#like completely silent in my misery of discovery

[maehemthemisfit]

𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐘 𝐇𝐀𝐕𝐄 𝐀 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐄

ask — Can I ask you that the reader 💋 them while they are 😥 and 💙 in order to 😇 them, (I really hope this makes sense) Characters: Scaramouche & Xiao (This is my first time requesting something, hopefully I did it right ☠️) - requested by @oddshroom

a/n — this took me so unbelievably long to write but I'm working on my emoji asks now! okay so apparently I have no self control when it comes to writing scara so this ended up being 3k instead of 500≤1k so I'm making this separate from the xiao's. also dw love, you did it absolutely right so it was clear and concise <3

pairing — [ scaramouche x gn!reader + 💋 kissing them while they're 😥 having a nightmare and 💙 playing with their hair in order to 😇 comfort them]

edited by: my homegirl @xiao6ao

masterlist / xiao post / emoji prompt list

Since when was the melody of screams this unpleasant? Or perhaps, maybe it was never a sweet tune to begin with.

The crackling of fire howled and filled his ears, yet he watched silently as the flames ate away at the wooden structure, devouring the joyous memories he created there. Ashes sprinkled the blazing air, scurrying around like fire flies and filling his lungs.

His breathing was shallow, huffs of air spilling from his chest and reminding him of how human he seemed. But he could never be human, not when his chest was but a hollow cavern, overflowing with nothing but broken dreams and empty promises. His fingers trembled beside him, and subconsciously, he backed away from the dazzling light.

Why was he afraid? How could he be afraid? After all, he was the one who’d started the fire.

"N-No..." Scaramouche whispered, his eyes widened in disbelief as he took in the scene before him. "This... this already happened. Why am I seeing this again?" He looked to his palms— a desperate attempt at gathering his sense of self— but upon seeing his old attire, he found himself inarticulate.

This can't be. It was like he was back to being—

"Kunikuzushi," That voice... that was- "Why did you do this?" The child cried, clutching a familiar doll to his chest. It was threaded with such precision and care, casting in his mind a fond memory of the weeks he spent learning how to sew such a thing with his past friend.

Then the sight of the child’s charred skin hit him, and the endearing thought was discarded. He looked just as he did so long ago— sick, fragile.

But his eyes, oh his eyes told another story.

Scaramouche remembered his eyes, always full of wonder and curiosity, much like his own when he was just a fledgling. Those eyes that would beam up at him as the child tugged him away to a new discovery. Those eyes that would melt close as a smile formed on the child's lips. Those eyes, that were now boring holes into his own, absent of life and that childlike glee he was once accustomed to. Those eyes that were now swirling with fear, fear that was now directed at him.

"I didn't—!!" Scaramouche found himself choking, misery seeping into the depths of his chest and pouring out into his voice. He felt utterly nauseous at the sight before him, heaving breaths of uncertainty as hot tears began to spill from his indigo hues.

Shakily, he brought a hand to his mouth, searching for the words he wanted to say. "I didn't mean to... you- you broke your promise..."

The child took a step back, "Promise? What promise?" The puppet’s brows furrowed at the confusion on the child’s face, the air getting all the more jeering— threatening to strangle him— the longer they spoke.

"You said we were family. You said you would never abandon me," Scaramouche recalled. Abandon. Just the word sizzled and left a bitter taste on his tongue.

It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair at all.

“I didn’t abandon you,” the boy managed to retort, his voice scarcely a rasp. “I died!” He choked on a fit of coughs as he succumbed to the illness both his parents fell to.

Abandon… die…

Those were two completely different words, were they not? Yet, somehow, the discarded creation had found the two synonymous. The concept of death was still foreign to him all those years ago, and the timing was impeccable, as if someone were pulling the strings to all his misfortune. One betrayal after another. It was a deadly recipe of disaster that bubbled over into impulsive decisions and, finally, the roaring flames before him.

And now, he could only witness this village burn all over again— brick by brick, plank by plank— and watch the terror in the eyes of the one he called his friend, of the people he held close to where his heart should be, resurface from ashes long gone.

Damn it. It's not fair. It's not fair at all.

Another staggering step, and the flames began clawing at the child’s leg, searing deeper into his already charred skin. "Wait! Please!" Scaramouche shouted, lunging forward towards the kid now set ablaze and embraced in the wild, untamed fire. “Don’t leave me—" No, not “—again.”

But it was all in vain. He pleaded. He cried. He called, yet no one came.

His fingers crossed the child's, the doll slipping from the child's grasp and into the desperate puppet's hands. And without skipping a beat, the child burst into cinders before his eyes.

The ground kissed his knees as he collapsed, trembling hands digging into the veil that did little to shield him from the raging light. Within seconds, it was torn to shreds and soaked in the tears that he bled.

He wept, voice barely above a whisper. "Why couldn't it have been me…" Those tears, those pathetic emotions he harbored, why couldn't they stop? Why did it hurt so bad? Why did everyone leave him?

A dry, forced chuckle passed his lips that were drenched with the downpour from his eyes. He wiped them.

"Maybe I am just some faulty being." He looked up at the stars that watched in silence above him, ignoring his pleas for help. Gods… humans… even the stars were nothing but lies.

It was only then that a sensation ran down his neck, causing him to flinch from the sudden sense of touch. He whimpered despite trying his best not to, yet what he felt wasn't in the slightest unpleasant.

He leaned into it, eyes growing heavy with whatever was circling his skin, the pain that drenched him before growing numb as the flow of his tears drew softly to a stop. He felt small, yet safe under this eerie yet familiar touch, like an angel was embracing him and shielding him away from the tragedies that plagued the world.

A trickle of hope poured into him, flooding a soothing warmth through the chest that had been poisoned by a twisting ache. His fist unraveled the tattered veil, his hands now clinging onto something more plush and soft, though he couldn't see.

It told him he was fine. He was safe. He was sound.

Sound?

The air caught his mind, now devoid of the screams that smothered him just moments before. Even the crazed laments of the fire ceased, replaced by the quiet pitter patter of falling droplets— none of which he felt.

What he did feel was something soft showering his face, warm and featherlike, and another delicate touch swaying back and forth over his cheek, creating a peaceful harmony within his settling mind.

Despite the heaviness in his limbs, he pulled himself closer, his legs rubbing against silky fabric instead of the ashened ground of what had once been his home. His arms drew himself closer against whatever was bringing him comfort, the sound of something beating surprisingly washing away the rest of his worries. He drifted far away from the panic that once overcame him, the raging storm in his head now reduced to calm waves of water, carrying him safely back to reality into the arms of an angel.

His eyes, tired and spent, fought to open. His vision made out from blurring colors the sight of another person laying beside him. They leaned into him, and he felt the same featherlike sensation on his forehead. A voice he recognized— he had yet to decipher the words— filled his ears.

It was…

Before his eyes could fully adjust, he was already curling against your chest, fingers softly grabbing your shirt and tugging like his life depended on it. In an instant, the world came rushing in, his lungs breathing in the calming air of the small apartment you shared.

He was fine. He was safe. He was with you.

He called your name, his voice cracking as a groan slipped past him, muffled by his face pressing into you. Memories of his nightmare crashed back in restless waves, threatening to drown him once again. He coughed, attempting to speak through labored breaths.

"I s-saw… my, I-'' Scaramouche hiccuped, his body starting to shake like the harsh winters of Snezhnaya was biting through his porcelain skin.

“Shhh, shhh, it’s okay, take your time.” You were quick to silence him, whispering affirmations in the mist of night for only his ears to hear. He clutched onto you tighter. “It’s okay love, I’m here.”

After the countless years of suffering the puppet endured, he wasn’t fond of being touched by any living being— at least, not after all the torturous poking and prodding he was subjected to during Dottore’s experiments, whilst promises of “making him stronger” or “unlocking his true divinity” fell on deaf ears as he withered in pain.

But you? He couldn’t help but melt under your irenic touch, something that was foreign to him for decades. It took awhile for him to adjust to your displays of affection, but eventually your arms became his new safe haven, something that was all apparent now as you rubbed gentle strokes against his back, the sobs that were born from his horrid dream now dying down to soft sniffles and hums.

The moon glowed in all its glory in the blanket of night, illuminating the two lovers cuddled closely together like birds in a nest. Its silver glow became sparkles in the stray tears that spilled over his cheeks, your hands calmly wiping them as they fell. He came to realize over some time that the featherlike touches he felt prior were you pressing kisses to his face.

The moon came and fled as the sun put it to rest, painting the darkened skies in shades of blue and red. Its rays glimmered, peaking through the window and shedding its warmth on the both of you. By then, the wandering puppet’s tear stained cheeks were dried, his breathing leveled, and eyes half lidded, swirling with bouts of serenity.

Your hand was idly playing with his hair, gently combing through and dividing pieces that fell across his face. A comfortable silence filled the air, only penetrated by the whisper that flew past your lover’s lips, calling your name. You hummed as his hand slowly crept from under the covers, reaching out to grab yours from his strands and bringing it to his chest. His warm breath tickled your skin when he sighed, the feeling being overthrown when his lips kissed the back of your palm, lingering for nearly a minute.

“Do you…” He spoke softly, still firmly holding onto you, yet his voice sounded far off, eyes distant and hazy. “Do you think I’m evil?”

The question dripped from his lips like dew to a leaf, dropping into your ears for your brain to soak it in. Melancholy sprouted from it, growing vines that entangled your heart.

The word evil ran through your head, such a harsh term to describe someone, you scrutinized. Could you really compare the word to the former harbinger lying across from you? Perhaps his past actions, but…

Do evil people cry genuine tears? Do evil people feel remorse for their wicked deeds? What truly defines evil anyway?

The fluttering of wings fanned your clouded thoughts, your answer becoming clear along with the sound of birds chirping. You tugged at the vines clenching your heart, ripping them with ease as you looked at the man in question.

“Doing good things doesn’t make you a good person,” you imparted, staring honestly into his alluring eyes. He listened intently as you spoke, hanging off of every word like a puppet to a string. “And doing bad things doesn’t make you a bad person either.”

The foggy look in his eyes finally cleared.

“I think you experienced the worst parts of the world before you could understand the beauty of it, which led to your notorious doings.” You adjusted your hand to hold his, and he gave you a gentle squeeze as your thumb caressed circles into his. “But if we look back to your ‘previous incarnation’ without your memories, or your titles before Balladeer, would you call them evil as well? Would the people who knew you then describe you in such a way?”

The question floated in the air. A quizzical frown assuming the puppet’s features. For a second, he was back in his dream again— images of fire and ash tainting his mind. He remembered those eyes that were swirling with fear, anxiety threatening to crawl up his spine again.

He was fine. He was safe. He was…

“I didn’t abandon you,” The child's voice played back in his head, oddly sounding more soft compared to the voice he heard in his dream. Another recollection filled his thoughts— it was the sight of the child pulling him eagerly, a wide grin adorning his chubby cheeks, a giggle followed by his own filling the air as he allowed the kid to guide him to some growing lavender melons.

"I- I can't reach it. Awhh," The child pouted, looking away from the tree dejectedly.

"They are pretty high up," Scara- no, Kunikuzushi observed, bringing a hand to his chin. "You'll be able to reach them if I give you a lift though."

"Really? Oh thank you, thank you, thank you! You're really the best ya know, and d-don't forget it either!" The child cheered, jumping up and down in his small burst of excitement before calming down. He tired easily, no matter what he did.

"I'm the best? But I'm just a mere—"

The small mortal coughed weakly, balling his fist right after and shouting a heartfelt declaration. "Puppet this, puppet that. You're a good person and you're a good friend. There's no if, ands, or buts about it,"

He couldn't help but reciprocate the child's smile.

"I- I guess you have a point," Kunikuzushi hummed, his face blooming a pretty pink as he tried to hide under his veil. "You know… you sound a lot like an old friend of mine.”

The memory faded as quick as it came, his shoulders now relaxed and expression thoughtful. You assumed he reached the same answer as you.

They wouldn't call him evil. Never in a million years.

“I couldn’t either," You answered his thoughts, bringing your hand back to card through his hair. "Which is why I don't think you're the monster you make yourself out to be."

He wanted to laugh, but he found himself without a voice. All those questions he aimlessly sought answers to. He’d even asked the God of Wisdom the same thing, yet her answer was quite different from yours. But could he really take your words to heart— or hold it above the words of a god? Would her answer change if he asked her again? Would your answer change if he wronged you?

He was fine. He was safe. He was good.

The sounds of rain dwindled as the critters of light rustled away, chirping and hollering to the sun’s presence. By now, its light blanketed you both, whisking off the drowsiness as you rubbed your eyes. You were in the midst of calling your lover’s name when his fingers wrapped around your leg, pulling it over his hip to bring you close once again.

He cupped your face, your eyes instinctively closing as his lips embraced yours, the warmth of his touch enough to rival the sun and the shine of the moon. No celestial body could reap what the two of you had sown beautifully together.

You held his past, present, and future, carried his vices and virtues, wiped his tears and tore down his walls even when he built them up too high.

You stayed, even when he couldn't give you his heart.

He was enough, you reminded him proudly each day. He was safe. He was fine. He was loved.

"I love you," Scaramouche found himself mumbling against your lips, breathing out a content sigh when the two of you finally parted.

It was the first time he initiated such a declaration, and while he'd never admit how much it affected him, the shy smile carved into his face spoke it well enough. His passionate gaze lit a thousand flames in your soul and it was your turn to fall into the rabbit hole of his beauty.

With another quick kiss, you touched your foreheads together, your voice a lullaby to his ears as you chimed the words that always made him feel something skip a beat in his chest.

"I love every part of you, and never forget that," you huffed, feigning a pouty expression to entice a smile— which he effortlessly gave.

"Don't worry, I won't," he laughed heartily this time, making an effort to find your hand and intertwining your pinkies. He brought them to his chin, pecking the side of your hand once more. "I promise."

TAGLIST — @sonder-paradise @96jnie @scaramouchenumber1fan @linn-a-a @wisteriaflowersss @ineriris @yesntforno @serramii @shadowmist0706 @jmgrule @imeanwatever @c00kie-cat @xtodorokismistressx @ieathairs @endlessmari @strawberryclumsy @serenity-ren-bliss

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[giffingthingsss]

Lewis, Clarke, and Roddenberry

What set me about writing the book was the discovery that a pupil of mine took all that dream of interplanetary colonization quite seriously.

Lewis

It's been forever since I read Out of the Silent Planet. I will confess I remember almost nothing. I was a tiny person. I was too young for Perelandra and didn't finish it (I also kind of doubt it's up my alley, but maybe someday).

Pretty much all I remember is that they involve two untainted worlds whose fate hinges on a human stopping other humans from corrupting them. (I hesitate to compare them to Avatar, which I found hopelessly bland, but there are parallels. Avatar with mythological meat behind it?)

The impetus grew from Lewis sitting amongst the scientific minds of Oxford and being genuinely concerned that these men sincerely wanted to engage in interplanetary travel. He called them

little rocket societies bent on exporting the crimes of mankind to other planets

Leave those aliens alone.

I look forward with horror to contact with the other inhabited planets, if there are such. We would only transport to them all of our sin and our acquisitiveness, and establish a new colonialism. I can’t bear to think of it.

Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke wrote to him objecting to the viewpoint that scientists were like his antagonist Weston and that humanity would only muck up other worlds.

He believed that going into space would make man 'grow up,' a very Roddenberry-esque idea. In fact you might call it the exact same idea.

A portion of the letter from 1943 -

It is true that the human race is still in its infancy but I believe that astronautics more than any other single development will accelerate the coming age of our species. National rivalries, which have caused most of the misery of the past, will finally appear in their proper perspective when they can be seen against the background of the stars.

A portion of Lewis' reply -

I don’t of course think that at the moment many scientists are budding Westons: but I do think (hang it all, I live among scientists!) that a point of view not unlike Weston’s is on the way... I agree Technology is per se neutral: but a race devoted to the increase of its own power by technology with complete indifference to ethics does seem to me a cancer in the universe.

To someone else, Lewis wrote -

The point I wanted to make is that excessive excitement about gadgetry and the belief (Weston’s belief) that the possession of, say, wireless & aeroplanes, somehow makes one superior to those who lack them & even justifies one in conquering such people, is bosh. My motto would be ‘Have your toys, have your conveniences, but for heaven’s sake don’t start talking as if those things really mattered as, say, charity matters.’

Lewis: an anti-space colonialist.

Lewis and Clarke (pun intended) liked each other even if they disagreed. Clarke invited Lewis to a debate on the subject.

I am sure your appearance would arouse great interest, as many of our members admire your writings even if they may not see eye to eye with them.

Lewis replied -

The fatal objection is that I should be covering ground I have already covered in print and on which I have nothing to add. I know that is how many lectures are made, but I never do it. I might at a pinch show great fortitude about the boredom of the audience, but then there’s my own. But thank your society very much for the invitation and convey my good wishes to them as regards everything but interplanetary travel. P.S. - Probably the whole thing is only a plan for kidnapping me and marooning me on an asteroid!

Clarke replied -

I promise you that if we do have an opportunity of marooning you on an asteroid we will give you time to pack your winter woolies.

The two met once and wrote a few more times. They mostly kept in touch through Joy who attended the same science fiction club as Clarke.

Oh, by the way, Clarke was later on friendly terms with some guy named Gene Roddenberry.

Arthur literally made my Star Trek idea possible... My association with the Clarke mind and concepts began in 1964 with his book Profiles of the Future. In 1969, I travelled to Arizona to listen to a Clarke lecture on astronomy, where…. I was persuaded by him to continue my Star Trek projects despite the entertainment industry’s labelling the production as an unbelievable concept and a failure.

Star Trek

Lewis died in 1963, three years before Star Trek first aired (It's insane to me that Lewis lived that late. He seems like a product of the 1800's or something). What would he have thought about it? Probably nothing since he didn't watch television. But if he did he would have seen many familiar ideas he had already encountered in print.

In an odd way, Roddenberry's ideas weren't all that contrary to his. Humanity goes into space after getting its s*&t together. And policies like the Prime Directive are essentially anti-colonial. Lewis' fear that mankind would mess with other worlds and ruin them is assuaged. Ethics are stressed. Episodes like Mirror, Mirror, in contrast, are almost illustrations of Lewis' fears.

Their conflict would no doubt arise in the reason for this 'getting of s*&t together.' The 'perfectibility of man' debate.

Lewis would say such a transformation of the human race would require a spiritual awakening, that man needs help. Roddenberry would call it something like evolutionary progress. Man would simply evolve past its problems (such an evolution would realistically take thousands or perhaps even millions more years, not two hundred, but whatever. flying through space accelerates us I guess. threshold pun).

This is what is responsible for the utopia on earth, not any one system. Whatever system exists in the Trek world works because humanity has simply 'learned better.' They don't exploit it or each other because they don't want to.

Man has gone from knowing very well what the right thing is, but not wanting to do it, to finding it virtually unthinkable to do anything else.

Everyone is treated equally, there is no greed, no want, no envy, etc... We don't go to war with each other because we have no desire to do so. We're past all that. We simply want to become the best versions of ourselves possible.

Some of Arthur Clarke's work involves mankind evolving to gain new abilities and achieve an almost godlike status, etc... And he's hardly the only early writer to come up with something similar.

You can sense a 20th century man looking around at all the new technology and scientific breakthroughs and being convinced that the next stage of evolution was right around the corner. Those same ideas find their way into Star Trek, not just through an earthly utopia, but through hints that humans will evolve into things like the Q or past requiring physical bodies (or into lizards), etc...

Encounters with 'divine' aliens is something rather unique to the shows when Roddenberry was still alive. I suspect because that's when the guys who had been influenced by early scifi were still around.

Trek does not stick with its 'perfected man' theory for long, even in Roddenberry's time, as it's almost impossible to tell stories that way. Fast forward to modern Picard and it has almost disappeared entirely. Trek is now current man in space.

People put that down to modern writers 'not knowing star trek' when really it's modern writers not knowing early to mid 20th century science fiction. The audience largely doesn't know it either. Times have changed. For us the bloom is largely off the technological rose. We barely remember when the bloom was on it.

But this new depression brings us back around to a demand for escapism, to get away from our problems for a while and live in another world. The demand for a hopeful Trek (albeit one that no longer stems from 40s ideas, but is a thing all its own) grows with it.

