#its just been a very outsiders hyperfix day | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

jungkoode · 3 months ago

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𝐅𝐔𝐂𝐊 𝐌𝐄 𝐔𝐏 | 14

˗ˏ�� laundry day ˎˊ˗

"Doing laundry should be a normal activity—not something that brings out a whole new set of revelations about Jungkook you were not even fathoming. And you don’t know if it’s helping old ladies, tying your shoes or collecting stupid vynils—but you don’t like how it’s throwing off your whole perception of your annoying roommate."

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⋆｡°✩ chapter details ✩°｡⋆

word count: 8k

content: laundry rooms, old ladies that have a vendetta against you?, jungkook being a decent human being, batman socks, vynil revelations, humanizing jungkook and not liking it

✧ author's note ✧

Hello again little gremlins! It’s your girl, Kiki—back with another dose of Jungkook being emotionally compromised and having weird feelings about vulnerability.

SO. This chapter is… fairly slow-paced, which, duh—have you read my stuff? I went HAM on the introspection here, but I think it was so needed. Sometimes we need this type of chapter to balance the narrative out. I think it’s worked out beautifully, but do let me know your thoughts at the end.

About the goal thing! In case you’ve been living under a rock (or you don’t check my Tumblr regularly—which, fair), I have decided to switch my update schedule system.

Previously, I had been working with a weekly schedule as you all know. This has been quite easy for me to maintain because I work with hyperfixations, and basically ADHD.

The thing is… it’s a 2 month cycle.

I’m basically on week 7/8 already.

And that brings me to The Point. Goal-based update system. Which just means I’ll continue posting as long as we reach the established goals in every chapter. I’m going to be creating a whole post explaining how it works, but, long story short—as long as we reach either the goal in Tumblr OR Wattpad, we’ll be getting more chapters!

This is basically a self-regulation thing. I am self-aware (luckily) and I know how to work with my ADHD—but for those who don’t know; it’s heavily tied to dopamine. Which just means (I’m not gonna get nerdy I swear), I basically need engagement to trick my brain into staying motivated. Otherwise dopamine hits get slowly weaker and at some point I literally cannot bring myself to write.

WHICH SUCKS. Because I do love my stories, and I love sharing them. But burnout is real and brains work in funny ways and I can’t really fight my ADHD or brain chemistry (trust me I wish I could). So this is how you guys are going to help me tame this bitch. WE RIDE AT DOWN. 🤝

And before anyone asks—no, this is not up for debate. This is not something I’m “considering” or “open to feedback on.” This is me taking care of my mental health and working with my ADHD instead of against it. It’s not an “excuse,” it’s just how my brain operates. If that bothers you… I literally do not know what to tell you.

Anyways, as always, I love you all, I’m reading all your comments and reblogs and asks, and do check the note goal at the very end! 🩷

⋆｡°✩ read on✩°｡⋆

ao3

wattpad

It's fucking weird how some people's clothes have a gravitational pull, like they're magnets and your body is just helplessly metal.

You're wearing his sweater. The same one that's been mocking you from your desk chair for the last twenty-four hours, just sitting there in all its navy blue glory, smelling like rain and testosterone and bad decisions. You don't know why you haven't tossed it back into his room yet. It's been staring you down all morning, a silent accusation of...something.

But now it's almost midday on Sunday, and your pile of dirty clothes has reached critical mass. Your laundry basket is basically a textile Mount Everest. You'd wear something clean, except there isn't anything clean left—not unless you count the questionable tank top you found at the back of your drawer that you're pretty sure you wore to a frat party sophomore year.

So. Jungkook's sweater it is.

You tell yourself it's just practical. Totally logical. It's uncharacteristically chilly outside, the first whisper of almost September creeping in, and you need something to cover your ridiculous pajama shorts for the trek to the basement laundry room. They're flowery and pale pink, paired with an equally ridiculous oversized t-shirt featuring a cartoonish sunflower with the words "HAVE A SUNFLOWER DAY!" emblazoned across your chest in neon yellow.

Not exactly the look you'd choose for running into anyone with functioning eyeballs, but it's Sunday, and your give-a-fuck meter is hovering at absolute zero.

It's not like you're going to run into anyone important anyway. Miguel the super probably won't be down there; he's usually sleeping off his Saturday night till at least 2PM. And the chances of meeting some hot neighbor—your future spouse who'll be so charmed by your sunflower ensemble that they'll propose on the spot—are basically nonexistent.

Actually, scratch that.

Even if some dream person did materialize in the laundry room today, they wouldn't see the sunflower masterpiece because it's hidden under Jungkook's stupidly oversized hoodie. The one that somehow hangs past your shorts, making it look like you're not wearing pants at all, which is a whole different kind of disaster.

Whatever. It's warm. It doesn't smell like him anymore. (It does.) And you're just using it. Borrowing it. Temporarily occupying its fabric space.

You scoop up your overflowing laundry basket and wrestle it onto your hip. The elevator in this building moves with all the urgency of continental drift, so you opt for the stairs. Three flights down isn't horrible, especially since the laundry room is conveniently right next to the stairwell exit.

"Just put it in his room later," you mutter to yourself, adjusting the hoodie.

You could've done that yesterday when he tossed it at you, but you didn't, and you're not thinking about why.

You check your pocket for quarters and detergent pods.

The whole ritual is familiar now—Sunday laundry day, another week of adulting successfully completed without burning the building down or getting evicted. Not that the bar should be that low, but hey, after the month you've had, you'll take the wins where you can get them.

As you start down the stairs, the hoodie falls past your hand, and you absently tug it back up, trying not to think about how the collar brushes against your cheek or how the cuffs hang past your fingertips.

And you definitely aren't thinking about the fact that you're surrounded by the scent of him with every breath you take.

Because that would be weird, right? Being conscious of wearing your roommate's clothes? The roommate you occasionally fuck? The one who took you to buy a vibrator yesterday before subjecting you to lunch with his overly-protective friend?

Right. Not weird at all.

You're just doing laundry, in ridiculous pajamas, wearing his hoodie because it's practical. That's the story, and you're sticking to it—even if the sleeves smell faintly of his soap when you lift your hand to push your hair out of your face.

The stairwell is quiet, just the echo of your worn-out sneakers slapping against the concrete steps. You shift the basket to your other hip, huffing slightly under its weight.

Maybe you should've done laundry sooner. Maybe you shouldn't wait until you're literally out of underwear every single time.

But then again, maybe you should focus on the stairs and not on the fact that your bare thighs occasionally brush against the soft inner lining of his hoodie.

Adulthood is just a series of mundane chores punctuated by questionable decisions. And today, apparently, that includes wearing Jungkook's hoodie to do your laundry.

No big deal. You'll wash your clothes, return his sweater, and the universe will continue spinning on its axis, completely unaffected by your poor wardrobe choices.

The door to the laundry room is propped open with a cinder block—probably Mrs. Patel from 4C forgetting to remove it again. You shift your basket one final time and head in, already mentally claiming the good dryer, the one that doesn't sound like it's harboring a demon when it hits the spin cycle.

It's just laundry day. Just another Sunday.

And the laundry room is still a goddamn joke.

Because let’s be real—whoever thought six washing machines and four dryers could service an entire apartment building was either a sadist or never did laundry in their life.

And on Sundays?

It's like watching vultures circle a carcass—everybody desperate for their turn at the machines, glaring at anyone who takes too long to transfer their clothes.

Dona Ramirez is already there, of course. The seventy-something retiree who treats the laundry room like her personal kingdom and you like an invading barbarian. She's currently guarding the Good Dryer—the one you had mentally claimed seconds ago.

Just. Fucking. Great.

She looks up as you enter, lips pursing like she's just bitten into something sour. Her eyes travel from your face down to your bare legs and back up again, judgment radiating from her in palpable waves.

"Good morning," you mutter, aiming for polite but landing somewhere around constipated.

"Hmph." Dona sniffs, turning back to her women's magazine. "Young people these days. No shame."

You bite back the urge to point out that it's literally just your legs showing, not your entire ass. It wouldn't matter anyway. In Dona's world, anything above the ankle is basically pornographic.

Shifting your heavy basket to your other hip, you make your way to the only empty washing machine—wedged in the back corner, naturally. The one that sometimes stops mid-cycle like it's having an existential crisis. You slam your basket down with more force than necessary.

"Careful with the machines," Dona mutters without looking up from her magazine. "They're not getting any younger."

Neither are you, standing here taking shit from the laundry room gatekeeper.

"Sorry," you say, not sorry at all.

You start sorting your clothes, creating separate piles for darks and lights. Dona continues to flip pages, totally unbothered. Or maybe bothered. You can’t tell and frankly don’t care.

As you're separating your darks, something catches your eye. Orange hair. Lots of it, actually, clinging to your black leggings and that navy shirt you wore when you were studying on the couch last week.

Griffin.

That little furry infiltrator has been shedding all over your clothes again. Despite the fact that your door is always closed. Despite the "no pets" clause in your lease that Jungkook blatantly ignores. Despite your best efforts to maintain some semblance of a cat-hair-free existence.

And yet...

You find yourself smiling slightly as you pluck a particularly long orange strand from your favorite black sweater. The traitorous little shit must have snuck into your room when you were in the shower yesterday. You'd caught him curled up on your bed when you came out, looking entirely too comfortable and completely unapologetic about the invasion.

He'd just blinked at you lazily, that slow "yes, I know I'm not supposed to be here, and no, I don't care" cat-blink that somehow manages to be both insulting and endearing at the same time.

You should be annoyed. You should definitely tell Jungkook to keep his feline menace away from your clean laundry basket. You should not find it even remotely charming that Griffin seems to have decided your clothes are his second-favorite napping spot (right after your pillow, the little asshole).

And yet here you are, pulling orange fur off your black clothes with something dangerously close to fondness.

What the fuck is happening to you?

Maybe it's sleep deprivation.

Or maybe it's the fact that Griffin is actually kind of cool, for a cat.

He doesn't have that typical cat superiority complex—he just genuinely doesn't give a shit about anything except food, sunbeams, and antagonizing Jungkook.

It's a lifestyle you can respect.

Plus, he has this way of curling up next to you when you're reading, just close enough to leech your body heat without actually admitting he wants your attention. It's like living with a tiny, furry version of his owner.

Not that you'd ever admit that particular observation out loud.

You dump your dark clothes into the washing machine, mentally calculating how much detergent to add. Dona shuffles to check her wash cycle, eyeing you suspiciously like you might try to sabotage her laundry when she's not looking.

"Cold day," she comments, which is probably the most conversational she's ever been with you.

"Yeah," you reply, not looking up from measuring detergent. "Came early this year."

She hums disapprovingly, like the weather is also your fault. "Wearing your boyfriend's clothes won't keep you warm forever."

For a split second, your brain halts.

Boyfriend? What boyfriend? And then—

Ah.

The hoodie.

Jungkook's hoodie that you're swimming in.

Something about her smug certainty, that look that says she's got you all figured out, makes you want to burn the whole goddamn building down. Or at least throw a very minor wrench in her worldview.

"It's my girlfriend's, actually," you say, the lie sliding off your tongue with practiced ease.

There. Take that, you judgmental old bat. Let's see how your 1950s sensibilities handle—

"Even worse," Dona sniffs, not missing a beat. "Girls these days, always stealing each other's clothes. You'll never build a proper wardrobe that way."

Wait, what?

You blink, momentarily thrown. That's... not the reaction you were expecting. No pearl-clutching. No horrified gasps. Just... practical fashion advice?

"I—"

"My granddaughter does the same thing," she continues, adjusting the scarf around her neck with arthritic fingers. "Comes home wearing her girlfriend's sweatshirts, twice her size. Looks like she's drowning in fabric. No shape whatsoever. You young people and your oversized clothes." She clicks her tongue. "In my day, we wore things that fit."

Well, shit.

So much for your brilliant plan to scandalize the old lady.

Turns out Dona's not a homophobe—she's just a fashion critic. Equal opportunity judgment for all. How progressive of her.

"Right," you mutter, feeling weirdly chastised. "I'll, uh, keep that in mind."

"Hmph." She turns back to her laundry, seemingly satisfied that she's dispensed enough wisdom for one day.

You're still processing this unexpected twist when the laundry room door creaks open behind you, letting in a draft of cooler air.

You don't need to turn around to know who it is.

Something in the atmosphere shifts immediately—molecules rearranging themselves, air particles getting all excited, the very fabric of space-time bending to accommodate his presence.

Or maybe that's just your pulse doing that annoying thing where it decides to race for no good reason.

"Well, well, well."

His voice is sleep-rough and amused, and you can already picture the exact expression on his face without looking.

That stupid half-smirk. That cocked eyebrow. That look that says he's caught you doing something you shouldn't.

You turn slowly, trying to appear nonchalant despite the fact that you're suddenly, acutely aware that you're wearing his fucking hoodie over your ridiculous pajamas.

Jungkook stands in the doorway, laundry basket propped against his hip, looking unfairly good for someone who's probably just rolled out of bed. His hair is a disaster, sticking up in tufts. He's wearing a plain white t-shirt and those stupid gray sweatpants that look way too good on him, and his feet are bare—the absolute psychopath. Who walks around a gross apartment building with no shoes?

His eyes drop immediately to the hoodie, and his eyebrow arches even higher.

"Interesting fashion choice, Phoenix," he says, lips twitching.

Your face heats. "Laundry day," you say, as if that explains everything.

As if borrowing—okay, stealing—his clothes is a perfectly normal response to having nothing clean to wear.

"Clearly." His gaze sweeps over you, taking in the edge of your floral shorts peeking out beneath the hem of his hoodie. "Sunflower PJs? Again?"

"It's laundry day," you repeat, like maybe he didn't hear you the first time. Like maybe that's a valid excuse for looking like you raided a middle schooler's closet. "Everything else is dirty."

"Hmm."

He steps fully into the room, letting the door swing shut behind him, and moves to the washing machine next to yours.

Puts his basket down.

Stands too close.

“But the hoodie isn't yours."

It's not a question. It's a statement, delivered with that infuriating confidence he always has, like he's so sure of himself, so certain of how this interaction is going to play out.

"I found it in my room," you say, turning back to your washing machine, pretending to be deeply interested in the cycle selection. "Must've gotten mixed up in my stuff."

"For a whole day?" He snorts, and you can hear him starting to sort his laundry beside you. "Interesting that you decided to wear it instead of, I don't know, returning it."

"It was convenient," you mutter, jabbing at the start button. "And it's cold."

"Right."

You can hear the smile in his voice without looking at him, and you don’t know why you notice without even having to gaze at him.

Damn your body and its complete lack of dignity.

"You're late, boy."

Your head whips around at the sharp change in Dona's tone. Not softer—definitely not softer—but different somehow. Like… Less venomous, more... familiar?

The old woman is glaring at Jungkook, but it's not the same glare she gives you. It's like the difference between a loaded gun and a water pistol.

"Sorry, Miss D," Jungkook says, and there's something in his voice—a hint of warmth?—that catches you completely off guard. "Overslept."

"Hmph. Young people." Dona shakes her head, but there's no real bite to it. "My sheets need folding. These old hands aren't what they used to be."

"Sure thing." Jungkook nods like this is a completely normal request, like random old ladies demanding his manual labor is just part of his Sunday routine.

What the actual fuck?

You stare between them, waiting for Jungkook to tell her to fold her own damn sheets, or at the very least look annoyed at being bossed around.

But he just continues sorting his laundry like this is fine.

Like this is normal.

"You know her?" you ask, keeping your voice low as Dona bustles over to check her washing machine.

Jungkook glances at you, one eyebrow raised. "Yeah?"

"Since when?"

He shrugs, separating a dark shirt from a pile of whites. "Since I moved in? She lives on the fourth floor."

"And you just... help her fold laundry? Voluntarily?"

"Sometimes." He's not looking at you now, focused on his sorting with more attention than dirty clothes really require. "It's not a big deal."

"Is that why she doesn't look at you like you're gum on her shoe?"

He huffs a laugh. "What?"

"She fucking hates me," you whisper, gesturing discreetly at Dona's back. "Every time I see her, she looks at me like I personally invented avocado toast and killed all the mom-and-pop stores."

"Maybe you just need to help her fold her sheets," he suggests, the corner of his mouth quirking up.

"Or maybe you've charmed her with your stupid dimples and your fake nice-guy routine."

"Fake nice-guy routine?" His eyebrows shoot up, and he looks genuinely amused. "Is that what you think this is?"

"Obviously," you mutter. "Nobody is actually that helpful without an agenda."

He studies you for a moment. Then, speaks. "Yeah? What's my agenda with Dona, then?"

“I don't know yet. But I'm sure it's something nefarious."

"Nefarious," he repeats, and now he's definitely laughing at you. "Sure, Phoenix. I'm playing the long con with a senior citizen. Really working that angle."

"Wouldn't put it past you.”

"Right." He tilts his head to the other side, still smiling slightly. "Well, while I'm busy being fake nice, you might want to turn your machine on. You've been standing there for five minutes and it's still not running."

You glance down at your washing machine, which is indeed just sitting there, silent and unhelpful. Fuck. Your finger must have missed the start button in your rush to look like you knew what you were doing.

You jab the button again, harder this time, and the machine finally lurches to life with a groan that sounds suspiciously like judgment.

"Boy," Dona calls from across the room, "come help with these detergent bottles. They're too heavy."

"Coming," Jungkook calls back, and he's moving before you can say anything else, crossing the room to where Dona is struggling with an industrial-sized bottle of Tide.

You watch, equal parts confused and suspicious, as he takes the bottle from her. They exchange a few words you can't quite hear over the rumble of the washing machines, and then—what the fuck—Dona actually pats his arm. Like he's her grandson or something.

Like she doesn't find him utterly repulsive.

Is this why she likes him? Because he lets her boss him around and carries her detergent?

That's... kind of pathetic, actually.

You thought Jungkook had more of a backbone than that.

But still. It's weird. The cold, calculating part of your brain catalogs this new information, filed under "Jungkook, Things That Don't Add Up About."

It's growing into a pretty substantial folder these days.

You turn back to your washing machine, pretending to be deeply fascinated by the cycle display, but you're still watching them from the corner of your eye. Trying to figure out what his deal is.

"You need groceries this week?" Jungkook asks, voice low but not quite low enough that you can't hear it. "I can swing by after my studio session on Wednesday."

"Do I look like I need charity?" Dona snaps, but it’s not fueled by anger. If anything, she sounds... embarrassed?

"Not charity," Jungkook says, voice even. "Just a neighbor thing."

"Hmph." Dona busies herself with folding a dishcloth. "Well, if you insist on playing delivery boy, I do need milk. And those crackers from last time."

"Got it." Jungkook nods, like this is just normal. Like he's not going completely out of his way for someone who doesn't even seem particularly grateful.

You frown, trying to make it make sense.

Maybe... maybe it's a hustle? Maybe old ladies tip really well? Or maybe he's building up good karma because he's secretly done something terrible and needs to balance the cosmic scales?

The two of them chat for a bit longer, and you can't quite hear all of it, but you catch fragments—something about Dona's doctor's appointment, something about Jungkook's classes, something about a recipe for chicken soup.

It's all so... domestic. So weirdly normal. So completely at odds with the Jungkook you know—the one who teases you mercilessly, the one who fucks you against walls, the one with the sharp edges and the arrogant smirk.

You're so busy trying to reconcile these two versions of him that you almost miss it when Dona's voice rises slightly.

"...since Hector passed, and these new delivery apps, they charge so much..." Her voice wavers, just slightly. "...shouldn't have to pay an arm and a leg just to get groceries when you can't..."

Jungkook says something too low for you to catch, and Dona makes that "hmph" sound again. But this time it sounds different. Almost... vulnerable?

"Well," she says, louder now, "you're the only one who bothers to check. The others in this building, they see an old woman and they look right through her. Like I'm already a ghost."

Oh.

Oh shit.

Something uncomfortable twists in your chest. An emotion you don't want to examine too closely. Something that feels a lot like…

Shame.

Because that's exactly what you did, isn't it? You saw a grumpy old lady and decided she was the enemy. You never once considered that maybe she was just lonely.

That maybe she uses sharpness as a shield.

The same way you use sarcasm as one.

"Not a ghost yet," Jungkook says, and his voice is gentler than you've ever heard it. "Still kicking my ass at dominoes every Thursday."

"Language," Dona scolds, but you can hear the smile in her voice. "And don't you forget it. I expect a rematch this week."

"Wouldn't miss it."

Wait. He plays dominoes with her? Weekly? What the actual fuck?

And now you feel even worse, because apparently Jungkook—the guy you've been dismissing as an arrogant player with no depth—has been spending his Thursday nights playing board games with a lonely old woman.

While you've been doing what? Watching Netflix and judging everyone's life choices?

Great. Now he's making you feel like an asshole without even trying. That's just perfect.

You turn back to your washing machine, genuinely focused on it this time, trying to process this new information. Trying to fit it into your understanding of who Jungkook is.

It's not working very well.

When you hear footsteps approaching, you pretend to be busy. You don’t know why you can’t look at him in the eyes right now.

"Sheets are folded," Jungkook says, sliding up next to you. "World is saved."

"What a hero," you deadpan, still not looking at him.

"Someday you'll appreciate my many talents," he says, and you can hear the smirk in his voice. "Speaking of which, nice hoodie."

You finally glance at him, and yep—there's that stupid, self-satisfied grin. Like he's caught you doing something embarrassing. Which, to be fair, he has.

"It's practical," you say, tugging the hem down where it's riding up. "That's all."

"Sure," he agrees easily. "Very practical to keep my clothes. Much more practical than, say, returning them."

"You want it back?" You make a show of starting to pull it off. "Fine, take—"

"Keep it," he says quickly, and the way he says it—not teasing, not mocking, just simple and straightforward—catches you off guard. "It looks better on you anyway."

You freeze, hands still at the hem of the hoodie, not quite sure how to respond to that. It feels like a trap somehow, like if you accept, you're admitting to something. To what, you're not exactly sure.

"Whatever," you mutter, dropping your hands. "I'll wash it and give it back."

"No rush." He turns back to his own laundry, a small smile playing at his lips.

For a moment, you just stand there, watching him sort his clothes. Then you look away, annoyed with yourself for gawking.

"So," you say, as casual as you can muster, "you're like, what? The old lady whisperer?"

