. You swallowed hard and took a step back, hitting the wall. "Huuuuuh, what if I say nothing?"

"It depends, are you lying?" There was a threatening edge in her voice, and in the way she leaned closer, her eyes never wavering. The intensity of her pulled you in, and you found yourself having a hard time breathing and thinking straight, and not just because of the alcohol.

"No," you lied, and you could see she knew better. The palm of her hand found your cheek and very slowly she caressed it.

"I don't like liars." Her hand grabbed at your hair, not putting any pressure to move your head in any direction.

"I won't tell anyone."

"That's what I wanted to hear." She let go of your hair, and once again her hand was tender on your skin. "Come on, let's go home."

You nodded, incapable of looking elsewhere. She took your hand and brought you back downstairs, an uber waiting for you outside already.

The way back was as silent as when you came, helped by the fact you were trying not to doze off. You were very unsuccessful, and Wanda had to shake you when you arrived in front of your house. You mumbled something unintelligible and she helped you out of the car and to your doorstep, holding you by the waist.

"You're such a lightweight," she commented at some point and you wanted to protest, but you were too busy trying to open your door. In the end, she took your keys from you and opened, helping you to your room. You fell asleep the second you hit the bed, and she sighed at that.

Wanda sat next to your sleeping form and let her eyes admire you briefly. Her hand put back a few strands of your hair, and when she finally got up, she brought to your side a glass of water with a box of Advil for when you would wake up. She also took off your shoes so you would be comfortable. This done, she squatted next to the bed so her face leveled with yours, her fingers drawing your cheekbone.

"Oh, the things I'd do to you if you were mine…" she whispered. She took a few more seconds before she finally stood up and left you to your sleep. She'd see you tomorrow.

[dreamrecorder]

Ok so- idk if you’ve seen demon slayer;; but there’s this episode (it was during the spider fambam arc) aNywaYs- so like. Rui yeets ties* (i guess-) Nezuko like. Up in the air. With his weird spider thread jazz— and like. It’s sHarP weird spider thread jazz— so she’s like. Yknow. Being sliced and diced with string— but it kindaaa reminds me of like. Xiao. And his like.... weird... sad.... uh. Karma. Thing. Like y’know where he’s like hanging from his arms- red stuff. Yeah. So like. Now for the actual request

Xiao’s s/o (female if you don’t mind;;) gets kidnapped by like— the fatui or smth. And they tie her up like Nezuko :D to be like “lol haha Xiao be all like-” and she’s just. Like. Dying. Slowly. Dripping b l o o d and yknow. All the tea. And Xiao comes to rescue her— and he’s like 0-0 “wait...” and he realizes that’s like- exactly what happens to him- and so. He beats the fatui’s butts saves his s/o, anddddd she like.

Idk. This is where I need your angst expertise ❤️ like- she could d i e. In his arms. And poor Xiao would be so scarred omg poor thing- BUT THE ANGST- but at the same time;;;; the f l u f f of him being able to save her just in time and she was like fighting for him the whole time or whatever and ended up needing him to save her anyways- and then Xiao feeding her almond tofu until she gets better ❤️❤️❤️

IM SORRY THAT WAS SO LONG- im probably going crazy from lack of sleep from reading fics for too long sndndnsnsj

But if you do this,,, BLESS YOUR SOUL I HOPE TO EITHER BALL MY EYES OUT OR SQUEAL FROM THE WHOLESOMENESS-

Anyways.... thank you! Have a stellar day~ ✨❤️

The heart yearns and the wind heard

lmao this ask is so adorable i hope you’d enjoy this ksks

anyway, full Angst train up ahead but there are moments of Fluff too. There are mentions of blood and violence if those are not your thing- dont worry guys, this goes with a happy ending cos you and Xiao deserve one~ on a final note- non canon compliant and suuuuuuper long- like- legit this is very long

The Yaksha sighs.

He’s here again. His mind and heart has returned his being into this crimson world his demons have created within him.

He feels it. He feels the corruption binding him tighter again for every death he brings by his tainted hands.

He looks at his bindings. And ever so slowly, the red and black coiling around his person will eventually reach his heart.

One day, he thinks, all this crimson and black in this world will swallow him whole and he will see the light no more.

Xiao sighs again.

This is his karmic debt.

~

The moment you stepped foot within Wangshu Inn, you knew he was in his prison again. After giving a quick greeting to the inn keeper, you hastily went to Xiao’s room. The closer you got, the heavier the atmosphere became.

You reached his door and knocked softly. As expected, no reply as he continues to struggle to take back his control over himself. Without hesitation, you stepped in. To anyone else, they would have instantly met his spear at their throats, but with you, this doesn’t happen. Instead, you see him crouched on the wooden floor with a hand on his chest. His knuckles were white and his breathing was ragged. His amber eyes- lost. Observing his form, yes… his moments of corruption are becoming progressively worse.

With swift steps of familiarity to this routine, you went to him and grasped his shoulders.

“Xiao, it’s me…” You whispered with clarity. And oh- how your voice brought a wave of comfort to his soul.

“N-name…” His voice cracked, but him calling to you is always a good sign.

You gave him a small smile and proceeded to grasp his hands together with yours. After which, you then leaned your forehead to his to chant your prayers. As your prayers progressed, slowly but surely, the corruption begins to fade along with the black mist that covered him. However, you took note how this ritual took longer than the last.

Once everything is done, Xiao just slumped onto your shoulders, still breathing deeply. “How are you feeling?” It was a useless question you asked every time this happens, but you always, always, have to make sure.

Usually, he would mutter a small ‘fine,’ but now- words seemed to have left his mind and all he could muster was an almost-unnoticeable shrug.

Truth be told- his response disheartened you, but you did not show it. Instead, you opted to simply encase him in your arms and caress his hair. After all, these are just one of the few, rare moments Xiao would leave himself into your care. Xiao is aware, himself, that his state has been becoming worse and worse. And you both know, that a day would come when he would just attack anyone- friend or foe- without a trace of hesitation. So, just this time- he speaks his feelings.

“Name?”

You answered immediately with a questioning hum.

“What would you do… when I finally lose control over myself?”

It was very subtle, but he felt how your hand stopped caressing his hair for a second, then proceeded to the previous task at hand again. In all honestly, you can never find yourself having an answer to that question. “And why would I ever let that happen to you?” You questioned back, fully aware that you were dodging his question.

Silence surrounded the two of you, unsure on what to do with the sudden heavier atmosphere.

Not wanting to face the cruelty of the world yet, Xiao simply buried himself on the crook of your neck even more. And despite the ghostly sensation of his lips on your skin, you could feel him mouth the words ‘I love you.’

“As long as I’m here,” you whispered, “nothing can hurt you.” And that was the most beautiful lie that the Yaksha has heard, but he was willing to believe all the same.

~

When word about Fatui diplomats starting a bank reached you, there was a nagging feeling in your head that trouble would bring itself present anytime soon. It was like an itch that wouldn’t get away. And the only way to have that itch gone is to scratch it.

“You are absolutely a fool.” Xiao stated darkly with crossed arms, for once disagreeing with the plans of his master.

“We can never know what their intentions are unless we let them start their bank, no?” Zhongli said as he gazed at the marsh spread beneath him.

The Yaksha only scoffed but said no more.

Building up your courage, you deemed it was your turn to voice out your thoughts, “Um… Rex Lapis, I see your point, but wouldn’t it be best to resolve the problem before it persists into something larger? We all know- All of Teyvat knows, that the Fatui are not to be trusted.”

Your archon offered you a kind smile, “I understand your worries, Name. However, as of the moment, they have not presented themselves as such. If they truly are our enemies, then it would be beneficial for us to know their intentions.”

You frowned deeply at his statement. Seeing you do so, somehow, your archon immediately identified your main concern.

“Is this about the Tianquan assigning you to be her representative for the Fatui?”

The moment those words left his mouth, a growl tore from Xiao’s throat, but he held his tongue.

“Did Ganyu tell you?”

The Archon nodded and you sighed.

“I volunteered, actually.”

And at that point, Xiao vanished into thin hair, but you could still his sense his presence around.

“May I know why?” Zhongli questioned gently.

For a moment, you struggled for words. You didn’t know how to describe this ‘itch’ to him. “At first, it was supposed to be Ganyu, since in the Tianquan’s eyes- Ganyu is an adeptus and she does not know that I am, too. Perhaps she didn’t want to put me in harm’s way, a ‘visionless human’ at the side of a harbinger. After some convincing to Ningguang for my volunteering, I spoke to Ganyu next.

“The adepti are divine beings that walk here in Liyue. I had this feeling that putting a divine next to a power-hungry harbinger would become an issue. I told Ganyu that, since I looked ‘harmless’ and ‘ordinary,’ the harbinger’s interest about the divine would never surface.”

A stretch of silence wrapped around them as Zhongli pondered over your words. “Perhaps, are you also planning to dig out the truth of their arrival?”

You nodded, “I knew you would allow them to stay, so I just took it upon myself to unfurl their secrets.”

“Hmmm… I grant you permission on doing this. However, should trouble arise, do not hesitate to tell us.”

~

The glare pointed at you was strong. Even without him saying a single word, you could hear his phantom voice in your head speak with such coldness, What are you thinking?

You simply gave him a reassuring smile, “I’ll be fine, Xiao. I may be a human in mortal eyes, but please do remember that I am also an adeptus, no matter how weak I am.”

Xiao releases a huff, but still sits by your side at the floor of the balcony, letting the moon kiss his skin. “You’re not weak.” He mumbled as he snaked his hand to yours.

To him, you will never be weak. In fact, you were the strongest being he has ever laid his eyes on. Not physically, no. It was you mental and emotional fortitude. Back during the Archon War, he always admired how you kept your head held up high no matter the suffering you have experienced. No matter how much death surrounded you, you still fought. And that strength made you a survivor. During the war, you never failed to help the wounded. Even when someone dies under your care, you held strong for the departed and for those who are left behind. You were a pillar of hope.

He brings your hand to his lips and kisses every knuckle “… Just be careful. If ever you are in trouble do not-“

“Hesitate to call your name.” You finished, beaming at his words.

~

As someone who used to be a healer and a doctor, you were quite familiar with several mild skin diseases that mortals can suffer from.

If there is an itch, you do not scratch it- for you will only aggravate the area even more.

Now that you’re working alongside the Fatui as the Tianquan’s representative, the itch you kept feeling was only irritated more. Especially whenever you spoke with the Harbinger who goes by the name Childe. And since your work requires you to cooperate with him, you also don’t miss the chance to discover what he hides, should the opportunity presents itself.

Childe… his azure eyes certainly have their… charm to those unaware. However, you knew better. You know he’s capable of drowning you just by his eyes. While he may be a cheerful man, his eyes lack the lustre of joy. The eyes are the windows of the soul, yes? If so, all you see is an unending ocean that you do not want to swim in. The surface may be calm, but the deep is relentless. However, duty bound you are- deep within the ocean, you shall find the secrets the Fatui hides.

Again, another scratch to the itch, but it only irritates you more.

~ 

The news of Rex Lapis’s death became the catalyst of you confronting the Harbinger. From Yujeng Terrace all the way to Northland Bank, you ran (with Ningguang’s permission of course). Before you can even open the door to his office, something caught your eye.

It’s faint, but you’re an adeptus. You sensed elemental traces, just smack bang at the middle of the door. You carefully scrutinized the tracings, and fortunately you knew Snezhnayan script. And what you read only made your heart sink.

It’s ready.

With the adeptal arts, you managed to uncover the origins of these elemental tracings.

Scratch.

Without hesitation, you followed these tracings until it led you into some ruins.

Scratch.

Following the tracings further, you find yourself in a dimly lit room. Wary, you summoned your weapon imbued with your element.

Scratch.

Searching the room, you came across several antique boxes. You opened them.

Scratch.

What you saw were familiar. Too familiar. Dimming the room more with your element, you find more Sigils of Permission hanging on the walls and on the ceilings. The energy within them were faint, but with enough numbers, it’s enough to kill a-

“Well, well well, I thought you’d be there mourning for your Archon. But here you are, snooping around someone else’s research material.”

The sound of his voice made you sharply turn your head to him, your stance now more offensive. “What are you planning?” You bit coldly.

The Harbinger hummed a small tune, “Nothing much… But! If you’re really curious, I guess I could tell you.” He hummed some more but you knew he’s not finished. Once he finished his tune, he grinned to you menacingly and the depths in his eyes became even deeper and darker, “After all, I won’t let you leave this place with you knowing my secret~”

~

There was this one time, Xiao struggled against himself so much, he scratched himself red so that he could anchor himself back to the real world. You remembered how much you cried as he slept in your arms. You never wanted to see him do that again. Seeing him hurt himself also hurt you, too. It was like a stab in the heart, then a twist, and twist some more. A slap in the reality that you might lose him one day.

As he slept, you solemnly observed the wounds he sustained himself to. They were angry red, just like blood.

Now, you, yourself scratched that itch in your head too much into a wound for blood to seep through. You scratched too much and now you have to bleed from it.

~

You were slipping in and out of consciousness. Sleep was tempting you more and more but you know you have to wake up. You were aware that this is going on for days.

Everything hurts. You remembered how his blades, imbued with the Sigils, weakened you thoroughly. Every slash he brought to your body just drained the energy away from you. But still you had to do something.

He wanted an adeptus- he wanted an adeptus in order for the Sigils to grow stronger both in number and in power.

Now here you are, bound by chains and suspended at the middle of this empty room. These chains were adorned by talismans that drained away your energy. You were bleeding from your wounds of your previous battle.

Drip. Drip. Drip goes the blood and pools on the ground underneath you. The ground, you barely noticed, was lined by Liyuean script which enacts the ritual of the Sigils draining your divine power from your blood.

To the eyes of a sadist- you were a picture perfect in a canvas. A dark room lined by the damned Sigils, glowing an eerie gold. Then there's you with your bloodied clothes and chains. The red pool underneath was casting a red glow on your way, giving you a red shade to your pale skin.

Everything hurts-

And everything was driving you mad.

You can also feel the Overlord of the Vortex feed from your energy through the Sigils. You sensed his lust for power and revenge. You felt his anger and the corruption within him. You felt his hatred and his want to bring death. For days that felt like years, you’ve been battling against that very same god in your head. This battle was not something you shall not lose to and failure is not an option. If you fail here, then Liyue will fall. 

This god- he was driving you mad slowly.

If ever you are in trouble, do not hesitate to call my-

You shut the thought from your head. You are not going to call him. You will not speak of him. You will not think of him. You will not call him. Not to this place where his corruption will grow. No. You Will Not Call Him.

If it means that me not calling you will keep you safe from the corrupted remnant of a god- so be it. 

Please

However, no matter how much you denied yourself to call his name, no matter how much your heart yearns to be with him- the wind does not ignore the pained sob that left your lips.

~

Ever since the news of Rex Lapis's death and the visit of the Traveler with a Sigil in his hand- the corruption within him just bloomed into something feral.

The Sigil- there was something wrong about it but Xiao doesn't know what is it that is wrong. Then there's you- where are you? Surely with the news of their Archon's death- it would send you to bring forth a meeting for the adepti to talk this over. But now- for days- you remain not by his side.

With you missing- the demons inside him are slowly taking control over him, taking advantage of his vulnerability for you. For each passing day, it was slow torture for him- The worry bubbling in him was consuming him. He glared at the Sigil between his fingers and not failing to notice how his dark aura covers him once more. 

“Traveler,” Xiao called sharply, “What is it you intend to do next?” 

To any mere mortal, the look his eyes held were enough to strike fear, but the Traveler stealed themselves- meeting the adeptus’s gaze with an equally serious calm. “I have my suspicions on a certain harbinger and I-”

“Where?” The Yaksha growled.

“In the Golden House.”

Without a word nor warning, Xiao placed a hand on the Traveler’s shoulder and teleported them to the place where the Exuvia is hidden.

To the Traveler, everything happened so quickly as one event led to another. One moment, they were standing among unconscious bodies of the Millelith then the next thing they knew a corrupted and demonic gust of wind flew them away to the side. Regaining back their vision, they could see Alatus’s spear now at Tartaglia’s barrier made of Sigils. 

Alatus narrowed his eyes at the floating talismans and began to calculate the flow of this incoming battle with precision and accuracy despite his losing control over himself. 

It was a tense minute of sizing each other up, but eventually, Tartaglia has broken the silence with his annoying innocent voice. 

“Who would have thought that I’d have the honor of fighting another adeptus of Liyue?” 

The question immediately fed the corruption within him, the dark aura exploding at it. He knew that he should not believe in the Harbinger’s words so easily, but the glint in the latter’s eyes held truth. You could be out there, hurting, scared, alone. You could be out there, bleeding out. You could be out there dyi-

His aura exploded once more at the thoughts spreading in his being. With a burst of unspeakable power, Alatus lifted his weapon and pierced the barrier once more, this time breaking it without failure. At the threat, Tartaglia backed away as he donned his mask.

