#it's been so long since I dared to indulge an OC fanfic idea

[foggyfanfic]

Love and Fury

Fic Summary: The goat herder’s daughter, Leandra, has spent the past year of her life trying to catch the man who raped her best friend in the act. When she finally sees him slip something into somebody’s drink, she panics and overturns her plate of food onto his potential victim in order to get her out of there. Pepa, the would be victim in question, is very understanding once Leandra explains what happened. Unfortunately, nobody remembered to pass that explanation onto Bruno. Pre-Movie AU. Rape is a theme but none is shown “on-screen”. Trigger Warnings: Attempted Rape

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CH 1 Panic! At the Quinceanera 

People often forget that Bruno Madrigal, despite having The Sight, was not actually omnipotent. He could see the future, see who was going to go bald, get fat, the exact time and place of your beloved goldfish’s demise; but, he couldn’t see through walls.

Which is for the best, really, mostly because people already thought he was creepy enough as it is. But even more importantly, if he’d seen through the walls of Señor Sanchez’s house on the night of Gabriele Sanchez’s quinceanera he would have known that when Leandra, the goat herder’s daughter, dropped a plate of food on Pepa’s lap she was actually doing Pepa a huge favor.

If he’d seen through the walls, he would have seen Cicero, Pepa’s current crush/almost boyfriend, prepare a drink for Pepa at the punch bowl. He’d have seen Cicero slip a little something extra into the drink when he thought nobody was looking. He’d have seen Leandra’s look of panic as she realized what she was witnessing.

But Bruno Madrigal could not see through walls, so all he saw was red as Cicero, Pepa’s latest crush/almost boyfriend, laughed at her. 

Pepa stared down at the food staining her dress, her brand new dress, a storm cloud forming over her head. Her bottom lip wobbled but she clenched her jaw and turned a glare on the woman and the overturned plate in her hand.

Leandra leaned down and hissed something to Pepa, Bruno couldn’t hear what she said, but he saw the way Pepa’s face fell as she looked first at Cicero, who was bent over double, then at her half empty drink.

Cicero’s bark of laughter had drawn the attention of the other people standing in the Sanchez’s garden. As heads turned their way Pepa’s cheeks reddened and the cloud over her head began to drizzle. She glanced around, looked at Cicero, then looked to the woman standing over her. 

“I’m so sorry Pepa,” and she sounded so genuinely sad that for a second Bruno’s anger abetted, but then she finished, “I tripped.”

Bruno expected lightning to flash at this blatant lie, he expected Pepa to shoot to her feet and call the other woman out, he moved to stand behind her left shoulder, mirroring Julieta who stood behind her right. They both crossed their arms and glared at the lying witch, ready to back their triplet up in whatever fight broke out.

“That’s ok,” Pepa said, slowly rising to her feet and brushing the food off her lap, “I-it’s not your fault.”

Bruno exchanged a shocked look with Julietta who opened her mouth to say what they were both thinking, “But she-.”

Pepa held up a hand with a small shake of her head, “I better g-get home and wash this stuff off.”

“I’ll walk you,” Cicero offered immediately, having reigned his laughter in and slapped on a charming smile. Bruno frowned at him, he figured the least the man could do was apologize for his initial reaction.

He was so busy frowning at Cicero that he missed the way Pepa paled at the offer.

“No,” the lying, envious, witch, yelled as she turned quickly to Cicero, “I need… I was actually coming over here to discuss buying some of your father’s wine for an event. An event to um… sell more cheese.”

Cicero smirked, clearly coming to the same conclusion that Bruno had, that she had spilled her food on Pepa specifically to steal Cicero’s attention for herself. 

“Oh, but I-,” Cicero started to say, holding a hand out to Pepa. Pepa gulped as she looked in between Cicero’s hand and the goat herder’s daughter.

“Wanted to dance? Great! We can dance,” she put herself between Cicero and Pepa, snatching up his hand.

Bruno felt his lip curl in disgust, this time he was the one who opened his mouth to say something to the lying, envious, conniving witch.

“That sounds like a great idea,” Pepa said, cutting Bruno off as she strung her arm through his, “Bruno, Julietta, will you two walk me home.”