He glances at you, eyebrow raised. "What?"

"You and Dona." You gesture vaguely in her direction. "The whole..." You wave your hand, trying to encompass whatever the hell it is you just witnessed. "...thing."

"The thing," he repeats, clearly amused. "Very specific."

"You know what I mean," you huff. "The helping her fold sheets thing. The grocery delivery thing. The dominoes thing."

His movements pause for just a fraction of a second, so brief you almost miss it. "You were eavesdropping?"

"It's a small laundry room," you point out. "And you weren't exactly whispering."

"It's not a big deal."

"Playing dominoes with an old lady every Thursday isn't a big deal?"

"It's just dominoes," he says, like that explains everything.

Like it's completely normal to spend your free time entertaining your elderly neighbor when you could be, I don't know, literally anything else that twenty-something guys usually do on a Thursday night.

"And the groceries?"

"She has trouble carrying them up the stairs," he says with a shrug. "The delivery apps charge too much. It's not a big deal."

"You keep saying that," you note, studying his profile as he focuses very intently on separating a blue shirt from a white one. "But it kind of is. I mean, how many people in this building even know their neighbors' names?"

"Maybe they should. Maybe it wouldn't kill people to look up from their phones once in a while and notice the actual humans around them."

You blink, taken aback by the sudden intensity. "Okay, damn. Sorry I asked."

"No, I'm—" He exhales sharply. "I just don't like talking about it, okay? It's not a thing."

"Why?" you press, genuinely curious now. "Why is it such a big secret that you're apparently a decent human being?"

“It's not a secret. I just don't..." He shakes his head. "I don't do it for attention or whatever. It's just the right thing to do."

"So you don't want me to know you do the right thing?"

"I don't need a fucking gold star for basic human decency," he snaps, and now there's definitely an edge to his voice. "I'm not looking for a pat on the back. I'm not trying to—" He breaks off, stuffing clothes into the machine with more force than necessary. "Just drop it, alright?"

You raise your eyebrows, watching as he jams quarters into the slot with unnecessary aggression. It's almost like he's... embarrassed? No, that's not quite right. More like he's uncomfortable with you knowing this side of him.

Like he doesn't want you to think he's actually nice.

Which is weird, because most guys would be falling all over themselves to prove they're nice guys. To get those good-person points. To make sure everyone knows what a saint they are for helping the little old lady with her groceries.

But Jungkook seems genuinely annoyed that you found out. Almost defensive about it.

It's... interesting.

Weird.

"Fine," you say, lifting your hands in surrender. "Consider it dropped. Your secret identity as a decent human being is safe with me."

He exhales sharply through his nose, still not looking at you. "Thanks."

You both lapse into silence, the hum of the washing machines like tiny droplets of silence between both of you.

Across the room, Dona is bustling around the dryers, muttering to herself about settings and temperatures. You sneaks glances at her, seeing her in a different light now.

Not just a grumpy old woman.

A widow.

Someone who lives alone and has to rely on the kindness of neighbors—specifically, one neighbor—for simple tasks like carrying groceries.

Someone who's lonely enough that a weekly dominoes game is something to look forward to.

It makes your chest feel tight in a way you don't particularly like.

"Boy," Dona calls, breaking the silence. "What cycle for delicates?"

"Gentle, cold water," Jungkook calls back without hesitation, like he's some kind of laundry expert. Like this is a normal conversation they have all the time.

"Hmph," is Dona's only response, but you notice she follows his advice, adjusting the settings on the dryer.

"She likes you," you observe quietly.

Jungkook glances at you, then back at his machine.

"She tolerates me," he corrects. "There's a difference."

"She doesn't even tolerate me."

"You've never offered to help with her sheets."

"I didn't know that was an option," you say, crossing your arms. "There's no sign-up sheet for 'Old Lady Sheet Folding' in the lobby."

He snorts, and just like that, the tension from earlier seems to dissipate.

“Maybe there should be. Building-wide rotation."

"I can see it now," you say, following in on the joke. "'4B gets Monday sheets, 6A takes Tuesday sheets...'"

"'If you find yourself assigned to Wednesday sheets, please be aware that those are the cat-hair sheets,'" he continues, adopting a serious tone. "'Lint rollers will be provided.'"

You can't help it—you laugh.

It's brief, just a small burst of amusement, but it's genuine.

And when you glance at Jungkook, he's looking at you with a strange expression, like he's seeing something he didn't expect.

"What?" you ask, immediately self-conscious.

"Nothing," he says, turning back to his machine. But there's a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "Just wondering if I should sign you up for Thursday sheets."

"Don't you dare," you warn, but it’s too soft. "I have enough on my plate without adding geriatric sheet duty."

"Could be worse," he says with a shrug. "Could be Tuesday sheets."

"What's Tuesday?"

"Bingo night." He wiggles his eyebrows. "Dona goes hard on the snacks."

You stare at him, once again thrown by this glimpse into a life you didn't know existed. "You're kidding."

"Only partly," he admits with a grin. "But seriously, Tuesday is when she does her big laundry loads. Always complains about the folding."

"And you know this because...?"

"Because I pay attention," he says simply, like it's obvious. Like everyone should just naturally notice these things about their neighbors. "It's not that complicated, Phoenix."

There's no judgment in his voice, but you still feel oddly defensive. Like you've been caught failing some basic test of humanity.

"Well, we can't all be saints," you mutter.

"Not trying to be a saint," he says, a hint of irritation creeping back it. "It's just—" He exhales sharply. "Never mind."

You watch him from the corner of your eye, trying to figure out what button you just pushed. Why this, of all things, seems to get under his skin.

"Sorry," you say finally, surprising even yourself. "I didn't mean to make it weird."

“It's fine."

"It's cool that you help her," you add, feeling awkward but pressing on anyway. "Seriously. Not everyone would."

"Yeah, well." He shrugs, clearly uncomfortable with the praise. "Like I said, it's not a big deal."

"Right." You nod, getting it now.

He really doesn't want the recognition.

Doesn't want the attention for doing something decent.

You both fall silent again, with Dona’s muttering as your only company. It's not uncomfortable, though. It's just... quiet. Companionable, almost.

Which is weird, because you don't do companionable silences with Jungkook. You do heated arguments and sarcastic exchanges and intense fucking.

Not... this. Whatever this is.

"You ever play dominoes?" he asks suddenly, breaking the silence.

You blink at the unexpected question.

“Not since I was a kid."

He nods, considering this.

"Dona's always complaining that two players is boring. Says it's meant to be played with more people."

You wait for him to continue, to make the obvious invitation, but he doesn't. Just stands there, pretending to be deeply interested in the cycle display on his washing machine.

"Are you..." You squint at him. "Are you trying to ask me to play dominoes with you and Dona?"

"What? No." He scoffs, finger pressing random buttons. "Just making conversation."

"Right."

"I'm just saying," he continues, eyes fixed on the machine, "that if you ever… I dunno, find yourself bored on a Thursday night… There’s always dominoes."

Is he… Is he actually inviting you to his weird geriatric game night?

And if so, why?

It's not like you've shown any interest in spending time with the elderly. Or with him, outside of the very specific context of fucking each other senseless.

"I'll keep that in mind," you say finally, not committing to anything.

"Cool."

Another silence falls.

You don’t say anything.

He doesn’t say anything.

And you’re still wearing his hoodie. And he’s still standing too close.

And for a moment—just a brief, fleeting moment—you wonder what it would be like. To sit around a table with Jungkook and Dona, playing dominoes on a Thursday night. To see that side of him—the side that helps old ladies with groceries and remembers how they like their sheets folded.

It's a weird thought. An unfamiliar one. And you push it away almost as soon as it forms.

Because that's not what this is.

That's not what you are.

You're roommates who sometimes fuck. You're not friends who play board games together.

"Boy," Dona calls from across the room, breaking into your thoughts. "What cycle for cotton?"

"High heat, Miss D," Jungkook calls back, and just like that, the moment—whatever it was—is broken.

He turns back to his sorting, and you turn back to yours, and everything goes back to normal. Or whatever passes for normal these days.

But you're still wearing his hoodie. And you're pretty sure you're not giving it back anytime soon.

Sometime later, you're leaning against the wall just outside the laundry room, scrolling mindlessly through your phone.

Your thumb drags across the screen without purpose, not really taking in whatever the hell you're looking at—Instagram? Twitter? Does it matter? The washing machines finished twenty minutes ago, but Jungkook insisted on carrying both your loads like some kind of laundry martyr.

"I got it," he'd said, waving you off when you tried to grab your basket. "Go ahead."

So here you are, waiting, because it feels weird to just leave him down here with your underwear. Even though he's definitely seen your underwear before. In significantly more compromising contexts.

From inside the laundry room, you can hear the murmur of voices—Jungkook and Dona in what sounds like a heated debate about fabric softener. You catch fragments: "ruins the absorbency" and "smells nice" and "didn't raise my Hector to use that chemical garbage."

You roll your eyes. How is this your Sunday? Standing in a dingy hallway while your fuck buddy debates laundry techniques with a geriatric neighbor?

The door finally swings open, and Jungkook emerges, arms loaded with both laundry baskets stacked precariously on top of each other. His biceps flex as he adjusts the weight, and you're definitely not noticing that.

"Ready?" he asks, nudging the door closed with his foot.

"Been ready," you murmur, pocketing your phone. "Some of us don't need an hour-long consultation about dryer settings."

"She has strong opinions about lint," he says, absolutely straight-faced, like this is a normal follow-up to any conversation.

"Fascinating." You push off from the wall, heading for the stairs. "Let's go before she recruits you for a lint task force or whatever."

He just grins, following behind you.

The stairwell is narrow and poorly lit, with concrete steps that have seen better decades.

You're a few steps ahead when you hear it—a dull thud followed by a muttered "fuck."

You spin around to see Jungkook stumbling backward, nearly dropping both baskets as his free hand flies to his forehead. There's an exposed pipe running along the low ceiling that you always duck under without thinking—you're not particularly tall—but apparently nobody warned Jungkook about it.

"Shit." The word leaves your mouth before you can stop it, and suddenly you're moving toward him, hands reaching out automatically. "You okay?"

He looks momentarily stunned, both by the impact and by your reaction.

"Yeah, just—"

You're already on your tiptoes, fingers brushing his hair away from his forehead to check the damage. There's a red mark forming, but the skin isn't broken. His hair is softer than you expected, still slightly damp from his morning shower, and he smells like—

Wait.

What the fuck are you doing?

You freeze, suddenly aware of how close you are, of your fingers in his hair, of his eyes fixed on yours with an expression you can't quite read.

Neither of you moves.

His eyes dart between both of your pupils.

"Um," you say intelligently, dropping your hands like his forehead is suddenly made of lava. "Be more careful. We don't need you more idiot than you already are."

Smooth. Really smooth.

His lips twitch, but he doesn't call you out on whatever the hell that sentence was supposed to be. "Thanks for the concern."

"I'm not concerned," you say automatically, already turning back toward the stairs. "Just don't want to deal with your concussed ass if you knock yourself out."

"Right." His voice follows you up the stairs. "God forbid you have to care about something."

"Exactly," you agree, not looking back. "Caring is for suckers."

You're halfway up the flight when you hear him grunt as he shifts the laundry baskets. It's a lot to carry, and the stairwell is narrow, but you're definitely not offering to help. That would imply you care, which you just explicitly denied. So.

There's a moment of shuffling footsteps behind you, then: "Wait a sec, Nix."

You turn, ready with some smart-ass comment about his head injury affecting his ability to climb stairs, but the words die in your throat. He's set both baskets down on the landing and is now kneeling on the step below you, looking at your feet.

"What are you—"

"Your shoes," he says, nodding at your sneakers. "They're untied."

You glance down. Sure enough, both laces on your ancient Converse are dragging on the concrete steps, a tripping hazard waiting to happen.

"I know," you lie. You didn't know. "I was gonna fix them later."

"Later, like after you face-plant on the stairs?" He's already reaching for your shoe, his big hands deftly gathering the laces. "With my luck, I'd have to call an ambulance, and they'd blame me for pushing you."

"I wouldn't give you the satisfaction of falling," you mutter, but you don't pull away.

Instead, you just stand there, weirdly frozen, as Jungkook—the guy who regularly makes you come so hard you see stars—ties your shoelaces like you're a fucking kindergartner.

His head is bent in concentration, dark hair falling over his forehead, partially hiding the red mark from the pipe. His hands move with practiced ease, looping and pulling.

It's such a small thing. So mundane. So ordinary.

So why does your chest feel tight?

"There," he says, finishing the second shoe with a final tug. "Crisis averted."

He glances up at you, still kneeling, and something in his expression makes your stomach do a weird little flip. It's probably just the angle. The way the shitty stairwell lighting catches on his features. The lingering effects of morning caffeine making your pulse do stupid things.

"I could have done that myself," you say, but your voice comes out softer than you intended.

"I know." He shrugs, pushing himself to his feet and picking up the laundry baskets again. "But you didn't."

You don't have a good response to that, so you just turn and continue up the stairs, acutely aware of him following behind you. The only sound is your newly tied shoes against the concrete and his slightly labored breathing as he carries the laundry.

It's weird.

This whole morning has been weird.

First the hoodie, then Dona and the dominoes revelation, now this—Jungkook tying your shoes like it's nothing.

Like these small, casually intimate gestures are just things people do for each other.

Maybe they are. Maybe this is all completely normal roommate behavior, and you're the weird one for overthinking it.

It's not like he meant anything by it.

He's just like that, apparently—the kind of guy who helps old ladies with groceries and plays dominoes on Thursdays and doesn't let people trip on their shoelaces.

It's not personal. It's not about you.

He's just nice sometimes. In between being an absolute asshole who drives you crazy.

It doesn't mean anything.

It doesn't mean anything at all.

You finally make it to the apartment door, fishing your keys out of the pocket of Jungkook's stupid hoodie and hold the door open for him because he's still stubbornly carrying both laundry loads, despite your begrudging offer to take yours back.

"I can carry my own shit," you'd said on the landing between the second and third floors, trying to grab your basket.

He'd just smirked and swung it out of your reach. "I got it."

"I'm not helpless."

"Never said you were."

"So give me my laundry, asshole."

"Nope."

And that was that. Because apparently this is the hill he wants to die on. Stupid, stubborn, impossible man.

Now he strides past you into the apartment, annoyingly unbothered by the weight of two full baskets.

You absolutely do not track how lean his arm muscles are as he sets them both on the table near the main door.

You definitely don't track the line of his shoulders as he rolls them back, working out the tension from the climb.

And you certainly don't follow a bead of sweat as it trails down the side of his neck, disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt.

Because that would be pathetic. And you're not pathetic.

He starts rummaging through his basket, brows furrowed in concentration. Then he looks up, confusion clear on his face.

“Wait, I'm missing a sock."

"Huh?"

"A sock." He holds up a single black sock with little Batman logos on it. "I should have two."

You stare at him blankly. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Did you see a sock drop or something? On the stairs, maybe?"

"Why would I be looking for your socks?" You cross your arms. "I have better things to do with my life than track your Batmans."

"Fuck it," he sighs. "I'm going downstairs again."

"Seriously? For a sock?"

"It's my favorite pair." He's already heading for the door. "Be right back."

And then he's gone, the door closing behind him with a soft click, leaving you standing there next to two baskets of laundry and feeling weirdly... abandoned?

Which is ridiculous. It's a sock. He'll be back in five minutes.

Get a grip, bitch.

You stare at the laundry baskets on the table. His and yours, side by side.

Why did he insist on carrying yours? It's so stupidly... nice. And Jungkook isn't nice. He's arrogant and annoying and makes you want to pull your hair out. He's not supposed to tie your shoes or carry your laundry or play dominoes with old ladies.

It's throwing off your entire understanding of him, and that's irritating as hell.

You hate him. You definitely hate him.

Except that's getting harder to believe by the day.

The sound of a door opening breaks into your thoughts, but it's not the main door—it's Yoongi's room. Huh. Like seeing a bear outside hibernation season.

He shuffles into the kitchen, looking about as close to death as you've ever seen him. His hair is a disaster, sticking up in weird tufts like he’s barely managed to lay down on a horizontal surface. The bags under his eyes have bags. His t-shirt is wrinkled in that "I've been wearing this for days" way, and he's moving with the careful deliberation of someone who hasn't slept in approximately three centuries.

"Working?" you ask, because it seems like the only explanation for this zombie-like state.

"Unfortunately." His voice is rough, like he hasn't used it in hours. Maybe days.

He doesn't elaborate, just heads straight for the coffee maker.

You don't ask. Not your business.

Besides, you've got your own shit to worry about—like why you can't stop thinking about Jungkook carrying your laundry, or tying your shoes, or the way his hands moved when he was folding Dona's sheets.

God, you need a lobotomy.

Your gaze drifts around the apartment, trying to focus on literally anything else. It lands on the record collection displayed on the wall next to the TV. There must be at least thirty vinyl albums. You remember when Yeji was over last week, she mentioned them—commented on how eclectic the selection was.

You'd just shrugged and said they were Yoongi's. Because they had to be, right? Music producer, always holed up with headphones... it makes sense.

"Nice collection," you say, nodding toward the wall.

You're not sure why you say it. Maybe to make conversation. Maybe to confirm your assumption. Maybe because some part of you suspects they're not Yoongi's at all, and you want to know what else you might have missed about Jungkook.

Not that you care about his likes or interests or anything. That would be dangerously close to caring about him as a person, which—ha! Absolutely not.

"Huh?"

Yoongi turns around lazily, coffeepot in hand. He follows your gaze to the wall of records, and then—he scoffs. Actually scoffs, shaking his head like you've just said something so stupid he can't believe it came out of your mouth.

"Have you even checked them?" he asks, tone dry as the Sahara. "They're mostly Mayer."

You blink.

Mayer? As in John Mayer? As in the songs Jungkook plays on his guitar sometimes?

As in "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room"—the song he played that night in his room when he taunted you through text messages and you were stupid enough to actually walk in?

"They're Jungkook's," Yoongi adds after a beat of silence. "Not mine."

"Oh." The word falls from your lips automatically, small and insignificant, completely inadequate to express the weird reorganization happening in your brain. "But he doesn't have a record player?"

Yoongi just shrugs, pouring coffee into his mug. "Doesn't mean he can't collect them."

You stare at the vinyl collection with new eyes. Each album carefully chosen, meticulously arranged. A physical manifestation of something Jungkook cares about, something he values enough to collect even though he can't listen to them. Yet.

Something unwinds in your chest. A tight, small knot of... what?

Surprise?

Interest?

Whatever it is, you don't like it. Don't want to examine it too closely. Because it feels dangerously like the beginning of seeing Jungkook as a whole person, not just the asshole who happens to be good in bed.

And that's not what this is. That's not what you are.

The door swings open, and there he is—stupid grin on his stupid face, waving a Batman sock in the air like he's just found buried treasure.

"Found it," he announces, triumphant. "It was stuck in the dryer door."

You give him the blankest stare you can muster. "Congratulations. Your sock journey is complete."

His grin just widens, completely unfazed by your sarcasm. "Thanks for the moral support, Phoenix. Couldn't have done it without you."

"I literally did nothing."

"Your energy kept me going."

You roll your eyes so hard it's a miracle they don't get stuck in the back of your head. He just laughs, that warm, rich sound that does absolutely nothing to your insides, and starts gathering his laundry.

"Later," you mutter, turning away before he can see the corner of your mouth threatening to twitch upward.

You grab your laundry basket head straight for your room, shutting the door with perhaps more force than necessary.

Safe in your own space, you fish your phone from your pocket—and see three missed calls from the same number.

Ah. Barnes & Noble.

Seems like you got the job. Which is good. Great, even.

This is what responsible adults do—get jobs, pay bills, build sensible futures. Not collect vinyl records they can't play or help old ladies with their grocery shopping or carry their roommates' laundry just because.

Normal, practical, boring adult stuff. That's what you're about.

Except now you can't stop thinking about those records on the wall. About what else you might have missed. About who Jungkook actually is when he isn't being an infuriating, cocky asshole. About—

About nothing. Because you don’t care.

He’s Jungkook. Rogue. The infuriating roommate of yours that leaves towels everywhere and can’t be bothered to clean his own mugs.

You toss your phone onto your bed and start aggressively pulling laundry from your basket.

You've got shit to do. Clothes to put away. A job to call back about. A life to live that absolutely does not revolve around wondering why your roommate collects vinyl records or helps old ladies or ties your shoes when they're untied.

It doesn't matter. None of it matters.

(Except that it might. Just a little. And that's the most terrifying thought of all.)

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thornybubbles · 1 year ago

Text

Fourth Wall (JJBA Yandere Scenario)

Scenario: Recently, you’ve moved on from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure to a different anime series and fandom. You realize that this was a terrible mistake.

Note: This is based on a prompt I saw on Tumblr ages ago. I just expanded on it a bit.

Warnings: Typical Yandere behavior, threats, abusive behavior, possible harm towards reader, mental distress, anti-comfort. Remember that you alone are responsible for what you read.

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Changing fandoms wasn’t that unusual for you. You would find a new anime, fall in love with it, then it became your new hyperfixation. After a while, the process would repeat. This is what happened with you and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. It wasn’t that you didn’t like the series anymore, you just moved on to a new anime/manga. Still…it felt different this time. You weren’t sure why, but ever since you moved on to your new favorite series, you had this unexplainable feeling of guilt wash over you every time you watched an episode of your new favorite anime or read the latest chapter of the manga. Stranger still, there was an underlying feeling of dread as well.

As many times as you’d changed fandoms, you’d never experienced such feelings before. It was uncomfortable and you wished that you could move on to your new obsession without any strings attached. It was ridiculous, really. Why should you feel guilty about a change of taste? You weren’t hurting anything. No one would be affected by it. And yet, you still felt unnecessary shame over changing fandoms. You guessed it had something to do with the lingering attachment you had for certain characters from various parts throughout the series. It almost felt like you were leaving them behind somehow. Another silly notion. They were fictional characters and did not exist outside of the world within JoJo. They had no knowledge of you, much less having knowledge of your “betrayal”. You decided that it was stupid to dwell on it and dived headfirst into your new favorite series. That guilty feeling would surely fade after a while.