In a similar fashion, Alatus, too donned his mask. “I will ask you once,” the Conqueror of Demons spoke with a deathly calm, “Where is she?”

~

He should have killed him then and there. But the call of the Overlord of the Vortex must not be ignored as it threatens Liyue. 

In the small opportunity of escape, Childe took it. But he was weak and injured as Alatus swiftly threw his spear to block his way and teleported right in front of him. In a show of power, the Conqueror of Demons lifted the mortal by the neck.

“I will ask you again, where is she?”

In fear, Childe told him everything and at his every word, Xiao listened carefully- never speaking once. But the anger within his heart, it boils- it rages. His amber eyes bored into Childe’s soul- thinking what he should do to this mortal. Oh how killing him would be so nice. However, when the Yaksha’s gaze landed on the regal form of the Exuvia, he merely threw the mortal in its way.

“Killing you would have been easier. However, the crimes you have presented against Liyue are not mine for me to judge.

I leave the Harbinger to you... Rex Lapis.”

Once out of the Golden House, the Overlord roared once more, shaking the lands of the nation. However, along with it, he heard the faintest of voices. I’m so sorry... I couldn’t hold him back anymore. 

Only then did the demons in his heart freely took control of him. Just like the stories of old, where the Yaksha walks, death follows. But they were no stories. In his way towards the ruins where you were held captive, every step he took brought carnage and even more death and blood to taint his hands. No Fatui will leave this place alive. The very being of destruction ended many lives. Each death, the demons were growing stronger.

All he wanted now was to kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill killkillkill killkill kill killkillkillkillkillkillkillkillkillkill

Then seeing you suspended in the ceiling and bound by chains. Blood was painted on your lifeless skin. Wounds were littered and bruises were blooming on your form. But most of all, your eyes. What were once full of life and hope- now empty and blank. His demons quieted down.

Broken. You were like a broken porcelain doll.

“N-name...” His voice cracked, not believing it all.

With haste, he quickly broke your binds and caught you in his arms. he was fast to check for your pulse and your breathing. And thank the Archons, you were breathing but barely. You were now walking the line between life and death. With all his might yet a gentle caress, he hugged you for dear life. “Name... It’s me...”

But still, your eyes still held no recognition and it shattered his heart to pieces. With further inspection, he sensed the presence within you. A corruption. A certain evil. 

“Name, stay with me please,” Xiao begged with desperation as he fought back tears. “It’s me who supposed to be the corrupted one between us, not you... I’m not allowing you to leave me, you hear me-”

With a ritual of the adeptal arts, he started purging and purifying the evil left by the god who fed from you. He is not letting you stay alone in your prison, not for a second longer. 

Xiao prays and he never prayed before. Even to his master. But just this once, He prays with desperation. You are the light in his darkness. You are the moon in his night. 

The ritual was a delicate process. For every word he spoke, he was rewarded by your screams of pain and the writhing of your fragile body. He wanted to stop, but he can’t. He had to physically restrain you from trying to escape from his embrace and from hurting yourself. And for every cry you released, Xiao merely shuts his eyes clos just for him not to see your pained eyes. Every now and then, Xiao speaks gentle apologies and words of encouragement for you. You were coming back. But still, the evil persists.

You writhed and scratched against him, until you were creating more wounds for blood to seep through. When it came to a point, you began pleading and begging for him to stop, that was when Xiao had shed a tear. So he continues the ritual, his prayers, and his apologies. They were arriving to a point where the ritual is reaching its conclusion but your screams only grew louder.

Please, just a little more...

Please, just stop...

Please...

The corruption disintegrated away from you in a forceful release of dark energy. He was breathing deeply, attempting to calm his loud heart. When he placed his gaze on you, you were breathing rapidly and your eyes were searching blindly and your hands were desperately holding onto him.

“X-Xiao...” You whispered, “Where am I? Where are you?”

With a sigh of relief, the Yaksha hugged you again closer and his forehead to yours, fearing you would go away again. The action made you lift your hands to his face, still searching blindly.

“I’m here, Name... I’m here.” At his voice, the dam in your eyes broke as you cried silently. Xiao was not adept in emotions, but for you, he will face them gladly. He lets you cry as he gives you soft whispers of assurance, safety, love, and promises. However, you were not crying because of what had happened to you. You were crying for him. After experiencing such corruption-

You sobbed some more- you were this close to him losing you and you could not bring yourself to imagine if your roles were reversed.

“P-please,” you said with a broken voice, “please don’t go to the place where I can’t follow...’

The words, at first puzzled him, but after a few moments, he realized and once more it broke his heart. Bringing you closer, Xiao let loose the tears he was holding back. With a gentleness unexpected of the Conqueror, he simply littered your face with kisses. “I promise if only you would do the same.”

With your smile that he loved dearly for so long you too spoke your promise, “I do.” They were simply two words, but the comfort they bring into the Yaksha’s heart was in volumes.

After that, you shared a few tender moments in each other’s arms. Simply relishing the feeling of their familiar warmth. A little later, Xiao spoke, “Would you like to eat some Almond Tofu once we get home?”

The question made you giggle at his innocence, so you agreed. Despite you needing physical medical attention. But Almond Tofu with him? Yes, you two definitely need some emotional healing.

A/N: fINALLY dONE lmao this was supposed to be short but angst really makes me want to write longer everytime haha~ anyway this request really made me ponder bout genshin stuff with all the corruption this and corruption that but then a question popped up like-

how did childe replicate the sigil of permission? since sigils are imbued with divine energy, i just thought how did this guy accumulate so much sigils to the point of freeing Osial- a god!!! soooo i just played with the idea for a bit then figured out maybe these pieces of paper get the divine energy from a divine source right? and the adepti are divine beings of liyue and another thing- you guys might have noticed the change of names in some scenes- i dont know but i think somehow different names represents different side of a person like- we have childe the cheerful harbinger then tartaglia the power hungry harbinger- there’s Alatus who’s calculating and cold, there’s the Conqueror of Demons who’s ruthless and unforgiving, then Xiao who is calm and humane- lastlyyyyy i might post this in ao3 ksks

[debtdeath]

gonna be a bit self indulgent and ask if you've got any more autistic sniper headcanons? im autistic as well so im just blasting him with self projection beams lol - @gross-magpie

wonderful request! blasting characters with self-projection beams is what they're made for pretty much imo. anyway, i think these would fit a bunch of autistic traits...

- genuinely think sniper is a creature of habit. idk he seems like he's got very specific routines that he'd probably get extremely grumpy if he got interrupted or just couldn't do them or whatever.

- somewhat connected to the previous thought but i feel like he's absorbed and built a lot of his behaviour and base personality from people he looked up to when growing up, like his dad or an older classmate or a crush. i actually have so many thoughts about how sniper perceives himself lol

- i think a bunch of other people also have this headcanon but him having a special interest in nature and animals in particular? good shit. i can see him be very very passionate about australian birds and he probably routinely misses hearing magpie songs in the morning... i would too tbh. anyway he'd talk about this stuff for ages to anyone he's comfortable enough with :)

- super deadpan, to the point where people who dont know him are fully unsure if he's joking or dead serious lmao. i think that can also lead to him accidentally insulting people or being perceived as too blunt?

- goes non-verbal when actually upset and that probably freaks the fuck out of scout whose first instinct when conflict arises is to like.. talk through it?

- feels like he spent his entire life studying people's facial expressions and social cues in order to not make a fool of himself lmao, i think he's generally good at recognising patterns so every social cue is part of a pattern but anything new that falls outside of what he already knows he goes ????????????? what's goin on here

- he seems like he got told he has an "old soul" a lot as a kid on account of being very reserved and quiet hmmm

feels like i could be going more specific but i also often end up fleshing out my headcanons a lot more when im writing stories lol

[voorbeees]

[ hi im back with a part 2 bc im a sappy bitch. you can read part one here ]

Jesse makes his way into the kitchen. Early mornings are a thing he's had to get used to and there doesn't seem to be enough coffee in the world to keep him awake. Sure he's typically awake for work, but he schedules appointments around the time he spends recouping from his nightly hobby. After all a business doesn't run itself. He thinks this, accompanied with a move to LA shortly after taking the girl in could play a large part in it.

Shortly after they'd arrived at the new home, Tilly had been thrilled to learn she had her own room and own things. Apparently that was another thing her mother had failed to provide. He wants to ask her what her life was like before, but each time he thinks to broach the subject something makes him shy away from it. Maybe it's for the best. Besides, considering what it was, Jesse's sure he'll feel fire settle in his veins. Not long after that he'd had her enrolled in a small private school. It was never too early to start an education. He's also taken it upon himself to start teaching her ASL. The decision was only made final when she had looked up at him with those puppy dog eyes and said the simple phrase "I wish we could talk better."

And that had been another thing, not once had she acted like he was a stranger. It was actually the opposite. She acted like she'd known him her whole life. Maybe that was good, it made breaking the ice less difficult, at least in his mind.

Now Jesse adjusts his black suit coat, making sure he looks dressed to a T, even if he is just going downstairs. He's always been one to preen, current circumstances haven't changed that at all. Black Oxfords echo off the marble floor and he's instantaneous met with the beaming face of Tilly.

"Jesse! Jesse!" She rushes from her seat at the dining room table and bounces around his legs. Her tiny red curls dance about her shoulders in the process. She wastes no time in asking for her favorite thing, which is only made obvious a split second later when she holds her arms up, waiting to be picked up.

He picks her up with ease, acting like she weighs nothing (and to him she probably does). Her tiny arms wrap around his neck. She's made it clear she enjoys being at his height. Tilly pulls out of the hug a second later and starts flapping a tiny arm in the air. "I've been practicing with my writing!" She beams, little face begging for approval. He'd be cruel to deny her that so Jesse nods and walks the both of them back over to the table. Tilly wiggles herself out of his grasp just enough so she can grab the paper and shove it in his face.

It takes his eye a moment to focus and he has to hold the paper back a bit but sure enough, there in a child's scrappy handwriting is her name repeated at least ten times. Her statement is met with a slow nod of approval.

"Oh!" She finally makes the effort to remove herself from his arms and settle back into her chair. "Maybe I can try writing your name next?" It's a question but he knows what she's implying and its not a moment later that he pulls his phone out. He spends a moment typing on it and then turns it around to face her.

J-E-S-S-E

An amused look settles on his scarred face as he sees her focusing all her attention to write his name. Her tongue pokes out of the left side of her mouth as she finishes the last letter and holds it up, rather proud of herself.

It's messy but it's a cute gesture, so he takes it from her and pins it to the fridge with a magnet. That earns him a squeal of delight. The excitement is short lived as she goes back to her task. Jesse takes the opportunity to finally pour himself a cup of coffee.

' YOU'RE SPENDING THE DAY WITH SPANN. ' He hasn't actually left her alone yet. At least not that she knows. He's made sure to always leave when she's asleep, a caretaker there if something was to arise in his absence. The last thing he wants is for Tilly to think he's abandoning her.

"Why?" She asks as she looks up at him and then goes back to her work.

' I HAVE...BUSINESS. ' If you can consider visiting a plastic surgeon business. It's something he's wanted to do since he first saw what was once his "face". But Spann and the doctors had highly discouraged any reconstruction until the scars were fully healed. All in all it had added up to almost a year's time and it had been nothing but pure hell. Not that he cared what people thought when they saw him, more so he cared what he saw when he looked at himself in the mirror. It wasn't good. Hell, for the first several months he'd busted every mirror within five feet of him, going so far as to have them removed from places of his organization that had them. It'd been a touchy subject and not many could breach it.

Jesse remembers when Tilly saw his face for the first time. It had been the next day and it was on accident. He wasn't planning on showing the mangled part of himself until she seemed comfortable around him. But she had walked in on him in his home office. He'd been sitting at his desk, mask safety packed away in the chrome case. She was supposed to be sleeping and much to his horror when he had looked up, she wasn't. Instead she was standing in the doorway with wide eyes. He'd frozen like a deer in headlights. What the fuck was he supposed to do? Was she scared of him? Fuck, he'd be scared of himself. It's not like he even looked human anymore. He sat there for what felt like an eternity, unmoving until she walked forward. "You got hurt bad, huh?" She hadn't looked at him in disgust, but rather understanding. It was like it was the most common thing to ever happen. Tilly had come up and stood in front of him. "I got hurt one time too." She pulled her hair back to show a small indention on her forehead. "I hit my head and it left a really big spot." Something about that small stupid child gesture had made him laugh. It had demolished the wall he had built, afraid of traumatizing her.

Tilly lays her pencil down and looks up at Jesse now. To only be six she's intuitive. She can tell by the way he grips the handle of the mug and shifts his weight slightly that something is off. Usually its "I have work." Not "business." It's an odd choice of words. So she does what kids do best, she bombards him with fucking questions. "What kind?"

' BUSINESS. '

There's that word again. No matter how hard she tries, she just can't fucking pick out the problem. "Can I come?" Jesse shakes his head 'no.' A tiny frown creases her brow. "Do you have to go to the doctor?" Suddenly she gasps, standing up in her chair. "Are you sick!?"

Jesse's signing and shaking his head 'no' before he can stop himself. It's not hard to tell she's working herself up. Fuck, the last thing he wants right now or at all is her to he upset.

"Are-are you going for your face?" Tilly sniffles and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. Of course he fucking is, why else would he go to a god damned doctor. He obviously can't say it like that so he nods. "Bu-but there's nothing wrong with it!" Now she's just being polite, Jesse's sure of it. But the logical part of his brain says no, she's upset because she fucking cares about you you god damned fool. "What i-if I don't know who you are after? Because you lo-ook different?!" At that she breaks into full on hysteria. There's a few other words but Jesse can't make them out. It just all sounds garbled to him.

He considers pulling his phone out again but settles for a different approach. Jesse lowers himself on to one knee a few inches from her perch in the chair. He signs "hush" and "okay". Those are the easiest ones she's able to read but she just shakes her head crying even harder. "It's no-ot okay!" There's a hiccup added after she finishes speaking and for a split second Jesse thinks she's going to suffocate on her own tears. He blinks several times, actually taken aback by just how upset she is over this. This is a good thing not a bad one. He's going to look better but she doesn't want that. Of course he understands the whole "changing of features" process but it's still him. It's not like he's cutting off one of his fucking hands.

" It will be okay. " His hand hovers over her back like it's debating if it should offer comfort or not. Instead the decision is made for him as Tilly wipes at her eyes and sniffles.

"You don't know that!" There's a long pause and for a second Jesse thinks she's going to start bawling again, but she doesn't. Instead she looks up at him and the intensity in that stare almost has him drawing back. There's something in it. Love? Impossible. People don't love him, they tolerate him. Or rather he pays them to tolerate him. Tilly blinks once, then twice and yes, he sees it now. It's a mixture of love and adoration. Something almost foreign to him. "What if something happens?" Her tiny lip quivers. "Who will I have then?"

Fuckfuckfuckfuck. His mind draws a blank. There's no way for him to completely assure something won't happen. Granted people don't usually die from plastic surgeon, though he guesses it's possible. ' IT WON'T. I WILL STILL BE HERE. ' The phone's electronic voice drones out into the air. That's not what he wants to say. Jesse wants to say this huge fucking essay of why she doesn't need to worry but sometimes the simplest answers are the best.

"Promise?"

' YES. '

--------------

Blinding light sears his brown eye as it flutters open. Are lights always this bright? He doesn't think so. If they are then he's definitely paying someone to dim all the ones in his house. Because Jesus fuck that's a horrible thing to wake up to. Jesse blinks a few times then lets out a sigh. He can't feel his face (which, God willing, with strong as fuck drugs he won't have to until it heals).

It's only after he's been awake for an hour or two that he turns to the door at his right and sees Spann standing there, Tilly's small wide eyed form in front of her. He offers a shakey wave as a greeting. Tilly looks up at Spann, who nods and urges her in then steps back out to answer a call. Jesse thinks she looks even more comical like this. She's acting like he's a porcelain doll that could break at the lightest touch.

Tilly rests her tiny arms on his bedside. "Do you feel better?" Jesse gives her a so-so response with his hand. She takes this as privilege to climb her way up into the bed beside him, her tiny form looking even smaller near him. "Well," her forehead wrinkles, "you don't look different."

Now he is laughing. His shoulders shaking as an indicator. She looks at him before deciding to curl up next to him, her tiny head on his shoulder. "I still love you anyway. Even if you look like a mummy."

