#incapable of faking sincerity

[wordingg]

Drunk Boys

Summary: Edwin agrees to go to a Halloween party with Charles. When they both start drinking enchanted alcohol, things get out of hand.

AN: Written for Dead Boy Ween, Day 11, prompt: Halloween.

Somehow these fills keep getting longer and longer. This is another one that I would be open to writing a sequel to, if there's interest in it. It ends on sort of an ambiguous sad note.

“The two of you are going to a house party? On Halloween?” Crystal asked incredulously.

“What, you think we can’t fit in at a house party?” Charles asked, sincerely puzzled.

“You, I understand. It’s Edwin that I can’t picture partying, let alone somewhere as informal as someone’s house,” she said with a pointed look at Edwin. He was seated behind the desk, occasionally moving papers from one pile to another in a transparent attempt to look uninterested in the conversation.

“It is not my preferred activity for revelry,” Edwin said, dry as the desert.

“Do you have a preferred ‘activity for revelry’?” Crystal asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I think it’s wonderful,” Niko interrupted them to add. “It’s like an iconic teenager experience. I’m happy for you guys.”

Edwin frowned faintly in Niko’s direction, but held his tongue like Charles expected. Edwin was incapable of saying anything even vaguely not nice to Niko.

“Thanks, Niko,” Charles grinned, throwing himself onto the couch, even though there was definitely not room for him on the tiny loveseat. He ended up mostly sprawled across the girls’ laps, Crystal groaning and slapping his arms away and Niko humming happily and resting her bubble tea on his stomach.

“We’ve had a standing invitation for years, but this one,” Charles gestured at Edwin, who huffed and put his nose in the air, “has never been open to going.”

“Oh? Why the sudden change?” Crystal asked Edwin, her tone a little arch but mostly curious.

Edwin sighed and fiddled with the papers again. “No particular reason,” he mumbled, unusual for him but maybe he disliked all the attention.

Charles didn’t want Edwin to get self-conscious about agreeing to go to the party and change his mind, so he quickly changed the subject. “It’s like the biggest ghost event of the year! It’s super fun.”

“I didn’t realize ghosts had a social calendar,” Crystal said with a raised eyebrow.

“There are certain days of the year when spectral energy waxes and the veil that separates the living and the dead thin,” Edwin explained in what Charles thought of as his professor voice. If he was professor-ing at them, then Charles’ distraction must have worked, and he was back to feeling comfortable. “Both Samhain and Beltane mark days when the balance between light and dark, summer and winter, are perfectly balanced. This makes them ideal days for rituals regarding the dead.”

“He means that Aleister Crowley enchants a whole house every year and throws a crazy rager in it where ghosts can actually interact with the living and get drunk and all that,” Charles adds with a grin to the two girls.

“I suppose, if you want to be crass, you could explain it like that,” Edwin said crossly.

“Aleister Crowley is a ghost?” Crystal asked with big eyes “A ghost that throws Halloween parties?” she added, sounding even more surprised.

“He’s completely off his chump,” Edwin snapped, “A fake in all but the most rudimentary of magicks,” he added with a curl of his lip.

“We don’t like him, as a rule,” Charles said with an apologetic look at Edwin. Edwin was too busy scowling down at the surface of the desk to notice. “He called Edwin a, uh, what was it, a poodle something?”

“Poodle-faker,” Edwin spit, then winced, like just saying the word left a bad taste in his mouth.

“Yeah, that,” Charles sighed.

“I’m sorry, but what does that mean? Poodle-faker? Off his chump?” Niko asked quietly.

Edwin made a face like he’d rather chew on a shoe than explain what those words meant, so Charles quickly answered, “Off his chump is like, he’s totally nuts, off his rocker like. Poodle-faker is like an old timey insult that means you hang out with women too much,” Charles added that last explanation carefully, hoping that his tone got across how stupid of an insult he thought it was. He didn’t totally understand what it meant or why that was an insult, but he knew that Edwin had been in a properly awful state for days after that casual insult, so it must have meant a lot to him.

“So, he’s a monumental dick,” Crystal said dryly.

“Yes,” Edwin agreed enthusiastically.

“Why do you want to go to a party thrown by someone who’s a monumental dick?” Niko asked as sincerely as she asked every other question that ever escaped her perfect pink lips.

“Because I’ll be there to kick his spectral ass,” Crystal said with a grin that showed the sharp points of her teeth.

“No way!” Charles exclaimed, sitting up fast enough that Niko’s tea almost spilled, though her quick reflexes saved it from toppling off of Charles’ stomach and all over the girls’ laps. “You guys can’t come,” he said frantically.

“Why not?” Crystal asked, her eyebrows communicating that she was two seconds away from wanting to fight him about it.

“Because any party thrown by Aleister Crowley is a dangerous place for the living to be,” Edwin said darkly, giving Crystal a severe look. “He has no respect for anyone, but he especially does not respect the living. Or women,” he added with a troubled frown.

“Ew,” Niko said quietly before sucking her drink loudly through her straw.

“We can all go to Miss Ava Gardner’s party on Beltane,” Edwin said with a nod, like it was already decided. “She is a consummate host and a lovely woman. You’ll be safe as houses there.”

That set them off on a completely different tangent, with Crystal and Niko asking Edwin and Charles how many dead movie stars they knew and how many lived in London and what Crystal and Niko could possibly do to earn a polite introduction.

They never quite circled back to why exactly Edwin wanted to go to Crowley’s Halloween party. Charles was happy that Edwin wanted to go, he had been trying to get him to agree to go for literal decades after all, but the lack of explanation was concerning. Crowley was shite, but the party was fun and it was a huge get together for all of undead London. Charles had been a ton of times, though it was a lot less fun without Edwin there.

Charles tried to push his concerns down. Edwin had agreed to go. Charles didn’t have to be let in on every little twist and turn of his best friend’s thoughts, he could just be happy that they were together.

---

The night of the party, Charles was a mess of nerves. Edwin seemed nervous as well, though Charles expected that had more to do with his anxiety over running into the host and less to do with the party itself. Charles got the impression that Edwin had never been comfortable around people when he was alive, based on the stories that Edwin told. But, Charles had never seen Edwin act anything other than confident and self-possessed in person. Still, Charles wanted the night to go well so badly that he could almost feel his stomach doing flips below his ribcage.

The girls had decided to aggressively have fun without them. They were both decked out in beautiful creative costumes. Charles definitely appreciated all the bare skin and glitter and makeup and Edwin seemed to be fascinated with the pageantry of it all.

Crystal was dressed in huge curling demon horns, red glitter, and a series of sinfully suggestive black leather body harnesses under a tiny halter top and distressed shorts and huge platform boots that looked like they were built with curb stomping as the one and only activity in mind. Niko looked like a dream in pastels and holographic fabric, every movement she made shining and glittering back in prismatic halos of color.

“I’m an angel alien. I think,” she said, adjusting a headband with pink pompoms on bouncing springs on top of her head. The pompoms bounced cutely every time she moved.

Charles barked out a laugh. “Hell yeah you are,” he agreed with a grin.

Edwin curiously fingered her plastic holographic skirt, watching the play of the warm orange light of the office lamps play across it. “You look enchanting. I can barely bring myself to look away from you,” Edwin said with a smile that Niko shyly returned.

“Am I enchanting?” Crystal asked with a teasing smile.

“You’re terrifying,” Edwin said, straightening from examining Niko’s outfit and trying to suppress of a smile of his own.

“And hot,” Charles added with a wink.

“Perfect,” Crystal declared, “Just as I intended.” She flicked a curl over her shoulder while Niko giggled.

Not much later, they were all off. The girls had an impressive itinerary of clubs and bars and parties planned out, but the boys had only one location in mind.

Every year Crowley’s Halloween party was held in a different location. That year it was being held in the Ragged School turned museum down in the East End.

By the time that Charles and Edwin got there, just as the sun set below the skyline, ghosts from all over the city were flowing into the building. The lights were on inside, making every old broken down window shine out into the near darkness of the crisp autumn night like a beacon. Music poured out of the open front door, an odd mix of music from all manner of eras and time frames. The nearby canal gave the chill a humid tinge, making the air around them feel even colder than it really was.

“It feels morbid, doesn’t it?” Edwin asked, frowning up at the squat square facade of the school. It wasn’t grand or beautiful like some of the old buildings left behind from Edwin’s time. Charles thought he might have read somewhere that the building was a warehouse before it was converted into a school for the city’s poorest children sometime around the end of the 1800s.

“Suppose it’s just because we’re school boys, init?” Charles asked. The building did look a little ominous, even with the bright lights and music and all the ghosts slowly making their way inside.

“You ready?” Charles asked with a smile, thinking it was probably better to move inside rather than linger and wonder about times past.

Edwin took a deep breath and visibly straightened himself, his chin tilting up, his shoulders pulling back.

“As ready as I’ll ever be, I think,” he said doubtfully, despite his stiff posture.

“Brills,” Charles smiled. “Let’s head in.”

The inside of the Ragged School was absolutely packed with an eclectic mix of people both living and dead with the odd scattering of other kinds of supernatural creatures. The museum itself was pretty sparsely decorated, from what Charles could see through the press of the crowd. It definitely looked like a school, with glimpses of old wooden desks in big empty classrooms and a nice open staircase in the front hall with a polished wooden balustrade. It was obvious that the bits near the front entrance had all recently been repainted and polished up. Charles wondered if it would continue to look that way through the whole school.

Charles and Edwin didn’t have much of a chance to investigate, as they were quickly recognized by a knot of ghosts lingering near the front door.