In 1954, Clarke included a line in a letter to Lewis about not being interested in writing a story set on Earth. He admitted that might make him guilty of 'escapism.'

Lewis replied -

About ‘escapism’, never let that flea stick in your ear. I was liberated from it once & for all when a friend said ‘These critics are v. sensitive to the least hint of Escape. Now what class of men wd. one expect to be thus worked-up about Escape?–Jailers.’ Turn-key critics: people who want to keep the world in some ideological prison because a glimpse at any remote prospect wd. make their stuff seem less exclusively important.

Addendums

Inspiration from Voyage to Arcturus:

Voyage to Arcturus is not the parody of Perelandra but its father. It was published, a dead failure, about 25 years ago. Now that the author is dead it is suddenly leaping into fame: but I’m one of the old guard who had a treasured second hand copy before anyone had heard of it. From Lyndsay I first learned what other planets in fiction are really good for: for spiritual adventures. Only they can satisfy the craving which sends our imaginations off the earth. Or putting it another way, in him I first saw the terrific results produced by the union of two kinds of fiction hitherto kept apart: the Novalis, G. Macdonald, James Stephens sort and the H. G. Wells, Jules Verne sort.

Arthur Clarke on Joy -

Lewis wrote a favorable review of Childhood's End back to Joy. A portion -

It is a strange comment on our age that such a book lies hid in a hideous paper-backed edition, wholly unnoticed by the cognoscenti, while any 'realistic' drivel about some neurotic in a London flat - something that needs no real invention at all, something that any educated man could write if he chose, may get seriously reviewed and mentioned in serious books - as if it really mattered. I wonder how long this tyranny will last?

Joy showed it to Clarke (probably the reason this particular letter survived while the others have been lost), and Clarke asked if he could quote from it. A Lewis blurb appeared on the back cover of the UK edition.

[aspec-argentum]

Was someone going to tell me that her name wasn't Hope Van Dyke or was I just supposed to figure that out by watching Ant Man and The Wasp for like the 5th time with subtitles at midnight myself?

[robininthelabyrinth]

Spilled Pearls

- Chapter 26 - ao3 -

“Qiren-xiong, would you like me to keep them back a little longer?” Lan Yueheng asked anxiously. He’d been biting his lip and wringing his hands and pacing hard enough to leave a mark on the floor. Lan Qiren really ought to let him go back to his mathematics and his alchemy, to abandon this sad sorry world of politics that the rest of them were mired in for the purer joys of academic discovery. “It’s just, they’re getting really insistent on talking with you…”

Lan Qiren sighed and put down the cup of tea that had already cooled without him taking a single sip.

“No,” he finally said. “It’s fine. I’m amazed you managed to keep them back this long.”

He had been working very hard these past few days. He’d just wanted a short break. An afternoon of silence, or even just a few shichen...

Apparently, he couldn’t even get that now. 

Lan Yueheng beamed. “I got Zhang Xin to help! She’s keeping them all back – elders and teachers and fellow disciples and all.”

Lan Qiren frowned a little, thinking of the lady in question, who was fierce and fiery but definitely not fearsome or well-respected enough to hold back the teeming tide of Lan sect members desperate for Lan Qiren to stop ignoring them. “…do I want to know how?”

“With a club!”

Lan Qiren did not want to know how.

“I put explosives in the –”

“Please stop explaining,” Lan Qiren begged.

“You asked.”

Technically, Lan Qiren had asked if he wanted to know, but he shouldn’t stand on technicalities. Especially not now that he was –

He stopped that thought before completing it.

“Go out and tell them that I will not be taking any questions on my living conditions, quarters or clothing, any of the current rule modification proposals - it’s far too soon - and certainly none that are just about the current situation, and also that anyone who doesn’t have a question is not welcome,” he decided. “If there’s anyone left over, they can come inside and pose their question. If it’s not a good one, I will impose punishment on the basis of Concentrate on cultivation.”

In the end, there were only three people admitted out of the disappointed throngs of disciples outside. The first two questions were appropriate ones, being both purely administrative and critically necessary to the running of their sect; the last, however…

The disciple in question was one of the gate-guards.

He saluted. “There are visitors on the way in,” he reported. “From other sects.”

“Didn’t I already give orders that all access tokens not currently in the Cloud Recesses be revoked, and no new ones issued?” Lan Qiren asked curtly. “We are not currently accepting guests, and will not be until matters have been settled. You may inform them as much.”

The disciple hesitated.

“What is it?”

“The visitors in question…” The disciple hesitated again, and Lan Qiren frowned. “It’s Sect Leader Nie and Sect Leader Wen.”

Lan Qiren had been reaching for his cup of tea again, but his fingers stopped in mid-air.

“They’ve been very stubborn. Neither has agreed to go, no matter what we tell them, and they’ve been there all day, saying that they’ll stay standing at our gate until we let them in. Do – do the same orders apply to them?”

Lan Qiren looked down at his hand, frozen in midair. His fingers were trembling a little. Strain, probably; he’d had a very bad time for quite a while now, and even though he’d taken the time for it, he hadn’t actually slept properly. He’d only lain in bed, staring blankly at the ceiling, trying to absorb whatever little rest he could.

“They do,” he finally said, putting his hands back into his lap as if he could hide his misery from himself. “Dismissed.”

The last disciple left.

“Why won’t you let them in?” Lan Yueheng asked from behind him. “They’re your friends, aren’t you?”

He paused, falling silent for a brief moment.

“You could use friends right now, Qiren-xiong,” he finally said. “You really could.”

“I know,” Lan Qiren said, and felt the bitterness rise up in his throat until it almost choked him. “They are my friends, and one even more, my sworn brother. They are that, but they are not only that – they are also the sect leaders of two of the other Great Sects. Even if they don’t want to cross me or hurt me, their sect obligations must be always in the forefront of their minds, be their primary care and consideration, just as the Lan sect must be mine.”

Now, he added. Must be mine, now.

“But…”

“The sect comes first, Yueheng-xiong.” Lan Qiren was so tired that it felt like a physical ache. “It has to come first. First and foremost, above everything else. Haven’t we seen what happens if that’s not what’s done?”

Wasn’t everything they were suffering now all because his brother had put himself first, instead of the sect? He had equated his interests with the sect and in doing so harmed the sect so deeply, harmed all their family and all the rest of them, everyone that relied on them...how could Lan Qiren willfully repeat such a mistake, no matter how much he longed sometimes to do so?

“But -!”

“I’ve made my decision.”

“It’s the wrong one,” Zhang Xin said from the door, still holding that club of hers and looking as fierce as a small angry dog. “You’re the rule expert, aren’t you? Stop thinking about your brother for a moment and focus on them. As far as I’ve always heard, the rules say that you can’t just care for the sect, you have to care for yourself, too. Or else who’d be left to care for the sect?”

Lan Qiren flinched and looked down at his hands again.

He supposed she had a point.

“Yueheng-xiong,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Go after that disciple. Tell him…tell him that they still can’t enter, but that he should pass along a message to them. Tell him to tell them…” He hesitated. “If they truly wish to remain nearby, I will be available to meet with them in Caiyi Town ten days from now.”

That should be enough time to settle everything if he really exerted himself, Lan Qiren thought. All the preparations that needed to be made before the world could find out what had happened.

“They don’t have to,” he added, bitterness curling in his gut even as he tried to make it clear that he was speaking in earnest. “If they don’t want to. I won’t be offended if they don’t.”

After all, it would be asking rather a lot, forcing them to stay outside doing nothing for such a long time. Wen Ruohan and Lao Nie: they were sect leaders both, Great Sects at their command, and not possessed of a great deal of spare time. More than that, neither of them were especially patient people in the best of times, and much less so now that they were currently at odds with each other – though perhaps the fact that they’d put up with each other’s company long enough to yell at his gate-guard suggested that their recently frozen-over relationship had perhaps at last started to thaw. 

Anyway, Lan Qiren wasn’t even doing them the courtesy of offering them accommodations within the Cloud Recesses, as anyone might reasonably expect. They’d have to stay in Caiyi Town instead, take a room at an inn like any ordinary mortal…truly, it would not be a surprise if they did not choose to stay.

It would be fine if they didn’t stay. It would be.

“I’ll pass it along,” Lan Yueheng promised, and ran out the door. Zhang Xin sniffed, but said no more. It was clear she would have preferred he do more, perhaps go and speak to them immediately, but she also knew that she’d pushed her insolence about as far as she could take it. 

She was very brave.

“You should marry him,” Lan Qiren told her, thinking to himself that someone ought to be happy even if it wasn’t him, and she blinked at him. “Yueheng-xiong. He looks at you like you hung the moon in the sky.”

Zhang Xin blinked again, and then flushed. “Well…”

“You like romances, don’t you? Why not take the next step on this one?”

She waved her hands at him. “We’ll get there! Don’t rush us.”

“You don’t have parents, right?” Lan Qiren pressed. “If you like, I can act for them in making the arrangements –”

“I’ll consider that,” she hissed, her face now bright red. She pointed the club at him, and Lan Qiren hastily raised his hands in surrender; he knew what Lan Yueheng’s explosives were like. “Go back to moping. I’m starting to think I liked you better that way.”

Lan Qiren didn’t think she did.

“I need more ink,” he said instead. If he was going to have to make up for all of his brother’s failings and get the Lan sect into the state it needed to in order to be ready to face the storm that awaited them outside their gates within ten days, he would need to work hard, and that meant starting now. “Please fetch some for me. I promise not to bring it up again.”

She eyed him suspiciously, but bustled off, and Lan Qiren turned to apply himself to work.

Work was – he could do the work.

As long as he didn’t have to think about why he was doing it, or how long he would need to do it, not think about how this work wouldn’t just be for now but for the rest of his life, he could do it.

It took the full ten days and several sleepless nights, interspersed with sleep borne of pure exhaustion, but in the end Lan Qiren managed to make all the preparations he thought were necessary to minimize or at least endure the loss of face that the Lan sect would subject to once the world heard of rumors of what had happened. Even with the sanitized, filtered, cleaned-up version of it that they intended to spread, it would still hurt their reputation.

“You should take several days to yourself,” his music teacher advised, looking genuinely concerned, and his swordsmanship teacher nodded in agreement. “There will be more work to come, but none so soon.”

Lan Qiren nodded, being too tired to care about them worrying about him now, and went to the gate.

“Zhu Dawei,” he called, recognizing the disciple there. It was the same one who had brought him the news, ten days back; the one he’d sent back with the message. “Was there…”

He trailed off, not sure how to ask the question without seeming overly pathetic – by chance, do you know if my sworn brother and best friend abandoned me and returned to their sects, as any reasonable person would, or did they decide to wait an unreasonably long time in order to talk to me?

Zhu Dawei saluted adroitly. “Sect Leader Wen and Sect Leader Nie said to tell you that they will be waiting for you at the inn along the main waterway in Caiyi Town, the one with the red awning. They’re planning on dining at you hour if you would like to join them.”

He had good friends, Lan Qiren thought, feeling stabbing pains of emotions in his chest that he thought might even be a good thing. He nodded. “My thanks,” he said, and headed down the mountain.

Wen Ruohan and Lao Nie were there in the inn in one of the private suites that were available for rich guests, sitting at a table laid out with all the local specialties: six different dishes and tea and wine. They were bickering over something or another – Lan Qiren didn’t strain himself to listen, only paused a little outside the door, watching them both for a moment. 

Having been forced to spend ten days’ time in close proximity had clearly been good for them: they were practically back to the way they had been before they’d fallen out, each one clearly genuinely at ease - Wen Ruohan with his smirks and his haughty sneers, Lao Nie with his booming laugh and expressive scowls. Perhaps they had even had the opportunity to actually talk to each other, to clear the air between them and make plain their respective positions, which Lan Qiren had been starting to think they never would - that Wen Ruohan would grow so resentful that he’d shut off his heart again and take Lao Nie back on the condition that he never speak of it again, and so let it fester as an unhealed wound. Lan Qiren had worried about the terrible things that might come of such lingering rage. He had not liked it, but had felt helpless to change it: after all, who on earth could force these two men to stay near to each other when they did not want to?

Him, apparently.

They looked good together, suited each other, he thought, watching them both. They were both tall and strong, fine men that exuded power and fierceness and determination in equal measure; it was a real pity that they weren’t quite the right match for each other.

Lao Nie caught sight of Lan Qiren standing at the door first. The moment he did, he turned away and rose to his feet. “Qiren! There you are – come in – sit! Sit, sit – have you eaten?”

“Earlier,” Lan Qiren said, coming in and trying to raise his hands in a salute that got quickly knocked aside. “I could eat again.”

“We insist on it,” Wen Ruohan said, looking him over with a judgmental frown. “I think you’ve gotten thinner…he’s gotten thinner, hasn’t he, Lao Nie?”

Lao Nie held Lan Qiren at arms length and looked him over critically. “Normally, Hanhan, I’d accuse you of being a mother hen and never let you live it down ever again,” he remarked, “but in this case I really think you’re right. His face is thinner than it was before, definitely a sign of losing weight too rapidly…tell us what happened, Qiren. There’s been no news at all from the Lan sect, only that there was some sort of crisis – some violence – and then all the gates to the Cloud Recesses were shut.”

“Yes,” Lan Qiren said, rubbing at his temples. He didn’t really want to think about it, but there was no avoiding it. “They were. The full details will be announced at the next discussion conference, which is coming up rapidly.”

“It is,” Lao Nie said. “I should know; I’m hosting. Will you tell us in advance what the news is?”

“I will.”

“Food first,” Wen Ruohan interjected. “No talking during meals, remember?”

Lao Nie made a face at him, but Lan Qiren smiled thinly at his sworn brother’s poorly concealed kindness and sat down. He ate quickly, the food largely tasteless on his tongue even though it was finely made and featured many of his favorites. They must have ordered them especially, knowing that he was coming tonight.

The quiet was a welcome reprieve, and allowed him to think over what he was going to say a little more thoroughly. He’d known, of course, that he’d have to tell them, but he hadn’t yet settled on exactly how to force the words from between his teeth…

When dinner was done and the dishes cleared, the only thing left on the table being the tea and the wine, he cleared his throat. “Did you rent the room?” he asked, and they nodded. “For how long?”

“We booked the whole month,” Wen Ruohan said carelessly. “It didn’t cost as much as all that.”

Caiyi Town was the nearest town to the Cloud Recesses, which was full of very rich cultivators. The prices here were far higher than a comparable inn in another place, and were nowhere near cheap even for a night - much less a month. More than that, Lan Qiren hadn’t seen any other guests, which made him suspect that Wen Ruohan had rented not only the room but the entire inn, making it the sort of expenditure more commonly seen among the scions of Lanling Jin.

Still, Lan Qiren did not complain or point out the inaccuracy. Not when he had hoped for something exactly like that.

“Good,” he said, and reached up to his forehead ribbon.

Both Wen Ruohan and Lao Nie gaped at him in stunned disbelief as he removed it, carefully folding it up like the precious thing that it was and tucking it away into his sleeve for safekeeping – even though the process took some time to accomplish, they had not yet recovered by the time he was done. They looked a bit like gawping fish.

“The forehead ribbon reminds you of your self-restraint,” Lan Qiren quoted. “I do not intend to maintain it tonight.”

More gawking. He ignored it.

“I’m intending on getting drunk,” he clarified, nodding at the jars of wine on the table. “I’ll drink as much as you allow me to. Could you keep an eye on me and make sure I don’t leave the premises? I can’t lose face for the sect right now, but both of you are considerably stronger than me, and faster, too. You can keep an eye on me and restrain my behavior, if necessary, and I would appreciate it if you would.”

“…of course,” Wen Ruohan said, exchanging glances with Lao Nie. “If that’s what you want, little Lan. We’ll care for you.”

“Can we ask why?” Lao Nie asked, always the blunt one.

Lan Qiren looked down at the table, gathered his courage, and looked back up at them. “I’m going to be attending the next discussion conference,” he said, and even he could hear how dull and depressed his already monotonous voice was. “At that time, you will need to call me Sect Leader Lan.”

“Sect - Sect Leader…? You?” Lao Nie was gaping again. “But – you –”

“What happened to Qingheng-jun?” Wen Ruohan asked, his eyes already narrowed as his mind rapidly churned over the information. 

“He has entered permanent seclusion,” Lan Qiren said. His fingers had tightened into fists again, and his knuckles were white from the strain. “Along with his wife.”

“His – wife?”

“He Kexin?” Wen Ruohan asked. “He’s married – no, she married him?”

“Yes,” Lan Qiren said, because friends or no, brother or no, they were still sect leaders, still outsiders. He could not share with them the full story, at least not yet, not until he’d made sure they couldn’t use it against his sect. Not until there was a story that the whole world would accept as the truth. “They are married, and secluded. I am the next in line, and have therefore taken on the position.”

“But you wanted to travel,” Lao Nie said. “To play music, to go see new places. You had all those plans –”

Lan Qiren flinched.

“Be silent,” Wen Ruohan told Lao Nie. “Can’t you see you’re just making it worse? He knows.”

Yes, Lan Qiren knew. No one knew better than him the dreams he’d had, the plans he’d made, how much it had been a fixed part of his life – stronger than mere hope, it had been an expectation. He had never imagined that his life wouldn’t be what he planned to make of it.

He never imagined his life would be…like this.

“It is temporary,” he added, the rotten feeling of disappointment coating his tongue like a swallow of bitter medicine. “An examination has revealed that He Kexin is pregnant with my brother’s child. Although it is far too early for any medical indications, divination suggests that it will be a boy.”

And even if it wasn’t, well, Lan Yi had set a precedent for women to be allowed to be sect leaders, too.

The sect elders had compared the exceptional qualities of Lan Qiren’s brother against Lan Qiren’s own, compared their respective talents for cultivation and temperaments and their ways with people. That analysis complete, they had suddenly changed their tune: no more did they try to comfort Lan Qiren for his crushed dreams by painting pictures of the power he would obtain, of his children inheriting after him – as if Lan Qiren had ever cared about power, he who had never coveted the position of sect leader even once in his life, and had on account of his inclinations, or lack thereof, had already given up hope of children – and instead they spoke instead of Lan Qiren’s duty to his brother’s legitimate bloodline, his duty to the sect overall.

Lan Qiren had listened in silence for a while, barely restraining from sneering at their shallow and obvious hypocrisy, before striking a deal with them: he would take on the role of acting sect leader, as he had already known he had no choice but to do, and in time he would willingly step aside for his brother’s heir or heirs, if there was more than one, but he insisted on being the one to raise them.

He didn’t especially want to raise children, having no idea if he would be any good at it, but he didn’t trust anyone else in his sect to prioritize raising the children as children – as people of their own, rather than extensions of their father, as another chance to correct the mistakes of the past. To raise them with the rules as guidance, as support in times of weakness and pride in times of strength, not as an obstacle to be overcome; to try to do whatever he could to help them avoid the faults of the prior generation without crushing their souls the way his brother had tried to crush his.

He would give this unborn nephew or nephews everything he could. He would give them the rules, and he would protect them from them; he would spend the rest of his life exerting himself to clean up the sect until it was something worth inheriting, and then he’d give them that, too.

“Congratulations,” Lao Nie said blankly, and Wen Ruohan elbowed him sharply in the ribs.

Lan Qiren chuckled humorlessly. “He’ll be only a few years younger than yours,” he said to Lao Nie. “And about of age with your second when he’s born, da-ge.”

“You don’t deserve this,” Wen Ruohan said, his mouth twisted with bitterness that for once had nothing to do with his own desires. “You deserve better.”

Lan Qiren appreciated the thought.

He appreciated them both being angry on his behalf, which they so clearly were. Lao Nie’s face had grown black with rage, his brows tight as if pulled taut with a string, and while Wen Ruohan’s face was calm and sedate as always, his qi seethed and hissed and coiled around them all as if he could keep away Lan Qiren’s duties by sheer force of will. He might even try, if it was something Lan Qiren would consider letting him do.

It wasn’t, though.

“The sect’s needs come first,” he said simply. “You both put your sects above yourselves; you know how it is. It’s the same for me.”