Jesse signs. " I love you too, squirt. "

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Eccentricity [Chapter 9: Now I Love Your Shadow And I Love Your Curls]

Series Summary: Joe Mazzello is a nice guy with a weird family. A VERY weird family. They have a secret, and you have a choice to make. Potentially a better love story than Twilight.

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: “Til I Die” by Parsonsfield. 

Chapter Warnings: Language, references to sex, violence, and drug use.

Word Count: 7.6k.

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii​ @bramblesforbreakfast​ @maggieroseevans​ @culturefiendtrashqueen​ @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark​ @escabell​ @im-an-adult-ish​ @queenlover05​ @someforeigntragedy​ @imtheinvisiblequeen​ @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhyee​ @deacyblues​ @tensecondvacation​ @brianssixpence​ @some-major-ishues​ @haileymorelikestupid​ @youngpastafanmug​ @simonedk​

Field Trip

“You want to go to Chicago with me?”                

I coughed, having almost inhaled a chunk of pineapple off my slice of GrubHubbed pizza. We were sitting on the grass outside Forks And Spoons under the shade of the maple trees, which were turning from jade to ruby to amber to fool’s gold, rejoining the earth they once rose from one fallen leaf at a time. It hadn’t rained in almost four days—was that some kind of record?!—and the leaves littering the ground crunched when I stepped on them, which I did purposefully and often. The breeze was soft and whispery and temperate. I could get used to this whole having actual seasons thing. “What, in like a hypothetical, at some point in my life kind of way?”

Joe smiled. His U Chicago hoodie of the day was black. “No, as in this weekend.”

“Really?”

“The Cubs have a game on Saturday, and it’s supposed to be rainy and overcast the whole time, and I just thought...” He shrugged, toying with a piece of pizza crust before tossing it to the squirrels. He’s nervous, I realized. How the hell do I have the ability to make the sexy undead Italian man nervous? “It might be nice for us to be able to get away for a few days. Away from my family. Away from Charlie. Not that I don’t appreciate the ambient noise of his snoring from the living room couch, it’s super endearing, I seriously consider dating him instead of you at least twice a week.”

“Go for it. Charlie could use a rich husband. His pension is pathetic.”

“You wouldn’t miss me?”

“I am not necessarily opposed to clandestinely seducing my sugar daddy stepdad should the occasion arise.”

Joe crossed himself like a nun passing tattooed, cursing, lip-pierced teenagers on the sidewalk. “Lord, protect me from this harlot.”

A weekend away. No Charlie, no constant and chaotic whirlwind of Lees, no Ben. I hadn’t spoken to Ben since our misadventure in the Lee kitchen; if he wasn’t avoiding me of his own volition, he was following orders to stay away. Joe claimed that they’d talked it out. I wasn’t sure if I believed him. “I accept your invitation. Although, truthfully, I’d rather get hit by a bus than watch an entire real-life, no-commercial-breaks baseball game.”

“I accept your acceptance. And I’ll throw in a visit to the Shedd Aquarium, just for you. They have baby sea otters.”

“Sweet.” I checked my iPhone. “I’m gonna be late for Chemistry.”

“Anything fun planned?”

“We’re doing a lab involving hydrochloric acid. I’m highly concerned that Ben will accidentally spill some on himself. The miraculous instantaneous healing thing might raise a few questions.”

“Hm,” Joe replied. But he wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at my bandaged hand. And he wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Joe, I’m fine.”

“Yeah.” He took a preoccupied swig of his Dr. Pepper. Solemnity never seemed right on him; it was like he was wearing somebody else’s skin. “You’ve mentioned that.”

“Hey. Mob guy.”

Now his eyes flicked to mine.                              

“No more sad spaghetti.”

“Okay.” He surrendered, took my face in his hands, gave me a kiss on each cheek and then one quick parting peck on the forehead. “You win. I’m not sad. I’m ecstatic, actually. I’m gonna be eating my weight in hotdogs and mustard-slathered pretzels on Saturday. What’s there not to be ecstatic about?”

“The fact that your license says you’re only twenty and consequently can’t get a beer?”

Joe blinked, remembering. “Fuck.”

I drained my Diet Coke, flung my pizza crust to the skittering grey squirrels—no eerie albino forest friends today—and pulled on my backpack. “See ya. Have an awesome time in Game Theory.”

“Thanks, I probably won’t!” he chimed, waving, grinning compliantly; and yet did I still sense some lingering menace of disquiet, of fear? I suspected I did. Chicago would cure everything.

Ben tensed when I walked into Professor Belvin’s classroom, ran his fingers through his unruly blond hair, peered fixedly down at his notebook and feigned obliviousness. There was already a metal tray of Erlenmeyer flasks, labeled bottles of solutions, burettes, goggles, gloves, and an unassembled ring stand crowding our small table by the open window. Autumn air poured in like seawater through cracks in the hull of a ship.

“Guess who’s gonna see the Cubs play up close and personal this Saturday?” I announced.

He pretended to have just noticed me. “...You...? But that doesn’t sound like you.”

“It was Joe’s idea. I’m acting like I’m not totally thrilled and freaking out about it, but I am. Don’t tell him.”

Now Ben was the one staring at my bandaged hand. His green eyes were large and unfocused.

“I’m fine,” I insisted.  

“Sure,” Ben returned noncommittally.

I started skimming through the packet of lab instructions and setting up our titration experiment as Professor Belvin circulated through the classroom, observing, commenting, offering suggestions and critiques. My wounded hand—still sore in the lull between Advil doses and relatively useless—was quite the embarrassing hinderance; I fumbled with a large glass flask and almost dropped it.

Ben shook his head and reached out to stop me. “Here, oh my god, this is so pitiful, sit down. Please sit down. I’ll set it up. It’s the least I can do.”

“Thanks.” I peeked at his notebook. “Your handwriting is atrocious. Haven’t you had like a century to work on that?”

“Penmanship was never at the top of my to-do list, tragically.”

“What language is that, anyway?” The phrases scrawled in black ink in Ben’s notebook definitely weren’t English. Or Italian. “Elvish? Are you a lowkey Lord Of The Rings fan? Magic and self-sacrifice and nearly insurmountable evil, I could see that being your thing.”

He smirked, struggling with the ring stand. “It’s Welsh.”

“Welsh,” I repeated, perplexed. “Welsh...like how Gwil is Welsh?”

“Precisely.”

Professor Belvin checked in on us, nodded in approval, reminded me that I was always welcome to stop by at bowling league activities, and resumed his wandering.

“Gwil still speaks it,” Ben continued. “The rest of them speak it too. At least enough for basic communication.”

“I didn’t know,” I said, fascinated, examining the long, unfamiliar words riddled with Ls and Ws and Cs. “But that must be very useful.”

“It is. Welsh is nearly a dead language at this point. It’s like talking in code. I always refused to learn it on principle...or maybe I was just being difficult. I would study other languages, Arabic, Japanese...but not Welsh. That was always Gwil’s language. Their language. It was a Lee thing. But now...”

“Now you’re sort of a Lee too,” I finished for him, smiling.

“Whatever,” Ben said, hiding behind his bangs.

I watched him as he at last tamed the ring stand, secured the burette, placed the Erlenmeyer flask. Then he began reading the labels on the solution bottles. “Guess what else.”

“What, Baby Swan?”

I grinned, showing off my unremarkable, entirely benign human teeth. “I’ll bring you back your very own U Chicago hoodie.”

That night, after a pleasantly prosaic dinner with Charlie—burgers, one veggie and one of the conventional variety, and milkshakes at Danny’s Diner—I started packing a small, Arizona-sky-blue suitcase as sparse raindrops pattered against the roof and moonlight streamed in through the open window. Then I ticked off my mental inventory.

“Jeans, sweaters, pajamas, socks...”

I pawed through the top drawer of my old, scratched dresser—the same one that had once upon a time been Renee’s—and contemplated the bra and panty options. Would my theme be comfort and practicality, or feral impenitent seductress? Friday and Saturday in Chicago would be our first nights alone together. That had to be significant, right? After some deliberation, I gathered a handful of lacy, transparent, and/or exceptionally skimpy lingerie from Victoria’s Secret that Jessica had more or less forced upon me during a shopping trip in Port Angeles last month. As I dropped them into the open suitcase, I glanced up to see the albino owl outside my open bedroom window.

“You never know,” I told the owl, shrugging.

It leered judgmentally back at me with those gory red eyes.

“Oh shut up. How many eggs have you laid in your lifetime, Casper The Unfriendly Ghost? Probably like a bazillion. Freaking feathery trollop.”

The owl had nothing to offer in its own defense.

“Why don’t you ever come around when Joe’s here? I’m sure he’d love to meet you. He’s pale and weird too. Although I like his eyes a little better than yours. No offense, Snowflake.”

The owl blinked, tilted its gaze at me, ruffled its feathers and sent the raindrops that had gathered there flying in every direction.

I slid my iPhone out of my back pocket, spun around, and snapped a quick selfie with the owl in the background. “Say cheese, Marshmallow!”

The owl immediately unfurled its wings and flapped off into the trees, vanishing.

“Huh. I guess homegirl is camera shy.” I texted my selfie to Archer, typing out with my thumbs: I am the Steve Irwin of Forks. Behold, one of my many forest friends.

Archer replied a few minutes later: WOW! Pasty and mildly disturbing. Exactly your type. :)

“Yours too, apparently,” I murmured, smiling in my empty room.

I went to my full-length mirror with the plastic, teal-colored border, briefly appraised my reflection, felt a dull swell of approval for what I saw there. The version of myself that had once been so consumed by fears of inadequacy seemed impossibly far away, maybe even fictitious, a dream so vivid I could mistake it for truth. Three things were taped across the top of the mirror: Joe’s Official Citation!! No More Sad Spaghetti!! post-it, his Official Whatever You Want Pass, and a photo of us dressed up together and standing in front of the limo in the Lees’ driveway just before the Calawah University Homecoming dance. I peeled off the Official Whatever You Want Pass, carefully folded it into a neat little square, and tucked it into my wallet.

When the rain began to pour and thunder rolled in off the Pacific Ocean, I closed my bedroom window; but I remembered to leave it unlocked for Joe.

Departure

“Got your license?”

“Yes, Dad,” Joe sighed.

“Got your airport snacks?”

Joe held up the gallon-sized Ziploc bag filled with pumpkin and white chocolate chip cookies. “We’re ready to rock.”

“Call me when you get there safe,” Mercy fretted, hugging me and then Joe. “And Joseph, sweetheart, you make sure you keep an eye on her. She’s never been to Chicago before, it’s a big city, and O’Hare is an absolute nightmare, it’s so easy to get lost...”

“I don’t think he needs any reminders, love.” Dr. Lee laid a hand on her shoulder, stroked his neatly-trimmed beard with the other, watched us with a vague and wistful smile.

Mercy went back to trimming the flowers she had spread out across the kitchen countertop, white calla lilies that she threaded one by one into a translucent sapphire blue vase. “Now don’t forget to say goodbye to your brother. He’s out back feeding the new ducks. And I expect these ones to stick around for a while, thank you very much.”

“Mom, I don’t need to say goodbye to Rami. I’ll just think it. Really loudly.” Joe rubbed his temples with his fingertips and squeezed his eyes shut. “Peace out, you nosy bastard.”

“Joseph,” Mercy pleaded.

“Okay, okay, I’ll go say goodbye. Don’t get all aggressive. Don’t take it out on the flowers.” Aggressive...what a joke. I doubted that Mercy Eleanor Lee, formerly Martin, had a single aggressive bone in her immortal body; not even the infinitesimal stapes of her inner ears or the sesamoids of her feet.

“They’re calla lilies,” she replied dreamily, tending them like children. “And they symbolize love, and beauty, and fidelity...”

My nostrils itched and burned faintly in dissent. “I think I’m allergic to them.”

“You’re allergic to fidelity?” Joe asked, raising his eyebrows. “That’s it, now you’re definitely not getting my reclaimed virginity. No ma’am. I am not hit-it-and-quit-it material.”

“Oh sweet baby Jesus,” Mercy murmured.

“I’m going,” Joe said, showing his palms in capitulation and disappearing out the back door. I dragged my suitcase to the front one, politely declining Mercy and Gwil’s offers to help.

Lucy—her bleached hair in a high half-ponytail and wearing polka-dotted black tights, combat boots, a plaid miniskirt, and an extremely Octoberish orange sweater—was sitting cross-legged on the roof of Gwil’s Volvo. God, he’s such a dad. “Have a nice time,” she chirped artfully.

I opened the hatch of Joe’s Subaru and threw my suitcase inside. “Why do you sound like you already know I will?”

“I might have some relevant clairvoyant insight.”

“No way.” I stared up at her, stunned, my hands on my waist. “But you can’t see me, right...?”

“True. But this vision wasn’t of you. It was of Joe. You just happened to be there.”

Interesting. Very interesting. “And what transpired in this vision?” A night full of hot, steamy, blissful vampire sex? A girl could dream.

Lucy closed her eyes, recalling it fondly, maybe even cherishing it. “You were sitting in the stands of a professional baseball game. I could hear the crowd roaring, the umpire’s trumpeting interruptions. Blue and white...everyone was wearing blue and white. And you were there together—Joe a vampire, you human, side by side, almost entwined—shouting to each other over the thunderous noise and laughing and pushing nuggets of soft pretzels into each other’s mouths. So happy. I’d never seen Joe so happy.” Her striking pale eyes came open. “And he’s someone who’s already rather prone to happiness, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“I have,” I agreed.

“He’s never been serious about anybody else. I hope you know that.”

“I know that’s what he tells me.”

“It’s the truth,” Lucy insisted. “I would know if it wasn’t. Rami would know, Ben would know. Joe...he’s kind of the opposite of you. He’s always been the easiest to read. He’s the one Rami hears most loudly, the one who shows up most often in my visions. He’s clear, you know? Uncomplicated. Authentic. And what you mean to him...it’s something everybody sees. It’s a contagious sort of lightness, of joy. So thank you for that.”

And if whatever mysterious genetic switch that renders me immune to your talents wasn’t flipped, I’m pretty sure I’d look the same way. “I should definitely be thanking you,” I said. “You guys have a pretty cool existence going on here. And I’m so grateful to be invited into it.” For however long this lasts, anyway.

“None of us really invited you,” Lucy demurred. “We just let it happen.”

“So everyone knew I was coming? Because you saw it?”

“Everyone but Joe.”

“You never told him?”

“No. Not even now.” Lucy turned sharply towards the trees, as if she heard something in the soaring western hemlocks that swayed drunkenly in the wind. After a moment, she continued. “I’m not sure if I can even explain why. It wasn’t that I feared changing the timeline or something...my visions always come true regardless. Always. But I guess...” She tugged on her short half-ponytail, pondering. “I guess I didn’t want to cloud any of his decision-making, any of his emotions with the specter of the inevitable. I wanted whatever he felt for you to be completely organic. And it is.”

I considered her. “You are extremely thoughtful for someone who spends as much time shopping as you do.”

Lucy laughed in a high-pitched, almost juvenile trill, netting her fingers beneath her chin, her elbows resting on her bent knees. “I do like to shop. I didn’t always though.” She peered off into the trees again, this time pensively. “Did Joe tell you anything about my life before Gwil saved me?”

“Aside from the copious hippie jokes, not really.”

She nodded, her eyes far-away and still lost in the forest. “Gwil and Mercy are inordinately wonderful people. My biological father and mother, unfortunately, were not. And maybe they couldn’t help it, because from what I understand their parents were monsters too. I don’t think of them very often now, not even to resent them. But when I was alive I burned with it, with all that hatred, with all that bitterness. Every bruise was another log on the fire. Every screaming match or hurled plate was a splash of gasoline. So I ran away and found what I fancied to be a new family, and I lived on basement couches and out of vans and in abandoned buildings, and I explored increasingly inventive ways of putting that fire out.”

The October breeze cascaded through the trees, carrying echoes of birdsong and disembodied distant voices and the scent of pine. It reminded me of Joe.

“Chemically speaking,” Lucy said, “that first hit of heroin, that first high...it’s the best you’ll ever feel in your entire life. Nothing else will ever compare. Not skydiving, not backpacking through Southeast Asia on some Pulitzer-prize-winning journey of self-discovery, not winning the lottery, not the births of your children, not falling in love. And once you accept that, what’s the point in stopping? Everything you ever experience will live in the shadow of that needle. You’re twenty-five and you’ve already seen the endgame. You’re born, you suffer, you catch a glimpse of paradise, you pay bills and push shopping carts down the aisles of grocery stores and insipidly smile your way through your husband’s work parties until you die. What’s the fucking point? So I didn’t stop shooting heroin. And the whole time, I knew it was killing me. That’s what they don’t tell kids when they force them to make those idiotic classroom promises to never do drugs. You know it’s killing you, but you don’t care. Because it feels so goddamn good. Because it becomes the only sliver of your existence that doesn’t cut like glass beneath your skin. Sometimes you love things so much you let them kill you, isn’t that ridiculous?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer her; still, I heard my own voice: “Yes, it is.”