“The Dead Boy Detectives themselves!” a pretty young man with curly hair and mutton chops said with a cheer.

“You’re both here!” a young woman with her dark hair shaved close to her head exclaimed in surprise. She was hanging from the neck of the young man who had spoken first, her dress so tiny that Charles would have blushed if he was able to.

“Are you on a case?” an older woman with a mischievous smile asked from their other side.

Charles recognized most of them from previous cases, though it was hard to remember while he was trying not to look at all the soft dark skin the young woman had on display. He thought that the guy with the mutton chops might have been haunted by a devil dog or something twenty years ago.

“Not tonight,” Edwin said shortly, nodding to them all.

“Yeah, just here for a bit of fun,” Charles said, winking at the older woman, even though it was the young couple who laughed.

“If you want to avoid Crowley, stick to the first floor,” the older woman said to Edwin with a knowing smile. “He thinks he’s holding court up there, but really he’s just making it easy for rest of us to avoid him.”

Edwin perked up a bit at that, some of the tension leeching out of his shoulders. “Thank you for the tip. I will do that.”

And then they were being buffeted through the crowd, bouncing from one group of ghosts to another. It was almost like a who’s who of spirits that the dead boys had helped or talked to or bargained with in the past thirty years. Everyone seemed happily surprised to see them and everyone was eager to talk. It was times like this that Charles was reminded of how deeply they had ingrained themselves into the supernatural tapestry of London.

Charles felt a little bit like he understood why girls fantasized about being the prettiest girl at the ball, because that night Charles certainly felt like one.

At some point, someone pressed a red solo cup into each of their hands. With a laugh, the ghost had explained, “It’s enchanted!” which made Edwin frown and Charles smile.

Edwin opened his mouth, probably to ask for the exact specifics of what kind of enchantment was on the cup, but Charles was already knocking it back.

It bubbled across his tongue in a familiar tang of sour and hops that Charles recognized from the bottles of bitter he and his friends used to sneak behind the school gymnasium after games. The taste of nostalgia was so strong it almost brought tears to his eyes. He had almost forgotten what it had tasted like, but that was it exactly.

“Charles,” Edwin sighed in exasperation. “Really. You should not drink things handed to you by a stranger.”

“I’m not a stranger,” the stranger said. “You boys saved my pet goldfish from a hungry selkie three years ago. I owe you one.”

“See?” Charles said, elbowing Edwin gently with what he knew as a cheeky smile. “He’s an past client. We can trust him. Try it!”

Edwin looked doubtfully at the liquid in the cup. It looked like nothing more spectacular than tap water, but Charles knew that it wouldn’t taste like it.

After taking a bracing breath, Edwin tipped the cup up and took a sizable swallow. When he brought the cup back down, his eyebrows were raised in surprise.

“Oh,” he said faintly. “That tastes just like the wine tonic my mother used to make me take as a child.” He turned to Charles in surprise.

“To me, it tastes like the beer me and my pals used to sneak after school,” Charles said.

“And to me, it tastes like Jack Daniels and tears,” the strange man said mournfully. “Cheers, boys. Enjoy the party,” he said and then wandered off, sipping from his own red solo cup.

The party got noticeably more blurry after that.

Charles and Edwin kept their cups in hand and kept drinking from them. No matter how much they drank, the cups never seemed to empty, so they never had to wonder where they could get more and didn’t keep much track of how much they had drank. At least, Charles certainly didn’t. He couldn’t speak for Edwin, but it felt like he was keeping pace with Charles.

Edwin had stuck close to Charles since they entered the party, but the drunker they got, the closer they became. First, they started leaning on each other, then Edwin looped Charles’ hand around his elbow when he started stumbling, until eventually they were mutually clinging to each others’ arms to stay upright.

The happiness that Charles had felt when they first entered the party just kept building. He felt warm and comfortable, even more so when his own enjoyment was mirrored in Edwin’s face. Everyone was so happy to see them, they laughed when the boys stumbled and helped right them again, pretty men and women kept touching Charles’ sleeve hair and older women carefully fixed Edwin’s hair or righted his bow tie.

Charles felt like he was on top of the world. So, when he heard one of his favorite songs come on over the speakers set throughout the house, he didn’t hesitate.

“Come dance with me!” Charles insisted, already dragging Edwin into the middle of a nearby classroom that had been repurposed into a dance floor. The desks had all been pushed into the wall, a small knot of people already swaying in the center.

Edwin stumbled, his hair falling over his forehead for the thousandth time that night.

“Charles,” he mumbled, “I can’t dance.”

“It’s okay. It’s not that kind of song,” Charles assured him, pulling him into the knot of other dancers.

England Belongs to Me by Cock Sparrer was blaring over the speakers and people were jumping and banging their heads, but Charles wasn’t paying attention to anyone but Edwin. Edwin looked uncertain and ungainly, his long legs becoming so much less certain as they both became more and more drunk. But, his eyes were stuck on Charles, watching him, waiting for him, and it made Charles feel like he was at the center of the universe.

“It’s easy!” Charles shouted over the music. “Just bounce up and down!” Charles said, grabbing both of Edwin’s hands in his and popping up and down on the balls of his feet to the rhythm of the music.

Edwin tried to follow his instructions, but he looked self conscious. He squeezed Charles’ hands in his and looked down at their shoes which was just not the thing, was it? Charles let go of Edwin’s hands after the second verse and instead wrapped his arms around his waist and pulled him close.

“Just move with me,” Charles said with a grin and a squeeze. Edwin still looked completely lost, but now he also looked a little flustered which was perfect in Charles’ opinion. Charles kept bouncing, but now he also swayed side to side. After only briefly hesitating, Edwin put his arms around Charles shoulders and let him move him.

And then the song changes and Pure by The Lightning Seeds came on. The crowd around them was laughing and dissolving and then coming back together as new people took to the floor. Charles and Edwin stayed where they were, swaying, pressed together.

Charles looked into Edwin’s eyes and they were so intense and pretty in that moment. Edwin was a pretty boy, Charles thought, in a different way that people sometimes called Charles a pretty boy. People called Charles pretty because he had an earring and he styled his hair. Charles thought Edwin would look pretty no matter what he wore or what he did with his hair.

They swayed together, looking into each other’s eyes for longer than either of them would have been capable of doing sober. Charles remembered the song that was playing, the way he used to listen to it on loop the month before he died. The guy who was on the cover of the cassette, Ian Broudie, was cute in a way that Charles hadn’t let himself think about back then. But, when he would lay on his bed and close his eyes he would imagine that the singer was there in his room with him, singing him a love song with soft lips and softer looking hair and big glasses that made him look sweet and inviting.

Before Charles noticed it, Edwin’s lips were on his, soft as the Charles back then had imagined the boy in the song’s might be, sweeter than any kiss he’d had before then.

Charles barely got a chance to kiss back, before Edwin was pulling away. His brow was crumpled and his eyes were afraid. Charles tought that Edwin shouldn’t look so afraid, especially not right after kissing him.

“I’m so sorry. I don’t,” Edwin swallowed and his throat clicked, his adam’s apple bobbed against his collar. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“I liked it,” Charles said. He heard the slur on his voice, so he repeated himself just in case. “I liked it,” he grinned and leaned in. “Do it again?”

Edwin met him halfway and they were kissing and swaying and music was playing. Someone whistled and clapped and Charles had enough thought to take a hand off of Edwin’s shoulder and point his middle finger in the general direction of the whistler to the raucous laughter of the crowd.

They kissed and danced and the music kept changing. It felt a bit like the room was spinning, but Edwin felt solid and perfect, so Charles just held onto him and kept kissing him until long after a living boy’s lips would have gone numb.

---

At some point, Charles and Edwin ended up on a couch.

“This does not seem historically accurate,” Edwin had muttered into the couch cushion, but by that point Charles was too invested in kissing every square centimeter of Edwin’s long beautiful throat to bother engaging in talk about Edwardian furniture.

“Perhaps you boys should get a room,” a feminine voice laughed from somewhere nearby. Long acrylic nails glided through Charles’ hair, scratching his scalp. “I think you’re scandalizing some of the geezers.”

“Don’t care. Fuck off,” Charles grumbled, waving a hand to banish the heavenly nails. Whoever she was, she laughed and removed her hand. Charles fumbled around until he found Edwin’s hand on his waist and slapped it onto his head instead. Edwin seemed to get the message and started scratching his short nails through Charles’ hair.

Edwin was laid out on a hideous plaid couch, his long limbs splayed out, his bow tie long gone, his shirt unbuttoned. His hair was a mess and his lips were wet with Charles’ spit. Charles had no idea how they had gotten to the couch or even a vague idea of where they were in the building, but he was glad to whatever drunken stumble or nice friend had gotten them there. They must have been at the edge of the party. There were a few people talking or necking in the room with them, but it was a lot wherever they were than it had been earlier.

Charles was cradled in the basket of Edwin’s legs, his strong thighs squeezing Charles’ hips every time he did something especially clever with his mouth. Somewhere in the back of Charles addled brain he knew he was hard and that Edwin was hard and that he had been rocking himself into Edwin for however long it had been that they’d been making out.

A small voice was starting to panic somewhere in the soupy mess of his brain. Edwin loved him. Charles had told Edwin that he didn’t love him like that. And now Charles was grinding Edwin into a dusty couch in the back of a house party while they were both drunk off their asses. That was not a respectful way to treat a friend.

Charles reached over the edge of the couch and grabbed his solo cup, tipping a huge swallow down his throat. His thoughts became pleasantly unfocused again.

