#imagine this. a blanket that has sleeves. you will never be cold again

[heejinpilled]

it doesn’t matter what show or movie it is but i always love the bit when there’s a flashback to like many years ago and a character proposes an idea that is very much a real thing in the future and everyone is like “ur crazy that’s so dumb. no one would ever want that”. and the real thing is like crazy popular too

[imamotherfuckingstar-lord]

fate

opla!sanji x reader, fluff

a/n: gif request by @sweetheartlizzie07

The ship rocked steadily; waves quiet as the moon lit the small ripples. Staring out to sea, you thought of all the little steppingstones that lead you to this ship. To the crew that took you in like the lonely orphan you are. Were. A smile made its way to the corner of your mouth, and you wondered if luck finally was turning its head your way. A cool breeze sent a shiver down your spine and then a warm blanket fell onto your shoulders.

“You’ll catch a cold and while the idea of healing you back to good health is enthralling…” Sanji tightened the wool blanket around your body and smiled, hands falling to his side. “I’m sure Chopper would disapproval.” “I don’t know, a week in bed sounds great.”

A charming smile graced the cook’s face, and he angled you back toward the sea, the two of you quietly staring out into the dark abyss. For minutes, a peaceful silence played between the small space left between Sanji and you. Neither of you needed to say much, quiet company had often been what you offered each other. He’d be cooking in the kitchen while you read at the counter, occasionally looking up from your book to steal a mental imagine of Sanji. Sleeves rolled up, a concentrated fiery in his eyes, a relaxed pout on his face – it was your favorite painting.

“Can I ask you something, Sanji?”

His eyes drew away from the sea to you. “Anything.”

And he meant it.

“Do you believe in fate?”

“Not really.”

Your facial expression must have looked disappointed because he began to backtrack, but you stopped him with a laugh. “You’re allowed to have your own opinion.”

He relaxed and edged closer to you, shoulder against yours. Watching as he pulled out the small tin, he kept his cigarettes in, you waited patiently for him to offer one up. When he did, you took a slow inhale and gave it back, once again staring out beyond the waves. “I always felt like my life would always just be. I was stuck on this island, waiting to be married off to someone I would never love. Have children that I would try to love. Just like my mother but then, Luffy found me.”

Sanji nodded, letting out a low chuckle. “He sort of found all of us, didn’t he?”

“That he did,” you replied. Turning to face Sanji, you asked him if he thought this was his fate. “Being on this ship, with this crew? Do you really think this is where you’re supposed to be?”

“Yes,” he answered swiftly, his hand moving to find yours. When his fingertips touched the outside of your wrist, you held his stare. “We can think we don’t deserve better than what we had, but maybe the universe has a way of remedying things.”

His hand moved down to lock with yours and he crushed the cigarette into the ledge – freeing himself to grab a hold of both your hands. Sanji held them gingerly, rubbing his thumb against your skin.

“So, you do believe in fate then?”

He shrugged playfully with a grin. “If fate led both of us to this moment, on this ship, then I guess I believe in it. What do you say?”

The waves gathered some courage to make noise against the ship, rocking it ever so gently as you held your balance – hands in Sanji’s. The moon shined brightly; the smell of sea salt filled the air as you squeezed your palm against his. All your life, you had begged and pleaded for something more than you had. A life worth living for, a family worth dying for. A love worth loving…

“I say I’m all in, if you are.”

Sanji let out a sigh of relief, gathering you in his arms. He kissed your forehead, rocking you under the gathered stars and for what seemed like a wonderful lifetime – the two of you remained that way, enjoying the little moment fate had gifted you.

[obae-me]

Random Sibling Headcanons

I'm a wee bit sick, which is why I've put my more serious projects on a very short pause. That being said I still feel the need to write something, so why not get some ideas out in the form of little fun ideas? Featuring colored names this time because it's fun for my brain.

These are just some little headcanons I like to think the brothers have done, since I love thinking of their sibling/ at-home relationships with each other.

In the picture of Lucifer's office, he seems to have stairs heading up to a second-story loft of some sort. I've always imagined he has a "Pride" wall somewhere up there filled with memorabilia of his brother's greatest or proudest achievements. There's some photos, art pieces, awards his siblings gave up on keeping, etc. His brothers know about it but hate it, so they all never speak of it.

Mammon and Levi once both badly injured their hands, trying to outdo each other high-fiving. You know where you try to get that perfect smack and hurt the other person's palm? Yeah, like that. They whiffed it on the first try and had to do it again and just couldn't stop after that.

Belphie usually puts small portions of his dirty clothes into his brother's hampers so they can clean his clothes for him without them realizing. It drives them all wild having to sort it out each time, and Belphie thrives off of it.

One of Satan's favorite pranks was to quickly run around the whole house and use up every hot water source he can while Lucifer was taking a shower so his water turns ice cold while the eldest is still in it. It got to the point where Lucifer is actually fine taking cold showers now.

If a bunch of them are in the same room and one of them gets a call from Lucifer, the others will suddenly try to sound like something horrible is going on, more often than not trying to incriminate the person who picked up the phone, blaming them for some false scenario that never happened.

If Belphie gets woken up too many times in the same day, he'll find ways to wake his siblings up in the middle of the night. Once he managed to get into all their phones and set annoyingly loud alarms, another night he cursed the piano in the music room to play until morning. Now the brothers have an unspoken rule not to wake their youngest sibling up more than four times a day.

Asmo likes to barge into his siblings' rooms sometimes unannounced with his D.D.D. while he's live on Devilgram or Deviltube. He loves to catch his brother's doing something stupid, it's hilarious. Sometimes he's not even live, he's just recording so he can keep videos to laugh over later.

They trade chores often, much to Lucifer's frustration, but everyone has some chores they absolutely can't stand. They've even somehow come up with a bartering system of sorts. Laundry = 1 other chore like dusting, but something like Dishes = 2 chores like taking on laundry and vacuuming.

None of them have ever missed one of Beel's games. They always show up and sit in the same spots so Beel never has to look around for them in the crowd. Lucifer brings the bag of supplies and snacks should his siblings need it. Because they always end up complaining about something by the end of the night. Mammon always brings his megaphone that almost always gets in him trouble every time. Levi gives his brothers all glowsticks. Satan always secretly has tricks up his sleeve to use against the opposing team should any of them come close to harming Beel (although that's nearly impossible, but he has them as a precaution). Asmo made everyone the most beautiful signs to hold. And Belphie brings everyone blankets since it can get chilly in the stands. He also brings a big lunchbox of snacks for Beel to eat right after the game even though they always go out to eat right after.

Lucifer, Mammon, and Levi as the three eldest are used to giving their younger siblings things they no longer need. The younger four have plenty of hand-me-downs but more often then not, they don't really mind. Lucifer gives out anything he's not overtly a fan of which can be anything from books to cologne to jewelry. Everyone has a few old things of his. Mammon gives out a bunch of clothes quite frequently. Despite his greed, his room can only hold so much, and so he usually goes through a semi-regular purge. Anything his brothers don't grab he sells. Levi gives out old electronics since he upgrades to the newest stuff as soon as he can. Because of this, Satan owns a pair of cat-ear headphones.

On a trip to the human world once, Asmo bought Belphie one of those electronic toothbrushes that play a song in your head while you brush your teeth so the youngest no longer falls asleep during brushing. Yes, it was a Brittany Spears one. (Does this date me? Maybe. Do they even make those anymore?)

Mammon and Asmo have both sat Beel down and tried to give him a basic course on recognizing flirting to keep their younger brother from being so totally oblivious, but no matter how many times they try, he never notices. However, now if Beel is ever given a random phone number, he knows to take it to either of those two to sort it out for him.

Once, for Belphie's birthday he received the ugliest quilt made from little squares from his brother's t-shirts, pillowcases, robes, etc. They all worked together to sew it up and it's very, very obvious who did what parts. Belphie says he can't stand the awful thing but sleeps with it every night.

[luveline]

I am humbly requesting a steve zombie au where the reader gets hypothermia hehehe😌

ty for ur humble request babe ♡ steve zombie au —steve freaks when you show symptoms of hypothermia. fem!reader 2k

"Steve, I think there's something wrong." 

Steve raises his head to show he's listening, keeping his gaze on the map. You say it through shivers, sleeves pulled down over your makeshift mittens. "What's wrong, honey?"

He's noticed you aren't yourself today, and he thinks a soft tone is the least he can give you. The stupid map in his hand is tattered, creased down the middle from folding and unfolding. He thought getting to Michigan would be easy, walk in one direction and keep on, but you both need to eat and rest and the weather is too cold to go any further. He needs to find a residential, tonight. 

"I feel off. I'm tired and I…" Your mumbling drifts off. 

Steve shoves the map under his arm, "What? Tell me." 

"Cold," you say, slurred, offering your hands. "I can't feel my fingers." 

You're wearing socks over your hands, the best gloves Steve could offer. He takes them with a severe frown, unhappy when the cold of your skin permeates through. You're ice. 

"And you don't feel well?" he asks, feeling up your arm to your neck. 

Steve digs under the layers of your shirts, hoodie, coat, feeling for your pulse. It feels alarmingly slow. He'd never guess from looking at you how slow your heart is pumping. 

Steve doesn't know everything, but he knows you're not supposed to be this cold for this long. You shiver as his fingers warm your neck, a pained hum coming from the very back of your throat as he pulls you in for a hug. 

"Okay," he says, rubbing your back even though he knows it's pointless. "Don't worry. We can't stay outside anymore, huh?" 

Steve aches to have to drag you down road after road, stretches of streets littered with little protection to offer. The roadside stores here are rocked by the elements, windows smashed and ceilings caving in. You're stumbling by the time a crop of houses appear in the distance, lethargic. Steve thought it was bad that you were cold, of course, but this is a more primal fear. You're not cold, you're freezing, actively freezing. 

"You're okay," he says again, his gentlest reassurance. "Sweetheart, just a few more minutes. See that house, the big brown shutters? That's where we're going. Can you do it?" 

"I can do it," you murmur. 

"I know, but it's my turn to ask stupid questions." 

Dead trees line the street, a planter of flowers by the door turned to crisps. Steve props you against a beam of wood holding up the angled porch roof and opens the screen door. He tries the handle on the interior. It's locked, a good sign. 

He's admittedly feeling the adrenaline of your imminent demise. Furious with the world and circumstances and himself for letting this happen, Steve kicks the door down with three big kicks. The bang rings like a shot through the entire neighbourhood, he imagines, but there's no time to worry about it. 

"You have to–" little gasp, Steve's head hurts, "have to sweep the house," you say as he pulls you inside. 

If there's something in here, he has to risk it. Out of options. 

He's as softhanded as he can manage dropping you into a seemingly intact couch. The room appears untouched from whoever left it, rather plush, it's a room Steve would've liked to live in. 

He grabs your face. You meet his eyes, startled. 

"I'm going upstairs for blankets. If something happens, you yell for me as loudly as you can. You don't have to say anything, just scream. Seriously." 

"Yeah," you say breathlessly. The last street of walking and the few steps has exhausted you. 

"Don't sleep," he says severely. 

"No, I won't." 

Steve dumps his bag on the floor. He backtracks to the porch to grab yours and wedges the splintered door closed using your bag as a temporary stopper. 

You must be hypothermic, cold for days, too cold to sleep last night, and it's all Steve's fault. We can do it, he'd said, just another push. He hoped for better standing further out of Indiana. None of it will matter if you get sick. 

He spins to walk up the stairs, falls weak and rushes back into the living room to check on you. 

"Everything's okay," he says, taking your face again into his hands and kissing your forehead. It's purely selfish. 

You touch his elbow. "I know." 