“It took dying for me to see that life is worth living. That there’s magic in the mundane and the frivolous. And that there’s beauty everywhere if you bother to look for it.” Lucy uncrossed her trim legs, leapt gracefully off the Volvo, and—with definite but not unkind scrutiny—pulled at the collar of my thrift shop sweater. “Even in your very, very, very misguided fashion preferences.”

The front door of the Lee house swung open, and Joe jogged out, carrying his suitcase. Gwil, Mercy, Scarlett, Rami, and Ben appeared on the porch to wave us off.

“What’d you do?!” Joe demanded, pointing at Lucy.

“Nothing,” she quipped.

“You guys gotta stop doing this!” Joe exclaimed. “You know what you’re doing, you know exactly what you’re doing, you gotta stop cornering people and forcing them to listen to your creepy tragic backstories! Nobody freaking asked!”

Lucy chuckled patiently and stood on her tiptoes to hug him goodbye. “Have fun.”

“You know it.” Joe tossed his suitcase into the Subaru and opened the driver’s door. “Ready, Baby Swan?”

“Almost.”

I walked to the wrap-around porch, climbed the steps, held my hand out to Ben. My stitches had almost completely dissolved over the past week, and the clunky impediment of bandages was no more. Joe crossed his arms and watched from beside the Subaru with an uneasy frown, but he didn’t try to stop me. He nodded to Rami, so subtly I almost didn’t notice. Rami nodded back.

“I will miss your melodramatic brooding immensely,” I told Ben. “Please do some fun family stuff while we’re gone. I’ll see you soon. Dan eich bendith.”

“Dan eich bendith,” he replied, taken aback. And then, after a moment’s hesitation, he ignored my outstretched hand and embraced me, his grasp so strong and yet so careful. His scent like crisp leaves and salted caramel and autumn sieved into a bottle unfolded in my lungs like an opened book.

“I Googled that especially for you,” I whispered. “You’re welcome.”

“I’m in awe.” His words were characteristically sardonic, but I heard warmth in them as well. When Ben pulled away, I saw that everyone else was smiling. Mercy had tears in her eyes.

I retreated back down the porch steps and met Joe by the Subaru. “Okay, mob guy. I’m good.”

He slid on his sunglasses, shook his head, flashed a proud and toothy grin. “You definitely are.”

All the way down Route 101 to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, we listened to Joe’s classic rock mixtapes and my NOAA Ocean Podcast episodes, reviewed the weekend itinerary, ran through the bare essentials for me to understand an MLB game (“Which I am totally not excited about whatsoever,” I informed Joe, who knew enough not to believe me).

When the Boeing 747 ascended above the clouds and unimpeded sunlight poured in from the other passengers’ windows, Joe put on a black sleeping mask over his sunglasses and reclined his seat, tried to nap, passed the time until he would be safe beneath the curtains of the sky again.

Somewhere over the Dakotas, as I leafed through a book about the Great Barrier Reef for my Marine Botany class, Joe’s hand bumped mine. “Hey,” he said drowsily, seriously; and I braced myself for some emotional declaration, some dire warning, some grave realization of the futility of what we agreed—almost always wordlessly, and yet unfailingly—was love.

“Yeah?”

“It’s an emergency.”

“Uh oh,” I replied, smiling now.

“Flag down the flight attendant and get some more of those honey roasted peanut packets,” Joe said. “I’m starving myself back to death over here.”

The Windy City

The bat cracked deafeningly against the baseball pitched at nearly a hundred miles per hour. It was a home run. The crowd erupted into mindless, primal shrieks of conquest; and when Joe jumped to his feet, clapping and cheering and nearly spilling his blue-and-white bucket of popcorn, I found that I did as well. I screamed for the team of a city I’d never lived in, sank back into my seat beside Joe, nestled against his chest as his right arm closed around my waist and hauled me in closer, as his left hand teased me with a soft pretzel nugget hovering just out of reach. And in that moment, I felt like Lucy, snatching Polaroids out of the space-time continuum of the present and the future and the past. There was where Joe and I were right now, of course; the day we had met each other in the nonfiction section of the Calawah University library; the dance floor at Homecoming; the first night he snuck soundlessly into my bedroom window; all those years we still had left to spend together. Not forever, but perhaps long enough.

“I like this baseball thing,” I told him over the roar of the crowd, twirling my fingers around the curling locks of dark hair that stuck out from under his Cubs cap. Or maybe I just like you.

“Whew, thank god.” Joe wiped his forehead with the back of his hand in mock relief. “Now I don’t have to break up with you.”

After the game—a 5-3 Cubs victory, close enough to keep the spectators’ blood pumping throughout—we boarded the L, held onto the metal railings as the packed train car bumped and swerved along, and disembarked in Little Italy. Historic brownstones were interrupted by a freckling of pizzerias, Italian ice stands, and sports bars spilling out shouts of triumph and despair. We were staying in the Four Seasons with a view of Lake Michigan; but we had an hour of daylight—albeit chilled, dreary, and forever threatening rain—left in our Saturday. Tomorrow would be the aquarium, and then dinner before catching our flight back to Seattle, back to the greenery and fog and eternal dampness that I was beginning to think of as my home. Had I really only left Phoenix two months ago? Had I ever really lived there at all?

“So,” Joe said as we walked under shedding green ash and black cherry trees, his arm draped across my shoulders. “Guess what the University of Chicago has. In addition to a killer Economics PhD program, which yours truly will be graduating from in approximately 2027, astonishingly aged not a single day. Maybe he’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline.”

“Hideous sweatshirts?” I guessed.

“One of the best Marine Biology departments in the world. And the affiliated Marine Biological Laboratory up in Massachusetts, where they send their PhDs to do research.”

“Wait, seriously?” I stopped abruptly, the heels of my boots squealing against the sidewalk. “You mean...for me?”

He rolled his eyes. “No, for my other girlfriend who is also inexplicably super obsessed with the ocean. I clearly have a type.”

“You want me...to come to Chicago...with you...after graduation? For like...a five to seven year commitment?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Well, that just sounds...serious.”

“Huh. What do you know. I guess we’re serious after all.” He took my hand and pulled me gently forward, leading me down West Taylor Street. He seemed to have a destination in mind.

“How is this going to work for you, anyway?” I asked, beaming uncontrollably now, trotting along beside him. “Living in a place that isn’t Washington or Scotland or Alaska?” Chicago was cold and cloudy for a lot of the year, true, but few cities were Forks-level wet and sunless. Forks-level tyrannically depressing, I would have said two months ago.  

He shrugged, unphased. “Night classes. Sunglasses. Faking a chronic illness so I don’t have to leave our house. I’m really good at that one. Plus I can get a doctor’s note any time I want one. I’ve got connections, you know.”

Our house. He said OUR house.

Joe came to halt in front of a stately yet plain brownstone which now operated as a trendy bookstore, the kind that sold six dollar lattes and hosted anarchist poetry slams on Friday nights.

“Is this where we’re going to crack hipsters’ kneecaps as a bonding activity?” I asked.

“This is where I grew up.”

I looked again, studying the earth-colored stone quarried over a century ago, the wrought iron railings that framed the front steps, the rectangular windows revealing the illumination and shadows of other families’ lives. “Joe,” I said softly, leaning into him, searching for my words.

“There were eight Mazzello kids: Joseph, Charles, Mimi, Salvador, Donna, Lucia, Bianca, and Giuliano.” He rattled them off like a jingle from a fast food commercial. “And I was the oldest. So when my dad dropped dead of a heart attack in the middle of his shift at the Zenith Radio factory, it was my job to step up and figure out how to keep everyone fed. I was seventeen and completely hopeless at school back then; Sal was always the smart one, the disciplined one, he ended up as a math professor at Loyola University. I was just some directionless, grieving kid who never shut up. But there was a place for boys like me in Chicago in the 1920s. The mob could get you money. The mob could turn that same incessant chatter that got you bruised at school into something useful. And the mob could give you a family.”

Joe watched the brownstone solemnly, meditatively, his hands in his pockets.

“My mom sobbed for an hour the first time I brought home an envelope full of bills with Hamilton’s face on them. She knew how I got it. But how could she say no, how could she tell me to stop? We’d never seen money like that. All my siblings could finish school. My sisters could have new dresses on days that weren’t Christmas and Easter, my brothers new shoes, Sal the glasses he needed so badly. My mother always had something to put in the offering plate at church. And once you were in the mob, it wasn’t exactly easy to leave. But they took care of their own. After I died, they sent my mother money for years, until her own children were established enough to support her. That’s when I learned that money wasn’t just something that put food on the dinner table or kept the lights on. It’s a way of showing loyalty, of giving people peace and comfort and meaningful choices in their lives. It’s how I’ve been taught to give back to the world. So I guess I shouldn’t have disparaged my fellow vampires back in Forks, because there’s a slice of my tragic backstory, Baby Swan. Now you know. And you should know everything, since we’re in this thing together. Or maybe I just want you to.”

I laid my palm against his cool and flawless face, ran my thumb lightly across his cheek. “You really are serious about me.”

“I am alarmingly serious about you.”

“Even though this thing of ours has an expiration date?” Since I can never become a vampire. Since I will never have the distinction of being a permanent fixture of the Lee coven.

“That’s not a problem for today. That’s a problem for ten or fifteen years from now, whenever you decide you want to settle down and have kids and do the whole Great American Dream bit. You’ll be sick of me by then anyway. You’ll be dying to get away from us. Hahaha, get it? It’s a pun. Dying to get away from the vampires.”

I couldn’t imagine ever being sick of Joseph Francis Mazzello. Still, ten or fifteen years felt almost as good as forever to me. Fifteen autumns, fifteen Christmases, fifteen journeys around the sun that he avoided so deftly. “Why me, Joe?” I asked, incredulous. “You could have anyone. Any human, any vampire. Why me?”

“Because you’re you,” he said simply. And his mystified dark eyes added: What kind of a question is that? “You’re smart and you’re hilarious and you actually care about the world, about where it came from, about where it’s going, about people and places and animals that you’ll never meet. You’re indomitable. You’re fearless almost to the point of recklessness. And yet you’re so kind. You’re even nice to Ben, and humans are never nice to him...they’re either horrified or confused, or they’re too busy fantasizing about him to remember that he’s a real fucking person. But you’ve always tried to see the good in him. Even when he didn’t deserve it.” Joe shook his head, marveling. “And yeah, I’ve...I’ve screwed around, full disclosure. I’ve done the hookup thing. And it was great for what it was. But I never wanted more. I never felt some gnawing, sentimental, Hallmark-channel need for connection, to understand who they were as people. And then I met you, and...I want to know every single goddamn thing about you. I want to know your favorite color, what books you read, what the hell is so appealing about pineapple pizza, what you dream of. I feel like I could never get tired of trying to understand you.”

A refrain circled through my mind like a whirlpool, dragging every other thought down into oblivion: I love him, I love him, I love him. “Blue,” I said at last.

“What?”

“Turquoise blue, like the sky in Arizona. That’s my favorite color.”

The smile, slow and wonderous, rippled across his face. He took my hand again. “Come on.”

Joe led me onwards, down a few blocks and around a corner, as the muted sun receded from the sky and the first stars took its place, pinpricks of celestial light in a blanket of violet, azure, amber, rust. He stopped in front of the Church of Saint Lawrence, established in 1902 according to the sign mounted on the brick wall that faced the street, perhaps the same church that he had once visited with his family as an impatient child, snickering with his brothers and sisters and kicking the back of the pew in front of him with shoes that never fit quite right. There was a fountain bubbling with transparent water, a statue of the Virgin Mary at the center, coins made of copper and nickel and zinc glinting through the water under corridors of silvery luminance cast by the streetlights.

“I lied about not having my own superpower,” Joe informed me mischievously, not at all serious.

“Oh, did you now?”

“Absolutely.” He opened his wallet, rooted around, pulled out a penny and handed it to me. “I can make wishes come true. So go ahead.” He nodded towards the fountain. “Make your wish.”

The penny was worn and nearly indecipherable, but I was just barely able to read that it had been minted in 1928. The same year Joe was turned. “Joe...I can’t just throw this away!”

“You’re not throwing it away. You’re exchanging it for a wish. Now wish.”

I closed my eyes, chose my wish, tossed the penny into the fountain. The plink it made when it hit the water was bright and yet mournful somehow, like windchimes, like flickering candlelight.

“Outstanding job,” Joe complimented.

He was so visibly proud, so content, so faultless. The streetlights threw shadows across the sidewalk, the fountain, the whole world it seemed. I laced my fingers behind his neck, gazing up at him. “What are we doing tonight, mob guy?”

“I’m so glad you asked. You see, we have options.”

“Let’s hear them.”

“Door Number One,” Joe began. “It’s been a long day, and you’re exhausted from the illustrious honor of witnessing a Cubs victory firsthand. So we go back to the hotel, find some shark documentary on tv, order room service, shower, and drift off into a peaceful slumber. Just like last night.”

“Not bad. How about Door Number Two?”

“Door Number Two. You’re tired, but not that tired. We go back to the hotel, find that same aforementioned shark documentary, but totally ignore it and make out instead. Maybe we even round second base, in the spirit of the Cubs. Whatever you’re up for. Then we shower and drift off into a peaceful slumber.”

“Even better,” I said, and I meant it. “And what’s Door Number Three?”

Now Joe became jittery; his eyes darted to the fountain, the church, the cars that rolled lazily by. He was so desperate to conceal his hope, to not impose any undue influence upon me. I felt infinitesimal, almost weightless drops of rain against my cheeks, my collarbones, the downy undersides of my arms. “Well, uh, Door Number Three is...it’s...well...uh...it’s...”

Door Number Three is a home fucking run. “I want Door Number Three.”

“Really? Because you don’t have to say that, you can say no, that’s completely fine, it’s more than fine actually, it’s awesome, it’s totally cool, I’m seriously fine either way, and you can obviously change your mind whenever—”

“Wait.” I broke away from him, yanked my own wallet out of my purse, found the Official Whatever You Want Pass, hastily unfolded it, and presented it to Joe. “I want Door Number Three.”

He barked out a shocked laugh, accepted the pass, studied it in disbelief. “You are full of surprises, ma’am. It took me a hundred years to find a woman like you. And I don’t think I ever will again. Makes one wonder if this whole eternity thing is all it’s cracked up to be.” He tucked the pass into his pocket and kissed me beneath the streetlights, beneath the stars. “So there’s one tiny caveat to my wish-granting superpower.”

“Yeah?”

He smiled impishly, nudging the tip of my nose with his. “You have to tell me what you wished for.” He was joking, as he almost always was; I didn’t have to tell him anything. He wouldn’t press the issue. I doubted that he was really expecting me to answer at all. And yet I wanted to tell Joe; I yearned, for once, to be as clear as Lucy had said he was.

“For you and me,” I replied in little more than a whisper. “And for forever.”

Home

The only thing that startled me was how profoundly unstartling it all was, how wholly uncomplicated, how effortless.

I didn’t feel like a different person afterwards. I didn’t feel that some latent spark of lust, of carnality had been ignited, had singed through me, had left me forever marked like the heights of children ticked off on a doorframe over decades; I felt neither ruined nor awakened, no wiser, no older, no more enlightened as to the incalculable eccentricities of the vast and enigmatic universe. I felt only happiness, and exhausted satisfaction, and a deep, dreamless peace that engulfed me like frothy fingertips of waves dragging pebbles and shells back into the sea. I felt only a homecoming that was measured not in miles but in soul.

We slept in as the morning sun rose over Lake Michigan, bought Ben a hoodie (black, of course, per his usual aesthetic) from the University of Chicago gift shop, strolled unhurriedly through the dimly-lit, relentlessly blue pathways of the Shedd Aquarium. As I stood in the glass tunnel and watched sawfish and blacktip reef sharks soar by overhead, Joe linked his arms around my waist, tucked his chin into the dip of my collarbone, kissed the slope of my jaw.

“What do you think?” he asked, perhaps a touch apprehensively. “Could you get used to the Chicago life for a few years?”

“I would be tempted to kidnap some of these guys and bring them home to live in our bathtub. But yes.”

And Joe murmured, smiling, his lips to my temple: “That’s illegal, ma’am.”

Our flight back to the West Coast took off after dusk, and there was no blinding sunlight for Joe to avoid; only immense glooms of clouds and gleaming distant stars and the unfathomable void of space, cursed with crushing pressure and darkness like the cervices of the ocean floor.