You got the perfect opportunity to binge your new favorite anime one day. It was one of those days when you were fortunate enough to have nothing to do. All of your responsibilities had been dealt with and you had no plans other than to sit on your ass and watch your new favorite show until bedtime. Sure, you could go out with friends, but you really just wanted to chill by yourself for the day. So anime binge party it was. You made a comfy nest of blankets and pillows on the couch and set up your laptop on the coffee table. You got some snacks and a drink, made yourself comfortable on the couch, and pressed play on the screen. You relaxed into the softness of your pillows and blankets and immersed yourself in another world for a few hours.

About ten episodes in, you had to go to the bathroom very badly. All of that soda you’d drunk was taking its toll on your bladder. You paused the video, untangled yourself from your blankets, and stiffly power-walked to the bathroom. Once you relieved yourself, you washed your hands and went back into the living room. You snuggled back into your blanket burrito and reached over to start the video, but something wasn’t right. On the screen wasn’t the anime you’d been watching. It was the first episode of Phantom Blood.

What…???

Did you accidently click the wrong thing in your haste to pause the video and rush to the bathroom?

That had to be it.

It was the only thing that made sense.

You clicked off of the JoJo episode and went back to the previous page which took you back to the episode of the new anime you’d been watching. You found the place in the episode that you left off on and pressed play. You settled back in your comfy nest and watched the rest of the episode. You watched for another hour or so. During the opening of one of the episodes, you suddenly found yourself watching the opening for an episode of Battle Tendency. You sat up straight and stared at the screen in shock and confusion.

“What the fuck?” you muttered under your breath.

You refreshed the page and the episode started properly. That’s the second time your video was suddenly changed to an episode of JoJo. The first time you assumed that it was because of an accidental click but now you weren’t so sure. You hadn’t been touching anything when it happened the second time. All you were doing was staring at the screen when the switch happened. Why did it keep happening? Some kind of glitch with the streaming service? You didn’t know, but it was a bit annoying. You hoped that wouldn’t be a constant thing while you were trying to watch your show.

The rest of the day went by without further incident. Eventually, you noticed that it had grown dark and you decided that your day of doing absolutely nothing needed to come to a close. You closed your laptop and reluctantly pried yourself off of the couch. As much as you wanted to just lay there in your blanket nest, you knew that you’d get a much better sleep in your bed. So you hobbled off to your room; your mind on nothing but getting a decent night’s sleep.

You woke up a few hours later with a dried out mouth and an aching throat. You swallowed a few times, wincing at the sandpapery feeling of your tongue against the inside of your mouth. Well that’s what you get for sleeping with your mouth wide open. You flung the covers off of you grumpily and climbed out of bed. You stumbled into the kitchen, not daring to turn the light on and submit your sleep sensitive eyes to an onslaught of painful luminosity. You made your way over to the counter, grabbed a glass, and staggered over to the sink. As you were filling the glass you suddenly had the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. You assumed that it was your sleep fogged brain at work. After all, part of the reason you woke up was because you were having a disturbing dream. You tried to remember what the dream was about, but you couldn’t piece the memories together to get a full picture. You just remembered being in a place that made you uncomfortable and meeting someone that was familiar to you, but their presence frightened you. You just couldn’t remember the details. It kinda made you want to stay awake for the rest of the night but you decided against that. You knew you’d feel like shit the next day if you didn’t get back to sleep. There was nothing worse than waking up with a splitting headache due to lack of proper rest. You downed the glass of water and put the empty glass in the sink.

You suddenly became aware of a strange odor in the air. What was that smell? Smoke? God, was something burning?! You took another sniff of the air and recognized the smell as specifically cigarette smoke. Okay, so that meant that your house wasn’t burning down. That was good news, but why would you be smelling cigarette smoke? The only way you would be smelling cigarette smoke is if it were coming from in the same room as you…

You heard the sound of rustling fabric from somewhere behind you. You spun around and immediately spotted the outline of someone sitting at your kitchen table. You could also make out the small glow of a lit cigarette sticking out of their mouth. As your eyes adjusted to the darkness, you could make out some details of the figure. They were large, broad shouldered, and wore a long white coat, and on their head rested an oddly shaped hat. In the miniscule amount of light in the room you could make out the glint of gold accessories on both their hat and coat.

“No way…” you gasped in a quiet voice. “No way in hell…”

The figure lit a lighter and held it to the wick of the candle that was located in the middle of the table. Once the candle was lit fully, you could see the figure better. It was as you expected, Jotaro as he appeared in part four was sitting at your kitchen table, glaring at you as if you were less than dogshit.

“You recognize me?” he scoffed and took another drag from his cigarette. “I’m surprised. I thought you forgot all about me… about us….”

You backed up against the counter, unable to believe what you were seeing and hearing.

Jotaro glanced down at the cigarette in his hand. He held it up in front of him.

“This is your fault, you know.” he sneered. “I quit smoking, but after you abandoned us, I started the habit again. I’ve been tolerant so far because I was stupid enough to think that you’d come back eventually. Maybe you were just taking a break and you’d come back when you were bored… that was my stupidity. I’ll own up to that. But when I realized that you’d thrown us aside like trash, well, I got pissed. I guess I took up smoking again just to stay sane…”

You were so appalled at the fictional character seated at your table that you hadn’t been paying much attention to what he was saying. Slowly the words began to filter into your mind and of everything he said, one thing stood out the most…

He said “us”. He said that you had abandoned “us”...

That’s when you became aware of the other figures lined up behind Jotaro.

You could make out their shapes and features in the candlelight. Jonathan stood there looking as utterly brokenhearted as a man could be. Joseph had a smug grin on his face as if he’d just caught you committing a crime. Josuke’s face was contorted in a vicious snarl while his fists were clenched by his sides. Ever so often his left eye would twitch indicating that he may be on the verge of a psychotic break. Giorno offered you a placid smile that was off putting when set against the coldness of his eyes.

Your eyes darted nervously from one face to another before finally settling back on Jotaro’s. It was too much. You pushed away from the counter and ran out of the kitchen. A voice that probably belonged to Jonathan called out for you to stop but you paid it no attention. Luckily the kitchen was right next to the front door. Once you were outside, you could run to the neighbor’s house and get them to call the police. You wouldn’t dare tell them the truth. What would you even say? You couldn’t tell them that five fictional characters from an anime had invaded your house. They’d think you were on something. You would just tell them that someone had broken into your house. That’s all. Honestly, you didn’t know what the hell the police could do against them, but you didn’t know what else to do. You reached the front door but your hand froze just as you were about to unlock the door and yank it open.

Two people were staring down at you from the window in the front door, two people you recognized. Kars looked down his nose at you with a haughty expression. He looked ever so much like a strict parent that had just caught his kid trying to sneak out of the house. DIO on the other hand had the most sadistic smile on his face. He made a “come-hither” gesture with his clawed hand as if he fully expected you to just open the door and throw yourself at him. Their eyes glowed with a hellish light and you couldn’t take the sight of them. You screamed and backed away from the door. As you stepped back, you saw two other familiar faces staring at you from the windows on either side of the door. Doppio had one hand pressed against the glass while the other hand held a rock from the garden to his ear as if it were a cell phone. One of his eyes had changed to a jade green color and glared at you with intense rage. His other, normal eye had a pitiful, disappointed look in it. From the other window Kira stared at you with an utterly emotionless expression. You didn’t dare speculate on what kind of thoughts could be going through his head at that moment. You screamed again and started to turn and run towards the back door…

“Star Platinum!”

Suddenly you were held tight in an iron like hold. An invisible hand covered your mouth preventing you from screaming anymore. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that you were being held in place by Jotaro’s Stand. Struggling in Star Platinum’s grip was useless so you just hung there in midair as Jotaro approached you.

“We weren’t done talking.” he snapped.

He leaned in slightly and you got a whiff of cigarette smoke mixed with cologne.

“Now you listen and you listen good,” he started to say. He held up a single finger.

“One. Just one more chance. That’s all you get. Come back to us and there won’t be a problem. Leave us again and it will get ugly.” he said, glancing up at the villains peering through the windows. His upper lip curled in disgust when he locked eyes with DIO and Kira, but only for a moment before his eyes were back on you.

“Is that understood?” he asked.

You nodded your head, whimpering behind Star Platinum’s invisible palm.

“Good.”

You don’t know what happened after that. You just woke up in your bed with a pounding headache.

“Fuck…” you groaned, pressing your hands to your temples.

You felt awful. You could only guess that you just simply didn’t sleep very well. Damn nightmares. What was with that dream? Was it all because you felt guilty about leaving the JoJo fandom? You grumbled and rolled out of bed. You were going to need to take something for that headache. First you needed to get a glass of water. You stumbled off to the kitchen getting an uncomfortable feeling of deja vu. The moment you entered the kitchen, your eyes glanced to the kitchen table and you nearly fainted.

The candle was out, but it was smoking as if it had only been put out mere moments ago. The cigarette butt that rested on the saucer that had been used as a makeshift ashtray was also still smoking.

That night you made it a point to sit down and watch a few episodes of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure starting with Phantom Blood. You planned to rewatch the entire series from the very beginning all the way to Stone Ocean. With each episode you watched, you noticed that ever so often a character’s eyes would slide over towards you as if making sure you were still there, watching them. Sometimes it would be one of the main characters. Sometimes it would be one of the villains. Sometimes it would be a side character. Regardless, they all kept checking to see if you were watching. Every day, you would make it a point to watch at least one episode of JoJo, no matter what. You didn’t dare skip out on your daily dose of JoJo. You also never went back to the other anime you’d been watching after you left the JoJo fandom. No, you learned your lesson. You were familiar enough with Jotaro’s character to know that he only gave people one chance and no more. Just like with Rubber Soul and Steely Dan. He gave them both a chance to leave mostly unscathed but they both decided to turn on him at the last minute. They both were punished severely. You weren’t going to make that same mistake.

So you sat there on the couch, stiff and terrified as you watched your “favorite” anime…

… like a good little fan should…

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dilly-dahlia · 2 months ago

Note

This is just little request if you don’t mind! The Aphmau fandom is coming back! <3! (MCD) Garroth x Fem reader, where the reader always checks up on Garroth giving him food and water, and chat with him everyday, since he’s the head guard. Garroth always feels appreciated, but he slowly becoming attached to the reader.

Must Be Love

pairing: Garroth x Reader

content: mcd season 1, fluff, kissing, Donna and Logan’s wedding without the Garroth is a Ro’Meave reveal cause that would’ve been a lot for a one shot

summary: There are many things Garroth had experienced in his life. However, meeting and becoming attached to one of the kindest souls he’s ever met was not one of those things.

word count: 4.9k

a/n: i hope i did Garroth justice cause i’ve never written for that guy. like ever not even in middle school when i first hyperfixated and i’m scared i didn’t get him right

masterlist

The first time you showed up at Phoenix Drop’s jailhouse with a basket of food and a smile on your face, Garroth was shocked. No one typically came to the jail—as the word jail itself was enough to take away anyone’s ease, regardless of its vacancy or the the guards being quartered there—unless they were reporting a problem. Even when they did, they certainly never brought food.

The last time something similar happened was back when Molly came by every day to talk with Dale. Before they fell in love. Now that the pair was happily married, no one had been so welcoming to the guard. Because of that previous experience, Garroth’s initial thought had been that you’d taken a similar interest in someone, but he had never seen you before.

Your smile was bright and your eyes were soft. You wore a plain cream dress with a deep blue cloak around your shoulders. Your entire appearance was bare of any fancy embellishments or adornments, but the obvious goodness that seeped from your smile alone was enough to make Garroth think he had just met royalty.

“Garroth.” The head guard hadn’t even noticed the presence of his lord standing beside the woman. “This is Y/n,” Aphmau said once Garroth had peeled his attention from you. “She came in yesterday evening from Borobos.”

That’s why he didn’t recognize you. You were a very new addition to the village’s residents, though Garroth was sure you were just passing through. Even though his face was concealed by the helmet atop his head, he offered you a smile.

“Welcome, Lady Y/n.” He tilted his head forward in a bow and stepped to the side, allowing you and Aphmau to properly enter the jailhouse. ��Please, come in. I won’t leave the two of you to stand outside in the cold.”

You thanked him, but Aphmau stayed behind. “I have to get going to Meteli,” she explained, tapping her fingers against the door frame. “I’ll be gone for a couple days, but I trust you to take care of the village.”

Aphmau gave Garroth a kind smile and he nodded. “Of course, my lady. It would be my honor to watch over the village in your absence.”

“Thank you so much. Oh, and Y/n wanted to get shown around a bit. I would do it, but.” Aphmau trailed off, vaguely motioning to herself and the direction of the ocean. “You know. I told her you’d be able to, but if you aren’t up for it then don’t feel obligated! I was just saying-“

“Nonsense, Lady Aphmau.” Garroth shook his head. “I can show her around.”

Aphmau exhaled in relief, pressing the palms of her hands together and bowing. “You’re an angel sent by Irene, I swear. Okay, well I have to get going. I’ll see you later.”

She gave Garroth one more smile before she was off. Garroth stayed at the door, watching her walk down the path until she passed a corner and he couldn’t see her.

Garroth turned and shut the door behind him. He found that you had already seated yourself across from Zenix and that you had already started a conversation with him. He also found that the basket you’d brought in had been opened and that Zenix had already helped himself to what looked to be a slice of sweet bread.

“Was the breakfast this morning not enough?” Garroth asked, the teasing smile on his face evident by his tone. He stepped closer to the table, crossing his arms and peering at Zenix through his helmet.

Zenix held a hand out defensively, his mouth full of the pastry. “She offered! And not to be rude, Sir Garroth, but this is infinitely better than the toast and eggs we have every morning.”

You laughed at Zenix’s jest, and Garroth turned his gaze to you. You seemed comfortable in this environment, which was a far cry from the way nearly everyone else felt when they found themselves in the jailhouse.

“I just thought I’d bring you guys food,” you said once your laughter had died. “In Borobos, the guardsmen aren’t very respected. It seems very different here from what Lady Aphmau told me, but I figured it would still be a nice thing to do.”

Garroth hummed. “Well we thank you. We are very grateful, although you really didn’t need to go out of your way for that.”

“We wouldn’t mind if you kept going out of your way for it, though,” Zenix cut in. Garroth reached over and smacked the boy’s shoulder in response.

You laughed again. “It’s alright. I really don’t mind. I actually really enjoy baking and cooking, so doing this isn’t a big deal.”

Garroth nodded. “We are thankful regardless. Now, since I’m sure he hasn’t introduced himself yet,”—Garroth placed a hand on Zenix’s shoulder—“this is Zenix. He’s my personal apprentice and soon to be second in command.”

Zenix offered a mock salute before stuffing the rest of the sweet bread in his hand into his mouth. He was quick to chew and swallow it, though his voice came out slightly hoarse when he talked. “A pleasure to meet you.”

You smiled. “And you as well. I’m Y/n.”

“Aphmau told me you wanted to see the village?” Garroth asked. You nodded, turning to meet his gaze. “I’ll show you around once you’re ready.”

“Thank you. Though, you aren’t going to eat anything?”

“Garroth’s a weirdo and doesn’t eat in front of people. Ever.” As if to avoid any scolding the head guard might have given him, Zenix jumped up from his seat and bounded toward the door. “I’m off on patrol!”

Garroth watched Zenix bound out the door and let out a heavy sigh once the boy was gone. “I apologize. He’s very . . . Energetic.”

“It’s alright,” you said, letting out an amused breath. “It’s a relief to me. Most everyone in Borobos was so uptight.”

Garroth hummed, eyeing the open basket on the table. “I don’t mean to come off as rude by not taking anything.”

You shook your head. “No, don’t worry about it. I’m sure you already ate. Besides, I feel like it would be weirder for me to force you to eat something I made.”

“I suppose it would be.” You stood from your seat, reaching to close the basket before readjusting your cloak over your shoulders. “Are you ready, then?”

You nodded with a hum. “Yes, I am.”

Garroth led you out the door. He walked by your side as he led you around the small village of Phoenix Drop. He introduced you to any villager you came across and spent the better half of the morning chatting with you and exchanging stories about yourselves.

For the first time in a long time, Garroth felt completely at ease.

—

Okay, Garroth thought to himself after he had walked you back to Donna’s brothel. That’s where you were staying for the time being. You bringing food to the jailhouse was simply a formality. A ‘thank you for welcoming me’ of sorts.

That’s what Garroth thought. That thought was dismissed, however, when you showed up the next morning with another basket of sweets. And again the morning after that. And the next and the next and . . .

Surely you must have taken a romantic interest in someone. Garroth had no clue who, as Brain was too young for you and you seemed to treat Zenix as a younger brother. Your interactions with Garroth were nothing but polite and he feared you didn’t find yourself to be comfortable around him, so it couldn’t have been him.

But then who? Garroth entertained for a moment that you might be after Laurance when the Head Guard of Meteli visited Phoenix Drop, but you hadn’t known him before that.

You must have just been a good soul, then. Similar to his Lady Aphmau but with less capability to change the world. After a while, Garroth confirmed that fact for himself when he noticed you volunteering to care for Levin while Aphmau was gone and help in any way you could to fix up the village.

It was refreshing to him that there were good people in the world. He’d seen the worst manipulative, conniving con men in O’Khasis. He grew up around them. He’d devised a plan to fake his death using the tactics they did. A false identity, a bit of magic and tricks. He even found himself thinking like them, occasionally, no matter how hard he tried erasing that part of himself.

In your company, though, he didn’t think he was all that bad. During the daily morning talks he figured that if someone as good, someone as kind as you could stand someone like him—if someone like him could make you smile and laugh the way you did—he must not have been so bad.

Despite the promise he had made to himself so long ago when he faked his death, Garroth found himself growing attached to you. More so than usual. He found himself growing attached to you in an odd way he had never experienced. It was different than how he cared for Zenix before he ran off. It was different than the unwavering loyalty he held for Lady Aphmau and his village. His attachment to you was . . . warm. It was something he chose, whether involuntarily or not, to hold. It couldn’t be boiled down to an obligation of duty like his relationship with Zenix or Aphmau or the village. He liked you.

Well, that was odd. Garroth had never liked anyone before.

What does one do in that situation?

—

The air was crisp. It felt fresh and clean despite the parasite that had found itself in Phoenix Drop to officiate a wedding. Zane Ro’Meave—High Priest of O’Khasis. The second son of O’Khasis, his predecessor being Gareth Ro’Meave. As it stood, Zane was set to inherit lordship when Garte died, since Gareth hadn’t been seen in five years. That, and Gareth’s body had been found drowned in the river surrounding the city years ago. Gareth Ro’Meave was dead as far as anyone knew.

Garroth stayed away from the High Priest as much as possible. He didn’t want to risk being recognized, but . . . Well, if he wanted to attend the wedding he couldn’t wear his helm. Without that, there was no doubt that he would be recognized. Garroth was the spitting image of his father.

He would figure it out. He would watch the merchant and his lover wed from afar if he had to. Even if it meant he couldn’t sit with you. Or talk to you. Or . . . do anything with you for the day.

He was thankful that you still visited the guard despite the business of everyone else. Garroth had opted to stay in his room on the jailhouse’s second floor for the day. It would be easier that way.

He was even more grateful that he was the only guard still in the jailhouse.

“I can’t believe Donna and Logan are getting married,” you said. You sat beside him on his bed, fidgeting with a necklace around your neck. One Garroth had gotten you (although he told you it was from the entire Phoenix Drop guard, as a thank you for always providing them with food and caring for them). “I remember when they first met. Irene, time really does fly, doesn’t it?”

Garroth agreed. Time really did go by quickly. It had been over five years since he’d last seen Zane. Over five years since he was Gareth Ro’Meave, golden heir of the O’Khasian throne. That fact struck him when he finally saw his brother, who was taller than he had been. Zane wasn’t quite as tall as Garroth, but he was getting there.

“It’s been a while since you came to Phoenix Drop,” he said, turning to face you. He still wore his helmet (he’d never let you see him without it) and you couldn’t see his face, but some part of you could imagine the soft smile that graced his features.

You nodded. “It has. I plan to stay here much longer, as well.”

When you smiled at him, Garroth swore the sun rays brightened and the birds started singing.

After a moment, you said, “So I won’t see you at the wedding tonight?”

Regretfully, Garroth shook his head. “No, you won’t. I’m sorry.”

You shook your head. “There’s nothing to be sorry for. If I’m being honest, the High Priest is being hypocritical about you not being able to wear your armor. I mean, his guards can but you can’t because then it’ll be considered a rich wedding?” You rolled your eyes, resting your weight against your arm. “I think it’s stupid.”

Garroth chuckled. He’d never heard you say anything remotely negative about anyone. “You’re not fond of the High Priest?”

You scoffed. “No. He visited Borobos a couple times and I always got a bad feeling from him.”

Garroth hummed. A comfortable silence enveloped the two of you. One that made Garroth feel warm.

“If I . . . were to come to the wedding,” Garroth began. His voice was muffled, more so than usual. He was mumbling, and you wished for a moment that he would take off his helm so you could read his lips. “Would you dance with me?”

You smiled in response to his question and softly nodded. “I’ll be sure to save a dance for you.”

The helmet suddenly became very hot. Garroth’s cheeks were burning despite the happy smile stretched across his lips. You really were beautiful.

“That’s only if I decide to come,” Garroth added.

“Of course. Regardless, I wouldn’t want to fill my dance card before you had the chance to add your name,” you teased, a playful smile pulling at your lips. Garroth knew it was a tease. Phoenix Drop wasn’t fancy enough for things like dance cards.

“I do hope you’ll come,” you said after a moment. Your voice was more sincere, and Garroth could’ve sworn you leaned closer to him ever so slightly. “But even if you don’t, I’ll be sure to come by before I turn in for the night.”

“You don’t have to,” Garroth said, although he was using every bit of his willpower to hide the anticipation from his voice.

“I will.” You smiled again. “I enjoy spending time with you.”

Garroth’s heart nearly jumped out of his chest. The two of you had been doing this for a while now. Leaving small hints of your ever growing feelings to each other. The hints were never obvious, and you both always interpreted them as friendly interaction, but Garroth always let himself believe for just a moment that you felt the same way he did.

“What does your dress look like?” he asked. He was curious. He wanted to create a mental image of what you might look like before he eventually saw you later that day.