Steve takes off his jacket and puts it over your lap. The house is vaguely warmer than outdoors but it's far from enough to make a difference to you. Heart in his throat, he bounds up the stairs and onto the landing, an L-shape with one bedroom straight in front and four doors on left. The smell of gore coming from the closed master bedroom explains how it could be this clean; it wasn't uncommon at the start of the apocalypse for people to lock themselves in, kill themselves and their families. He has no interest in seeing it, nor unleashing the mould spores that come with decomposition. Whatever blankets were in there are worthless now. 

He takes a left and opens the door with a slam. A teenage bedroom not unlike his own back home, a simple comforter on the bed. He grabs it and tosses it on the landing, dipping into the second room. Bathroom, nothing worth having. The third room is a utility room with a jackpot of folded sheets, towels, padded quilts, and a comforter rolled into a log. He throws everything onto the floor and forgets the fourth door, arms fit to burst with fabric as he descends back downstairs. 

"Steve?" you ask.

"Yep, yes. I'm here." He drops the blankets at your feet. "Are your clothes damp?" 

"I think… no." 

"I'd tell you to take off your jacket," he begins, shaking the biggest comforter out over you as he talks, "but I want as many layers as possible. Come here, sweetheart. Lift your back a little." He tucks you in like a pastry. "Good. Good, thank you, sweetheart." 

"You're being very nice," you mumble, your eyelashes twitching like you've dimes weighing down your eyelids. 

"I'm always nice." 

"No," you say, your head falling back into the couch cushions. It's a family couch made of soft fabrics, not the showy leather piece you'd expect in such a mammoth lodging. "You're okay, though." 

Steve piles blankets on top of you. The cold is eating at him too, his nose stiff, his hair standing on end as gooseflesh ripples over his arms. 

When you've been sufficiently sandwiched, he feels your face again. You're already warmer, his hand creeping down into your shirt to feel for your pulse. Ropey. 

"Sweetheart, I need you to try and perk up," he says, rubbing your cheek with his thumb. 

"Not feeling perky." 

"Ah, but you're always perky. You're my sun, 'cos I'm so awful," he says, panic lining his plea. "You are. I'm going to make you something hot to eat." 

"Hot air?" you ask, slinking further down into your hump of sheets. 

"I think we might be in luck." 

He speaks too soon, really. The cupboards are lackluster. The can of soup he'd been hoping to find doesn't materialise. But there's a small can of ravioli, enough salted fish to make any tom cat happy, and a jug of water beneath the sink. He looks at it and sighs in relief. You have two litres of rainwater in your bag, and that had been the rations. This is one less thing to worry about. 

Steve makes sure that there kitchen door and the patio doors in the lonely dining room are locked, taking a big cooking pot from the pantry (depressingly empty bar a bag of sugar spilled on its side and a sack of grain) and a saucepan from atop the stove. He checks the gass but he's never that lucky, resigning himself to a typical campfire when it doesn't work. 

"Steve, put it back on," you say as he comes back in, your eyes a little wider, slightly more alert. You've pulled your arms out from under the blankets, with his jacket in your hands. 

Steve has kissed you before. You haven't talked about it out loud —he'd like to think a lot has been said in hand-holding, in spooning, and in you hand carding through his hair. He's eager to kiss you again, dumping his findings to hold your wrists. "Thank you," he says, kissing you clumsily, your lips cold. "Now put your arms in. I'll pull the blankets up." 

"Can you kiss me again?" 

"I'm trying to make you some hot water." 

"I'm warm enough already. Please?" 

Steve kisses you again. This time, he closes his eyes, puts his hand against your jaw. The sound of your lips pressing to his seems loud in the quiet. 

He pulls away with a final peck. "Are you feeling warmer?" 

You blow breath up your face. "Bet so." 

Steve rolls his eyes and turns away to make a campfire in the stolen pot. He'll boil some water in the saucepan for you to hold like a risky hot water bottle, and make some warmed ravioli. It'll be sweet. And tomorrow, if you're feeling better, he'll scavenge for supplies in the neighbourhood. Tonight, he'll burn the kitchen chairs. They don't need them anymore. 

"Settle in," he says, opening his backpack for the fire starters and matches. "We'll stay for a while, okay?" 

"Yeah, okay. Sorry for the fuss." 

"Are you kidding?" He can't look at you. He'll probably cry. "It's cold. You were cold, and we didn't– I knew your coat wasn't good enough but I just thought… well, it's my fault. It is. And I– I care about you so much," —he says it in a rush, true but unused to admitting his feelings to you or anyone— "I can't do this without you. I'll take better care of you, I swear. It won't happen again." 

"You know what would really warm me up?" you ask. 

Steve turns on his heel. "Let me make you something to eat." 

"Not hungry, just cold." 

Steve tamps down a giddy smile into one more respectable. "Let me feel your pulse," he relents, lifting the heavy layer of blankets to climb inside. Its roasting, the warmest he's felt in weeks, and your arm is alive as he slides into your side. 

He puts his hand against your neck, waiting for a steady bump. 

"Am I cured?" you ask. 

Steve sighs in relief. "You're cured." 

You wrap your arms around him. Life with you and in this situation is an endless rise and fall. Something shitty happens, you scrape by, and, as a victory, he gets to hug you in the end. 

"Are you sure you're okay?" Steve asks. 

"You just said I was cured, Steve," you mumble, digging your face into his shoulder. "Just. Stay here. Keep feeling me up." 

"Not what I'm doing." 

[monstersinthecosmos]

Vamptember Day 1 - Experiment

{agnes obel - kamma}

Daniel’s thoughts don’t make much sense.

Like everything is a fragment, like nothing is in order. 

Sometimes, a sound has a taste to him. Some remembered flavor from his human life, that he’ll never really know again. Sometimes a color has a smell. Sometimes, the music in the background of a television ad sends him spiraling into a memory so deeply that he can’t remember where he is when he comes back up for air.

His thoughts shuffle together. Don’t make much sense. Marius tries to keep a respectful distance, to give him privacy, but checks in from time to time, just to know how he’s doing. It’s often hard to tell. His thoughts are like a kaleidoscope some nights, and the sound of radio static on others. Sometimes he’ll be tidy, in perfect working order, until some intrusive thing sours him. It can be a texture beneath his fingers, a scent, a painting. It’s like an ink bottle tipping over to ruin a half-written page. 

Perhaps, Marius wonders, to someone Daniel’s age it’s more like the electricity shorting.

Some nights Marius stares at him, and Daniel doesn’t seem to notice. The child of his child, unmoving for hours, curled into the corner of the sectional sofa. It’s hard to tell how much is his own bias, but Daniel always looks young like this. The Blood had restored the weight in his face, erased the human signs of age, but it’s how small he makes himself. Marius stares, and thinks that Daniel seems like a broken little thing. 

“I heard that,” Daniel mumbles.

Daniel rubs at his face. His hunger cramps through his thoughts, permeates the entire room, and the pain in his strained arteries somehow becomes a color in his mind that he can’t unsee. He squeezes the bridge of his nose and pats at the breast pocket of his flannel shirt, as if looking for something.

Old human habit, Marius imagines. Looking for cigarettes that he hasn’t touched in over a decade.

“Would you like to hunt?” Marius asks. 

Daniel just shakes his head. He pulls his knees close to his chest. Nails scratch against his scalp.

“You’re hungry,” Marius says gently. He leans into the door frame, crosses his arms over his chest, wondering the best solution here. 

Marius is old. He can handle hunger. Likes it sometimes, the way the pain can clear him out a little bit. But Daniel is too young. Shouldn’t go so long without feeding. The weakness brought on only makes his acuity worse, makes him less patient, more quiet. The bad kind of quiet, though.

Daniel’s thoughts race, imagining the next handful of steps it takes to go hunting. Changing his clothes, putting shoes on. The cold wind outside and then the sweltering heat of a bar. The noise. The bitter chemical taste of perfume on a woman’s throat. Cleaning up afterwards. Too much for tonight, and the thought of the swoon isn’t even enough to drag him off the couch.

It’s not good to let the hunger build like this, though. Not for someone like Daniel. 

Marius reaches for the light switch beside him, twisting the dimmer to bring the lights lower. He grabs a blanket from where’s it’s lazily thrown over the arm of the couch and brings it closer, drapes it across Daniel’s shoulders as he takes the seat beside him.

“Drink from me, at least,” he says gently, as he unbuttons his cuff, and rolls the sleeve up his forearm. 

Daniel turns in his seat. Leans his temple into the soft couch cushion. Rubs his cheek in the fabric for a moment, as if it’s soothing.

Armand’s child. Marius looks at him, really looks, and he can see what Armand saw, just for a second. 

Marius holds out his hand. The purple veins still show, just barely. Enough that Daniel’s breath hitches when he looks down and sees them. He shifts, crosses his legs, pulls the blanket tighter around himself. Marius waits, with all his patience. He lets his hand fall into Daniel’s lap, inviting his control. 

“I always thought I’d be afraid of you,” Daniel says. 

It’s the most he’s spoken in months, but Marius doesn’t point it out. Thinks Daniel might take it badly.

Marius doesn’t answer, either. A quiet Hmm in consideration, to acknowledge him, as he settles back into the cushions. He tucks one of his feet beneath the opposite leg, lifts his free arm to rest on the back of the couch. Snow is beginning to fall outside, and he watches as frost grows on the corners of the windows.

The cool grip, finally, as Daniel touches him. Fingers tentatively curling around Marius’s forearm, as if reaching for a slithering thing. Not real revulsion, though, Marius can tell. Just the exhaustion and curiosity, too fragile to deal with any surprises tonight.

And then his teeth, and the cautious wet-cold press of his tongue. The pain tingles pleasantly in Marius’s spine, breaking through the barrier of immortality for a moment. 

“My fledglings weren’t like you,” he says softly, as Daniel drinks. His eyes are closed and he moans, just enough for Marius to hear. Quiet little noise, sated for the moment. Marius wonders what Daniel sees in the Blood, and tries to think of beautiful things.

But my fledglings weren’t like you, he thinks again. Even at her most morose, Pandora still floated at the surface. Amadeo could be reclaimed by a game of the switch. 

Maybe Marius just never knew, though. Never saw into their heads like this. Maybe Amadeo was this disorganized, too, maybe that’s why he liked this one.

Daniel pulls away with a gasp, and his voice garbles around the blood in his mouth. 

“Armand thought of me as an experiment,” he says. He drops Marius’s wrist and falls back against the cushions. He licks the blood from his teeth.

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not—”

“He told me once that he was an experiment to you, too.”

Marius rubs a thumb over the healed wounds in his wrist. Straightens his shoulders as he buttons his sleeve back up. 

His throat cramps, and his heartbeat is loud in his own ears. He glances at the snow outside.

“I need to hunt,” he says. He pats Daniel’s thigh as he stands. “Please don’t leave the house without me.”

[carnivorousyandeere]

Dorian with a Darling who does body painting and is determined😏 to make him their newest masterpiece..... although it might be a project best left for Darling's eyes only 🤭

Dorian’s fingers still over his phone at the work of art displayed on its screen. The painting is gorgeous, yes. He assumes the model must be rather attractive as well, but it’s obvious with your level of talent you could make anyone look ethereal. He’s not the least bit interested in the model, the canvas. He has to know more about the person behind the paintbrushes and air brushes, behind the camera. He has to know more about you.

( MDNI, No Age in Bio DNI )

CW: murder, smut, jealousy, praise kink, unprofessional work environment, technically Dorian is Darling’s employer;;; post-sex photography

Info: gn reader, no agab mentioned; switch/dom reader; switch/sub yandere

Dorian invited you to stay in his home to pursue your art more freely, but his bitterness at you bringing home “random tramps” to paint wears away at his nerves. He certainly doesn’t feel himself to be a prime candidate for artistic inspiration or photographs, but he can’t stand you spending so much time with other people. The curse of your line of work is that need for a living canvas; a need he cannot deny you, or else your art will enchant no longer.

He kills your models when you’re through with them. If you ever question why none return your calls to work with you again, you don’t mention it to him. You don’t talk much to him at all. It’s both comforting and frustrating. He wants to hear your thoughts, but he never knows what to say in response.