“Of course,” Julietta said, with one more glance at Cicero and the lying, envious, conniving, horrible, witch that had attacked their sister. 

Bruno just glared at the couple as Pepa tugged him away, even craning his neck to send one last dirty look at the lying, envious, conniving, horrible, evil, witch as she smiled nervously at Cicero. When they were clear of the party, Pepa’s drizzle turned into a downpour, soaking all three of them through. Julietta softly asked why Pepa hadn’t wanted to call the other woman out on her lie but the only answer she’d received was a quiet sob. They’d walked through the village, which was thankfully empty due to everybody being at the party, in somewhat awkward silence only broken by the occasional crash of thunder.

“A-at least the rain should keep the stains from setting,” Bruno said, as Casita came into view.

Pepa laughed wetly, then sucked in a breath, “God, I’m so embarrassed.”

Cicero had been pushing at her boundaries lately, asking for a more physical relationship than she was ready to give him unless he made some sort of commitment to her. There had been a time or two where she’d had to physically push him off of her, aided by the wind at her command. Both times it had happened, he had seemed apologetic, told her he was just so crazy about her he had gotten carried away. 

Whenever she had asked why he hadn’t committed to being in a monogamous relationship he had had so many answers ready, each more logical sounding than the last. Pepa had started to think that she was being crazy, asking for him to commit without any promise that she would make it worth it for him.

She had ignored so many red flags. She felt like such an idiot.

“Pepa, no, you have nothing to be embarrassed about! That, that… absolute puta is the one who should be embarrassed,” Julietta jumped to reassure her, Pepa shook her head and said something that was swallowed up by the sound of thunder.

“I’ll wash the dress,” Bruno volunteered, the moment they crossed through the threshold of their home, “m-make it like tonight never happened.”

He usually hated doing the laundry, mostly because it was the chore he got stuck with the most. He’d complained to Felix, when the slightly older man had stopped by to drop off an order of corn flour, and Feilx had asked if Bruno was good at doing laundry. Bruno had reluctantly admitted that stains bothered him, and even though he was bored of the task, he couldn’t bring himself to do a bad job because then he would have to put up with seeing the stains. 

“Well, there’s your problem right there, hermano,” Felix had said, patting Bruno on the back.

Bruno liked Felix, most people did, but Bruno privately missed the days when Pepa was too busy pining over Felix to waste her time on idiots like Cicero. Ah, to be twelve again.

Pepa nodded sullenly, “Thank you Bruno. Julie, w-will you stay with me?”

“Of course,” Julietta said, “would you like anything to eat?”

Pepa stopped abruptly at the base of the stairs, looking somewhat stricken. Bruno detached himself from her and hared off to get the wash basin ready, he heard her blubber something to Julietta but couldn’t quite make out anything other than Cicero’s name. He heard Julie’s response loud and clear, and he briefly paused to gape at her over his shoulder. He didn’t know that Julietta knew how to curse like that, it was a good thing that they hadn’t stopped to grab their mother on the way out of the party. She would not have been pleased.

Of course, in the morning, when Julietta would quietly explain the night's events, their Mama would let out a few curses of her own.

While Bruno was busy prepping the wash basin, Pepa was beginning to feel the effects of the drug Cicero gave her. The weather inside Casita grew steadily worse as the last scraps of hope Pepa had held, hope that Leandra was wrong, hope that Cicero wasn’t that sort of man, slipped away like water through clenched fingers.

While Julietta quietly handed Bruno the delicately embroidered dress for him to wash, Pepa laid in her bed, staring at the ceiling and tried her very best to hold onto consciousness. The weather calmed as her attempts failed.

Bruno had started to hang the now clean dress up on the line, by the time Pepa regained a semblance of consciousness. And that was only because Julietta had shook her awake in order to offer her a bowl of arroz con leche. Upon realizing how truly helpless she was, how horribly wrong the night could have gone, Pepa summoned a great tornado that patrolled through the courtyard and corridors of Casita. Bruno extended his neck to look into the house at the perilous wind, then added more clips to the dress. He threw some salt over his shoulder then knocked on the nearest piece of wood, before finally sending out a little prayer that the dress would stay put. 