Your expression brightened, and you sat straighter. “It’s gorgeous,” you said, and Garroth listened intently as you explained how your dress looked. Your description was vague, and you tried your best describing all the details you could, but you knew the description you gave wouldn’t do it justice.

Garroth knew it, too.

—

Cadenza truly did make beautiful dresses and suits. She had dropped one off for Garroth earlier (“Just in case,” she had said) and he had marveled at the craftsmanship of it. The seams seemed sturdy and the fabric was high quality. Stepping into the plaza and seeing the care Cadenza had put into each outfit astounded him. But in his opinion, there was one that outshined them all.

You were right. The dress Cadenza had made for you was beautiful. Though, Garroth may have had a bias towards it since you were the one wearing it. The sleeves were long and puffy and made of a sparkly, sheer material. Golden florals were embroidered on the cuffs and the neckline and hem of the dress. The skirt was long and any time you spun it would follow the flow of your body in an elegant circle.

Garroth hardly noticed that the deep midnight blue of your dress matched the color of his bow tie. He also failed to notice the matching embroidery on your dress and the lapels of his blazer. It seemed as though fashion wasn’t the only thing Cadenza had an eye for.

Garroth waited until you were alone to approach you. He finally did once you had seated yourself after a rather boisterous dance Dale had dragged you into. He could see the way your chest quickly rose and fell as you tried to catch your breath, and Garroth looked away.

You noticed him coming in your peripheral. When you looked at him it seemed as though the world had stopped just to give the two of you a second to revel in each other’s presence. A smile stretched across your lips, the one that Garroth loved. You perked up at the sight of him, and turned your body in the chair to face him better.

“You’re here,” you said. Garroth nodded.

“I thought it’d be fun.” You nodded, but your thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. You were focused on his face, a sight you had never seen. Despite that, you had instantly recognized him and the soft smile he gave you. It was one you had imagined many times. Seeing it was exhilarating.

“I believe I owe you a dance,” you said to him once the music had changed to a slower tune.

Garroth’s smile widened and he held his hand out. “May I, Lady Y/n.”

You chuckled and placed your hand in his. Irene, you were so giddy. “You may, Sir Garroth.”

You laughed again as Garroth pulled you up from your seat and led you to the dance floor, where other pairs had began gathering. Garroth wrapped his arms around you, holding you close. You felt safe and protected in his arms, and although the two of you were much closer than was appropriate for a couple that wasn’t together, no one batted an eye.

“You’re very handsome,” you told him after a moment you had spent admiring his features. And he truly was. His curly hair reflected the fairy lights and moonlight in a way that made it seem golden, and his eyes were probably the most beautiful thing you had ever seen. His cheekbones were defined and his lips looked so . . . kissable. You wanted to trace your thumb across every feature and commit it to memory, ready to recall whenever you needed the comfort of a familiar face.

“And you look radiant,” he replied, smiling down at you. And, Irene, his smile was just perfect. It was enough to make any girl fall in love.

You let out a soft breath of amusement, adjusting your arms around him so you could hold him impossibly closer. “You’re just saying that,” you whispered. You didn’t know what else to say.

“I’m not,” he instantly said. His voice was soft to match yours, though the more he talked the more you suspected his quiet tone was to hide his hesitation and nerves. “You are the most gorgeous girl I’ve ever seen. You’re the kind of woman men would fight a war for.”

Your face heated. You tried biting back a smile, but only failed miserably. “Would you go to war for me?”

“Without a doubt.”

You wished there weren’t so many people around so you could lean into Garroth and press your lips against his. You were sure that was the only correct reaction to have.

Garroth seemed the share the same thought, or at least a similar one. He leaned forward, his face red and his gaze nervous, to whisper in your ear. “I’d like to take you somewhere.”

He had stuttered over his words. You found it to be the most endearing thing. You looked up at him and nodded.

“After this song,” he said, snaking his arm further around you to hold you closer to him. His face was still red as a cherry and his breaths seemed out of focus, but you weren’t much better. Your heart felt like it would beat right out of your chest at any moment and you felt like you were in a daze with him.

It felt like the song from Zoey’s enchanted music box went on for hours after he said that. When it finally ended, Garroth reluctantly let go of you and you reluctantly let go of him. He kept his hand entwined with yours, though, and led you through the small crowd of people and away from the party.

You followed him to the woods. He didn’t lead you too deep, but just far enough so you were out of sight from peering eyes. Just far enough so he could have a truly private moment with you.

Once he stopped the two of you stood in silence for a moment. Your gazes went back and forth. He would spend a moment staring at you before he caught your gaze and looked away, and the same thing would happen to you. Those first few seconds were nothing more than fleeting glances until Garroth finally spoke.

“You really do look beautiful,” he whispered. Your warm smile made Garroth’s nervous gaze soften. He looked at you like you had hung the very stars in the sky.

“So you’ve said,” you replied. You risked it and took a step closer. Had you been in his room at the guard station, your movements closer to him could have been passed as you allowing yourself to slip towards him. Now, though, it was painfully obvious that it was a decision you consciously made.

“Well it’s true.” Garroth didn’t move close to you like you had to him, but his gaze did flit down to your feet. You took a chance and stepped closer again, and Garroth shifted forward.

“Is there something you wanted to say, Sir Garroth?” you asked, tilting your head up to him. You sometimes added the title sir to tease him. “Or did you bring me all the way here just to tell me again I’m pretty?”

Garroth’s cheeks pinkened and he let out a strained huff. “No, I . . .” He paused. You raised your eyebrows expectantly but didn’t say anything. You wanted to give him all the time he needed to collect his thoughts. “I’ve found myself wanting to be rather . . . spontaneous, recently.”

“Yes, you’ve brought me into the woods rather unexpectedly.” Your lips stretched into a soft smile and you chuckled. “Spontaneity isn’t bad. Sometimes the result can be good.”

“I fear I may ruin a friendship if I act on my impulses.” Garroth swallowed and quickly swiped his tongue over his lips. “And I would deeply regret it if this girl stopped talking to me because of what I’d do.”

“Oh, so it’s a girl you like?” You tried to keep your voice even and unfeeling, but the small heartbreak still made its way into your words. You felt your smile fade and you found yourself taking a small step away from him. You hadn’t anticipated for him to like you back—you had seen the way he interacted with Phoenix Drop’s lord—but some small part of you hoped that some of the signs you’d seen could be an indicator of romantic feelings toward you.

“Well,” you began after a brief pause. You paused again after the word left your mouth, though, thinking. Did you want to pretend for just a moment? Or would that only hurt you more? “Any girl would be lucky to have you,” you settled on.

Garroth hummed. You didn’t know if he’d noticed you step away from him, but he definitely took a step closer.

“Would you recommend I act on an impulse of mine?”

You nodded. You had seen the way Garroth acted around Aphmau, but you had also seen how Aphmau acted around Garroth. Even if you couldn’t have him the way you wanted, you were going to help him for his own sake.

Garroth took a breath. You were ready for him to thank you for your brief advice, but you hadn’t expected him to lean forward and press his lips against yours.

Although his kiss was soft, the action shocked you. You had stiffened for a moment, and Garroth had began pulling away to apologize, but you were quick to pull him back. Your hands reached up to wrap around his neck and rest on his chest so you could tug his lips back down to yours. You kissed him softly at first, but when your fingers threaded through his golden locks and you pressed your lips harder against his and he wrapped his arms around your waist, you couldn’t help the breathless sigh that escaped your lips when he pulled away for just a moment.

You were quick to reconnect your lips, and when you did Garroth lifted you off the ground and spun in a circle for the flow of your dress to follow. This was arguably the best thing he’d ever experienced.

When he pulled away it was just an inch. He kept his forehead pressed against yours and his eyes closed and the two of you shared the same air. There was a wide smile on your lips, and you were so happy you laughed.

You couldn’t remember what was said after that, but the warm and fuzzy feeling stayed in your heart for hours after the fact. Days, even. You carried it with you the next day and the day after and the day after that.

And when the two of you went back to the plaza, soft smiles on your faces and hands just barely brushing against each other, everyone knew something had changed.

—

Even though everyone in the village could see the shift in your relationship with Garroth, you tried to keep it private and pretend nothing was different. Stolen kisses in the guard tower before he went for patrol, brief brushes of hands against each other, fleeting glances to the other from down the path. You hadn’t even really officiated anything and your stomach flipped at every sight of him.

You still found yourself venturing to the guard tower every morning wirh a basket. You would often bring a little something for Laurance and Dante and Dale or whoever else was currently positioned, but Garroth was always the main focus of your attention. It had gotten to the point where Laurance and Dante could recognize you by the sound of your footsteps, and they always stepped aside and told you where Garroth was.

He was in his room more often than not. He had taken to removing his helmet around you and rarely wore it when you visited. You could see his pretty eyes that way, and you always smiled and told him that they were, and somewhere along the line the two of you would press your lips together and spend a couple minutes every day pretending you were the only people in the world.

“I’d like to court you,” he told you one day, though his voice was quiet and hesitant. You couldn’t tell if he was truly hesitating to say that, though, or if his muffled tone was from the fact that his lips were pressed against the junction of your jaw. He stopped for a moment, his soft breaths brushing against the shell of your ear. “I know we’ve been . . . close, recently, but we’ve never spoken about it. I’d like to do this properly.”

“Why don’t you, then?” you asked. You turned your head to meet his gaze when he pulled away, just enough to look you in the eyes. There was a soft smile on his face, like he couldn’t believe you weren’t denying him.

“Is that a yes?” His voice was hopeful, and you chuckled. How could he ever think you’d say no?

“Yes, Garroth,” you said, your tone light. “It is.”

You heard something of a smack against the frame of Garroth’s closed door. You turned your head, expecting someone to come in. No one did. You only heard the soft clinking of armor on the other side.

“Finally.” The voice was muffled and quiet through the wood, but you recognized it as Laurance’s.

“That was taking forever.” And that voice belonged to Dante. Your gaze flicked back to Garroth, finding that he was covering the lower half of his blushing face.

“You don’t even know. He’s been yapping about her since before you were even here.”

You hear their footsteps disappear down the hall as they walk away from Garroth’s room. You wait for a moment before bursting into a fit of giggles.

Garroth’s hand entwined wirh yours and the two of you spent a moment longer talking, though most of the conversation came in the form of lighthearted teasing from you. Garroth’s cheeks only turned more and more red with every word you spoke, until finally you had to let him go so he could complete his patrol.

You walked along the cobbled roads gappier that day, along with every other day that came. There was a spring in your step and you practically skipped everywhere you went.

You tried to keep it private. Tried to keep the yearning glances and kisses behind closed doors, but everyone knew it. Everyone could see the attachment their head guard had grown for the baking maiden in the village, and no one thought there was nothing more fitting than that.

i fear this piece gave me intense imposter syndrome??? for some reason??? idk i feel like i could’ve done way better and this piece is shit but alas. anyways anon i hope you enjoyed i wish i could’ve done better for you 🫡

TAGGING: @mellozhi @garrothswiferealnotfake if you’d like to be added to the mcd or garroth taglist comment or to let me know!!

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aventurineswife · 2 months ago

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hi hello im like feeling very scared about this, making requests is scary, and this would be my first ever one, im pretty sure ur requests are open right now, apologies if not, its so scary keeping track but uh i cant stop thinking about like a reader who like goes to sleep rlly early (like 6-7pm) but then wakes up rlly early as a result (like 3-5am) and as a result grows very tired and eepy during the day and sometimes falls asleep or spaces out during the day, idk where you could take this, i just think it would be cute to make up something for it (and definitely isnt my routine) as for characters uh aventurine, kaveh and if u write for them lyney and baizhu (idk if u write for many genshin characters but i literally only know aventurine from honkai bc i hyperfixated on just him, idk the lore of honkai at all 😭)

Dreamers in the Daylight

Tags: Kaveh x Reader, Aventurine x Reader, Fluff, Established Relationship, Soft Moments, Protective Partner, Sleepy/Overworked Reader, Light Humor, Emotional Vulnerability.

Warnings: Mild mentions of overworking, Emotional fatigue.

A/N: No! Don't be scared!! 😭🙏 I'm so sorry for being intimidating!! Requests are closed now. And you did a good job on making a request 🫂💖 (also I'm feeling eepy so I just did Kaveh and Aventurine sadly 😔)

Kaveh first noticed your unique sleep routine during one of his late-night sketching marathons. He had returned home to find you already fast asleep on the couch at 7 PM, curled up with a blanket and the soft glow of candles illuminating your peaceful expression. He couldn’t help but smile as he adjusted the blanket over your shoulders before retreating to his room.

Your early-to-bed habit intrigued him, but it also left him confused when he found you wide awake in the predawn hours, humming softly to yourself as you prepared tea. The quiet mornings you spent together soon became a comfort to Kaveh. While he worked on designs or poured his heart into blueprints, you would sit beside him, resting your chin on your hand, occasionally spacing out as the world outside slowly woke up.

But during the day, your schedule often caught up with you. Kaveh first discovered this when he brought you to one of his favorite spots in Sumeru—a scenic hill with a breathtaking view of the city. He was passionately explaining the significance of the architecture below when he turned to see your head nodding, your eyelids drooping.

“Are you… falling asleep?” he asked, half-offended and half-amused.

You jerked awake, blinking rapidly. “N-No, I’m just… resting my eyes! I swear I was listening!”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “You’re hopeless,” he teased, though he gently guided you to sit under a tree’s shade. “Alright, take a quick nap. I’ll wake you up in a bit.”

Moments like these became common. Whether you were resting your head on his shoulder in the middle of a crowded plaza or dozing off during his long-winded rants about art, Kaveh always found a way to accommodate you. He’d sigh dramatically, but there was a fondness in his tone as he whispered, “Only you could make me stop mid-sentence just so you can nap.”

Yet, he never left your side. He’d drape his cape over you to shield you from the sun. Sometimes, he’d even sit with you, watching your serene expression and wondering how someone so effortlessly stole his heart.

One morning, as the two of you shared tea before dawn, Kaveh turned to you with a soft smile. “You know,” he began, “I used to think your sleep schedule was odd. But now, I’ve realized I wouldn’t trade these quiet mornings—or your sleepy daytime antics—for anything.”

You grinned, leaning your head against his shoulder. “Glad you’re on board, sunshine.”

The first time Aventurine realized your peculiar sleep habits, he didn’t know whether to laugh or raise an eyebrow. You had fallen asleep in his office chair at 6:30 PM, your head resting on the corner of his desk while he explained his latest strategy. He’d been mid-sentence about a crucial investment when he turned to find you completely out, your breathing soft and even.

“Well, well,” he muttered, tilting his hat back. “If this isn’t the biggest gamble of my life—someone who sleeps through my brilliance.”

He didn’t wake you. Instead, he draped his overcoat over your shoulders and continued working in silence. But the next morning, when he saw you sipping coffee at 4 AM, humming cheerfully as though the day had already begun, he knew he had found someone… unique.

Aventurine didn’t mind your sleep schedule, though it did make him adjust his plans. He’d noticed how you grew visibly tired during the day, your eyes glazing over during strategy meetings or your head drooping at social gatherings. At first, he found it amusing, especially when others tried to engage you in conversation, only for you to reply with an incoherent mumble.

“You’re really stealing the show, darling,” he teased one evening after you fell asleep in the middle of a poker game. He gently scooped you up, placing you on the couch in his suite. “The only person who can outplay me is someone who’s not even awake.”

But Aventurine’s teasing belied his genuine care for you. He’d schedule his meetings around your energy levels, ensuring you were comfortable before any long discussions. During your midday naps, he’d sit beside you, absently flipping through documents while stealing glances at your relaxed face. He didn’t understand how you could look so content, even in the middle of chaos, but it fascinated him.

One afternoon, as you rested your head on his shoulder during a lull in his meetings, Aventurine leaned closer, speaking softly. “You know, most people think I’m a reckless gambler, always chasing the next big win. But you—you’re the real risk-taker. Who else would trust me to keep an eye on them while they nap?”

You smirked, eyes half-closed. “Maybe because you’re not as scary as you think you are.”

He chuckled, adjusting his glasses. “Careful, darling. Keep saying things like that, and I might actually believe you.”

From then on, Aventurine made it his mission to protect your unique rhythm. Whether he shielded you from interruptions during naps or joined you in the quiet stillness of early mornings, he found a strange comfort in the balance you brought to his life. For a man who thrived on uncertainty, you were the one constant he was willing to bet everything on.

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blue-jisungs · 1 year ago

Text

SO BEAUTIFUL

author's note. can u tell what i was hyperfixation on when i wrote this?! a cookie for those who answer correctly (emoji) btw this song is one of my faves when it comes to ian :( right after violet crazy and scaredy cat.......... however his whole discography is just mindblowing so its hard to have a 1 fav song ngl <//3

summary. idk man just whipped prince!joshua ...

genre. atla-ish !! its not the main plot but there's mention of element benders lolzies, royal setting (prince!joshu, army general!y/n), situationship/non-established relationship between them

warnings. blood, wounds (kinda descriptive, im sorry), fighting, mention of war and killing people (i mean yn is in army so....), cursing, one suggestive joke but i mean,, it was there like... it was stronger than me..., not a warning but emphasis on fem reader, yn kinda has a breakdown :(

word count. 3878

joshua ran his hand through his hair, letting out a small sigh. he was reading a book but his mind seemed unable to focus as the words and sentences didn’t make sense in his head.

“you’ve been reading this one single page for ten minutes now, your highness” he heard seungkwan’s teasing voice and just looked up at his friend.

“i’m aware of that, seungkwan” joshua mumbled and put the bookmark between the pages, leaving the item on a small table.

he bit his lip and looked outside the window, the sight of mountains bringing him some peace.

joshua’s mind was uneasy due to the late return of his army. and his absence at the battlefield.

the news of victory brought by his right hand and good friend, minghao, definitely caused him to sleep better. but before that, there had been weeks of days filled with stress and anxiety. and now, for unknown reasons the army’s arrival was postponed – and there was no message.

“i’m sure general l/n has everything under control” seungkwan’s voice brought joshua back to reality and he subconsciously smiled upon hearing your last name.

maybe that was the reason why he was constant concern. he was worried about you. no, it wasn’t like he doubted your fighting abilities it’s just… anything could happen on the battle ground. besides, you weren’t a bender. obviously, every caring prince would be worried about his subordinates. the matter was that it was your first serious battle all alone. usually he was there too. or at least seungcheol, who was his father’s military advisor – also very skilled in combat. but due to his injury and the medics sharp warning he wasn’t able to go.

joshua sighed quietly and stood up, lazily walking up to his balcony. the cold air hugged his face, a refreshing breeze filling his lungs.

another cause of his stress was… well, you’re a woman. it’s not like women don’t hold high positions in society and are well respected in the water kingdom but… army was mostly men. who knew if any of the soldiers didn’t cause you trouble.

“i don’t think that the ball is a good idea…” joshua mumbled, tracing shapes on the marble railing.

“whether you like it or not, your mother had already decided. majority of our alliances arrived” seungkwan shrugged and turned around upon the sound of knocking. joshua looked through his shoulder, expectant.

it was minghao.

it must have been good news since he was shining.

“they’re here”

before the prince could pass him in the door, minghao cleared his throat.

“y/n is resting though”

joshua stopped in his tracks, not even realising there's a smile that appeared – dropped now slowly.

“is she hurt?” he asked, worry in his voice. seungkwan closed the balcony door and joined the water kingdom’s prince's side.

“no, no. not as far as i know. she’s just exhausted and needs to prepare for the ball. and the paper work, losses and such… it’d be better if you didn’t bother her” minghao suggested softly. “wonwoo is to your disposal though”

wonwoo, the lieutenant general. that’s fine, he’ll just ask about you.

joshua nodded and left in silence. seungkwan and minghao exchanged playful looks.

joshua could not sit still. his mother sent him numerous looks but his eyes weren’t focused at her at all. he scanned the crowd in search of you.

his mother was oh so kind to postpone the ball to the next day, letting the soldiers rest. as he noticed, most of them made it. you surely would be here too, right? you were the general after all.

then it struck him like thunder.

there you were, in the midst of people. a flowy, light blue dress on your body gently falling onto the floor. he knew you got the access to the best sewers in the kingdom but this time… your dress really reminded him of water. maybe it was the silver linings in it? or just the lightness of the fabric? either way, you looked angelic. and with your hair loose, falling like waterfalls on your shoulders.

as the great warrior you were, you sensed his gaze on you. sending him a small smile, looking from above your companion’s shoulder, joshua sighed dreamily.

your lips moved and then you walked past the man you talked to, stepping directly into joshua’s direction. he cleared his throat, his sight on you.

“my queen” you hummed and bowed gently to his mother first, then you held eye contact with him with another bow “my prince”

“general l/n, you’re truly the shining star of our army. we’ve heard the tales and i must say, i admire your vigour and dedication” his mother said. you bowed again.

“thank you, my queen. i’m proud i can serve our country” you nodded, smiling gently. joshua adored your face, not being able to get enough of it. especially after your three-months long absence.

“mother if you don’t mind, you’ll hear the stories later. now i’m going to kidnap general l/n for a minute”

before you knew it, his hand tenderly interlocked with yours as he lead you to the dance floor. landing in the middle, below the silver chandelier that lit up your face in the prettiest ways possible, the prince placed a feather-light kiss atop of your hand.

the music started, the royal sounds of cello and violins ripping through air; joshua led the dance, his ebony eyes scanning your face. his features were overtaken by the look of how much he missed you, you could tell it by his eyes only. the soft curve of his smile made your heart melt, fingers brushing against his neck.

“so beautiful” he hummed deeply, heart almost aching with joy. why was it like this? he thought he thought it through but now he was just confused; why does his heart hurt when you’re finally within his reach?

”so, so beautiful” joshua repeated, daring to glance at your lips “i missed you dearly”

you huffed, letting him sway to the rhythm of music. because he was an excellent water bender, he was one with the flow – whether it was his element or music. he guided you through the sounds of instruments, which made you emotional. hearing the sound of them after months away from your homeland…

“aren’t you tired? are you fine?” joshua asked, care in his voice. he had you so close yet so far. in his arms but unable to caress your cheek or kiss your lips.

you shook your head, scanning his face. maybe you missed him too, after all.