Imagine his surprise upon learning you want him to be your canvas— that you were even feeling a bit shy about asking him to sit for you.

“You’ve already done so much, I don’t want to trouble you more…”

“Nonsense! If anything—” Dorian seems to realize his tone is too passionate, too loud, and coughs self-consciously into his sleeve before continuing more quietly— “if anything, it would be an honor.”

~~~

Dorian is mostly bare, his last vestige of modesty a blanket covering his privates. He tries so hard not to squirm under your gaze as you evaluate the planes and curves of his body. He has to fight for that stillness even harder at the cold touch of paint on his skin, knowing that it’s you who’s adorning him like this, making him into art. Your art.

If you notice him trembling and breathing a little shallowly as cover his face, then arms, then chest in a base layer to protect his skin followed by swathes of deep blue paint, mercifully you don’t say so.

Dorian is beginning to relax, patting himself on the back for being so normal when he feels a swipe of primer across his hip and jolts away with a gasp, eyes shooting open.

You jolt back too, drawing your hands back to yourself, apologizing profusely.

Dorian swallows down the lump in his throat, willing his heart to stop sending so much damn blood down south. His ears are ringing. He clears his throat again, avoiding your eye. “I should be the one apologizing… you are only doing what we agreed to…”

He coughs again, hiding himself from you as best he can. “I-I’m afraid it’s just been… rather a long time since somebody has touched me… there…”

Oh. Here you were, so afraid to paint your handsome benefactor, and he was even more nervous than you!

Dorian cringes away at your laugh, beautiful though it is. He relaxes when you take his hand in yours, kissing the back of his knuckles.

“It’s okay to feel that way. It happens surprisingly often.”

Dorian frowns at the thought of other people in his spot. Did you hold their hands too? Kiss their skin, smudge the paint drying there? Dorian turns his head to kiss your hand in turn, watching the gentle laughter dry in your throat at his heated look. “And what do you usually do when that happens?”

“I…” you swallow harshly, looking away. “I usually leave the room so the model can compose themself…”

Dorian hums, kissing up your wrist and nipping at the skin when you answer. “And what if I don’t want you to leave? What if… I want you to stay?”

Your head spins with sudden heat as Dorian pulls you into a kiss, smearing blue paint all over your lips and nose. You’re out of breath long before he lets you go, sucking down air greedily and giggling a little at the absurdity of it all. Dorian pulls you even closer, guiding your hand to his cock.

You gently pull him out from under the blanket. He’s dripping already. You smear pre-cum with your thumb, licking your lips as Dorian shudders and tilts forward to rest his forehead against yours. His eyelids flutter with every stroke, soft whispers of your name leaving his lips like a prayer.

He’s beautiful like this, and you tell him so. Dorian whines. His gasps of your name only grow louder, his cock twitching harder as you continue to praise him— no matter how much he shakes his head in denial of your sweet words.

He cums hard, white splattering across his painted stomach. You coax him to lay back in a more comfortable position, petting his hair and reassuring him he did a good job for you, before taking out your camera and snapping some pictures to start a… private collection.

[agattthaa]

Anna's Effect

Paring: Anna/Lane

Word count: 1.130

Rating: T

Summary: Lane was a person that never had difficulty to understand people's feelings. What she had now was the difficulty to understand her own.

Tagging: @rc-catalog

Working on her bed was extremely impractical. Lane knew that. But the Siberian winter was colder on that day than it has been in a long time, and even with her room being one of the warmest in the manor, it was simply too cold to concentrate sitting on that small desk.

So she took one of Anna's long sleeved turtleneck and took all her books and notebooks to her bed and covered her legs with the thick woven blanket.

The translation was not progressing very fast. Actually, it wasn't progressing at all. Lane was sure that she needed whatever content the two missing pages carried but she had nowhere else to look for it. Soon Dimitry would start pointing out her delay, as if it was her fault that translating a book in a language no one alive knew and that the alphabet was a complete mystery was as easy as falling asleep.

She didn't even want to imagine his face when she told him she hadn’t made any progress.

-I don't want to see his face for a long time!

The slam of the door and the pacing woman took her out of any of her worries about her job. Anna was completely angry. Angrier than Lane has ever seen her.

She walked around the room completely mad, so displeased with whatever happened that she didn't even notice that Lane was staring at her. Her face completely red and her mumbling almost inaudible. The only words the woman could understand were “Dimitry” and “stupid”. They were repeated at least eight times.

-Did he catch you?

The woman jumped and turned around to look at Lane, making it completely clear that indeed her presence was unknown until that moment. But the surprise soon enough left Anna's face, the red started to subdue and she was visibly less upset than she had been when she got into the room, as if Lane’s mere presence would be enough for that.

As if.

Lane was sure that out of everyone that could have a calming presence, she would be the last. Of course, she knew how to calm people, she had to learn it fairly early due to her parents and the need for her to act like an adult when she should've been a normal kid. But her ability to calm people down came from her ability of understanding and analyzing human feelings, it didn't come from her ability to be a comforting presence, it didn't come from her being a friendly shoulder, it didn't come from her being a good source of support.

That Lane didn't know how to do.

And yet, Anna was no longer pacing around, she was now standing in front of Lane's bed, her breathing normal again, her face no longer red and her anger vanished. She looked down at Lane as if the translator had asked the wrong question and that she wanted something else. What, that Lane didn't know, so the two of them stared at each other for minutes or seconds or the entire eternity before Anna sighed.

-I tried to reach out to the girl in the cafeteria again, and out of nowhere the general showed up.

-I assume he was pretty upset.

-You have no idea. I don't know what he expects from me. There's people getting like that, we have no idea of why, of how they are contaminated or how to prevent the contamination. So he keeps a microbiologist on his squad just out of decoration? Am I supposed to sit still and drink some tea while there's people that I could help and that are simply dying?

Lane didn't know how to answer that. They both knew that in his stoic way, the general was protecting Anna by keeping her away from the locals, and they both also knew that Anna was right. That it was her duty to at least try to solve this mysterious pathogen just as it was the general's duty to prevent her to. So, indeed, what was Anna supposed to do? The silence came back while Anna searched for the answers to her questions on Lane’s eyes and searched for something in Anna's.

From the start, Anna had been the biggest mystery for Lane to understand. She had an extreme facility to understand people's emotions, including Anna herself.

What wasn't understandable was what Lane denominated “The Anna's Effect”. To stay sleeping close to Anna, Lane had spent an entire night listening to endless snorings from a man she didn't like and that didn't like her back, to be able to have lunch and dinner with Anna, she had started to eat with the entire squad and even participating on the cooking and the talking, and when Anna was sad or mad or displeased, like now, Lane felt the same.

She didn't want to calm Anna just because, she wanted because seeing Anna hurt caused pain to her.

“Oh.”

She knew it as soon as she thought of getting up to hold Anna in her arms. The need for human contact had never been a thought that Lane believed that she could have. But she also never believed that she would take someone else’s hurt to an extent. She was more upset at the general now that she has ever been before, and he had done a lot of things to make her upset. The sadness in Anna's eyes hurt more than anything she could remember, so it wasn't a life-changing realization really. It was more of the understanding of the matter per say.

That now it made sense that every time she got into a room, her eyes would immediately search for Anna's, or why she always prefered to take the closes Anna stored in her closet than that the ones she left out for Lane, it made sense because the scent of a beloved person helped to reduce stress levels, it made sense why the air left her chest everytime that Anna smiled at her.

-You could help me with my job.

Anna immediately smiled, once again taking the air from Lane's lungs, but at least now she knew her thought about having lung cancer was nonsensical.

-You mean watch you as you do your work?

Lane didn't answer, simply moving a few books away and lifting the blanket. The cold air got in, but so did Anna, so it wasn't that upsetting.

And the microbiologist wasn't lying when she said that she was just going to watch. Her head rested against Lane's shoulder and she watched and soon fell asleep. And as Lane moved the books away as quietly as possible and slowly laid the two of them down, Lane noticed that she wasn't the only one affected by an effect.

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

If the Sky Comes Falling Down (For You)

First posted: January 25, 2019

Focuses on: Jason Todd and his various siblings

Favorite bookmark: "A variety of permutations and flavors of Robin h/c featuring Jason! The Baskin Robins of BatFam h/c, if you will."

Second favorite bookmark: "and so, step by step, the prodigal stray coaxes himself home."

Tier: #3 in hits & kudos & subscriptions, #4 in comment threads, #2 in bookmarks

This is my “behind the scenes” series where I indulge myself horribly by annotating my fics. Link to the fic itself above. Individual chapter notations below the cuts.

Chapter One

First, to note, the title came last and is from "Hey Brother" by Avicii because it was already on my BatFam playlist and gave me strong sibling feels, so it worked!

Okay if I remember correctly, this fic came about because 1) I had jotted down story ideas, all surrounding Jason, that were all just a bit too similar for me to feel comfortable doing them as one-offs, and 2) it was late 2018 when I start writing so I was deep in 5+1 IronDad fics.

This fic was so deeply indulgent from start to finish, which I think might be why people liked it so much? Like, if you're into the tropes into this fic, you're really into them. It scratches the itch just right, because it's my itch and I wrote it for me.

The plan was to do like I did for my other multi-chapter fics (except Nature and Nurture, RIP me) and write it all out before posting anything, so I could be sure that I would actually finish. I don't have that kind of self-restraint anymore. But it was a fun challenge to figure out what should happen to whom and in what order.

Jason didn’t sleep much anymore. He’d always been a rough sleeper, his years spent in low-security public housing and then on the street grinding away at his ability to rest with ease. He slept lightly, his consciousness skimming just below the surface, ready to spring awake at the softest noise.

As I've said before, sometimes I have an idea for a fic but then, when trying to start it, a sentence pops up immediately as my opener. That's always a wild ride because sometimes it seems to have nothing at all to do with where I want to go, so then I have to backtrack and figure out but why tho????

Moving to the Manor had helped some, after he’d assured himself that no one was going to scratch at his door or steal his shoes. The cold mornings had been the best, spent curled under a mound of the softest blankets imaginable atop a mattress so perfectly contoured to his bones that it’d felt like floating on the surface of a pool. He’d slept, truly slept, at the Manor.

I like the idea of, even at Jason's most toxic and vitriolic, the Manor itself still representing safety and comfort. Maybe sometimes he would twist it into stifling or grossly indulgent, but I think deep in his stomach he would know that distortion was a lie. The Manor was safer than anywhere else, even with his mom.

Those days of rest were long gone. The Pit had done a number on his brain—intensifying and altering his emotions, erasing some old habits and dialing up others, leaving dark chasms where memories should be.

I've seen other fics play with the idea of the trauma of Jason's injuries, death, resurrection, and the Pit all combining to some degree or another to swiss-cheese his brain (a phrase I lovingly borrow from Quantum Leap.) And that of course leaves a bunch of really fun room to play with—how much does Jason know he's missing vs. how much is gone or totally distorted without him even being aware? (Again, another thing I tease out in various fics like N&N.)

It was like someone had jammed a stick in his skull and given his brain a good stir. Or maybe that was just the crowbar. Ha.

I made myself snicker with that one. It's so voiceily Jason but also that ha is so guttural and specific in my head, you all will never know.

He was making progress with his budding criminal empire—splashy progress, as displayed on the crusting cuffs of his sleeves and the splattered toes of his boots, but also more subtle progress, too. The subtle form was harder, so much harder, but he knew its changes would be more permanent, in the long run. Splashy got people talking. Subtle got them bowing.

Jason! Todd! Is! No! Thug! He is smart and cunning and uses violence to make an impact and that's that on that.