He wasn’t sure what saint to pray to for laundry related concerns, but he figured at least one of them must know the frustration of coming back to the clothesline to discover that your previously clean clothes had fallen in a mud puddle.

The tornado faded as Julietta reiterated her promise to stay with Pepa all night. There was nothing her food could do to cleanse the drug from Pepa’s body, but she could help heal any lingering after effects Pepa might feel in the morning.

“Ros- Rosalie,” Pepa slurred, “this happened to Rosalie last year.”

“It did,” Julietta whispered, calmly petting her sister’s hand.

“Everybody thought- Padré g-gave that sermon about alcohol.”

“He did.”

“She was telling the truth.”

“She was.”

Rosalie had woken up naked in a haystack in her family’s barn. She had been found by Florez, who worked for her father. When asked, she had sworn up and down that she hadn’t touched a drop of liquor and had left the party by herself the second she had started to feel a bit tired. Her friends had corroborated her story, but there was no denying the hand shaped bruises around her hips, or the baby she gave birth to nine months later.

When she had started to show, Rosalie had sobbed and begged her father to believe her, to help her figure out what had happened that night. He hadn’t. He had thrown her out and she had become a cautionary tale.

Alma had taken the girl in and made arrangements for her and her child to live with Señora Ruiz, the kindly old weaver who was in need of an apprentice. Rosalie barely wandered into town these days, unless it was for church. Even then, she usually arrived as late as she could without being rude, and left just as quickly.

It wasn’t that Pepa and Julietta hadn’t believed Rosalie, after all, both Mamá and Bruno took the woman at her word, why should they do any different? It was just… hard to accept that anyone in Encanto could do that to another person.

“They were friends, si?” Pepa asked, massaging her temple. It hurt to keep her eyes open. 

“Rosalie and…?” 

She gestured down at her lap where a plate’s worth of food had provided a convenient excuse to get away from Cicero, “What’s her face.”

“Oh, si. Still are, I think, might even be closer than they were before. I-I don’t know, they both live so far out of town,” Julietta sighed, realizing she didn’t really know much about the woman that had saved her sister tonight.

The goat herder, Raul Lopez, lived in the mountains surrounding Encanto, a reasonable place for a goat herder to live. His daughter, Leandra, was technically adopted, her birth family hadn’t survived the first few years in Encanto, but he loved her well enough and had given her everything he could. 

She was a bit younger than the triplets, but no more so than Agustín, Julietta’s boyfriend. In fact, she and Agustín were friends, weren’t they? Good friends, the last time she’d seen the two talk, Agustín had called Leandra “hermana” and he seemed to mean it.

Other than that, all Julietta knew about the other woman was that she had figured out how to make fine soaps and lotions by mixing lye and herbs into some of the goat milk. Leandra ran the market stall for her father, whenever Julietta had stopped by they talked about herbs and their different uses, or Agustín, never about themselves. 

All the same, Julietta had seen Leandra and her father move to sit next to Rosalie during Padré’s sermon on the dangers of alcohol and pre-marital sex. Which was a statement if there ever was one.

“Mami believed Rosalie,” Pepa suddenly said, after a pause so long Julietta had assumed she’d fallen asleep again.

“Do you want to tell Mamá about this?”

“No, but yes.”

“Do you want me to tell Mamá about this?”

“Si, por favor.”

There was a knock at Pepa’s door and Bruno poked his head in, “The dress is clean as new. D-do you need anything else?”

“What if I asked you to help me hide a body?” Pepa managed to ask, although it took effort to keep the words from smudging together.

Bruno grinned wryly, “Then I’d ask Julietta to be our alibi.”

Pepa snorted, then sighed, rubbing at her eyes in a way that Bruno mistook for her rubbing away tears. In truth, her head was beginning to pound from the effort it took to stay awake. Julietta squeezed her sister’s hand, then turned to Bruno.

“When Mama gets back can you let her know that I need to talk to her about something important? In the morning.”

“Claro,” Bruno nodded, “anything else?”

“There’s some extra arroz con leche in the kitchen if you want some,” Julietta offered softly.

“Have you had any?”