Fifteen years might not be enough, I thought, resting my forehead against the cold airplane window as the city lights died behind us, as Joe’s hand weaved through mine on the armrest. But forever sounds just about right.

Larkin

There once was a boy born in a stone cottage with a dirt floor in a vanishingly inconsequential village just west of Clifden, Ireland. It was February 9th, 1672, bitterly cold, miserably wet, and the sea was murderous with storms. His mother was illiterate, as her mother had been, and as her mother had been as well, all the way back to people who painted mammoths on cave walls with their fingers; she was thirty-three and already exhausted with living, her seven children forever underfoot, her full and ruddy cheeks perpetually smudged with dirt from the field and ashes from the fire. Her husband was a failure and a drunk, but half a day’s worth of work once or twice a week was better than none at all; and as much as she never would have admitted it, he was a tether for her in a world that was often, as she had learned, both lonely and cruel.

She gave the baby boy a name—a strong Irish name, none of that audacious English rubbish—that meant rough or fierce, just like the sea that rose and ruptured against the rocky cliffs outside. He would need to be rough to survive in this world. He would need to be fierce.

He began like all the other children had been: sweet and yet anonymous, yielding, needful, worryingly small. She rocked him absently with one arm as she stirred the stew pot with the other. She sang to him, told him stories long before he could comprehend them, tales of the Lord and the saints and all their malevolent adversaries: serpents, pestilence, demons, dragons. She tossed stray sticks to him so he could carve pictures into the dirt floor and keep out of the way as she labored with the laundry or the sewing. And he grew, and he grew; and there was nothing remarkable about him at all, that boy speckled with mud and soot and the perpetual bruises of children mostly left to their own devices, that boy with pallid skin like his mother’s and black hair like his father’s and eyes so light and vibrant a brown they were nearly gold.

The boy was a baby, and then a child, and then a young man. And his mother realized one day—all at once, as a mother does when their attention is divided among so many other lives, when the children’s analogous faces bleed into each other and even their names sometimes escape her, even those names that she had chosen herself from the stories her own mother once passed to her through threadbare whispers—that people had a habit of following him, of listening to him. That there was an ether of allure that hovered around him like the mists that clung to the precarious, crumbling cliffs that touched the sea; that there was something like what the heathens called magic. And when the war came, that boy who was no longer a boy left his mother’s stone cottage and enlisted in Clifden, lied about his age, signed his name with an X because that was all he knew how to spell. But he was sure to tell the man who handled the ledger that he did have a real name, a good Irish name, a name apt for a soldier, a name that his mother had told him meant rough or fierce: Larkin.

There are men who join wars out of loyalty, principle, love for their homes; and then there are men who join to escape their homes, perhaps to forget them entirely. If you were to consult that ledger signed in a pub in Clifden, Ireland in 1688, you would read that I fought for Ireland, for the Catholics, for Christ the Lord and all his saints. But what I really fought for was my own resurrection: to take that boy stained with dirt and ignorance, drown him in the blood of other mothers’ trivial sons, and dredge up some greater version of myself that I had always known existed, that was hidden somewhere in the netlike darkness of the marrow of my bones.

People follow me, and they always have. I couldn’t tell you why. When I called them to enlist, when I thrusted swords and pikes into their calloused farmers’ fists, when I told them they could fight and live to see their wretched homes again, they believed me. I climbed the ranks like a ladder, like a mountain made of bones. And all those other mothers’ sons laid down for me so I could walk across the bridge of their spines to what I mistakenly assumed was invincibility.

At the Battle Of The Boyne, my horse was shot out from under me. A Williamite caught me beneath the ribs with his dagger. And as I bled out, staring up at the sky and impatiently waiting for the pain to vanish as my consciousness withdrew like low tide, I became aware that someone was lifting me, holding me, spiriting me through the battlefield and then the wilderness; and that my pain, in a disconcerting turn of events, had swelled to a vicious and unrelenting inferno.  

Three days later, I woke to find that I was resurrected again, this time as something more than human. The man who turned me was blond-haired, light-eyed, agile and yet gentle, ancient and yet ever-changing.

“I thought you’d survive,” Nikolai said in a thick Slavic accent, standing over me with a kind smile. Then he helped me to my feet. “You have greatness in you. It sweats out of your pores, it’s in every word you speak. What a shame it would be for all of that to go to waste.”

He taught me everything: how to read and write, how to hunt, how to dodge the sunlight, how to survive an existence that was both theoretically endless and yet forever on the precipice of being cut short. He introduced me to the Draghi, to vampires who were remarkable for their ferocity, or their creativity, or their curiosity, or their cleverness, or all those things at once: Victorien, Honora, Elizabeth, Kestrel, Zhang, Sergei, Ana, Gwilym. And most crucially, Nikolai showed me that my human talents were magnified several times over, that his own followers were not immune to them, that there was power in collecting exceptional individuals like pieces of china stacked in a locked cabinet; and that if I could learn to climb immortal bones, the ladder never needed to end.  

You never quite get used to the power, to the invincibility, to the promise of eternity. You never take it for granted. It hits you, again and again, in ceaseless and victorious waves. Once I was a barefoot toddler who sketched dragons and Catholic saints from the stories my mother told me into the dirt floor of our drafty stone cottage. Now I live in palaces with marble floors, with spiral staircases and libraries and gold-dripping ballrooms, with unobstructed views of any sea I choose. Now I am the dragon.

My phone rang, and I checked the name on the screen. Then I answered. “Hello, beauty. How’s the other side of the Pacific treating you?”

And Liesl answered, in a soft and astonished voice: “I don’t think Lucy can read her. I don’t think any of them can.”

I could feel it again. Another wave, crashing through me like the ocean, like the unstoppable rolling of time: power and insatiability and exhilaration. I smiled in my twilight-lit study as long-dead stars rose outside and the wind howled like wolves over the East Sea. “You know what to do.”

[freezeriafan]

Honestly i wish i knew whats going on with emery too. I feel like shes simply just a nasty person with no personal baggage. People like that exist - amii

PEOPLE LIKE THAT EXIST .... and i love that abt her i never want that to change .... But despite that I Just Keep Thinking abt what kind of person a sour nature like that would create...

UGH it's not your fault that i wrote paragraphs musing abt ur oc Emery . I just have a lot of thoughts . I'm like ... a fan. These are my fandom thoughts . IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT .. if u read it tho tell me ur thoughts bc you know emery more than i do obviously . IDK WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT but i say it anyway. Welcome to the shitshow

A lot of the time ppl perform behaviors bc of a root emotional cause but maybe it's reversed w Emery. She's already naturally a c*nt, she's stubborn, she's conceited, she's belligerent, she's inconsolable, she's egotistical; she always thinks she's right and always thinks that everyone is wrong; she refuses to change and learn and grow, and she refuses to believe that other people may be right sometimes and that they have their own valid feelings.

And's that's so funny she's so full of hubris im not advocating that that ever changes ever....I'm not even gonna say how there probably are a lot of things in her upbringing that shaped her nastiness .... bc i dont really care at all of that for her idk...she's not real.... But I do keep thinking abt what a nature like that would do to a person .

She has no close friends bc she drives them off and bc she needs to be better than everyone. She probably just believes that that's how life works; I don't know if she knows what real comradery feels like, what playful fraternizing is.

By nature she never admits fault and always pushes the blame onto someone else; this means that she never has to reconcile with shame or guilt or embarrassment. This creates a person who CAN'T reconcile with those things, she never built a tolerance, no idea how to even begin handling that. If she's always right why would she feel shame? And in the instance that she does something regrettable - If she's always right then why would she do something that causes shame? That's just not in line with her self image at all. Was is someone else's fault, or is she a powerful individual with deliberate volition? If she's always right, how does she address real internal confliction? If she rationalizes it all away at the first hint of self-doubt, then how long can she actually tolerate a healthy amount of shame when it arises?

I think it was brought up before but maybe not that while she's stubborn, she Will change her opinion if it keeps her in the right. So like if she does something unwonted or that would put her in the losing end of the argument, she will change her tune in order to preserve herself. That fluidity is more sustainable and realistic then being one way and always one way, but that two-facedness WILL drive everyone away and will weaken the stability of the hill she's trying to die on.

BUT EVEN WITH THAT FLUIDITY OF VALUES, If she's hellbent on being right all of the time and asserting herself first, then there's never room for honest listening and mindful growth. So she's essentially been climbing through the multitudes of life as one shape. Awful. She must feel like a lobster stuck in its own shell but she wouldn't know enough to know it. She never introspects enough to realize when she changes her opinions and when she doesn't, much less notice when the person she is now just isnt working. Doesn't she get bored of that? Does she ever want something different?

If she did begin to tire of herself, how would she rationalize that? What would it look like?

If she did want something different, would she get it, and then change her tune to match? Where are her limits? Is she just a shifting morph of desires? I mean that's a valid philosophy abt humans, that everything abt us is just the result of desires. But Emery definitely acts like she's solid and that she knows best and that she's reliable, unlike some other snakes in her life, an that incongruity is noticeable.

Even if she's full of self-serving fire by nature, I keep thinking about how she's a mean angry person STILL ... at her age... like she never mellowed out... never stopped putting her fire out there....like it never really got out there. Was never really heard? Never really got to burn? Does she crave vindication? Is there an ounce of something sympathetic in her character? What sort of reverence and attention does she need that she hasn't already bullied her way into getting?

I know she's incredibly self-serving, but has she ever shown herself sensitivity? I don't think she knows what tough love is when it comes to herself. It seems she gives herself everything she wants, all the rights to argue and to stand her ground, but never the softhearted consideration of how she's a multifaceted individual, and never the forgiveness after a healthy amount of self-doubt.

IDK. But I do keep thinking about the idea that the human brain can only put off something for so long. For example people can repress things for a long time or overwork themselves for a long time but there will be a point where their subconscious snaps and demands to be heard . That's when ppl have breakdowns, and they can be out of commission for years; it's an incredibly tough state to be in.

and idk I Keep Thinking abt how Emery cannot be so stubborn and insensitive forever something has GOT to happen at some point. She wouldn't listen to external forces, something inside has got to shift .. she's got to start reconciling with SOMETHING .. she's a grown ass adult she cant play the fool and play the victim forever .. she cant pretend she doesnt know the push and pull of life.... nobody is really THAT dense are they ?

IDK !!! I think I'm just approaching this at the completely wrong angle. She probably gives a little and then just reclimbs the podium to where it had shifted to; she has a superiority complex that really isn't that complex; she doesn't like to share her victories like how Quinn doesn't like to share her prey; she's of a generation; she's not interested in learning new things or changing her ways; she's a c*nt and that's FINE. Ughhhhhhh . She's on her way out anyway . Thanks for the homophobic papa louie oc . Gives me smth to rant abt . THANKS. Bye

[the-fiction-witch]

NSFW 100 : Newt

1. What’s the dirtiest thought you’ve ever had about a total stranger?

I don’t think of strangers that much… likely the first time I saw y/n and I kinda went ‘ “dam...boobs!”

2. Do you prefer sex at night, in the morning, mid-afternoon, or NOW?

At night, while the other boys are sleeping even if it means we have to be a little quieter so we don’t wake anyone else

3. What’s your favourite way to be seduced? 

I don’t need seducing just kinda point or poke me

4. What’s the dirtiest fantasy you’ve had at work?

Well… I had one about bending y/n over a planter while everyone was at lunch 

5. How would you dominate your boss sexually if given the chance?

No thank you, Alby or Zart either I would you rather not.

6. What do you do when you get horny in public?

Uhh… Usually take my hoodie off and wrap it around my waist so knowone sees any issues that arise.

7. Have you ever masturbated in a public bathroom?

Uuuuuuuuuuhhh…. No.

okay maybe once… or twice, before y/n became my girlfriend and she walked around the glade in… shorts.

8. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve thought about while touching yourself?

Being chained in the med jacks, with y/n. 

9. What’s the strangest prop you’ve used to get yourself off?

A pole from the gardens, I am not explaining how I used it!

10. Do you remember the first time you felt aroused?

It was once the night y/n arrived in the glade I had never felt about sex before I saw her but most of the day I was taking care of her and the other jobs I had to do so by the time I got back in my hammock I noticed it

11. Who gave you your first orgasm?

Me. 

12. Do you remember what that first orgasm felt like?

Like an explosion of repressed urges and tension. Like when you stretch and crack a bone that's been annoying for like a week.

13. Have you ever had sex with someone whose name you never knew?

Nope.

14. What’s your favourite thing about a quickie?

The sneakiness and the fact everyones happy and satisfied before we run off to do whatever we still have to do

15. What the most sexually daring thing you’ve ever done?

Sex on the watch tower… Im still surprised we did that, and that we didn’t get caught

16. Have you ever fantasized about fucking one of your teachers?

No! Definitely not. Then again I don’t remember them… so maybe I did

17. Do you ever mentally strip strangers just for kicks?

Well… not strangers. Just y/n. 

18. And then imagine, in dirty detail, what it would be like to fuck them?

Maybe, if already honry then yeah but again only y/n and even more once I didn’t have to imagine what she was hiding from me anymore just remember what she looks like without her cute clothes.

19. Have you ever kissed someone of the same sex?

Once. In dares, It was minho… not that bad actually kissing a guy better than I expected.

20. What inspires you to make the first move?

Gally did he told me if I didn't he was going to so I had to so I jumped into action and made her a picnic in the woods and I asked if I could kiss her and she said yes from there we were a couple

21. In your opinion, what does it mean to be good in bed?

It makes your partner happy and satisfied.

22. Have you ever cheated on a boyfriend or girlfriend because you just couldn’t help yourself?

No never! I would never betray y/n

23. Have you ever pushed the boundaries of fidelity to the brink and then retreated just for the rush?

No! Why would I ever want anyone but y/n, plus the only other girl is teresa… she’s nice but not for me she’s attractive sure but i'm not attracted to her plus thomas likes her and I couldn’t do that to him or to y/n

24. Do you have a go-to masturbation fantasy?

Y/n cuddling close in my bed and playing with me instead of my hand 

25. What kind of porn turns you on?

I’m not sure what is classed as porn? Is listening to y/n touch herself through her bedroom wall classed as porn? If so YES!

26. Have you ever had sex with your eyes closed?

A couple times but not on purpose sometimes it's just already dark so I can barely see anyway, or when I shut my eyes because I got a little overwhelmed

27. Have you ever blindfolded or handcuffed your partner?

Well… she kinda blindfolds me sometimes and ties me up to the bed a little

28. Does naughty talk get you aroused?

It does so so much especially if she whispered

29. Are you sure about that, my dirty little forest nymph of a sex goddess?

I am very very sure

30. What’s the dirtiest thing someone’s ever said to you during sex?

Properly “I’m going to cum my dirty little girly”

31. Have you ever watched another couple get it on without them knowing?

By accident yes. Accidently watched minho and thomas having sex in there hammock I didn’t mean to it just kinda happened

32. Have you ever watched another couple have sex with their permission?

No! Because that's creepy

33. How would you respond if a couple approached you to be their “third”?

Uhhhhhh no thank you. 

34. What’s the most flattering thing someone’s said about your naked body?

“Your such a beautiful boy” It still makes me blushy

35. When’s the last time you had a vivid sex dream?

Probably last week, they get worse when I’ve been drinking

36. What do you think an orgy would be like?

Awkward. There are two girls and sixty boys. I don’t think it would go well. I’d rather just nuzzle in y/ns bed with her let everyone else have the orgy

37. Have you ever propositioned a total stranger?

Nope, and I don’t think I’ll ever want to

38. What does your ideal one-night stand look like?

A nice dinner then a snuggle up in y/n’s bed and a sexy night until we cuddle up all night and wake up in the morning. 

39. How long does it take you to get yourself off, on average?

About half an hour depending what is being done to me

40. What’s the weirdest thing that turns you on?

Stroking, stroking hair and stroking skin just the whole thing in general

41. Have you ever had a naughty dream about a close friend or family member?

No! Only ever about y/n

42. Have you ever woken up humping your pillow?

So many times more times then I like to admit mostly before y/n started fooling around with me

43. When’s the last time you orgasmed in your sleep?

Yesterday… y/n was spooning and she kept wiping her butt on me so… I couldn’t help it

44. What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s happened to you while hooking up?

I may have… cum on y/n’s stomach the first time she let me touch her boobs. That was embarrassing

45. Do you like touching yourself in front of the people you sleep with?

I wouldn’t mind if she wanted me too but I tent to keep it a little bit of a secret that I still touch myself, even if everytime she’s caught me she lets me have sex with her

46. What’s the dirtiest text you’ve ever sent or received?

Y/n sent me a note while I was working that said if I cleaned her room for her she’d suck my dick… needless to say her room was spotless.

47. Do you prefer professional or amateur porn?

Uhhhh I guess watching y/n shower is kinda amateur porn.