And though he’d heard her speak before in the careful neutral of the middle-class, the sounds being beat out of her now were Crime Alley crooked.

I like the idea of Steph and Jason growing up in the same neighborhood. It's not a hill I'd die on, but it makes for some interesting fic.

The girl put up a good fight. She was rough, no finesse, no real training. All knuckles and elbows and feet and knees. He spotted some of the Bat basics pop up in the way she ducked and spun, but she wasn’t lithe like Nightwing or crafty like the Replacement. She was a brawler. And she was losing.

She is who he might have been, without Bruce and Alfred and Dick. A decent fighter, stubborn, willing to brawl it out, but ultimately destined to lose.

It sucked in an abstract way, the way it sucked that someone was going hungry halfway around the world, the way it sucked when a stranger missed his bus. It sucked, but it wasn’t Jason’s problem, and he couldn’t really bring himself to care. B needed to learn to pick up his toys.

Starting with Steph made the most sense to me. She wasn't (and isn't) a member I know super well, with so much of her canon backstory being things I have no interest in, and she's part of the Family but in that awkward "we're maybe siblings but also I have a mom and also I dated one of you too??" ways, so she's got a little bit of distance, for me as a writer and also Jason. She doesn't have the emotional heat of the others. He doesn't hate her, just what she represents. He also doesn't care what happens to her, except—

The knife glinted in the amber streetlight and cast a shadow across the yellow emblem on her chest.

She's not Batman. She's not a Robin. She's Batgirl. And that's a different thing entirely.

Jason knew what they saw when they looked at him. He was big now, broad-shouldered and massive in a way he had only ever dreamed of being as a scrawny, malnourished street kid. His helmet was blood-red and gleaming, its angles sculpted to subtly suggest a skull. And his clothes were still stained with actual blood. He was an Alley myth, a nightmare with more bite than the Bat, because he wasn’t afraid to do real damage. He was death.

Jason Peter Todd is scary smart, and he knows how to make the exact impact he wants.

“I don’t know you, but I know your colors. You’re Ibanescu’s boys.”

I had to google Gotham crime families. I know literally nothing other than the name.

It was one thing to let her get the snot beat out of her. And even if someone else had taken a shot at her, he wouldn’t have minded. But he couldn’t. Not in that suit.

:3

“It’s not about you,” Jason repeated, his voice gravelly and rough. He pointed toward the yellow symbol on her chest, the symbol that, in the world he’d left, the world he remembered, belonged to someone else. “I owe her a debt. And now it’s paid.” Jason was a murderer. A thief. A criminal. A drug lord. He had no illusions as to his own goodness anymore, no hope for redemption or grace. But he had his values, the few precious things that he would not allow. One of those, it seemed, was watch a man restrain and stab a Batgirl while he did nothing.

Someday I'll write more about that. The partner and friend and maybe mentor who was still reeling from trauma and hadn't yet found her way when Jason was snuffed out of existence.

Jason was tired, but the night was just beginning.

So that's where it starts. Jason tired, literally caked with dried blood, stepping in not because of love or hate or curiosity or concern but because he felt he owed a debt to someone else and that debt instead landed on the person in front of him.

[intrepidacious]

a vague prompt for your first time writing for curtis!! 🫶🏻✨️💕

 “i’m wondering why i’m freezing and i see you’ve stolen the entire blanket.”

thawing | c.e.

a/n: believe it or not, this really is just seven sentences. i'm loving my curtis era.

You blink awake slowly at the rough sound of his voice, a low rumble just loud enough for you to hear over the sounds of the train moving; in the semi-darkness, Curtis is reduced to a silhouette, his eyes black shadows, his features hidden, but you can still catch his edges softening as you stir.

"Sorry," you whisper, trying not to hit your head on the top of the bunk in your attempt to quietly untangle yourself from the blanket you’d been sharing at the beginning of the night, which is easier said than done without waking everyone around you.

It’s not that you’re a secret, really, or at least you don’t think so; it’s not like there’s much to tell, anyway, because even though you swear he doesn’t look at anyone else the way he looks at you, whatever’s there between you has never been named, or pointed out, or acted upon. But whenever the night gets particularly cold in the tail section or you dream of sunshine on your neck and soft, solid earth beneath your feet, you sneak out of the cot you’ve been assigned to and make your way down the wagon, and when Edgar lets out a particularly loud snore, you gently tug at Curtis’ sleeve and he lets you squeeze in next to him, crammed between the wall of the train and his own warm body, and he’ll wrap his arm around you as soon as he’s drawn the curtain shut.

There’s something to be said about the way he changes when he’s separated from the rest of the world even by just a flimsy piece of cloth, when there’s no one else’s expectations placed on his back anymore and he holds you like it means something; but you don’t have the words to tell him how it breaks your heart in the loveliest way, and so you don’t say anything at all. You fall into a dreamless sleep while listening to his breaths evening out, and if you press a little closer, then, who’s to blame?

His hands are cold when he pulls the blanket over both of your shoulders again and it makes you shiver and catch one of them with your own, shifting to lay on your side, tracing his rough knuckles and wondering, not for the first time, how things could be, would be, might have been; before you drift off again, you imagine him shift a little closer still.

[webdollzz]

ok so here’s what I was thinkin’ lol!

we all know how Mike met Eleven. Now instead of Mike in that situation, let’s put Eddie. He goes to that picnic table in the woods and ends up finding a girl around his age (she refuses to talk cause of how scared she is and has a hard time using her powers on command). She’s super scared of Eddie and he eventually convinces her to come back to his trailer where she’d be safe. I can only imagine how sweet and gentle Eddie would be with her, wraps a blanket around her while she lays on his bed😭,he’d probably treat her like a baby bird, and thinks she’s the most delicate thing ever 🥺😂lol

Delicacy

warnings: none, tooth rotting fluff , Eddie x shy!telekinetic!fem!reader. Gentle!Eddie. Reader can speak, but she doesn't talk much due to shyness. use of y/n ONCE and it was reader introducing herself. swearing, it's Eddie. cmon now. drug talk. again. it's Eddie. 1st person pov?

˚ ⋆ ·̩͙. .·̩͙ ⋆ ✩ ｡ ˚ ✩ ｡ ˚ ⋆ ˚｡ *⋆ ˚ ✩ ｡˚˚ ⋆ ·̩͙. .·̩͙ ⋆ ✩ ｡ ˚ ⋆ ·̩͙. .·̩͙ ⋆ ✩ ｡

the leaves crunch under my feet. I have just escaped the lab and I have no idea where I'm going, because I never left of course. I turn a certain corner in the woods, and I'm revlived to see a bench. But as I step closer my anxiety spikes again. There's someone there, a man. I try to step back in order to make a quick and sly exit but I step on a twig that makes a loud SNAP. the man's head flew up from his metal container, shutting it almost instantly.

" Uhh..Hello? anyone there?"

He shouts out. You're debating on whether backing up or stepping out. just as you decide to back, the man turns his head a certain way that he's able to see your legs, and your oversized tee.

"Oh! oh, um, hey!" He says, and you peak out enough that he sees your eye.

"Yeah, you. You okay? do you need me to call somebody or..can you come out here?" He says, giving you a one up. You step out and edge closer to the bench, being very cautious because he could be someone from the lab.

"Are you okay? He whispers so he doesn't startle you. You nod slightly and stand just infront of the seat. He notices you're tensing your hands and focusing on his metal container before him. You're struggling to use your power. It's been weak since you left the lab. He just assumes you're cold, though.

"Oh! you must be freezing wearing only that in minus 4 weather. Cmere!" He says, taking off his jacket and walking round the table towards you. He leans to put the jacket on you, but you flinch and step back.

"Hey, nono it's okay, here, sorry." He noticed how you flinched and decided to just hand you the jacket. You take it out of his hands and put your arms in the sleeves.

"Hey why don't I take you to my house? well- it's not a house it's more of a mini house. Anyway, you look freezing and it's supposed to snow tonight and I can't just leave you out here. If you'd feel more comfortable you can sit in the back of my car so you don't have to be that close to me." He rambles, clearly trying to make it known you're safe and he isn't even gonna breathe without making sure you're okay with that.

"No..no. okay. I sit in with you." You speak, trying to make yourself sound tougher to no avail. "Oh! oh you can speak. okay! Great, just this way, uh..your name?" He's shocked you can speak, he actually kinda thought you were an homeless exchange student.

"..I'm y/n. You're?" I whisper.

"right! my apologies. Eddie, Eddie munson." He says, wrapping an arm around you to keep you steady.

"..Munson?" You mumble, struggling to say the word a little.

"Yeah..its like..a second name. If there was three Eddie's in a line, and they all looked like me but have different last names, you'd know which one was me because they don't have munson as their last name. You..uh do you understand that?" He struggles to find a way to explain a last name, who knew it'd be hard to explain such a simple thing. You think about it for a second before saying

"Makes..sense." He gives you a soft smile before realising he left his metal box

"Oh! shit, sorry, I left my box . I'll be right back." He says, removing his arm from around you but you catch his wrist.

"No, wait. Let me..." You whisper, he's clearly confused but stops. You close your eyes and take a deep breath before focusing all your attention on the box. It starts rattling, shaking almost. It begins to slowly and shakily make its way towards you.

"WOAH! woah what the fuck?!" He says, practically flying backwards towards his car. His reaction startles you and you flinch and the box drops on the floor about halfway. You step back towards a tree and lean against it.

"Wait, sorry, Im just..I've.. never quite seen something like that before." He whispers the last bit as he bends down to pick up his box.

"Come on back, It's okay. I'm sorry I shouted , just surprised. Cmere, you're safe." He says, reaching a hand out to you. which you look at before you slowly take it.

"Safe?" You mumble.

"Yeah..yeah safe. You know what it means?" He replies, looking at you.

You nod "I know..never felt."

He left out a soft 'ah'.

You're now in his car about 4 to 5 minutes away from his trailer. Without him realising , you take the metal box and open it up . You see a little bag with..balled up grass? in it. You smell it and immediately let out a huff due to the extreme smell. Weird smelling grass. Eddie glances over, double taking when he realises what you have.

"Woahhwoah. careful with that, it's not even mine- here give it, I'll put it back later." He says, switching to one hand to drive the car and the other is reaching for the bagged up green ball.

You hand it to him, and he shoves it in his back pocket as he pulls into his trailer. He steps out whilst you're still trying to get out, forgetting you have a seat belt on. He opens you door and realises you haven't taken your belt off. he chuckles softly before leaning over you, making you wonder what he was doing so you lean down too, you hear a soft -click- He leans back up not knowing you leant down too so your noses practically brush together. He makes a sly glance at your lips to your eyes before removing your belt and softly taking your hand in his to step you out the vehicle. He walks you into his trailer, sitting you down softly on the couch.

"Do you have any injuries? like um..cuts? or scratches?" He asks, standing back upright. You nod and lift up your shirt a little to reveal a cut, not heavily bleeding but still needs to be taken care of.

"Okay, im gonna go grab some clothes and a first aid kit, stay here, look around, just don't leave , kay?" He says, giving a look towards the door. You softly nod and he walks towards his bedroom. You stand up and begin to look at a bunch of tapes.

there's some words on them you've never seen or heard them. meta-llica? Iron mayden? goodness knows. he walks back out looking towards the couch seeing your not there and snaps his head towards the door thinking you left but seeing you kneeling in the corner with a bunch of tapes. He let's out a soft laugh

"I see you found my music." His voice makes you flinch a little. "Here, the bathroom is just there. You can wear these until we get you some girl clothes. Unless you like those. sure we could find you some." You nod and walk towards the bathroom, turning around and shutting it. You slip on what he's given you, some black pants and a shirt that says.. Black..sab-beth? How have you never heard these words before? Weird. You walk out and eddie smiles at seeing you in his clothes because they're huge on you. "Here..May I?" He says, gesturing to your bottom half. You turn your head and lift up your arms thinking he was gonna take your shirt off.

He softly reaches towards the joggers and rolls them so they're not as big. His fingers grazes softly on your hips, they're cold so it makes you twitch a little. He let's out a soft sorry.

"Sit, gotta clean up that cut or it'll get infected." He sounds, patting the couch. you do as he said and opened your legs a little so he could reach the cut on your stomach.

"Okay, good job. Could you hold your shirt up to about..there? please. thank you." He says, lifitng your shirt softly so he can gain access to the cut better.