“Not yet.”

“I’ll bring you some. Pepa?”

Pepa grunted and shook her head. Bruno took this to mean that she was too upset to have more of her favorite dessert, he sighed and told Julietta he would be right back. By the time he arrived with a bowl of rice pudding for Julietta, Pepa had succumbed once again to the effects of Cicero’s drug. He decided he wouldn’t risk waking her but dropped a light kiss to each of his sisters’ heads.

Julietta squeezed his wrist and gave him a tight but warm smile, she was too caught up in thoughts of poor Rosalie for it to occur to her that Bruno didn’t actually know what was happening.

And because it didn’t occur to her that Bruno had no clue what was really going on, she didn’t tell him.

Meanwhile, Bruno sat down in the chair closest to Casita’s front door with his bowl of arroz con leche and continued thinking about the same thing he’d been thinking about since he’d left the party. That lying, envious, conniving, horrible, evil, petty, witch that had done this to his sister.

Bruno Madrigal was not what one would usually consider a confident man, when he was forced to make an appearance at a party he generally remained with one or both of his sisters. Lately he’d expanded his social circle to Agustín, so that was exciting, but even that was only because Agustín was dating Julietta. Otherwise, he kept to himself, avoiding human contact as much as he was able. 

As awed by his abilities as everybody had been when he was a child, once he hit that first growth spurt, once he’d started to lose the baby fat around his cheeks, their awe had turned to first irritation, then caution, and finally fear.

Bruno Madrigal was not what one would usually consider a confident man, because most only considered him a bad omen.

He wasn’t a violent man either, although his head danced with fantasies of throwing whole buckets of food onto the lying, envious, conniving, horrible, evil, petty, desperate, witch. Unfortunately, the thought of attacking another person in any way repelled him. Disgusted him, even. All the same, his sister deserved justice!

That lying, envious, conniving, horrible, evil, petty, desperate… he was running out of applicable insults. And it was getting much too long a descriptor, anyway.

Unfortunately, as previously stated, Bruno mostly kept to himself and well, he didn’t know her name.

He’d been to her quinceanera, he knew he had, because Mamá made them go to every quinceanera they were invited to. And, he’d bought cheese from her stall a few times. Bruno had even given her a vision once, and her father had sent her back with a thank you basket.

But he had never asked her name.

The village was small, and she had been in the grade below his in school. He sort of assumed that he should know her name by now, and it was weird that he didn’t, so he had always avoided calling attention to that fact.

He would call her la Reina Malvada, or Reina for short, after the evil queen in the play the school children had just put on. It made sense, obviously Reina was motivated by jealousy just like the evil queen in the story. The only women in the village who could compete with Reina’s beauty were the Madrigal sisters; it was only a matter of time before such a black hearted villainess went after one of them.

Well, Bruno wasn’t going to stand for this. He may not be a knight in shining armor, or a handsome prince, but he loved his sisters. And he wouldn’t let anyone get away with attacking them like this.

Reina came down from the mountains to sell her and her father’s wares in the market every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Bruno would pay her a visit and insist she apologize to his sister and admit what she had done. And if he had to lean into his reputation as Bad Luck Bruno to make that happen? A small price to pay for his sister’s happiness.

[cttrajan1206]

#arrow sys#Love them#Absolute sweethearts all of em#And suoer fun to sprint with

FIRST OF ALL SOBS /pos

second,,, i know nothing abt twst or obey me but grabby hands at a ramble; i will absolutely listen if you wanted to talk about it :starry:

JSHDJF [WAILS ALOUD] I TOOK SO LONG SO GET BACK TO YOU THAT I FINISHED ONE OF THE WIPS IN THAT TIME LMAO!!

Well!! This is good promo! :> The one that i was typing up is finished now and it's the obey me fic! You can find it here:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/33644662

Mammon and Movies:

Basically! Someone read another fic of mine that included my self insert flappy stimming and also getting mental breakdown so it asked if i could include a couple other stims in another work since he enjoyed my first one! I. Took that request and made an entire fic dedicated to him lmao. So! I asked it later on for what it would like me to include and which character to use and here we are!