“You still deserve better,” Lao Nie said, and shook his head. “Hanhan’s right. You really do. I’m so sorry, Qiren. I should’ve been there to help more – shouldn’t have been so distracted –”

“Nothing could have been done to change it,” Lan Qiren said. He didn’t disagree, knowing as he did how careless Lao Nie had been over it all, but if he were to blame Lao Nie, he might as well blame Wen Ruohan, who he knew for a fact did know about it and didn’t bother to try to intervene – but he didn’t want to blame his sworn brother, who had no responsibility here, and he didn’t much want to blame Lao Nie, either, even if he’d said some very stupid things from a distance. It had only ever been his brother’s fault; there was nothing else for it. “It’s…”

He trailed off, not able to say it was fine, because it wasn’t. It just wasn’t true.

Do not tell lies.

“I’ll live,” he said instead, because that was. No matter what, he had to live. His sect depended on him, his not-yet-born nephew depended on him. “I’m going to become a teacher, instead. It’ll give me something to do.”

He would have more than enough to do as the sect leader, of course, acting or otherwise, and with him just barely into his early twenties he was very young to be a teacher. But he desperately wanted something that wasn’t just the sect’s, something all his own, and he had planned on being a teacher, too. Much later in life, of course, but – it was still something.

Something of his own.

Maybe he’d push the elders for permission to have children from other sects come for lessons, just to mimic the variety of the world that he was no longer permitted to go see. Sect leaders feather their own nests with the stories of others, he’d once told Cangse Sanren, that’s a way of living, too…

He had to think of it that way. If he didn’t, he’d think instead of what she said, a caged lark singing only for a select few, and that would be worse. 

“Do you have any more questions?” he added, not wanting to think of anything at all any longer. “If not, I would very much like to get drunk on your wine, if you don’t mind.”

Wen Ruohan and Lao Nie exchanged glances again, some secret communication that Lan Qiren didn’t bother to try and fail to decipher – truly, if there was one good part to the entire disaster it was that they had overcome their distance in truth rather merely on the surface – but then Wen Ruohan nodded firmly and Lao Nie began to set out the drinking bowls.

“For once, I’m almost looking forward to hearing about your sect rules,” Wen Ruohan remarked. “As long as you just tell me about them, this time, and don’t knee me in the –”

Lan Qiren grabbed at the drinking bowl, glaring at him, and Lao Nie laughed. “Let’s see how much you can tolerate,” he said cheerfully. “The liquor here is pretty mild, so start with one bowl and tell me how you’re feeling after –”

Lan Qiren drank the bowl, grimacing a little at the taste, and remembered nothing more.

[yostresswritinggirl]

I like Venti so much. Best boy.

How would Venti feel about an S/O with synesthasia. The ability to hear color. One day she goes to him performing on the street with a sketchpap and shows him what he sounds like.

My, my, look who it is. The person who started it all, and ending it. It's amusing how this came full circle and of course you bring me such an interesting yet difficult prompt *balls fist, shakes at sky*

I had a lot of time to think about this and I feel it was still so hard to make. And there's so many variants and uniqueness to each case so this will be a wild ride. But this marks the end of this special event and on to a new one, and I thank you especially for being with me through it!

This fic made me realize I need a better Venti banner lololol

Ethereal Hues

Venti with a Reader with Synesthesia (Specifically, the ability to see sounds)

The wind-borne bard fancies audiences that sings along, that joins him in his merry tunes. He knows faces, distinguishes them, reads their responses. If it was unorthodox tales he sang, he would laugh at the predicted angry churns. If it were awesome tales of adventures, Venti would bask in the glory of awe and cheers.

And so he finds you to be the most peculiar individual he has ever audienced. You stand in the back far away from the crowd as you carry with you a notebook. Based on the way you steal glances to him whenever he performs out in public and the way your hands moved, you were definitely sketching him, yet you paid no such expression for his songs the same way the others did. And he was sure you were no deaf individual.

He had been intrigued since day one, and he had been so even at the third. When he wishes to come to you, he would always find you packing up immediately after his performances, and he would be swept aside by the task at hand: getting his share of Mora for a fantastic performance.

You were only there for his music, and your interest seem to disappear the moment the music is lost.

So slowly he would adjust his schedule, making it so his songs linger longer, his notes stretching out more just to keep you there in his vision for longer. And yet whenever he privies himself to have caught your attention, it seems as tho you were not really interested at him: even if the distance between you were great, he knows you were looking through him.

This game of cat and mouse had stretched out to seven days.

You managed to attend every tale the bard tells within the walls of Mondstadt but never have you stepped foot inside the tavern of Angel’s Share when he would perform late at night. With this discovery, he doesn’t bother to try lure you out from there, opting to skip performing in the tavern.

Much to Diluc’s surprise. It had gone so that the bartender himself asked if things were not looking great for the bard, but he was met by a smug and conniving smile, that he was quick to smack the shit out of and never bother about again.

Every time the bard wishes to approach you after the last string of his lyre is plucked, he was blocked by the crowd or pulled by a child, enough to render him unmoving, enough of a timeframe for you to disappear. You would think it was you purposely evading the bard’s advances but the way you move and act doesn’t seem like you were running away or in a hurry, more so, you look more disappointed that the festivities had to end every time.

A week of disappointments had led Venti to play his sorrows to his lyre under the tree at Windrise. It was a tune that no one in the public eye has seen him play and he was content in indulging on his own misery.

“Eyes from the fountain bench, of a longing stare had whence.

Slip between thy grasp, even as I call out through a rasp.”

“Ah, a different one this time,” he’d almost fallen out of the branch he was hanging by when a voice suddenly spoke out from beneath the tree’s shade. And there you are in all your glory, an amused expression in your face as you watch the Anemo wielder catch himself before gracefully flying down in front of you in disbelief. “Hello.”

“Hi!” He squeaked out before clearing his throat, adjusting his posture to reflect his usual composed facade with that wide grin.

“The colors brought me here, but I didn’t expect you to be the one producing them.” He watched you fumble with the familiar sketchbook in your hand, his muse in his curiousities right in front of him nonchalantly, as if fate had not been trying its best to separate them for the past week. "With the collection complete, I can finally show you the whole thing!" You practically shoved the pad to his face, forcing him to step back.

And there he saw the most ethereal painting he had seen of himself. His lone form in front of the statue where he usually plays, there in his company were streaks of light blue, reminiscent of Barbara's elemental skill. He clutches the pad for a better look as he notices more blots of complementary colors littered in ecstatic manners. Below, the words 'glee' was written in dark cursive.

Next page had warmer colors, that wrapped around him like silk and satin which would then plunge to the floor like cold white mist. This one was labelled 'Comfort.'

There were four more illustrations that depict numerous vibes of his tunes whenever he had performed, and paired with it comes different colors and patterns. Each one was more detailed than the last and with new vigor he was more than eager to see the next ones—

And then the last one was the latest, where he was once singing his odes and woes from the tree's branches. Yet this one holds a different gesture to it and he sucks in the details with a faraway gaze. Black, gray and navy blue hang like curtain as it seemingly seeps from his flesh, tangling into a weightless form before diverging into a single string of black that casts itself past the borders of the paper. It was like shadows that desperately cling to its owner, ones sadness and desperation taking form into a monster that seeks a vessel.

He looks up to you with eyes once again shining at the brilliance of the illustrations- before he clutched the pad to his chest, a toothy grin and a dangerous glint in his teal eyes, "I'm keeping this~"

To hell with that.

First he takes your sketchpad and rifts through it like there's no tomorrow, and then he lays claim on it?! The audacity of this bard!

With the only arsenal that you had, you started throwing brushes and acrylics at the floating bard until he had to crash land from getting caught by his extravagant cape. What an oversight.

That day, you'd finally sit down with the famous bard and properly got to introduce each other. While you're ecstatic to chat with the person you'd long admired from afar, Venti was more ecstatic at the idea of you and your marvelous power. It's similar to elemental sight, he imagines, and he pried with more inquiries than you had anticipated.

You thought he'd be weirded out by both your colorful sense or the fact that you had stalked him for a week to immortalize his ethereal glow in the shadows.

Yet he was so open-minded about it, wanting to accompany you more on your endeavors and jokingly using you as his marketing manager for more Mora opportunities. You find the idea not so bad.

At one point in time without your knowledge nor acknowledgement, Venti (ever so curious boy) changed his form from his bard friend to copy yours, trying to see if he were able to replicate your vision. Alas it was not as easy as that. Whatever Venti did after that, not even Celestia knows.

Your ability to see the streams of music instead of just projecting associated shapes and colors had made it easy to find Venti, and vice versa.

When he wants to find you specifically, Venti sings your name in a lilting melody as he walks through the stone streets of Mondstadt, the blazing color pouring through your window as you crane your head out and look him down from the second floor.

Venti's invisible aura brightens at the sight of you and he presents the fresh Cecilias in his hand, singing for you to accompany him to another day and you're forced to do so with his cheesiness.

He continues to sing even as you resign to your home to prepare. Unbeknownst to you the people of Mond watched with wonder and awe at the sweetness of the serenading bard that comes by every 9 AM daily to your doorstep.

Nature rarer uses yellow

Than another hue;

Saves she all of that for sunsets, —

Prodigal of blue,

Spending scarlet like a woman,

Yellow she affords

Only scantly and selectly,

Like a lover's words.

You tilt your head at Venti at his lyrics, its lines influencing the color that coats him before his lyre finally calms its strings. He does not expand on his words as the silent conversation ended with a smile. Venti had been making songs with colors incorporated in them and despite the Muse of hues, you have yet to understand what they truly mean. If they mean anything at all.

You wish you could bring about the same flowery words to describe how beautiful Venti is, your current muse, adorned with the colors of a world only you can see. But for now, as you watch him smile past the crowd and lock eyes with yours, the most you can do is immortalize his ethereal hues. Until you finally work up the courage to admit it was not the colors that had drawn you to him.

This is a blessed day as it marks the end of the 50 followers event, and start the 100 followers one! Thank you for joining us in this journey, we still have a long way to go!

[taechaos]

i got a fluff drabble idea for you!!

Jungkook and the oc were sleeping together, and jk had a nightmare of oc leaving him. When he wakes up(at around 3 a.m.), he doesnt see the oc beside him, he starts thinking that she actually left him because of his toxic behavior. While the oc was actually in a different room/kitchen/balcony for a reason. And when she comes back, she sees jjk panicked/shocked/crying. The oc comforting and babying jk, and jk too being a baby and complaining how she shouldnt have left him alone.

-from 🍠anon

angst and fluff 😎 tw: panic attack

Jungkook weaves his fingers through your hair that falls over his chest where you head lays, your breath hot on his exposed skin while you try to sleep to the comfort of his scent. There's an issue, one that makes him uncomfortable to discuss with his girlfriend, but discussing it is mandatory.

"Have you been busy?" he whispers into the darkness of his dorm room where another mattress sits empty without the presence of his roommate. Seokjin's night-out gave him the opportunity to dress you in one of his shirts as a pajama top, and your leg is bare over his thighs. If he didn't have something on his mind, he wouldn't bother striking up this conversation.

"Hm? No, why?" you murmur and start drawing patterns on his ribs.

He swallows hard, almost reserved in his approach. "Then why are my grades so shitty lately?" That came out harsher than intended, and he grimaces when you freeze along with your fingers. He knows he can't treat you the way he used to due to change in circumstances, but his ass is on the line.

"They are? What are your grades?"

"B-," he grumbles.

"That's shitty?" you sit up with a deep frown. "Jungkook, I've been preparing for my finals while making the time to do all your formative assignments. They barely take up your final grade, B- isn't shitty in the least."

"I appreciate it," he forces out through a tiny snarl, "but if you're going to do something, do it well."

You scoff, offended by his lack of gratitude and hurt by his demeaning attitude.

"I'm only telling you this because if you can't do it, I'll ask someone else. It's not that hard." His tone indirectly implies you're overreacting to such a minor topic.

"Might I remind you that I don't even major in law," you purse your lips into a thin line to swallow the lump in your throat, "nor do I attend your lectures, and I still get you semi-good grades. You can't find someone else who'll do better than me, let alone without your money."

He licks his lips and applies pressure on the back of your head to lay you back down on him. You're hesitant, but stay put anyway with a prominent pout on your face. He gently pets you as he softly says, "Don't be so sensitive. I needed to tell you so you can improve. I need to be successful for the better of our future, baby. I'm telling you because I love you."

You mumble incoherently, and he assumes you said it back. A few minutes later, he hears your soft snores and eventually drifts off with the worry of his career in the back of his mind.

And it feels like he only slept for a minute when he wakes up. Waking up is an understatement, for he shot up in his bed with a silent gasp while the sun is still down. He's almost breathless with the way he pants before sighing, realizing this is reality, not what he saw through closed lids.

It wasn't a prank this time. You really broke up with him after graduation, telling him that he'd find someone else to kiss in his workplace for them to write his reports because you wouldn't be there. He promised loyalty, but he didn't show it because you thought he dated you for selfish reasons without the inclusion of love. That's stupid because he remembers telling you he loved you before falling asleep. He knows he meant it, so why didn't you believe it?

He wants to show and not tell, make you feel loved by the hug of his arms, but there is no you to love.

You aren't there.

He touches the spot you previously occupied, and the warmth of your body is slowly fading. Maybe it's an extra early morning lecture, he thinks before checking the time. There is no lecture he knows of that starts at 3 AM. His heart starts to race.

No need to panic. You'll be here any minute now. He waits and waits, and the seconds feel like minutes, the minutes feel like hours, and it's not long before his heart hurts from the rapid pace of his pulse. You're not here.

Trying to control his breathing proves to be difficult, almost like being aware of your blinking and you forget how natural it is for you to do it every three seconds. He shoves the blanket on his lap to the side and stands up to pace his room. He can't take his eyes off the ceiling, otherwise he can't hold the tears at bay. No reason to panic, no reason to cry, no reason to feel so suffocated.

But they well up to the point that they start streaming down his face regardless of what he does, and now there's nothing that isn't out of his control, similar to your midnight disappearance. His breaths are shallow, and his guts twist uncomfortably, just like the discomfort in his lungs. Everything hurts.

"I was too harsh on her," he says in a broken whimper and tugs on his hair. "Shitty grades? You can't even stay awake in class."

He sounds so pathetic in his ears, practically gasping his words out, but his thoughts are so scrambled that he can only voice them to get some sort of relief. It doesn't help, not when he's not in a position to do anything. He can't even smoke due to the fire alarm.

He falls on the floor to crawl to the bed so he can lay his back on the footboard, hands relentless with their pulling on his hair. He leans his forehead on his bent knees and convinces himself that he's been the one overreacting all along, like he is now; not the other way around.

"You could've said something before leaving, you bitch," he hiccups in utter misery. There's no other way he can comfort himself other than to blame you. "A-And I'm the harsh one? You're worse."

"Jungkook?"

He doesn't look up at you, shaking his head with his eyes shut tightly. You rush to his side and he flinches at the contact before aggressively snuggling into you. A patch forms on the center of your shirt from the result of his tear stains.

You're shaken and in shock. You left to the communal bathroom, and since it's strictly for males, you had to wait inside until a dialogue down the hall died down so you don't get reported. Not to add your attire isn't exactly public friendly.

You rub his back soothingly with another hand scratching his scalp. You're aware that Jungkook is more prone to panic attacks than you are, which was a strange discovery considering his tough exterior, and you feel bad for being the cause more than once. Leaving him alone at night after an argument is apparently enough for him to break down, and you feel guilty for taking his attachment lightly.

When his cries start to cease little by little, he hoarsely scolds you as expected. "You shouldn't have left," he rasps and sniffles, "was a punishment really necessary? W-We can talk things out like adults, you know."

"I was in the bathroom," you quietly reassure with a peck on his nose. He scrunches it in response. "You're so paranoid."

"E-Excuse me for misunderstanding why you left while you were still angry at me. I had a dream where you more or less did the same fucking thing."

You coo at him when he shyly looks to the side with knitted brows. You gaze at his tinted nose and flushed cheeks that are still wet from his crying before tucking a hair strand behind his ear. "I would never up and leave like that–"

"But you did!"

"–because of a minor disagreement. I went to pee and had to wait out some bystanders. And I wasn't angry at you," you giggle.

He puckers his lips, still tense and upset. "But you were hurt."

"Just a tad bit," you hold an invisible pencil between your fingertips just to show how much.

He blows out a deep breath and wipes his face. Taking the hand you held up, he kisses your knuckles. "I'm sorry. I can't even get those grades on my own and you still manage to do better than I ever could with so many other courses you take."

You ruffle his disheveled hair and he wears a distasteful expression. "I know. You're cunning and clever, but you're extremely lazy."

"Rude," he huffs. His red eyes droop lazily and his gaze turns downcast. "I was being paranoid about you and my academics. Stupid, rather," he sighs. Before you can deny it, he stands up and pulls you along to get back in bed.

He forces you to lie down on him completely, overtaking your whole body as he wraps his arms around you. You get comfortable on his firm torso and tangle your legs with his.

"What do you have to say to me?" he grunts.

"What do you mean?"

"Three magical words, but preferably more explicit."

You laugh breathlessly and peck his collarbone. "I love you so much, I would kill and die for you," you play along to his innocent request, "I want to be with you until the world caves in. What else..."

"Don't stop until I fall asleep. Keep going."

You confess your undying love for him until his snores fill the air, prompting you to drift off alongside.

[panharmonium]

you know what?

no.  absolutely not.

i already did part 1 of this post here.  i’m back again with part 2, because unfortunately the awfulness factor doesn’t stop with arthur, and as much as i adore hunith generally, this entire sequence is a MESS.

and yes, i am aware that pretty much nobody else thinks so.  every time i see this scene referenced in fandom, it is always framed as a fun, cutesy, sing-songy moment of “oooo, hunith ships merthur!”  literally every time.  

which, you know, like i always say about everything fandom-related - that’s fine.  everybody is going to enjoy things differently; you do you, and keep on having fun!  but here on my own blog, in my own space, i am gonna do me, and in this case ‘me’ involves yelling about how much i can’t stand that particular read, and how angry the end of 1.10 makes me.

disclaimer, to help folks curate their own fandom experiences: i am going to be Very Cranky for the rest of this post.  if you love this particular scene in the way i just mentioned, you will probably want to scroll on by, because this piece of meta most likely won’t be your jam.  as always, these are my personal thoughts and nobody is obligated to share them, so please do not hesitate to simply skip this post if we are on different wavelengths - instead, keep enjoying fandom in whatever way is most fun for you!

fair warning now given, off i go on a long, frustrated tirade.

i already wrote about the first half of this scene, where arthur decides that the appropriate thing to do at this particular moment is to give merlin a scolding about the evils of sorcery, despite the fact that the only reason arthur is even alive to deliver this lecture in the first place is because merlin’s ‘sorcerer’ best friend just DIED saving arthur’s life.  but sure, you know what, let’s use said best friend’s funeral to chastise merlin about how “dangerous” sorcerers are.  let’s just make that completely dickheaded decision.  

and, moving on to the second half of this scene - here’s the thing.  hunith overhears this entire conversation.  she overhears arthur telling merlin off about sorcery, in front of the burning corpse of merlin’s best friend, who is, as far as arthur knows, the ‘sorcerer’ who died saving arthur’s life.  

and yet, for some inexplicable reason, hunith still cannot get off the arthur pendragon train for two damn seconds.  

she has known arthur for less than a week.  by contrast, she has known will for his entire life.  but the instant arthur walks away, hunith sidles up next to merlin and says, “you’d better be going” - like.  okay, my god, can you try to hustle him away from his best friend’s in-progress funeral any faster?????  how about we maybe give him a second?  the pyre hasn’t even burnt down yet, and merlin hasn’t had a single second to himself since this sequence started.  he’s had to stand there and listen to arthur insult the dude who everyone is supposed to be memorializing, and then hunith - who overheard the entire thing - zips right over and tries to chivvy merlin on his way.  you’d better be going.