"this might hurt." He whispers before patting a alcohol cloth on the cut. You gasp and grab his arm, pushing him away slightly.

"Sorry! Sorry. just a little more. you're doing really good." You make your hold less tight and let him do what he's gonna do.

As he's doing that he begins to speak. "Hey..um. if you don't mind me asking, how did you do that? back there. The whole...floaty..thing. Whatever it was." You shrug.

"I was a in a lab, put in a water tube, with a funny hat on with strings attached and I saw things. Trained me to move things without touching. There is others...Was." You mumble, correcting yourself. His eyebrows raise slightly.

"They did tests on you?" He asks, leaning back because he finished. You just stare at him, making him realise you don't know how bad that is.

"Right..anyway, you're all bandaged up. I'll change it tomorrow. Until then, is there something you wanna do?" You glance around, tapes catching your eye again. you stand up and walk towards them, trying to find one that matches the words on your shirt.

You eventually find one called "Black sabbeth: Paranoid." You hand it to Eddie, pointing to your shirt.

"The same." you spoke.

He nods with big grin. "Yeah! they're the same. You wanna listen?"

He asks, taking it out of your hands. You nod and he walks over to put the tape in, turning the volume down to 11 so it's not too loud for you. You sit down on the couch, waiting for the song to begin, he joins you and it begins. After a few seconds, maybe 10 or 20, you bop your head along. getting the rhythm. He laughs whilst looking at you.

"Bitchin', right?" He smiles.

You stare for a few seconds before returning the soft smile.

"Bitchin'."

˚ ⋆ ·̩͙. .·̩͙ ⋆ ✩ ｡ ˚ ✩ ｡ ˚ ⋆ ˚｡ *⋆ ˚ ✩ ｡˚˚ ⋆ ·̩͙. .·̩͙ ⋆ ✩ ｡ ˚ ⋆ ·̩͙. .·̩͙ ⋆ ✩ ｡

thank you for your request, lauren! always a pleasure to write for you. Hope I did it justice! also no that is not how i spell or say those metal bands. I was doing it in a way that makes it sound like the reader is trying to sound it out in her head!

[altschmerzes]

i absolutely adore “something to hold onto” (and your writing in general) - any chance of a snippet from the next chapter?

absolutely!!! thank you so much it's so kind of you to say :') that fic is such a specifically fun and specifically nerve-wracking project and i'd absolutely love to share some of part 2 with you!!

clip under the cut, as well as specific content warnings for it, though of course you know what fic this is and that it's just. generally Rough Stuff going on here, though the immediate harm has stopped.

this is from the beginning of part 2, shortly after jack and company have found mac hiding in the supply closet in the office. jack's gone through a brief field exam to conclude that mac's injuries aren't going to be life-threatening if they stay here for a while, allow him some time to collect himself and calm down.

specific warnings are just that mac is in a really fragile place, he's really out of it and is having a hard time managing his reactions to things.

--

“It’s alright, they’re gone. It’s just us. Just you and me. Sam’s keeping everyone away, the tac team we brought is outside. Sierra’s coming to get us. They’ve been at the airstrip we landed at, but they’re bringing a car over. Don’t you worry about that just yet, though. If they get here before you’re ready, they can go ahead and wait.”

Jack keeps on talking, speaking in a quiet and steady register about not much at all. He talks about where they are - apparently it’s Northern Nevada - and about the snowfall outside. He talks about the snow a lot, really. Once he’s started on the subject he never seems to run out of things to say about it, and it’s familiar enough to bring some relief to Mac’s scattered nerves. He tips his head to the side, resting it on his knees and watching Jack, listening to his voice and imagining that the sound of it could wrap around him like a blanket.

After a while, Jack shifts where he sits in the doorway, getting a little closer. He carefully monitors Mac’s response and when he doesn’t see any kind of negative reaction he reaches out, slow and cautious. There’s a moment where Mac isn’t sure what he should do, if he should lurch away to avoid the contact or allow it to happen, lean into it when it does. It’s a warring set of instincts, fear grappling with a desperate need he hates recognizing in himself, and he settles on doing nothing at all. Jack’s hand touches his side, lightly at first and then in a more deliberate press when Mac doesn’t shy away from him. Warmth seeps slowly through the material of Mac’s flannel, and as soon as he feels it, he wants more. He wants that warmth to envelop him entirely, take him out of this cold little room and away from everything he’s feeling. He wants so badly to be safe.

Ducking his head to the side, Mac soaks the ceaseless stream of tears with his sleeve again. (It’s ruined by now, blood and tears leaving it a tacky, stiff mess that may never come all the way clean.) Jack’s hand, curved around his side at the middle of his ribs, bent towards his back to avoid the damage to his chest, stays where it is. His thumb sweeps up and down a few times, a soothing gesture that brings a hitch to Mac’s lungs.

“Sorry.” It’s hardly a whisper, but Mac has to say it. He needs Jack to know that he doesn’t want to be doing this, that if he could have forced his body to cooperate he would have gotten up and left already. It’s not that he wants to be wasting everyone’s time, it’s just the control he always keeps such a tight grip on, the composure and compartmentalization he prides himself in are out of his reach. Biology, psychology, sociology - a dozen different things spring to life at once in Mac’s mind like pop-up windows. He can’t sort through them, and it doesn’t matter anyway. He knows why people cry, he does, but it doesn’t matter. He’s supposed to be better than that. “Sorry, I can’t, I… Trying to stop. Promise. ‘M trying, but I can’t stop- stop-” Stop crying. Mac can’t get it out, just jams his squeezed-shut eyes against his sleeve again and tries to convince himself that Jack can’t feel the way his back shudders and jerks with his breathing.

Jack makes a muted sound that’s almost but not quite a snort. “Don’t know what on God’s green earth you think you’re apologizing for, there, Mac, but you ain’t done nothing wrong. I won’t hear you apologize for crying. Not now, not ever. You apologize for way too much shit you didn’t do wrong. Not enough for some other stuff I might wish you would sometimes, but, well, that’s beside the point.” His voice has gone soft and fond, just barely teasing, and then it sobers again immediately. “But not that. Don’t you ever say you’re sorry for that. Not one minute of my life am I ever gonna want to hear that.”

[rcguish]

a collection of snippets from some of the discord happenings ( silver and grusha threads <3 ) : first date ; day one, into the morning.

pretty cute is something he’d only heard blue say to him, years ago. that was different, this is different. instinctively, free hand rises to touch the thickest part of the scar displaced off of nose bridge, and he feels somewhat prepared to speak in rebuttal. but silver sees the pure sincerity in the depths of grusha’s eyes, like he spoke from his heart rather than in deception, and it felt real. like he couldn’t dare to argue, like it was anything other than fact to them. blue’s words ring once again in his mind. maybe even thinking of kissing them?

companion moves back, and he almost makes a noise akin to a whine — almost — before their gazes meet and heart skips its beat again. without a thought, eyes flit from eyes to lips, and back up again. there’s a beat of hesitation, movement before a pause that has silver holding his breath — would he? and when a hand clad in a mitten rests on the side of his face, silver hums again in a low, deeper note that really did sound like the slightest whine. maybe touch was quickly filling in some distant and forgotten about part of him, maybe some part of him he had to kill to survive. with grusha’s eyes closed and them unable to notice at that moment, silver lets his gaze fall to their scarf and hidden away lips once more.

he sees grusha work himself through something that he can’t see. notes the inhale / exhale, a conscious effort in releasing the tension that gripped their frame ; and just that alone brings a soft smile back to the ends of silver’s lips. i’m proud of you. self soothing was never an easy feat, it was a hundred year long war that took place in the span of minutes. maybe hours, maybe days. they did it in seconds, no matter how forced. it was a start. [ ... ... ] “i —“ no, that wasn’t right. the arms that had released grusha, now holding to the crease of their arm that was cradling his face, clench and unclench. from laying gentle, to fists above cloth, to a quiet uncertainty in movement. “…no, you.” the words that fall almost lamely from his mouth are enough for a quieted huff of air evolve into a soft laugh.

though chill had set in to his extremities, and conscious thought had started self-allocation towards subtly steadying his breathing, silver doesn't spend more than a second on the idea as it came to him. gently releases his grasp and reaches to the top of his jacket collar. pulls down the zipper, sliding off external warmth before folding it into a neat blanket and laying it on top of the scarf on grusha's leg. thankfully, successful planning ahead with knowing they'd be outside longer, had led to him layering two long sleeved shirts underneath. or else he'd be left with just the normal one.

his motion stills as silver’s caught up in his amusement, though — a slight raise of his eyebrows and a firmer sort of smile settling on lips. “gold’s dubbed my joints as ‘rice krispies’, if that makes you feel any better. i can only imagine what your groan sounded like ; mine was a prelude to him getting thrown into the nearby river.”

"though, i'd say being on a high-altitude and ridiculously cold mountain is hardly anything in comparison to being frozen over." slides layer off and holds it out to start folding -- frozen over? he really just said that? silver slows to a very quick stop, mid-fold, before he turns his face slowly to meet with theirs. the amusement fades to the glint of a grimace, hesitant to see / hear what they'd possibly react like to that simple fact that had been so casually thrown out. ( was he that exhausted? ) and just like that, suddenly it was hard to even try to recall semblance of normalcy in a social conversation -- but damn, did silver want so badly to keep holding on to that lightheartedness they shared all night since their first comfort. even if it did scramble his inner script somewhat. "i, uh -- yeah." awkwardly shuffles himself over to the couch in front of the larvesta, right in a fit of avoidance of one of his worst topics. "glaseado watcher's orders prove to be just right once again -- these little guys are also amazing."

grusha brakes in front of him and silver’s eyes snap open in a sudden defense in his awareness to another presence. they hadn’t snuck up on him, but it felt like it — and did his heart pound against his ribcage like it was desperate to escape, desperate to run away from his childhood and the memories that haunted him. ( escape what? escape where? ) no, no, not like this — there’s a coldness to the corner of his eye, that only after bringing a gloved hand to swipe at it does it pull away and he’d realize there was wetness on the tip of his finger now. not like this. not like this. how could he break so quickly? how could the simple resurfacing of that render him so wrecked to the point of almost / practically welling up? silver had lived those days over and over again since they happened, had it plague his mind like a weighted reminder to watch his fucking back, always. [ ... ... ] there’s a distant and subconscious part of silver that brings his hand to his belt, retrieving familiar pokeball of weavile so that he could materialize beside him and crawl right into silver’s lap — as he barely registered both presences. a stretch of quiet, save for the sounds of pokemon finishing their meals. he forces himself to breathe, those exercises he had once found and come to put into ( albeit, poor ) practice as soon as blue fur and red feathers grounded him back, slowly, into this home. a safe place, away from the torment of the past. he tries for a subtle wipe of the corners of his eyes when the burning dissipates, even if no tears had managed to spill over — but he knows damn well such a reaction wouldn’t have gone unnoticed. and so he rests his head back, exhausted, against the headrest of the couch when heartbeat starts to slow. weavile rumbled like a purr in his lap, a welcome vibration against his legs that bring platinum gaze back to multicolored. “…it’s… a long story.” quiets once more, letting hands absently run fingers over weavile’s fur. “i think it’d be better to tell you — another time.”

silver looks at grusha like he was the one thing tethering him to that earth in that moment -- and he was. "i was supposed to die, there… i should've died. so many times i was captive, i should've died, but i didn't -- and now that i'm here, living into adulthood…" his voice cracks, thick with sadness and fatigue. he was tired. "i feel like i'm living on borrowed time. i should've…" opens up his fist and takes firm hold of their hand properly. he doesn't have the strength to finish that sentence, and head turns / gaze drops to lose itself in weavile's fur. manages to breathe out a shaky whisper, "i'm sorry." [ ... ... ] and like he had read silver’s mind, he’s being pulled into the tender warmness of contact. a side hug. it felt reminiscent of the time silver had leaned over and done similar for grusha during his moment of vulnerability, and the faintest shadow of a smile plays at the ends of his lips. and those words only solidify something in his heart. home… a sanctuary away from what he’s survived. home could be a person. and maybe home was becoming grusha.