This is a 4K fic of Mammon from Obey Me paired with a Neurodivergent!Reader. The plot is that of him showing you a magic trick and smoothly whipping out a movie ticket!! You've been wanting to ask him to see a movie with you for a while so this is perfect! So perfect in fact that you're overwhelmed with happiness and have a brief moment of being nonverbal as you're overwhelmed with euphoria. Then the next day, you meet him at the venue and the date begins! Other scenes include him allowing you to hold onto his bracelets as it's one of your stims (he wears one of every texture to accomodate to your tastes), you dissociating out of anxiety in a movie theatre and him helping to ground you, and finally! Him sleeping on your shoulder before the movie ends.

Ik i kinda just said the majority of the plot lmao but! Its just a fluffy and sweet movie date! I enjoyed writing it a lot although i got about 80% of it done a month ago and tyn didn't touch it for like 2 weeks sjdbsjd i was p sad abt that. I like finishing things quickly esp when its for other people!! But it was a comfort during a hard time to write this work at 2am under the light of a night lamp and to the tune of street life ambience.

ALSO I FOUND OUT THAT MAMMONS OFFICIAL SONG "ARE YOU READY" LEGIT HAS NO HOURLONG LOOPS AND THAT WAS A HARD HIT TO ME BC LIKE I WANTED TO LISTEN TO IT ON TV BUT IT WASNT HAPPENINGGG TWT WHY DOES EVERYONE LIKE ALL THE OTHER OTHER BROTHER'S SONGS INSTEAD LIKE PLSSS

Anyway lmao i'm quite happy with this work, it feels very round and finished to me which makes me happy because it means I didn't need to worry about editing it to feel satisfied. The requester liked it a lot too! Which made me super super happy. :>

Now!! For the twisted wonderland!! That’s a comfort plotline of mine that doesn’t really have a title yet and is still a wip that is written through my friend’s DMs BUT! I will also take the time to promo my twst writing blog! It is dead QvQ On there, you can see a bit more about the self insert in question but for now, i’ll just put the ship name as the title.

https://twst-sumi-squad.tumblr.com/

Kalim Al-Asim X Sumi Bint Khattar (Plot line):

So!! This one stemmed from me drawing something out of self indulgence and to show it to my friend, I described Sumi B in full and then I told them about my ships and around that time I had like five love songs I was obsessed with. And for each of them. I had. A separate animatic. For like at least 1 ship, the average was two but one had three. Sumi B was the centre of the most ships but not the only one. Anyway!! I told my friend about this and asked if I could dump my ideas onto them! They agreed and I started with a summarised version but then realised I needed a bit more build up so I started to write it in a bit more detail. Hah. It ended up being a Lot More Detailed but even then, I would write the scenes in a much more fluid and descriptive way if it were Real Writing so! I call it a Plotline. It is very long.

The plot itself is. long now. it’s a slowburn lmao because most if not all of my self insert ships tend to be slowburns. But this one? This particular self insert? Sumi B? Yeah she’s the only one with trust issues so she mothers the BIGGEST slowburns known to history. It takes them a year before she even considers him a friend despite seeing him every day and also having multiple deep conversations with him. Anyway though, this one is a big comfort becuase it has something I didn’t really dare to do before. Kalim, the canon character, falls in love with my oc first. Normally I have it the other way round becuase I’m too scared to assume that I would be like, deserving or like desirable enough for someone to have a crush on me. But with Sumi B, even I have a goddamn crush on her lmao. I indulge myself a bit with this one and really play around with emotions and!! In the most recent scene! We have finally reached the part where she actually starts to love him back! :D

I started this one a loooong time ago, at least a month and maybe two? It was Intended to be finsiehd in one night and then i got carried away and my friend got invested and then I ALSO got invested and so I started to develop the plot further so make it more interesting and keep the buildup going. It’s very fun and though i try to limit myself to summarising actions and dialogue, i fail. very often. so it often has little tidbits of more beautiful sentences and tension lmao. 