“i’m perfectly fine now” you whispered and his look was more expressive than words; he understood what you meant: you missed him too.

the melody came to a halt and it was like a string snapped in front of your eyes, the sudden sound of chatter making you go back to reality.

“i’m sure there’s plenty of young ladies willing to dance with you. i shall not keep you busy” you said. joshua opened his mouth, protesting.

“let’s take a trip down a darker place, the garden has really improved when you were absent” he almost whined, begging with his eyes so you’d spare him even a mere moment alone.

suddenly, wonwoo approached you. he leaned in to whisper something in your ear, concern on his face. you nodded, features getting colder than snow blasting in the harshest of winters. he knew that look, it meant trouble; it meant an approaching threat.

“i’d be more than willing to. however, there happened to be an urgent matter that needs to be taken care of. i…” you hesitated and sent a look to wonwoo. he understood since he left right away. only then quiet words left your mouth “i’ll meet you in your chamber later, shu”

his heart skipped a beat, nodding. his eyes followed your figure, finally at peace that you’re back.

an outsider would never think that you’re a general, one of the skillest people in the kingdom when it came to combat. whilst being a non-bender, which was quite impressive. you were just so… flowy, glowing and gentle. oh, gentle you truly were…

“...the fuck you mean we had a tail?” you hissed, poking wonwoo’s chest and then taking a deep sigh “well fuck me, that’s just fucking great!”

“i bet your highness would want to do that” wonwoo cleared his throat, your hand slapping his arm in an instant.

“lieutenant general jeon, i ask you to behave accordingly to the situation. there is a risk of coup, the life of the royal bloodline is on the line and you dare to make a joke?” you said coldly, making wonwoo shiver. then, you suddenly snickered “i do admire your timing though. and now tell me more”

you and wonwoo were close, it’s not like it was out of his manner to joke like this. but the fact that there might be a spy in the castle right now…

“chan came across the traces and him and others made an assumption we’re followed by an fire nation soldier who survived the battle” wonwoo gave you the details.

your light dress rustled on the late afternoon wind, breeze running through its fabric. you closed our eyes, fingers tightening on the marble railing of a terrace.

there were two choices in this situation: announce there might be a spy and transport the royal family into a guarded place, which may result in panic and rumours spreading (including those about your incompetence). however, the spy might run off or give in. the second option: stay silent and don’t let anyone suspect a thing, take care of the spy with your own hands. risks: people getting hurt, especially the king or queen. or prince.

“do we know where they might be now?” you asked, looking through your shoulder at the crowded ballroom. chatter, dancing, music… people living to the fullest. and joshua being there too.

“we do have suspicions that they might be nearby, we found some traces near your… your, um, house” wonwoo answered, your eyes shifting.

“so they want me, huh?” you sighed. that was far better than the royals getting hurt. staring at the sunset, a wide palette of oranges and yellows melting into one, you nodded. “inform the guards, keep an eye on any suspicious activity. i’ll go check if they’re still around my place. report immediately if anything happens”

“yes, general” wonwoo saluted and walked away, feeling the breath of urgency on his neck.

adoring the sunset for a little longer, watching it morph into a navy night sky; you decided to go before it got too dark.

joshua was walking around his chamber, footsteps echoing due to the largeness of it. it was past midnight, almost 6 hours since you left the ballroom… did you change your mind? you didn’t want to come?

he let out a deep sigh, plopping on his bed and staring at the book he was reading.

joshua was a prince and enjoyed literature, he has read countless and countless books and genres. he especially found an interest in old romance but all of them had a similar scheme when it came to relationships: the woman was the one to be head over heels whipped for the guy. she’d blush when someone mentioned his name, she’d miss him dearly when he’s on his adventurous voyages, she’d dream of him even in her sleep. he never read a book with an opposite order of things. and yet… here he was, waiting for you like a lost puppy. while his heart sought after you, his mind was worried about your wellbeing during your army shenanigans, he longed to hear, see or touch you even for a mere moment longer.

huffing like an displeased child, he laid on the bed. if you come, you come. and he’ll be asleep. that way, you’ll know he doesn’t cares that deeply—

knock knock. knock knock knock knock.

joshua frowned, sitting up. it could be you but… it wasn’t your usual knock.

the door opened with a quiet creak. you were leaning against the doorframe , upper body leaning forward with hair falling on your face.

“took you long enough” joshua mumbled and stood up, when you suddenly started sliding down the doorframe lifelessly. he ran up to you, kneeling down and grabbing your hands. frighteningly cold hands “what’s wrong?”

his voice remained strong unlike his heart. you gathered all your willpower and raised your head, fighting the dropping eyelids.

“my back…” you croaked out, leaning forward but only ending up in his embrace.

he did not image your reunion like that.

joshua gently moved his hands to your back and his fingers met with something… sticky…? the flowy material of your dress was ripped, the warmth of the liquid contrasting with the low temperature of your body.

“y/n, what happened?” he asked, voice stern yet revealing a hint of worry.

“i’ll explain later just… help me, shu. please” you breathed out, the air tickling his neck. joshua gulped, his adam’s apple bobbing, and he grabbed you in bridal style.

placing you on his queen sized bed, rolling gently to the side, his mind was racing with thoughts. what happened? were you attacked? was it a fresh wound?

“i’ll rip the dress, only on the back. i apologize, ill buy you thousands of new ones just… breathe for me, alright?” he stuttered, putting on some light.

only then his eyes saw how serious was your wound. he took a sharp inhale, throat going dry.

there was a deep wound going across your back, left arm to almost the side of your right hip. it looked like a sword left such a mark.

joshua quickly opened the handy tap he had in his chamber and didn’t bother to pour it into bowl.

he bent water straight from the tap, focusing deeply. trying to connect with his inner peace and energy but his rapid heartbeat seemed to disturb him too much.

“focus, jisoo” he grunted to himself, slender fingers shaking “y/n, talk to me. you need to stay conscious”

“won’t talking take my oxygen that i desperately need–” you started.

“yeah, you’re right. be quiet” he scoffed, trying to light up the mood. then he moved his hands slowly from the beginning to your wound to the end of it. very slowly, surely. still like water, his palms flat but fingers directing the stream of liquid. you groaned, curling your back.

it wasn’t the first time joshua was patching you up but it definitely was the first time he knew it’s dead serious… and seeing you in such pain.

another thing was that at the back of his mind there was a sprouting thought that he won’t be able to close the wound completely. not with his heart all over the place.

joshua took a deep breath, focusing on the element flowing through his body. not on you… in pain… bleeding out on his bed…

“’m sorry”

at first, he didn’t hear it. only when he heard a sob, he realized that it’s you.

“hey, no. don’t apologize, that’s an order. it’s a deep wound, i know it hurts but im trying my best and we’ll talk it out later.

inch by inch, millimetre by millimetre, thanks to his healing abilities your skin started clasping the wound. he wasn’t sure which technique to use – layer by layer or pieces at once but the crimson liquid pouring out of your pale back made him chose the first one. which will lead to leaving a scar.

joshua began to feel worn out, despite all the hours of training that prepared him for such situations. but he knew that if he stopped now, you could die.

“shu…” you mumbled, shaking like a leaf. your voice was quiet, weak. he felt time slipping through his fingers.

brows knitting, sweat dripping down his temple, joshua shook his head. despite strength leaving him, he promised himself to restore as much as possible.

you looked through your arm, pearly tears shimmering in the moonlight. joshua’s heart ached, as if someone put a needle right through it.

“i know, i’m sorry but i beg, a few more minutes…” he croaked, feeling lightheaded.

“you’re exhausting yourself, stop it” a whisper escaped your lips “shu, please”

“no, you need to live” he grunted. you frowned and tried to sit up, causing him to gasp “are you insane?”

“give me the bandage and go call the medics. i don’t want you to pass out” you ordered, reaching for his hand.

joshua put the last ounces of water and energy into your body, leaning to close the tap. then, he dug in one of his drawers.

you were still bleeding but far less than when you barged in. he handed you the material and wiped the tears, sweat and blood off your face.

“i’ve got this now. go get some help, please” you sent him a weak smile.

joshua cursed mentally and left quickly. you were probably right.

once he was back with jun, jihoon and seokmin, they took care of you. the oldest one gave you some herbs that would put you to sleep as they worked on your wound. joshua insisted that it all took place inside his chamber.

they were done around 3am, leaving you two alone. the prince managed to get rid of the blood stained duvet and covered you in a blanket that was on his couch.

them, he laid down next to you. the moonlight shone on your pale face, parted lips making an escape for soft snores. your chest was rising up and down a lot more calmly, joshua could feel your energy being more vivid that before. it was stable now, like a steam of water in the woods rather than dried out lake.

“you always have to cause some trouble, huh?” he scoffed and reached his hand out, caressing your cheek gently. even in deep slumber after getting hurt you were so beautiful.

he noticed your brows furrowing and fingers twitching. your breathing sped up, yet you remained asleep. joshua observed you cautiously.

“no… don’t… don’t kill him” you mumbled, shifting in your sleep. his eyes widened, realizing you’re having a nightmare “anyone but… but my shu”

joshua’s heart melted on spot, pleasant warmth flooding his insides.

“you can’t even get a rest, can you?” he huffed and shuffled closer, guiding your head onto his chest. you instantly nuzzled closer, arms instinctively wrapping around his body.

with an uneasy mind, he caressed your hair. your breathing calmed down so he wondered if the nightmare went away.

joshua stuck his gaze into the open window, unable to relax. stars barely shone on the navy horizon, covered by clouds. it seemed like the sky couldn’t sleep either.

upon stirring awake you instantly knew (even without opening your eyes) that you’re in joshua’s bed. it was much more softer than your bed but above all, it had the comfort. you felt warm and secure; cozy in his hold. joshua had his arm wrapped around you, fingers tracing shapes on your skin.

peeking an eye open you noticed he’s holding a book with his other hand, eyes tracking the text.

you wanted to stay like this forever.

then, a stinging pain ran through your back and you trembled, causing him to shift his worried gaze at you. he gasped softly.

“you’re awake” joshua hummed and leaned closer, placing a gentle kiss on your forehead.

you melted because of the gesture, nuzzling further into his neck.

“how do you feel?” he asked, worry in his voice.

“better, much better. thank you, shu. i apologize for the mess i made” you mumbled, resting his palm on his chest. he put his hand over it, caressing your skin.

joshua missed this so much. he missed you.

silence was hanging between you two, an unspoken question of “what happened?” hanging above your head.

“may i see wound?” he asked suddenly. you nodded, your hair tickling his skin.

he helped you sit straight and handed you one of his sleeping cloth to cover the front of your body.

joshua gently moved your hair from your back, his fingertips ghosting over your skin. goosebumps covered your arms.

“you know… you always say i’m so beautiful” you started quietly. joshua hummed in acknowledgment to let you know that he’s listening. then, he shuffled something closer and put it on the bed “but i’m not. i’m so ugly, joshua. my soul is ugly”

“that is not true, y/n” he protested sternly as his delicate fingers worked on removing the bandage. his touches were soft, almost as if he was afraid to touch you.

“i’m a soldier, shu. i hurt people. and yesterday… there was a spy. he sneaked up on me, threatened to kill you. and that triggered me i just… couldn’t bare that thought. and i saw red… he used my distraction and tripped me, slicing in the back” you stuttered, throat going dry “i’m a failure. i almost let him escape, your life was at risk and i couldn’t control my emotions…”

his movement halted for a while, the quietness od the room making your soft pants sound much more louder than you’d like to.

“you are not a failure. you had led our army to victory, several times” joshua resumed and you felt the calming stream of water. then, you felt a soothing sensation spreading over your wound.

joshua was bending to recover your wound, or at least make it heal quicker and more effectively.

“yeah but… i’m a bad person” you mumbled, playing with your fingers.

he stopped bending and put a new bandage over your wound, it still not being clasped fully.

joshua patted your arm and you put his shirt on, turning around.

“you know why i always say you’re so beautiful?” joshua asked and once you faced him, he grabbed your chin gently “obviously i mean your looks too but above all, i treasure your soul. you’re such a pure, dedicated human”

you swallowed, his soft features warming your heart.

“this situation must have made you feel upset and not worthy but you’re so appreciated. my your subordinates, friends… by me. as much as i admire your readiness to sacrifice for me but please, i beg, don’t do it next time” joshua hummed, his thumb moving in soothing manner “i’d rather die myself than live without you”

“don’t say that” you scoffed, shaking your head gently “our country needs a leader”

“and i need you” joshua replied, moving his hands to cup your face “please, y/n. you’re so precious to me… so–“

“if you say beautiful i’ll smack you” you let out a laugh and he couldn’t help but share a smile.

“but it’s true” he grinned and closed the gap between you two, lips crashing on yours. you shared a passionate kiss, a one that lovers after reunion share.

but truth be told, you were like all those lovers in old tales.

and maybe this time, there’s going to be a flawless ending: making it official.

main masterlist | event masterlist

taglist. @mirxzii ,, @primoppang ,, @l3visbby ,, @nicholasluvbot ,, @planetkiimchi ,, @weird-bookworm ,, @slytherinshua ,, @kazmura ,, @laylasbunbunny ,, @dazzlingligth ,, @eternalgyuuu ,, @rubywonu ,, @haecien ,, @mine-gyu

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theamberparadise · 5 days ago

Text

THE MANSION: HEADCANNONS

SYPNOSIS;

my thoughts on how the Creepypasta mansion looks like, the people living in it, where it resides, how it survives, and what the residents do in general.

PUBLISH DATE; 03/06/2025

AUTHORS NOTE;

this is a very long one. so if you're not absolutely bored out of your mind, don't read. lmao

HEADS UP, RESIDENTS=CREEPS THAT AREN'T PROXIES

by the way, don't fret, more MHA writing coming soon. i just need my hyperfixation to relieve itself before i can get to MHA again

happy reading my little shrimps

THE MANSION

WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE? HOW DO THE RESIDENTS/PROXIES FIND IT?

I do imagine it being old and antique. Black mold staining the outer edges of the very off-white wooden planks that cover the outside of the mansion, black roof with a few hanging vines (now that Tim managed to reach up and snip them off), and windows that barely showed anything inside to anyone looking at it from the outside.

There's an algae-covered grand fountain that once spewed great, elegant spurts of water that used to wow its guests, and now only a very small, sputtering blast of water from one opening remains

At the far back of the mansion, there was once a bright green patch of healthy grass, now only a training ground, the once healthy grass is turned into a large, very dry rectangular patch of dried up soil as a result of endless kicking, stomping, running, and discarded bullets, worn down with time

In front of the longer side of the training ground, the very thick forest that frames the mansion from the entrance. Lots of other creatures inhabit that actually, it isn't only The Rake that haunts them

It formerly belonged to an old rich man from the 60s who violently murdered his wives consecutively for their dowry and was running a money laundering business before getting caught and soon enough committed suicide in front of the town officials.

Since then it's been untouched

The Operator found it a bit soon after his existence was manifested, and has used his own power to "restore" the mansion. Not a full-on makeover, just a little redo of the original design on the inside but leaving the outer as is, to deter any unwelcome intruders

But that barely happens, with maybe six or seven unfortunate wanderers who managed to stumble across the building. Either way The Operator orders his subjects to immediately eliminate whoever spots it, as he always informs his children on who should be in their home.

That being said, the reason why there's only so few of the people that found it, is because the forest is quite literally-- alive. When it senses an unwelcome being, it will twist and turn its vines and branches, open up holes to habitats belonging to deadly cryptids, and deprive them of food such as fruits and drinkable lake waters.

That's why, when the residents and the proxies are called by The Operator to their forever new home, it's inevitable that they get lost in the forest for a few days first, as it takes the forest a bit of time to acclimate to the being's temperature and presence.

This is part of why The Operator takes his recruiting slowly, so as not to alarm the whole barrier that very much protects his creations' spaces.

Although The Operator would like to recruit as many as he can in a sleek amount of time, another reason why he doesn't force the forest to accept them immediately is because he sees the way that his children survives in the forest for the few days they are there as a test-- he wants to see their nature being in somewhere that is unknown to them

How they hunt. How they travel. How they seek. How they retain their strength in this green void of nothing but the cold.

He also sees how they can defend themselves against those who aren't in their "likeness". By this, he means how they defend themselves against other cryptids, such as The Rake, The Seedeater, The Stiltwalker, anything that isn't of The Operator's creation.

Do they fight? Do they flee? Do they bargain? Do they just hope for the best?

Either way, he is glad. Somewhat relieved, since he now knew he didn't have to show himself to them every time they encounter a being such as those, which in most cases, they flee. Fight if they have to, but they mostly flee and end up at the mansion's care

Surprise! The mansion is ALSO alive. It's similar to the forest-- except you're surrounded by antique oddities and the smell of decades-old leather.

The first time Hoodie stepped in, it seemed like the halls started to twist and turn at its whim, for every left Hoodie took, would lead him somewhere back in the kitchen.

Of course, he was frustrated for a while, deterring supernatural cryptids weren't easy in the forest, and the poor guy needed some sleep after he was quite literally just had been brought back alive. Eventually, he finally found his room, and thanked the heavens (which he believed did not exist after what he's been through), before finally getting some rest.

Although he wasn't really the first to step inside the mansion, he definitely was one of the first to figure out the whole jig of the place.

Masky came and Hoodie told him what was going on after Masky just rotated around the library about three times

Toby came, then Kate.

Soon enough they all worked as a team to finally map out and draw the mansion's actual layout. They framed it on the right staircase at the entrance of the mansion.

Speaking of the entrance, it looks like the second picture above, except it is MUCH MUCH MUUUCH more cleaned up than that. The Operator doesn't exactly give luxury to his children, but he gives then practicality. And you can't be practical with dust everywhere.

WHERE IN THE WORLD IS IT!?

Actually, I'd like to think the mansion is in the Appalachian mountains.

Think about it. So many posts online talking about Doppelgangers and Wendigos. Random whistling at night.

Many places to staple the pages. Easy to build undetected weaponry huts. Plus, the population's not all that bad, there are some people to eliminate and it's also a bit rare for far travelling for the residents/proxies

Anyhow, that's my answer.

HOW DOES IT SURVIVE?

I would guess that The Operator does have a part in maintaining the mansion's overall well-being (y'know, since it's alive and stuff)

So, in the deepest, darkest, smallest room in the mansion, lays the heart.

The Operator created the heart because he has his own responsibilities to tend to, and he alone cannot maintain it. So, in a nutshell, he created that thing so he won't deal with the mansion falling apart anytime soon.

It's similar to what happened when Alice from Fear Street: 1978 found some sort of a "beating heart" which connected her to the dead.

Very, very similar. Except the whole room is so much more darker and only lit by a number of candles-- none of which seems to melt any further. It's a gorey, fleshy mess.

It's a big goop of red, pumping sac with black goop lining it. Every time it pumps, it produces this horrible blomp, glurp. blomp, glurp. kind of sound that makes any resident gag at the sound of it, even if the sight wasn't enough.

Huge part of why it's at the very bottom. The heart is the reason why the mansion stays standing, given its very obvious rot and mildew, the heart's goop keeps it all together.

It needs to be fed. And its food needs to be alive. Live animals, live people.

A few of the only residents that can handle the stench of this.. organ. Is Eyeless Jack, Jeff (to an extent, at least. he's not in there for more than three minutes), and surprisingly, Toby.

WHAT DO THE PROXIES DO?

Of course, all of them kill. Killing is at least more than once, required. It's just that, for some of them, it isn't as frequent, due to their specialties. This is a list of what they do for the mansion. Basically, their household chores.

THE MAIN PROXIES

PRIMARY INFORMATION (read this so you won't get confused)

As a main source of extra income, the proxies partake in organ-trafficking.

Basically, they're the dealers. And honestly, they have pretty good reviews on the Dark Web, just a few stars off here and there because of the customer service (Masky) but otherwise, their stuff is pretty good.

With the help of EJ and BEN, the harvesting is almost flawless and is packaged very safely to their clients. The marketing is decent, too, for the Dark Web is where BEN gets most of his jump scare material and his sneaky tech allowing them to see if the client is actually real and not some bogus who tries to scam them.

Toby kills the victim. EJ harvests the organs. BEN embeds pop up ads. Masky talks with the clients. Brian does the packaging and helps Kate deliver. Kate is the driver while Brian makes sure the organ doesn't get shaken up too much.

They're a great team honestly. Toby is just a little greedy when it comes to money. And Masky paired with customer service can sometimes not be a great duo. He can be a little rude in text and much more rude on the phone.

One time, a client complained about a liver that was "too small". Of course Masky retaliated and told them it was a normal size and no refunds were allowed, they were delivering organs for fuck's sake why would they take it back!?

Eventually the customer hung up in a fit of rage and Masky almost broke the phone with his bare hands.

That was one of the only 3/5 stars they ever received but so far the rest is always 5/5 so Masky could care less.

It's just that next time, whenever Masky got too heated, Brian would be the one to take the phone. Not Toby, because he'd be too unstable and the client may not be aware of his tics and he might accidentally call the client a slur.

Not Kate, either. She doesn't talk. And if she does, and if the client's questions is something stupid as fuck like "ohhhh ehmm geeee is this actually from a human" she might just sigh, and hang the fuck up

BEN would just straight up troll the guy. "These lungs look kinda small. You sure they're from an adult?"

"Oh yeah, sure they are actually kinda small, but deez nuts aren't"-his response. 😕

EJ is actually decent to talk to, it's just that his voice has made people piss themselves. A woman once asked for a receipt for reference and when he told her very maliciously that it was stapled to the ice box it was shipped in, her scream of "HOLY SHIT" was heard by everybody in the room followed by "you fucking COCKSUCKER" even further followed by the beep of the phone

Safe to say, Brian is more fit for the phone, Tim just doesn't wanna admit he's not easy to talk to.

MASKY (TIM WRIGHT)

He is considered to be the plumber and repairman of the mansion. Every annoying leak, squeaky bed (😏), loose cabinet, hole in the wall, he's onto it.

It started because of a leaky pipe in the kitchen sink. Hoodie, trying to wash his mug, casually mentioned it while Masky was going through the fridge post-mission at the ungodly hour of four AM.