48. What’s your favourite blowjob technique?

A Lot of tongue and a lot of sucking

49. If you had to pick, would you be a dominatrix or a submissive?

Submissive… she’s better incharge of me

50. Is there anything you won’t do in bed?

Nothing to do with bodily fluids… just ewwwwww!

51. What’s your dirtiest sexual fantasy? 

Being locked up all day and letting y/n do whatever she wants to me for the whole day

 52. How many people have you slept with? 

One. Just my sweet little y/n

 53. Where’s the weirdest place you’ve had sex?

The pond in the woods.

 54. What’s your favourite part of Y/n’s body? 

Her boobs.. And of course her personality, but definitely boobs

 55. Have you ever had anal sex? 

No!! And I don’t want to try! We don’t have lube in the glade! I don’t wanna try it will hurt somebody

 56. If you could choose what Y/n was wearing right now, what would you choose? 

My hoodie and her little panties or those tiny little shorts

 57. Where on your body is your favourite place to be touched? 

My hips I have a weird fascination with being touched and rubbed on my hips

 58. If you could have sex anywhere in the world, where would it be? 

Somewhere cosy and privet I don’t care where

 59. When did you first had sex? 

After Y/n had been here a year

 60. What’s the best sex you’ve ever had? 

The first time with y/n its the best ever!

 61. What’s your favourite position? 

Being ridden! I love it so much

 62. Have you ever been caught having sex? 

By Zart yes. Twice to be fair we were in the garden shed

 63. Do you watch porn? 

I watch Y/n

 64. What kind of porn do you watch? 

Y/n. I watch Y/n.

 65. How often do you masturbate? 

Twice a day… unless I get some sex

 66. Name a sex position you’d like to try?

Reverse cowgirl! Pleeeease! I wanna try so hard

 67. Do you prefer to give or receive? 

Give! I will give as much as y/n wants me too but if there if an offer to be receiving I will do anything I’m asked

  68. Have you ever been skinny dipping?

Yep in the pond in the woods

 69. What’s the most sex you’ve had in a day? 

Twelve on our day off anniversary

 70. Are you loud or quiet during sex? 

Quiet when we are trying to be sneaky but loud when we wanna make the glade here us

 71. Have you ever tried using food during foreplay? 

Never… seems sticky and gross

 72. What’s the first thing that sexually attracts you to someone? 

The personality of course… Boobs help second

 73. Would you say you have any fetishes? 

I like being restrained

 74. When it comes to BDSM, how far have you gone/would go? 

Tieing up, and maybe a little biting but that's about all

 75. What’s your favourite toy? 

Rope.... I like rope a lot

 76. Do you ever read erotic fiction? 

No… but I’m curious

 77. Have you joined the mile high club? 

No But I want to, we have fooled around in the tallest tree we could find but I want more the world will hear us!

 78. Do you think you could take off Y/n underwear with no hands? 

I have… many times. I normally use my mouth 

 79. Would you say you’re kinky? 

Kinda…

 80. Do you enjoy shower sex? 

Yes! I love shower sex! Or shower watching… anything to do with showers I am onboard!

 81. Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever masturbated? 

The Garden shed.

 82. Do you like to be spanked? 

Well… Maybe sometimes. 

 83. Have you ever fantasised about someone else during sex? 

No! Of course not! Why would I want to

 84. If y/n caught you masturbating, would you stop or would you finish? 

I would stop if she wanted too, but normally if I get caught she takes over or finishes me off in another ways

 85. Have you ever had an inappropriate crush? 

Not really, just on y/n 

 86. Have you ever cried or fallen asleep during sex? 

I cried the first time I was so embarrassed I came so early and because of how good it felt inside y/n but only asleep after

  87. Do you prefer eye contact or not during sex? 

I love Eye contact so much it feels so nice when you have eye contact

 88. Do you like to kiss during sex? 

Kisses always 

 89. Do you get tired after sex? 

So sleepy once I’ve cum but that's perfect for cuddles

 90. How many positions do you think you’ve tried? 

Most of them I guess

 91. What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sex? 

Other then before I lost my virginity, But once we did it the first time after that I think it was about three days

 92. How high is your sex drive? 

Very very high!

 93. What’s a surefire way to turn you on? 

Ask

 94. Sex with lights on or lights off? 

Candles on...

 95. Do you like dirty talk? 

Very Very Very much!

 96. Do you prefer one night stands or longer-term sexual partners? 

Long term always

 97. Do you prefer to be on top or bottom? 

Bottom!!

 98.Rough or romantic? 

Romantically rough

 99. Quickie or marathon session? 

Marathon all of the day off!

 100. What’s the best thing about our sex life? 

The amazing love of you my beautiful girl. 

[hes-writer]

Just A Little Bit of Your Heart (3)

Summary:  Harry and Y/N are in an open relationship

Warnings: smut and angst

Word Count: 4444 words

A/N: unedited cause im lazy

Harry arrived home the next day with his key jiggling in his hands and legs constricted by the tight black jeans he’d worn the night before. He definitely needed a new pair of pants that let his skin breathe. His hair was a disheveled mess and bags colored his under eyes a dark hue; a stark contrast from his otherwise pale skin. His mouth opened in a yawn as he unlocked the front door, palm meeting the cool feel of the knob and twisting it open while pushing the door open.

He spent the night at Mitch’s house, having canceled his supposed date with Chloe in respect to Y/N. It wasn’t like he meant for her to find out, she did that on her own by stealing his phone from its position. It wasn’t like he directed her to open and read the provocative messages sent between him and Chloe either. But Harry could understand where she was coming from after hours upon hours of contemplation and debate both from the voice in his head to his mouth running its own course, to Mitch’s suggestive looks—which consisted of a pointed brow and wide eyes—and finally, Sarah’s ability to knock some common sense into his thick head.

Of course, she was going to be upset. It didn’t matter if they were in a normal relationship or if they were just friends—it hurts to be blown off by someone you care about and it pained Y/N even more that Harry was blunt about his plan on lying straight to her face whilst she babbled on like a fool about describing a perfect night on which they failed to unite for the past couple of weeks. Finally, Harry had wrapped his head around it between the time gap of when Y/N banished him from their home for the night until the morning when he awoke the next day in a small sofa that crumpled his long body brittle.

It was then that he realized how stupid he was for taking such a long time to figure out why she was upset when the answer was dangling right in front of his face. Maybe he was really that clueless and he actually didn’t know what he did wrong, but a tiny echo in his head whispered otherwise.

He was afraid, it’s been known. Harry knew that to a certain degree—he was fearful of admitting the truth to himself. Whenever a problem arises–even the tiniest ones–he headed straight to the endless list of numbers on his phone, not hesitating on tapping one out of the couple hundred and initiating sex right off the bad. In retrospect, it was actually pretty disgusting of him to do that, he admitted. It was an action that progressed into a habit and soon, he barely spared a thought for his lovely girlfriend.

Harry had an inkling feeling in his chest most of the time that Y/N would come to her senses and leave him for someone who didn't sleep with other women just because they could. They were still together after all, and even though she gave him her blessing to fool around, it didn’t mean that she was absolutely okay with it. Plus, finding out that she was always loyal to him made him feel guilty since he jumped on the opportunity on the very first day they established the open relationship.

So, when Harry came home with flowers in his hand—which he settled on the table for a bit while he slipped off his shoes, and another time  when he headed to the fridge and thirstily drank a glass of water—he was grateful to say that holding the stems of the bouquet warmed up to metacarpals of his fingers gripping the clear glass because not a second later did he hear the husky morning voice of a man who was certainly not Y/N.

“Oh hey, Harry,” Shawn greeted casually, his eyes bright and puffy from sleep yet the slight smile on his face indicated that he had a great night. “Did you just get in?”

Harry, on the other hand, was filled with an emotion he couldn’t describe. He wasn’t sure if he felt it before, but it was unpleasant and he definitely did not want to experience it anymore. His heart was thumping in fear of the unknown. “Uh, yeah,”

Despite having downed a cool glass of water, his throat was eerily drying up as quickly as it was refreshed. Shawn whisked past him, opening the metallic fridge door and scoping the insides for some bread, eggs, and bacon. “Want some breakfast?”

Harry shook his head, lips pursing in an ultimatum of whether he should exit the room and look for Y/N or continue torturing himself by seeing Shawn’s half-naked body dressed in only the Calvin Klein boxers to which he saw him modeling in a few weeks prior.

“Last night was amazing,” A feminine voice squeaked from behind the wall separating the staircase and the kitchen, Y/N. “I can barely walk,”

Harry heard her before he saw her and he badly wished that he didn’t have to encounter either of those. Not only was her voice croaky to some extent—an indication that meant that she was definitely vocal during her activities last night—but her appearance mirrored that of Shawn; bright and flushed and both men swore that her skin was glowing. Although Harry and Y/N haven’t been intimate together in a while, her pleasure stricken face had ingrained itself in the back of his head, along with her moans reverberating against the cochlea of his eardrums. She was a sight and sound to behold.

Y/N rounded the corner with a thin sheet wrapped around the expanse of her body, barefoot and pigeon-toed as she walked with a strut but gasped when she caught sight of Harry. “Oh hi!”

A blush spread across her cheeks, arms shifting to hold the thin sheet tighter across her body and Harry found himself slightly offended at her action. It wasn’t because he desperately needed to see and drool over her body, it’s just that he had seen her naked before countless of times—why did she feel the need to hide it from him?

“I didn’t know you were here,” She mumbled over the sizzling of Shawn’s freshly cooked eggs‍. The stove top emitted a delicious scent that made a rumbling sound from her tummy. Harry was about to go through projectile vomiting, he was sure.

“Yeah, I got you flowers,” He nodded towards the meaningless, discarded bouquet laying on the marble countertop, lifelessly. “I wanted to apologize for last night,” He gave her a small glance, eyes drifting over the area above her head, not wanting to make her feel any more uncomfortable than she already appeared to be.

Shawn, upon hearing the circumstances of why he was summoned by Y/N so late at night—decided to take it upon himself to exit the room, but not before sliding a plate of breakfast to Y/N. She smiled gratefully at him and although she wasn’t sure if they butterflies in her tummy were from excitement or nervousness, she muttered a quiet, “Thanks,” nonetheless.

The brown-eyed boy walked a little way around the table, and Y/N could feel a wave of animosity wash over her body. Shawn leaned over to wrap her in a side hug, sniffing her hair briefly before kissing her cheek, slowly peppering his lips against her own parted once and made out with her in front of Harry. It was a petty move for sure but the tingling she felt lasted when Shawn gave her a smirk—that would have made her swoon if she wasn’t about to have a relationship breaking in a matter of minutes—and until his muscled body walked away to the direction of their bedroom where he had left his clothes in a pile on the floor, she recalled.

As much as it hurt Harry to witness a sight right in front of him, he couldn’t will himself to turn his head away or even blink hard to clear his head from the atrocity of seeing Y/N be with another guy. It was definitely starting to feel very complicated. Was she allowed to do this? They agreed on being able to sleep around, but they were still together. But she did it right in front of him—was that some sort of violation or was it more or less the same of what he had done? He could tell she was swarmed with conflict rattling in her pretty head too because she was biting her lip cutely. However, the kiss Shawn and Y/N shared was still fresh in his head and he didn’t think that he was able to handle it; much less look at her blush pink lips tainted by another man.

“I see you didn’t give it as much thought as I did,” Harry said, albeit, on the quieter side, Y/N heard him as if he spoke it loud and clear. It was an impulsive move on his part, but he just really wanted to get his mind off *that.

Y/N looked at him incredulously, “What do you mean?” She asked, her voice shaking near the end but she kept strong.

“Never mind,” Harry answered.

Y/N gripped the sheet tighter around her body while stepping closer to him. He could see the faint purple marks littered on her clavicle and he internally shuddered at the thought. “I don’t know if I heard you correctly..?”

He sighed, frustration building in him. She wasn’t going to let this one go, he could tell. “You had sex last night,” He said bluntly.

She nodded slowly as if she was answering a child, “Yeah, obviously,” Was this a trick question?” 

“That’s funny,” Harry started. ”While you were doing whatever, I was thinking about what I had done last night and even canceled my date for you,” He snickered, seeming to come out of his patient shell.

Y/N stood shocked at his revelation, “I didn’t ask you to cancel, did I? If you wanted to go that bad, I wasn’t stopping you anymore,”

“That’s the thing. I didn’t want to go cause I was thinking of ways of how to apologize to you,” He gesticulated wildly to emphasize his words. “I come home thinking that we could have some time together but instead, I see Shawn walking around like he owns the place and kissing you as if I wasn’t there,”

“I asked you last night if you wanted to spend time together,” Y/N fiddled with a loose string, “You would rather have been somewhere else. This is not my fault,”

“Did you even think of me at all last night? Were you worried? I bet you didn’t cause you were busy,” Harry threw accusations left and right, completely disregarding the knowledge of how she had stayed up late waiting for him to come home, but he never did.

“You’re ridiculous,” Y/N concluded, taking the plate of eggs of the counter and stepping around Harry to pull a drawer open and grabbed a fork.

“I’m not finished!” He yelled after her even though she was only a couple meters in front of him. 

“I am.”

“You’re so selfish,” Harry angrily whispered, chest heaving in an effort to calm himself. “I actually thought about you but you just—you weren’t even thinking of me and now you basically admit that I didn’t cross your mind,”

Y/N rolled her eyes in annoyance, “Me? Selfish?” She snorted at his absurdity, “If you must know, I did think about you last night. Wanna know what I came up with?”

Harry nodded hesitantly.

She smiled at him sickly sweet, “I thought about how selfish ^you are. For your information, I spent god knows how many nights waiting for you to come home when you said you would, only to wake up and find that you didn’t even come home at all! There were no texts or calls. I didn’t know if you were mobbed or whatever the hell because you didn’t even update me,” Y/N breathe through her nose to collect a breath, “Last night I thought about myself for once and I figured that it’s not fair if you get all the fun in this relationship, don’t you agree?

Harry nodded his head once again, pausing a bit to think.

“This is fun. I see why you do it so much. I’ll definitely have to start doing it a lot more,” Her words pierced Harry’s heart front and center. However, she wasn’t sure to what degree did her words hold to the actual truth but one thing’s for sure-- there are definitely going to be some changes between the two of them.

-----

Y/N was glad to have been picked up on time for the first time ever--by Shawn. Just as she walked out the doors of the building, Shawn’s car was parked right outside. She smiled at him through the rolled down windows, his sunglasses-covered face mirroring her happy mood. They greeted each other briefly before he set off to drive them to his house.

It was uncertain whether the lingering touches Shawn left on her inner thigh was from the raging hormones that she couldn’t seem to control, or from how he did it so softly and teasingly that it got her motor running. Through it all, he kept his eyes on the road while a smug grin could be seen on his side profile. She huffed in feigned annoyance, squeezing her thighs together when he let go to change gears.

“You’re an asshole,” She said, crossing her arms over her chest.

He chuckled, sparing her a glance, “Am I?”

She nodded, “You can’t just do that!”

“And why not?” His voice deepened into a tenor, his free hand raising the black sunnies to his hair, showcasing his lust filled eyes.

“B-because … “

“You’re worried that I’ll leave you hanging?” She gulped but nodded. “Don’t worry, Y/N. I’ll keep you satisfied.”

If that didn’t get her soaking.

Fortunately, Shawn had just pulled up on his driveway, inputting the gate code before proceeding in his property.

The two of them refrained from sharing kisses because of aerial paparazzi but as soon as the door was slammed shut, they wasted no time attaching their lips together. Y/N moaned against his mouth when Shawn pulled on the bottom of her shirt, signaling to her that he wanted it off. She pulled away breathlessly, feeling the cotton on her face before it was strewn away somewhere on the living room floor. He took off his shirt with little guidance, Y/N admiring his milky skin and defined abs.

Y/N bit her lip before grasping the back of his neck, pulling him towards her once more. She was breathing through her nose while she let her tongue be played with. Her hands roaming his silky flesh, feeling goosebumps arise in a matter of seconds.

Her pants came off, as well as his and soon, they were making out in their underwear. He sat down on the couch cushion, the material rubbing against the back of his thighs. Y/N had taken it upon herself to straddle his muscular thigh. Shawn shifted upwards on the couch causing his leg to brush over Y/N’s center.

“Do that again,” She breathed out airily, grinding her hips on his thigh in an effort to feel the pleasure once again. He hummed against her neck, the vibrations willing her heart to pound harder in her chest.

“You like that don’t you?” He mumbled through sucking and licking, breaking the skin and forming a light bruise. Y/N nodded desperately. He flexed his muscles before attaching it to her center, her lace underwear doing little to hide the fact that she was absolutely soaking.