This particular fic is based off of my imagined animatic for the song “Would you be so kind” by Dodie! I didn’t know about the song until i saw other people’s animatics and I ended up taking it and running away haha! I’m currently really happy with it however I am really dreading the day where I actually write it out properly. If I don’t? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll post the plotline by itself. I have another fic just like it, one with a different self insert who (in fact) is very very close with Sumi B and considers her his older sister, that i ALSO wrote in semi detailed plot lines in someone’s DMs. Both are massive comforts to me and though i love them, their plot lines are so goddamn long that i will dread the day i decide to write them all out.

So uhm!!! Yeah!! XDD Those are the two fics I was talking about! I hope you enjoyed my small ramblings about them haha. I’m starting college soon though so I fear I might have much more time for fanfic.

[diaxfeliz]

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐢 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐡 | 𝟏.𝟓𝐤

A Genshin Impact Fanfic

➵ Character/s: Scaramouche

➵ OC/s: Captain Pix

➵ Warning/s: none

A/N: Welcome back to me writing self-indulgent shit :DD I know Scara’s most likely ooc but whatever.

•

The sixth Harbinger swore to never love and yet he keeps his closest and only friend around even after being devastated by their separation and feeling a surge of happiness when they’re reunited.

•

•

•

From atop the forecastle, Scaramouche watched Pix with a curious eye. It had been years since the two friends last saw each other. They lost contact with each other when Pix was spontaneously shipped off to Inazuma that night. They didn’t get to say goodbye to each other then.

It was a miracle that they ended up on the same boat back home from Liyue, and while Scaramouche longed to talk to them again, he didn’t know what to say. He felt that they drifted apart in those years after they’d promised they’d never. Both him and Pix were people of their word, so what happened?

While Scaramouche continued his longing stare, Pix caught wind of it and looked up at him to which he immediately looked away. He wasn’t the only one who felt disappointed of their separation — Pix was too. Just like Scaramouche, however, they didn’t know what to do or what to say — let alone what to call him now.

Scaramouche gripped the railing he had been holding onto this entire time and sighed. He shouldn’t be wasting time like this and so decided to leave to wander elsewhere until they reached home.

Time passed and the air got colder. Scaramouche, someone who often travels in and out of Snezhnaya, is aware of their near arrival home. He breathed onto his hands to try and warm them, but all that came out was a puff of vapor. The cold wind stung when it flew by, urging him to take shelter somewhere warmer.

While he thought of going back to his private quarters, he remembered the very first boat ride he and Pix shared. They had known each other for a while then and he suddenly felt the urge to head down into the hold. It was a special place he and Pix shared back then and he couldn’t help but want to experience it again.

…

“Why are we here?” Scaramouche asked, continuing to follow Pix into the hold.

Pix opened the door in which a rush of warm air escaped the dark room. A smile lit up Pix’s face as they skipped inside and gestured their friend to follow.

“It’s warmest here. A little stuffy, but it battles home’s cold.” Pix hung the lantern on a hook attached to the ceiling. “You can put your things by the crates, Scara. I’ll fetch us some blankets.”

…

Scaramouche quietly opened the door to the hold. He wasn’t sure why he was being so cautious about it. Maybe he was just making sure not to startle whoever was currently inside? He would’ve believed his own words if he didn’t see light on the ceiling at the end of the room behind the cargo.

He peeked around the corner and as he expected, there Pix was sitting atop crates, blanketed with a lit lantern beside them. It seemed like they were still doing work whilst trying to keep warm, and before Scaramouche could lean closer and check on what Pix was doing, he sneezed.

Pix turned to Scaramouche, a smile quickly adorning their face. Scaramouche had the urge to leave, but it would be rude of him to do so now that Pix had seen him. He never cared about being rude, but when it came to Pix, he tries hard not to be.

Pix wordlessly rose from their seat and approached their superior who still refused to look them in the eye. Pix didn’t mind though. They removed the blanket from themselves and settled it on Scaramouche’s shoulders seemingly catching him off guard by the surprised look on his face. He looked down at Pix’s hands and took the edges of the blanket from them. It was warm and fragrant from their use of it, triggering a sense of comfort in Scaramouche.

…

“I found these.” Pix held up two thick blankets with a smile. They handed one to Scaramouche who accepted with no problem. “It should keep us warm until we get out of Snezhnayan waters.