Hoodie barely turned around and almost immediately seeing a fairly small splash of water repeatedly hitting the drain before sighing. Sink's leakin' through again. Masky tiredly lifted his head backwards, the pang of his previous headache threatening to return if he doesn't soften his movements. He asked the taller man to step aside. And out of nowhere, he pulls out a toolbox from the cabinet, fishes out a wrench and creaks the cabinet under the sink open. There, the pipes were immediately assaulted by his wrench, and soon enough, he stopped the leak just before his eyes went dark.

Hoodie was taken aback, yes, but quickly recovers from the new found shock, remembering that his old friend is a carpenter-- he was just slightly surprised Masky remembered anything at all.

From then on Hoodie started calling on Masky everytime a repair was needed.

Toilet not flushing? He'll grumble about how your shit is too big to go down the pipe.

Slammed the door too hard? He will annoyingly screw the hinge back on.

Jumped a little and broke the floorboards? Fatty.

He just silently accepted it, despite his his annoyed nature, he knew there wasn't anyone else with that much experience in those things but him, and he takes a little pride in that.

Especially when it comes to fixing a woman's things. It stems from his inner trauma/abandonment issues since his mother left him at the young age of nine years old and he's had a... "view" for women since then.

He would boast about being "the man" of the house, just because he can fix Nurse Ann's table. (She wants to saw his head off)

HOODIE (BRIAN THOMAS)

He's in (1) charge of in-house security using various CCTV systems he keeps in his office, as well as (2) tolling the numbers for their organ business, keeping track of how much money each member should get, and (3) monthly room checks of each resident.

His CCTVs don't make it into the rooms of the residents. It is an unspoken rule of the mansion that nobody should ever, invade or snoop another one's room without their permission.

His cameras blink in the corners of hallways, in the kitchen, the living room, the library-- basically every common part of the mansion.

He does this so the liberty and the dignity of the mansion doesn't get ruined. And by ruined I mean he does this so Jeff doesn't have another fit and rip the couch again.

Overall, he does watch over everyone so that no fights break out resulting in unnecessary clinic visits to EJ, no furniture is ruined, nobody unknown is breaking inside, no malicious intent is done...

At least on his part. In his eyes, he can do whatever he wants. He's a cocky bastard. Don't be surprised to find him in your room sniffing for "prohibited items" even though there are literal army guns stored in the weapons room.

TICCI TOBY

He's known for breaking up fights whenever Hoodie informs him that there is one and at first he gets made fun of or not taken seriously, but once he throws his hatchet down in between the two penetrators they go silent. He's also one of the people in charge of hunting for food, usually he brings home deer, rabbit and stuff like that. He is also a mentor for X-Virus (Cody) since he's the newest member of the mansion.

Every time a fight starts, he begins ticking off people in his head. He recalls what people have told him and which pissed them off, and almost every time it ends up being Jeff starting it.

It began when him and Kate were still a bit new to the mansion and even then Masky and Hoodie were very commonly found bickering at each other during missions. One snowy day, Toby had enough and basically screeched at the top of his lungs for them to stop-- only for Masky to make fun of him. He ended up being slammed into a brick wall and was threatened by Toby before he dragged Masky back to the cabin they were staying at and locked the two separately for a while until things calmed down.

KATE THE CHASER

If you think about it she'd be known as a "recon" of the group. She stayed in the forest the longest out of all of them and safe to say she's actually encountered one of the cryptids. Although she didn't fight, she didn't flee either. She observed the creature, to her curiosity, and figured out what deterred it and what attracted its presence. She is also the main one who is informed first of the mission since her first instinct isn't brawling with the others on who gets which part in the mission.

Of course she's just as strong as her groupmates, possibly even stronger since The Operator takes more out of her than the others. But in the times she's able to calm her animalistic nature down and listen to her surroundings, she can actually sense what is lingering there, and whether it has bad intentions or not.

Regardless, she plays a very important part in the group. She is the main disseminator of information in the group.

BONUS!

WAIT, BUT AMBER, HOW DOES THE INFORMATION GET TO KATE? OR ANYONE IN THE MANSION? DIDN'T YOU IMPLICATE THAT THE OPERATOR DOESN'T PARTICULARLY LIKE SHOWING ITSELF UNLESS IT'S FOR AN EMERGENCY?

Yes! You're absolutely correct. The Operator does not like showing himself to his children as it can hinder his underground work, so, he disseminates his missions to his proxies like this:

In very common cases, the information comes out on its own through a typewriter. Yes, a haunted typewriter.

Whenever a new mission is to be completed, its keys click and clack on their own, despite nobody at all near touching it. And when the page is full and finished, its bell will let out a little ding!

Voila. A new mission.

It's impressive, really. How it works is, The Operator has his own little typewriter in his office. Same model, same size, same color, the only distinct mark for him to know it's his is, his sigil is carved on the side.

He types away, and he presses this silver little button on the very corner, and just like that, the paper fades away, leading to the proxies' typewriter to type it write out again, on its own this time.

Kate's room is the closest to this typewriter, so she ends up hearing the bell-- almost every single time.

It resides in its own little room with very little space just for one person and one person only, propped up on a slim coffee table in the middle of it. I swear, it's a bad place for claustrophobics.

Anyhow, she reads it first, then takes it back to the common room where the proxies hang out mainly.

Any other information/warnings/missions addressed to any resident other than the proxies, are held confidential and only known by Kate. It is up to that resident's volition or choice to reveal it to them if wanted.

hope you enjoyed this lmao.

#creepypasta #hoodie #masky marble hornets #brian thomas #tim wright #brian marble hornets #creepypasta mansion #creepypasta hoodie #creepypasta masky #kate the chaser #ticci toby #creepypasta headcanon #creepypasta proxy #slender proxy #proxy #slenderman #slenderverse

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narenohate · 1 year ago

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the reckless, the wild youth (WIP)

(since eda and raine's backstory is so different in this AU, i'm pondering a comic about the two of them and just how and why it went so wrong) (infodump.... ramble?? ig down there + design notes on how my progress is going with this project)

Seb's design notes: anyways i've been dancing with the idea of making canis caninam's witches more animalistic. because yeah im just having fun at this point. bonus, sphynx / owl beast design. i'm not a big fan of her canon design, and it's not because i think she's scary.

my current inspo for the witch faces is a mix of good ol' na'vi 3d models, deerchip's s work (they're on twitter!!) and olya bossak's anthropomorphic portraits!! i didn't just want them to be elves who purr, tbh... though more and more as i post this i'm kind of hoping to get harrassed off the fandom for my weird ideas and "forced" to make this into an original story.

ramble on story derived from conversation with Bow (idea beta tester, victim of the circumstances of my hyperfixation, beautiful white hetero man who got here by accident). IT'S A ROUGH, UNEDITED DRAFT. PARTS OF IT ARE DIRECTLY FROM A CONVERSATION. IT'S ROUGH. Eda is born to the Clawthorne family - daughter of Gwendolyn, a healer, and Dell, a toy maker who married into her clan as to escape the hardships of living outside the barrier, amidst bestial demons... and probably something else, smart enough to scare him into hiding, though that usually goes unsaid. She is one of a pair of twins, and, for the first fourteen suns, eleven moons and twenty-nine sundowns of their lives they are inseparable.

It's their fifteenth birthday when Dell gives them an old grimmoire that has been in his family for centuries. Some of its words have been altered with the years, rewritten and repaired by generations, their meaning lost - symbols re-drawn from memory with each unfortunate accident.

Lilith partakes in that tradition - having to repair a page of a long-winded wild-spell meant to be cast by a powerful warlock, after she spills some tea on it.

that night, the two set out to camp with a group of their friends -hyacinth, a selk nobleman who, despite his young age, served under belos as his huntsmaid and personal cook, and his apprentice, darius, a prodigy who'd already been branded for a coven, and who'd been personally selected by belos to be a companion for the golden-haired boy who'd earned his favor.

and, of course, trailing slightly behind, raine whispers. their glasses are foggy and they already smell like the alcohol they brought to the party.

nobody leaves the outermost wall to camp these days, of course, so the bunch of them settle in an abandoned park, before doing as teenagers do when provided alcohol, and getting plastered.

at some point, eda, raine and hyacinth get into an argument of some kind - one that results in eda opening the grimmoire she brought along, and going along with the plan she'd nearly abandoned: using her rudimentary knowledge of the old tongue the tome was written in, she makes a circle out of salt around herself, and reads the spell.

its words are all wrong. whatever she summons she angers, and, at first, nothing happens.

then, as she and raine lay together on her hammock the afternoon after the party and the tiny backyard camping "trip", eda falls ill.

it was fever and it was vomiting. then the lining of her stomach, then her gums and her teeth and her tongue. her skin sagged and it was like she was all liquid inside it.

raine slept by her bedside, singing to calm her down whenever she awoke. lilith laid in the old manor's basement, endlessly brewing potion after potion to try and quell the pain that refused to ebb away.

darius and hyacinth did not go to belos - instead they were stopped at the door by the clawthorne patriarch, and with his help, took a griffin out of the city, found an old thing. it called itself queen of bats, and it was made of wood, and it knew dell very well.

the three give her the griffin, and spend four sunsets and three sunrises walking back with their prize - it's a living tether, a wooden owl dell had made as a toy for his daughter when she was very young. filled with the griffin's soul, it was given by its enchantress the mission of tethering its holder.

they arrive to a burning house. darius and dell don't speak of it, but the only time they both see the emperor is when they deliver his selk concubine's mutilated carcass at the throne room, laid at his feet like an offering.

dell lost one eye to his daughter, the other eye and both hands to the emperor.

raine was gone to everyone except the thing that eda had become, a sphynx that spared their life for the price of their song. they land atop a rocky cliffface, a few miles away from the outer border of the bonesborough wall - soon, something finds them.

the owl her father had carved for her followed eda, and raine became sure, at that moment, that she wasn't lost.

lilith and darius compensated for hyacinth's loss, sitting for years at the foot of the throne as the emperor's guards, until belos found it fit to entrust them both to make for him a new selkie servant - they took hyacinth's old heart, a blue stone that ebbed and flowed, and they took the lungs of a dragon, the innards of a maiden, and all the blood they could get from a seal-devil, along with a tiny fragment of bone that had been strapped to hyacinth's old heart.

they spend day and night putting him together - the rough face of clay mixed with blood, the organs gracefully gifted, the bone.

they bury the sculpture. a boy digs himself out of the dirt while they sleep in the temple, curled up together in a mess of ratty old sheets they'd found.

they name him hunter because he was more demon than boy, but had hyacinth's face, and, though something seemed very wrong, he had somehow killed and dragged in a rat to eat by their side during the time they'd spent asleep.

belos allows the name to stay, and grants them both titles and robes of white, and allows them to mary whomever they wish.

lilith secludes herself to a temple and studies every grimmoire she can, and darius takes on apprentice after apprentice, teaching them how to pull the throat strings of a bard out, and how to best slay a sphynx.

hunter looks just like hyacinth, and, despite how strongly he'd imprinted on his makers, they both hate him from just the look in his eyes.

lilith finds the portraits of every other selk concubine, every other golden guard.

it's always hyacinth's face. meanwhile, raine managed to unearth eda - partially.

they bind her to them, and she remembers very little, but she is undeniably herself, and despite the tragedy of her body, or maybe because of it, she seeks to cause chaos. she embraces the life of a wildling, and raine follows in her stead.

a year passes. then two. three, maybe. probably more, considering everything that comes after. what really matters is that, as raine grows more frantic in their search for something that can help her, occasionally coming in contact with the fragmented clawthorne family's matriarch (before finding her treatments too harsh), all in search for a way to stabilize eda's mind and body...

she accepts that fate she was given.

the system of castes and castings and divisions becomes pointless to her, and she eagerly, easily pushes raine to rebellion by her side. the wards around the walls have nothing against her - usually, griffins and dragons don't fly that high.

raine found gwen's attempts to heal her daughter too much - but at some point, more than a decade after the two set out together, a night after raine settles a chain with a golden ring around her massive paw's wrist, they catch wind, through that shared palisman of theirs, that raine's mother has passed.

they leave eda to sleep atop the church, tail around its tower, and enter it to pray.

they meet someone - a who who dances on the edge of being a what - and, in their grief, bear to her their heart, and are offered a deal in return.

all they want in life, for a price, their mind.

eda wakes up, a moon later, transformed, and with every memory made vague, erased except for vague outlines.

naked but for a wedding ring around her neck, in a dark, low chunk of the city, with the body of a beast, she's seen as exotic enough to work the night for a couple years, as she catches up on a life she lost, and takes the name of a harpy, not knowing she's a clawthorne.

… clawthorne health clinic seems so familiar of a name, though. she jots down their contacts. attends every speech given by darius deammonne, head of the carnomantis force, and often borrows from the library books on forbidden magic written or translated by one lilith clawthorne.

it's not familiar.

she feels like it should be, though. so she digs into it all - never takes the name of clawthorne, but as her social standing falls and she teeters ever closer to living outside the walls, the people around her take to calling her the owl-lady.

she eventually takes to stealing from old homes - the abandoned sort, full of hobs and rats and hexes she can easily bypass, with magic as strong (as well-trained, despite the lack of any memory of schooling) as hers.

there's a farm-house, though, mostly burnt, long ago vacated, that feels very familiar when she enters. she tears up despite not remembering her, when she recognizes her twin's face beside her own in a portrait. in the rubble of a bedroom, a large woven hammock still has an old violin sitting broken on top of its torn fabric.

inside its case, the thing she knows she gave up her memories - or maybe something more - for, sits waiting and patient.

... a key to the human realm. she knows a lot about it, and remembers an unbound fascination.

(her one visit goes very wrong, of course - but she can spy through her palisman's little eye, so it's worth it. it's all worth it.)

meanwhile, raine wakes up, married to a woman whose face is foggy to them, with three apprentices who don't know their name but promise they've been there under them for weeks.

whomever wiped their mind didn't bother to take the human-styled wedding ring off their finger.

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ccuniculusmolestus · 3 months ago

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Do you think Henry would kill himself anyway even without thr situation with Charles? When I got to Bunny's death in book I had a feeling that Henry will kill himself over it. So I was wondering if you felt the same vibes

I don’t think Charles’ situation caused the suicide, but maybe it acted as a catalyst. The root cause of the suicide was Julian’s “betrayal” and also, I think his obsession with Greek ideals/being a Greek hero/embodying the glory and might of a myth, combined with his depression/general disdain towards living a contemporary life were big contributions to his suicidal (perhaps even homicidal) tendencies.

I think it’s obvious from the start that Henry is Not Very Right in the head. No I don’t mean his autistic hyperfixation on Ancient Greece and its ideals, but generally speaking, he seems like a stoic intellectual but something was always off about him, just a little. I think it becomes obvious when we try to look outside of Richard’s perspective.

That being said when I was reading the book I hadn’t processed any of this and was not expecting his suicide. In fact when I got to the hotel part I was actually under the impression (for some reason) that there was at least a few more pages left (and I never expected he wouldn’t be in those pages 🥲 this is Richard’s story after all…) so his suicide made me go “what.”

But yeah, Charles/Camilla were catalysts to Henry’s suicide but not the cause of it. The cause had been established I think many years ago and had been building up. Bunny’s murder might as well have been a reason too, because maybe it made Henry realize the tendencies he had that he DIDNT want to have, maybe he knew he’d kill or hurt more people because he couldn’t help it, maybe killing Bunny made him realize how sick he truly was. It’s the typical tragedy of when someone you love is alive and causing you extreme trouble you may want them dead, but then when you’ve stained your hands in their blood and they’ve ceased to exist you realize, in passing days and moments, that you miss their voice and maybe they didn’t deserve that.

Taking a life is not so easy. When you kill, you lead your soul to a gradual corruption of not only your self but your community (in this sense maybe his friends?). (The concept of miasma).

#TSH #bunny corcoran #the secret history #henry winter #tsh donna tartt #francis abernathy #charles macaulay #richard papen #camilla macaulay #Donna tartt #asks!#asks :3

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melodrangea · 10 months ago

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I'M BEGGING YOU PLS I NEED KID WITH A READER THAT'S LIKE THE TITULAR CHARACTER FROM KOMI CAN'T COMMUNICATE-- THEY COME OFF AS LIKE A KUUDERE, COOL AND COLLECTED-- BUT SECRETLY THEY'RE A DORK AND SOCIALLY ANXIOUS AND JUST HAVE A LOT OF POWER AND KNOW HOW TO USE IT!! Maybe they wear a cloak and mostly blacks and reds😈😈😈 And maybe instead of using a weapon, they have some unexplainable power source similar to witches that just makes them even /more/ mysterious and cool. Until they start talking to you about how the last of both the carolina parakeets and passenger pigeons died in the exact same cage 4 years apart💀 Maybe the reason they're so quiet is /because/ they're so awkward and weird🥺 They probably silently stare at him all wide eyed and freak him out until he realises that means they just think he's pretty and like looking at him🙏🙏🙏 Anyways sorry for rambling🥺🥺🥺

i have a bunch of asks i’ve still yet to answer (sorry my loves) but this sounded too intriguing and funny not to write right away

what i’m hearing is witch!reader that’s calm on the outside and quirky on the inside

and something about birds :)

so imma just roll with that real quick

———————————————————————————

Kid x Witch!Kuudere! Reader

-now this totally makes sense

-because let’s be honest Kid is basically the exact same way

-cool and collected on the outside, but a total symmetry dork on the inside with a love for architecture

-you first notice Kid during sparring practice at the dwma

-assuming this is post-kishin and witches are more accepted, now you’re in the elite class with Mkf and the others

-you were assigned to face him, Patty and Liz

-you were nervous facing not only three on one, but one of the dwma’s top students

-Kid on the other hand noticed you for your witchy traits

-how the cloak you huddled yourself in flowed like a shroud of feathers, how soft your hair looked and the glittering jewelry you adorned yourself with

-you looked a little out of place but so did he and Kid respected your lack of care, how aloof you seemed to be to the whole scenario

-the spar ended in a close match with Kid winning but that impressed him even more at how close you got

-Kid was used to wiping the floor with every student that crossed his path, he admired how well you held up

-he liked a challenge

-you two danced around each other for a long time, pretending to be calm and calculated until one day the two of you were hanging out, walking down the street towards a cafe you’d heard of

-when Kid spotted a very symmetrical looking pigeon…

-and the facade was all over for the two of you

-Kid immediately went into fanboy mode, praising the bird for its unique coloring and symmetrical feathers

-and you about passenger pigeons and the odd coincidences revolving around the end of the species

it was an interesting time at the cafe, managing to both surprise the other about their hidden hyper fixations

but it honestly just gave the two of you more to talk about

there was the obvious initial embarrassment about your cover being blown but Kid found your wide array of knowledge very attractive

especially since your witchy persona is bird based

and Kid’s hyper-fixation made sense as a grim reaper he had to keep order, and what’s more orderly than symmetry?

and now that the metaphorical veil had been lifted it gave you both the confidence to admit your feelings, knowing that you both finally understood each other

were you the hottest and oddest couple ever? probably.

but did either of you give a single shit? absolutely not

and now Kid can spoil you with shiny objects while you use your magic to make things symmetrical :)

———————————————————————————

man if i had a dollar for every time i said hyperfixation

but if wishes were wings my grammar skills would fly so high they’d burn in the sun

and that’s a wrap my lovelies <3

i hope i did your request justice anon!!

-melodrangea <3

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sea-adhesiveness537 · 2 months ago

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CAN YOU TELL ME ALL OF THE JELLYFISH DUO LORE?? cuz i think im beginning to hyperfixate on them

also SUPRISE FANART DOODLE JUMPSCARE!! LISTEN UP LUSAMINE GOT SUM TO SAY‼️ (btw sorry if i got anything wrong or missed any details)

Oh shit! Screen Universe doodle fan art REAL!! Idk if you're a daydreamer or not, but if not, the fact that I managed to get a not immersive daydreamer hyperfixate and be obsessed with them is very impressive!!

Ok, they have a whole ass lore doc in the works that was essentially pretty close to having its early release version done that I somehow didn't finish because I have other stuff in my plate. They go very far back! Back before Screen Universe was a thing in my head!

But I will give you the basic gist and summary of it because holy fucking shit, I'm honestly, genuinely very flattered that you like them as a pair! Or even notice that I pair them so much.

Ok, so! On the meta timeline, back before Screen Universe was a thing in my head, they were enemies in the previously active daydream world because I genuinely hated Lusamine at first because of what she did in her video game (very bad things, she's a Pokémon villain). Then one day, on 2017, on the night of the second to the last day of examination week on grade 6, I read a meme comic of Lusamine recreating a scene of the SpongeBob episode, Nature Pants, and it went into chaos from there. They've been paired more ever since then. The more SpongeBob memes I found of Lusamine being portrayed as SpongeBob himself on the internet, the closer they got in the daydreams 😭😔. Eventually, the previously active daydream world's main story came to an end and into its extra content stage, and getting stuff that's even unrelated to it. At this point, both of these Jellyfish obsessed fucks took over as the centering piece from there.

Eventually, Screen Universe was made in my head for them to fuck around in. At first, it was a "dlc" or extra content connected to the previous world, but it split itself from said world and became its own thing or identity in 2019. Screen Universe then kept growing, changing, and developing from there.

Now, on to the in-lore or in-story shit of Screen Universe.

Just a head's up, Lusamine in her original canon isn't... A good person. This would be definitely important to the whole Screen Universe lore bit since there is something in her Screen Universe lore that's tied to her canon lore because of how it affected said lore and her life in Screen Universe's story. Long story short: it was BAD. It complicated her life outside of acting out the canon storyline really quick.

At this point, both of them grew out of their characters and diverge too far or pretty far from it mentally or internally speaking. So don't expect both of them to be similar to their canon selves. This bit is especially important to their lores and themes of Screen Universe, so keep this in mind. I mean, there are characters in Screen Universe who are pretty similar to their canon selves, but not all of them. SpongeBob and Lusamine are two of the people who aren't like their canon selves.

For starters, they're this species called Fictionals. They're made for the entertainment of us audiences, specifically to play roles of the characters and act out their stories. They have this true form underneath their skin, and said skin is just a meat suit resembling a character used to portray said character. Yes, they're actors. Fake versions or imitations of the characters if you will. So you might see them or the other characters mention some meta shit their characters would otherwise not know, and some form of audience even they, the actors themselves, aren't certainly sure if they actually exist or not.