HELLO?!  the pyre is still roaring.  how about, instead of hassling merlin and hustling him offstage, everybody just sits down and waits for a minute.  how about they all just leave merlin alone for three everloving seconds.  

honestly, just - every time i think about this scene i get angrier.

i love hunith, and i know she’s well-intentioned.  but everything she gives merlin in this scene is the exact opposite of what he needs.  he doesn’t need to be hurried off the village green like there’s some reason he can’t stay there for the entirety of his friend’s funeral.  he doesn’t need to be pushed into going back to camelot when he is clearly struggling with the idea of leaving ealdor again.  and he absolutely does not need to be told how much someone else “needs” him right now, when he himself is the one who is having a fucking crisis and who needs someone to take care of him.

i cannot emphasize that last point enough.  it is just - beyond upsetting to me that hunith literally watches arthur shitting on merlin’s dead best friend (and, by proxy, merlin himself, since merlin is the actual sorcerer) and she still somehow thinks the right thing to do is walk over and start telling merlin how great arthur is and how arthur “needs” him and how merlin “belongs at arthur’s side.”  

i can’t stand that.  it makes me so angry.  it’s not right.  it’s not fair.  it’s damaging.  it’s the same shitty messaging that destroys merlin’s life in later seasons, this idea that he exists for someone else’s sake, the complete disregard for what he himself might want at any given moment, for what he himself might need, for the reservations he might have about this plan that other people have formulated for his life.

he is UNCOMFORTABLE when she says these things to him!  he doesn’t look at her; he shifts his gaze to arthur and the camelot squad with this grim, unconvinced expression on his face, and then he averts his eyes from her.

everything hunith tells merlin in this scene is the exact opposite of what he needs to hear.  he does not need someone to tell him how badly his services are “needed” by a man who hates the person merlin truly is, not when the only friend who ever accepted merlin’s true self has just been killed.  he does not need to be told that arthur, who is alive solely because will is dead and who only seconds ago expressed exactly zero gratitude for that sacrifice, is the person to whom merlin owes his undying loyalty.  he does not need to be shuffled off to camelot as quickly as possible, as if it would be better for him to just rush forward and forget what happened here, as if what happened here didn’t matter.  

because what happened here did matter, whether hunith and arthur find it convenient to acknowledge or not.  i have to lay this out again, because what happened to merlin in ealdor is so much more important than anybody ever seems to realize - and i do understand that, i really do (because yes, it was just one episode for us) - but we have to look at it from merlin’s perspective, not the audience’s.

will wasn’t ‘one episode’ for merlin.  

i can’t say this enough times.  i cannot say this loudly enough.

merlin, at the beginning of this show, has only ever had ONE FRIEND.

most of us can’t even imagine something like that.  

but try.  TRY.  

merlin has only ever had one friend.  he’s only ever had one friend to love him.  he only had one friend for the first two decades of his life.  he’s only been in camelot for a couple of months; he’s only known these camelot people for a couple of months, and they don’t know his real self anyhow.  and now his ONLY FRIEND, the person he’s known all his life, the only friend he ever had who knew him for who he truly was, was just violently cut down before his very eyes, whilst saving a guy who can legally have merlin murdered for just existing.  and even though merlin and will spend the entirety of 1.10 having a painful, complicated argument, will still uses his last moments on earth to tell the biggest fucking whopper of his life, in order to shield merlin from harm, taking all of the danger and infamy and condemnation upon himself.  he dies with a lie on his lips.  he dies with merlin’s hand in his hair.  

and all the while, merlin knows that this would not have happened if he had just been willing to use his magic in the first place, instead of letting his fear of discovery prompt him into allowing his neighbors to offer themselves up for the slaughter in his place.

the avalanching double-whammy of grief and guilt that merlin is suddenly slammed with at the end of this episode is almost incomprehensible in scale.

i’ve talked about this before, but again, i think it’s something we don’t generally remember: losing will is the first time merlin has ever experienced personal bereavement.  and he doesn’t get to start out with a warm-up; he goes straight to the big leagues.  this is not some trifling thing.  this is a total implosion of merlin’s world as he knows it.  

when we think about the mark this episode leaves on merlin’s life, i don’t think most of us consider the magnitude of this event deeply enough.  losing will in this way is not some one-off thing that merlin just...gets over.  this is the most earth-shattering thing that has ever happened to him, at this point in time.  it is still one of the worst things that has ever happened to him, period, even years later.  the guilt never goes away.  

and the thing that’s unique about this particular trauma is that merlin has to manage it alone.  there are other tragedies in his life where we witness him receiving support/comfort from others - freya, lancelot, balinor (though of course there are aspects to these miseries that merlin has to keep secret from other people, as well) - but with will, merlin has to do everything on his own.  he can’t get one single moment of peace at will’s funeral.  his own mother, the only person who knows what really happened, can’t help him without making everything about arthur.  and merlin can’t tell anyone else what happened, not the truth of it, because doing so would squander the gift he’s been given - will’s lie is still protecting him, years later, from arthur and morgana both.  

merlin, at the end of 1.10, is forced to navigate this grief completely alone, in the silent secrecy of his own heart.  arthur is actively making it worse.  hunith is out here singing arthur’s praises.  and will is just like - he’s suddenly not part of the conversation anymore.  he doesn’t even register on anyone’s radar.

it truly is...incredible, for me, to watch hunith overhear arthur being legitimately terrible to both merlin and the guy who just died saving merlin AND arthur’s lives, and then to see her come over and start talking about how merlin belongs at arthur’s side, how much merlin needs to be there for him, how they’re two sides of the same coin.  meanwhile, the guy who literally just lied his life away to protect merlin’s secret and who NEVER made merlin feel like he had to hide who he was and who never had any problem with magic in the first place and never made merlin feel unsafe and never treated merlin like he was less of a human being just for existing -

- he’s just burning to ash there, and hunith doesn’t even acknowledge that, despite the fact that merlin is so visibly, intently, single-mindedly focused on that funeral pyre, and so clearly in distress and in pain and NEEDING somebody.  all she can talk about is merlin’s responsibility to arthur.  

the dissonance here is baffling.  hunith has known will forever.  she met arthur less than a week ago.  she barely knows him, and what she does know is that he thinks magic-users are dangerous/evil.  she saw him being a dick to her kid.  she knows her son is having the worst day of his life.  and she still doesn’t offer a single comforting word in reference to the person who just died protecting merlin’s secret, instead choosing to wax poetic about a man whose bigotry is what merlin needed protecting from in the first place.

that...is a hot mess.  the merlin-hunith-will dynamic is one of the few things in this show that reflects less-than-stellarly on hunith’s character, however much i love her.  and even though it all stems from an overwhelming desire to keep her son safe, it doesn’t make her choices any less damaging.  she sends merlin away specifically because she finds out that will knows about his secret.  she spends 1.10 analyzing and encouraging and dissecting merlin’s relationship with arthur, when merlin’s relationship with will is the one that desperately needs attention.  she’s proven wrong about will’s trustworthiness in the most stunning, powerful way possible, and then she never even acknowledges him, instead choosing to laud the dude who literally forces merlin to live in fear of execution.

she’s merlin’s mother.  she’s the only person in his life who knows anything about what will actually meant to him.  she is his only possible resource as he tries to weather a kind of devastation that defies description.  

and she, like arthur, just barrels right on ahead and makes everything about someone else.

the cinematography choices in this scene matter.  whenever arthur or hunith tries to talk to merlin, the camera is placed on the opposite side of the fire from them, meaning the flames are always in the foreground of the frame.  they are something we are required to see and look past before we can get to anything else in the scene.  and in terms of directorial/acting decisions - merlin doesn’t take his eyes off the pyre until the end of his conversation with hunith.  not once while talking to arthur does he look away from it.

the funeral pyre is always in the foreground of the shot, because it’s in the forefront of merlin’s mind.  that is where his focus is right now.  that is what is taking up all of his attention.  that is what is edging into the frame, eating up our entire field of view.  that is what he needs help with.

but he doesn’t get any such support.  the entire sequence ends up revolving around arthur.  will’s entire funeral is about arthur fucking pendragon.  arthur inserts himself so he can talk to merlin about how evil magic is, and then hunith inserts herself so she can talk to merlin about how great arthur is.  nobody ever stops to think that maybe merlin doesn’t want to talk to anybody right this second.  merlin’s entire ‘farewell’ to the only true friend he ever had in his life is completely swallowed up by the prince of camelot, and if that isn’t a metaphor for the rest of merlin’s life, then i don’t know what is.  

i know nobody needs to hear this, because very few people are invested in this kid at the same level of embarrassing detail as me, but here it is, anyway.  

yes, will is prickly.  he’s hard to get on with.  he’s angry.  he’s bitter and snappy and uncharitable, sometimes.

but you know what?  he has every reason to be like that.  

this kid has nobody.  his own best friend’s mother - who has known him all his life - doesn’t trust him and doesn’t respect him.  she is too afraid for her own son’s safety to give will any credit.  she sends merlin away to camelot, the most violently anti-magic place in the world, because apparently, will knowing about merlin’s secret would be even more dangerous than uther pendragon’s genocidal reign.

think about how that would feel.  to hear something like that about yourself.  to be somebody who is already so goddamn alone in the world, and to have your only friend vanish without so much as a ‘see you later,’ and then to be made to feel, however indirectly, like this is somehow your fault, like you’re the liability, like you’re the untrustworthy element here.  as if you, somehow, are more dangerous than a king who literally pays to have sorcerers trafficked to him in cages.

will has every right to be upset, all the time.  he has every reason to be angry, and bitter, and hurt, all the time.  to be thought so poorly of - to be held in such low esteem - when he hasn’t done anything wrong, when he hasn’t ever done anything to earn that kind of mistrust - and to have that same misplaced suspicion used to justify separating him from the only person in the world who gives a damn about him - if it were me, i would be constantly on the verge of screaming, all the time.

will has always been on merlin’s side, and he has never done anything to endanger him, and in the end he gives up everything to make sure merlin can stay safe and hidden and unhunted.  he shouldn’t have needed to prove his goodness, his constancy, his worth; not when he’s already kept merlin’s secret for who knows how many years, but even after he does do so, it doesn’t even matter.  arthur acknowledges him only to disparage sorcery.  hunith passes him over completely in favor of praising arthur, with no acknowledgment of the misjudgment she made.

i have said before that merlin tends to befriend people who have nobody, people who’ve been left behind by the rest of the world, people who’ve been made to feel that they aren’t worthy of love.  and will, merlin’s oldest friend, was the first of those many characters, and it is so heartbreaking to me that in this instance, the same kind of disinterested and careless attitude towards his worth that dogged him all his life is perpetuated and affirmed after his death.  ‘people are used to ignoring him,’ merlin tells arthur, and merlin is right - even when will is dead and burning, arthur only sees sorcery.  hunith, who we would expect to be more sympathetic, only sees arthur.

merlin is the only one who knows better.  merlin has always known better, and he loves will so much, but he is the only one, apparently, and honestly, after will dies?  nobody else even tries to understand.

to sum up:

hunith and arthur, for all that i love them, are both way out of line at the end of this episode.  

the legacy of this experience, for merlin, is that he spends the rest of his life processing this particular trauma alone.  and that is why i always, always have to keep will and ealdor in the back of my mind when i write for merlin in any capacity - because this event isn’t some simple stumbling block for him; it changes him forever.  it teaches him what he can and can’t expect from the people around him, and it solidifies how irrelevant his own needs are when viewed in comparison with arthur’s, even to people who barely even KNOW arthur; people who are supposed to put merlin first over everything.  it teaches merlin to bury his sorrow, and to wrestle with personal suffering in secret, because if things aren’t ultimately about arthur, then they aren’t important enough to be granted any significant amount of time for merlin to deal with.  merlin’s own grief, even at his best friend’s funeral, takes too long to resolve.  arthur walks away from the pyre, and it’s time for merlin to leave, too.  you’d better be going.

bottom line: i don’t care if other people think this whole ‘ooo, everybody wants merlin to be with arthur’ thing is wonderful or beautiful or dreamily romantic.  it isn’t.  it’s ugly, and it’s cruel, and it stripped merlin of his present identity and his future potential, one stolen moment at a time.

[hauntednighttraveler]

Paul Lahote x f!reader wisdom teeth

Y/N POV 

Paul wanted to take me to my appointment only to film me waking up from the sedation and show the pack. I needed a driver and didn't have the energy to fight him on the issue, so here I am in the car with a giddy giant wolf puppy. Hopefully, I won’t say anything too bad when I wake up. Or maybe I can sweet talk my way into getting Paul to delete the video so I don't die of embarrassment. 

Paul glances at me as he's driving, sensing my anxiety before the procedure. 

"Don't worry Y/N! The doc said that it should take about 45 minutes and that they do this stuff all the time! You'll be fine! And if not, they'll have to answer to me." 

He grabbed my hand and gently kissed it to help calm my nerves. He can be so caring when he's not riled up by his pack. 

I leaned closer to him and smiled. " I know. I just can't help but feel anxious you know? It'll be the first time since I've been completely vulnerable to the world and I'll practically depend on you for a while after the procedure. I don't like feeling helpless. I need my independence. Plus it's going to suck not being able to eat my favorite foods." As I turn my head back to look out the window I pursed my lips at the thought of not being able to chew food for a while. 

We enjoyed the silence as we continued our drive to the doctor's office. My heart sped up even faster as we pulled into the parking lot. 

I turned to Paul and looked at him earnestly. " We can still back out. Are you sure you'll be able to take care of me with your broken arm? I'm sure you have better things to do than look after me." 

He chuckled. " I wouldn't miss this for the world, babe. You know I'll always protect you even if I'm near death. A lousy arm won't stop me from protecting you. I couldn't think of a better place to be right now than being next to you." 

" Awe that's so sweet Paul! Sometimes I wonder how I got to be so lucky." My heart turned to mush at Paul's declaration. 

" Also, I can't wait to see you after the procedure! You'll be so out of it. It'll make a great movie for our next pack movie night!" Paul winked at me after giving me a smirk. 

*Sigh* He just had to ruin the moment with his big mouth. 

A nurse comes to get me once we're all checked in. I glance back at Paul one last time before going to the back. Taking a deep breath in I mentally prepare myself. 

Paul's POV 

I nervously look at my watch. It’s been 45 minutes already, why hasn’t she come out yet? If that doc messed anything up, today will be his last day practicing. Five more minutes pass and I get up to ask the front desk what’s taking so long. Before I reach the window, I can smell and hear Y/N coming. 

The first glance at her made my heart turn to mush. The way she looked so out of it and helpless, reminded me of a drunk Y/N. But this drunk version of Y/N had regressed to a helpless toddler. Two nurses were holding onto her arms, trying their best to help her walk and make sure she didn’t fall to the ground. Apparently, Y/N was so out of it she didn’t know how to walk properly. The nurses were trying to get Y/N to lock her knees so that she wouldn’t collapse and take two nurses down with her. Deciding to put the nurses out of their misery, I walked up and took Y/N from them. 

“Thank you, guys! I’m sorry for the trouble she caused you!” I waved them goodbye and they watched me now struggle to get a drugged up Y/N 50ft to our car. 

We finally made it to the car and Y/N seemed to be slipping in and out of consciousness. Once I got her seatbelt on I encountered a new problem. Y/N kept flopping down to her left. Boy was her neck going to hurt when she woke up. 

As we are about five minutes away from the office, Y/N jumps up from slouching, startling me to death. She turns her head slowly towards me and I see a look of confusion hidden by her glazed eyes. 

In a muffled voice thanks to the gauze, she quietly asks, “Who are you?!” 

I chuckle in my head. Out loud I tell her, “I’m Paul, your boyfriend.” 

She gasps as best as she could and exclaims, “ You are?!” She then proceeds to slump back down as quickly as she jumped up earlier. 

This is going to be so much fun. I glance over at her periodically. A smile is plastered on my face as I study her features. Her cheeks are protruding from the gauze in her mouth, giving her the essence of a chipmunk stuffing their mouth. 

Suddenly, Y/N pops back up and stares at me with her deer in the headlight eyes. “Who are you?!” 

Laughing once again, I tell her, “ I’m Paul, your boyfriend.” I wonder how many times we’ll go through this charade. 

Surprised yet again, Y/N slumps back down into unconsciousness. 

30 minutes pass and I think Y/N has allowed a deep sleep to take over. Boy was I wrong. Without warning yet again for what felt like the 20th time, my little chipmunk pops up again scaring the ever-loving Jesus out of me. 

I hear her sniffing as if searching for something. Her face lights up like a child’s on Christmas Day. “I smell pizza!” 

“You can’t have pizza. We have some soup for you at home.” As I give Y/N the news, her face quickly morphs into the face of a child being told no for the first time in their life. My heart broke at the sight of her face. I would give her all the pizza in the world to make her smile. 

As if forgetting her discovery of pizza, Y/N takes another quick sniff and shouts, “ I smell pasta!” She’s clapping her hands with the biggest grin on her face. 

Again I have to break her spirits and tell her about the soup. Instead of smelling something else, Y/N quickly slumps back into the unknown. Peace engulfs the car. 

After about 5 more times of Y/N popping up and smelling foods, we finally make it to our apartment. Remembering how difficult it was to get her to walk with the nurses, dread came over me at the realization that we live on the 3rd floor of our complex and we don’t have an elevator. If at all possible, I wanted to avoid picking Y/N up like a rag doll. I didn’t feel like cleaning up puke this early in the morning. I make my way to Y/N’s side of the car. I gently shake her to wake her up. 

Startled, she stares behind me, looking around. “ Where are we?” 

“We are at home! Time to get you upstairs!” I make a motion to grab her right arm to support her. As I try and support Y/N with one arm, I silently curse myself for injuring my right arm. Even with my super wolf powers, to say that my left arm was severely lacking compared to my right was an understatement. 

The first few steps towards our complex gave me false hope. Things seemed to be going fine, except Y/N kept blacking out. We almost fell face forward when she blanked out mid-step up the curb. If our neighbors saw us right now, they would definitely call the cops on me thinking I drugged Y/N and was going to do something bad to her. I would never in a million years do something as disgusting as that. People like that are cowards and should be destroyed. 

We finally make it to the stairs after fumbling for a good 5 minutes only to have traveled a couple of feet. I stare up at the 3 flights of stairs we have to take, the journey looking daunting. Fed up with how slow and how little progress we have made, I decide to throw Y/N over my shoulder and walk up the stairs. I made sure to take the stairs slowly, trying not to push my luck, there would be no puke to clean up so help me God. 

Three flights of stairs later and we land at our apartment. I set Y/N down and we make it to our bedroom. I stopped her right before the bed and tell her to turn and sit down hoping that she’ll turn and sit on the bed. Apparently, all she heard was sit, and down she slumped to the floor, almost taking me with her. As I huffed getting up, I stared at her sweet blissful face, almost getting mad at her, almost. I won’t admit it to Y/N, but I had more than half a mind to leave her on the floor. But I couldn’t do that to my precious Y/N. Trying again, I pick her up off the floor and I am able to successfully get her top front half onto the bed. Although it may look like she was being smothered, I took it as a small victory. That is until she started sliding back off of the bed. Quickly I used my good arm and knee to stop her from undoing all of my hard work. I slide her body onto the bed and take off her shoes. Immediately after getting her right shoe off, she flips over in the blink of an eye. I leap to the other side of the bed, praying she doesn’t roll off before I get there. Thankfully, our bed is king-sized, stopping her from exerting too much energy to continue rolling. Instead, her final position has her spread out like a starfish, on top of the covers with her goofy smile front and center. Needing a drink after this fiasco, I head to the kitchen and grab myself a beer. I slouch on the couch next to our husky, Meliodas, thinking of all the stories I can’t wait to tell Y/N when she wakes up. 

[baoshan-sanren]

Chapter 30

of the wwx emperor au I’m thinking of calling Lan QiRen’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week oh god it’s only gonna get worse

Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 Part 1 | Chapter 8 Part 2 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 Part 1 | Chapter 15 Part 2 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 Part 1 | Chapter 22 Part 2 | Chapter 23 | Chapter 24 | Chapter 25 | Chapter 26 | Chapter 27 | Chapter 28 | Chapter 29

They watch the lanterns from a rooftop terrace.

The inn itself is large and lovely. The front faces the main road, which crosses YiLing east to west, leading directly to the Immortal Mountain. The back opens into an enclosed garden, the tallow trees awash in autumn colors, hiding whatever unsightly neighbors may exist beyond their red-gold canopy of branches. It is difficult to fully conceal the haphazardness of YiLing, but the designer of the inn had cleverly used the landscape to obscure as much of the town as possible. One could easily imagine, if occupying the rooms and balconies facing the garden, that no such thing as overcrowded winehouses or street markets could exist in its vicinity.