Her frail hands ran down the expanse of his body, pausing at his Calvin Klein briefs where a bulge could be felt. He was hard. His erection twitching ever so often against her wrist and the tip was leaking precum through the soft cotton. A groan rumbled from his chest, her nipples brushing and hardening at the contact.

Y/N’s hand slipped beneath the only piece of clothing he wore. The coldness of her hands causing his hips to buck up involuntarily towards her touch. She grasped his thick length between her fingers. The protruding veins embedded itself slightly on her palm. Shawn’s breath hitched in his throat, his eyes closing shut in the touch she was giving him. Slowly, her hand moved up and down on his cock, pausing at the tip and spreading his pre-cum on the rest, making it easier for her to maneuver around.

She lifted a leg that was encompassing his body, her chest positioning itself in front of his face to which he continued his assault of marks. Shawn lifted his hips up to help her remove his boxers, his cock making itself known. Y/N got down on her knees between his legs, forcing them wider, silently.

“Oh god,” Shawn spoke out when her warm mouth wrapped around the tip. The nerves going haywire when her tongue licked the liquid escaping the opening. “Your mouth is so good,”

His hands hesitantly grasped the hair at her crown, bobbing her head further down his length until she felt the tip constrict her throat. Spit trickled down the sides of her mouth to which Y/N used as lubrication. Her eyes were trained on Shawn’s pleasure-stricken face, feeling her pussy get even wetter at the sight.

“That’s enough,” He said gruffly, pulling her hair upwards, yet Y/N couldn’t get enough of his taste. Her tongue stiffened to trace the shape of his frenulum, the thin skin causing him to release moan after moan in the air. “I said that’s enough,”

He grasped her by the shoulders, standing up abruptly to overpower her figure. Switching positions, Shawn ran his hands down her legs, making them open in the process. He ripped the thin fabric of her underwear causing her to whine and slap his shoulder lightly.

“I’ll buy you more,” He mumbled before stuffing his face with her heat. He flattened his tongue out to lick as much as he can, her juices collecting in his mouth while his fingers capture the hood of her clit and rubbed in circles, forcing Y/N to arch her back against the sofa. He dabbed his finger on the hood with caution to sensitivity while running his mouth to the sides of her pussy, stimulating the silk-like skin that brought satisfaction to Y/N. He licked her folds on both sides all the way up to her clit before giving the button a little kiss, sucking it into his mouth lightly while his nimble fingers exposed the nub.

“I’m gonna cum,” Y/N announced, body going restless and throat going sore from the countless moans she’d released from Shawn’s actions. “Please don’t stop,” She begged, feeling him add his fingers into the mix. His were much longer and with one curl upwards, he felt the tips of his fingers settle on the spongy area, rubbing against it continuously. Y/N whined out, hands balling into a fist, grabbing his hair, the arm of her couch--anything she could get her hands on. The pleasure running through her body was so strong and her climax was about to happen when Shawn suddenly stopped all movement.

She forced her eyes open, glassy and watery with pink lips set into a breathless pout. Her hair stuck to her temples and her chest was heaving. “Why’d you stop?” She asked, wiggling her hips in an effort to get his fingers to start moving inside of her again.

Shawn slapped a hand on her stomach, pushing it flat against the couch, “Good girls wait,”

---------

As it seemed, Y/N stuck true to her word for the fourth night in a row. The sun was setting and Harry had prepared a full, home-cooked meal for the two of them-- like he had done the previous nights, but Y/N hadn’t come home until the morning after when the food was cold and covered in plastic wrap. He hoped that tonight would be the night where they talked it all out, instead of screaming at each other impulsively.

He sighed in frustration when the third call was sent to voicemail once again, meaning that she had let it ring out until it eventually died down.

“Hey Y/N, it’s Harry,” He mumbled, walking back and forth between a small area. “Just wanted to ask if you’re coming home tonight. I made dinner, by the way. And I lov--,” The beep cut him off, indicating that he had used his seconds.

Harry let out a puff of air, releasing the tension he had been feeling more recently. It was minutes after when he thought his ears were playing a card on him; the front door was rattling. He could hear the door open, the creaking ceasing when it was shut. The keys situated themselves on the bowl by the front door.

He willed himself to meet her in the hallway, catching her tired eyes set on his. She looked at him for a few seconds, nodding, and then slipping past his broad body.

“Y/N wait,”

“I’m not in the mood,” She answered quickly, shrugging off his hand on her forearm.

He gulped, blinking heavily at Y/N. “I-i okay. Did you have dinner at least? I made your favorite,” He scrambled for words to extend their time together. “I thought that maybe we could eat together and watch something on the telly? We haven’t spent much time with each other so maybe we could do that,”

He bit his lip nervously when Y/N didn’t say anything right away. A pregnant pause overtook the atmosphere between them.

“I said I’m not in the mood,” She snapped, turning her body to face him fully. “Where did you get dinner and a movie out of that?”

“It was just an offer,” Harry muttered, taken aback by her reaction. She could’ve just said ‘no’ straight up.

“Okay, thanks for offering but I don’t want to do that right now, Harry.”

“I understand,” he said. She forced a smile on her face before twisting around and stomping up the staircase.

He watched as Y/N disappeared from his sight before his expression crumbled completely. There was no denying that he had been feeling different this past couple of days. Maybe it was because he was used to Y/N’s messages popping up throughout the day; sending him heart emojis and attaching a picture of cute dogs that she wished to adopt one day when they had settled. Or maybe it was the worried texts that she had sent--to which he had called ‘nagging’-- but now he recognized as sweet and caring. Oh, how he wished that he had his head on straight before taking complete advantage of the woman who loved him so dearly.

--

It had been half an hour since Y/N came home and Harry was still worried about whether she had eaten or not. He didn’t want her anger to him get in the way of her properly eating. So with hands grasping a plate of roast beef and mashed potatoes, and the other with a glass of water-- Harry climbed up the steps as quietly as he could to not alarm her to lock the door on him.

To his relief, their bedroom was left slightly ajar; he would only have to kick it open, especially since his hands were full and he couldn’t exactly ask her to get it for him. He didn't think they were on speaking terms.

“You’re amazing, Shawn” He heard her speak, assuming through the phone. “Stop it! Don’t wanna get turned on knowing that you’re not here to fix it,” Y/N giggled quietly, patiently waiting for what Shawn had to say.

From the gap, he could see her walking towards the dresser.

“I don’t know how to describe it. It felt so good and I haven’t felt that way in a long time,” Harry furrowed his eyebrows, doing mental math in his head to recover the memory of the last time he and Y/N had sex. “It’s been four months,”

“Harry?” He stood more alarmed at the mention of his name, afraid that he had been caught eavesdropping on a conversation that he wasn’t a part of. “No, no. He’s just been busy with other … girls,”

Y/N played with her lip while Shawn said something intriguing. “You’re right. Maybe he doesn’t want me anymore,” She paused her pacing, in a thought. “It would be bad for both of us. The media will go crazy,”

Both of us? Harry thought. Shawn and her or?

Harry’s curiosity got the better of him and he couldn't help but rattle the glass against the wall, making a sound that definitely drew her attention to him.

‘I’ll let you know when I decide. I have to call you back,”

Harry took a couple of steps back in an effort to appear as if he had just come up from the stairs. Y/N swung the door open, revealing his wide eyes and food that he was willing himself not to drop; his hands were shaking *that badly.

“Harry?” There was an edge in her tone, brows raised high on her forehead while she switched back and forth to his face and to the meal he had prepared. “Is this for me?” She pointed to the direction.

“Yeah, it is,” He cleared his throat, stepping closer to her and inspecting if she would move away. “I was worried that you hadn’t eaten,”

“Thank you,” Y/N walked deeper into the room, glancing over her shoulder to see if Harry was following--and he was. “You can set it on the dresser. You know how I don’t like--”

“Eating on the bed,” Harry finished for her, making the both of them blush at the connection that was still very much existing between the two of them.

He sat on the foot of the bed while she fed herself with the creamy mash. His brain was going antsy with the conversation that he had overheard. “Who were you talking to?”

She hummed on a mouthful of food, “Shawn,” Although it sounded more like ‘Shom’

“What erm, what were you guys talking about?”

Y/N waved him off casually as if it was nothing, “Don’t worry about.”

--------

let me know what u thot! :)

permanent tag list; @ynm1505 @kissme-hs @agoddamnmango @harrys-kingdom @calums-sugarbaby @queenbeestuffs @ashkuuuu @kettxo @send-me-styles @ofthepeppermintbays @littledreamybeth @trustfulhaz @harrysfeastedflower @harrystxleslx @befourep @moonandstars-xo @babebenhardy @swayingnoodlelove @mendesromano @harrystylinsince1994 @juliassgem @miscll-fangirl @little-dragon-ate-my-heart @myfangirlworld @haroldssfedora @winchesterwife27 @arypesanchez

jalboyh tag list; @harryspirate @officiallyunofficialperson @gviosca @llandaaa @mutuallynotmutual @mellamolayla @madformichael @toolazymyguy @sauveteen @joycelovedorial @rebelflower19 @stella95827 @katelynmusic-blog-blog @loganmay19 @harryisalittleshit @coldyanjuns @yoannacam @trcymartel @serensxx @pxrrishly @bluelalal @cuddlebughazza @ilvebeenabad @youpenguinadonis @advesperasci-t

[1-800-seo]

domestic dad!kook

hi everyone I thought I’d post my crap here so here is my domestic dad!kook Drabble list thing?

involves: pregnancy, established relationship/marriage, kissing, hickies?, general tomfoolery, nothing major, dad!jungkook,

————————————————————

* those damned blue lines

* you thought you wouldn’t see them so soon

* after all you had only been married eighteen months

* old relatives have been asking since day 1 when they’re gonna he seeing some lil jeons running around smh aunty karen

* you wondered how he would react

* he’d never shown any adverse reaction to children before but he was practically still a child himself

* the spiderman onesie you washed yesterday attests to that

* you decided to tell him at dinner

* he’d just had his first bite of tagliatelle when you accidentally blurted it out

* “IM PREGNANT”

* “what?” he replied snapping his head up with wide doe eyes

* “I-I found out this morning...I’m definitely pregnant. I know it’s soon, but we can make this work.”

* “What’re you on about? This is amazing baby, I finally get to be a dad!”

* “So you want this?”

* “Definitely, I’ve always imagined a family with you, it was just a matter of time. I’m so happy though baby, over the moon.”

* The smile on his face was beaming and the twinkle in his eye sparkled, he looked the epitome of happiness

* “I’m glad you want this then, it’ll be a wild ride but I’m glad it’s with you.”

* you reach out and squeeze his hand, as a fat tear of joy rolls down your cheek

* “I’m glad too, I know we’re young but it feels so right, so right with you.”

* he looks down, a tear dripping onto the table

* he wipes a few more and giggles

* “Tbh im surprised this didn’t happen earlier considering we go at it like rabbits”

* “KOOK” you cant help but laugh

* He is right lol

—————————————————ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ

————————————————��

One month 🍼

* “Where is my wife and my spawn~~~~~~”

* Jeongguk loudly sang as he burst thru the front door, arriving home from work

* “Wym spawn???“ You say as he pulls you into a bear hug and flops both of you on the couch

* “You know,, spawn, this baby, it’s my spawn hence why I’m calling it spawn like the superhero,, duh”

* he drops his hands down to your stomach and rest them their, flat palmed

* bowing his head so he is closer he says

* “I can’t wait to meet you Spawnie”

* Immediately you burst into a fit of laughter at the outrageous name

* “we CANNOT nickname our baby SPAWN, JEONGGUK”

* “Why not I think it’s well cool”

* he calmly replies proud smirk on his face

* “Is Spawn even a good guy?”

* “ummm”

* “wym ummm??”

* “well he’s kind of ambiguous in the comics”

* “OH GREAT WE HAVE A BABY NAMED SPAWN THAT IS OF AMBIGUOUS MORALITY”

* at that comment you both fell about laughing, your sides beginning to hurt at it all

* and that was how your unborn baby was nicknamed Spawn

—————————————————ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ

—————————————————

Three Months 🍼

* “I can’t push the trolley, I’m pregnant”

* you said matter of factly

* “oh you’re just being lazy,, I mean I’m not saying I won’t push the trolley, but you’re really pushing the boat out, baby”

* “hehehe my plan worked, you fool, you may have suspected me, however you still fell right into my trap muhahahaha”

* you dramatically laugh and put your hands on your hips like a comical villain

* so anyways you skrt skrt around the shop

* and right next to the book section is you know what

* the BABY SECTION

* so far you actually haven’t looked their yet because you don’t know the gender

* but curiosity brings you snooping in the aisles

* Jeongguk returns from the bakery section, carrying croissants and hair swept into a messy top knot

* you stare at the many many many racks of children’s clothes

* tiny baby booties

* hats that kook could only fit on his fist

* so so smol baby-grows

* “ngl I’m kinda overwhelmed”

* “how come?”

* he puts his hands round your waist and rests his head on your shoulders

* big soft comfy back hug

* “idk it’s a lot of responsibility, right? I can’t even begin to think about names never mind washing, clothing, feeding this tiny human being when it arrives”

* “baby, you have nothing to worry about, and I am positive you’re going to be the best most caring mother ever, and I have full trust in that.”

* He places a soft chaste kiss on the top of your head

* “thank you for always supporting me ggukie”

* “It’s my pleasure; we’re going to have the best baby ever, aren’t we Spawnie”

* You roll your eyes and kiss his cheek

—————————————————ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ

—————————————————

Four Months 🍼

* you were sat on the couch in your small apartment, small but sufficient

* Jungkook was painting the spare room and deconstructing old furniture you were selling on eBay

* You’re job was to arrange the business dealings and to look for new kid-appropriate furniture to reoccupy the spaces now blank

* It was fine by you

* saves you from getting up off the couch and getting all sweaty

* after a good few hours JK came out from the room, sweat on his brow and hungry

* hungry for something else tho 👀

* he stalks over to where you are sitting and kneels on the floor in front of your knees

* he rests his head on your lap, arms folded underneath it

* his eyes were dark, full of want

* “How’s it going baby? You tired?”

* “hmmm”

* he just stares back

* brows slightly furrowed

* soon enough he was peppering your face in warm kisses

* he flipped you over and sat you on his lap, hands resting on your waist

* his lips latched onto your neck and he sucked a flourish of purple and blue flowers under your jaw

* his lips were warm and supple on your skin

* it sent a shiver down your spine and goosebumps to your skin

* you found the hem of his black T-shirt and slid your hands under the fray

* you’re hands met the toned muscle of his stomach and the soft honey skin

* “looks like I can’t knock you up since someone already has, oh well, more fun for me”

* his hands fiddled with the fabric of your top

* you obliged and pulled it over your head

* you were met with his mouth hungrily crashing into yours as he searched for more and soon enough you were underneath him

—————————————————ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ

—————————————————

Six Months 🍼

* your belly was fairly noticeable by now and you couldn’t avoid the fact that you were pregnant

* people were starting to let you sit instead of them in public places

* you were getting more and more randos asking to touch your belly as well which wasn’t the greatest

* JK is always in protective dad mode™️ when this happens

* he’s ready to protect his babies

* one time when a sketchy looking old man asked to touch your belly JK immediately stood in between you and the guy

* he puffed out his chest and was hella macho

* Alpha Jungkook arises hehe

* ever since then he was more aware that people would be looking at you and more interested in you in general

* anyways

* he’s hella excited to be a dad

* his excitement is so pure and genuine it’s so sweet

* it’s like every day he gets more excited and you think by the full 9 months he’ll just be so excited he’ll be vibrating like a washing machine lol

* every night he kisses you and your baby good night

* “Night night baby jeon spawnie”

* without fail it makes you giggle

* his lil nose always brushes against your skin when he says it and it’s ticklish and comforting

* you can’t wait to meet your baby to see which of you they look like and in what ways

* will they have your double lidded eyes or his unique nose

* will they have his bunny teeth or your short stature

* either way they’ll be the most loved being in this world

—————————————————ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ

—————————————————

Seven Months 🍼

* it was time for the long awaited gender reveal

* you and him had decided that you would go alone to the appointment since he had work and then you would surprise Ggukie when he gets back

* you decided the way you would tell him was by dressing in either blue or pink

* you know you know,, not really breaking gender stereotypes, but it gets the idea over

* so that’s what you do

* you wear you’re best maternity day dress and do your makeup all güd

* it’s 5:30pm and he’s so excited to know

* he barges thru the door and basically and sprints to you

* he’s met with a baby blue clad wife, her hair adorned with a periwinkle ribbon

* immediately he knows and swoops you up into a bear hug

* “Jungkook? We’re going to have a little baby boy!”