Pushing himself up Edwin’s body in an indecent drag, Charles mouthed at Edwin’s ear. “You feel so good,” he groaned, thrusting down hard. Edwin gasped and moaned, thrusting up to meet Charles, the hand not buried in Charles’ hair reaching down to grab Charles’ ass and pull him against him harder.

“Oh-kay. Everyone out,” the woman’s voice from before called out through the room.

There was grumbling and laughing as ghosts and creatures started to slowly trickle out of the little back room.

“Who gave them solo cups?” someone asked in exasperation as they walked by. “They’re practically babies.”

“Jerry,” someone said with a snort.

“Jerry!” a number of people chorused their discontent with poor Jerry, but Charles didn’t want to hear that. He didn’t want to think about the cup, he just needed every thought that wasn’t about Edwin and how to make him make that sound again to go away.

Charles reached over and fumbled for his cup again, almost knocking it over. He tipped it back, his throat working to swallow and swallow and swallow until his stomach rebelled at the thought of swallowing more. Then, he passed the cup to Edwin, who wobbled his way up onto his elbows so that he could do the same.

Whatever happened after that was indistinct. Charles remembered more moaning, from both of them but especially from Edwin. He remembered the taste of Edwin’s skin and the feel of his soft hair between his fingers. He remembered pleasure singing up and down his spine and burning low in his gut.

He remembered that they clung to each other afterward and whispered sweet words against each other’s lips and nuzzled together so tenderly. No one had ever touched Charles as gently as Edwin did, but Charles would never be able to remember the words they whispered to each other as they did so.

And, even though ghosts don’t sleep, something like it must have stolen over them eventually, because Charles couldn’t remember anything after that.

---

If Charles had felt like a princess during the party, he felt like the scum of the earth the next morning.

It didn’t seem fair for ghosts to be able to get hang overs, but Charles couldn’t come up with any other explanation for why his head was pounding like it was. Even when he was alive, he had never gotten a hangover before, but he supposed enchanted endless solo cups were probably stronger than the cheap beer that his mates would steal from their parents.

Charles pried his eyes open to blink at the sunlight bright room and saw Edwin blinking tiredly at him from about two inches away. Charles screeched, lurched backward, and fell painfully onto the dirty floor beside the couch.

“Charles?” Edwin asked sleepily, leaning over the side of the couch and looking at Charles with concern.

But, Charles couldn’t look at him. He couldn’t look at his pale throat still plainly visible against his open collar, or his mussed hair that had felt so soft between Charles’ fingers, or his frowning mouth that had gasped and moaned just the night before.

“I know what he sounds like when he cums,” Charles thought wildly, before shooting to his feet in a burst of adrenaline as that thought seared itself into the inside of his skull, something he could never unthink or undo or bury.

“Are you alright?” Edwin asked, looking distinctly more concerned.

“Yeah! Brills! Perfect!” Charles shouted, his voice strangled and awful even to his own ears. Edwin’s face was folding into a more severe frown. Charles had to do something to salvage the situation. “My head is killing me, though. Can’t remember a thing about last night,” Charles laughed, wincing and pressing a hand to his forehead. Luckily, his head was actually killing him, so he didn’t even have to pretend to wince.

Edwin’s face went startlingly blank, the frown and the furrowed brow dropping off like they’d never been there. Charles held his breath and felt like the world did too.

After what felt like an eternity, Edwin faintly said. “Yes. Me too.” He looked away and swallowed and very briefly a pained look flitted across his face that cut Charles to the quick.

“No no no,” Charles thought. “That was wrong. That was the wrong answer! Fuck!”

Edwin sighed and began doing up the buttons of his shirt in sharp yanks and twists of his elegant fingers. “You really should listen to me, Charles. I told you it was foolish to accept mysterious drinks from strangers. Now we might as well have not come to the party at all.”

“Ah, well. I mean. It wasn’t that bad,” Charles stumbled. His heart was pounding in his chest and Edwin wasn’t looking at him. “It was a lot of fun before we started drinking, yeah?”

Edwin ignored him, running a hand through his hair to try and neaten it, though the effort was wasted. His hair was too mussed to be fixed by a little bit of finger combing.

Climbing to his feet, Edwin began to pull his clothing straight. But, it still looked rumpled, even to Charles’ untrained eye. He wondered why Edwin didn’t just imagine his clothing neatened like he usually did. He wondered if Edwin was as flustered as he was.

“We ought to be getting back to the office. The girls are likely wondering where we are,” Edwin said stiffly, opening the old wooden door out to the corridor and striding out. The school looked different in the daylight. The glass was old and dirty in the unfinished part of the museum, making the early autumn light look strange and anemic on the peeling paint and scuffed wood.

“Wait, Edwin,” Charles hurried after him, but Edwin didn’t slow down. His long legs ate up the distance down the corridor toward the general direction of the front hall. “I said wait!” Charles grabbed Edwin’s wrist.

Edwin stopped suddenly, twisting his head to the side to pin Charles with a venomous look.

“Do you have something you want to talk about, Charles?” he snapped.

Charles felt pinned to the spot, like Edwin had pinned him to a piece of corkboard like a bug. “Well,” Charles mumbled. He hesitated. He knew what he should say. He knew he should come clean and admit that he did remember what had happened, but there was a rock in his stomach and his tongue felt too numb to get the words out. “Well, no, I guess-”

“If you have nothing to say to me, then let’s get on with business as usual. Shall we?” Edwin asked.

He looked brittle in that moment, like he had spun himself up a facade made of glass and if Charles so much as touched him the wrong way he would shatter. Charles had done that to him, to his best friend in the world.

Charles let go of Edwin’s wrist. He felt small and pathetic and that he likely deserved much worse than Edwin snapping at him.

“Yeah. Okay,” Charles croaked.

Edwin looked at him for a long time, but eventually he nodded and turned back around. He started walking again, this time at a more reasonable pace. Charles walked just a step behind him and tried to force down all the feelings swelling up in his chest with nowhere to go.

He would follow Edwin and protect him and be his best friend as well as he could, Charles decided. That was all he could do.

[helly-watermelonsmellinfellon]

There's something I don't see talked about enough in the SVSSS fandom.

The System.

I just received a comment on one of my fics - which has post-canon SQQ and SQH able to still use social media - suggesting that it would be very easy for people in the real world to point out that these characters using fake accounts to post on real life social media sites would easily be doxxed and the System would have no ability to do anything about that.

Something I have noticed among a lot of people who read this particular book is that not a lot of consideration is given to the very thing orchestrating everything. We often think of the system as a ridiculous guide or rule book that exists solely to give the protagonist what he wants/deserves. We don't really approach it for what it is.

This was my reply to that comment:

Doubt it. The System is able to kidnap people from their worlds and place them in other worlds and bodies in those worlds as punishment. And if you don't do as it wants, to the specification it doesn't directly detail, it can send your soul to an alternate version of the present world to be tortured in another body. I sincerely doubt an abstract, otherworldly being like that, which never receives consequences for anything it does because there is apparently nothing that can canonically challenge it, is going to be threatened by doxxing. If it can create things, link universes together, steal souls, and can be anywhere at any time, I wouldn't expect it to be incapable of manipulating people's perception. I even mentioned how in this fic, it WILL erase SQQ's sister's memories if he chooses to reveal his identity to her, but it becomes too much for her to handle. This suggests it has power anywhere and can do whatever it wants. So, in my mind, if someone actually tried to doxx their accounts, it's either going to lead nowhere, lead to somewhere fake, or the info will be stripped from their lives entirely the moment they find anything/nothing.

It was a very nitpicky kind of comment in my opinion, which warranted this response, but my response just made me realize that the System is effectively an amortal, omnipresent, and omnipotent Entity. It literally doesn't go away. We even think it's over and the Extras tell us, via SQH, that it's still there and still in control.

Think about it.

Think about every single thing that happened because of the System's actions or demands. It literally never faces consequences because there is nothing that could hope to punish it. I've only read 1 fic where higher beings step in to punish the System for kidnapping, coercing, and torturing innocent people for its amusement.

Because that IS something it can do. With ease. And seems all too happy to do.

The System is very dangerous and it's weird how this is something people forget when reading fanfics. SVSSS is the kind of book where crack ideas can work in the frame of the canon story because a character like SQH exists. Because he wrote PIDW with every single plothole and contrived story beat for the sake of money and survival, we can have the weirdest shit happen and blame it on his lack of imagination when writing PIDW. It doesn't need in-depth nitpicking to make it make sense. MXTX gave us a very large and generous sandbox to play in.

You don't need to rationalize a crack plot. And you should always keep in mind that canonically, the System is a terrifying Entity capable of outrageous things. It shouldn't be the deal-breaker that the Entity that kidnaps, gaslights, coerces, tortures, and manipulates people is capable of fantastical feats in a fanfic.

[tickles-tea]

Glass

Happy birthday to my number one, the light of my life, and the cause of the low numbers currently in my bank account ❤️ This fic is a little different from my usual writing but I really wanted to put something out for Izaya’s birthday so I hope you all enjoy ;u;

Shizuo used to hate Izaya’s laugh.

It was like glass shattering into a shower of sharp edges and unapologetic cruelty, every broken piece expertly aimed to hurt. It dripped in a poison so potent Shizuo could taste it- that vicious cocktail of cyanide and deception. That deception was what made it so bitter, Shizuo was sure.

Because at its core, Izaya’s laugh was completely and undeniably fake.

For all of Izaya’s smirks and snickers, not once did that glee ever reach his eyes. Every smile perfectly fixed in place, every laugh rehearsed and performed, all coming together to form the mask of Izaya Orihara.