In short, it is not a type of place where the Lan Sect would ever attempt to secure lodgings, nor would XiChen ever walk into its front halls of his own volition.

Nie MingJue has no such reservations. The innkeeper’s insistence that the terrace can only be accessed by the guests of the inn falls on deaf ears, and is soon completely silenced by Nie MingJue’s contemptuous glare. A simple glint of gold is enough to make XiChen’s Lan Sect uniform invisible. In moments, they are both personally escorted to the roof of the building.

The terrace is not large, and they are not alone. XiChen tucks himself into a corner overlooking the street, MingJue’s bulk easily blocking him from the sight of other patrons, preventing any unwanted attention. The towering mass of the Immortal Mountain is a black, indistinct shape to the west, a silent guardian watching over YiLing. The first lanterns are always released from the Emperor’s palace, and they seem to have arrived just in time to see them rising from a pitch black void between the earth and heavens, resembling handfuls of fading stars hanging low in the sky.

XiChen had assumed that YiLing may prove itself less disordered when seen from above, the way one can only see a large pattern from a distance. He is wrong. There truly is no sense or structure to be seen in its layout. Not a single street is free of someone shouting their wares, intricate roof ridge decorations arch next to weathered tiles that had long needed replacing, stubborn maples grow wherever they can find a spot of dirt and a flood of rain water.

He has not yet decided if he is pleased or disappointed by the discovery, when lanterns from YiLing follow those released from the Immortal Mountain, painting the town in light and color, chasing the darkness away. XiChen has seen the Lantern Festival many times in Gusu, twice during an unplanned stay in MoLing, and once during a particularly long Sect Leader conference in LanLing. The LanLing Jin grandiosity is difficult to match anywhere in the Empire, but XiChen has never seen so many lanterns at once, transforming night into day, hardly a slice of sky visible between them.

The parade traveling the street below them swells, loud and cheerful, the sheer profusion of chaos and noise impossible to ignore, even with such an impressive light show directly above them.

XiChen turns to MingJue, intending to ask if YiLing truly holds a different procession each night of the festival. The idea still seems extravagant to him, even if it is the Emperor’s birthday. But MingJue is looking at neither the lanterns, nor the parade below, his attentive gaze and half-formed smile focused entirely on XiChen.

XiChen forgets what he had meant to ask, and looks away again, his face heating.

They are standing close, to keep their distance from the other spectators gathered on the terrace. It is only a handful of guests, their voices indistinct murmurs, easily drowned out by the clamor from the street.

XiChen does not like feeling flustered, especially in the presence of strangers.

“Sect Leader--“

“You have asked me to call you by your name,” Nie MingJue says, his voice low, “and I have obeyed. But no matter how many times I ask, you will not do the same.”

XiChen folds his hands in his sleeves, to keep them steady and out of sight. The only sources of light on the terrace are the small, paper lamps decorating the inn roof, and even they only cast a reddish, muted glow. XiChen fervently hopes that their glow is faint enough to conceal the color in his cheeks.

“It would be improper,” he says.

Even as he speaks, he inwardly cringes at the absurdity of the words.

How hypocritical of him, to call such familiarity improper. Did he not allow the man to hold his hand whenever he wished? Had he not welcomed each advance with a smile? Can he not still feel the press of Nie MingJue’s palm on the small of his back?

And yet, regardless of how imprudent all his earlier behavior may be, he must draw a line somewhere. If not for the sake of propriety, then for the sake of his own sanity.  

"Would it be less improper if I were to speak plainly of my admiration?”

Oh, XiChen thinks, breath leaving him in a rush.

Although this is something he had long suspected, to have it spoken out loud, to have it confirmed in such direct fashion, seems to be more than he had been prepared to handle. How can something be so thrilling, and yet cause so much confusion and misery?

“Even if you were to speak plainly,” XiChen says, struggling to keep his voice firm, “You would still be the General of the Emperor’s army, with duties to perform and a Sect to lead. And I-- I would still be the future leader of the Lan Sect. We should not speak of impossible things.”

“This is your only objection? Not my temper or disposition, but the circumstances of our individual positions?”

Mortified, XiChen imagines that his face must be as red as the lamps decorating the roof.

“You are being rather bold,” he says, “but I have found no other cause for disapproval.”

Nie MinJue falls silent. XiChen returns to watching the parade without truly seeing it, the trembling agitation in his chest refusing to settle.

Unexpectedly, he feels guilty, as if the circumstances which prevent him from speaking just as directly are somehow of his own making. The General of the Emperor’s army may bestow his admiration liberally, and he may do so as boldly as he pleases. Ultimately, Nie MingJue has nothing to lose. A small bit of lost pride in having to face rejection can be nothing to someone so highly esteemed. But XiChen, destined to lead a disgraced Sect, can never be so bold. The small bit of dignity he possesses might be pitiful and tattered, but he cannot put it aside, regardless of his heart’s desires.

A flash of white in the crowd is a welcome distraction, but even so, it takes him some time to recognize the Lan Sect robes, and even longer to realize why the sight of them is so jarring.

It is only one set of robes. One single disciple moving through the crowds, when uncle had been more than explicit in his instructions. They are always to travel in pairs, regardless of circumstances. There are a few places in the Empire where a lone Lan disciple may pass unscathed, but YiLing has never been one of them.

“XiChen?”

“I think something is wrong,” XiChen says, “that is Lan YunLi, and he should not be here. Not this late in the evening, and not alone.”

“Come,” Nie MingJue does not hesitate, “let us catch him before he disappears.”

[ymiwritesstuff]

Regained Hope

This was requested by @sweatyknightwombatherring and because it includes significant spoilers for Steel Ball Run, I won’t be showing the ask itself. I really hope you enjoy this, I did make a couple changes to hopefully improve the quality, hope you don’t mind. Please enjoy.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 7: Steel Ball Run

Gyro Zeppeli x Fem!Reader

Summary: A grim turn of events leaves you filled with sorrow that quickly turns into confusion and hope as you make a discovery that changes everything.

Notes: Angst, SPOILERS FOR PART 7!!

Every sound around you went unheard, the only thing audible to you being your own, rapid, panicked heartbeat as the water slowly returned to its previous state. Your hands were slowly losing their strength as you dragged his limp body to a safer place, away from the slowly rising water. The President had turned his attention to Johnny, who noticed your desperate attempt to save Gyro’s life.

“Please please, please... C’mon...” Groans left your lips as you tried to hold onto him and at the same time quickly move him to the shore, the fresh wound on his side bleeding and making your heart hurt that much more. You were exhausted, but you had to save him, you weren’t going to let it end like this. After everything you had gone through, after everything he had done for you, you weren’t going to lose him, not like this. The heartache dug its claws into your most vulnerable places, trying to make you lose hope, and give up on trying to save him, however you endured it and held onto him with an iron-like grip, pulled him as hard as you could, and ignored the overwhelming, draining exhaustion.

With one final pull, you somehow made it on dry land before the water was able to consume you. But the struggle was far from over. Your heart still racing, you quickly kneeled down beside him, your eyes immediately examining his bleeding wound caused by Valentine. “Gyro? Gyro can you hear me?!” Your trembling hands made their way on the injury, applying pressure on it to hopefully easing the plentiful bleeding. Gyro’s emerald eyes were closed, his entire being unresponsive to your cries. Your eyes landed on your hands that had quickly become covered by the crimson liquid, the sight only increasing your panic and fear.

Loud sounds quickly caught your attention. Turning towards the noise, your eyes quickly landed on Johnny, engaged in a battle with the President. A wave of dismay washed over you, your eyes quickly glancing at Gyro, whose state hadn’t improved at all. Your heartbeat echoed in your ears, panic took over your entire being, and for a single moment, you felt like everything around you crumbled into dust. A feeling of utter hopelessness hit you like a boulder and all you could do was to plead and somehow try to save him.

“Please... Please Gyro! You have to get up!” You choked out, your bloody hands still desperately holding onto him. He had to survive, he absolutely had to. Your eyes glanced at his face that remained still, the sight only bringing you more dismay. Slowly, you lowered your ear to his chest, hoping to hear an alive heartbeat, but at the same time, secretly knowing that the silent prayer in your mind was anything but possible.

Silence. Complete, utterly painful silence was all that remained in the place that once held a beating heart. “N-no...” The voice that came out was quiet, weak, completely defeated as tears slowly prickled in your (E/C) eyes. Your head remained on his chest, your mind internally screaming and demanding him to somehow open those gorgeous emerald eyes once more. However the more time passed, the less faith you had. “No.. No no no! Gyro please! Get up!” You lifted your head to look at him once again, your hands subconsciously leaving his wound and your sobs traveling from the base of your throat all the way to your mouth, through which they painfully left.

Upon receiving no response, just a blank, lifeless expression on the face that usually held the most amazing smile you had ever seen, you collapsed and allowed your upper body to fall on top of him, desiring to have him close even in this agonizing moment. “P-please...” Deep down you knew. No matter what you did, how much you cried, and how many tears you shed, he wouldn’t come back.

You couldn’t do anything. You couldn’t save him. If only you had been stronger. The crushing feeling of sorrow and agony filled you with an endless amount of guilt, and you couldn’t help but blame yourself. The heavy tears that fell from your eyes like a rainfall landed on his soulless corpse that you still held onto. All the previous determination you had was now gone, replaced by a plaguing misery.

How had it come to this? Just a few moments ago, everything was fine and now, everything was gone. You gripped the material of his shirt, unwilling to let him go despite knowing that he was already gone. Denial mixed with sadness and created a feeling that weighed on your heart and only worsened your condition. It was hopeless.

However, suddenly, a strange feeling of someone’s presence surrounded you. The sudden change caused you to lift your gaze up and notice something, unfamiliar materializing next to you. A gasp slipped your lips once you came to the realization. It was impossible. “Y-you... You’re my sta-” Your quiet sentence was cut short as a glow started emitting from the Italian’s body, more specifically, the spot your pain-filled tears had landed on. Your eyes widened and a spark of hope ignited within you. You threw a glance at your fighting spirit you had never encountered before and noticed it glowing similarly.

Something had awakened your stand for the first time ever. You had never seen it appear next to you, leaving you to assume that you simply didn’t have one. However, despite your eyes being filled with tears and slightly blurring your vision, they didn’t lie. Because what you saw, was indeed the manifestation of your spirit, and it was doing something.

The glowing quickly moved to Gyro’s wound and to your amazement, it disappeared. The once bleeding wound was now gone, seemingly healed by your stand, which only increased your confusion, but also fueled your hope. You weren’t sure what it was that your soul was doing, nor did you want to jump to conclusions, but once your eyes caught looked at Gyro and noticed something, everything changed.

For a moment, you didn’t believe what you had just seen. But once his chest rose again and he took another breath, your eyes widened in shock and you immediately rushed to his side, your stand quickly disappearing. “Gyro! A-are you- Can you hear me?” Your hands land on his face, the warmth returning to his cheeks. For a moment, nothing happens and you wonder if any of what just occurred was real, however, all that doubt gets thrown out of the window when he frowns his brows and lets out a groan, a sign of life you never thought you’d hear.

“W-what the...?” He says, his voice raspy and quiet as if he had just woken from a nap. Your eyes widen and once more, you can feel tears forming, this time, however, out of joy. His emerald eyes that shine as they had always done lock onto yours and that is more than enough to make you throw yourself at him, wrapping your arms around his neck in a tight embrace you longed for.

“G-Gyro! Y-you... You’re alive!!” A sob escapes your lips as you bury your head in his neck, unwilling to let go. Gyro’s eyes frown in confusion until he remembers what happened. He glances at you once you pull away, tears still dripping from your eyes. “You saved me, didn’t you? How in the hell did you...?” His voice trails off as he is unable to come to a conclusion that could possibly explain why he was still breathing. He vividly remembers being wounded by the President before his whole world went dark. Gyro thought for sure he was dead, yet here he was, you by his side.

Gyro doesn’t receive a proper answer to his question, instead you crash your lips into his, unable to resist the desperate urge to kiss him after everything. He doesn’t protest and instead wrapped his arms around you. It took you a good few moments to realize that he was actually there, holding you and this was not a product of your mind that formed out of desperation.

You suddenly remember that the battle with Valentine wasn’t over yet and quickly pull away. Gyro raises his brow but quickly follows your gaze that lands on Johnny and Valentine. “That bastard just won’t die, will he?” He says and stands up, which makes you do so as well. “We have to help,” you say, pushing the joy of seeing Gyro alive and well aside for a brief moment. He glances at you and gives you that smile you loved.

“It’s time for round two.”

[inlovewithfairies]

The Queen's visit

Summary: With Queen Luna visiting Alfea, Farah has to keeps quiet at her aggressions, Griffin hasn't.

A/N: I know I said I was gonna post this last night but my dad got drunk and my dog broke a lot of stuff, so here, have a cute fanfic, as usual, english ain't my first language so I did the best I could.

Warning: none

Words: 1,2k

Characters: Farah Dowling | Faragonda, Griffin, Queen Luna.

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

Twice per year if not more Luna had developed the bothering act of visiting the school for a check-up. Those days had been misery incarnated for Farah, but the Queen was the Queen and after all she was in her lands.

Dressed in a long trench coat Farah stepped out of her office and strolled downstairs, she reached the front doors and noticed the cars far away from the entrance, she had a minute at most. She felt something in her shoulder and turned around to a red eyed raven, she smiled and caressed its feathers.

"Air support, huh?"

The moment the cars drove pass the gates the raven left her shoulder and flew to a near by tree. Farah straighten her coat and waited for Luna to get out of the car, she bowed her head a little and greeted her.

"Queen Luna, pleasure to see you"

"Pleasure to see you too, Farah." The woman walked inside the building and Farah followed, there goes the air support.

They discussed pleasantries for a while, they covered most of the school, they lacked the specialists training area.

"You know dear, I have some oils to recommend if you want. Your skin seems to be absorbing all your stress." Said Luna smiling to her, passive aggressive behavior was kind of her thing. Farah smiled tightly and they walked toward the specialists. She felt the raven fly over their heads and next to Saul, far over the field. They reached them after a while, both of them feeling Farah's discomfort, the headmistress held her head up but her eyes showed doubt.

"Queen Luna" said both Griffin and Saul bowing.

"Headmaster Silva, Headmistress Griffin" she replied.

Farah felt the aura of protection surround her, she looked away from the training and into the purple haired woman, whom smiled to her and focused back on something Luna was saying. Comments on their skills at teaching filled the air, interrupted by a first year specialist falling into the water and swimming to the shore, later realizing it was where they were standing, soaked he looked up and noticed the four adults standing at him, he gulped. Bowing he moved away fast and reached for a towel, only to have all the water away from him with a flicker of Farah's hand, he looked back and gave her a small smile and a nod. 'Thanks'.

"I think it's time for some tea, don't you think, Farah?" Luna spoke and began walking towards the school without waiting for an answer, Farah hurried after her and gave Griffin and Saul a grimace, Saul answered with a thumbs up and Griffin with a side smile. They were half way through the lawn when Luna spoke again.

"I know that you love teaching, but I don't know how you can manage to live here without a partner, I would find it impossible not to have a family, no one to go back home to. Don't you ever feel lonely? The students will leave at some point after all" Luna had faux worry all over her face and Farah felt an ache on her chest.

"You get used to it. The students are more important, their education comes first." She half smiled to her and walked all the way to the building.

A couple hours later, Griffin walked into their suite, she had trained for a while with the specialists and needed a shower and her bed, it had been a long time. She opened the door and hung her coat by it, shoes off she walked past the kitchen and into the living room area, Farah looked up at her scrunching her face and closed her eyes, tension in her body. Shit she had messed it up. There in the living room was Farah, sitting on the sofa with Queen Luna on the armchair across from her, sipping on a cup of tea. Queen Luna's eyebrows shot upwards and looked at Griffin with shock.

"Well, well, isn't this a surprise" spoke the Queen resting the cup on the table. Griffin saw as Farah's head hung and the tension building up in her body.

"When you mentioned tea I figured it would be in the office." Said Griffin rooted to her spot trying not to stare at any fairy.

"I was wondering what Farah's suite would be like, I have to admit it is brighter than I thought."

"We decided to have tea here instead" said Farah turning to her again. The night was setting outside the window and Griffin doubted whether to stay or leave. Marvelled at the new discovery Queen Luna urged her to sit on the sofa.

"Come on, you don't have to be all weird because I'm here, I'm Farah's friend."

Farah wanted to roll her eyes but she had to admit that having caught Luna out of guard was rather pleasant. Griffin got another cup of tea and walked to the sofa, giving Farah a kiss on the head a she went by, slightly caressing her shoulder. Queen Luna smiled at them "I'm glad Farah finally found someone, thought she was going to be a weird loner all her life" Farah let the harmful comment pass but Griffin didn't.

"Finally? We've been together for over 20 years. Rather longer than your marriage if I recall correctly" Griffin gave a pleasant smile and sipped her tea. Farah could see the mixed feeling burning under Luna's feature, she avoided the Queen's gaze by looking at her cup.

"Why did you choose to keep it a secret, then?" She snapped.

"Who said it is a secret?" She took a sip of her cup "Everyone here and in Cloud Tower knows we are together" Griffin answered fast, she knew better than to pick at Luna, but she hadn't grown in her kingdom, she wasn't afraid of her.

They stood in silent for a few minutes faux smiles on their faces. Luna stood up and looked at them.

"It's getting late, I shall leave" both women stood up and followed her to the door. Farah made it to follow the Queen outside but was stopped by Griffin.

"Training with the specialists killed me, I'll take a shower and then go to bed" she whispered by her ear, loud enough she knew Luna could hear. "Hurry up", she kissed under her ear and pushed her to Luna. Suppressing her smile Farah gazed at Luna and both of them walked downstairs to the entrance, any hurtful comment being ignored completely.

When Farah made it back to the suite Griffin was already on bed, brushing her hair. Farah ran to her and pressed her to the bed, climbing on top of her and sitting over her hips. The purple haired chucked as Farah pecked all over her face.

"I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you" Griffin secured her arm around her waist "Thank you so much" Farah rested her head against Griffin's chest smiling.

"Did she say anything else to you?" Griffin looked at her and Farah kissed where she was laying. "Farah, speak to me" she let her hands wander on the mind fairy's back. With a huf she spoke softly. "She said she could recommend some oil for my skin, that the stress was affecting it". Griffin let go a laugh that made her sit up, Farah moved away from her chest and stared at her.

"What's so funny?"

"You my dear have the most wonderful skin, don't listen to her" she kissed her cheeks and nose, then holding her to her chest again.

[yikeswtfmate]

Trouvaille

Trouvaille (n.) a valuable discovery, or a lucky find; something lovely discovered by chance

Summary: Bucky stumbles upon a dingy bar in Brooklyn, turning his world upside down.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: swearing

A/N: Super fluffy piece! I’m so excited about this, every second of it has been an absolute pleasure. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did writing it!

masterlist

It’s another Wednesday night that Bucky spends in a seemingly random bar in Brooklyn. But nothing is random about this bar – although, granted, it was at first. Now, James Buchanan Barnes can be found in this bar once a week without fail (which in all honesty should be a miracle considering what his job is), whether it’s a Monday (when only a few sad men swallow their misery in tall glasses of beer), or a Thursday (his favourite, because at 10 o’clock on the dot the bartender plays that song that he used to love so much in another life), or a Saturday (which he hates the most because it’s crowded and he can’t really have a proper conversation). The bar is nothing much – the same floor that however many times it’s cleaned it’s still a little bit sticky, there’s the smell of stale booze that oozes out from the upholstery and the customers only give him a cursory glance when he walks in and takes his usual stool right at the farthest corner of the bar.

He discovered this bar one night when he was tired of wandering the streets of Brooklyn after a long day of restlessness. He couldn’t sit still in the Avengers Tower, and although he tried sparring with Nat, or playing poker with Sam and Tony, or even tried his hand at chess again with Steve, he just couldn’t stop feeling fidgety. So he just up and went for a stroll through the emptying streets until he ended up in Brooklyn. He noticed the neon sign above the door, one of the clover’s leaves flickering on and off in the darkness. He decided to take a seat when he heard the music – low notes of a song long forgotten dancing between whispers and shouts, the singer’s voice too sweet for the rough hands that were clutching their bottles.