While he did not have a problem with taking it, he was a little skeptical about the two of them messing with the things in the hold. “Are we even allowed to tamper with the cargo?” he asked.

“I’m pretty sure we aren’t.” Pix said with a mischievous wink.

…

“It’s getting cold.” Pix’s soft voice snapped him out of his daydreaming. “Looks like we’re almost home.”

Scaramouche tightened his jaw. “We are…”

In all honesty, Scaramouche didn’t know what to say to his only friend. He didn’t expect to be meeting them again so soon. He felt so out of character not knowing what to say in front of them. Was he supposed to say he missed them? Was that it?

A cold breeze whips through the hold, making Pix cover their mouth and sneeze. Upon removing their hand, frost was all over it as well as their nose. Scaramouche panicked at the sight, making him grip his blanket. He’d heard of Pix’s condition and he gained a clear picture of what it was like after their situation being explained to him when Dottore had explained it to the rest of the Harbingers.

“N-No — You need this more than I do.” He began to remove the blanket in a panic. “You’ll die before we even—”

Before the blanket could even leave his shoulders, Pix grabbed his hands and smiled. It was their signature reassuring smile Scaramouche was very familiar with. Their smile was the one thing that never changed about them in the course of the few years they were apart.

“I’ll be fine,” Pix reassured him. “Master Scaramouche.”

A string snapped inside Scaramouche’s head upon hearing Pix refer to him so formally.

…

Pix blew a raspberry. “As if I’d ever call you ‘master’.”

“I’d rather you’d not.” He rolled his eyes. “What else would this friendship be for then?”

…

He bit back tears from Pix’s referral to him. This was what he was afraid of — Pix forgetting their friendship was founded on them treating each other like equals no matter what. A pain he’d never experienced before bubbled in his chest, choking him on his own words.

“Don’t call me that.” he said with an angry tremble in his voice. “Don’t you dare call me that!”

Pix was taken aback by him raising his voice. There was a surprise in their eyes when they pulled back to give him the space he needed. When Scaramouche saw the surprise in their eyes, he immediately regretted his outburst. He was beginning to treat Pix like a subordinate because of the conflict of his emotions and he hated it.

“W-Wait, no. I didn’t mean to… Just…” Scaramouche stuttered uncharacteristically. He opened his mouth, wanting to explain himself — wanting something to come out of it, but nothing.

His hands trembled as he jumped at Pix, wrapping his arms around them. All the pent up feelings he had from missing Pix finally ran free and he eased himself onto Pix, savoring being close to them again. Was this what it felt like to be deprived of someone’s touch?

“I just miss you, Pix.” He finally blurted out, tears streaming down his face.

…

“Now that I think about it, for every milestone I reach,” Pix stopped to turn to him. “you’re always there.”

“Oh?” Scaramouche responded with an eyebrow raise.

“When I first joined, when I got my Delusion, when I became First Captain, when I became the Everhonorary — all I could see is you among the crowd.” Pix smiled brightly, one which Scaramouche couldn’t help but reciprocate.

“It must be a sign then.”

“Right.” Pix laughed and held up a hand, fingers apart, in front of Scaramouche. “A sign that we’re in this together no matter what.

Scaramouche was confused for a moment on what Pix wanted, but when he intertwined his fingers with theirs, they intertwined their fingers right back.

He smiled. “No matter what.”

…

He never cared about good relationships when he became the sixth Harbinger. That is until he met Pix. They were the only person he didn’t want to let go of. Even if it went against his beliefs and principles, Pix was the major exception in his life.

“…My bad, Scara.” Pix mumbled and hugged him back, making sure that they fitted against each other’s bodies perfectly. If Scaramouche was comfortable hugging them, it felt even more comfortable with them hugging him.

“I’m glad to hear you missed me.” They chuckled into his hair. “I missed you too.”

For a moment, Scaramouche felt as if he was on his way to Liyue with Pix, where he didn’t worry about them ever being separated. It felt as if the few year gap that happened never did and they grew together, both as friends and Harbingers. Scaramouche had once damned the idea of non-work relationships, but that was long before he met Pix, and he was more than glad to have them in his life.