As the years passed, Shizuo began to believe that perhaps there was no face behind that mask at all. 

It wasn’t until they’d begun their…situationship…that this belief was brought into question. 

In the darkness of night, hidden between tangled sheets and heated flesh, he found ghosts of sincerity in that mask.

He saw longing in those clever eyes, pupils blown wide with desire and desperation. He tasted restraint on Izaya’s lips where the other would try his damnedest to stay quiet, where he would bite into his own skin to conceal any noise that wasn’t artificial. 

Izaya’s mask cracked during those nights and, with it, Shizuo did too.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the thing that finally shattered him was that same glass-crackle laugh.

Shizuo’s touches had grown softer. Bites were replaced by kisses, black and blue flesh making way for goosebumps over pale skin. He had started to explore instead of devouring.

All it took was one wandering hand brushing a little too lightly over Izaya’s thigh to reveal something Shizuo hadn’t known he was looking for. 

A giggle- sweet and bright and genuine and everything Shizuo had thought Izaya to be incapable of. 

Another crack in the mask had formed and Shizuo desperately needed to see what was behind it. 

His hands were his pickaxe as he chipped at its jagged edges. Spidering fingers climbing up a slender rib cage caused Izaya’s face to scrunch up in a wide toothy grin. Thumbs drilling into the hollows under his arms broke the dam and released a flood of helpless laughter. Despite coming from the same vocal cords, this laugh was so different from the one Shizuo was used to.

If Izaya’s usual mirth was a splintered mirror, this was a stained glass window. Bright, colorful, and refracting beauty like true laughter should. This frantic cackling, irregular and imperfect, was the truest reflection he’d seen of who Izaya could be if he allowed himself to. 

Shizuo knew of crystal clear lakes that played tricks on your eyes, with water so pure that you could see the very bottom without realizing how deep it truly was. He knew, and yet he still drowned in Izaya’s laugh. He let it fill his lungs with each breath and huff of amusement, drinking it all in. It was intoxicating.

It was surprising for Shizuo Heiwajima to willingly dive into the depths of Izaya Orihara. If anyone were to even fathom the idea, they'd be silenced by others for their own safety. Retribution would surely come for them at the hands of either man. However, the thought that Izaya would welcome him in- keeping his hands gripped around Shizuo’s wrists instead of the handle of a blade -was almost unimaginable.

Shizuo had learned that things aren't always as they seemed with Izaya, though. He’d learned that behind those fierce eyes and acidic grins hid a smile so honest that it made Shizuo’s heart clench. If he could believe this impossible reality, was it really so far fetched to think that one day that mask would shatter like glass? Was it foolish to think that Izaya might one day raise one elegant hand and remove it entirely? 

One couldn’t know for sure, but sitting here surrounded by the sugar and sincerity of Izaya’s laughter…Shizuo couldn’t wait to find out. 

[yuikomorii]

i’ve watched the diabolik lovers anime in like 2017 and i’ve been a fan since then but i never read the manga or the games and i’ve been wondering about how the diaboys actually are with feelings ?? cuz i read lots of fics and opinions and it always varies from they can’t feel love AT ALL and they’re downright horrible and then in the manga i guess ? they’re actually not that bad and they say ayato is pure or smth ? but if we consider the anime they really seem like they’re incapable of love

// I'm sorry, but whoever claims that the Diaboys are "incapable of love" either lacks reading comprehension or simply refuses to accept the truth. Rejet did not produce seven games solely for people to say such things.

I know some individuals prefer to emphasize on the psychological/horror sides of DL, but let's not forget that it's still a franchise with a lot of romantic moments, and it's been proven multiple times that the Diaboys can sincerely love someone. Sure, it wasn't easy at first, and some of them seemed hopeless, but Yui never gave up on them and showed compassion, which is what they most craved. They stopped seeing Yui as a blood bag and began to love her for herself thanks to Yui’s good heart.

One thing about the Sakamakis is that they all put on a façade. The fake Laito is a pervert, but the real one despises such things; the fake Shu is lazy, but the real one is depressed; the fake Reiji is proud, but the real one is incredibly insecure; the fake Subaru is violent, but the real one is kind; the fake Kanato is a lunatic, but the real one just feels like nobody can understand him and now… the fake Ayato is selfish, but the real one is pure-hearted.

Since you brought it up, I enjoy the anime, but yeah, it made all of the characters less likeable than in the games. In the anime, Ayato appears insane when he ends Cordelia off, yet in the games, specifically in the MB flashbacks, he is seen crying when she dies. He did bad things out of instinct or because he has had enough, but he ends up regretting those and feeling guilty afterwards. Throughout the games, you'll notice how he forgives the ones who have wronged him + attempts to help them and not only in his own routes. Him being pure-hearted plays a big role in his character, since even Laito mentioned being envious of him for that reason and that’s why you’ll have to witness fans or Rejet mentioning it.

[magxit]

Yep, you nailed it. Matty is incapable of being vulnerable. I don't think he can be fully sincere too. He wants to be this tortured guy, so be it then.

and he understands that but really wants love in his life but he can't actually let himself be vulnerable so he fakes it and it blows up in his face each and every time. he does so much harm to himself and everyone around him. I understand growing up with addiction in your family but I am not famous and I don't have a million people talking shit about me everyday. I still have serious issues when it comes to relationships and that is why I am single by choice. Matty can't seem to be alone and taylor is the same way but the way they approach love and relationships are completely different.

[familiariscanis]

i don't care if bsd is believable. i don't care if the plot twists make sense, because honestly they never really have made much sense and they don't necessarily need to. bsd tends to be kind of ridiculous and a lot of times that's what makes it fun and endearing. i am perfectly willing to suspend my disbelief for this show.

i do care if bsd is rewarding tho, and i don't feel like this was a particularly rewarding season finale as far as dazai's character goes. another dazai ex machina ending to a season isn't the problem here for me; it's the doubt that resolution is retroactively casting on everything dazai has done and said in the last arc. it makes the sincerity of everything he said suspect. it makes me wonder if he was ever really in danger. how much dazai knew, how assured he was of his victory isn't entirely clear, but that doesn't really matter. what matters is that enough of the conflict in the mersault arc was shown to be not real, and that puts everything in a different light. it makes any vulnerability or weakness dazai showed during the arc seem inconsequential, and it makes it feel less genuine dazai's speech to chuuya when he was "drowning" chuuya was interesting when the chapter released because it had so many character and relationship implications. dazai, pragmatic and logical as he is, being capable of killing chuuya if he had to but not incapable of feeling nothing about it. it made you wonder if perhaps dazai might be doing something he'd regret, if he'd realize only once it's too late the true consequences of his actions. dazai saying for years that he wants to kill chuuya and genuinely believing that he wants him dead, only to realize once he's succeeded at that that his life is missing something without chuuya there to irritate him... that's interesting! that's opening up a whole world of possibilities for dazai's character and their relationship. even if chuuya survives, dazai still may be faced with the realization that hey, he doesn't want chuuya dead. it forces him to really reckon with the magnitude of importance chuuya has in his life, which, for all of their unspoken trust, may be something dazai has taken for granted. it might make him re-examine his feelings or himself. it might change the dynamic between them.

now that there's the possibility of it being pre-planned, that speech loses it's weight— and the character implications of it are somewhat lost. of course, there is the possibility that dazai didn't know at the time, that he only figured it out at some point during the events of the game. it's certainly open to interpretation and it's definitely interesting to interpret it that he didn't know at the time, but it's an equally valid interpretation that dazai knew all along, so it shifts the exploration of dazai's character and his feelings for chuuya from the realm of canon to fanon.

but the way that the vampire fake-out plot twist is presented does strip some of the possibility for vulnerability from dazai's words. it casts enough doubt on it to make it plausible that he was just fucking around, that it doesn't really mean anything. it keeps dazai in a secure place of superiority in the narrative and makes him immune to normal character flaws and weaknesses. dazai, as a person, is supposed to be learning to trust and he wins because of that trust, but it's falling flat for dazai as a character (for me, at least) because we don't believe there was ever really a risk that he'd fall. as the audinece, we can see asagiri setting up a safety net and it negates the impact of the trust fall that dazai is supposedly doing. basically this plot twist is the emotional equivalent to seeing a video of someone jumping off a ledge and then the camera zooms out and you realize what you thought was a 30 foot drop is actually only about 3 feet. and not only is it not rewarding, but it makes me feel like i was silly for being worried in the first place.

[commonpigeon]

i do feel like im a person you either love or hate because im very sincerely myself and im incapable of faking anything. im very loud and open and honest and that's exciting to some people i suppose. and people in school would openly mock me and deliberately get reactions out of me but i had close friends so i didn't even care lol but i also did cry in class a lot so maybe i did care

[unconditionalcaretaker]

A memory about my parents that was formative for me. This has been on my mind lately. CW: cluster B ableism, emotional domestic abuse

My father never cried in front of us, unless someone had died. He thought it was weak. He wanted to teach me not to cry either, by punishing me if I ever did - my parents argued over this. He also never apologized, at least not without caveats, not sincerely. He believed a person should have nothing to apologize for. My mother believed he couldn't cry, and couldn't feel remorse, or love, and that this was proof he was a narcissistic sociopath. A "malignant narcissist," she used that phrase a lot.

But one day, when I was maybe eight or so, he broke down after a particularly bad fight with my mother. She went in the other room, and he started crying, and I comforted him. He told me how sorry he was that he had screamed at us, and for the things he did to try to control my mother. He said he loved us and wished he were a better father. I was so happy, so triumphant. I believed, for those golden few minutes, that he was capable of loving me. Here was the proof. We could be nice to him now.