He stayed for the most radiant laughter that filled his ears, folding over and around the song. He stayed for the bright eyes that met his when he asked for a beer of his own; for the smile that tugged at delicate lips; for the raised eyebrow that ascertained recognition. He normally would have pulled his baseball cap lower over his eyes, but he didn’t want to obstruct his view. He wanted to see her fully, to bask in the marvel that this woman in front of him was.

The first words she said to him were of mockery, laughing at his weak attempt at a disguise, and after six months of knowing her, he’s still surprised at how easy it is to be around her. How easy it is to banter, to make fun of the other, to always be able to cheer him up, regardless of how deep his rage might be, to not expect anything more than to just be.

Now it’s another night that Bucky spends at the dingy bar, watching Y/N pour shots for the hen party that’s taking place for whatever reason on a Wednesday. He’s been in a foul mood all evening, and she’s been trying to give him some space, but as she wipes her hands on a damp towel, she huffs and saunters over to him.

“Ok, big guy. Tell me what’s up with you today.” Y/N demands, but Bucky doesn’t answer at first. She leans down, trying to catch his eyes as he lowers his gaze towards the bottle he’s been nursing for an hour already. “You know I hate it when I can’t see your pretty smile, baby.” She tries again. “Come on, Sarge, I won’t be seeing you for another week after tonight, give me something to swoon over until next time.”

He finally smiles, even if for a fraction. He looks back up at her and she notices the dark circles under his eyes. She knows he doesn’t usually sleep well, but he seems even more exhausted than last week. There’s something bugging him that’s enough to keep him from flirting and laughing at her stupid jokes, as he would do.

“Penny for your thoughts?” She offers.

“How about a kiss, doll?” Which is definitely more than she could get out of him all night, but still not the full force of the charm that he normally displays.

“My, mister Barnes, you sure know how to bewitch a girl, don’t you?” There’s a pause in their conversation as she goes about serving a man in a suit that must’ve probably just gotten out of a huge fight with his partner, considering the distraught look.

“Come on, Buck. Tell me what’s up. I ain’t leaving until you tell me what’s wrong.”

“You still have two more hours to work.” He points out.

“Which means I’m super dedicated to the cause if I’m willing to not lose my job by just walking out to prove a point.”

He sighs but at least offers her a small smile in return. Shaking his head, he takes a sip of his beer, knowing from experience that although she can give him space whenever he needs it, he always finds that he feels better after sharing his thoughts with her.

“Just been having a shitty week, that’s all, doll. The last mission was rather…challenging.” He says, memories of too many bodies scattered on a cold slaughterhouse floor in front of his eyes. There are not many things he’d shy away from telling her, but sometimes he feels the need to avoid giving her the grimy details.

Y/N nods in silence, and after a few seconds of watching him closely, she places her hand on top of his right one that was resting on the bar top. He moves his palm upwards in order to hold hers, lifting it towards his lips and placing a soft kiss on a knuckle. She squeezes his fingers for a second but doesn’t let go. He needs the contact, of that she is more than certain, and however much she’d like to deny her affection for him, this sullen man sneaked his way around her veins, slipped between the cracks of her ribs, and nestled himself in a corner of her heart, filling her lungs with sunshine and camellias without her even noticing.

“Well, I’d say beer is a good start to drown your sorrows in.” She notes, trying to make light, drawing him out of the dark place he likes to curl into.

She pulls back her hand, all the while Bucky wishing she’d just stay there in front of him, keeping her hand in his and just looking at each other.

“I can also offer you some salted peanuts as well.” She says, disappearing under the bar, throwing food and alcohol on the top as she keeps on talking. “Might find some pretzels as well, if only I can find where Cody keeps putting them under this goddamn – aha!” Another colourful bag surfaces and Bucky tries to catch it without smashing anything in his way. “Oh! I might even find his secret stash of chocolate if I look hard enough!” Her eyes appear over the countertop, a mischievous glint that Bucky enjoys but always treats with caution. “Would that make you feel better?”

“I’ve already told you that a kiss would be enough, baby.” He winks, already feeling some of the tension easing out of his muscles.

“Now, now, James. This is no way of treating a lady. What would the village say if I were to fall into your arms without you properly courting me?”

Bucky tilts his head to the side, narrowing his eyes. She shifts under his gaze, but can admit that it melts her from inside out.

“Is that what you want, doll? A proper courtship?” His voice is low but even with music playing and patrons shouting around them, she feels as if he whispered those words into her ear. She shudders, making his lips slowly tug up at one end.

“Bucky, you’re supposed to tell me what you want so you can feel better.”

“I said I wanted a kiss, but you keep refusing me, baby.” A frown. “So I’ll just settle for walking you home tonight, what do you say?”

“Silly goose.” She laughs, although she’s only half listening to him as she is pouring a draught beer to a customer next to him. “You’ve been walking me home for the past three months, I don’t see how tonight would be any different.”

Bucky smiles softly when she sends him a wink distractedly. There are pauses in their conversation, sentences and questions scattered across two hours as the patrons of the bar order their last drinks and prepare to head home. Midnight comes and goes, and Bucky loses himself in memories of nights spent in the bar, just so he could be in her company, even if for only a few hours. Tonight’s the night, he decides, there have been too many silent queries in her eyes, too many touches that bordered on delicate caresses, too many smiles hiding secrets that could bloom into something else, something more that he so desperately has been longing for.

It was easier to not want more from life before he met her. He was content with just surviving from day to day, never asking for more, never believing he deserved more. The way he saw it, it should have been his atonement for the years of pain and suffering he had inflicted. Never knowing more than completing the missions he was sent on, eradicating as much as possible of the evil that existed in the world, trying to tip the scales at least a fraction before he’d have to finally rest, regardless of how soon that would come. Until Bucky met Y/N, which turned his world upside down. He found himself more careful, less inclined to charge head first into any situation that might bring him certain death. Now he had someone to come back to, someone who would bring him back from the dead just so she could give him a good scolding.

He's been more than careful not to let any of his friends near her, except for Natalia, of course. Y/N mentioned one time her thoughts on the Black Widow being the most amazing woman to ever grace the Earth, so he decided to surprise her one night. It wasn’t a tough choice to make, her ecstatic expression and her giddiness were enough to make him smile all night, although he had to give up her attention completely in favour of the redhead. After that, Nat would sometimes accompany him, having taken a liking to “Barnes’ cute bartender,” but neither of them would give any more to the others, much to their collective chagrin. But Bucky was relentless in refusing to subject her to their teasing and intensity, and he was grateful Nat respected his wish.

One night he asked her to dance with him in the middle of the dingy bar. It was the first time she played that song he loved so much, a soft melody that waved around their bodies as he shifted her closer and closer to him until she finally rested her head on his shoulder. He felt the sigh that escaped her lips and kissed the top of her head with his eyes closed.

Another night he came in bruised and battered after a particularly difficult mission, having escaped from the Med bay as soon as he was allowed, his first thought upon waking up being of her. The moment she saw him, she rounded the bar, inspecting him from head to toe and pinched his ear, which was probably the only part of him that wasn’t hurting at that moment. She shouted at him and cursed him, accusing him of being a “reckless wet sock,” all the while he was laughing at her reaction, even though the worry in her eyes made his heart expand like batter in the oven. That was the first time she made him promise he’ll stop putting himself in danger or she’ll never forgive him, a hand over his purple cheek, her thumb stroking over the tender skin. With a kiss to the inside of her wrist, he promised, having realised he would forever do anything she would ask of him.

While she is closing the bar, Bucky wonders yet again how would his life look like if he would just give up his duties as an Avenger, and follow his heart for once. He wonders whether that would be selfish, throwing away the possibilities unleashed by the serum flowing through his body, turning his back to the injustices of the world without a second thought, just so he could wake up with Y/N in his arms every morning.

“You’re thinking too much again and that only leads to trouble.” Her voice startles him from his musings, a poke to his ribs for good measure.

They start walking in silence for a few blocks, the city asleep around them. Y/N waits for him to speak, knowing from experience that it’s better to give him time until he’s ready to say whatever’s on his mind.

“Do you ever wish to…give everything up and start again?” He asks.

“I guess being a bartender isn’t anyone’s dream job.” She concedes. “I’d love to write more, but that won’t pay my bills. Giving everything up and starting again would just work in theory, wouldn’t it, though? There will always be a part of you that stays with you forever, no matter how much you try to hide it, so in my opinion it’s better to just accept it and move on.” A few more steps in silence. “You should stop blaming yourself, Buck. It wasn’t your fault. Accept it and move on. I’m not judging you for anything you’ve done while you were…you know. You’re here now and I love the person that you are now, so that’s all that matters to me.”

Bucky stops in his tracks, watching her in utter stupor. They’ve discussed what happened, but never at great lengths, because Bucky was too afraid he’ll repulse her into avoiding him. She’s never shared her thoughts on the matter, at least not this openly.

Y/N turns back when she notices he’s not in step with her anymore. She extends her arm, offering her hand and he takes it, interlacing their fingers together.

“You’re kind, and sweet, and funny, and although you’re a fucking idiot who has no sense of self-preservation, I care about you deeply, Buck. And it’s not just the fact that you’re the most gorgeous man I’ve ever met, even though it sure is a big plus to be this easy on the eye.” She laughs. “It’s breaking my heart to see you beating yourself up time and time again for something that is not your fault. I want you to see yourself through my eyes and realise that you deserve all the happiness in the world, and that you’re loved so much – ”

Y/N’s words die in her throat. Hands in her hair, pulling at heart strings, soft caresses of his tongue, the taste of beer, camellias bursting her chest open, arms around his neck, long strands of hair tickling her fingers, a sense of coming home, a sigh escaping lips, the tug of a smile, and foreheads pressed to each other, love weaving in and around their pulsing veins.

“I’ve wanted to do this for a while.” He admits.

“It took you too much for my liking.”

A whisper on his lips as Bucky kisses her again – more, forever, I promise.

[charlemange1]

Ask of the Lesser (Frankenstein/Lovecraft Works): 6 Gods and Monsters

Darkness enveloped my little cell as I waited for my last sunrise. A cruel ending it was, to be hung in the square and have the name Frankenstein permanently branded with unhallowed deeds. The shadow of Victor’s legacy would trap me till the end, and I had only myself to blame. My selfish desires to revive my family had blinded me to Curwen’s dark work. A mistake I realized had likely cost many lives, judging from the number of crates I had delivered over the past few months. Human blood! Oh, if only I had known! How could I hate Victor when in my own obsession I had enabled such atrocities? What right had I to judge him when I was enslaved to the same master?

My head thumped against the wall in defeat. Victor. My mind drifted back to our final conversation in the villa, when we were all that remained of our family and a trembling husk was all that remained of him.

“That daemon has struck down everyone but you, and he is coming, Ernest! I have failed to stop him, and he shall claim you too, if you stand idle!”

“Calm yourself, Victor. You are unwell,” I soothed, watching him pace the floor. “Elizabeth’s death has shaken you.”

“Murder. She was murdered by him, Ernest! You must believe me!” Victor clutched my shoulders with boney fingers. He shoved his journal against my chest, and I saw his nails were gnawed to bloodied stubs. “Here is my journal, dated years ago! Could madness be so precise? So detail-oriented?”

Grief had settled into every line of his exhausted face. His manic eyes pleaded with me through the strands of unkempt hair that floated rather than fell around his head. I ignored the lice crawling in the knotted curls and gently shut the journal.

“Victor, you know I stumble with such fancy words. These are scribbles to me.” I patted his trembling hand. “How about we get some sleep, huh? The servants are pouring some Laudanum to calm your nerves.”

“I do not need calm, we must act,” Victor’s voice rose to the rafters in desperation. My hand discreetly waved forward the servants positioned in the hall. “I have wrought terrible mayhem upon our house, but I will not let my curse consume you too! You are all I have left, Ernest. I beg of you to believe me! Not these mad claims, but me. As my brother, you must heed this threat!”

“Yes, yes, Victor,” I smiled gently and fought back tears. Elizabeth and Papas’ deaths had broken him. My poor, hysteric brother! He had always been the strong one. The one with all the talent pushing my miserable frame to be better. Where had that trailblazer gone? My brother may have been clutching me, but he had abandoned me in spirit. The Victor I had known was gone. The servants filed in to take his imposter away.

“Do not let them do this, Ernest,” Victor fought the hands that restrained him, though he had lost the strength to fight long ago. “Please, believe me! I cannot lose you too!”

“You are mad with grief, Victor,” I soothed. “Rest will restore you.”

You are the strong one! How can you fall apart and leave me alone?

Victor opened his mouth, but my mind was set. Something like defeat settled in his eyes. Victor’s body went limp as the servants’ drug him to his room. His eyes never left me, two watery pits silently pleading to be heard.

Wanting to save a thick-skulled wretch like me.

My hands pressed against my eyes and I wept for words left unspoken. He had cared! Victor had done wrong by turning from God, but I had turned my back on my own brother who so desperately wanted to keep me safe.

Was that why his creature had spared me? Not because I was to insignificant for my death to hurt Victor, but because me living and reducing his suffering to the rambles of a madman was the ultimate punishment? Victor could find strength in those murdered by destroying his monster and avenging them. The misery I had to live with in their absence would not end by Victor putting a bullet through the creature’s heart. My murdered family’s thoughts were at peace, but my ongoing misery was Victor’s shame to carry to the grave knowing he was responsible. His fond letter crinkled in my pocket, and I knew I could not hate him. I knew then too, that the unhallowed work that had withered his spirit and decimated our family could not continue, no matter the intent.  

The prison door swung open and a streak of light cut back the shadows. I covered my eyes from the haggard silhouette outlined against the intense brightness.

“Ernest, what in heavens name are you doing here?”

“Walton?” Blinking rapidly, I focused on the captain’s battered frame. “Have you come to take me to the gallows?”

Silence settled between us.

“I want to know why?”

“Why an invalid like me would play with a fire that scorched my brother?” I laughed bitterly. “I thought I could resurrect my family and we could be happy again, but not if their life comes from the death of others. I have seen death, Walton, and felt the void created in its wake. I would never subject anyone to that grief, even if it meant restoring my only source of happiness. I know what such work did to Victor and saw how it tore our family apart. I was a fool to think any good could come of its continuation.” I turned from the captain. “So write your sequel. Tell the world what a fool I am!”

“You are a fool,” Walton nodded. He bent beside me and rested his hand across mine. “But you are not a bad man. You clearly did not know the contents of your wicked cargo. It seems your destiny to be caught up in the madness of others, a lonely ship tossed about in a storm it could never hope to understand. You know better now, though.” Walton’s voice cracked. “Tell me who tricked you? What are they planning with Victor’s work?”

My repressed misgivings of Curwen resonated with Walton’s trembling voice. I had been too focused on my family to consider how Curwen would utilize the spark of life after they were brought back. What had he meant about merging raised souls with new flesh to be unstoppable?

“I do not know the details, but if the end justifies the mean, and that mean is human blood, it is a wicked thing,” I frowned. “Is this an interrogation?”

“A rescue,” Walton corrected, stepping aside to give me a clear path to the door. Seeing the confusion on my face, he pulled out an empty sack and smiled. “Your father was a magistrate. You should know how a few gold coins can sway a verdict. Yet not everyone has deep pockets, if you want the night on our side, we must quit this place and put an end to whatever is brewing on the edges of Ingolstadt.”

Gripping the wall, I pulled myself to a standing position, longing for my cane left by the river. “I will do whatever I can to stop Mr. Curwen from following in my brother’s steps.”

“We will stop,” Walton placed a hand on my shoulder.

“Captain, this is my sin to mend,” I said. “You must not jeopardize your life to let mine be at peace.”

“I fear all life will be in jeopardy if I stand idle,” Walton frowned. “I am more than just the historian of great men’s exploits, and you are not your brother. You do not have to do this alone.”

A roach darted in and out of the shaft of floor light. What chance had I of talking down Curwen alone? Walton knew the thrill of discovery, he could speak a language to Curwen that I had never known and Victor knew all too well. And, despite the pain Walton’s biography had caused me, I realized that Victor’s legacy overshadowed us both, but while I was tied to Victor by blood, Walton merely happened upon him by chance and was unknowingly thrust into this world of gods and monsters. I was shunned for the deeds of my brother, but as I looked at the frail captain, I knew he had suffered too. My hostility was unwarranted, and I extended my hand to relate as much to Walton.

“Shall we destroy that feind, then?” Walton asked, eagerly returning the handshake.

I thought of the morning after the servants had drug Victor away. I had stood in his empty room torn apart by a hasty deserter rushing to an Arctic death.

I shook my head beside Walton. I had ignored Victor for the last time.

“Walton, my brother held this man to the highest regard. I will not underplay the depravity of Mr. Curwen’s work, but perhaps his delusions of grandeur have incapacitated his ability to reason, a crime which I cannot judge, nor you, Arctic explorer. When we enter the university, let me speak with him before any rash action is taken.”

“And if speech fails?”

“You know what Mr. Curwen will do, and that cannot be.”

Walton looked reluctant, but having nearly died in his own quest for glory, he could not protest.

Outside, we were met by a horrid wind that sent overturned barrels bouncing across the streets. Walton found me a broom to replace my cane as we hurried past window shutters slamming open and shut. It seemed nature itself was sick of this wicked business.

“Does this Curwen character work with human flesh?” Walton shouted above the wind as we cleared the courtyard.

“Initially, though his process for reanimation differs greatly from Victors. He boils the body down to salt and relies on black magic for completion.”

Walton nodded with a frown. “By any chance, did you ever inspect Victor’s casket after I delivered him to you?”

“There was no reason to after I saw his face,” I said, confused by this question. A chorus of barks and howls rose up throughout the city. Were they following us?

“I see,” Walton said, eyes darting around in search of bloodhounds. “Given your former disbelief of Victor’s accomplishment, I refrained from sharing certain requests he relayed to me. Requests I felt best to omit from my biography.”

“Do tell?” I said as a man leaned out his window to wrangle the collar of his howling dog in a vain attempt to silence it.

“Victor said he did not wish to be brought back and asked for me to dismember and discard him after death,” Walton admitted, side stepping a bouncing barrel. “An odd request, considering he alone knew the secret of reanimation. Or so I thought.”

“Right,” I said absently. The unnamable smell from Curwen’s lab hung heavy in the air. “Did you do it?”

“I could only bring myself to throw his left hand overboard, I am no butcherer!” Walton shivered from more than the wind. “I did not know if that means anything to you now?”

“It appears straightforward enough,” I breathed as the gates of Ingolstadt University came into view. “Victor cannot be revived.”

[imagine-nation20]

Need To Hear You

Summary: “Do you really keep a diary? I’d give anything to look at it. May I?”

Or in which Jaskier accidentally reads something he shouldn’t.

Requested By: Anon

Request: “Do you really keep a diary? I’d give anything to look at it. May I?” with our beloved Jaskier! please dear!