In lore or in the story, this all started when SpongeBob visited the Nintendo Empire (yes, there are big pots of lands based on the big video game and animation companies, they're called territories, and yes, video game and animated characters can co-exist together in the hub world called the Fictional Realm where they take a break from acting out their canons and do their own business there) and encountered Lusamine in a dark alleyway. Idk why, but in all versions of Screen Universe, they'd always meet up either within a dark alleyway or at the edge of a dark alleyway by the sidewalk. It's only the context that's been changed or developed over time. In the current context, SpongeBob made an excuse of just strolling around the Nintendo Empire one more time before going back to his homeland, the Nick Nation. But in reality, he's actually looking for Squidward and scanning the Empire for his whereabouts because of what happened to him in the events prior to this plot point. Then he encounters Lusamine at the edge of the dark alleyway, who was a newly made Fictional who fell from the sky (yyeeeeaaaahhh, they have an interesting way of being born, but basically no one has reproductive organs and their creators are the ones doing the work creating them before dropping them into their realm for safe keeping. But the Fictionals can live for a pretty long time as long as there's projects and acting work to do, so it works out).

Oh yeah, at some point during all that, there are other creatures foreign to them that tried to take Lus to their Realm because they... Like her too much. They're called Weblings and they're from another Realm called the Internet Realm. They're the embodiment of people's accounts on the internet, the most common one being the social media kind. SpongeBob saves Lus from being snatched in time and they both try to get away from the Weblings. They both go somewhere to eat, and Sponge tries to drop Lusa off in a place for her to wait for her senior co-stars from her series (in this case, Pokémon) to pick her up. However, she kept following him until it got to the point of stalking him home and hoping on the ride SpongeBob took to get to the Nintendo Empire in the first place. Just so you know, Nintendo Empire is rather far from the Nick Nation, so it'd take a while to make a back and forth trip between places. So when it was found out that his, eeerrrrr, new friend got in the blimp ship, he had no choice but to just go all the way back to the Nick Nation because they didn't expect that to happen or have enough resources to make an extra trip just to return some rookie game Fictional to her supposed homeland. He'd have to think about what to do with her after that.

When they got back to the Nick Nation, Sponge took care of Lus and nurse her back to a proper condition because when she fell from the skies before being found by him, she wasn't doing so hot and was struggling like a stray cat or a street creature back in the dark alleyway.

Then they spent more time together, bonding, Sponge guiding Lus about this new world around her and stuff. At one point, Sponge taught her a bit about morals like what's right and wrong... A bit too early for someone like her. This is especially important to the whole, "Lusamine was so fucked up in the True canon that it fucked up the Screen Universe counterpart's life" thing going on. Basically, that whole morality thing was either fuel or the start of her existential crisis because she later found out she was created specifically to portray a bad person doing bad things.

A month or so passed and the senior co-stars from the Pokémon series called up SpongeBob for them to pick up Lusamine from his place. At this point, they've grown somewhat attached to each other, and Lus didn't want to be separated from Sponge just yet. Luckily, the older human Pokémon actors agreed to let Sponge tag along since he's the closest to Lus and he's the only that helped her grow comfortable and adapt to the environment. They both went back to the Nintendo Empire, and then the first split in the story occurs. They part ways for now and they start doing their own things and go through their own arcs. But they meet up and visit each other every now and then throughout the story. It's mostly Lus doing the visiting since Sponge seems like a pretty busy person to leave his homeland often. He's the literal leader of the place, what more can he do when there's a lot of shit for him to worry about due to the events of the storyline prior to the "introduction to video game people" season/book/part. Then again, he was doing something else aside from that due to something else happening in his side of the story.

Anyways, Lus mostly visits Sponge ever so often during her break times or while she's sneaking off from acting work. She honestly wants to tell him about her new job as an actor and her smaller grievances in said job without spoiling her game's story. She also invited him to check out the live performance of her debut game before knowing her character's true canon nature. She later wants to take that back after knowing what her character is truly like out of fear over Sponge possibly hating her for playing as such a person, but at that point, Sponge already wants to check it out anyway. Dw, he doesn't care or mind about what she plays as as long as the actress herself is not too bad of a person. He's one of few known people who's chill around villain actors, both in the public eye and just in general.

When their respective arcs and sides of the story reach its climax or peak, Lusamine's side of the story interrupted SpongeBob's side because a co-star of hers from a different Pokémon game who plays a pretty similar role as her accused SpongeBob of leaking some major canon story bits from Lusamine's game because during her side of the story and her own arc, her off camera life grew miserable because a lot of people in her homeland mysteriously knew about what her character did in the true canon story and start attacking her over it. SpongeBob told the accuser that Lus didn't tell him ANYTHING about what happened in her canon story, just the behind the scenes stuff and what she and her co-stars are up to adjacent to it or outside of it.

Yes, the (replacement. Very long story) Ghetsis Fictional accused the SpongeBob Fictional of leaking Pokémon Sun and Moon's plot because the Lusamine Fictional got hate crimes for her character's actions way earlier than it should've happened (during production instead of after its release).

SpongeBob let the accuser and two other Pokémon co-stars (Cynthia and Lysandre) stay over a little longer and get to know them a bit better. I mean, he has heard of them and knew them at some point, but they're from mentions, the news, and other sorts of second or third degree information, never directly interacting with them outside of the time when they had to pick Lus up for her actor job at an earlier point of the story

At this point, it's SpongeBob who's now doing the visiting because of the news and the accusation. To the point where he even stays in the Nintendo Empire for a little longer in one of his visits that's closer to the game's release date (some time in September, mid or late October, or early November, I didn't decide when did he do that visit, but it should be one of those).

There's a story point where Lus ripped her skin off out of distress, fear, anxiety, and guilt from playing the character, the grave implications that imprinted on her, and her society conditioning her to feel those things because they hold their highest regard over what character and role someone plays as. And if anyone plays the villain of their canon story, they strip the actor's rights and normalcy, and sometimes even their life if it especially goes REALLY bad. It gets worse for the actor the more psychotic/fucked up the original villain character is.

And that's why and how Actress Lusamine despises her character so much (and to some extent, her creators for making the character that way and forcing her to not only play said character, but bear or keep the character's name and body too). She thinks it's the character's fault that she got into this sort of situation this early into her life. But at the same time, a part of her hated herself and felt guilty for acting out those scenes. As if, in some cruel cosmic sense, it's her fault for having such a role in the first place even though it was out her control.

Luckily and conveniently, SpongeBob was in the Nintendo Empire when Lusamine did the whole Peel Her Skin Off thing and found her in the same area where he first met and saved her. During all this, her other few major co-workers, both from her own Pokémon game and from other Pokémon games, went after her and looked for her together with SpongeBob. SpongeBob then tries to persuade and convince her to go back in the suit or else she might cave in to the intense and horrible pain she put herself into from being outside the character meat suit and die permanently (yeah, there are two kinds of deaths, permanent and temporary death. Temporar is more like fainting after going down to zero hp and being very exhausted. Permanent is a true death where they'll never wake up again). It took awhile, but eventually after reassuring that Sponge wouldn't hate or attack her for whatever might happen in her true canon, and that she can be whoever she wants to be despite being stuck to the body and name of a character, she goes back to the skin suit.

Then release of the game rolls around... And then the main antagonist of the story approaches. It's Mickey... Mickey Mouse. Throughout the video game characters' intro season/book/part/whatever segment of the story, he's shown to be harassing past actors in the flashback sequences and arcs, which includes the older Pokémon actors. That's why Cynthia, a character who's otherwise not a bad guy in canon, gets involved or intertwined with the villain actors' shenanigans and the Ghetsis actor had to be replaced with another Fictional to carry that role. Mickey did something to them that caused them to be in the situations they are now in during the present day. Mickey, along side with his group or organization, is also tied to SpongeBob's side of the plot and the acceleration of SpongeBob's issues and angst.

I feel like there's more to explain about... All of this, but we'll get to that some other time or post since this is supposed to be a Jellyfish Duo centric post.

Before going into the next section, I want to talk about Live Performances and how they work. A Live Performance is basically the actors reenacting the events of their source materials in their little workplace where they usually do recordings of their work. It's like their way of showing other actors what they do and can do, impress other actors, and often times, a tradition or a rite of passage for the newbies to exhibit what they learned and done during their production/development stage of their debut project to the older ones. Their workplace is a pocket dimension studio world thingy that has everything an actor needs for their work.

Anyways, now in the present events, instead of SpongeBob going first to try the Live Performance of Pokémon Sun and Moon the game, it was Mickey because, would you look at that, the game released on the same day as when Mickey as a character was born and debuted as a concept of a cartoon character, November 18. And as expected, the Pokémon LARP session went BAD! Lusamine almost died to the mouse she's trying to entertain multiple times because, "character=bad, therefore character's actor=also bad" bullshit and Mickey would always coincidentally get into a psychosis/delusional episode at the peak of a live game's story, which explains the suffering and bullshit the other actors had to go through to not be murdered by the mouse. Some even suspected that Mickey's bullshitting just to have an excuse to get off to his sick kicks, but they're not so sure about that. People tried to ban him from their own Live Performances in the past, their government was like, "money :)" and, "he besties with emperor Mario, so Mickey good :)" (ok, the latter statement was just an exaggeration, but you get the gist of it). So they just didn't get rid of him.

During most of the murder attempts during the Live Performances, Lusamine hit Mickey, both in normal form and in her big boss form, and just ram all she got into him like his face. Both out of impulse, and because she snapped after being attacked for her character's canon crimes for so long. This WILL be important for later :}.

After the whole Mouse x Pokémon gen 7 rampage went down, it was SpongeBob's turn on the Live Performance or Pokémon LARP sesh. It went smoothly and normal. Just kinda rocky here and there because he'd try to derail the story sometimes either for the fun of it or out of boredom, and the actress who's originally the main character in the canon Pokémon SuMo story was not having any of it and tries to rope things back to how the original plot line should go. There'd be times when SpongeBob and Lusamine would have secret and illegal meta gaming talks over the phone throughout the course of the live game because the latter who was waiting for her cue to show up got bored and wanted to talk to him and give her company. I mean, there are other co-workers around, but they're too busy doing their own thing, keeping the act running, reviewing their script, and all. So they talked whenever Sponge is not preoccupied with a scene. There's this one point where SpongeBob accidentally steps out of the overworld and into this void place full of code. It's like a skeleton of the world if you will. Lusamine had to guide him out of there without being suspicious of an important figure being in danger in her own workplace. Don't worry, he got out.

When the story got closer to Lusa's big reveal of her canon nature, her actress kinda freaked out and gave Sponge a heads up on what it "might" go down. Like, a warning, and the option of turning back, since she's worried that what Sponge reassured her was not fully true or that she's still unsure about SpongeBob's reaction ever since the whole Mouse crime attempt went down. SpongeBob still pushed through and progressed the story, leading him to That Plot Point of the story. They still talk about what was happening during that part of the story meta speaking in a form of morse codes without ruining or interrupting the original scene. While SpongeBob was surprised from the emotional whiplash of what canon Lusamine was like, Actress Lus was relieved that SpongeBob doesn't hate her or look her down as a person for carrying an emotionally heavy role as a reason of existing. He just felt bad for her and wished he didn't denied it out of grief, wished he had done something better than denying (yeeeeaaahh, he seen all the signs that point to Actress Lusamine playing the villain at work, but ignored them because he hated the thought of losing a newly made friend to a part of society and something that's out of his control due to past traumas related to losing friends).

They have more meta calls after that, but it's not as often as before because of how heavy the situation felt even if it's just an act. Then again, there are also other factors behind it, so there's that.

At the climax of the reenactment, they have a play fight that's more friendly than whatever Mickey has going on with the other actors. Anyways, that's how SpongeBob seen Lusamine's boss form. Oh, and there were multiple mistakes during that point of the reenactment because it's triggering Lusa's trauma of Mickey trying to kill her permanently. So they had to do over again and again until they got it right.

After all that, they finally cooled down, and went back to meta talking again. When the post game reenactment stuff came around, SpongeBob poke around and find out about what other stuff the game has in store before wrapping up the LARP sesh.

At one point, there was a post game bit that made him reflect on his actions back in his side of the plot and his character arc because he was becoming an asshole to a pair of characters while the whole disaster/existential angst inducing production of Pokémon SuMo arc thingy went down. He later thanks Lus for the Live Performance, not just for the general entertainment, but also for showing him see what he did wrong. Lus was oblivious to the whole thing and didn't know what he exactly meant, so she assumed that she just gave him some good entertainment with her performance. Recently, I thought of a scenario where Lus wants to have a Pokémon battle with SpongeBob not as her character, but as herself or actor self, so I thought of adding that in for the post game reenactment section.

Once the Pokémon LARP sesh wrapped up and stuff, the actors did their cool down and change out of their acting gear while Sponge does his own thing rating everything like the actors and their characters. The main priority of the rating are the actors, the rest are optional and not important.

Remember the rat? Well, he'll appear now.

So the rat bastard shows the fuck up again, and sues Lusamine because she punched and hit him back in his own Live Performance sesh (even if it's out of self defense). And then the whole trial arc ensued. It ended in disaster and a planned execution because Lus hit Mickey with her boss form, and her villain role puts her in a position that's less ideal than her opponent. So she's very much doomed from the get go.

Luckily, SpongeBob helped Lus escape prison and her perma death sentence along side with her co-workers and some of SpongeBob's co-workers and allies from his homeland. But now SpongeBob has to confront Mario and the legal side of the Nintendo Empire—

(Screen Universe part two is fucking nuts, I tell you 💀. It goes bananas towards the middle and the end. And this is just the Jellyfish Duo sections of the plot!)

(cont.) after taking Lusamine out of prison and not in a bailing way. SpongeBob negotiated with Mario about the terms and conditions of Lusamine's fate to ensure that she can still live without dying to legal consequences. Later, they agreed that she can stay with Sponge and in his Territory as long as she doesn't set foot upon the lands of the Empire's surface unless with the intent of going to actor work or under supervision. Basically, she got banished from the Nintendo Empire after all that happened.

#immersive daydreaming #screen universe #spongebob #screen universe rambling #paraportal #maladaptive daydreaming #lusamine #ask #there's more but this is taking too long #I'm sure I just rambled about most of part two's plot with the ommision of the other sections like the Waltian Cult and SpongeBob'sbackstor #and side of the story but it'd just make things longer than it should've been #I'm honestly flattered that I got someone seemingly outside of the daydream community brainrot about these two #like yes! come join me and a handful of other few people in crack shipping hell!#jellyfish duo

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daytaker · 1 year ago

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NightBringer Satan is a Gift.

I understand everyone has their own opinions on how good/not good NB is as a game or a story or whatever, but in my opinion, Satan's characterization is soooo enhanced by it. I know that this isn't an opinion that everyone shares, but to me, Satan felt emotionally artificial sometimes in the original game (more on that below).* He felt kind of awkward and like he wanted to connect with MC but something was blocking the kind of connection they develop with some of the other brothers. (Disclaimer: I've only done season 1 of OG, so I can't speak to how he's characterized later on. I know, I know, shame. But I'm trying my best.) Getting to see what Satan is like when he doesn't have any control over his emotions makes the stiffness and artificiality make more sense to me, and they become admirable because we get to see just how hard it is for him to get everything under control.

I think they did a really good job with the pacing of his development in NB too. Satan in Lesson 1 and Satan in Lesson 19 are different, but there isn't a moment where he suddenly starts controlling his emotions better. I think there's a lot going on behind the scenes with him as far as his emotional growth and self control are concerned.

Also let's not forget some very important things about Satan that make him, IMO, one of the most interesting characters to work with as a writer:

Satan was never an angel; he had no fall from grace.

Satan was created from Lucifer's wrath---he is literally the product of trauma and self-mutilation.

Satan is significantly younger than his brothers.

He spent the first year of his life more or less trapped in a castle with his deeply emotionally wounded brothers.

He has a deep resentment towards Lucifer that sometimes defies reason---he wishes he didn't dedicate so much of his time and energy to him, but it's basically a compulsion.

He hates his deep association with Lucifer, and he hates that he has a lot in common with him.

And these lead me to some headcanons that live rent-free in my brain every day of my life.

Satan sees himself as a reminder of the Great Celestial War and everything his brothers lost in it, including Lilith.

He is divine retribution against Lucifer for his failure, for leading his brothers to failure, for letting his sister die.

He acts as a counterbalance to Lucifer's pride by bearing the weight of the shame that Lucifer can't fully accept now that he is the Avatar of Pride. Even if Lucifer pushes it out of his mind, Satan never forgets that he failed in the worst way possible.

His biggest aspiration is to become a full and complete person outside of any association he has with Lucifer. He feels like some sort of parasitic tumor that exists only in opposition to his brother, and he wants desperately to escape that role that he feels he was born into.

Anyway, Satan is great, hail Satan, all that good stuff. Did you know I have a lot of thoughts and opinions about Satan? I know, shocking. For more of my takes here's my fic about him (on AO3).

*I think Satan almost metaphorically represents certain elements of autism---emotions that don't come out the way you intend, masking and its limitations, hyperfixations that are barely under control. In Fandom Discourse(TM) there's sometimes a level of focus on more 'cutesy' autistic traits that we find endearing in characters, like social obliviousness and gleefully indulged hyperfixations. But emotional control, emotional masking, emotional seepage, emotional artificiality---these are also real and messy and often times they aren't cute and they're uncomfortable to see in yourself or in someone else. I really don't like diagnosing characters so I'm not about to claim Satan "is" autistic, but as someone who has been called essentially 'spectrum adjacent' by doctors, I relate to the awkwardness and the desire to appear normal despite knowing you're not and emotions spilling out in ugly ways---um. That got really long and personal.

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ashestxr · 4 months ago

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being in the hermitcraft/life series fandom while also being hyperfixated on cherik is a problem, because i cant stop imagining the xmen and the brotherhood as minecraft youtubers that are normally very chill and respectful but go batshit when put on a pvp server with barely any rules 😭

like, hear me out, xmen first class as 3rd life

charles gathers as many of his youtuber friends and acquaintances as possible for a hardcore minecraft server where everyone has three lives, expecting it to be all peaceful and stuff until people are on their red life, and at first it is, when people are just getting started. erik and charles team up, of course, and so do a few others like shaw and emma or raven and hank, most people just sticking to themselves

but then shaw is an ass and breaks the "rules" by killing erik on purpose while not on his red life. this ends with erik swearing that he'll be the one to get shaw out of the series (charles is not impressed when he finds out)

things get relatively more peaceful again after that, people dying on accident here and there, but of course, that doesnt last long as shaw is the first to get to his last life. hes allowed to kill people now and its made worse by the fact that his alliance has grown stronger, azazel and janos have joined him and emma in their castle on the beach. shaw is even proudly showing off his new netherite helmet, despite the fact that helmets arent allowed on the server

moira decides to do something about that and goes to charles and erik to ask for help of aligning as many other people as possible against the four of them before they get more allies. they go off on their own to recruit the others while moira builds a secret base for their meetings. unsurprisingly, everyone agrees to join them, but they didnt know that shaw had already recruited angel before asking her. a couple more people get on their red life outside of shaw. the team has a couple of successful secret meetings, but angel rats them out and tells shaw where they are

while charles erik and moira are out scoping out shaws base, they find only emma is there and end up in a stand off. shaw and the others storm the secret base and find darwin, alex and angel there. it ends with angel being revealed as a traitor and alex and darwin killed. alex is on his last life, but darwin was already on red, so hes first out of the server. he gets made fun of by alex for that ("seriously darwin? you can adapt to survive anything but that doesnt translate to minecraft skills??"). emma is also killed shortly after and is second out

before this, everyone that was against shaw was just in a tentative alliance, nothing like what shaws team was like. they would have meetings and help each other with some things, but they were still off on their own. but now they were a team, sticking together in their new base and and helping each other grow stronger

on the final day of the server, most of the people were on red, charles being one of the few still on yellow. the plan was to swarm shaws team while they were still inside their base, but since last time they were there, it had been trapped and all hell broke loose once they stepped inside. practically everything blew up, and azazel, janos, and angel jumped them shortly afterward while they were still confused. shaw was no where to be found

erik went to look for him while everyone else fought and he found him in a secret room underground that had been untouched by the explosion. they fight and erik wins, donning the helmet that shaw was so proud of. during their fight, several other people lose their last life in the chaos, until eventually the only ones left are charles and moira, charles somehow miraculously still having two lives while moira is on her last

just as they are discussing how to end the game fairly, by having moira killing charles and then the three of them having a friendly battle to see who wins, erik comes back and sees that charles is still on his second life. he decides that charles deserves the win, or maybe they could have a joint win, and starts shooting moira from a distance, catching them off guard. moira starts to shoot back at erik, and while charles is trying to get them both to stop he gets shot in the chaos. already low on health from the battle before, and without any food to heal, he was one shot, and looses his second life and it was unfortunately eriks arrow that did it. moira, caught off guard at charles' sudden death, doesnt see erik coming closer and gets killed shortly after, leaving just erik and charles left

charles returns from his respawn and goes back to the beach with nothing on him and finds erik waiting there for him. erik asks if this means that they won. charles disagrees, saying that there has to be one winner, and all the "ghosts" left on the server agree in chat. erik begs him to reconsider, that it was charles' server, he could do whatever he wanted, they can change the rules and win together. they want the same thing. it was always their alliance above everyone else. charles disagrees.

theres nothing much that can be done. charles has nothing and moira took all of his things with her when she lost her last life. despite eriks insistence that they can have a fair fight, charles is already low health again and erik doesnt have enough food to get them both up to full health. charles takes the loss with dignity, and erik wins the first season

and of course, the collective fandom in their universe that has grown throughout this series freaks the fuck out over this finale 😭

like, charles and erik obviously become what desert duo is in our world (beach duo?), where people make a shit ton of art and fics about these two and also shipping them and people are still obsessed with their team-up even years after the first season has ended (their interactions in later seasons dont help)

and of course, the animatics. they are so dramatic and accidentally fool people into thinking theyre for something equally as dramatic, but when you actually watch it to see just how heart wrenching this series must be, this is what you see when you get to the big scene that everyone is obsessed over 😭

(imagine getting your fiancé into a silly block game only for him to get way more into it then you ever were)

i kinda got carried away while figuring out how to make xmfc fit into minecraft, cause despite all the detail i went into here, this au is mostly focused on these characters being minecraft youtubers rather than what they do in the game 😭

like i do have some plans for how dofp could work in the life series (and possibly making it be double life??), and the vaguest ideas for x1, but otherwise its just mostly silliness and dumb antics (like charles and erik being engaged but the fandom doesnt know or peter also being a youtuber and finding out that erik is his dad after already becoming friends with him online)

i really hope other people like this au because its been consuming my every thought lately 😭😭

#this is SO stupid LMAOOO #i did not expect to yap about this au as much as i have just now #and this is just barely scratching the surface..#this whole post is just me subtly trying to convince the cherik fandom to watch 3rd life tbh #(im not being subtle at ALL)#xmen #cherik #charles xavier #professor x #erik lehnsherr #magneto #xmen first class #mcyt cherik au #stars evil ramblings #ashestxr doodles

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duckie-darling · 11 months ago

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Worth the Effort

Lucifer x gn! sinner reader (may skew more f! reader in later chapters)

Chapter 1: Slow burn, Fluff (for now), post season 1, 4.5k words.