Afterwards, I ran to tell my mother what had happened, that we were wrong about him. She said...that he was only crying to manipulate me. Whether he knew it consciously or not. I was a fool for believing him, she said. I shouldn't let myself be taken in that way, ever again.

I couldn't say whether I fully believed her or not, but something inside of me broke then. How can we know that anyone is really capable of love if even the most open display of emotion, of painful regret on behalf of love, is not proof? How could I know that I myself was not just faking it? What display of guilt would be great enough?

I condemn her behavior now. I affirm my father's heart. In fact, it is the work of my life to affirm my father's heart. She was wrong on every level. Those who do bad things are NOT narcissistic sociopaths. Those who are narcissistic sociopaths are STILL capable of love. Those who are incapable of love are STILL deserving of kindness. I will say this no matter how my internalized shame rebels against it. I affirm the humanity of all people.

[rknchan]

shoutout to andrei semyonovich lebezyatnikov being one of the most underappreciated ruslit characters like... almost no one ever talks about him, neither critics or literature teachers (in our school tho we did discuss lebezyatnikov as "another counterpart of raskolnikov along with luzhin and svidrigailov" but as far as i know he's seldom mentioned and even considered as raskolnikov's counterpart). but he does play a part in the plot??? and is a reflection of social movements and ideas of his time???? to begin with, there was a common trope in russian literature: a character who tries to be "progressive and woke" but is actually not, who is shown as foolish, fake and inconsistent in their beliefs, who criticizes the "rotten society" but actually is a part of it; is often a parody of the protagonist - who is indeed progressive and smart and revolutionary and misunderstood and so on (bonus points if they admire the protagonist and try to copy him) we can see this trope in griboyedov's play "woe from wit" (repetilov - a parody on chatsky), turgenev's novel "fathers and sons" (sitnikov and kukshina - wannabe nihilists as opposed to bazarov though kukshina is a literal queen she slays), and dostoyevsky's later works - "the idiot" (hippolite terentyev's gang) and "demons" (verkhovensky's circle); maybe grushnitsky from "a hero of our time" can be counted too, he fits all the traits but he's obsessed with byronism not politics and is treated more seriously

when we first see lebezyatnikov in p5c1, it's exactly how he is presented like: silly and pathetic, with unattractive features, described with usage of very strong and borderline offensive language (how do you like "half-animate abortion"?), dramatic and self-righteous to the point he looks ridiculous... his surname comes from russian word "лебезить" [lebezit] - "to fawn on somebody" sometimes he has a point but some his takes are harmful (beating a woman with tuberculosis because "he seeks equality in fighting !!!" defending prostitution and saying it is empowerment and protest !!! while not knowing how sonya is suffering); even though he has sincere good intentions his ideology, like that of many 1860s-70s russian nihilists, is based on the ideas of nikolai chernyshevsky and his novel "what is to be done" (and other utopian socialists) but inverted and satirized the part where he defends freedom in marriage and "deceptions" ("Your wife will only prove how she respects you by considering you incapable of opposing her happiness and avenging yourself on her for her new husband...if I were to marry, ...I should present my wife with a lover if she had not found one for herself.") is a reference to "what is to be done" and chernyshevsky's own personal life - in witbd the main heroine tells her husband that she is in love with another man, and her husband pretends to commit suicide so that she would be formally a widow and able to marry her lover the "it’s an insult to a woman for a man to kiss her hand" line is also a direct reference to witbd (sorry for the spoilers btw witbd is quite an underaprecciated book if i ever reread it i ought to make a post about it) - chernyshevsky himself had a complicated relationship with his wife; he worshipped her, always put her interests above himself and let her make all the decisions in their family life, while she saw him only as a friend and a chance to escape from her abusive family; chernyshevsky said that if she liked someone else he'd forgive her and suffer in silence but would always forgive her if she came back SORRY what is to be DONE WITH CHERNYSHEVSKY LET'S GET BACK TO THE POINT. YEAH LEBEZYATNIKOV his description is summed up in this line: "one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarise it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely" but there's one important thing. he takes a step ahead. he protects sonya marmeladova!! and accuses luzhin of slandering her, explaining what actually happened and giving proof of luzhin's vileness!! (and later on he also helps sonya and rodion find katerina ivanovna mad and near death from her illness...) even katerina ivanovna says he was sent by god - for saving sonya's honour. the one who desires to fight for equality but doesn't know how and only makes a fool of himself in other characters' and author's eyes - he actually protects the weak, silent and oppressed. no parody sidekick has ever had such a character development, no trying-to-be-progressive character before had a chance to step out of their stereotype and do something good for another person or for the society this scene makes me so happy, not only because i love seeing someone protecting my beloved sonya but it also has a deeply personal meaning to me

i was also concerned about equality, freedom and perfecting the society and all such things, and ofc had confrontations with others regarding my opinions like all of us probably do, but in the end i always looked stupid, uneducated and worthless as i could never shut up, cried when i lost an argument and did nothing but whine about how things are unfair but never knew what to do to change it and so i thought: i don't deserve to call myself a profeminist and a liberal, i am not good enough i wanted to relate to strong-willed, enlightened, revolutionary characters like chatsky and rakhmetov, but i knew that i was a repetilov, a sitnikov, a lebezyatnikov - an useless caricature who is a shame to their ideology

and when i first read the scene where lebezyatnikov protects sonya, it made me genuinely happy to see how somebody who was viewed as an "useless and fake progressist" could also be a help to somebody and become a better person... it made me feel like i'm not worthless too, like im capable of such a character development and maybe even change someone's life for the better too.... ;;;;;

sorry it ended up too long and too personal and whiny in the end ... :c anyway i hope you did enjoy reading this or find something interesting

have a nice day!! <3

[lesfir]

The kiss of the Ascended Astarion is coming, folks. That means a new batch of fixers poison scrolls.

About the kiss itself, the new movements and phrases afterward if any are to be made.

In repertory:

- He's cringe and gross, ew - His kiss is creepy - He's abjusively kissing - He's manipulatively kissing - It's the honeymoon phase of the abusive cycle - He fakes feelings because Mephistopheles took his soul\all good - Kiss with Cazador 2.0. - It's not Astarion's kiss, it’s a husk's kiss - He not himself anymore - He's mimics feelings because he's stuck in trauma - He's like a True Vampire obsessively kissing, it's not love - He has no feelings, he's incapable of love. - Tav is humiliated in his eyes, he doesn't love - He despises Tav and considers Tav a degenerate pet-property, he doesn't love, the kiss isn't real love - It's an act of possession, not a love-kiss - It's a power play, not a love-kiss - He's kissing misogynistic\plain hateful - *Something passive-aggressive, provocative, snide* - Hot, BUT I love Spawn, his kiss is genuine, true and better wuw - It's sad to see that. Heartbreaking - Pathetic - He closes his eyes, he doesn't love - He opens his eyes, he doesn't love - He has eyes, he doesn't love etc.

This tasteless song is sung about everything the Ascended Astarion does. Generally from those who hate the "romanticization" of dark romances with the vampire-decadent who is Astarion. So it's anything, but one single nice romance with the "evil" man for the "path of evil" (like Minthara) in the game and a sincere kiss of Dark Love.

It's funny if Spawn and Lord kiss is no different. And it's not fair if one of them gets a kiss and one of them doesn't. I hope I didn't miss anything. Post will be edited if so

[minarcana]

RP trope tierlist

logging in from being AWOL due to The Inherent Stress Of Being Alive in order to post a dash meme that doesnt require thought

tagged by : @marionmaverick tagging : @aetheryic and anyone else whos online and happens to see this

ponderings on tropes behind cut and fel free to DM me if theres any of this bullshit u wanna write with me [audible winking noise]

ok hear me out. college aus are S tier and high school aus are D tier because as an adult i refuse to be invested in the goings-on of high schools and also the high school au offers fundamentally less options for insanity. college aus are here for me to make jokes in because anything in a college setting can happen. colleges are weird. this applies to both teachers and students. all the drama of ur school au with the added bonus of plots like "i have to hunt a professor for sport like some kind of CIA sting operation because he doesnt respond to emails and isnt in his office hours so come help me corner this guy". that, inherently, rules much more than "i still live with my parents because im 17". this is an unskippable monologue.

sharing a bed/fake relationships are all excuses for me to write incredible yearning, which i love and is my strength.

all folklore/historical/royal/magic/crossover aus rule. also i am a historian with a focus on literature/folklore/religion so obviously im Into It

we dont talk about my deep and abiding love for omegaverse unless ur also into omegaverse. i have a sprawling universe for all my muses in my brain. please dont judge me.

sex pollen is superior to fuck or die as a trope. i hold this true and sincere to my heart because of the specific kinks which i have. this is my skippable monologue cutscene in which i expound the delicate differences between the two. [REDACTED FOR LENGTH]

amnesia/death bore me generally. dark is fine so long as its not simply pure angst with no redemption. i enjoy angst but not pointless torment. yknow? miscommunication also bores me because its too easily solved and becomes unrelatable at a certain point of extension

crackfic and humor are different things, crack to me requires ooc. only chumps require breaking character to make jokes. skill issue.

i dont even know how id write a time loop thread bc 1. idk how itd work in general 2. every time i hear time loop i think of the fate/hollow ataraxia doujin that makes me laugh perpetually where archer gets stuck in a timeloop where the resest point is him getting boned. would be incapable of writing a time loop seriously bc id just be like "yeah but when can i make it reset so when the character wakes up theyre getting fucked like DAMNIT CAN I AT LEAST WAKE UP DURING THE FOREPLAY SO IM NOT SURPRISED BY IT bc thats my sense of humor"

now you too much about me as a person i guess but its been so long since i wrote i have to vomit thoughts apparently.