grusha equates him to light and silver feels like he couldn't breathe, somewhere in between wanting to speak to keep up rapport and wanting to turn around and finally kiss him. he tries to steady himself and his fluttering heart, instead, and prompts maybe that final push he needed. "i want to do this more. this -- dating you. i…" has to break a light chuckle at that, something stronger than just a huff of air. "i wanna keep dating you. i don't wanna let go, not if i can help it."

a slow yawn ends in the forming of a thought, " 'guess you could call me your boyfriend, then." and this time, not a single thought sets off any alarms or self-criticizing rabbit holes. this time, all that fills his mind is relief. the walls were coming down, and the weights on his shoulders felt noticeably lighter. like he had shed another barrier that kept him from fully interacting with the world. a small smile settles this time, and doesn't fade ; relaxation despite the butterfree running amok in his ribcage and the familiar ache settling in his head. [ ... ... ] though his timbre is deeper and edged with sleepiness, with words perhaps the slightest bit harder to fully enunciate, it's a thought he doesn't dare keep in anymore. "really... would like t' kiss you right now."

"i've never kissed anyone before, either." it's an unspoken thing but he wants to assure them, and himself, anyway. "so if we bump teeth, i'm sorry." but it's at that where silver breaks, ducking his head with a giddy / nervous laugh. ( it was too much to look grusha in the eye at that moment, with the intent of action right there! ) huffs out air in a lighter chuckle, bringing legs forward so that he sat properly against them, facing them rather than side by side. moment of time passes where he catches his favorite eyes in the world and holds that gaze, and silver's so sure the fondness and adoration lights his normally-dark eyes brighter than even the adrenaline of battle. ( windows to the soul, they truly were. ) "i'm stalling, huh?" he holds gaze, still, even when fingers begin ministrations of removing his gloves once again ; and when leather is set to the side, shaky hands slowly rise and hover just around grusha's cheeks. " i'm -- i'm nervous, too," voice cracks into a whisper but never once does silver's smile falter as he finally rests his hands so gently on their skin. and the intimacy from the moment alone, from holding his face with no barries in between, has trainer breathing out and closing the gap between their lips.

he leans forward and steals another chaste kiss from grusha’s cheek, right before moving to stand — ( hates how cold his fingers and cheeks feel without them touching him) and stretch with arms over his head. his head pounds for a second, but sleepiness dulls the pain without expression. but — the cacophony of joints cracking and popping from the time he’d been sitting and they all set into place is something he outright laughs over. “what was that about twenty four going on to forty?”

he moves around the chair to grasp the handles, beginning to push grusha forward and it's at that moment where it really, really solidifies for him just how much this gesture meant. for them to trust him, or maybe it wasn't about trust -- grusha had been warring inside of himself for a long time, that much silver had recognized from personal experience. there was something in their head that trainer couldn't quite understand fully, a meaning to their previous words that he was sure he'd spend more time ruminating on ; silver told himself, in due time, he would understand his puzzle. he just had to keep trying. [ ... ... ] grusha then points, and silver snaps his attention away to follow the direction to the vulpix sleeping so peacefully together. that's where he breaks and audibly gasps, a shaky and semi-muted thing as to not disturb them ( and the headache threatening to sour his excitement ).

he almost, almost begins to sit and lay down when he realizes that his pokeballs were still attached to his very-real and still-worn jeans. there's a moment where he contemplates several things at once : toss the jeans entirely and deal with the apologies he'll have to doll out to his pokemon as a result, or simply place them all on top of the thrown ( silver wanted to laugh at that ) clothes on the wheelchair and deal with the discomfort of ... sleeping in jeans.

grusha makes a noise also, shifting around that almost had silver daring to try opening his eyes again to take them all in, but then he stops. probably settling back down, or just getting comfortable again ; silver turns off of his back and to the side facing them, sleepily and blindly reaching out / feeling around for their arm or shoulder or anything. meets with something his brain barely registers as a distinct part of their body, but it's warm, so it's them -- and lets his brain focus on the sensation of rubbing small circles into the shoulder (?) of his ...

the pain's still very much present, but it's eased significantly now, with half-lidded eyes ; he's grateful for this moment to be as untouched as possible. grusha's face this close, sleep-addled and lightly imprinted from the pillow case set his heart beating quicker, and quicker, like he'd just gotten up and started running about. perhaps even more than he usually did. their voice, practically cracking with the first use, coaxes a quiet coo from silver as the smile takes its place on his lips. it lessens some after seconds of basking, but doesn't fade as his hand snakes around their shoulder and into their hair. "mornin', you..."

few hours... silver's eyebrows furrow somewhat, a quick calculation in his head had put their average amount of hours somewhere between seven and six... he's sure he's slept the entire time, too, if the heaviness in his bones is anything to go by. there's a way that grusha moves, where he starts suspecting something more ; but he doesn't dare bring the question up, not yet. his hand releases their hair in their turn, instead now resting over their cheek and thumb resuming a back and forth motion under eyes. "...'m sorry. did i move too much?"

there are beats of time, however long they may be doesn’t matter in the slightest to silver — where grusha is quiet. but their hand rests over his and all he focuses on is the feeling of their skin on his, all around something so used to only feeling glove lining. [ ... ... ] he almost, almost asks a question — amazingly enough, his mouth thinks better of it, and decides to stay quiet on the matter. “if you’re sure… but the pill-cutter won’t be needed, i think i’ll gladly take that dose.” he coughs at that, though, amusement lacing itself into his voice yet expression remained neutral in a practiced sort of way. “well, you see, they probably wouldn’t if i took them every time. i have the wondrous method of toughing it out, as they say.” there’s a humorous lilt to his voice, but it’s dry and almost erring on the side of self depreciating. “i’d just go to bed or keep trying to go about my day. but, i don’t really… feel like ‘just dealing with it’ right now, so — medicine sounds good.”

right hand clenches into a momentary fist in a contained physical reaction to thoughts so damn desperate to jump into a self-fulfilling rabbit hole. grusha's puff is enough to snap silver out of it, though, skin on skin contact a consistent reminder of what was right in front of him. what was real versus what his mind wanted him to believe. his hand loosens itself to relax, and a nerve catches fire under that released tension ; there's a slight wince that lands in a twitch of the eyebrow / wince in the crease of his eye. "i don't particularly feel like moving right now, myself, so... fine by me." if he lay here with grusha, nothing hurt ; it's the movement that got him. silver was not going to complain at the extra time to bask in the contact of his home. [ ... ... ] but that -- that's enough for eyes to fully open past a lazy / concerned half-lid, take in every aspect of their face while they bare their chest wide open for him. there are logistics here that silver puts thinking about on the back burner, atleast in this present moment. he glances down for a second at most to where their leg lay propped, though it's fleeting and he's magnetized back up to him. "i'm guessing..." speaks carefully, "that isn't really a recommended thing to do?" grusha's choice / correction of words is noted. the further concept of why? is pondered over while questions borne out of desire to help take the forefront of silver's mind. why could be a lot of reasons, though he's inclined to suspect some issues with self-perception, perhaps how silver might perceive him, it could be... a lot of things. it could be none of them at all.

there is hesitation, uncertainty in all of grusha’s movements and lack thereof that has silver’s eyebrows furrowing slightly downwards in anticipation. he’s grateful for their hand betraying everything they dared not say, a glimpse into their likely racing mind, and when jerky movements take over those fingers he leans forward to press a kiss against the heel of his palm. i've got you. so silver patiently waits and listens, following every gesture and movement, putting things together in his mind and letting pieces fall into place on their own. [ ... ... ] they had both shown each other, in what feels like so little time, almost the rawest parts of themselves ; and to that, silver knew deeply how important, special, this moment's become. how special he felt to be allowed to see grusha like this, to hear him, feel him. that overwhelming sense of gratitude and other emotions has silver scooting his body infinitesimally closer (despite that bone-deep ache of protest), hand reaching up to slide fingers through somewhat messed hair (adorably so) and come to rest against cheek once more. “…thank you. for — telling me about this. i know it’s not easy.” how special it felt to know him. he pauses for a moment, ruminating on all that grusha had divulged him. planning out what to say, slight anxiety and pressure on making sure he says the right thing. it’d be his worst luck to slip up just once, say / insinuate something, break all that trust that had been built —

here, silver tries to train his cognitions to override that negative feedback-loop -- that with enough time, he'd have a fully finished 'flow chart' for grusha, as well -- just in the way alone how silver watches him so keenly, and all that he does, so fondly. he'd meant it when he said he was here to stay, no matter how long. no matter if duty had called him elsewhere, no matter if the day came where pasts might reel ugly heads -- silver was sure that he'd find his way back to grusha, every single time. and so time would pass, just like in this very present moment : in every sour note, every little inch of bitterness, every eye roll, and every sigh. their foreheads meet, and though he's quiet in letting grusha speak free without judgment or pressure of time, silver finally kisses their fingers, featherlight and almost inaudible in the quiet. kindness... that was another thing he hadn't expected someone to recognize, let alone say he possessed. "we have all the time in the world." said not just in response to grusha, but a second meaning as a comfort to himself. a veiled double meaning that, verbalizing aloud, has his own frame melting just that littlest bit more.

when grusha disappears around the threshold, silver allows himself to roll onto his back and finally give in to a full body stretch. it's a slow thing, unravels first at his legs as joints creak and begin their sounds in all its glory, before arms reach up past his head and it's a euphoric feeling. euphoric, yet marred by the physical protest he feels start to seep in after that initial exhale / groan of contented pleasure. it's manageable enough that this would've been a 'tough it out' day, rather than a bedridden one. silver's grateful for that semblance of dignity to remain in tact, atleast for now -- while he's sure such a description or day would be met with good company, there's still that part so hellbent on keeping his pain a secret. dulled away and kept under wraps, only for him and his pokemon to witness and bear. [ ... ... ] "coffee." his response is immediate. "although, i'm not opposed to a good cup of…" trails off as the movement by his feet captures attention within the instant it happens -- but there is not a single threat in sight. except, of course, the threat to his heart. silver can't even dare hold or mitigate the reaction that follows ; jaw going slack and eyes blown wide with surprise, wonder, something almost childlike stirring in the pits of his chest. he looks back to grusha, then to the vulpix ; back to grusha, and the vulpix once more and this time the grin that splits his face, stays. he coos softly at the small fox, a somewhat giddy laugh exhaled in a shaky breath. and when he speaks, it's soft for fear of startling small creature, for fear of letting his excitement become too much. "hiii… i -- i don't have any treats right now, but…" slowly holds out his right hand, fingers gently curved as a presentation of scent. "well, i promise i can bring them and double next time, as compensation."