A/N: Tbh, I love writing diary discoveries, because they have the potential for such hilarity. I used to keep one, and if someone had read all the secrets I had poured into that(mine and other peoples) they would have a gold mine of blackmail. This one is kind of emotional, though (why is it always emo hours with my Jaskier stuff?). Hope you like it! (Also, the dress in this is modeled after Bernadette Banner’s Chemise a la Reine cause I love historical clothing youtubers)

~~~

It had slipped from your mouth before you could stop yourself, too caught up in the conversation between yourself, Jaskier, and your two friends. You had all decided to take a break from your lives to have breakfast together. Your friends had been talking about their diaries they kept, and you had jokingly mentioned all the gossip you had spilled into your own journal, forgetting that the nosiest person you knew was sitting beside you four.

Jaskier and you had grown up together, practically inseparable until he had gone off to become a bard. Now he only came around every few months to check in, and you treasured the time. 

At the mention of your diary, Jaskier’s head whipped around. A smirk was slowly creeping onto his face as he leaned towards you slightly, eyebrows practically in his hairline. “You have a diary?”

You looked to your two friends, Sahar and Wilhemina, begging for help. They, however, knew exactly why you were panicking, and were reveling in the hilarity of it all. They offered no help, and you mentally cursed them, swearing to throw them under the carriage next time they needed your assistance. 

“No?” It was phrased more as a question than an answer, and you cringed at the way Jaskier’s face lit up.

You were surprised when Jaskier leaned back, eyeing you, but not pressing the subject. Sahar and Wilhemina shared a confused look with each other, but only shrugged and turned to you with a new idea sure to spark trouble. 

“Willa and I wanted to head over to Gina’s, would you two like to come?” Sahar, asked, her brown curls bouncing as she tilted her head innocently. You narrowed your eyes, wondering what the two of them were up two. 

They both knew you hated Gina. As a teenager, you had both been after the same boy, and she had done everything in her power to make your life harder, and in the end, she had earned his affections.

Said boy was also sitting right next to you, looking very uncomfortable at the mention of his old acquaintance. 

It hadn’t ended well between the two. They had courted for almost half a year before Jaskier found out about her dislike for you, as well as what she had done, minus the part about you competing with her for his attention. You hadn’t had been the one to tell him though, thinking that he was happy. Rather, Sahar had gone behind your back and let him know, despite your protests. He definitely was not looking to see her again anytime soon.

And Sahar and Willa knew that.

“No, I think I’ll just head in.” You said, trying to imply that you would be done spending time with all of them, but Jaskier, while being perceptive at times, was completely oblivious in uncomfortable situations.

“I’ll be going with (Y/N), then. I’m sure Gina would be less than thrilled to see me,” He wrapped his arm around yours, standing from the table and dragging you out of the large greenhouse. Your family thought it was a good idea to turn it into a dining area, perfect for breakfast, and you rarely ever ate anywhere else, as at night it was lit up by lanterns. 

The glass doors were already open, and Jaskier rushed you two out. You could hear the giggles of your friends, and you assumed by the embarrassed look on Jaskier’s face, he could too.

The breeze created by your fast steps blew your simple white summer dress into your legs, the thin cotton light enough for the summer warmth. The lace sleeves brushed your elbow, billowing with the wind as well. You were almost afraid that that red sash around your waist would untie and blow away.

“Jaskier, please, slow down!” You begged, slightly out of breath by the time you made it to your back door. The gardener sent you a smile, eyeing the way Jaskier gripped your hand. You blushed, pulling from his grip as he turned to you, smiling slightly.

“Sorry, I was just suddenly struck by the need to write a song, and thought it best to get to my notebook before the idea left,” You knew he was lying, but you didn’t call him out on it. Gina has always been a sensitive topic for him, as were most of his past partners. You knew that his encounters rarely ever ended on good terms.

“Then hurry,” You urged him on, ushering him in through the back door and through your house. You made it to the front entrance, turning to head up the stairs to where you room and the guest room resided. Jaskier always stayed in one of the spare rooms when he was visiting, as you refused to let him stay in an inn.

You made your way up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time, with Jaskier complaining about the walk behind you. You rolled your eyes, ignoring him in favor of opening his bedroom door and plopping onto his bed. Your arms were spread out, hair no doubt messy and unkempt. If not from the running, then from the unceremonious and unladylike drop you had made onto the bed.

“Do you really keep a diary?” The question makes you choke on air, sitting up and looking at Jaskier warily. It seems like an answer enough to Jaskier, as he is moving over to the bed and sitting---much more gracefully than you---onto the bed. “ I’d give anything to look at it. May I?”

It is a question, but no matter how you answer, you know he will keep insisting. Jaskier was a lot of things, but a quitter wasn’t one. 

“No.” It is a simple answer, and the look in your eyes conveys to Jaskier that the answer wont change. There is a beat of silence.

You and Jaskier both break for the door.

He’s faster. If you had to guess, it was probably from the fact that he has been traveling with a witcher. It could also be the fact that his shoes are more suitable for running than your heeled boots. All you know for sure is, he makes it to the door before you, and is out in record time. The blue of his jacket slips through your bedroom door before your out of his, and you hear the familiar click on the lock as it closes.

You hand flies to the knob, twisting it in hopes that he hasn’t locked himself inside, and that the click was just you mishearing. It isn’t. The handle won’t budge, and you can hear him rifling through your things as you fist bangs against the door.

“Jaskier! Jaskier don’t you dare!” You shout, desperately trying to get his attention away from the book you know is safely hidden in the slats under your mattress. You also know that Jaskier will eventually remember it is your most trusted hiding place where you used to keep your stolen chocolate. “Jaskier, open this door right now!”

“Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad!” He shouts back, and you hear him head for your desk, opening drawers and searching still.

“Jaskier that is my private diary, and it is only meant for me to read!” Your desperate to appeal to his sympathy, but one Jaskier has his mind set on something, he won’t stop. You know this as well.

“I have been your best friend-” The slam of the last drawer- “since we could walk. I think your secrets are safe with me.”

There is a pause in his movements, and you pray he hasn’t remembered. He moves towards the door, but veers off towards your dresser.

“Why don’t you want me to read it? Does it have something naughty in it?” His tone is teasing, but the thought of what you had written only makes your queasy. Your mind brings up memories of the little girl in love with her best friend and obsessed with writing poems about him.

“Jaskier, please,” You beg, voice lower now. You think he may hear you, the silence stirring hope, but the footsteps restart again, and you dread where they are headed.

A triumphant ‘aha!’ seals your fate. 

Knowing you can’t do anything now but wait, you turn and slide down the door, accepting that this would be the end of your friendship. 

It is silent for a long while, and you think about him reclining on your bed, eyes skimming the words you had hoped no one would ever read. You imagine him trying not to laugh at the way you were so infatuated with him. You can see the teasing in his eyes now, and the way he would be uncomfortable around you now. Maybe he would leave this time, and never come back. Maybe this would be how you part with him for the last time.

The thought almost has you sobbing, but you resign yourself to suffering in silence. The tears burn as they fall, the misery etched into your cheeks through the hot trails they leave.

The door lock clicks, handle turning slowly. You stand, back still facing the door as it slowly opens. You refuse to turn around. You refuse to look at him; at his sky blue eyes that love to mock you. You hear the door hit the wall of your room, and you flinch slightly at the sound. The ringing in your ears in mind-numbing.

Nothing is said for a long while, but you know he is looking at you. You can feel his stare.

Footsteps approach you slowly, and you wait for the sound of his voice, filled with mockery and joking. Instead, what you get is warm arms, circling your waist, and a face pressed into the crook of your neck. You could feel the dampness across his face as it rested against your skin, and the subtle tremors that wracked his body.

Your own tears ceased, only leaving sniffles in their wake. The confusion of what Jaskier was doing---thinking---was to big of a distraction to bother continuing to wallow in your sorrows. Your hands hesitantly raised to rest over his own, delicate in their touch, and you felt Jaskier release a heavy sigh, grip tightening.

“I love you…” Is all that is said. It echoes down the hallway and back, and you don’t think you ever want to stop hearing it. You want to savor the moment, capture it in your heart, because you fear it is a dream. You fear waking up and never hearing Jaskier say it again.

“I think you already are well aware of how I feel,” You don’t know where you find the energy to tease him, but maybe it's the fact that you are so used to the banter between you. Silly jabs and jokes pointed at each other is normal, and normal is what you think you need right now. Of course, though, Jaskier never wants to make it easy on you.

“I know,” He whispers. “But I need to hear you say it. I need to hear you.”

It's a plea, a prayer, and you smile at the way his voice shakes, like hearing you say it is the only thing he will ever need.

“I love you.”

[imagine-loki]

Till We Meet Again

TITLE: Till We Meet Again

CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: 18/?

AUTHOR: marvelgirlonamarvelworld (side blog)

ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine Loki being mesmerized by a girl whose eyes remind him of the Bifrost

Imagine that Loki would visit you when you were a child, persuading you into mischief and cheering you up with his magic tricks, you assumed he was imaginary. 

RATING: M

NOTES/WARNINGS: angst, whump, language, not much really. Just a transition chapter

A/N 2: Alas! a new chapter! So I decided to merge a one-shot I’ve been working on with this new chapter. Thank you all for reading!!! I deeply, truly appreciate it :’) as always, feedback’s appreciated!!

-

Clouds.

    Alabaster gaseous matter formed with every trembling exhale. A ghastly thing that soon withered to a dark null. One which became part of the cold nothingness the fallen Icarus prince found himself surrounded by. 

    Cold damp stone met his aching palms. If once such low temperatures had no stir to his being, now it sent pangs and jolts through his blood. The bitter cold seeped through his pores and into his decaying soul. 

   The fallen prince, with his innocent eyes now bloodshot, endeavored to push himself from the damp floor yet his strengths betrayed his crippling will. Right away his torn gold-plated chest hit the cold ground as all air inside his lungs was no more.

    “Allfather…” he sobbed, failing to swallow the lump, as a loose tear allied with his weakness, “Father…why have you abandoned me?” The single pearl of salt danced down his cheek while his stare remained on the black stone ground; while his hands continued to struggle to at least be on his knees. “Why…” his ghastly face contorted. Another lament betrayed his lost facade of vain and might. “Why have you left me, father? Why have you abandoned me, mother?”

    His words still echoed. The resounding ‘No’ before letting go. Yes. Before letting go. 

    Loki had fallen. Fallen so suddenly, so haltingly, so briskly, so gracefully. 

   Unmade in the process, his broken body and exhausted mind traveled through space, journeyed through time.

   Fell and landed on a field of cold and clouds and shadows. Of watching eyes whose bodies remained embraced by the darkness. Of distant screams and wails enticed by mistress torture. 

    What a misfortune. 

   Another moan ripped away from his throat. One which became a breath of strength to his soul.

   Gritting his teeth and closing his eyes, his palms pushed his body off of the ground. Yet his arms did not move at all. Nothing happened, his body remained prostrated. Loki could not feel his limbs, could not feel the rest of his body at all. His body was numb. Dormant from the fall.

    And his blue lips quivered. Trembled as a ragged wail burned his throat followed by hiccups and suffocating sucks of air. His forehead pressed against the cold stone ground. “I could have done it…I could have done it. I could have done it.”

    His head remained bowed down, tears blurring and blinding his sight; facing the grim ominous dirt embodying his downfall and misery; letting loose trembling strands of coal hang and stick to his forehead while his decaying body broke in ripples of sweat that frostbit his bones.

    The young prince cried, sobbed and trembled before the black starless sky; before curious eyes guarding and waiting. Fisted the dirt, tasted his own blood, heeded the distant cries and screams caressing his spine, recalled it all yet ignored it all. 

    “I could have done it…” his jaw clenched and ached. The pounding inside his head bloomed and magnified it all through his body. 

   Once again he was nothing.

   Loki had no wings. No form to soar high into the night. Poor thing, they’d been clipped, plucked mercilessly. Left his bare back bleeding raw. And it would only get worse from there onward, yet he knew not of that at all.

    But it mattered naught either. 

   For his claws remained sharp. As sharp as his silver tongue was. As swift as diamonds cutting through glass. Blood forged. Disappointment sharpened. Ready to be drawn. Anxious to slash. Hungry to bury themselves in the ferrous fine crimson wine. 

    For many names he’d been called. And relentless was one.

    With every movement and flection, his bones trembled. With every weary heartbeat, his strength almost gave in. But now he was sat against a pillar whose tallness appeared infinite. His reddened eyes could see it all now, crystal clear and realized…death was lurking about.

    His eyes drifted to the void space, deep down hoping to notice a sign. A raven flying through the gray clouds, a flash of light contrasting with the black, a shooting star…even a spark of colors resembling those of an opal though he didn’t know why. 

    “He…Hei…Heimdall…” Loki called upon the watcher and protector of the realm he’d known as his homeland. “Heimdall.” Hope tainted his hoarse voice. “Open the Bifrost…” another tear allied with fright and rolled down his pale sunken cheek. “If you can hear me. If you can…see me. I beg you bring forth the Bifrost.”

    All noise withered down to a hum. And like a child anxiously awaiting to wish upon a rain of shooting stars, Loki continued to gaze up to the night with his heart thumping and his mind buzzing, already imaging the familiar blinding flash. 

    “Please…”

One heartbeat.

    Two heartbeats.

    Three heartbeats. 

    Space remained black.

    “Heimdall?” His hand raised to grasp the distant night and swallowed his pride and continued to call. “Mother? Please forgive me.”

    It was a matter of patience, had to wait, Loki told himself still clinging to the thinning thread. After all, he was far from home, lightyears away from all known, a million heartbeats away where he belonged.

    Yet the waiting was never-ending.

    Minutes lost their shape, elongated and transitioned to countless bitter cold nights. 

    Loki was alone, forgotten, weakened and helpless. Easy prey, the crawling thing. And he couldn’t help but squirm and weep silently from the fear.

    His head remained against the pillar and wept his strength away as the shadows danced and took form. “Please…somebody…”

    Oh, how he wished his seidr reserves did not empty, did not waste away in healing all that which could not be remedied. To have enough magic to create a little white bird, a beautiful rarity, to send smeared in his blood with a message within its bones. A sign, a feathered warning…to not be forgotten.

    “Please,” Loki closed his eyes, already sensing foreign stares peer upon as distant bickering reached his ears. “Please. I pray to thee. Allfathers rejoicing in paradise Valhalla, have mercy on me. I beg please, hear my plea.”

    Loki wished to open his eyes, desired to acknowledge his future captors stalk towards him with snarling creatures prowling beside. Yet the overbuilt exhaustion, the suffocating stillness of the disappointing nights forbade him to; the resurfacing screams and uproars of disembodied suffering voices triggered his self-preserve mode. And thus he sought refuge in his mind. Retrieved to the safe heaven where he would remain intact, safe from it all till his strengths came back. 

    Loki allowed himself to be carried by them, to his downfall, to his unmaking and reshape. Allowed his body to be kidnapped against his racing heart and screaming conscience. For even he obeyed his instincts, his fighting would be futile.

    Yet his racing mind was quieted upon the shrieking BOOM! of thunder striking the land…

    “Argh!”

    Loki sat upright, mad thumping heart against the back of his wide eyes, his throat drowned in hushed sobs and hiccups. He was nothing but a trembling creature; heaving frightened to death, clinging to nothing but his deceiving head.

      “Thor?” He called for his brother.

    Alabaster clouds still danced about before vanishing into furniture in the blink of watery eyes. And Loki couldn’t help but shakily exhale upon realizing his conscience’s own deceivings. It had been a dream. A nightmare.

    His eyes wandered on further, not trusting his own convictions, afraid this too was a dream within a dream. Though he realized he was in the same place he had been yesterday; sitting on the couch, with Luna’s sketchbook on his lap, downstairs..waiting.

    Yes. Loki was truly there! The living room was where he headed after the shocking discovery; where he impatiently waited for Luna’s return yet she never did.

    Oh, dear gods! He was safe, away from the gates of hell.

    Dusk crept through the windows. Clouds covered the skies.

    Had he really slept his day away? His floating ponder made him blink multiple times before standing and stretching. He winced at the cracks of his bones and stings on his back; the position he’d drifted to slumber wasn’t the most comfortable, and neither was Midgardian clothing.

    Like muscle memory Loki flicked his hand, expecting for the light to flicker to life; completely forgetting the nothingness he’d been left with until darkness prolonged. Disdained, he pursed his lips and made his way to flick the switch on himself.

    Much to his disdain, he had not much to do but continue on with the wait. It was exasperating, the silence was too loud yet too quiet at the same time. He could not leave and roam around for his only shield was this home. Step out that door and most likely he’d be detected by the world; by the Allfather if not by Heimdall. And he could not allow that. His whole plans revolved around his apparent death.

    The big reveal was not due yet.

    Shivers rippled through his spine, traveled through every nerve, swam away in his veins as he walked up the stairs, as the flash of his nightmare played before his glare. It was sickening to remember. A nightmare.

    Now that irrational side on him lost appealing. 

    His limbs went limp and froze in front of Luna’s bedroom door, cursing himself between hisses and ragged breaths. Oh the grand epiphany that’d fallen upon himself.  He’d been an idiot. A fool.

    Snapping from his dawning, Loki pushed the door and meandered through the dark and into the bathroom. 

    Ah, glutton. Bit more than he could chew. 

    He wondered how she was. He hoped that Luna would soon return. Having her away from him made him uneasy, rendered his conscience to grow loud with reproaches and worries for failing to protect her as he’d vowed to do so if something happened.

    Loki knew the apology was imminent although he’d pledged against it. Never say never, however. Should’ve known better. If Loki wished her to not leave, that was the remedy; one which was not enough. He knew Luna like the back of his hand, thus acknowledging he’d have to do much than simply ask for her pardoning. 

    Clothes lay neatly folded by the sink, and soon the tiled space was fogged by crystal mist from the warm artificial stream.

    His built figure stood there under the warm embrace of the water, silent, glistening thus enunciating his paleness and markings; at peace yet in an anguishing haze. Loki’s mind kept dwelling between past, present, and future bearings with the scepter being a common denominator.

    Yet he’d managed to bury it all, to forget in order for his nightmares to cease hunting again. It’d been nights, days, weeks since he’d dreamt a bad dream. Yet…There was no room for coincidence, no loose strings, nothing; that after discovering his scepter lay at arm’s length all ghosts from the past fluttered to life.

    The soft scent of blooming flowers danced through his nostrils just as the foam on his body washed away by the clear stream. Somehow, also carrying away part of his ailing. 

    The artificial rain ceased. Refracting beads of water rolled through his naked chest and fell from his raven hair as a white towel covered his lower half. The cool tiles against his feet sparked goosebumps to race along his spine.

    Again he walked from the light into the dark. And a sudden flash of a memory surfaced before his eyes, perhaps a second epiphany, of him as a child once frightened by the lack of light. Always seeking the comforting warmth of his mother’s arms.

    Oh, how Loki missed Frigga, and wondered…was she aware of his apparent death? Had she mourned as little as the Allfather or as much as his brother had presumably done?

    Funny how his fear became his comforting mantle from the scorching lights, from the true enemies disguised as lambs.

    Shadows took form and elongated as Loki reached the closet and opened it. A pair of jeans and a black tee were his outfit. 

    He wondered now when Luna had purchased them, or to whom this changes of clothing belonged to in the past. Yet he made no fuss of it as the soft fabric slipped against his scarred flesh; unbeknownst to him, inner jealousy had already been irked by it regardless.

    Trailing back to turn off the light of the bathroom, his foot stumbled against a soft surface that soon slid across the floor and laid by the doorframe. Right away his emerald glare discerned it was a book.

    Surprise incarcerated his breath in the confinements of his chest as he picked up the familiar worn out hardcover and peered at it in detail. Musky green. Torn out edges. The familiarity of the runic scripture on the spine of it made his heart stop beating right before speeding mad.

    Who knew of all places Loki had searched for his favourite book of spells, which he had lost years ago, he would come to find it in this home? Of all places! What were the odds?

    The odds, however, were the little girl he had once befriended.

    “Little thief,” Loki muttered and smiled warmly.

-

Meanwhile,

Somewhere in the outskirts of New York City.

    “Nothing?” The sound of silence vanished by Matt’s ponder from across the table. His voice was no more than sound waves sheathed by pure boredom, and borderline exasperation intensified by the many rounds of caffeine ingested through the over twenty-four-hour fruitless searches. 

    “Nada,” Luna responded while rubbing her eyes and drowning out a yawn. The computer screen displayed in a hideous yellow font at the center of the screen a ‘No Match’ sign which made her mentally roll her eyes. Of course she would find nothing.  Political high ends would have interest but not the guts to steal the suitcase from the tower. 