[outeremissary]

19, 23, 30 for Balthazar :3c

Thanks for the ask! Coming from this list, which I did not realize was in the queue.

19. are they quick to anger? what sets them off?

Balthazar is annoyed more easily than he's angered. It takes a lot of energy to be angry, and that energy could be better put towards finding a way to get back at the source of one's frustration. His real anger tends to come on very quickly- sometimes so suddenly that it even surprises him. He's angered by humiliation, especially public humiliation. Others attempting to predict his failures tends to get something hotter than irritation as well. Being misunderstood or rejected when he's put effort into communicating something or shaping some persona for someone can easily infuriate him as well, especially if it happens more than once (he and Tristian did not get along for quite some time after meeting). As time goes on and he becomes more certain of his ability to stand on his own, he allows himself to embrace a suppressed long-simmering resentment of being ordered around. But the development that surprises him most in terms of anger is a capacity for anger born out of empathy- a sincere fury for the indignities others have suffered. He extends some of his pride to the people he cares about, and offenses against them are as those against him.

On occasion, Regongar's puns also get to him. He can't even describe what he hates so much about them. Sometimes he just snaps. This only encourages Regongar, who finds the situation hilarious and of course has never known when to stop anything.

23. how would you describe their voice? can they sing?

Ah, this is fun, because Balthazar was originally a tabletop NPC with a very distinct voice. Balthazar almost always speaks softly. He never raises his voice if he can help it, and there's a whispery, musical quality to it when he's speaking at the low volume he prefers. It has a way of making people go quiet to listen to him. He enjoys feeling like others are making an active effort to hear what he says. It's a very emotive voice, full of lilting drama- drama heightened by a tendency yo slightly draw out vowels that makes everything feel just a little bit slower and weightier. Many would probably describe his voice as warm, although he has plenty of capacity to be cold and sharp. He has an accent pretty distinct to Absalom's Westgate district. The accent is fake.

Despite the pleasant voice he's a completely average singer. He's not tone deaf, but he doesn't have any skill greater than staying mostly on tune and his singing is expressive only in an artless, amateur way. He's not fond of singing in front of others. It makes him feel a bit incapable. He's fine to join others if the mood takes him though, and he has a habit of singing to himself when he thinks he's alone.

(Apparently I wrote about the tabletop voice experience on Twitter at one point)

30. do they smell like anything notable?

There's often a faint sweet scent to his hair- it comes from products he uses to take care of it. He's very conscious of his appearance. That scent probably isn't noticable unless someone is very close to him though.

[contexterrorexe]

Laika: So you know that I think your business is a good idea, and you know that I mean that, because I’m incapable of faking sincerity. I’m also just incapable of sincerity in general.

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

I have personally only known of one case of what I'd tentatively describe as 'unintentional gaslighting'.

It was a situation where Person A was being told misinformation and made to doubt their sense of reality by Person B, but B was themselves deep in Conspiracy Shit™️ and on some level genuinely believed what they were saying.

The reason I describe this as gaslighting, however, rather than B just Being Misinformed, isn't because it caused A to doubt their sense of reality.

It's because B's misinformation was accompanied by frequent statements about how A was being "brainwashed" by outside sources, and couldn't be trusted to figure out what was or wasn't real without the help of B and B-approved resources.

And because B was in a position of power over A, and used this misinformation, and the idea that A couldn't be trusted to think for themselves, as a reason to justify controlling and abusive behaviour.

The gaslighting was unintentional in the sense that B sincerely believed that they were in the right and A was the one who was misinformed, but fully intentional in the sense that B's solution to A's 'problem' was to try and take away A's right to assert their own view of reality and make them completely dependent on B to tell them what was real and not-real. Which is abusive no matter what the context.

In general, it takes a fair amount of effort to convince a neurotypical adult that their entire perception of reality Cannot Be Trusted, and that they require you personally to act as a crutch to tell them which of their beliefs are Fake News. Hell, people with mental illnesses that do genuinely affect their ability to tell what's real will often take a while to notice something's up when symptoms first start showing.

Most people's first instinct is to trust their senses over the words of another person. Overriding that instinct generally involves undermining the other person's confidence in themselves, typically through repeated mockery, accusations that they're "making it up", or trying to persuade them that they have a mental illness. Also isolating them from and/or encouraging mistrust in other sources of information (including friends or family). This is where the abuse comes in, and it cannot be done accidentally.

Lying to a person one time, while shitty, will not typically make them doubt their entire worldview when they find out. Telling someone something that you think is true but that is actually false will typically cause them to assume that you were wrong, not that they are personally incapable of telling true from false.

(The exception here is people who already doubt their perception of reality, either because they've been gaslit previously or because they have known themselves to experience hallucinations or delusions in the past.

People in these situations are often triggered by jokes or pranks that involve misinformation, which is why the #unreality tag on tumblr exists. Not using that tag, however, because you forgot, or didn't know, or didn't realise it applied, is not gaslighting, because there is no malicious intent to make the person doubt their perceptions.

This DOES NOT mean that people who experience delusions or hallucinations cannot also be gaslit.)

But yeah, typically gaslighting is intentional. Even if the person gaslighting you isn't literally thinking "time to try and convince them of something that isn't true so as to make them doubt their perception of reality!", the techniques involved in making someone believe that you are the only one who can tell them what is and isn't reality are actively and intentionally abusive.

You cannot gaslight someone without meaning to. You would know if you were doing it/had done it.

And yeah, people suck.

I just saw someone say the words "jokingly gaslight" this might be a good time to reintroduce the internet to the terms "lying" or perhaps "pranking" or even just "joking" on it's own

[beautifultragic]

ive become almost incapable of faking sincerity

[jaded-ghoster]

I’ve been frustrated recently so here’s 4.6k words of what I’ll one day FIX and FINISH of chapter 5 of Slight Emotional Manipulation, like the idea is there but halfway through it sounds so forced and I just never wanted to post something that’s half assed and fake, hence years of hiatus. I wanted Izuku to have a stronger presence but I got too into Aizawa’s, I wanted the scenes with meaning to come naturally instead of forcefully, I wanted it to flow better, the intro’s too long i’d say, i need more meat for the actual story, blah blah. I actually do have a plan for the ending, but that’s for another day. Anyway, I’ll reblog with the next 4.5k later

Notes: The writing app I use is peculiar so *word* implied italics

Tentative chapter title: Words of Wisdom Except the Words Are Silent and Wisdom is Pronounced Nineteen Eighty-Four

Shota is very in touch with his emotions, actually. Despite what his friends, classmates, and Hound Dog have said.

He doesn’t keep a mood journal or attend group therapy sessions of cry along to indie singers- Not that he’s mocking them, he can tell it’s effective, almost too effective, just not for him- but he did attend a single semester of health class when he was 16. So, he counts that as a master’s degree in comparison to everyone who’s incapable of using protection.

And one of the first things he learned in health class through lectures, flashcards, tests, and videos narrated by condescendingly satisfied people were coping mechanisms. Denial, reaction formation, displacement, fill in the rest. Basically, if you’re not crying, you’re coping. Unless you consider crying another form of coping, then he guesses you’re stuck there forever.

But Shota *knows* what happened. He’s perfectly aware of every poorly timed decision that led up to this situation and so far he hasn’t forced his students to recite a pledge to Nezu, he hasn’t spontaneously taken up knitting, and he hasn’t lashed out at the closest coworker. So as far as he’s concerned, he’s not suppressing any feelings.

Therefore, no. He’s not mad at Midoriya. *Obviously.*

Because what reason would he have to be miffed at the kid when this is so clearly all Nezu’s fault? The rat probably pulled some disturbing plots like he always does to get the kid as his own student. He may have threatened to expel him, or take over all his social media accounts and turn them into Death Arms fan pages, or ruin his hero career before it’s even started by spreading the rumor that he’s in cahoots with the Commission resistance- which he’s done before.

Seriously, Shota has sat in his office and watched him call agency after agency expressing his sincere concerns that Mr. Metalloid is misusing the access his hero ID grants him to the building to merge himself with locked steel doors and shift in and out of off-limit rooms. The guy’s agency issued a press release stating that he’s retired to Florida and that was the last time he and Zashi ever shouldered the blame for whatever dumb prank Oboro pulled.

But would his student really get scared into submission from something like that? He doesnt think he would, no one in his class would.

The last time they got threatened with expulsion four of them let the message go in one ear and come out the other as *there’s a second hand clothing store down the block so why don’t you pick out a few eyesore outfits and chase down Mr. Big Bad who’s got a kill count in the thousands.* If rumors spread that they were in any resistance, they might take that as directions to go join one.

And beyond that, Midoriya is Midoriya.

Only-

Shota checked the clock outside the room.

His eyes are complete shit. He cannot see what that says.

He pulled out his phone.

Only 18 hours after Nezu’s threat, Midoriya would have come up with a way around it and then mumbled his plans so loud that All Might would overhear and save him from his tragic fate of failure. And yes, failure, because he has a lot of faith in the kid but you can’t defeat something that’s beyond human comprehension.

And since Shota hasn't heard the mumblings of any despicable plans yet, he can safely conclude that nothing like that went down. So if Midoriya’s motivator for accepting the offer wasn’t fear, then it was probably the quest for knowledge.