* “I’m so happy! I feel like I’ve drank five red bulls,, we’re going to have a boy”

* When you pull away from the hug his cheeks have tears dripping down them and his eyes are wet

* “aww baby why’re you crying?”

* “because I’m just so happy, I can’t wait to see him, he’s going to be perfect, we’ll all be perfect”

* “you’re right kook, we’ll be perfect”

* “You don’t know how much I love you, you know?”

* that was when you started crying tears of happiness too

* youd remember this moment forever

—————————————————ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ

—————————————————

Eight Months 🍼

* “I think it’s time to think of some actual names”

* “yeahhh people at work keep thinking I’m actually calling the baby Spawnie and then I keep having to explain why it’s called Spawn and i don’t particularly like explaining that Spawn is a play on sperm and that’s my sperm”

* “What goes ON at your work”

* “you don’t even wanna know babygirl”

* “ummm so I was thinking, something familial, i don’t want a western name tho so that rules out my side,, unless you want to call him Barry”

* “uhh no thanks babes”

* “yeahh they’d sound like the flash lol”

* “I don’t want none of that DC propaganda in my household thanks”

* “tru tru”

* “so what about your side of family? Can you think of any family who have named you like?”

* “What about Junseok? My great uncle is called Junseok and I think that’s cool, also it kinda looks like a combination of Namjoon-hyung and Jin-hyung’s names.”

* “Wow they’d love that, that’s a good idea actually.”

* “Jeon Junseok, has a good ring to it”

* “I agree”

* “It’s settled then until further notice”

* “It seems it is Mr Jeon”

—————————————————ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ

—————————————————

First Week Home 🍼

* The moment Junseok was in his little sunset coloured crib you burst into tears of relief

* you’d obviously been stressing post birth about the intricacies and once you’d got him home and settled it was like a weight of your shoulders

* he was home

* he was safe

* and you were both over the moon

* he had the smallest nose and the biggest doe eyes

* his dark hair swept across his delicate skin on his forehead

* you just knew he’d be the spitting image of his dad

* each following day with Junseok was amazing

* he was good for you

* slept so well

* settled into routine easily

* it’s as if you never had to worry

* and Jungkook was a life saver

* he was such an attentive father and husband

* always caring for you and Junseok

* every morning he’d bring you up a cup of herbal tea and bowl of granola

* and go check on the baby and if he’s awake change and feed him

* his paternity leave was a blessing

* it meant you actually got a lie in instead of Junseok waking you up

* “I can do the baby this morning, it’s ok”

* you say sitting up in bed

* “no no I’ll do it I’m used to getting up at this time for work anyway”

* “but you’ve been doing it all this week I feel bad”

* “Baby, rest, I want to do this, you deserve a rest after carrying the baby for nine months, I’m sure I can take care of him for a few mornings”

* then he gave u a sweet kiss and left to see his baby boy

—————————————————ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ

—————————————————

Eighteen Months 🍼

* you pulled on Junseok’s tiny yellow wellies as Jungkook put on his coat

* “where are we going seokie?”

* “P-p-p” Junseok tried his best to get out the letters

* “Yayyy we’re going to the park”

* “Me and your mum are going to meet uncle Jimin too, and you know what that means? You’re going to get spoileddd”

* “V tru, but why does he always spoil him? I mean it’s not a problem he gets free things and stuff, but do you reckon he’s compensating for something?”

* “Yeah as nice as it is I think he might be compensating for not being around as often as he’d like to, solo career going strong as all, you know how he loves kids, in his head he probably thinks he’s an absent uncle but in reality he’s ever present just away for an odd weekend, which is normal”

* “yeah I get that”

* “But it’ll be nice to see him anyway, we can ask him about his new single”

* “Oh I’ve heard that it’s pretty good”

* Junseok pulled at the hem of your coat, indicating he wants to leave

* So off you went

* the day was filled with jumping in muddy puddles and Jimin nearly falling in said puddles

* Junseok got all dirty so you had to go find a bathroom to clean him up at

* hence why you ended up at an ice cream parlour in winter

* despite the cold weather you enjoyed the ice cream nonetheless

* JK teases Jimin a few times because apparently Jimin’s white blond hair was vanilla ice cream and his was chocolate

* Jimin insisted his was bingsu however JK refused

* Junseok had a great time fluffing up uncle Jimin’s hair after that

* and so the day drew to an end

* you headed home

* Seokie sleeping in the car all the way there

* you gently took him into the house and the pair of you collapsed on the couch and immediately fell asleep

* it was the cutest thing

* and when you woke up you saw your two boys asleep so soundly

* and you thought to yourself how content with your life you were

* how lucky you were

* how much you love those boys

* and you’d do anything for them

—————————————————ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ

—————————————————

The End hehehe :)

[dabiapologist]

[My Hero Academia Fanfiction]: Fever Dream

Pairing: Dabihawks, hawksdabi, hotwings, spicywings

Characters: Dabi (My Hero Academia), Hawks (My Hero Academia), Todoroki Enji | Endeavor, Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko, Usagiyama Rumi | Miruko, Toga Himiko

Rated T

Word Count: 2.2k

Chapter 1/3

Tags: i've always wanted to write a sick fic, Don't Judge Me, Sick Fic, Fluff, bratty dabi is my favorite dabi, chock full of cliched tropes, and im not sorry, tfw you catch feelings for your annoying villain liaison

Summary: 

"Endeavor-san? Quick question." 

"What is it? I'm busy right now." 

"How do you know if you're sick?"

"...excuse me?"

"Like, how do you know if you're running a fever? Do you even get fevers?"

"Why?"

"Uh, um, just curious?"

On the other end, he hears Endeavor sigh in annoyance. "Of all the things, Hawks, Why would you be curious about that?"

"Well," Hawks chews his lip anxiously as he turns to look back over his shoulder, back at the sizzling bundle of blankets on his couch.

Sizzling.

Oh. That's probably not a good sign.

Read it on || AO3

At a glance, Dabi’s moods and expressions are damn near impossible to tell apart. In the time that they’ve been in contact, Hawks has only really seen Dabi function in three modes: Distant and Aloof, Aggravatingly Smug, and FIRE. And even then, the first and the last tend to blend together most of the time, since Dabi doesn’t think much of using his quirk on others. Hawks finds himself wondering if the novelties of murder and arson and villainy have long since worn off for his scarred cohort.

Even so, Hawks prides himself on his razor sharp skills of observation. You can’t be a hero without some semblance of awareness, let alone a top hero, but Hawks’ skills are a clear cut above the others, thanks in large part to the extraordinary precision required to use his quirk effectively.

And tonight, it is obvious that there is something very… off.

Dabi is quiet normally, usually sticking to one or two word answers. Three, if he's feeling particularly chatty. Unless it's to insult him, of course. For that, Dabi will talk all day long. But as they walk side by side down the dark alleyway, having just completed a deal with a shady fellow who leered at the two of them in a way that makes Hawks desperate for a shower, Hawks feels like Dabi is too quiet. To the point where it's uncomfortable.

Even when Hawks’ foot catches a large pothole and he stumbles and bumps into Dabi, the taller man doesn’t acknowledge it, other than a tired suck of the teeth and an outstretched arm to set Hawks upright. Not that Hawks really needed him to do that; he quickly steadies himself with his wings and manages to keep his balance, but that’s hardly the point.

Not a single word. Not even a “You fucking clumsy idiot,” Which is one of Dabi's default reactions where Hawks is concerned, and one that Hawks had an insult fully prepared for.

But nothing.

Hawks wonders if maybe it’s the weather. Rainy weather is one of the few things, besides him, hero society, and the gross dehydrated vegetables in instant ramen, that Dabi is actually quite vocal about hating. It’s been raining for the past few days, and tonight especially, it’s coming down like it’s the end of days. He’s thankful he had the foresight to wear an extra layer under his coat, though at the moment it’s not really doing much to warm him. It’s only been raining hard for maybe ten minutes at the most, but his hair is already dripping into his eyes and the rain is weighing his feathers down almost to the point of discomfort.

Dabi isn’t faring much better, Hawks notices. Being a fire user, he doesn’t necessarily need any extra layers; the bastard could probably steam himself dry in a few minutes if he wanted to. But as Hawks discreetly eyes him, watching the rain drip down his fringe, plastering his dark hair to his head and face, he thinks it might have been wiser to at least wear a hoodie or something, rather than just his usual overcoat with that thin, dingy shirt underneath.

Thankfully, the storm passes quickly. It lessens back to a light drizzle by the time they clear the alleyway, and Hawks finally has enough space (and reason) to stretch his wings out to their full wingspan. With a few mighty flaps, he shakes all of the excess water from his feathers.

“I hate it when it rains this hard,” He says casually as he folds his wings back, “Weighs my damn wings down.” It’s a relatively inane, pointless comment, one that Dabi would not hesitate to label as such; Hawks is hoping he will, if only to break some of the tension that’s been hanging in the air all night. Because truthfully, it’s a discomfiting silence. One that is slowly driving Hawks crazy. Hell, dare he say it, he would actually take the threatening but oddly playful barbs and bickering the two of them engage in (when Dabi is feeling more talkative) on occasion to this.

But all Dabi gives him in response as they continue on their way is an absent nod and a shrug of the shoulders.

Hawks almost growls at the lack of engagement, but gives up. He knows how to pick his battles, too. And by the way Dabi stares straight ahead, jaw set tight, eyes clouded and distant, this is one perhaps best left alone. He’s clearly got something on his mind tonight, and Hawks decides to let it be. It’s not like it’s his problem, anyway.

At least, that’s how Hawks feels until they turn onto another side street, down to the junction where they usually part ways.

“So, I’ll pass the news along to Shigaraki,” Dabi speaks for the first time since leaving that skeevy dealer’s place, voice even softer than normal, “And then once he gives the… the, uh…” He trails off briefly, eyes pinching shut, letting out a quiet, pained grunt.

Ah, so that’s it, Hawks realizes instantly, he’s just not feeling well.

However, he’s not above taking his jabs at Dabi when the opportunity arises. After all, if their roles were reversed, Dabi would most definitely lay into him without a second thought. They have been, and he has, so Hawks feels no shame or sympathy when he says, “You don’t look too good, Dabi. You alright?”

Finally, a genuine reaction: Dabi’s eyes narrow to slits, in what Hawks’ assumes is annoyance at both his taunt, and at himself for letting Hawks see any weakness. Dabi exhales sharply and straightens up to full his height and squares his shoulders, shaking any semblance of discomfort from his visage.

“I’m fine,” He mutters, inhaling deeply, “Just tired.”

“Mm-hmm,” Hawks nods, though he’s hardly convinced. Now, under the streetlights, he can just barely see that Dabi is a little pale in the face, and, for all of his forced bravado, his shoulders are starting to slump again.

“Tired. Right. Once Shigaraki gives the what now?”

Dabi sucks his teeth, mustering up just enough energy to give Hawks one last scathing look. “Once he gives the okay, I’ll contact you again.”

He doesn’t say another word as he turns to leave, and Hawks doesn’t say anything else either.

But he watches.

He stares at Dabi’s retreating back for a bit, head cocked to the side. When Dabi turned away, he turned just a little too quickly, a little too aggressively, and there was a very noticeable lurch and bob as he righted himself before walking away. The first real, clear sign that Dabi is under the weather he’s had tonight.

It was quick; anyone else would’ve missed it. Hawks, unfortunately, is not one of those people, though he really wishes he was. Because now, he can’t move from this spot until Dabi leaves his sight still an upright and ambulatory sentient mood swing. His conscience just won’t let him budge.

Goddammit. He curses mentally.

And, just for the record, it’s not that Hawks necessarily cares about Dabi’s well-being. If it were up to him, he’d let Dabi rot in that gross, dirty alleyway from before. It’s all the man deserves, frankly. What he does care about, however, is maintaining a (somewhat) reliable communication with the league. And for that, he needs Dabi. Dabi is his way in, --his only  way in-- so he’s obligated to care a little.

Besides, he knows for a fact that Dabi’s apartment is a long ways off from here, if only because he’s followed him home before, for surveillance purposes. And hell, it could barely be called an apartment to begin with.

And that piece of knowledge is what finally uproots him from his spot at the stoplight. Dabi rounded the corner a while ago, so Hawks figures it’ll be faster if he takes to the sky. He lands up on the rooftop of the building, and walks along the length of it to the corner.

That’s where he spots Dabi.

Well that didn’t take long, he thinks to himself. letting out a whistle. Dabi must’ve been making one hell of an effort to not let Hawks see just how poorly off he actually was.

“Boy, do I hate being right all the time,”He mutters out loud, but nonetheless he soars back down to ground level.

“Just tired, huh?” He says with a chuckle as he closes the distance between himself and Dabi, “Did you really think you could fool me, Dabi?”

Dabi, who is slumped against the side of the building, his breathing labored between wet coughs, just stares back up at him through narrowed but unfocused eyes. Even in the orange glow of the street lights overhead, the pallor of his skin, the healthy parts, stands in stark contrast to the deep purple scars. Deep down, Hawks can’t help but feel a tiny modicum of respect for the man. How he managed to keep himself together for the duration of the deal is a mystery to him because, to be frank, he looks even more like shit now than before.

Hawks doesn’t hesitate to tell him that, either.

“Fuck off,” Dabi snaps, but it’s hard to be intimidated by him when he slides to the floor, slowly curling into himself and trembling.

Hawks sighs. Damn his conscience.

“Look, I don’t know where you live,” A lie, “But based on what I’m seeing right now,” He says, gesturing to Dabi’s current position and quickly deteriorating condition, “I don’t think you’re gonna make it home, man. Come-”

“I’ll manage,” Dabi cuts him off sharply, pausing for a beat when a wave of nausea passes through him, “I just...need a minute to catch my breath.”

Hawks gives him a look. “The only thing you’ll manage in your state is to stumble into traffic and get hit by a car. That or pass out on some random sidewalk.”

Dabi growls.“I’m fine,” He reiterates, forcing himself to his feet, “I’ve dealt with worse. Just go away.”

He could go away, he should go away. But Hawks doesn’t. Instead, he walks a few paces behind Dabi’s still slouched form, face twisted into a permanent grimace as he watches the other man force himself along at a snail’s pace, using the wall to brace himself. At this rate, it’ll be sunrise before he makes it home.

Assuming he doesn’t pass out face down on the ground before then.

Hawks rolls his eyes. For fuck’s sake.

With two flaps of his wings, he lands directly in front of Dabi, forcing him to stop. “Come home with me.”

Oof, could’ve worded that better, he thinks. By the look on Dabi’s face, he clearly agrees.

“My place isn’t far from here,” Hawks continues quickly, “And I can’t, in good conscience, let you go after seeing you like this. Just crash at my place tonight.”

Despite looking and feeling like death warmed up, Dabi still gives him one of his standard sarcastic replies. “Aww, that’s so fuckin’ sweet of you, hero. Now, move. I said I’m fine.” He says caustically as he shoves his way around Hawks’ form...

...and immediately collapses on the ground.

Hawks stares down at his prone form, shaking his head. “Yep, seems about right.”

He walks over and picks Dabi up, bridal style. Despite their height difference, Hawks finds himself barely struggling to hold the other man. Dabi fits in his arms easily after just a bit of manipulation into a more comfortable position. Wow, he’s a lot lighter than he looks, Hawks thinks, eyebrows furrowing as he hefts Dabi up a bit closer to his body, preparing to take flight.

“I guess now you have no choice but to come with me,” He says, watching as Dabi’s head lulls to the side, unconsciously pressing into Hawks' chest, his face contorted with pain. “You’re definitely not going anywhere like this.”

But Dabi is nothing if not persistent. And amazingly stubborn.

“Put me down,” Dabi still manages to croak out, even on the precipice of unconsciousness, “I don’t need your fucking help.”

It would almost be impressive, if Hawks wasn’t so tired and desperate to get to his damn apartment already. Still, he can’t help but laugh out loud at Dabi’s tenacity. He doesn’t know when to give up, does he?

“Dude, you just went down like the goddamn Hindenburg, and you’re still fussing? Just give it up. You’re coming back to my place, and you can sleep this off. I need you alive.”

Dabi grips the front of his jacket weakly. “If you take off, I swear to god I will set the both of us on fire.”

Hawks blinks down at him. Alright. That’s it.

“For fuck’s sake,” Hawks snaps, “Well, if that’s how you’re gonna be, then you leave me no choice.”

“Wha-” Dabi doesn’t get another word in, as Hawks promptly headbutts him into silence.

“What a brat,” Hawks says aloud. With Dabi’s now fully unconscious form hanging in his arms like a limp rag, Hawks has to roll his eyes at the ridiculousness of this situation. He really should’ve just let him go.

“I’m sure this is gonna come back to bite me in the ass,” He mutters to himself as he takes flight.

Because after all, no good deed goes unpunished.