sterling eyes full of fascination, lips parsed somewhat to form an o of a silent sound he muted almost subconsciously when the fox sniffed and gave a tentative lick. silver had always possessed a love in his heart for the vulpix line, thinks maybe that it could've even been a possibility that he would've had a ninetales on his team had the cards not played out like they did all those years ago. if he ever took the time to go about finding something that had given him joy, hope, rather than allowing himself to forget about it / squash it down when the mission was the first thing on his mind. for years. when he'd punish his own self by disallowing any sort of reward to himself, meeting and befriending a vulpix included. it's when grusha lightly scolds and brushes his finger against orange fur that has silver finally taking his gaze away from the kit and to his person. he distantly registers the bite at that, a delayed sort of reaction before the amusement fills in with softness, adoration once again seeping through in his gaze. "it's alright -- it's nothing compared to the bite of a totodile or croconaw." though feraligatr didn't dare as he evolved into his final form, silver knew more than once that it's crossed his pokemon's mind in the early days. and… grusha in this moment reminded him of gold, even if just a little. this was the best part of the house that dexholder had grown up in, the baby pokemon that wandered and roamed freely to intermingle with older ones. the best part that had long ago twisted up silver's heart with envy. he thinks maybe he could ask, even if just for the notion of an assist, but that very same thought's swallowed down and dismissed when he remembers that he'd have to ask gold of all people. nah. [ ... ... ] "they're a rarity in johto, even if they are native." silver speaks almost absently, and those the grin on his face lessens somewhat it never fully disappears or drops from his face. "i don't remember details, but i do remember always admiring vulpix and ninetales when i was a kid. maybe it was an old children's book that stuck with me." maybe it had been something used against him. forced to bury.

grusha speaks, they laugh, silver snorts at that -- a poor attempt at trying to maintain his normally dry banter in return despite the pure lightness / happiness (!!!) he feels practically emanating from his chest. genuinely tries to recall the memories with a reflective look on his face, stroking warm orange fur all the while. “mmm, maybe. maybe something like how if you come across one, maybe your greatest desire comes true — like in the form of a ‘lonely, disabled dude on a mountain.’ one that has really pretty hair and is an amazing person to get to know.” he can’t help the development of snorts into warm laughter at that, amorous feelings leaving him feeling rather playful. flirtatious?

grusha had been changing him, in just the relatively small span of time they’ve both been in each others’ lives. silver had never once imagined a life where romance could exist, his cynicism / fatalism had deemed it unrealistic. and yet, here he sat faced with pieces of his childhood being brought back, handed to him with roses and joy that should’ve been associated with childhood in the first place, waking up in soft morning light to face… to face his companion. partner. home. compass, lighthouse to bring him back in the middle of a storm. and if grusha catches his eyes at the moment – right at the moment that silver had unfocused / reoriented to coo at the vulpix so happily eating up all of the attention by his hands, and back up to them again… they might notice the way how pupils in stark contrast to surrounding silvery-white, seem to dilate the slightest bit. “my advantage, huh… alright, i confess. what if i told you, my evil grand master plan is to keep saying the sappiest things like that so that i could keep seeing how it makes you react? snapshot it all into my mind to paint later.” to adore later. lugia below and ho-oh above, who was he becoming? “to relish in the string quartet i always hear when you blush like that.” ( silver kind of liked it. thought maybe the person he was becoming might actually be someone worth existing. ) [ ... ... ] would you be interested in adopting them, when they’re old enough? his entire body full on stops at that. eyes flit back and forth listlessly, reading, searching again all over grusha’s face. “…really?” he feels numb for heartbeats of time, however long passes – long enough that the two kits voice their displeasure at the lack of attention and he’s quickly (albeit, still absently) resuming the gentle pets. silver thinks of all the years spent learning that how he had raised his pokemon was inadequate, and unsustainable – all the years spent overcoming all of it, and changing for the betterment of each and every single team member. he swallows and there’s a sharp pain from the dryness in his throat. he swallows again and it still stings. “i… i haven’t raised a new pokemon in… years.” in an instant, with just a single blink, silver sees that mask across every centimeter and in the fullest depth imaginable across his eyelids. in the way that such a beloved pokemon / thing had been kept, hung above his head like he was an animal being forced to run, forced to act meaninglessly forever. all of his desires, dreams, wants, being squashed and beaten into the ground until silver had nothing left. nothing to cling to in the recesses of his own mind, and those lessons were taken all with him. from then on, when he constantly failed / deliberately chose not to find things to be happy in. and with the feeling of ice spanning across his skin again – all at once the pain lancing through his hand, his wrist, right into the knuckle of his ring finger and gripping all the way around into his palm is enough for him to hiss. for eyes to shut away for a moment as he lifts off from vulpix and clutches his hand, fingers pressing directly into the junction between carpus / metacarpus when those nuisances of nerves feel like they’ve been lit on fire. and just as quickly as it comes, it goes. slowly he opens his eyes once more, and they hone in on home and the way how he leaned against the bed. and silver releases a shaky breath. [ ... ... ] so instead, silver nods. and despite the overwhelming disbelief melting into a tentative joy, he finds himself leaning in close to their face. finds that same hand to find their cheek again, lured in by the pull they had over him. "you're… too kind to me. but i -- " inhales, breathes out, "i won't let you down."

grusha takes his hand and kisses it, and silver feels overwhelmed with it. he’d been somewhat more acquainted to touching pokemon without the barrier of leather, and thus feeling the soft fur hadn’t been too much of a shock to his system – but the skin to skin… the way how their lips felt against that ache, it had become nothing short of intoxicating. silver found he actively wanted this, all of them, so much more. but — what if grusha had found out about silver and how he used to treat his team? what if, in the face of all the ugly sins of his past, they decided he wasn’t as suitable as they thought he was? silver feels the weight of his own heart on the verge of breaking at that thought, something like a familiar old ugly grief rearing its head. right in the shape of solid carved ice and menacing black holes for eyes and a smile. no. he was better than that. the connections that he’s forged and nurtured with his team made them a proper team, rather than extensions of his own being – and silver would never, ever revert back to the way he was. a strange, unusual confidence fills his chest from the back of his neck, down, to shooting through his heart and filling him with warmth to all of his extremities.

“we have all the time in the world,” he repeats. and when he says it that time, certainty like steel weaves itself into his bones. it’s that time that the doubts hanging over his shoulder constantly, finally don’t dare to ruin this. grusha’s fingers release his, finding themselves fixing up silver’s unruly sleep-mussed hair and he feels warmth itself finding ears / nape of the neck first. almost feels himself duck in shyness, an impulse to hide away the less presentable parts of himself (especially his hair, especially when he’d learned that for so long he’d been a wreck of a kid). but silver doesn’t give in. instead he looks at grusha in that moment, his grounding force / reassurance, and sees his favorite eyes and all their adoration and, for the first time it’s enough for silver to just simply sweep away his woes. and when vulpix squirms herself free from his lap, silver doesn’t bother to hide the laugh in earnest that flows off of his lips. and earnest turns to sheepish / flattered, an insecurity shining in the light and met with praise instead. “i’m glad one of us finds it cool. maybe i could learn to like it from your eyes.” [ ... ... ] and almost on cue, that unusual slip of hair practically announces itself and all silver could hear was a deep, bassy melody. he’s filled with a deeper sense of calm in response, his grin softening as he leans up and kisses their forehead / twines fingers with that darker lock.

[lemony-snickers]

petrichor for the prompts please? It’s currently storming and my are is under nearly every watch/warning imaginable right now (thunderstorm, flooding, and tornado being the big ones). Remembering that there’s new growth and life springing up around me helps me during gloomy days like this.

I’m happy to see you writing again, lem. It brings me joy.

Sending you warm and cozy thoughts full of your favorite warm beverage, blanket, a fire, and a beautiful view 💜

(aaah, stay safe! we had hail & massive thunderstorms here over the weekend and it was pretty scary! i hope it passes quickly and that there's no real damage where you are. also, i hope you don't mind i chose our beloved yams because when i think of petrichor, i think of forests, and, well, you can probably figure out the rest, ahaha. <3)

There are few things Tenzo likes more than being in the forest after a storm. The fresh smell of rain, of loam, of life bristling all around him, never ceases to induce a sensation of both contentment and excitement.

Appreciation for the humidity and the quiet, anticipation for everything new yet to come.

The moss is soft beneath him, squelching a little in places where the land dips and water has collected. He doesn't mind the wet feet, though. The one thing shinobi sandals are good for is that they drain easily. And it's warm enough he isn't concerned about his toes getting cold.

He pauses to take a long, deep breath through his nose, to enjoy the earthy scent all around him. It's like the heavy drops of precipitation have activated the world anew; awakening the dirt and the bark of the trees, coaxing them to life. He breathes it all in and feels like he is one with the forest.

Maybe his kinship with it has something to do with mokuton. Perhaps his tranquil nature and his love of the woods is all part of his complicated relationship to his own body; the cells that replicate inside him which were put there by someone else.

If so, perhaps his appreciation for nature is the only gift Orochimaru ever gave him.

The rains have been heavy in Fire Country this season, and the proof is all around him. The greenery is brighter than usual, the stems of flowers and ferns hardy and thick, brimming with strength. Birds chirp, fluttering their wings as they bathe in puddles left by the storm.

The forest swells with life, and it invigorates Tenzo on his journey. He has no destination today, no mission to complete. His time, for now, is his own, and amongst the damp leaves and sticky mud and biting insects is the only way he'd ever consider enjoying it.

The sound of an animal in the brush catches his attention and Tenzo alights easily to a tree branch overhead to survey his surroundings. At first, he thinks perhaps it's a fox--the copper fur catches his eyes between verdant leaves. But it seems much too small for a fox. Perhaps a kit, then.

Tenzo climbs down from his perch and approaches slowly, not wanting to spook the creature if he can help it. It might be injured or sick if it's wandering the forest so close to him in broad daylight, and he does not relish a trip to the infirmary if it decides to attack.

When he pushes aside the leaves, Tenzo has to stifle a laugh.

It's no fox, no kit, but a bedraggled, half-drowned looking orange tabby, who glares at him from beneath sodden, matted fur, ears flattened and hissing as it sneers.

"Got caught in the rain, huh?" he asks, smirking at the feline as it makes a ferocious rumbling sound somewhere deep in its belly. Tenzo just chuckles. "Yes, you're very terrifying. Now come here."

The cat hisses when Tenzo unzips his vest and scoops it up in his arms, but it's not as if this is any more difficult than wrangling a rambunctious ANBU squad at the bar or rousing Kakashi-senpai for a particularly early mission departure. So with minimal effort, Tenzo manages to secure the cat in his grasp, holding it firmly against his chest so he can use his other sleeve to dry the creature's head and back, letting the rest of the moisture seep into the front of his shirt.

At first, the cat struggles, digging its needle-like claw into Tenzo's forearms and chest. "Oh, knock it off, you're fine," he says, continuing to help the cat dry off. The method isn't perfect, by any means, but by the time he sets the cat back on its feet, it's much less drowned-looking than when he found it.

"There you are," he says, still chuckling, "try to stay out of the rain next time."

And then he's on his way again, marching back toward Konoha listening to the birds and the rush of water in a nearby stream, trying very hard not to let on that he can sense the cat stalking him through the undergrowth.

He's unsure whether it does so out of gratitude or irritation, but it hardly matters.

One cat to another, Tenzo doesn't find his new orange shadow to be much of a threat.

It's not until he's home he has to make a decision--leave it outside or let it in. It's not much of a decision, though, because as soon as his front door is open half an inch, the thing darts inside like it's always lived there.

Tenzo rolls his eyes, resigned to his evening. He'll put up posters tomorrow to see if the stray belongs to anyone, but for now, he's too tired and content to worry over it.

As he sprawls on his bed a little while later, the cat climbs up to join him.

"Oh, so you like me now, huh?" he asks.

The cat glares, but still settles on his chest to fall asleep, purring all the while. Tenzo's new companion still smells like the forest--like the damp earth and green leaves he loves so much.

He'll still make the posters, but it seems to him like maybe that's a sign.

prompt list for those interested. <3

[saints-who-never-existed]

Rereading The Terror

It's been a while! (Mainly because I went home for Christmas and didn't think to take the book with me!)

Chapter Forty-Six: Crozier