Except it wasn’t, because seriously, what could a kid (who just by holding a single conversation with him you could tell has had nothing but unwanted free time over the last decade) possibly learn from Nezu? Something that he isn’t scheduled to learn with the rest of the class in due time, already knew it advance, or is currently learning on the side right now. The remaining list is unsurprisingly small.

Hacking, welding in his spare time, color theory so Nemuri won’t blow a fuse over the theater sets not being perfect, even broken Indonesian for every extra minute he spends around the deca-lingual Yaoyorozu. Not to menton the binder of lesson outlines that Shota has planned for the next five months that Midoriya has definitely been targeting ever since he caught a glimpse of it three weeks ago. He’s learned it all, or is scheming to, hence the need for the binder’s own encrypted safe, and he can probably pull off that scheme without Nezu’s help.

So what else is there? Murder? Technically, Shota did provide him a comprehensive if not brief knife throwing class, although not intending to assist in that department even if it did have all the correct components. And if the kid was that distraught over Aoyama’s scream cutting the mini lesson short then he could have said something. Not that it would’ve changed anything, Shota’s still on thin ice with class 1-A’s parents due to both the Kamino disaster and his overall personality, and he doubts a stab wound would help, but still. Doesn’t hurt to rue shit.

But regardless of how he and the other teachers may humor themselves, or gather round to toy with the idea of framing a kid for some random crime just to get some time away from them, they know Midoriya doesn’t actually want to kill people, that’s absurd. Any misconceptions that he does is the fault of his relentless curiosity and accidentally browsing with the school email. It’s opposite of what Midoriya wants and the majority of what Nezu “indirectly” teaches.

If Midoriya wants to save people, then he should ask advice from an actual pro hero. Which, by the way, is his entire curriculum. And if not heroes, then heroes in training, like his classmates.

Then again, his students may know how to rescue people but they aren’t exactly the most educated when it comes to actually treating injuries. Their strong suit is mainly beating up villains so they can prevent the people from getting hurt in the first place, which obviously doesn’t have a 100% success rate.

Like last week when that exhange student started choking on his soba, and since Sato couldn’t assault the sushi itself, he resorted to aiming a sugar fueled punch at the boy’s stomach. The food did come flying out, so he guesses it was effective, but it was still so, so stupid. Plus it put him on thin ice with the parents of kids who weren’t even his students.

In that case, Midoriya should go to people who do know how to deal with wounds, people like Recovery Girl. Or the nurse with the ice pack quirk. Or perhaps one of the other countless nurse practitioners that he literally helped hire. As in conducted-the-interviews-and-physically-pointed-at-his-final-choices-and-brought-them-all-donuts-on-their-first-day helped hire.

Then again, he can see why the kid maybe wouldn’t want to go to them for help after recent events.

And he doesn’t mean that the nurses refused to help him. No, that issue has long since been resolved after a couple of vindictive staring contests between Shota and an old lady that made every student avoid a certain corridor for a few days.

Recent events being that both of them conveniently forgot that the speed of which Recovery Girl draws her spheres of influence could almost put Nezu to shame. Within a few days all of the nurses had gone on what can essentially be dumbed down to a half-assed moral strike. They had signs and chants but with words written in almost transparent pencil and lyrics that had no apparent rhyme, beat, or even basic synchronization. He’s not objecting to strikes in general, he’s objecting to the complete lack of effort. It’s people like them who give strikes a bad name.

They announced to the crowd of students gathered in the courtyard that although they would gladly heal whoever required their assistance, they would not accompany the hero students on all their missions. It was above their pay grade and literally not what they went to med school for. It was simple. And with the way he’s phrasing this it probably sounds like he disagrees with their decision, he doesn’t.

He just found it weird that something so obvious needed to be stated, or at least that’s what he thought before Sero and Kaminari started texting panicked reassurances to each other, the exhange student and that scary mushroom girl following soon after.

So, yeah, he guesses Recovery Girl and her new band of minions aren’t exactly up for the position of a medical mentor. And he also guesses that he should stop naming examples if he knows he’s going to contradict them immediately after.

Point is, if the kids wanna save lives, then they shouldn’t rely on slimy rats and instead start from the basics, like first aid. So that’s what they’re doing today, something that Shota hopes will… not show the kid the light at the end of Nezu’s dark tunnel, per say, that doesn’t really exist, but provide a band-aid for when that light inevitably tries to burn him alive.

“First aid.”

Shota took a moment to let the others digest his words before breaking his gaze and bringing the rim of his coffee cup to his lips.

“What about it?” Nemuri asked. Shota lowered the coffee.

“That’s the plan.” He brought it back up.

“Isn’t that a little spontaneous of you?” He put the cup back down on the table. Midoriya raised his head from where it was stuffed between the pages of his notebook, large eyes moving between his two teachers while they silently squabbled.

“How so?”

“Well,” Nemuri quickly retracted her legs from where they were sprawled out on his desk, sitting up straight to give the facade of an actual professional. “Why jump straight to first aid when there are so many other things we could be working on? Right?” She turned to Midoriya, the boy flashing a questioning look his way when he didn’t know how to respond.

“Uhhh yeah, yeah! The list was developed early on- like really early, like last year-” Shota nodded, although in a lot of his coworker’s cases it was 15 years.

If someone checked the filing cabinets with complains dating back all the way to his first year at UA, they’d find passionately inscribed notes about how only selling Ma- Sorry, Might Bars was going to stunt the growth of the economy. Technically they still can’t do anything about that if they wants the chocolate bar company to continue their donations, but nothing can’t stop them from being peeved.

“-but it’s not set in stone, the whole point is to add as we go. And since three people sprained their ankle yesterday and thought the best solution was to shake it off, this feels like an appropriate time to do some medical training… I think. But in a hypothetical situation where that wasn’t a time-sensitive problem, yes.”

Midoriya may have some more things to learn if he thinks that alone will satiate the beast. The message *Like what?* slithered across Nemuri’s eyes in neon lights and the boy coughed.

“There’s getting construction plans approved for those two new elevators, handling the potential partnership with that clothing brand that offered to give major discounts on school uniform manufacturing if the hero students would promote their shoes-”

At least the email infiltrating lessons from Hatsume are clearly paying off, and with any luck Midoriya can improve in time to avoid being given a masterclass by Nezu. Vaguely, Shota recognizes hacking emails is bad and he should say something about it. But less vaguely, he thinks about how much he doesn’t care. The boy’s eyes grew distant.

“-the wifi password that the business students started hogging, broken air conditioners on the third floor, the corrupt sales manager of the Clip Mart across the street that refused to keep selling me any more of their pencils even though I’m obviously their most loyal customer and instead forced me to buy post-its instead- blue post-its! Which is crazy because how can you even *read* the letters-”

Midoriya cut himself off with a sharp inhale as the chair he was sitting in was pushed by a black combat boot, leaving him spinning around in silence and right out the office doors. Ectoplasm shut them behind him.

“And much more!” Nemuri’s hands flew in front of her, waving around like she was concocting a vision to him, “Like, let’s say, an art exhibit.”

“There’s one on the third floor.” Shota cut in.

“A theatre production!”

“Be more specific.”

“A theatre production on the dangers of an unknown forest!”

“They already tried that.”

“The dangers of strangers.”

“The strangers were actually *in* the forest."

“The dangers of cults.”

“Tried that, too. It didn’t last five minutes in the PTA meeting. Didn’t last five minutes in the forest, either, if I read the script correctly.” This one he was a little disappointed about. Whether it was because he thinks it’s a serious issue that many people should learn about or because he wanted to take the opportunity to throw a paper ball at Nezu every time a person got tricked into ruining their life is not something he is willing to disclose.

“The dangers of too loose clothing!”

“Why would we ever want to do that? Who would even come to that? What is the target audience in all of your-” Clearly self-interested “-ideas?”

“A song and dance we perform to the whole school during a festival filled with haunted houses and treats.”

“*We did that too*- Were you here for anything last year? Genuinely, where were you?” Midnight held up a finger and Shota decided that perhaps the 15th straw should be the last. “We’re doing first aid. Not just because it’s obvious that first aid in a *hero school* should have been prioritized during their first year, or because I have anything against your theatre productions-”

That’s a lie, he has everything against them. They make him stay an extra three hours late at this hellhole because he can’t do paperwork and make sure the tech crew kids don’t power saw their limbs off at the same time. He can’t walk through a hallway without finding splotches of blue paint on his clothes that don’t come off in the wash because of course they don’t. And every forty-five minutes one of the kids’ bad playlists resets and he has to go through their horrid music taste all over again. If he had a nickel for every time he’s considered using the costume crew’s god foresaken measuring tape as a noose, he’d have enough money to buy them three more measuring tapes so they could stop trying to paint lines and numbers on his capture weapon whenever they lose theirs.

"-But because I can’t say for sure that if we don’t teach them now, while we still have the ability to gather them all in one place without internships and patrols getting in the way, they may never have the chance to learn it again.” Shota's eyes danced across the room, passing over every other teacher in the room, just obvious enough for Nemuri to catch his hidden message: *Especially not from them*.

Nemuri finally backed down, that was one thing she couldn’t argue with. Majima glanced up from his computer.

“Hmm?”

“Nothing.” He turned back around to the whiteboard just as Midoriya rolled back in. Perfect timing. “Now, first aid.”

“My man,” Shouta let his head drop back to stare at the ceiling while Majima’s voice continued to cut through his brainstems. “You don’t need our approval to teach first-aid to your class, and I’m sure you already knew that since you use the UA employee handbook like Eri’s bedtime story-”

“Go to hell?”