    “Are you sure?” He asked from across the table with his face hiding behind the laptop screen.

    “Yes.” Luna groaned as the blinding white lights from the ceiling glared and reflected on the thick glass covering the wood beneath it.

    Stalling while incriminating the world was easy. Annoying but easy. Mantled her with the illusion of past normalcy, a mirage of how things used to be.

    No doubt Matt believed her words; although, the discrepancy he’d found her at home and not at the Tower was quite startling. All in all, on the other hand, Luna had some Loki in her, no doubt some of his trickery was bound to stick; make a fool think the sky is green when in reality…it is neither blue nor green.

    “I’ve gone through every file, nothing stands out, no solid match,” Luna made eye-contact with Matt. “But I don’t doubt the possibility it might have been one of these people. I mean, if what you say is true that whatever’s inside that suitcase is worth so much…” she snorted and hand gestured to his once upon a time friend, “it could’ve been any of the people we’ve played. Any who realized they were double-crossed by us.”

    “But nobody knew this intel,” Matt replied and brushed his hair back exasperatedly. “Our circle is tight, Luna. We’re a small group. And we’re running out of time.”

    Her eyebrows creased and fell silent momentarily. Luna was meticulously working her angle, but Matt was no idiot. And that made the game all the more difficult.

    Apparently, the so-called client/engineer had handed him a deadline. Yet Luna was more than aware it was them, the ones at the higher ranks of the chains. They were breathing down his neck.

    “Hey, we’re not the only ones who play underground,” said Luna while sipping from her cold-brewed coffee before freezing her actions and quickly lowering the cup from her lips; the memory of just where she was and with whom placed her cautious side on high alert. “We’re not the only ones who break the rules to get what we want, Matt. Regardless whether it is for the good or bad.”

    Luna watched as Matt scratched his chin, deep in thought while she studied his sun-kissed features. 

    To her, there were no indications the order to have her killed came from him. The car accident was not his doing. As belittling as it sounded in her head, the brown-eyed was no more than a pawn, a disguise. And she couldn’t help but pity the idiot.

    Unbeknownst to her unconscious, she was excusing his doings against her by telling herself the retrieval of those traffic cams were just orders from above. Call it fear to loose yet another somebody or denial to acknowledge his betrayal. 

    A chuckle disrupted the momentary silence in the small conference room the two had been in since yesterday; catching up on things, though Luna knew it was all half-truths. His focus was now on her face whose exhaustion was reflected in the unusual paleness and clouds on her eyes. 

    “What is it?” He said.

    “I think we’re making a big deal out of this,” Luna fiddled with the pulsing opal hanging from the delicate silver chain around her neck. As much as the thumping took her aback, for the stone had never done such thing before, she pushed the nagging thought aside. “What if it was SHIELD all along, which for some reason, moved the suitcase and we’re here like idiots searching for nonexistent ends?”

    “It wasn’t them.”

    Luna’s smile faded away upon the echo of an accentuated third voice in the room. And her stomach sunk as she turned to face the entrance, at the far right, where two familiar figures stood.

    This wasn’t good.

    This was so not good.

    Luna was a gaping fish. Wide-eyed and barely mustering a stuttered ‘long time no see’ as a greeting towards the two that’d tried to take her out. The twins.

    The two were a mirror with a slightly altered reflection of one another. Wanda’s expressive round eyes contrasted very much with Pietro’s downturned glare. It was one of the few differences between the twins, aside from the obvious ones such as height and dye of hair.

    The hushed unintelligible whispers were soon to make themselves present as the ginger tried to glimpse inside her mind.

    “Luna,” Wanda greeted her and smiled a smile which did not reach her eyes where her annoyance waltzed. “Good to see you’re back! And I still cannot read your mind…”

    Pietro, on the other hand, was a stark contrast to the stiffness of his twin. Somehow he seemed laid back, more so than before; acted like one of those foolish casanovas who would oftentimes get the girl with every twirl of his boasts and jokes. Eccentric quicksilver who had once caught her eye once upon a time. 

    He was good at disguising his emotions.

    “Luna,” Pietro grinned and winked.

    Idiot, Luna thought as her eyes drifted to Matt.

    “I called them in to help after the accident,” Matt explained, blatantly noticing her surprise before turning to the twins. “Please tell me something good you two.”

   Matt drifted his attention to the twins who shared a serious glance between them, no words were spoken but that of their telling eyes. Such action which Luna could only define as a quirk of theirs for their silence was quite nerve-wreaking. 

    As if they hid something, knew something Luna was oblivious of. And in her overbearingly hyperactive and paranoid mind, their silence foretold nothing yet everything. And if it was the latter, to flee from the chaos that would ensue would be difficult.

    One to three was not a good ratio.

    “All we can tell you is SHIELD did not move the suitcase,” Wanda deadpanned, thus shutting any possibility to lead the search in another direction.

    “How are you so sure?” Luna dumbly asked. She already knew the answer.

    Wanda glanced at her with that same twinkle of annoyance towards her person. “Because I read their minds, saw them.  Every single one. Even your so-called friends’.”

    Luna did not know how to react. Her face could only be described as a poem whose allegory was too difficult to understand. For although she knew that’d be the ginger’s answer it still surprised her the staggering hatred dripping within her statement. 

    Then the shocking question Luna had failed to ask herself about the twins struck her with might: Why? Why agree to carry out the dirty work for them? Why? How grand was the reward for carrying out such a thing? Why?

    Luna blinked once, twice, thrice hoping the sudden surface of anger and perplexity withered from burning her chest. “Excuse me, what?”

    The jester twin standing beside the ginger huffed and chuckled, crossed his arms as those silver eyes twinkled with amusement. Pietro was reliving a memory.

    “Okay,” Luna tilted her head and rested her right palm on the cold surface of the table. A nervous smile formed on her face as she tried to maintain that annoying facade of obliviousness. “Is this what you mentioned to me on our way here? That something went down over there but things got a little out of hand?”

    “Yeah,” Matt nodded and gestured with his hand. “That’s what I was talking about.”

    “Well, what exactly happened?” Luna questioned.

    “In short…uh,” Pietro stepped in, “Matt sent us to the tower, told us the suitcase was in the lower levels, we searched…and searched and searched,“ the silver-haired pointed out, keeping count with his fingers, “and found nothing. Then Wanda decided to change tactics buuuut…”

    “Please tell me you didn’t bring out the Hulk,” Luna’s eyes squinted and pursed her lips. Deep down squirming at the memory of the green giant and his eyes with a ring of scarlet. The amount of suffering, desperation, anger, and fear reflected in them haunted the corners of her memory to this day.

    Luna pitied the giant as much as she feared his fury. She wondered how Bruce was doing…

    “Okay. I did not think through my idea,” Wanda nodded and pursed her lips. “But I was not planning on leaving that tower without information. Now would you like to know what I saw in your friend’s head as I was searching for a lead?”

    The wicked grin plastered on the witch’s face made all Luna’s hairs stand on end. 

    “Thor?” She mumbled. The blond’s name pierced her chest. Her truer friend. The one she betrayed far before it all had gone to hell. 

    And thinking about it…Luna concluded she deserved all the shit raining down on her for stabbing an individual with pure intentions. 

    “I…I don’t think…,” chills and sparks caressed and clawed her spine as it planted the seed of discord; the bloom of curiosity.

    “Or I can show them to you,” Wanda offered with a twinkle in her eyes as the familiar murmurs in Luna’s head took force. “See for yourself his fears.”

    To lose you, his friend. Oh, and how much jealousy! To see you have no eyes for him!

    Luna closed her eyes and sighed, holding back, hiding it all in the depths of herself. Yet the pangs and clenches of her heart made swallowing the lump of guilt painstakingly difficult. And it was no help the ire of fire, towards Wanda and her own self, scorching her bones to brittle stone.

      Her lips curved and opened her eyes, forcefully showing a smile through her annoyance while shutting her mind. “I think I’ll pass. There are far more important tasks at hand right now, right Matt?”

    “True,” the brunet shook his head absentmindedly, thumb holding his child and curled pointer finger against his lips. Deep in thought. “But now that we’re mentioning him, when was the last time you two spoke?”

    “We haven’t talked since I went home, why?” Luna spoke right away. Perhaps too quick for her sake. Lying still remained somewhat of a weakness for her.

    Unlike Loki…but that was another matter on hold. Luna didn’t let his memory cave in for the remainder of the time being. Not yet.

    Matt remained silent, and so too the twins who sat three chairs away from him. His eyes were half-lidded as if to discern between an image blurring by the distance, thinking, planning.

    “I thought he’d be mother-hening you these two days,” Matt acknowledged. “Has he tried to get in touch with you?”

    “No?” Luna answered. “Before I left he said they were shortly leaving for a mission but didn’t tell me when they’d come back. I just figured he was still on that mission to this day, but I guess not.” Luna crossed her arms and puckered her lips while reclining against the desk chair. “Now with the whole mind-reading thing and whatever else went down…I doubt he’ll have the time.”

    And it’s not like Luna would be able to anyway. After all, Thor and the others had suspicions she’d gone missing. That she was taken by those that’d upraised hell on the tower.

    Matt locked eyes with Luna as his hand rested on the table, “I think you should call him. Keep in touch. Don’t go awol on him for too long.

    “You think my silence would raise suspicion?” Luna cocked her brow curiously. Although she already knew Thor wouldn’t bring her name to question.

    “Not necessarily,” Matt said, “but I want to rid of the possibility anyway. You’re our front still. Their distraction and our insider.”

    Luna tilted her head ever so slightly, mentally refusing what Matt was proposing. “Right.”

    “What the hell, you know what?” Matt jerked his head and hand gestured, “Why don’t you call him now? The sooner the better.”

    Luna bit the inside of her cheek as the desire to laugh in his face grew. If he only knew she could not…

    Trying to get in touch with him was a resonant ‘NO’. Not only because Mr. Nosy Laufeyson had declared they now relied on the element of surprise, but also and most importantly because Luna had no face to ever look Thor in the eye anymore. Guilt now forbade her from doing so.

    “Well. I don’t have a phone. It got destroyed. You know…in the accident.” Luna stammered. 

    She watched as Matt reached for his back pocket and placed a phone on the table and slid it across. Its screen already unlocked by his fingerprint, already waiting for the number to be dialed. “You can use mine.”

    Luna stared at the device. “Matt…” she reproached.

    What the hell was Matt and the twins playing at? Luna wondered. 

    Was this some kind of test? She asked herself.

    “Tony won’t be able to trace it back.” He asserted and smiled. “Call him.”

    “Don’t you think they’d be a little busy right now,” Luna questioned yet it was no more than an excuse of refusal in disguise.

    Matt huffed and silently chuckled, “Luna, it’s you who’s calling. He’ll definitely make time.”

    Luna parted her lips, hesitating, feeling all stares on her and making her a helpless child again. Small, frail little girl. 

    The defeat was inevitable. To do as he said was the only way and Luna was more than aware. To continue building up to excuses would bring no good end but that of being discovered. 

    Thus, with cold sweaty palms, and feeling the opal pulsating faster, she reached for the mobile and dialed the number she’d memorized before raising it to her ear.

    The beeps were soon replaced by an all too familiar robotic voice, JARVIS, who solicited her name and whom she desired to communicate with.

    “Thor Odinson,” Luna responded as her eyes focused on the darkness of the table while she waited for the three familiar beeps. Usually, when she called, that was how long it took the Norse god to reach the phone an answer.

    This time, however, there was nothing but one single beep. Right away his gruff voice showered her ears which made her heart rattle inside her rib cage.

    “Luna?! Is that you?!” His voice tainted with hope and weariness. “Luna?”

    And all Luna could do was bite her tongue. Swallow the lump. Stop herself from ending the call and throwing the phone before breaking down. 

    The desperation in his voice was too much. A stab, a strike to her soul. Tainted it black.

    “Hey… it’s me.” Luna built up enough courage to speak and hid her heartbreak behind a weary smile for the prying eyes. Hid all her ailings behind a voice of normalcy, a pitch higher. 

    A broken sigh echoed through the line. And Luna could already imagine the glassy baby eyes and broken smile on him.

    Luna wished to say ‘I’m sorry’. To confide in him just as he’d done before with her. To tell him he was the only one who had been true, honest, pure. Yet cowardice and her alliance made her repeat the same thing:

    “It’s me.”

.

.

A/N2: this story is flopping but I am determined to finish it regardless!

[trouvelle]

Emogust 26.08 — Roommates

A/N: Halfway through writing this... I realized I had no plot. This is simply a plunnie heavily inspired by (if not based on) Friends! Forgive me ;A;  School just started again, I had to tearfully bid my goodbye to summer break, and that resulted in this really late entry. @mintchocolateleaves @sup-poki ily’all !!

In the years Kaito has been legally allowed to drink, he’s made some pretty important discoveries about himself.

The first is that he really, really appreciates their guys’ night in. They do shots when they first start hanging out, sit in the corner of Saguru’s apartment (because he doesn’t have any roommates nor a girlfriend who would kick him in the ass for drenching the apartment with the smell of alcohol). He likes having his back against the cold concrete wall, the liquid cooling his throat as he feels the familiar buzz swelling in his stomach. But no matter how pleasant, it’s not really worth the shivering, anxious mess it makes him the next morning, when he’s trying to fight off the raging nausea.

He steers clear of tequila for a while after that.

So it probably should have been easier to foresee, the other discovery. Kaito and Heiji both bond really well. And they both can be really persuasive especially on the nights when Shinichi and Saguru want to be completely sober. Their excuse has always been the same—that they have jobs they want to keep. Come on, all of them have to go to work too in the morning, goddammit. Those two just don’t want to admit that they’re fucking lightweights. 

Kaito just doesn’t want to be alone in his misery. Heiji knows this, knows that Kaito is a social drinker, likes it only when he’s got someone else worse off than he is. The Osakan himself is never one to back down from any challenges. And Kaito is an impressionable drunk, will do just about anything so long as someone thinks to ask. They’re an awesome pair.

The last discovery he makes isn’t so much a discovery as it is a revelation and an inquiry. And it isn’t so much made as it is stumbled upon in the dark with bare feet and a whole lot of disorientation. It happens one of the nights when all four of them were hanging out and drinking in the huge apartment that Kaito, Shinichi and Heiji share.

And Kaito finds out that he’s really bad at keeping things to himself like this, when it’s just the four of them, a little buzzed and a lot open. He feels like he could tell them anything, because they know him now, they’ve stuck together and survived four years of college. That’s saying a lot.

So he feels safe, and he doesn’t even turn to one of them when he says, “I haven’t said “I love you” to Aoko. Do you think I should say it now?”

He doesn’t even notice the room had been so loud until it goes silent. It feels like a blanket, thick and heavy and stifling, and he turns his head to find Heiji staring down at him incredulously from the couch. He’s sitting with one leg thrown over the side. It’s close enough that Kaito could reach out and grab his ankle down, if he wanted, if he didn’t feel like that might not be such a good idea right now. “She’s not here though,” The dark-skinned guy points out.

Kaito regards his roommate in annoyance, “Thanks for stating the obvious.”

Even Shinichi pipes up, “You mean, this whole time you two have been dating, you’ve never once said it to her?"

He winces. “Is it that bad?” he asks, because why the hell not? They’ve all shared secrets bigger than this, right? This isn’t even that big a deal, in the grand scheme of things, whatever that might be. “Although I probably shouldn’t ask you. I know you and Ran say it all the time.” 

See, it’s unfair because their situations are completely different. Shinichi and Ran has been together since forever. The pair are a match made in heaven. Shinichi has a steady job as a professor in Tokyo University (The hottie of the Criminology Department, as Shinichi himself puts it.), and Ran is the star teacher in Teitan. Their relationship is solid. Their parents are also really good friends, and they’re bound to get married one day, if not soon. Shinichi is the type to, say, seize every opportunity he can get. That includes telling his girlfriend that he loves her every chance he can. But it’s also because he’s a big, sappy softie underneath his ever-silent and calculating exterior. 

The sole reason Kaito has been hesitating to say it to Aoko is because he isn’t sure that he can make her happy like Shinichi does with Ran. He knows full well that Aoko loves him the same way, that she might even love him more than he does. Part of him has always been certain that she’s the one who he will grow old with, because he doesn’t want anyone but her. But what if she can finds someone else, someone better, who can offer her an even happier future for her? He’s an entertainer, for God’s sake, he doesn’t have an elite job in an elite university like his cousin does.

“Are you gonna do it right now?” Saguru asks, chuckling a little under his breath. 

Kaito isn’t sure if he’s drunk enough to be that impulsive, just that he feels loose and comfortable. He doesn’t see what the big deal is. Except, it kind of is a big deal. Has been kind of a big deal for a while now, so much so that he’s been wanting to say it for years. Just to say it, because it’s felt like a weight on his chest for too long.

Also because he sees it in Aoko’s eyes, the flash of jealousy in her eyes whenever Shinichi and Ran calls out the three magical words to each other in the smallest of occasion here and there throughout the day. The hint of amusement accompanied by something none other than a dash of envy whenever Heiji and Kazuha calls each other by their infamous pet name “Ahou” like it’s their own version of “I love you”. 

“Hang on there. I’m not like Kudo here who needs to say it every five seconds.” He can feel the corners of his mouth sneaking upwards. You know what, maybe he should do it right now. Aoko and the girls’ apartment is literally across the hallway. 

If he does it right, it could be a good thing. And this too, is a good thing, this blossoming friendship. Because they are about to have a lot more milestones to achieve.

“Or, you know, you don’t have to verbally say it. Show that you love her through your actions,��� Saguru points out, his slim fingers moving in a motion for Kaito to pass him another bottle of beer. Kaito does so with a scowl. “Yeah, like I haven’t been doing that all these times.”

Shinichi decides to give his cousin a little push. “You know, the first time I said it to Ran and she said it back, it easily became one of the most special nights I’ve ever spent with her. But then again, there were also fireworks because we so happened to be in Niagara Falls.”

Heiji face morphs into a scowl. “Yeah, yeah, like you haven’t hogged all the beautiful backdrops already.” But as quickly as his scowl comes, it leaves, his expression changes into a content one. “I remember mine too. It was an amazing night, followed by something even more amazing. Saying those three words can be a way to begin it. ‘Cuz that was also the first time Kazuha and I—”

“Dude,” Kaito narrows his eyes dangerously at him. He’d rather not hear the details, thank you very much.

Knowing that his sister has done it—and quite often too—has made him quite angry at first. Kazuha’s his little sister, and that gives him every right to keep tabs on her and control over what she should and shouldn’t be doing. But the girl is stubborn in every way. Like how he doesn’t approve of her choice of being a model, but she still chooses that path anyway. He’s proud of her all right, because she’s doing so well. She’s appeared in quite a lot of commercials and magazine covers, getting photoshoot offers here and there.

Not that he’s not proud of Aoko too. She’s rapidly climbing her way up the nurses rank in Todai Hospital, and it’s one of the best hospitals in the whole world. “At least none of us has to worry about alcohol poisoning,” Heiji once remarked, “We’ve got an actual living first-aid box with us.”

Kaito’s main concern only lies in the fact that there are many male nurses too in addition to the number of good-looking male doctors who might potentially steal Aoko’s heart away, who would’ve thought?

Speaking of the male population... he turns his attention back to the three familiar faces in the room. Shinichi is now the one leading the conversation, stern and oh-so-like the leader of their little gang. It’s just natural in their dynamic, he thinks.

Shinichi is their all prismatic and crystal-clear fluid, and Saguru is the solid rock, where Heiji is the unpredictable fire roaring all around them, where Kaito is the all-rushing wind above them.

Ten years ago, if someone had told him he would spend most of his time with a Criminology professor, an IT procurements manager with the specialization Statistical Analysis and Data Reconfiguration (it’s amazing how he remembers the exact name of Heiji’s job, seriously, all of them simply refers to him as a transponster)—both of whom highlight as criminal investigators together on the side—and a stuck-up lawyer from a fancy law school in England (Kudo and Hattori both have really boring jobs when they’re not out solving cases, but what Hakuba does is the literal definition of boring), he wouldn’t have believed it for himself.

But oh, look who he ends up hanging out with almost every single day now.

“Just say it, man. She’s been waiting for it.” someone says. It takes Kaito a second to realize he’s watched Saguru’s lips form the syllables, that the words were said in Saguru’s smooth voice. 

Saguru smirks, the corner of his mouth curling up. Kaito’s not very sure through the haze of drunkenness, but he thinks he sees mischief and amusement very evident in the blonde’s face. He turns his head to regard Saguru with hard eyes and waits.

“She makes you happy and you make her happy, that’s all,” is what Saguru says next, and almost in sympathy.

Kaito is pretty sure that’s exactly what Shinichi and Heiji have been telling him to do just a moment ago. But it seems what Saguru says is the one that hits the nail, because Kaito’s face goes from nothing—no emotion, no expression—to fierce determination. 

And then Kaito stands, grabs a cup of water, downs it in a go and walk out the door, leaving the three in utter dumbfoundedness.