1 of (at least) 5 chapters

Inspired by the very specific intersection of Luci hyperfixation and youtube hoof care videos and relating way too hard to this silly, sad little man.

Summary: During the upswings of depression, the King of Hell's love language is breakfast and over the top circus puns. But on the downswings, he needs help remembering that he matters, too.

It was hard to identify the smell wafting through your hotel room, beckoning you away from your dreams and out from under the covers. The streets of hell were often smoky with the faint burning smell of dumpster fires or smoldering brimstone. But this was a little different. Almost pleasant. Almost comforting.

You rolled over to your other side, trying to will yourself back to sleep. It was too early to deal with a fire in the hotel. Surely if it were serious there’d be screaming, right? And besides, if it was anything besides the viridian hell-fires hungry for the flesh of sinners, then it would be fine. It wouldn’t actually hurt the sinners in the hotel, just the hotel itself. Right?

But after a few minutes of trying and failing to fall back into slumber, your growling stomach convinced you that it’s not likely to happen. You reluctantly kicked the blankets down off of your body and laid there, soaking in the comfort for a moment longer.

You hadn’t been a guest at the princess of Hell’s hotel that long. Long enough to fall into somewhat of a routine, but not long enough for the absolute decadence of the plush pillow and feather-soft sheets to have worn off. Not long enough for the quiet and solitude of a room all to yourself to stop being exquisite. Not long enough to forget what it was like to be out on those streets, a hapless sinner trying to dodge knives and bullets and bad deals. No, the privilege of this room and this place hadn’t worn off yet, so you chose to soak in a few more seconds with your head on a pillow behind a securely locked door.

Although, your stomach disagreed.

Finally giving in to its demands, you reluctantly shuffled to your feet and flicked on the bedside lamp with a yawn, limply rubbing sleep from your eyes. The smell had turned from something your brain detected as burning into instead something sweet, slightly smoky, and inviting. Someone was probably making themselves breakfast, and according to your stomach, you should follow suit.

You had come here with only the clothes on your back and whatever of your belongings weren’t pinched by pickpockets. So at least the added step of having to change out of pajamas wasn’t keeping you from breakfast! Turns out there’s a bright side to having not a single possession to your name.

But you still felt the need to make yourself look like you hadn’t just rolled out of bed before facing the world outside that door. The princess didn’t really seem like the kind to kick someone out for messy appearances, but you couldn’t afford to take any chances.

So your stomach continued to murmur as you trudged to the bathroom. You combed your fingers through your bedhead, detangling just enough to be presentable, and gargled with tap water in a weak attempt to stave off morning breath. You also checked your face for dirt and ensured the clothes you slept in weren’t twisted around during sleep. The face staring back at you in the mirror wasn’t exactly your best - but it was presentable.

Stepping out into the hallway, you were pleased to find you were alone, at least for now. While the enticing smell was definitely stronger out here, it didn’t seem like enough to awaken any other hotel residents. As you slowly walked down to the main floor, the sizzling and chopping noises cutting through the silence made it apparent that someone was in there cooking up a storm.

Plenty of people in hell were night owls or just slept most of the day, but very few of them would wake up this early in the morning to cook a proper breakfast for themselves, whistling cheerily. If there was some kind of visitor coming this morning, maybe it would be better to stay out of there - lie low, maybe see if that bartender (Husker was his name, you think?) had any cocktail peanuts to nibble on until the place cleared out. You cautiously stuck your head around the corner to glimpse the source of all the activity.

In no way did you expect that all the activity you heard from this room was coming from just one person.

He stood in front of the stove, whistling a jaunty little tune as he held a skillet in his right hand. He skillfully jerked the skillet, flipping a perfectly browned pancake into the air, which then did an acrobatic little flip before plopping back into the pan. His left hand was whisking some sort of concoction in a red bowl, which itself was being cradled in the air by a swirling golden light. On the counter off to his right, yet another swathe of golden magic was wrapped around a chef’s knife, rapidly julienning potatoes into perfect little matchsticks.

He let go of the whisk, grabbing instead, straight from the air above his head, a black spatula. The utensil was decorated with a shiny red apple at the handle. That, it turns out, was your first clue, but when he twirled quickly in place before coming to face you, you were suddenly certain exactly who it was you had just been caught spying on.

Lucifer - fallen angel, ruler of demons, King of hell - stood before you.

Making pancakes.

In an apron.

Patterned with rubber ducks.

“Goooood morning!” he chirped, eyes brightening as he flipped the pancake again into the air, angling it to land gracefully on a platter that was already piled with its siblings. “Oh, haha, you’re a new face! Well you’re in luck, because early risers get served first~!”

You blinked rapidly in surprise.

“Take a seat!” He snapped his fingers and one of the stools at the kitchen’s island pulled itself away from the counter as an invitation. There was a slight swirling sparkle of golden magic in the air above the surface, and a cascade of plates and silverware arranged themselves into a perfect place setting. The napkin was folded in the shape of a perfect origami swan (or duck?) in the middle of the plate.

“Are you thirsty?” He was talking too fast for you to move or even respond. “Apple? Orange? Pomegranate? Pick your poison!” Each word was punctuated by the fruit in question appearing in his hands, which he almost immediately started to casually juggle. Even just the fragrance of those fruits - a rare, almost unheard of delicacy in hell - made your mouth threaten to water.

He paused a moment, giving you just enough time to inhale in the hopes of replying before he interrupted. “Oh, but not REAL poison, heh!” his voice cracked and he looked slightly bashful over the misstep, finally breaking the constant excited chattering and replacing it with a slightly awkward silence.

“I-.....” You suddenly realized that somewhere in all that you had been given a command by the king of Hell, so you promptly sat on the stool that had been pulled out for you. “O-orange…?”

The awkward smile turned less awkward, and his face lit up again. “Comin’ right up!” His 3 makeshift juggling balls quickly turned into four, five, eight, twelve. After a moment of showboating while he juggled them with ease, each orange in turn magically hovered over top of your glass, squeezed itself dry, and then helpfully launched itself into the garbage can.

He dusted his hands off on his apron and gave a brief bow, seemingly ending his performance. Then his eyes narrowed slightly in annoyance, stopping your heart until you realized he was staring at your glass. He snapped his fingers, adding both a silly straw and a ruby red paper umbrella. “That’s more like it.” He then spun on his heel, resuming his whistling as well as his work.

You sipped the juice. It was delicious.

You couldn’t tear your eyes away from the man before you. He gave off the least intimidating presence you could imagine, and yet he was almost definitely the most powerful person between the two of you. No, realistically he was the most powerful person in the realm. Just thinking of the broadcast footage from the final extermination convinced you that much was true.

And sure, you had expected his once-in-a-while presence when taking up a room in the hotel. Rumor was he stayed in one of the corner suites, though you had never encountered his presence since you had gotten here. But this…this was not what you had expected.

You swallowed hard, again struggling to find your words. Words that wouldn’t risk insulting him and lead to you having your soul tormented more viciously than ever before, or your organs squeezed as dry as those oranges. But you were thankfully saved from having to say anything when the door swung open with another visitor.

“AuuuuuUUUGUH,” Angel Dust groaned, slipping onto another of the stools and planting a bottle of vodka onto the counter, followed shortly by his face. “Boy am I glad yer here today, pops. Ya don’t even wanna know about the fuckin’ night I had. Val had me upside down blowin’ so many dicks I couldn’ get the blood rushin’ anywhere but my head.” He seemed too exhausted to even pounce on the easy “head” double entendre. “Think ya can just make me the usual?”

Lucifer made a flourish with one hand, and more ingredients landed on the counter in another golden swirl. “Buttered biscuit, over hard eggs, absolu-HOOTly no bacon, shredded potato, lots of cheese. Coming right up!” He rolled up his sleeves and started shredding potatoes for the order that he apparently knew by heart.

You cleared your throat for a moment, finally managing to speak again. “Is this….a regular thing?”

Angel picked his head up, hair fluff falling over his face as he took a quick swig from the bottle. “Yeah, every once in a while.”

“That is-....that is, very kind of you, your Highness,” you muttered, addressing Lucifer this time.

The man in question paused from his nimble knifework to shrug and glance back at you. “Just Lucifer, actually!”

"But-", you stuttered, shifting in your seat. Was this a trick? “But you're the king and-”

"That I am!" He stood a little straighter, and from what little of his face you could see, his teeth shone through a smirk. “But to my darling Char-char’s official guests, I’ve decided to forgo those titles.”

He turned back to his slicing. “No matter how debauched, debased or demented! Whether pickpocket, peddler, porn star or poisoner. To all of the sorry sinners who haunt these halls, I am just Lucifer.” He stiffened a little, and then chuckled out a nervous laugh as his voice cracked. “I’m sure you’re just fi-iNe, though!”

The king glanced back at you, noting the nervous (or maybe confused?) energy. “But…you ca-can call me whatever you want! Whatever, uh, makes you more comfortable! Anything is fine exce-”

“So you’ll let me call you ‘Daddy’ now~~~~~?” Angel Dust interrupted.

“Except that,” Lucifer sighed. He was now tossing the shredded potatoes into a sizzling hot pan, and then grabbing his apple-handled spatula again, twirling it between his fingers like a baton. At some point in the rotation, it turned from spatula to whisk. He dipped it into a bowl full of egg yolks, beating them together with a practiced hand (and, apparently, wrist muscles of steel). The cheery whistling started again, and he tapped his foot gently to the tune. It was only now that you noticed he was standing on a stool in front of the stove.

He next grabbed a salt shaker, and you flinched a little as he tossed it into the air, doing a full 180-degree turn before catching it again and using it to salt the egg mixture.

“I gave you that bottle thinking you’d at least save a glass for me, Legs,” Husk growled slightly. He had apparently slunk in while-...while your attention was elsewhere.

It wasn’t your fault, though. It was sort of mesmerizing. Like watching a master at work - you just didn’t expect that work would be breakfast sandwiches. And he seemed to take genuine joy in the art. The corners of his eyes crinkled slightly when he smiled, and his forked tongue stuck out slightly when he seemed to be focused on flipping the egg just right. The blush-pink circles on his cheeks did cause his expression to always seem slightly-...well, cherubic. The genuine excitement made his smile so bright you almost had to avert your gaze. “Morningstar” really was a fitting name.

Lucifer floated over a plate onto the counter, and Angel Dust tore into his greasy sandwich.

“Hm-...could I have-...pancakes?” you spoke up, finally brave enough.

Lucifer turned to you with wide eyes and a dopey little grin. “Well that is actually my specialty! What shape?”

“R-...round?”

His face dropped in disappointment, scrunching up his nose a little. “That’s way too easy. How about a-”

“Duck?” Husk guessed with a smirk.

“...turtle. I was going to say turtle, BUT a duck is also an excellent idea. Do you want a duck? Please, say you want a duck?” he turned his eyes to you, almost pleading.

And how could you say no? “I-...yes, sure. Duck pancakes. Duck-cakes?”

“HA!” he let out an enthusiastic laugh. “Duck-cakes! DUCK-CAKES! That’s great. HahA!”

He made your order with expected enthusiasm, and when the plate slid across to you on the counter, the top pancake was decorated with an orange-wedge beak and blueberry eyes. Taking a bite, it was expectedly delicious, the perfect balance of crispness and fluffiness. You couldn’t help letting out a little sigh of delight.

“Heeheh! It’s the shape that makes it more delicious,” Lucifer snickered with another toothy grin. “Don’t you think?”

“It m-must be. But I think the chef also had a lot to do with it.”

That got him to beam even more, but you didn’t get to bask in the glow of that expression for long before his gaze snapped up to the next visitor.

“Char-char~!” he exclaimed, and 3 pairs of wings burst out of his back, allowing him to cartwheel through the air to land gracefully next to his daughter. “Do you want pancakes, honey? Duck-cakes, DUCK-CAKES! How have I never thought of that?” His hands flailed out above his head in excitement.

“I’m pretty sure you have, Dad,” Charlie offered with a smile as she sat down, Vaggie taking the seat beside her.

“Oh.” His jazz hands fell and his face scrunched up in thought, trying to remember whatever time she must be referring to. “Well, anyway, what’s your order this morning, Char-char?” He poofed himself back over to his post at the stove, already preparing to start on his next order.

The rest of the morning went on similarly to that. Hotel guests (and crew) slowly filtered in, each seeming to know exactly what they wanted for their breakfast order.

The diminutive hotel maid, Niffty chortled and wheezed her way into the kitchen, skittering up to Lucifer and holding a plastic dog bowl above her head. “In this, please....hehe... ”

Lucifer glanced down at her from his spot on the stool, frowning skeptically. “...really?” His eyebrow arched gracefully, again forcing you to turn your eyes away from the way the light caught his pale, unexpectedly beautiful face.

“yES, hehe,” Niffty chuckled.

“Uh, okay," Lucifer said with a sigh and another shrug, “you-... oddly endearing little gremlin.”

The comfortable chatter in the kitchen started putting you a bit more at ease, and it was easy to stay seated right where you were as the morning waned. You sipped your orange juice as your eyes wandered around the room, observing the conversations without having the need to participate.

Angel leaned an elbow on the counter, and his cheek on his palm, shaking the last bits of Beelzejuice into his own flute of freshly-squeezed orange juice. Charlie's face spread into a dopey grin as she sipped her mug of hot chocolate, and then began rambling to Vaggie about how she ‘never knew humans had invented something so delicious, so splendid, so warm and comforting!’ You also tried not to look too hard at Nifty, eviscerating her cockroach-shaped pancakes into a gruesome mush as strawberry syrup splashed out of the dog bowl. At least she seemed...happy?

But your eyes again found it difficult not to linger on the chef de cuisine. He was still standing on his stool, seemingly for a better vantage point to observe the results of his handiwork. His posture was perfectly poised, back straight and facial expression reserved as he sipped apple juice from a silly straw, but you managed to catch the smile.

Not the paparazzi smile, the one he probably puts on for the public, the people who want something from him. But a genuine one, tilting up the corners of his mouth and arching his eyebrows with some sort of fondness for the sinners surrounding him (and surrounded you all were, because quite a few other residents had filtered in throughout the morning).

He clearly seemed to be happy to do anything to please his daughter, but you also caught a sense of satisfaction when Husk, reaching past Angel, slid another pancake onto his place with a 'gimme one of those!' It was a struggle, but you caught his subtle grin when Vaggie, flushing as she took a bite from her girlfriend's fork, licked her lips so as not to waste a drop of syrup.

Not that it was a surprise for the literal sin of pride to get an ego boost from people enjoying his handiwork. But it was a softness you can’t say that you expected.

Lucifer’s eyes caught yours, and he tilted his head curiously, lips still clamped around the silly straw. You unfortunately could not control your expression, your eyes widening as you glanced away.

But it was too late, and you heard a little pop! of golden magic at the same time the stool next to yours was no longer occupied.

“So who are you, again?” his question was punctuated by loud straw slurping as he drained the last of his apple juice. “Oh, right! You’re new here. Right? That’s why I don’t remember you.”

You cleared your throat a little and turned to face him. “Y-yeah, pretty new. Got here a few weeks ago…”

He set the cup down with the tiniest hint of a frown on his face. “Ah. Well, it’s, heh, a big place, and I just can’t keep up with all the sinners Charlie brings in because-.....well, you know, because I’m usually in the suite doing-...very important paperwork and-”

“I, um-” you interrupted him, almost regretting it until you saw the relief on his face when he no longer had to keep talking, “It’s ok. I mean-! I mean, I’m not offended. It is a big place and-...I-I should say it’s an honor that you and Charlie are taking someone like me in and-”

“Oh, that was aaaaall Charlie! I don’t want a thing to do with managing the sinners,” he glanced over at his daughter with a gentle smile, full of pride.

“Oh…I’m sorry, should I-”

“Oh gee whiz!” he exclaimed, turning back to you with a frown. “No, that’s no slight meant to you, I just-” his delicate hands went to cover his face. “Obviously I’m no good at talking to humans any more. Or, I guess I never really was!” he chuckled in exasperation.

“A-as long as you don’t want me gone…then it’s alright,” you smiled, nervously but sincerely trying to reassure the Devil.

His hands left his face and he let out a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s try this again.” He turned to you with a smile, leaning his cheek on his hand and his elbow on the counter. He had managed to calm the nerves in his voice, and instead in a smooth tone that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, said, “So what brings you here?”

With that particular choice of words, the graceful way he crossed his legs and bobbed his foot, the inquisitive arch to his eyebrow and the frankly embarrassing way you’d been eating up the view all morning, it was hard not to imagine it as a pick-up line, and instead as the invitation for small talk that it really was.

“Well-...I-...before this, I was sort of just doing odd jobs that I could bear to stomach. Trying to get by without-...you know…doing something really terrible. The place is honestly a miracle, because it’s-...tough out there. I’m sure you know that.” You managed to make eye contact for a moment, and you were met with an expression of genuine interest, and a twinge of guilt.

“But-...if you mean Hell in general? I really wish I knew!” you admitted, glancing away again and turning to stir the bare ice cubes around in your otherwise empty glass. “I thought I was a good person. I mean, I’m sure I lied occasionally. Had a mean thought every once in a while. Didn’t always do my best or give everything my all. But, I really thought I would-...well, I didn’t think I would end up here.”

“HhhOOO boy do I know how that feels.” He inhaled deeply, then let out a sigh. “But-...ok. Listen,” his voice lowered, leaning in closer and giving you a whiff of what must have been apple-scented cologne. “I’ve tried to tell Charlie this, but the rules for that kind of stuff ma-ake no sense. It’s not even worth trying to figure out a ‘why.’”

He sat up, glancing over at his daughter, then back at you. “You came here for help, anyway. That’s...that’s good enough.” He paused for a moment, staring at his own fingers drumming against the counter as he seemingly became lost in thought.

Would it be a mercy to break him away from his thoughts? Maybe.

“Can I- ….can I ask a question, actually?”

He blinked rapidly, looking around as if trying to remember where he was. "Can you-....oh, but I believe you already did just by asking me that~” he snickered, as his brain caught up enough for a witty retort.

“Okay, fine,” you couldn’t help but chuckle. “Can I ask you a question besides the one I'm asking you now? "

“Hmmmm, I'll allow it! I am a gracious king after all.”

“While you were cooking...you just, you know, created those ingredients. Poofed them into existence. Why go through the trouble of cooking it? Why not just-....summon up a finished product?”

Lucifer straightened up again, and the trademark toothy grin spread across his face. “Well, it would be wa-HAY less fun to do it that way. If I did that, I’d make them, but I wouldn't really make them.”

After you tilted your head in momentary confusion, he continued, “Isn't it more fun to-....to make something by hand? To bust out the elbow grease? To feel like you sculpted something bit by bit?” There began a rising excitement in his voice, and you could see the slightest flutter of the wings laying flatly against his back. “To look at a pile of bits and pieces, and create magic instead of relying on it? Sure, I could make anything anyone wanted.”

He shrugged, and seemingly just to prove it, twirled his finger and created a 3D ferris wheel pancake sculpture, complete with carts full of maple syrup.

“But-...you know-...when people bother to take that first bite-...it feels better when I actually tried. It may not be as easy as this,” he rested his chin in his hands, watching the flapjack wheel rotate. “But to truly enjoy creating something, you have to put in the effort…”

“That’s-...that’s quite a sweet sentiment coming from-...sorry, please don’t take offense, but the literal devil. From the Bible.”

He chuckled, again almost forcing you to look away from the brightness of his expression as your heart fluttered. “Yeah, well! You know what they say. Don’t judge a duck by its feather.”

And you couldn’t help but chuckle in return, “I d-don’t think that’s how the expression goes! But may-ha-ha! M-maybe it should~?”

“Uh, wait is that not how it goes? Hold on- I could have sworn-” he rambled, as something about his expression kept you snickering. It was the lightest you’d felt in days, maybe even since you’d arrived in hell. A conversation with the actual devil had you tittering like a schoolgirl with a crush.

When you caught your breath from laughter and opened your eyes, you could swear his gaze lingered for a moment longer than necessary, though it could easily have been your imagination. His sharp smile widened, and he leaned in just a little closer. “Well, however you say it’s supposed to go, doesn’t it roll off the tongue a little better? Doesn’t the image it conjures of a flappy little bird-o sound so-ho-ho much cuter~? And make you want to not judge his wittle feathers?”

You smiled again, picking up on the apparent fact that the duck obsession was more than just a pancake thing. “Okay, yes. Maybe the people-...up there on Earth will realize not to ‘judge ducks by their feathers’ either. Things can change...sometimes,” you shrugged.

He settled that dazzling smile into a gentler one, still looking at your face and making your heart flutter against your will. He then seemed to suddenly be aware of his unconscious gawking, and looked away, clearing his throat.

“Y-yeah-" he stammered, “...I guess sometimes they do.”

#lucifer morningstar #hazbin lucifer #hazbin hotel #lucifer morningstar x reader #finally gathered the courage to publish the first chapter of this fic #it has been rattling around in my brain and leaking out my ears and puddling on the carpet for weeks #it's a labor of love I promise #but dear sweet lucifer is creation hard and painful #lucifer x reader

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