They're still going, as much as Crozier wishes that they could stop, that he could finally stop and that the bright flame of hope within him could die out "so he could surrender to the inevitable and lie down and pull the frozen tundra up over himself like a child under a blanket settling into his nap."

They've made camp once again, dubbing this one 'Hospital Camp'. and it's been a hard slog to get there across a large bay of ice. It's heartbreaking to read Crozier reminiscing almost fondly of their initial jaunt from ships to Terror Camp - as godawfully grim as we know it was, they made a "fantastic rate" then compared to the pitiful few hundred yards a day they're often covering now.

The dreaded tinned food is all gone at this point. They initially swore off the stuff after Fitzjames's death with Richard Aylmore being the only man to continue to consume them, at Crozier's behest. The rest of the men only began to eat from the tins again when Aylmore showed no particular signs of ill-health, although the same cannot be said for two other seamen who went against orders to sneak in some lead-laden tinned goodness. About one such man, who died in agony after eating a stolen tin of peaches, Crozier has this to say at what passes for his funeral: "Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" the captain had intoned "It seems it is shorter for those who steal from their mates."

This blunt eulogy is a hit with the remaining men who immediately rename the boats dragged during the dreaded afternoon/evening haul - the ones they have to go back for again and again - as Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish, and Short. "Crozier had grinned at this. It meant the men were not so far gone into hunger and despair that their English sailors' black humour did not still hold a cutting edge."

Crozier doesn't smile for long though - there's mutiny a-brewing! And it comes, in part, from "the last man on earth that Francis Crozier would have imagined opposing his command."! The camp is quiet, with many men and loyal officers away hunting and scouting for leads so it's easy for Crozier to hear the gathering of men outside his tent. Lieutenant Hodgson is at the head of this group, alongside several other senior men - captains of foretops and forecastles etc. In total, there are 23 of them ("...punch 23 holes into his lungs with a boat knife" anyone?!) including, of course, Manson, Aylmore, and Hickey. "Hickey looked at him with eyes so hooded and cold they could have belonged to one of the white bears they'd encountered - or perhaps to the thing on the ice itself"

In short, the 23 men want to return to the ship in hopes of a thaw. Crozier chides them all - for believing such a thing is possible, for believing they can make it back north before winter starts to set in again, for believing that the ship will still be afloat and that they'll be able to make their way out to her across the water: "Even if you steal one of the whaleboats, that will only hold ten or twelve of you with minimal supplies. Or are you planning on having ten or more of your party die before you get back to the camp? They will, you know. More than that."

His rant seems to do the trick for the most part, cowing the men, encouraging them to reconsider or at the very least to back down for now. But not Hickey. He tugs Manson's sleeve and they both step forward, threateningly, "past an alarmed-looking Hodgson". Crozier thinks quickly and grasps at the pistol in his pocket, deciding to shoot Hickey in the stomach and Manson right between the eyes - "No body shot was guaranteed to bring Manson down."

But before he can act - a commotion in the distance! "Everyone except Crozier and the caulker's mate turned to see what was happening. Crozier's gaze never left Hickey's eyes. Both men turned their heads only when the shouting started." It's Lieutenant Little, returned from a lead-scouting party with Mr Reid, Peglar and others. Making his way off the ice and onto land, he is - hilariously - completely oblivious to the mutinous drama that's just been unfolding in camp. "Open water!"

[cmon-butch]

27 HOME

TW:

“We’re gonna go soon, Addi, very soon.”

“W-want to l-leave.” Addi curls into a ball, careful not to squeeze her abdomen too tight. The stitches are extremely sore. She winces at almost every movement she makes.

“I know you want to leave, love. So soon. I promise you,” Hazel answers once again. She’s found that calling Addi, love, seems to calm her.

“N-no more.”

Hazel sighs. “One last round of IV medicines. After that, we can do it all at home. We’re gonna go soon.”

Addi groans. She doesn’t want the medicines anymore, but they do make her feel better. She can move better when she takes them. The girl they call Hazel talked the hospital staff into taking off her restraints and just letting Hazel keep an eye on her. She likes that.

Addi has been warming up to Hazel, as far as Hazel can tell. She’s less scared. She’s been talking. Not about where she was. Just about going home and not wanting to do things.

The doctors explained that her mindset has become very dependent and her memory has been altered. She will need supervision. She will need therapy, physical and emotional, and Hazel is even thinking of taking her to a speech therapist to fix that stutter she has developed.

She has already asked for reduced shifts at the hospital. David is even willing to help out.

Addi’s mother was heartbroken. Emily sobbed for days about her daughters missing memory. When it got too much for her, Hazel proposed that Addi could stay with her and David until Em had come to terms with reality. With little protest, she agreed.

“I dont w-want it, H-H-Hazel,” Addi whimpers. She can never say Hazels name without stuttering. Her H’s keep tripping her up.

“I understand that, Addi. Just one more treatment here, then we can go home. They make you feel better.”

“B-but I don’t want to.”

“I know, love. Just one more. Stick with me.”

The on call nurse enters with her med cart, rolling it next to the bed. “Good morning, Ms. Addi. How are we doing?”

Addison shoots a scared look into Hazels direction. She doesn’t answer. Hazel stands, whispering into the nurse’s ear. “She’s terrified of how the medications make her feel. Just be quick. I don’t want her getting up and hurting herself.”

The nurse nods, injecting the last round of IV pain meds into Addi’s system. They always make the patient very cold. Hazel gently lays a blanket on top of Addi, careful not to scare her.

“That’s it, love. All done.”

“G-go home now?”

“In a few moments. They have to get all this annoying stuff off you first.” To be honest, Hazel appreciates the fact that the pain killers make Addison more calm and docile. Even somewhat silly. That way, the car ride might not be too terrible for her.

“Off now?”

“Soon.”

…

The nurses enter an hour later. The meds have kicked in. Hazel watches as they maneuver the patients body in any way they want without her protesting. The pull off the leads, leaving the stickers. They replace the IVs with bandages. She is dressed in a few of David’s clothes. He came by earlier and brought them, Hazel wanted something oversized so she wouldn’t feel too trapped.

“You hanging in there?” Hazel calls.

“H-h-hanging,” is all she hears back. The sun is falling below the hospital window sill. It’s almost dark. They finally get to leave.

“Feeling okay? Not hurting anywhere.”

“Feels g-good.”

Hazel gives a sigh of relief. She has already picked up the prescription pills. She can’t imagine how she’s going to get Addi to take them. They’ll cross that bridge when they get there.

“Ready to go, love?”

The nurses finish, clearing out of the way. All that’s is left is Addi. She’s in oversized pajama pants and a large t-shirt. The short sleeves go down to her elbows. They leaned her back up against the bed. She offers a small, silly smile. Of course she’s not in pain.

“R-ready.”

Hazel brings the wheelchair over to her bedside. With some needed help, Addi slides her way into it. She laughs a slow, slurred laugh, probably thinking of something absurd. Hazel wheels her out, avoiding the larger crowds and louder noises. She doesn’t want Addi to be tugged out of this pleasant state.

The car has been in that same spot for five days. Hazel hasn’t left since her shift started. Before all this happened. Hazel lifts Addi into the passengers seat, setting a pillow down for her to lie on.

She sets her stuff in the back, taking the backpack filled with her clothes and a toothbrush and throwing it on the floorboard. She sighs, exhausted.

Taking her seat at the wheel, she puts Addi in a comfortable position. Leaning the girls back against the seat and letting her head rest on the pillow. “Still feel okay?”

“S-sleepy. Want to g-go h-h-home.”

“We’re on the way. Just rest. You need it.”

[peacekatniss]

Well, here is a snippet of a little something I've been working on. I've never written a fic before, so here goes nothing:

Sometimes I dream that my sister is alive. It always starts the same way. I’m looking out the back window, the one above the kitchen sink, and there’s a knock at the door. I make my way slowly across the house - I didn’t want to be disturbed today - and when I open the door I’m not greeted with the face of a stranger intruding, instead it’s her. 

And her eyes are as blue as ever. It’s a blue I’ve never been able to perfectly describe. Not sky blue, certainly never a blue that feels cold or piercing like ice, not the blue of an eggshell. One day Peeta and I spent hours mixing paint trying to find just the right shade. When we finally got it perfect, Peeta made a swatch, so that we would always have it, and labeled it Prim. 

And in this dream her hair is as golden as ever in the sunlight. And the corners of her mouth turn up in the beginning of a smile that I know will be radiant, and that I know will crinkle her eyes and the bridge of her nose. 

And then I wake up and the spell is broken. But the world actually feels a little bit warmer and a little bit brighter because I saw her again. Even though the visit is brief I cherish it like a gift. I wish she would say something in the dream, talk to me for a little while. To be honest I think I have forgotten her voice, and unlike her eye color it cannot be recreated with brushes and a little commitment.  

Late morning daylight streams through the window, blanketing me in warmth. Peeta’s side of the bed is empty, I can faintly hear him moving around downstairs in the kitchen. Outside the swallows have begun their chorus in the trees, and I can’t help but bask in the luxuriousness of the moment; the cool sheets, the summer sun, the gentle birdsong. I’ve been trying to appreciate the little things lately. It wouldn’t be fair to my sister if I didn’t at least try to embrace simple pleasures the way she did. I've spent so long building an indifferent barrier between myself and beauty, myself and joy. Or maybe Peeta’s appreciation for lovely things is brushing off on me. Either way, I’ve gone a little soft, but I think it would make Prim happy. 

My grumbling stomach pulls me out of bed and into some clothes. Jeans. A short sleeve shirt. My boots. In the kitchen, Peeta is diligently measuring ingredients for a lemon glaze. He’s been working on the recipe for a couple of days now but can’t quite get it to his satisfaction. I think that each batch tasted perfectly fine, not to mention exactly the same as each prior batch. But, he’s the baker, not me, so I trust his process more than his taste buds. 

I creep up behind him and wrap my arms around his waist before he can turn to greet me, plant a kiss between his shoulder blades where my mouth can reach. 

“I hope I didn’t wake you,” he says, turning around to face me. “I think I have just about perfected it this time.” 

He places his palms on the sides of my face, but holds his fingers aloft to avoid covering me in confectioner’s sugar. His eyes are so bright, so familiar. 

“I had that dream again,” I say and his face softens with understanding. 

“Any new details?”

I shake my head and move away from him to make my breakfast. He starts up a pot of coffee and explains how he has amended the recipe this morning. I can tell he’s trying to give me space and not press me about the dream, not make me feel like I need to say anything. I appreciate the language we’ve built together, it’s special and almost unexplainable. Sometimes we don’t need to say anything, and just a look on his face will tell me what he’s thinking, almost like magic. Maybe it’s just because our lives are so close together. I like to imagine that we are an unbreachable front, no one else can penetrate what we’ve built without both of our permission. 

My toast pops and I smear it with rejected lemon glaze #3. Peeta chuckles as he pours our coffees and fixes mine with a heap of sugar just how I like it. 

“You really will put anything on anything,” he laughs, gesturing to my lemon toast. “And that was by far the worst batch of glaze.” 

“I think it tastes great, actually,” I reply with a satisfying crunch. “But you’ll never know because I’m going to eat it all.”

“That is a fate I will happily accept,” he says. “I’m meeting with that contractor today about the bakery, so if I’m not here when you get back I’ll be in town. You’re welcome to join us if you want.” 

Peeta has been drawing up plans to reopen the bakery, and has been really excited to get to work with the contractor. He wants to integrate a lot of the original design of his family’s bakery that was destroyed, but also wants to develop it further to fit his own vision. Once he told me that the bakery was always meant to go to his oldest brother, but he always had ideas for how he would want it to be run that they would talk about together. I’m proud of him. It’s not easy to rebuild much of anything after so much loss, but to rebuild a multi-generational family business is even more difficult. 

“Yeah, I might stop by,” I tell him. “I want to grab a few things in town anyways.” 

... to be continued ...

I'm hoping I feel more motivated to work on this now that I have posted a snippet (it's nerve-wracking since I've never really shared any writing). But! Let me know what you think! It certainly is just a drop in the bucket of canon, post growing back together fics, but it's fun all the same :)