“-so why did you gather us here?”

“Because it’s not just my class in the second year hero department, Majima,” Shota tried to tune out the sound of Vlad clapping, “Vlad’s class needs this lesson just as much as mine does. As does Thirteen’s class and Ishiyama’s and Snipe’s- Letting one class learn something while the rest don’t get the chance to is not only unhelpful for the people who’ll eventually need medical assistance in the future but also very, very likely to cause internal issues with one another.”

Vlad didn’t clap this time, already silenced by the look on the Eraser hero’s face, but he nodded nonetheless. They might have issues with each other but they could at least agree that more tension between their classes was the last thing either of them needed, the aftermath of the USJ and sports festival being enough proof of that. As good of a hero-in-training that Monoma kid was, they didn’t need first-aid lessons adding more fuel to his already wildly insensitive burning fire.

And that’s ignoring Shinsou’s weird fight instigating tendencies for altercations that don’t even involve him.

They’re not amusing, they’re really not. Don’t look at him like that.

“Hence why I need all of your approval before I go forward.” He concluded.

Technically, he didn’t actually need their approval. Screw Majima but he does read the UA employee handbook on a semi-regular basis, semi-regular turned regular during the course of last week’s events. He’s read it enough to know that vice principals here can make as many changes to the curriculum they want around here (Tyrannical, he’s aware. But what did he expect?) as long as The Rat signs off on it.

Which he will, on anything Shota brings to him, because it’s not the consequences that he cares about, it’s the entertainment of seeing how Shota is gonna have to fight those consequences off tooth and nail to get himself out of the PTA’s wrath unscathed. Which he won’t.

But “technically”, he’d rather jump through flaming hoops getting the

teachers themselves to sign off on the curriculum changes than have to find some natural, conversational way to bring up the fact that he was promoted to a position not a single one of them knew existed here, not even himself. He’d just assumed the “vice principal” position mentioned in the handbook was Nezu’s way of making it seem to the HPSC like his power was absolutely being checked and balanced at the school.

It wasn’t, in case that wasn’t clear. And it still isn’t, in case anything he’s ever said made someone think otherwise.

“But just because all I’m asking for is a go ahead that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to compromise,”

Shota tapped the dry erase marker he was holding against the surface behind him, geasturing to the whiteboard covered in red arrows, circles, distinctive chicken scratch handwriting, and blue- Oh, the kid was right, he can barely see the pencil marks on those. Jesus who would sell such a thing.

“I’m aware it’s not as simple as just rounding all the students up in one place and teaching them the same thing; you guys all had your own lesson plans that would eventually cover this subject, so all this might do is get in the way of that. But I really do think it’s necessary to teach them all at the same time, that way they can help each other through any confusion without our direct assistance, which is something they’ll need to do as adults during medical emergencies, too. So if any of this doesn’t mesh well with what you guys had planned, feel free to make some changes or offer alternatives. Anything you feel is important.” And with that, he leaned back against the board, waiting for his coworkers to barrage him with suggestions.

He received silence.

“Really.” Shota stated again, shrugging when Midoriya gave him a confused glance. The kid was well prepared to jot down any edits needed to be made, but there’s not much he can do if no one speaks up. “I’m open to anything.”

Thirteen scratched the screen of their helmet. Majima’s eyes drifted towards the door. Vlad. Nemuri grinned, and that’s when it hit.

“You have no plans at all.” He breathed out. Silence again. Shota placed the marker down and chose his next words carefully. “I can’t believe i’m asking this, but have any of you, at any point in time, ever told your students or at least heavily implied that you should shove something in the mouth of a person having a seizure so they don’t bite off their tongue?”

More silence. And then, a hand.

“Christ.”

“It’s not my fault, okay? I just- I’m not used to helping out with that kind of thing! And why should I be? Why should any of us be? We’re not doctors, we’re pro-heroes. Right? Kayama, am I-” The redhead turned to the sight of Nemuri rolling her chair a little farther away from him, eyes communicating that there were many times in which she would love to be associated with Majima, this very moment not being one of them. Majima turned back to Shota. "If anything, this is the *commission’s* fault.”

“No this is your fault, Majima, you are a *grown man*-” Nemuri slid a little further away.

“I’m a mechanic, Eraser. I build machines. So if it’s really necessary, my robots can do all my first-aid for me.”

“Can they teach for you, too?”

There weren’t many things Majima could say in defense to that. Or rather, anything he could say that would actually be true. And he could sense fifty more viscerating comments from Shota hurtling his way from a distance. But the one thing he was right about was that he was a mechanic, a mechanic who could build things pretty well. And while it’s clear that seizure assistance and teaching weren’t included in his machines’ skill sets, lifting an arm was.

Majima’s recently updated suit’s metal finger was pointed before Shota could interrogate the excavation hero any further.

“Ectoplasm has never actually done first-aid on site. He just stays with the person while a clone runs off screaming for help from an actual nurse.”

Shota’s gaze slowly drifted to the hero in question, face carefully impassive.

“*What?*”

“AT LEAST I’M DOING SOMETHING PRODUCTIVE.” Ectoplasm shouted, rolling his chair away from Majima as well.

“You’re saying that this entire ti-”

Ectoplasm whipped his head to Ishiyama, marking the end of their book club.

“CEMENTOSS ISN’T ALLOWED NEAR INCAPACITATED VICTIMS ANYMORE BECAUSE EVERY TIME HE DOES THE CPR HE BREAKS THEIR RIBS AND DOES EVEN MORE DAMAGE.”

“Ishiyama you don’t even have hands why would you attempt to-” He just keeps getting cut off these days.

“Snipe’s been sued five separate times for reckless endangerment of a civilian because he doesn’t realize that emotional support is ineffective if there’s a gun pointing at their face the entire time.” The cement hero responded calmly, as if he’d just been waiting his turn. Snipe for his part just shrugged.

“Not much I can say to that. It’s becoming a real problem.”

“Many would say it already is.” Midoriya supplied thoughtfully.

“The first time it happened the girl just started confessing all her wrongdoings to me. Second time the guy ended up pulling out his own gun?”

“You emotionally supported the criminal.” Shota’s throat felt raw.

“And then the rest was actually on the same day. Family of three, three separate case filings- That one stung. Hurt my online presence a bit, too, I even considered going private for a second.”

“Have you ever considered just taking off the gun mask.” Snipe snorted.

“That’d hurt my online presence even more.”

“What is the mask even doing for you, Snipe?” Shota asked, although knowing better than to expect an actual answer. “We know your identity, everyone knows your identity. All it’s done for you so far is have you banned from seven states and kicked out of airports.”

“Okay am I crazy or did we already attempt to teach them this? Disaster training at the USJ, remember?” Vlad interrupted. Shota stared at him while Thirteen rolled off to join Nemuri and Ectoplasm in their isolated corner.

“No, Kan, I’ve completely forgotten. Remind me.” The blood hero’s hand fell back down to his lap.

“Personally, I think driving is more important.” Hound Dog yawned out from his spot by the espresso machine.

Shota’s stare went blank and before Midoriya could ask whether or not that counted as a legitimate suggestion to write down, his teacher’s capture weapon was looped around the back of his head to cover both his ears. Then looped over green eyes when he remembered that if the kid knew sign language it’s not too far-fetched to assume he could lip read, too.

“Personally, I think that I’ve already been seen unloading at least fifteen dummies from my trunk and if I don’t demonstrate heart failure on them soon, who knows what story people will come up with to explain it. I think those dummies cost money coming directly from the school budget. I think too many props that took too much time to develop have already been made for this. *I think* that first-aid is literally a part of the curriculum. I think this has serious PR stakes that can and will cost all of you all of your jobs if a UA student is seen in the ER for choking on crab of all fucking things because the chunks were too large and not one trainee or *teacher* in the most prestigious hero school in Japan knew how to do the Heimlich maneuver without breaking a rib and puncturing a lung somehow.”

“Must I bear this cross forever?!” Lunch Rush snapped.

“I think I’ve already roped too many people into this to go back now. I think your approval meant *jackshit* anyway for whether or not I go through with this plan, which I will.” Hizashi tilted his head. “Hound Dog, I think you’re only prioritizing driving lessons because you can’t commit the easiest crime of jaywalking without getting distracted by a squirrel and causing five different car accidents. And, oh yeah, I think *people will die if we don’t teach them this lesson*.” Shota let the capture weapon leave his student’s ears and fall back around his shoulders. A beat of silence passed.

“Ughhhh,” Nemuri groaned, “is that your only reason?”

“IT’S THE ONLY REASON I NEED-”

The sound of a door creaking open cut them off, Sero’s face appearing on the other side and depicting utter bafflement at the scene before him before remembering what he came for.

“Kaminari’s in the nurse’s office… Kirishima said he burned himself this morning trying to make eggs, which would’ve been an easy fix if he hadn’t rubbed, uh, butter on the wound right after? He’s fine, I think, he’s in Recovery Girl’s room, but his wound’s infected now. So, yeah, just came to let you know… Bye.”

The office was engulfed in silence for a few moments after the boy left until Shota got out of his leaning position to make his way to Recovery Girl, nodding at Midoriya and leaving one last message.

“I hate all of you.”

And he was gone.

Midoriya waited till the door was fully shut behind him before pulling out a stack of permission slips from Shota’s desk drawer, holding out one of them to Vlad for him to read. But before 2-B’s homeroom teacher could take the paper from the student’s grasp, the boy tightened his grip and leaned in with a grin.

“*Sign*.”